Chapter 438: Oath value
The boy named Sahul, who revealed his dragon body, squealed high in the air in front of us, who looked so bewildered.
“Gaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!”
“……You noisy bastard!”
Laila muttered without moving a hair and then grabbed Sahul’s tail to chase after him as he valiantly tried to soar into the sky and slammed it down on the ground.
“Bofuoo!?”
Fire breath spurts out from Sahul’s mouth. Of course, he did not intend to fight back, it was probably just leaking from the impact. The direction of the spray was the day after tomorrow, but it still burned a tree several dozen meters away. Dragon Laila is about 60 meters long. Sahul, who is only one-third the size of Laila, is not even close to being an adult and a child. It’s about the size difference between a human and a cat. There was no reason to fight and lose.
“H, Hey, he said something about the rider. Is it okay to do such a thing out of the blue?”
“We also have riders. In the first place, the idea that humans also use treaties and covenants should be polite. It’s the same with dragons. There’s no right to preach the law to an outlaw who doesn’t even know a single greeting”
Laila grabbed Sahul by the neck as he tried to get up, lifted him up again and slammed him down hard to the ground.
“!!!!”
This time, she gripped and squeezed his neck as she slammed him down, so there were no flames. The ground shook with a roar.
“If he doesn’t behave himself, I’ll have to chastise him a few more times”
“Wait, Laila, go away……”
“You’re too soft, Owner. A dragon can kill a human with a single jerk of its head. Don’t be fooled by a child’s mischievous behavior”
“If you try any harder, you’ll break something! You’ll be in big trouble!”
“If the surprise attack had succeeded, Anzeros would be dead. He will have to pay for his rudeness”
Laila says so in a bad mood and lifts the struggling Sahul again. ……Bad. She sounds annoyed and not very furious, but Laila is super angry.
“Maia, stop Laila! Dianne, calm Laila down!”
I yell and Maia pauses and takes on the body of a dragon, grabbing Sahul’s head and trying to rip it out of Laila’s hands……. Isn’t that extra tight?
“Sharon, get in line, aim for the wrist”
“Understood”
Taking the timing with Sharon who quickly took out her love sword, Dianne-san braced herself. Then, as if drawing an acute-angled isosceles triangle from two points on the ground, their kicks and slashes strike Laila’s wrists.
“KKu……! What are you doing!”
Laila couldn’t resist and took down Sahul. Maia dragged the already limp Sahul away from Laila. I watch the monster showdown, hiding behind Almeida and Neia, who remain close at hand.
“Ku……y, you guys……”
“Be quiet. Red dragon child. ……I’m not on your side either”
Maia, in dragon form, says quietly and holds Sahul’s head down to the ground.
“We have riders. If you’re an evil dragon who can’t be reasoned with, I have the right to kill you right here and now”
“Ku……e, even I……”
“Is that dark elf named Oscar a rider?”
“……I, It’s different”
“What is your reason for being hostile to us? If we are at odds with your rider’s righteousness, then you can openly say so……”
“Oo, you guys kidnapped that Rika, didn’t you……!!”
“……Different”
“Don’t lie to me!”
“You think a dragon would lie about a rider?”
“Ah, if it’s an evil dragon, you can say anything!”
Sahul makes absurd claims while lashing out. He is obviously trying to make us look like an evil dragon (Meaning like a villain? No, more like a felon), he puts aside the dragon pact he had just mentioned and insists that he is right. Laila, who had changed from her dragon body to her human body (completely naked), sighed as she rubbed her wrists that Dianne and the others had hit.
“You don’t seem to understand the importance of the pact, do you?”
“Laila”
“Are you only thinking of it as a way to become a hero? Do you really think that such a cheap rule will allow dragons to kill their own kind? If you think it is that easy to be the top of all dragons, then this child is still evil. He should be killed”
“Stop it”
“But, Owner. Look around you. The damage has already been done. This child has avenged the world”
All around us are burnt ruins. This is certainly a fact that is a little too heavy to ignore. At the very least, someone must have died. If it was a mistake, or if it was the result of the childish righteousness of a child who did not understand the reason for such a thing, it would be difficult to leave it alone. But then the dark elf named Oscar entered the conversation.
“That’s the thing……”
“Hmm?”
“That is a misunderstanding. No, it’s not a misunderstanding……I’m sure it’s Sahul-kun’s doing”
“……What’s that?”
When I tilted my head, Oscar scratched his head.
“This place is an abandoned village, originally”
He started to say something I didn’t understand.
It seems that this was an abandoned village several decades ago. It used to be a human village, but the soil was not very good and there were frequent conflicts with the lizardmen, so they decided to immigrate here. This is quite a common story in Celesta. The territory is large, but not all of it is monolithic and security is not always maintained. It is not uncommon for different ethnic groups to quarrel with each other in places out of the reach of the government and it is not unusual for one of them to be evicted because of it. The remaining village land was sold to a nearby landowner for a few hundred dollars, but the village’s maintenance costs were not commensurate with the harvest and there was no prospect of resolving the problems, so the land was left unattended for a long time. Oscar was apparently entrusted by the landowner to manage the land. Although the land was unsuitable for farming, which could be remedied with agricultural magic, the landowner was at a loss to come to terms with the territoriality of the lizardmen. There was a plan to have the lizardmen become peasants, but they seemed to be a tribe that did not show much interest in agriculture. But then Sahul appeared. Sahul said he was looking for a companion named Rika and he revealed his true identity as a dragon rather casually. Oscar was apparently quite distraught, but on the other hand, he had heard rumors about Helicon and had an epiphany. In other words, he intentionally went on a rampage in the abandoned village to attract attention so that the rumors would reach the person of Rika. At the same time, he would use the authority of the dragons to get the lizardmen, who worshiped them, to negotiate and if possible, quietly draw a line in the sand.
“Well, I mean, the burning was a performance. So if someone came here, I was going to explain according to the person, but……I didn’t expect another dragon to come first”
“You should know. Only a dragon can stop a dragon’s misdeeds. Any dragon or its rider with a heart will be there before anyone else”
Laila said so in a bad mood.
“But what kind of a mindset is it to let them attack you? I know it wasn’t your idea, but you could have at least told them”
“That’s……I’ll repeat it, but I didn’t expect the dragon to come in the first place……”
“An unknown dragon has appeared, it’s natural that you can’t take it easy!”
Sahul, still in his dragon form, shouted while Maia held him down.
“And I was staring at it, thinking it was the dragon that took Rika away! Rika must have thought I was too young to fight another dragon, so she went along with the bad guy herself to protect me……if that’s the case, he’ll attack me as soon as he finds out where I am!”
“……You have some reason to believe he’s going to target you?”
Laila says in a troublesome manner and after a giggle, Sahul opens his mouth as if he’s squeezing.
“I’m……I am a dragon born from human parents……”
“Hmph”
Laila sniffed in a boring way. But this is new to me.
“……Can a dragon be born from a human?”
“Sometimes it happens. It is called reincarnation. When a dragon is a single parent, the child does not necessarily become a dragon. In many cases, the child is the offspring of the other species with whom the dragon is most closely related. But for some reason, after another generation, some children are suddenly born as dragons”
“……Is that something to be targeted for?”
“Even children can be exceptionally strong. There are cases where they are noticed, but……well, it’s just a somewhat rare example and it’s not something a dragon would go out of their way to target”
Laila shrugged her shoulders as if to say she was amused.
“I was thinking of yelling at him, asking which palace he was from to allow such a silly child to make a contract, but it’s nothing. What a fool!”
“Y, You don’t know what you’re talking about!?”
Laila silenced the irritated young dragon with a glint in her eyes.
“To defile the pact is worse than swimming in feces. Don’t talk about the pact with half-knowledge, even if you don’t know where it came from. Don’t wear a hat on the rider. If Owner doesn’t stop me, I’ll tear off your limbs and cut off your head. I’m about to throw it into the sea”
“Hey, Laila”
“A pact is worth a dragon’s life and pride. You should know that, Owner”
Laila turned away completely, so I made a suggestion to Maia and Sahul.
“Ah……it, it’s going to be hard to control your voice even if you’re arguing like that, so could you both turn into human bodies for once?”
The two of them become humans and with Maia, who is still intimidating him from behind without letting her guard down, beside him, she begins to interview the boy.
“I see. That girl Rika is your rider……and she’s been missing for a while now?”
“R, Rider……or just, well, I’m just thinking about it……”
“Andy-sama, can I hit this liar ten times?”
“W, Why!”
“You’re a rider without a contract and you’re trying to denounce other dragons”
“I, I don’t know! I didn’t know that there was a ritual required! The old man at the palace who taught me about the pact only taught me a little bit at a time!”
“A lie is a lie. A fraud is a fraud. Punishment must be meted out”
Maia expressionlessly punches Sahul in the cheek. Before I could stop her, she struck him a second time with her back fist.
“Stop it!”
“……………”
You know how important the pact is to a genuine dragon. I can’t believe Maia here would go off the rails in front of me.
I’m not going to complain if she kills me.
“D, Damn it……just because you’re a little older, you’re getting on my nerves……
“……What”
The third shot, a crushing blow with an ice cube the size of a human head, generated in one second.
“Did you say it?”
“……I, I didn’t say……”
“Yes”
……Maia is also scary when she gets really mad.
“However, if that happens, it will not be solved unless we find out why Rika disappeared……”
“Of course, someone was trying to do my bidding as a stray dragon……”
“That’s enough”
I’m tired. He’s like Phaser when it comes to tiredness, this boy. He is the type of person who assumes things will turn out well for him. I’m sure he wants to make dramatic enemies and rescue her in a dramatic way.
“Do you know her race, the time of her disappearance and the area of her disappearance?”
Dianne asked the boy, looking a little tired.
“E, Emm……she is an elf……”
“If you can tell me those three things, I can do something about it”
“Dianne, can you afford to go along with this kind of childish nonsense?”
“You can’t ignore them now. And it’s not up to me to find out”
Dianne held up a finger.
“Organizational power is what you use at times like this, right?”