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The giant dragon was silently looking down at Lucella with her wounded wings folded.

The mountain that used to be in a frenzy had regained its calm now, and a human and dragon now stood face to face. Lucella swallowed his saliva, took a breath, and put on Giselle’s ring.

“Can you understand my words?”
“………Yeah.”

Kafal’s voice sounded like a simple hum, but Lucella understood the meaning of it.

Thanks to the ring’s power, Lucella now understood the essence of Dragonian. If human languages were like a shape drawn on paper, then the dragon language was a three-dimensional object.

Dragonian seemed like some sort of telepathy joined together with humming, but it was actually much more layered than that and was hard to understand unless you knew how to hear it.

“The reason I entered the mountain…”

Lucella spoke words that would have sounded like an incomprehensible series of sounds to human ears. But the current him knew how to mix meaning into it.

The crimson dragon silently cast down her eyes.

“I’m aware of it. While I could only understand half of what you were saying, it’s not hard to understand the situation through deduction.”
“Then why! Why didn’t you do anything to me when you learned that! I tried to steal your precious egg…”

That all came out as a small sound. Dragon conversations worked by putting many nuances and dense emotions into such sounds.

Lucella had regained his memories after going to the city and coincidentally investigating his own past.

Learning that he had aimed to steal Kafal’s egg dealt a big shock to him. And Kafal should have learned of that at the same time as him. However, her reaction made it hard to guess what she was thinking.

It was something she had every right to get angry and kill Lucella for. He even thought he wouldn’t mind it if it could serve as an atonement. He even wondered whether Kafal failed to understand what Lucella had done. But it seemed that she understood it well.

“If you had managed to steal my egg, I would have made you suffer through every pain this world has to offer. However, there is a distinction between anger and hatred. If you attempted to steal it to save someone dear to you, then it was simply a clash between two lives as part of the natural order. Although you were an enemy I had to repel, that would be the extent of my hatred towards you. But as you have failed in your attempt, that issue is closed.”
“But still…!”
“If we were to compare sins, the act of carrying out a wrongdoing would be greater than the sin of attempting it and failing.”

When Kafal spoke the word “sin,” it seemed to carry a tangible weight to it.

“What do you…?”
“I mean the fact that I took away the human world from you.”

Lucella took a moment to comprehend the weight of Kafal’s astonishing statement. Yet Kafal’s voice contained a deep regret.

“When I discovered you on the mountain, I thought that you had lost everything and were filled with resentment towards the world. It resonated with my own suffering of losing everything, and I felt a strong urge to protect you… It was the first time I had encountered a human who was so fragile and endearing. Until then, I had only met humans who were strong enough to compete with mighty magical beasts or resilient enough to survive in areas where dragons lived.”
“I see. There are few who come to places like this, and those that do are generally all like that…”

It was probably her first time seeing someone sneak in who may not even beat a giant rat to say nothing of Variants.

…Even if someone like that sneaked in, they would normally die before even encountering Kafal. That’s the kind of a place a dragon’s habitat was.

And thus, she decided to cherish the small thing she had found.

“I made the decision to isolate you from the human world, with the intention of providing you with a sense of contentment and happiness in my care, and helping you forget your resentment towards the outside world… Thus, I named you after my daughter who I lost before she was born, fully aware of the significance of this action and its consequences. I brought you into my nest not as a human, but as a dragon’s replacement.”
“Are you saying… that my old name vanished from the world along with my memories, not as an unintended side effect, but rather, as something you had planned from the very beginning?!”

The significance of a dragon bestowing a name. The dragon in question knew too well what it was. Lucella knew the significance of the name better than anyone else. The name that was supposed to be given to her child was bestowed on him.

Dragons were lifeforms heavily intertwined with the workings of the world.

When Kafal bestowed a name upon him, he was marked as the “dragon’s daughter,” which established this truth in the world.

That caused Lucella to undergo a transformation into a young girl, as well as allowing him to possess draconic powers that surpassed humans, and finally, blurred his memories of once being human and removed ■■■■■’s name from the world.

“But it turned out that you hadn’t lost anything. You had left many things in the human world, which I deprived you of. I even took the ‘death’ of your loved one from you… I’m truly sorry…”

Lucella held his breath.

While he was searching for himself in the city, he had come to learn that he wasn’t seen badly by people around. He also learned that he had left a clear mark on this world.

And Kafal knew that too. If Lucella went to a human city, he would ultimately be able to live as a human. That was the reason behind her acting so depressed. She thought she had picked up a human who had lost everything, but it turned out that she was the one who robbed him of what he still had left.

Lucella failed to save Giselle. Then again, he never had a way to save her from the start. Lucella failed to see Giselle during the moment of death. However, had Kafal not picked him up, he would have died either way, so it was hard to put the blame on Kafal for this.

Lucella had forgotten about Giselle entirely. This was… certainly akin to stealing her ‘death’ from him. After all, he wasn’t able to grieve for her until now.

Perhaps it wouldn’t be entirely wrong to call Kafal’s affection self-centered.

“Tell me. Answer me. I’m a dragon and you’re a human. Are we supposed to live… as we’re meant to?”

Kafal asked with great intensity, her eyes ablaze with the color of the setting sun. Lucella wanted to refuse, to say that it was absurd. But why was it so? He had a clear answer, but couldn’t explain the reasoning behind it and found himself at a loss for words.

While thinking about it, he for some strange reason felt amused by the situation.

“Heh… hahaha!”
“…Why are you laughing?”
“I mean, we finally got to have a meaningful conversation, but it just had to be about us parting ways. It sounded like something straight out of a tearjerker novel and I couldn’t help but be amused.”

Thinking calmly, Lucella found the whole situation amusing and couldn’t help but laugh.

He realized that the heavy burden he was carrying in his heart was pointless and felt relieved to finally let go of his feelings.

“Earlier… I said that I wouldn’t mind if you killed me because of the egg matter.”
“Why?”
“Well… I have several reasons. My first feeling was pity toward you for cherishing someone who wanted to steal your egg.”
“That’s…”
“But that didn’t happen. We decided to apologize and come clean with our secrets for each other’s sake despite the fact that knowing about our respective deeds could break us up. That’s… what it boils down to, isn’t it?”

They each attempted to resign themselves for each other’s sake. Should it be called a tragedy or a comedy? No, neither of those was needed here. How could this human and dragon settle for anything but a happy ending!!

“We met after doing selfish things. Perhaps our transient family relationship was built upon deceit. But that doesn’t mean that the happiness and warmth and everything else we felt during that time was fake too. In the end, we saved each other without thinking about ourselves. So don’t say something so sad as this being our farewell. Or what, do you want me to say it properly?”

Lucella laughed very naturally as he looked up at Kafal.

Kafal apologized, feeling the pain of an insignificant, small being. If so, it was now Lucella’s turn to take a step forward. So he could graduate from being a mighty dragon’s cherished and become her daughter.

“…If you’re willing to forgive me, then I’ll be your daughter. So, let’s stay together, mom.”
“Lucella…!!”

Overwhelmed, Kafal brought her giant snout close to Lucella, who accepted the gesture.