Ishura - Volume 3 - Chapter 19

Chapter 19: The Second Match

The only plant life was blighted vegetation with shriveled yellow leaves.

It was the only natural life that could be found within the Mari Wastes’ surrounding enormous gas field of the Mari Landburrow.

It was a desolate land, with deep crevices running like lightning all over, covered in parched bedrock. The lights of Aureatia, filled with vivacious activity, were supported by this dead land.

With the commencement of the Sixways Exhibition, there was a chance that there would be a battle between two monsters that far surpassed any minia in scale, and thus it was determined there were no better candidates to hold such a battle than here, in the Mari Wastes.

The gas-mining facilities were still a ways ahead in the distance, and there wasn’t any minian race zones of activity as far as the eye could see. If there were any eccentrics who wished to spectate what was sure to become a calamitous fight—of course, with the spectator fee becoming tax revenue for the council—amid this terrain, absent any visual obstacle, it would also be possible to watch the flow of the match from a relatively safe and far-off position.

They had provided a special two-day break in between the first and second match. This was to allow the almost full-day ride it took for the caravans full of spectators to reach the Mari Wastes.

It was completely different from the first match. The caravan’s rations were enough to cover the spectators’ dinner from the night before as well as the day’s lunch, and they were all hushed in somber dread, as if watching over a myth.

Then, if the citizens looked through their binoculars or monocular glasses…on one of the two table-shaped plateaus facing each other, they could make out a white silhouette that reflected the sun like cold steel.

Similar to Toroa the Awful, it was a being none among them had ever witnessed before, yet which still exuded a presence that forced all of them to accept she was real.

The strongest being within the Sixways Exhibition. A dragon. A true legend. Lucnoca the Winter.

Absolutely none of them noticed the puny outline of a man standing beside her.

“…I hesitated the whole time.”

Aureatia’s Sixth General, Harghent the Still, wrapped his entire body up in a thick blanket and was looking down on the expanse of land, split up by dark crevices.

Lucnoca the Winter was a terrifying dragon but also an individual being living within the logic and reason of this world. She didn’t constantly radiate cold air. However, the illusionary biting cold from his memories, and the premonition he had of the frigid landscape that was to come, made his body tremble.

“I thought if I told you everything, you and Alus…may no longer be on equal footing. And if winning like that…had any meaning at all. However, I can’t let myself think like that, can I? Alus may know about your legend, Lucnoca, but with you being in Igania for so long, you wouldn’t know anything about Alus’s legend, so—”

“Harghent.”

The dragon gently cut in, her clear voice wholly incongruous with her massive body.

“You take such a dreadfully long time to get to the point, don’t you?”

“Hngh…! I-I’m not…taking that long! Why is it never Grasse or Enu, but always me who’s told that…?! Do you really find my words so pointless?! I-I’m saying that, at this rate, you’ll be at a disadvantage!”

Lucnoca folded one of her long wings and put it up against her mouth.

A mannerism almost like a minia trying to hold back their laughter.

There wasn’t anywhere within Aureatia’s borders that could have accommodated her. Because of it, Lucnoca had only made the trip from Igania to Aureatia one day prior.

The white dragon was giddy, as though she was a young girl who had discovered a new place to play.

“Pfft, hee-hee-hee! Disadvantaged, is it? Why, I don’t mind at all.”

“…He has a magic item, known as the Greatshield of the Dead,”

Harghent muttered bitterly.

He knew, with his own eyes, one part of Alus the Star Runner’s fighting style. When it came to the wyvern’s thoughts and personality, he was more knowledgeable than any other in the world.

“I don’t know the conditions behind it, but he was able to avoid a breath attack with it. It was how he guarded against Vikeon the Smoldering’s breath. So that fatal breath of yours won’t work with him. You need to think as you fight, or you’ll get hit with his magic-item counterattack and lose.”

“It’ll work.”

“Wh-what do you—?”

“I’m saying it’s impossible to defend against my breath.”

“……Still.”

Looking at her demeanor, full of unwavering self-confidence, it conversely brought a feeling of anxiety flitting through Harghent’s mind.

—The dragon’s breath of Lucnoca the Winter.

It was likely the Word Arts that boasted the greatest destructive power in the entire land, freezing all creation and annihilating the very landscape itself. Nevertheless, she was just like Harghent, in that she had no understanding whatsoever of the full extent of Alus the Star Runner’s weapon arsenal.

Although its effects robbed heat, in complete contrast to their normal processes, Lucnoca’s breath was still ultimately a type of Thermal Arts. Was that self-conceit really going to work against the wyvern that butchered a creature of Vikeon the Smoldering’s grandeur?

…If I lose, it’s over for me. My ambition and my honor will be fully exhausted. That was why I brought along someone who absolutely wouldn’t lose—Lucnoca the Winter. I’m sure…… I’m sure I did everything right. But…but still.

His tightly clenched fists were trembling in his lap. It was partly from his premonition of the cold to come, but it carried another reason.

With this battle, something was finally going to be settled once and for all—Harghent’s very life.

Alus is strong. The strongest.

He believed so more than anyone else in the world. That was precisely why he decided to fight against him.

He looked at the tall earthen pillar that rose up exactly in the middle between the two large plateaus. As the sun grew higher in the sky, the shadow stretching out along the ground would shrink. That was the signal for the start of the match. For a battle of this scale, they couldn’t possibly place any official observers nearby.

At the moment when the shadow totally disappeared, the fight between the world’s ultimate two dragonkin would begin.

Aureatia’s Twentieth Minister, Hidow the Clamp, was taking part in this fight purely for the sake of Aureatia.

It wasn’t because of his own good nature, nor was it out of loyalty for Queen Sephite or the Aureatia Assembly. In fact, Hidow had never once in his entire life been seriously concerned for another person, and he even acknowledged that he himself was a bit of a villain.

He just didn’t have any ambition. Simply resolving Aureatia’s problems as they came up—and nothing more.

Given that, the fact that he ended up working together with the person who held the strongest ambitions of all, the wyvern Alus the Star Runner, truly was an ironic twist of fate.

“Hey, Alus.”

There was a bottomless abyss right below his feet. He was sitting down on the edge of the table-shaped plateau directly across from Lucnoca’s.

Alus’s responses were always slow, so whenever they’d converse, at the beginning, it would always start with Hidow talking at him in this way.

“This is nothing but a big show.”

“…………”

“You’ve known that a while, right? This is just some big festival for those minian race idiots to watch and enjoy all of you fighting. The whole crap about the Hero or whatever is just window dressing. Doesn’t it make it all seem so absurd?”

“…………Why?”

A small silhouette looked down from an even steeper clifftop from where Hidow sat.

This was simply a question. Alus wasn’t offended. He had spent enough time observing this wyvern that he could tell as much just from the tone of his voice.

He looked over in a different direction. The crowding citizens. In the wasteland landscape, they were huddled together like a windblown drift of garbage.

They had come to watch a calamity capable of annihilating them all a hundred times over as if they were on a pleasure trip. Their actions and everything about their lives seemed loathsome and senseless to Hidow.

“Those idiots aren’t putting their lives on the line. They can’t even solve their own problems by themselves… Heck, they don’t even know what their own problems even are, really. You want a country full of idiots like that? Me? I wouldn’t.”

“…It’s all the same,”

The wyvern blandly replied. There wasn’t any emotion in his voice.

“Minian races…wyverns… Everyone’s the same, right?”

“So you and I are the same as them, then?”

“……I just have people I like and people I don’t like…… Dumb, clever… It’s all too nitpicky for me, and I don’t really get it…”

“At the very least, minia are like that, let me tell you.”

“……Why?”

“It’s fine if you don’t get it…… More importantly, if you’re going to get out, now’s your last chance. There’s technically an agreement that outlines a penalty of some kind, but the Aureatian army’s never going to catch you flying up in the air. If it all sounds like nonsense……forget me and head back home.”

Hidow knew his suggestion was a wasted effort.

Alus did whatever it was he wanted to do. Even if it was something that couldn’t be measured in gains and losses.

Otherwise, he wouldn’t have been able to become a legend who had uncovered everything the world had to offer.

“It’s not nonsense at all.”

“…You think so?”

“…………It’s a match against Harghent…”

It was the same, melancholic mumble as always. However, there was a feeling of delight in his words.

The one he recognized as the greatest opponent of all. The joy to battle against the powerless Sixth General unacknowledged by anyone else.

His gazed was fixed on Lucnoca the Winter—and also not on Lucnoca the Winter at all.

“I seriously don’t get it.”

Hidow looked at the sky. The sun was close to its zenith. The time was fast approaching.

For a reason as simple as that, a mythical battle was at hand.

All the world, save Hidow, was bound by such a simple rule.

“All of you… I don’t get a single one of you.”

The pillar’s shadow was hidden, and wings buffeted the wind above his head. The dragon had flown into the air.

The start of the Sixways Exhibition’s second match was declared. It was exceedingly quiet.

The match, the largest-scale fight throughout the games, didn’t defy any of the expectations of those who witnessed it, save for those of the similarly all-powerful combatants who would claim victory.

In other words, before the sun could even set, the battle was one that brought eternal destruction to the land around it.

The conclusion taught everyone exactly how terrifying the words all-powerful could truly be.

Alus the Star Runner versus Lucnoca the Winter.

The momentum of the silhouette flying out in front of her had the force of explosive firepower.

Even to Lucnoca, having flown from Igania to Aureatia in less than a day, that’s what the speed felt like to her.

“Fantastic.”

This was not amazement at the speed on display. It was an emotionally charged reaction to the fighting spirit fearlessly coming her way.

Completely isolated by her excessive power, Lucnoca could no longer read how strong or weak her opponents were. In the past, the ones who looked weak were weak, and the ones who believed themselves strong had all been weak, too.

Therefore, though she hadn’t noticed herself……she had been waiting for someone to stand in front of her. She grew to only believe in the surest truths of all—the bravery to challenge an absolutely powerful opponent and the recklessness.

Lucnoca the Winter strongly believed that such a heart was far more beautiful than anything else in the world.

“…Now then, Alus. What exactly will you show me, then?”

However, the wyvern, approaching in a straight-lined collision course into Lucnoca’s flight path, suddenly changed his trajectory. Arcing up above him, he quickly turned to the south.

Those watching closely couldn’t help following him with their eyes.

They ended up looking into the midday sun. He had lured their gazes. Lucnoca folded her wings and suddenly dropped her speed.

The second she lost sight of Alus in the backlight of the sun, her eyes also missed a flash of light. The bullet fired from the musket’s maximum firing range flew and hit Lucnoca’s cheek.

“Uh-hoo, hoo, hoo, hoo, hoo, hoo!”

Feeling the sensation of the gunshot, Lucnoca laughed.

Flying out from the pillar of light, this time she tracked the silhouette diving low inside one of the fissures in the earth. After dilating her pupils and by having her look directly at the sun, now he attempted to contract them again in the darkness.

Lucnoca was aware of the sensation that crawled across her shot cheek. It was branching plant roots, sprouting from the bullet, eating away and corroding everything it touched.

It was known as the Torture Oak’s Seed. It was a magic bullet that used the musket’s gunpowder heat to germinate a tree that caused immediate organic death.

…But Lucnoca lightly rubbed the cheek being covered with roots with her claw.

“What an interesting little arrow.”

That was the extent of the lethal magic bullet, simply peeled off with her dragon scales and falling to the ground, rendered meaningless.

The reason behind the invincibility of dragon scale was not only their hardness. It lay in their insulating abilities.

Alus’s previous shot had clearly been aimed at Lucnoca’s eye. The eye not covered with dragon scales.

However, Lucnoca knew very well that each and every one of the champions who challenged dragons aimed for the same spot. The dodge she just made with her sudden deceleration was, to Lucnoca, nothing more than a conventional and expected back-and-forth that she didn’t even have to think about.

From the bottom of the fissure’s abyss, another bullet flew her way. Her claw cut in and repelled it.

Lucnoca the Winter hadn’t been aware this “gun” weapon existed, but as long as she possessed physical abilities and reflexes that far surpassed the bullets they fired, any knowledge of it was bound to become meaningless eventually.

It was clear this was another type of magic bullet that would bring death, but the surface layer of the dragon’s claws, with its high degree of crystallization, was at no risk of poisoning, and it was impossible for the roots to eat into it.

“Uh-hoo, hoo, hoo, hoo, hoo, hoo!”

She looked down into the abyss running across the land, where Alus had hidden himself. If she launched her breath right there, that would probably have been the end of the battle.

But that wouldn’t have been any fun.

How was this speedy little champion going to fight from here on out?

What kind of tricks was he thinking up as he stood before the world’s strongest dragon?

What would this Alus the Star Runner, the strongest in this land, do for her?

……Ah, that’s not it.

Her eyes, twinkling with curiosity and excitement, narrowed slightly.

If he hid himself in the ground fissures, he had no way to escape her breath. That was something that Alus the Star Runner should have been aware of more than anyone else. In that case—the situation was already different.

“Got you……”

By the time she heard the voice, the whip had already been sent off behind her. It traced an angular zigzag, unbefitting a whip at all, across the sky, and grabbed the base of the ancient dragon’s right wing.

“Kio’s Hand.”

The caught section twisted and distorted strangely and began emitting a clicking sound.

Kio’s Hand, the magic whip that moved freely of its own accord, had another function to it as well. It would twist anything it wrapped itself around, regardless of the target’s strength, and sever it.

As long as he was utilizing supernatural magic items, there were methods he could use to ignore their durability and break through her dragon scales.

“Uh-hoo, hoo, hoo! Uh-hoo, hoo, hoo, hoo, hoo! Aaah… How much fun! You truly are fast, Alus! Perhaps it’s a sign of my old age, but my eyes can’t keep up with you at all!”

“………Really, now…… You’re weak, then.”

Kio’s Hand was still nothing more than a foothold for his next move. While Alus kept one of his three arms pulling on the whip, another arm produced a new weapon. The strongest enchanted sword of all.

It was at that moment the clear voice rang out.

“Co chwelne.” (To Kouto winds.)

To those with some knowledge of Word Arts, they understood this was meaningless resistance.

In order to use Thermal Arts for destruction, it was necessary to give them a direction. It was impossible to use them offensively in a direction that would involve oneself in the blast. Alus was now behind Lucnoca, and he locked down her right wing to prevent her from turning her neck around back at him.

Much like a certain visitor had done in a Labyrinth City of the past, even the heat’s wake wouldn’t reach a person positioned directly behind the practitioner.

Nevertheless, the motion of the dragon’s breath attack began and ended with a single breath.

“Cyulcascarz.” (Wither and fall at the edge of light.)

At the end of Lucnoca’s field of view, there was a gently sloping valley and a waterfront.

There was the red horizon of the wasteland, and beautifully contrasting with it was a blue sky of sparsely scattered clouds.

It was the past several hundred years of the Mari Wastes’ changing landscape.

All of it disappeared.

It was as though the five senses held by all life had stopped.

Silence.

Darkness.

Even the spectators viewing from far off in the distance immediately felt the cataclysmic change to the world.

Lucnoca’s soundless breath brought the landscape in front of her to a standstill. All that existed there was blinded by white.

—No. It hadn’t been brought to an exact standstill. Though Thermal Arts were unaccompanied by any wind or impacting force, the cracked terrain had indeed changed within the raging stillness.

Even the drastic transformation, dyeing the world white by freezing air molecules, was over in an instant. It was chilled, as if the bottom of the world itself had fallen out, yet even more so. The rocky earth had completely contorted black, rippling out as if on the surface of an open sea. Chilled to the absolute limit, below it may not have been solid matter at all.

The construction of the earth, condensed under the terrifying force, flowed like one singular molecule.

“Aaah, Harghent. You said my breath wouldn’t work, didn’t you?”

The ruler of the truly silent world muttered to herself.

“Perhaps, in your world, that may have been true. But.”

It was horribly quiet.

But. Even with this, the conclusion was yet to come.

After a brief pause, it happened.

An explosion like lightning shaking heaven and earth.

The boundless, thunderous rumble devastated the world of silence.

The air, pelting like a raging torrent, surged into the world present before Lucnoca’s eyes, and even Alus the Star Runner was swept away by the raging billows, having moored himself to her with his magic whip.

Any and all matter had fallen in front of Lucnoca.

The eyes of the wyvern, completely off-balance, and the eyes of the dragon waiting for him to do so mingled together for one moment.

“……!”

“My breath works.”

With a downward swipe of her transcendent claws, Alus fell in a straight line down to dead earth.

The lightweight wyvern smashed through the rocky ground just from the speed of his descent.

The champion-slaying legend brushed away the magic whip, torn off from its grip around her right wing, like picking off a piece of seaweed.

She was unharmed.

All the champions who challenged the dragon had tried the same thing.

Lucnoca’s breath, shutting the world away in winter, was known even among the children who didn’t grow up to become warriors through children’s songs.

There were those who came with defenses against low temperatures laid out around them. There were those who carried a magic item that blocked any and all forms of destruction. Yet others were like this Alus before her, using their mobility and tactical skills to try escaping from the vicinity.

Historically, all of them had died.

The absolute and ultimate Ice Arts breath. All air particles within range were made solid.

In which case, the destruction didn’t end there. Continued afterward was the explosion of tumultuous tempest winds that tried to flow in and fill the hole the lost world left behind. Even an exceptional creature of the age, Alus the Star Runner, couldn’t fight against this reality before him.

…However.

“Uh-hoo, hoo, hoo! Uh-hoo, hoo, hoo, hoo!”

However, Lucnoca laughed. There was only one possible meaning behind it.

“Oh, how funny…!”

She hadn’t seen anything yet.

What sort of fighting style did he have left?

Just what kind of tricks did he retain to fight the strongest of all dragons before him?

What would the strongest of this land, Alus the Star Runner, show her next?

“……You’re toying with me……aren’t you……?”

It was the same quiet, gloomy, and weak voice as usual.

Nevertheless, if someone well acquainted with the wyvern had heard it, they would’ve been able to guess the singular strong emotion within it, tinged with the slightest degree of anger…

The emotion of “irritation.”

“Greatshield of the Dead.”

Once guarding him from Vikeon the Smoldering’s breath, it was his ultimate form of protection, capable of defending against the strongest dragon claws in the world, as long as the proper compensation was paid.

“…You’re bragging. Even……to the guy who’s about to kill you.”

Alus the Star Runner brandished his next weapon. Kicking the ground, he took off.

…But he couldn’t.

The world around them was chilled to the core. The air was heavy. The ground that had once been all rocks was now some sort of black crystal, twisted into a strange pattern by some effect of physics.

“Uh-hoo, hoo, hoo! You can’t go standing in a place like that, you know.”

Lucnoca looked down from far up above Alus’s head. Much the same way Alus had to all of the legends he had encountered before now.

Alus tried again to take to the skies. He coughed up blood. The cells in his lungs were being gnawed from the inside. He began to be drastically robbed of his body heat. The landscape after her breath had passed through, as well as the air, the earth, and everything else, was far colder than any ice…than anything he had ever known.

“…Perhaps your back legs have gotten themselves stuck to the ice, hmm?”

The strongest race in the land. The strongest individual among them.

There was no escaping from Lucnoca the Winter’s breath.

“Co chwelne. Cyulcascarz.” (To Kouto winds. Wither and fall at the edge of light.)

“Y-you…you’ve got to be kidding…!”

On top of a faraway plateau, Hidow gasped, the color draining from his face.

He had witnessed Lucnoca the Winter’s dragon breath with his own eyes. The embodiment of demise itself, completely eclipsing all imagination.

The sight should’ve been far off in the distance, but he definitely wasn’t that removed from it at all. If the area of effect had veered to the west? What if that spot where Lucnoca and Alus had clashed had been even half as close to where he was?

It was cold. The extremely frigid winds, prickling his skin far worse than any snowfield he had visited before, terrified Hidow. The spot showered by the ice breath was so far away from his position. This was still supposed to be the Mari Wastes. However, the current temperature indicated it was no longer.

And it was likely……that it would stay that way from now on.

That fool. Did Harghent know about this?

He couldn’t have possibly known. Supposing he had witnessed the attack at Igania Ice Lake, he clearly wouldn’t have returned to Aureatia alive. He may have been Wing Clipper Harghent, but Hidow wanted to believe he wasn’t foolish enough to know about this and still bring Lucnoca the Winter to compete.

He immediately shouldered the bare minimum of his belongings and called out to the soldier on standby behind him.

“Get the car!”

“H-huh?!”

“Didn’t hear me? Steam’s running, right? Get the car. We’re heading to the caravan.”

Hidow turned his attention to the caravan, visible in another direction. The citizens gathered together like locusts. They must have been wildly excited about the shocking scene and the tremendous being that the people of the current era were witnessing for the first time.

“But, sir, toward the caravan?”

“Where else? If Winter’s breath is pointed in this direction, it’ll kill us all! Me, you, all of them, it’s all up to her whims! We don’t have any choice but to evacuate! Get moving!”

“But if you leave the area, the Sixth General will be the only one observing the match! If that happens, Lord Hidow—”

“Get. Moving.”

Hidow grabbed the soldier by the collar and intimidated him.

The soldier wasn’t using his head. No sense of urgency. All of them were like this. He wouldn’t stand for it.

Gnashing his teeth, the Twentieth Minister looked over his shoulder to the battle behind him.

Why am I the one who has to think about this stuff?

Hidow was different from men like Harghent. He could think through the results and benefits that went with the choices he made. Even if it may have been so in the moment…he hadn’t simply agreed to the fight with Lucnoca the Winter simply out of pride and animosity.

The legend-slaying champion Alus and the champion-slaying legend Lucnoca. Among the participants in the Sixways Exhibition, the only ones that posed a threat to either of them were each other.

They were both out of anyone’s reach, beings there was no hope of ever defeating. In order for the minia to put down these two wicked dragons, they needed to make them kill each other and exhaust whichever one was left standing.

Therefore, Hidow had been able to face the first match after completely setting aside the sabotage against Alus he had planned to utilize during the first round. Currently, the Star Runner had control of all the equipment at his disposal. The battlefield didn’t impose any limits on his range of flight, and he hadn’t been poisoned beforehand, either.

To face off against the strongest of all dragons, he needed to be at his full power.

A purely rational judgment, completely unrelated to Hidow’s pride whatsoever.

…He really is the only one who can beat her after all, ain’t he?

Lucnoca the Winter’s strength went beyond the reach of the minian race’s powers of imagination.

You better win here, Alus.

Slipping into the passenger seat of the steam-powered automobile, he spoke into the radzio installed within.

A female liaison responded to his call. It was someone who knew about their operation.

“It’s Hidow the Clamp. Get Rosclay on!”

<Lord Rosclay? If you could hold on for a moment, I can—>

“Forget it. I’ll leave a message. You tell him, ‘Lucnoca is stronger than we anticipated. If Lucnoca wins here, we won’t be able to use that process we discussed.’ Got that? This might be the last time I’ll be able to report in.”

<Huh… Then, what about you Lord Hidow? Um…>

“Not important. You got my whole message, right? Tell him all of it now. Rosclay should be able to think of something.”

On the horizon, the giant white dragon’s silhouette was in motion.

The sight was distorted, almost as if he was looking through a water tank.

It was the temperature difference. Hidow could understand that. The extremely drastic gradient of cold air even changed the speed of light itself.

Was this some other world? A far distant shore, where people were unable to live or trespass. It was as if a frozen-over hellscape had been extracted from the passages of a story and emerged in that strip of wasteland.

“…You think I can die…?!” he warned, speaking to no one in particular.

He’d force all the spectators to evacuate. Think about future steps against this calamity going forward. He would make sure the Sixways Exhibition ended without any mishaps. There was still a mountain of work to get to. He wasn’t going to get buried in that worthless work and die like this.

“I can’t die now…!”

Together with a puff of steam, the car departed.

Sixth General Harghent the Still was also looking out at the same scene, clutching his knees to his chest underneath his blanket.

The cloudlessly noontime wasteland was now sealed in winter.

It was a time period that existed in the Beyond, when the world died out. Meanwhile in this land, bereft of seasons, spring would never come. Once Winter had visited, the world remained in eternal death.

There was a sense of an unopposable and inevitable end in the cold air that traveled all the way to where he sat.

A temperature of despair and fated resignation, like he had felt in Igania Ice Lake.

…Nevertheless, Harghent looked unblinking at that distant scene.

His eyes were bloodshot and crackled with fire inside the blanket. He was the only one who had believed it.

“Not yet.”

Lucnoca the Winter was truly the strongest legend of all.

So strong that she had lost her opportunities to fight. So strong that she was brimming with pride and negligence—and still had more to spare.

“……He hasn’t, done it yet…! Not yet…! Not yet!”

He continued to mutter words for no one to hear as his teeth rattled in the cold.

The idea to run away hadn’t even crossed his mind.

It wasn’t due to his bravery. He never had that choice in the first place.

Alus the Star Runner was putting his whole soul on the line. A contest that would never come again, that Harghent had sunk the piddling remnants of his pride and future entirely into.

He wasn’t a sham like Rosclay. He was the only wyvern and the only true dragon-slaying hero in the land. If he could just defeat Alus in this first round, there would no longer be anyone who could defeat Lucnoca the Winter.

“Alus.”

The white dragon once again showered the land with her ruthless breath.

Her attack, aimed down below her, didn’t destroy a large area like the one before it.

Instead—a radius of thirty odd meters of the earth collapsed like mud and caved in deep into the ground.

The dragon breath of Lucnoca the Winter didn’t possess any physical impact whatsoever.

Such phenomenon occurred simply due to the extreme cooling.

If all the space between molecules, extending several kilometers belowground, were lost in the instant cooling, was it possible for a topographical shift, almost like a meteor crater, to appear?

As it was understood in the Beyond, when under extremely low temperatures, matter didn’t maintain its volume. Condensed, pulverized, its entire structure changed completely. In the real, macroscopic world, when that exact phenomenon happened, how did that reality present itself? Even among the residents of the Beyond, no one had seen anything like it with their own eyes.

“…Alus!”

Amid the vortex of ruination, he knew Alus had to be there.

Biting down on his lip hard enough to draw blood, Harghent was trembling.

What emotion exactly was making him tremble, even he himself didn’t know.

He simply repeated those words over and over again.

“N-not yet… Not yet…!”

He saw the world behind him crumble away.

Alus didn’t fully comprehend exactly what type of phenomenon was occurring behind him. All he understood was that the scope of the attack was far beyond anything he could defend against with the Greatshield of the Dead.

“…Heshed Elis the Fire Pipe’s……”

Even after seeing such destruction, Alus the Star Runner……felt more regretful about losing one of his magic items than the right toe that had frozen and torn off.

When he killed Vikeon the Smoldering, Alus had pierced his flank with a long spear, but what magic item had allowed him to pierce through a dragon’s flesh? Even Harghent the Still didn’t know the answer to that question.

Heshed Elis the Fire Pipe was a simple iron pipe, not even loaded with gunpowder, but any object that touched its gun barrel would be launched with extraordinary force. As long it was aimed at a gap where their scales were torn off, the magic gun could even finish off a dragon.

He had been faced with a dilemma where instead of using it offensively, he was forced to use it for an emergency escape. Stuck to the ultracold ground, he had launched himself out from the extinction zone, sacrificing a right toe in the process.

“…………”

Inside a small jar, he lit the magic item’s—Ground Runner’s—flame and refreshed the air around him to stop it from freezing his lungs.

While Lucnoca had yet to find Alus, he checked the workings of his favorite gun. Picked out from among all the mass-produced guns he had swapped in during his long days of adventuring, it was a musket with a nearly miraculous degree of accuracy. Keeping the central mechanism untouched, he specialized the grip for wyvern hands; it was a weapon he placed more trust in than any of his legendary magic items, but—

“…Gunpowder’s no good, then.”

The percussion cap gunpowder was frigidly cold. Even if he did pull the trigger, it’d likely misfire. At the very least, during this battle, his arboreal magic bullets, poison magic bullets, and lightning bullets were now all unusable.

Kio’s Hand, that he had used to twist off Vikeon’s arm, had been cut apart, and Heshed Elis the Fire Pipe, used to pierce through his flesh, was lost. The winter of world finality had even killed his lifeless magic tools.

“……I wonder……what sort of treasure……Lucnoca the Winter has……?”

Now that he had lost three different weapons at his disposal, if anything, it made it obvious what his next method of attack should be.

The only method that could pierce through the dragon scales’ defenses and take her life in one attack.

Using Hillensingen the enchanted light sword was his only option.

Kicking off the ground with his wounded leg, the wyvern once again flew into the air.

As long as he was up in the sky, where Lucnoca’s breath hadn’t frozen anything over, he could still fly. While he was flying, his crippled leg wouldn’t put him at a disadvantage, either.

There was a clear fact of reality. He needed to get in close, or he would lose.

The all-powerful breath, sweeping death across all the eyes could see, was harder and harder to escape the farther he was from Lucnoca.

Even supposing he could defend against the power of breath itself with the Greatshield of the Dead, the ultracold world left behind prevented the activity of any living creature. Though it may have meant he’d be dealt a lethal blow being caught in the vacuum as before, his only option was expending all his strength to continue attacking from her blind spot.

Lucnoca the Winter came into view in front of him.

He could see her take flight, as if in response to his approach. He heard her clear voice.

“That isn’t all you have now, is it?”

Closing in the distance in a straight line, Alus flew at comet-like speeds.

The white dragon hadn’t turned her face to him, but she had noticed the presence of her opponent streaking in from the southeast.

“Right, Alus the Star Runner? Ooh, I’m so happy. Very, very, very happy, in fact. Everything about you is just oh so delightful!”

Her Ice Arts breath was coming. Alus’s wings buffeted the air. A mere moment before it came, the wyvern turned along an acute angle.

He needed to be going at his maximum, life-threatening speed. Faster than Lucnoca’s eyes could keep up.

However.

“Co chwelne.” (To Kouto Winds.)

—However, Lucnoca caught him directly in front of her.

After their last exchange, Alus had placed Lucnoca at the top among all the other legends he had fought up until now. The destructive scale of their clash wasn’t the only reason why. Even when it came to simple physical ability……she was so overwhelmingly superior it was impudent to even compare her to the others.

Why was she able to keep up her activity within this frozen hellscape, born from her own breath?

Why could she face the violent vortex gale, sucking everything into an air vacuum, and not stir an inch?

It was because her body could endure it all.

Dragons were the only living creatures that could possibly survive the aftermath effects of their own dragon breath.

Save for a single young elf girl exception—the Word-Maker never bestowed Word Arts that the user’s body couldn’t handle.

The strongest physical abilities in the land were even able to follow a silhouette going faster than the eye could see.

“Cyulcascarz.” (Wither and fall at the edge of light.)

Termination spread.

The view was annihilated in white.

Even if that one breath was to finish things, Lucnoca would still do the same.

As long as she was able to fight without any reservations and with all her strength, just once, then that was fine with her.

No matter how much of a frail wyvern he may have been, just the fact that she had been able to fight without any show of mercy meant that Alus the Star Runner was an irreplaceable presence to her.

The earth once again split open. Even the clouds vanished into mist.

Her Word Arts, ostensibly only supposed to affect the winds, transformed the depths of the earth’s crust into eternally frozen soil, simply from the aftermath of the atmospheric cooling. All in a single breath incantation, shorter than the Thermal Arts minia used to produce sparks.

Showered in cold air, the silhouette, just like every single champion before him, had disappointingly vanished.

“Uh-hoo, hoo, hoo, hoo, hoo…! Uh-hoo, hoo, hoo! Aaah… it’s been a hundred years since I’ve had a battle like this. Why, maybe even longer than that. I doubt I’ll enjoy myself this much anytime soon again.”

Eventually, another champion would appear who would demand her full power.

Lucnoca would end up waiting in solitude at that Ice Lake, anticipating more than that one encounter.

The vacuum born from the breath’s aftermath began to swallow the surrounding atmosphere like a tidal wave.

All of it happened in an instant.

—And if there was someone who knew all of that.

“……………”

If someone had already suffered the aftermath once, then they could match their acceleration with the torrent of wind.

From a blind spot on the dragons’ flank.

There existed a magic item called Rotting Soil Sun.

It was a sphere formed from a clod of dirt, and it could launch blades or bullets formed from the mud endlessly fountaining forth. That mud could even, for example…form something resembling a wyvern gliding on folded wings.

In the middle of his ultra-high-speed maneuvering, he used his flight inertia to abandon the substitute behind him and force the all-powerful dragon’s sights that were following him to stop mid-pursuit. He made her launch a breath attack at the substitute.

No matter how much kinetic visual acuity, or how fast her reaction speeds were, differentiating between two tiny shadows in a split second, while tracking Alus the Star Runner at his max speed, was impossible for any legend.

“Hillensingen.”

Quietly, feebly, he was finishing his mumbling. He always made sure to get his boasting in.

It was his only method of attack that could trivialize the dragon scale defenses and end everything in a single, split-second attack.

Multiplied by the speed of the vacuum winds, as well as Alus’s own speed, the attack—

“The enchanted li—”

He collided with something massive.

With a loud crunch, Alus’s world dissolved away.

“…Oh my!”

Lucnoca the Winter was slow to notice.

Yet she shouted in despair.

“Oh no…! You were still alive?! Oh, heaven’s me, what have I done…?!”

The light blade had cut deep, slicing the tip of her massive tail clean through to the bone.

However, that same tail had just slammed Alus to the ground under its massive weight.

“…Why, I truly didn’t notice at all! What a terrible failure on my part…! My opponent was still alive, and I wasted my chance! If I had known, oh how much more fun I could have!”

—It hadn’t been an attack.

The strongest dragon of all had simply changed her direction in midair.

Her tail, swung around to adjust her position, had just, in a stroke of misfortune, lined up with the trajectory of Alus’s attack.

The instant-kill suicide rush, surpassing the efforts of all the other champions in history, was defeated by plain bad luck.

She was too strong. Just moving her body had more than enough power to butcher another life.

She needed to actively try to enjoy herself or else she wouldn’t have been able.

“Sorry, Alus the Star Runner! Oh, I’m so sorry…! Let’s play some, shall we? Come now, Alus the Star Runner, please…!”

Denying even the fight itself, it was a single sight of desolation.

He had a vivid memory. Just how long ago was it?

The rain that had continued from the night before gradually began to recede, now only intermittently showering.

Looking through the gaps in the wood panels of the crumbling cabin, abandoned on the shoreline cliffs, he spent the whole day gazing at the tide going in and out.

“Hey.”

Lifting himself up away from the fissure in the rotted wood wall, that face had appeared again.

Names. Now that he thought about it, the minia all had names. Names that, among wyverns, were only given to the strong and clever upper ranks of the flock.

What was it again?

“Harghent.”

“Don’t go saying my name so easily like that.”

The young boy frantically turned around and looked behind him. He seemed much more worried about anyone from the village approaching the shack than the young wyvern himself.

“If it came out that I was sheltering a wyvern of all things, I could get beaten to death.”

“……Really…… Then, I’ll……be careful.”

“You even know what ‘being careful’ actually means? That’s something you gotta do yourself. Why the hell did you break your damn wing anyway?”

Harghent looked at the splint fixed up to his right wing.

As dragonkin, wyverns generally had a strong vitality. Broken bones for them should’ve healed faster than a minia’s, but it seemed like it would still be some time until his would be perfectly linked back together again.

“……? Because I ran into something…”

“Yeah, and I’m asking why the hell’d you run into something. Normal wyverns don’t have that stuff happen.”

“Because……I’m not normal, then……?”

The young boy scratched his head. At the time, he hadn’t been able to answer properly, but looking back, he now understood that his answer to Harghent when they first met had been vague.

Unlike other wyverns, he had unnecessary body parts. One on the left of his torso. Two on the right. This particular wyvern had three arms, unlike any of the wyverns that had been documented up until then.

They ruined his flight stability. He had collided into sea cliffs, normally not something that happened to a wyvern, and broken his wing. That was likely behind it all.

“If you can’t fly super well, then the same thing’s just going to happen again once it’s healed.”

“…………Maybe……”

“What kind of answer is ‘maybe,’ huh? Seriously, I don’t got a clue what’s going on in that head’a yours.”

Harghent always seemed to be in a bad mood, but at the time, he didn’t understand it at all. Most minians, when looking at a wyvern, were filled with anger and boiling with an urge to kill them.

“You really need a bit more…a little bit more sense of urgency—that you can’t keep going on like this, okay? Consider the source and take countermeasures.”

“But……I can’t fly well……so I can’t do that, either, right…? Nothing I can do.”

“Then learn how, dammit! The day you popped outta your egg, could you fly? Hell, what about Word Arts? Were you chitchatting with ’em like you are now right from the get-go?”

He struggled to understand Harghent’s point.

Were they words of concern for a wyvern like him? They couldn’t have been. It didn’t make any sense for a minia to do something like that. It hadn’t made any sense from the start, when he first sheltered him in this shack.

Harghent sat down and nibbled at the lunch he had brought with him. They were some kind of dried tree nuts and were as crude and wretched as any wyvern’s meal. His clothes were fraying all over, and one of the soles of his shoes was beginning to peel off.

“Comes a day for everyone out there, when they’re able to do something they couldn’t do before. It’s growth. Yeah, that’s right, growth. You gotta grow, too.”

“……Then……what do I do?”

“Huh?”

“Once……I’m able to fly…… What do I do?”

“I mean, c’mon…… Once you’re able to fly, you’ll be able to get your hands on all sorts of stuff, right? Can get yourself some tasty food, for one, and female wyverns prefer males that’re good fliers, right? Not that I got any clue, but… Also, you could even become a big shot in your flock!”

“Hmm… So that’s the type of stuff……you want, Harghent……”

“D-damn right I do!”

Harghent’s expression grew increasingly dour, and he kicked the nearby wooden wall panel.

The loud sound surprised him, but he was inept at expressing any intense emotions from birth. This surprise probably wasn’t made clear to Harghent, either.

“Haven’t you ever felt frustrated and humiliated from constantly being looked down on by someone who can’t do anything?! Those aristocrat bastards kick us servants around like we’re a bunch of useless fools! Both my dad and my mom, too… All they ever did was give these disgusting smiles and ingratiate themselves! I’m different. I’m going to become someone important; just watch… I’ll grow up and make all those pompous bastards see how great I really am…!”

“All of that’s……”

He cocked his head. Minia logic was strange.

“All of that’s about you, though…… It’s got nothing to do with me…”

“It’s the same thing! It’s all the same…! You’re alive, aren’t you?! Then you gotta have wants, too! Show ’em all that you can fly just as well as everyone else!”

At the time, had he understood that Harghent was seeing himself in the wyvern who had been left behind by his flock?

Whether he did or not, the fact remained that he felt an innocent curiosity toward the intense emotions he was witnessing for the first time in his life, the exact opposite of his own.

He possessed a passion the wyvern himself didn’t.

“………Okay. I’ll try, then… What do I need to do to grow?”

“……Just have to start with what you can, right…? Ever grabbed something in your hands before? Or moved your fingers independent of one another? Even with your wing injured, you can handle that right now. You add to the number of things you can do, little by little.”

“…Then what about you, Harghent? What do you need to do……to become important…?”

“Me?”

The question prompted Harghent’s first smile.

“Me, well, heh, heh, heh…! I’m the first one among the other guys my age to bring down a wyvern…! So I’ve got a gift for archery. I’ll hunt down more and more of your brethren like this and work my way up to greatness… It’ll just be wyverns for now. But someday I’m gonna be able to take down bigger and better targets, not just wyverns. That’s how I’ll get to be a general in the kingdom. I’ll have enough money to last a lifetime, and everyone’ll praise me.”

They were, at most, his deepest inner thoughts that could only lay bare to the injured wyvern in front of him. Ambitions that he absolutely couldn’t mention in front of any of the other villagers. Just how difficult, how far in the distant future, would it be until he got there?

In minia society, it was shameful. The weak weren’t supposed to speak about dreams beyond their station.

The boy held a small bow in his hands. Compared to an adult’s bow, its power was much, much weaker.

Nevertheless—even if it was simply dumb luck and had nothing to do with his skill level at all, Proud Bow was still the weapon that shot down his very first wyvern.

“Once I’m a general, I really wanna become a champion! I’m gonna leave my name in history…! I’ll even take on a dragon—and bring them down with this Dragon Slayer ballista of mine!

“Hmmm… Pretty amazing……”

His conversational acknowledgment came across almost like a half-hearted reply, but he truly felt that way from the bottom of his heart.

That was why, at that moment, he decided he would try to imitate the young boy.

Because that was surely what it meant to be alive.

“……You’re an amazing guy, Harghent……”

There was a continuous, incessant creaking sound.

Though he didn’t think he would fail, he may have had some sort of hunch that things might end up this way.

He had challenged more strong opponents than anyone else. He had experienced the limitless possibilities, both fortunate and unfortunate, that occurred when going up against powerful opponents who far surpassed his own stature.

If he hadn’t, then he wouldn’t have activated Chiklorakk the Eternity Machine.

It creaked with the sound of metallic friction. The sound reverberated from inside Alus’s body. A very unpleasant sensation.

In Alus’s hazy field of version, first he looked at his right toe. The part of him once thought to be frozen and lost was already being replaced by a peculiar metallic contraption combined from a cogwheel and crank.

Chiklorakk the Eternity Machine, simply a minute gear of unknown composition that was smaller than the tip of a minia’s pinkie—yet it was the most valuable item from Vikeon the Smoldering’s hoard.

The gear turned the inside of his body. He could feel the sensation from his pulverized backbone as well. In his left thigh and rib. As well as his left wing. The gears were propagating through his body, imitating organic life, and forcibly propelling them to action.

Why the hell did you break your damn wing anyway?

“What was I supposed to do…?” he dimly replied to the intermingled traces of the past.

Although accidental, he had been hit with a painfully severe counterattack.

Even the Greatshield of the Dead’s defenses were too slow to respond. The item was supposed to be activated in response to the enemy’s attack, and since each use brought intense pain and corrosion, the shield couldn’t be used while also maintaining control of his flight position.

Being swept into the explosive when the attack came was another mistake.

In his normal state, Alus might have been able to dodge the tail attack, even coming in at extreme speeds, right before it hit him. However, in the middle of being swept away, it was impossible for him to change his trajectory.

He had shut out his unrivaled enemy’s offense and devoted his everything to the one strike he’d need to turn the tables. That had been the cause of his defeat.

“………Consider the source, take countermeasures. Consider the source, take countermeasures…consider the source, take countermeasures…… Consider the source, take countermeasures.”

Even now, Alus the Star Runner could do this.

He wasn’t able to do everything from the start. He constantly added to the things he was able to accomplish—

First, it was defeating the strongest wyvern in his own flock.

Then the terrifying ogre in the forest. The biological apex of the desert, the wurm. The powerful warrior from a suppression squad. Then it was a champion. A legend. And finally, a dragon.

Alus was smacked out of the air by Lucnoca’s attack, but despite that, he had kept his grip on Hillensingen the enchanted light sword. His greed prevented him from letting go of his treasures even in life-and-death crises, leaving him one final method of attack at his disposal.

…Harghent. I’m going to beat Harghent……

He would exhaust every option he had. No matter what sort of treasure he’d have to throw away, he was going to beat him.

Because it was a promise to his only friend.

“…Ahhh, ah… Alus the Star Runner…… You must still be alive, right? After all, you took those claws of mine just fine. This couldn’t possibly be enough to do you in now. So please, show me more…”

Unlike moments before, Lucnoca the Winter was grieving.

“I wanted to fight even more. Truly……”

The wonderful champion, Alus the Star Runner, died. In a terribly boring and dull way. So many multitudes of warriors, all making her despondent.

Therefore, it caught her off guard.

“……!”

A sound like a long whistle.

Letting out a shrill cry as it cut through the air, the blade violently flew around Lucnoca’s vicinity. It was an enchanted sword, by the name Trembling Bird, but of course, this wasn’t an attack.

“Kysle ko kyakowak. Kestek ko gbakyau—” (From Alus to Hillensingen. A hailstorm to heaven and earth—)

The instant her attention turned to the enchanted sword’s shriek, a shadow closed in on her from directly below. She didn’t know the abilities of Rotten Soil Sun. She naturally recognized the figure in the corner of her eyes to be Alus the Star Runner.

Still not intending to make any attack, she extended her claw and instantly smacked the shadow out of the sky.

She shouted in delight.

“Aaah!”

You’re still alive, was what she was going to say.

Realizing once again that she had knocked it out of the way herself, she looked as it turned into a splotch on the ground. There was one other thing that had flown toward her from the same direction.

The bullets fired from Rotten Soil Sun didn’t start and end with the single shot shaped to copy the wyvern. Alus had sent another small lump of mud hidden inside the other’s bulk.

The light overflowing from it dazzled Lucnoca’s eyes.

Something then appeared from within the lump of mud—Hillensingen the enchanted light sword.

The claw that knocked the decoy out of the sky was guarding against the line of fire. However, the light blade easily penetrated right through it.

The strongest of enchanted swords, with no possible method of defending against its slash.

The white dragon turned her head away and avoided the flying slash. The twofold and threefold deception was meaningless. Lucnoca the Winter possessed the reflexive speed to immediately move to the defensive after all of it.

“Kaameksa koikak. Syaskakko kemno. Kairokr aino.” (Right eye axis. Changing circle. Circulate.) “Trembling Bird. Rotten Soil Sun. Hillensingen the enchanted light sword.”

The enchanted light sword pursued her in midair.

Under the effects of Alus’s Power Arts, it ran from the front of her neck to the back, burning away her nigh invincible dragon scales.

“Incredible… Oh my! Alus!”

If her dodge had been just slightly less effective, it would’ve sent a lethal dose through her neck. It was something she had never once received in her long history—the largest wound she ever had.

And that wasn’t the end of it.

If the attack cut up her tail, seized her claws, and came from directly below her, she couldn’t even shower her opponent in her breath. Because her own enormous body would be included in the attack radius.

“Why, to be able to fight like this—!”

When Lucnoca uttered this, the wyvern champion was inside the reach of her claws. Her breath, her dragon claws, and her tail…… Within this range, none of them could reach him.

Inside his right toe was the magic bullet.

The magic poison bullets of Arboreal Sky Tree, first causing their victim’s nerves to rupture. Even when he directly grabbed hold of it, the physical toe, flesh replaced with iron, didn’t possess any nerves to erode. Right now, his own body was a magic bullet, shooting faster than a gunshot across the horizon.

Aiming at her neck, where her dragon scales had been torn off, he would surpass the strongest of all dragons’ reflex speed.

“…”

…But he was unable.

The mass of Alus’s torso was vertically rent in half.

He lost his entire left wing.

…Lucnoca muttered, dumbfounded.

“…Oh dear. I’ve done it now.”

Then she spit out half of the champion’s body she had chomped off.

“Honestly…… How could I act like such a brute?”

The wyvern champion had disabled her tail, slipped through her claws, and even inhibited her breath as he challenged the dragon.

It hadn’t been enough. Beyond all of those were her fangs.

On the actual brink of death for the first time in her eternal history, the spinal reflex speed of the dragon’s maw far surpassed the maximum direct flight velocity of the strongest of all wyverns.

A reactive speed that even Lucnoca the Winter herself found to be completely unexpected.

It wasn’t the sort of personal growth that occurred under extreme situations, like Alus the Star Runner had accumulated over the years.

It was the basic instincts of a wild animal. Like her eradicating breath, nothing but a latent ability that the strongest of all creatures had possessed from the start.

“Why, I didn’t know I was so fast.”

It was simply that no one had seen her utilize her full strength before.

Even Lucnoca the Winter herself didn’t know her limits.

There hadn’t been a single person, anyone in the vast, wide world, who had backed her that far into a corner.

“……”

The rogue who had conquered everything far and wide on the horizon had fallen.

Trembling Bird. Rotten Soil Sun. Hillensingen the enchanted light sword.

Together with all his treasures, together with the sparkling brilliance of the world, he fell down into the ruptured earth’s abyss.

—What if Lucnoca the Winter’s tail attack hadn’t accidently caught him?

If he hadn’t been wounded by that attack. If his muscles hadn’t gone numb in the cold air? If he had thrown his gun away and made his bag lighter…… If he hadn’t been born with three arms?

It was he, the one lone wyvern, who was the champion to get the closest to taking Lucnoca the Winter’s life.

…I was right.

In the final moments of his fading consciousness, he thought.

…Harghent’s an amazing guy, after all……

“N-not yet……”

Harghent stood up and staggered ahead.

Alus the Star Runner had fallen. Down into that deep, dark abyss. To the bottom of the frozen earth.

The severe frost had almost been like death itself, but now he couldn’t even bring himself to keep the blanket around him. Without anything to cling to, Harghent shouted, smeared in tears and snot.

“Not yet!”

He would still rise back up again. Alus wasn’t defeated yet. Harghent hadn’t won yet. Alus the Star Runner was a champion, after all.

He had been his star, grabbing everything he wanted, never daunted by any hardship.

Even if that hardship was Lucnoca the Winter, he knew, surely…

“…Isn’t that right, Alus…?! It’s not over yet, it’s not over…! Aaaaaah…”

His knees buckled in front of the horizon’s unchanging stillness.

All that remained there was the cold temperature of despair and fated resignation.

Alus was there. Out in the distance was his greatest enemy. Harghent screamed.

“Someone!”

The elderly Sixth General screamed like a child.

“Someone pull Alus out of there! Someone…! It’s Alus! H-he’s… He’s my friend! Someone! Someone…! Somebody…!”

The voice didn’t reach anyone.

Hidow the Clamp, and that giant throng of spectators, had vanished at some point and gone away.

This uninhabited ice field, this scene of desolation itself. It was nothing less than the apex landscape.

“Someone, anyone…! Hck, hrngh…hngaaaah…!”

“Aaah, that truly was a delight. Now, Harghent.”

Lucnoca the Winter landed down behind Harghent’s crouching back.

The dragon, who once prided herself on her pure-white beauty, unviolated by anything…was in pitiful state as she bled copiously from her tail, with her neck wickedly burned and her left claw severed, and yet—

“Come now…! It’s not all going to just end after that, right? This is barely the beginning of the first round, after all! I’m sure the next one, too…… Of course! There’s even stronger champions waiting to give even more wonderful battles, right?!”

In her several hundred years of life, she had never once tasted excitement like this before.

The solitary and removed landscape seemed to glisten in her eyes. She thought that there still remained things she could love about this world.

For her, denied any hope of battle itself, those wounds were exactly what she had wanted more than anything else

“More, more, and more battles like that…! Ahhh, I truly can’t wait for the next battle! The next champion!”

Match Two. Winner, Lucnoca the Winter.