Outside of the village, there was a mountain of wooden crates. What the hell? Those weren’t there yesterday. “Take a look inside,” said Eclair. I opened several of the crates and looked inside. There were a variety of weapons and other supplies, as well as some monster eggs. “What is this? Did you guys just decide to buy a bunch of stuff with the money I gave you? And someone just left it all here? Or is this all the stuff that you stole, Ren?” Ren had been a bandit chief until just recently, after all. I looked over at Ren, but he was shaking his head. “No. I don’t remember getting any of this stuff,” he replied. So Ren had no idea what it was either. Maybe it was from Motoyasu. He could have left it here as a present for Filo. That seemed like something he would do. “Read this,” said Eclair. “What?” I looked at the lid of the crate I currently had open. Upon closer inspection, the same thing seemed to be written on all of the crates. The writing was really messy. In large letters the following was written: “To the Shield Hero: Please give these gifts to the disadvantaged slaves.” “What the hell?” “The supplies appear to be some kind of donation. There are some fairly expensive items among the equipment. The supplies include quite a bit of rare medicinal herbs, ores, and wood too,” Eclair explained. “Who in the world would do something like this?” I asked. “Most likely Siltvelt or Shieldfreeden is responsible. Based on the way the characters are written and the type of ink used, I would say there’s no doubt about it,” she continued. “Can we accept it?” I asked. “It’s practically impossible to determine the original owner of any of it. They went to great lengths to carefully remove any type of identifying markings. Even if we found the person or persons responsible, it would be difficult to take any action against them,” she replied. I suspected it might have been the people in Siltvelt who I sold the slave hunters to. There had been people doing similar things at the Zeltoble slave market. In other words, it was a donation to earn them brownie points, I guess. I sure hope they didn’t expect anything in return.
“Any riffraff causing trouble for Mr. Naofumi deserves certain death. Let us go execute them immediately!” Atla exclaimed. “That’s going a bit far. It’s not like they’re really causing me any trouble.” I figured I would just look the other way and accept the gifts. “Having to deal with it is a hassle though,” said Ren. “I guess so. What about the eggs? Rat, can you tell what they are?” I asked. “Seems to be eggs from everything from usapils to some rarer breeds. Then there’s this . . .” Oh? So she could tell with a single glance. “This one could be a problem.” Rat pointed at an egg in the crate that was larger than the others. What was it? Maybe it was the egg of some beast as powerful as the Spirit Tortoise or something. “What is it?” “It’s a dragon egg. A rather expensive and powerful one. Rare, I’m sure.” Well, then . . . I guess they had left something troublesome, after all. “A dragon, huh? That’s pretty cool,” Ren said. “Yeah! I . . .” Valley girl yelped in agreement, but then her voice trailed off and she looked away with a frown on her face. What was that? But she began smiling again soon after. Rat, on the other hand, didn’t look happy. Maybe she didn’t like dragons. “Having a dragon here in the village would be lovely!” valley girl exclaimed. “I guess valley girl likes dragons, unlike Rat,” I said. “Valley girl?!” “That’s another one of Mr. Naofumi’s fabulous nicknames. I’m jealous,” replied Atla. She sounded like a complete ditz. I decided to just ignore her. Actually, hadn’t I told her to shut up? That hadn’t lasted long. Valley girl glared at me when I called her that.
“What is with that name?” she asked. “Well, I don’t know your real name,” I replied. “I’m sure he got the nickname from some anime or something,” said Ren. “Bingo,” I replied. I’d chosen that name because she kept insisting the caterpillar wasn’t there earlier. She should have been thanking me, as far as I was concerned. “If you don’t tell him your real name, Mr. Naofumi will almost certainly continue to think of you as ‘valley girl’ until the end of time. Hurry up and introduce yourself!” said Raphtalia. She seemed to be in a rush to explain that to valley girl for some reason. “I’m Wyndia.” “I see. You’re fine with ‘valley girl,’ right?” “No!” “That’s just mean, Naofumi. Think of the poor girl,” Ren said. He rolled his eyes. Ren was sticking up for valley girl, a.k.a. Wyndia, but now she was glaring at him. “Oh, fine. Whatever,” I replied. “We need to have everyone introduce themselves. Otherwise, you never know what Mr. Naofumi will end up calling them,” said Raphtalia. “Is it really that big of a deal?” I asked. Surely there was nothing wrong with giving people nicknames. “We’re off topic. Back to the dragon egg,” I said. “Everyone be careful. But you’re right. What should we do about that?” Raphtalia asked with a troubled look on her face. A dragon, huh? I had a feeling Filo wouldn’t like that. It wasn’t like it was a special gift from someone I knew. Accepting it could end up causing a big fuss. Being given something so expensive just gave me more to worry about. Still, if there was no way to return it, I guess I would just have to accept it without complaining. Throwing it away would be a waste, after all. “I guess we’ll keep it for now. If anyone makes an issue out of it, we’ll just feign ignorance. How do monster seals work with dragons, anyway?” “You’ll have to apply a high-level monster seal. It looks like they were nice enough to leave all of the equipment required for the ceremony. I can take care of that if you’d like, Count,” Rat replied. “Yeah, let’s do that. By the way, why do you seem to dislike dragons so much?”
Rat seemed a bit annoyed when I asked her. “The upper class of dragons lose all sense of integrity once they go into heat.” “Huh?” “You didn’t know that? Regions where lots of dragons live are always dirty. They’re dangerous for all sorts of reasons.” “Really?” I thought about the regions I knew of where dragons lived. There was the village in the east where Ren defeated a dragon, and then the mountainous area where we had gone bandit hunting. There had been dragon corpses teeming with pathogenic germs in both areas. Describing the regions as dirty wouldn’t have been strange at all. “Dragons have no integrity, so those areas end up full of half-dragon creatures in no time.” “That sounds dangerous.” If it were a fantasy game, there would probably be a bunch of half-dragon or part-dragon subspecies coming out of the regions. I wondered if that was an actual problem here. “Well, they have their territories and they stay within them. But they mess the ecosystems up without a second thought, so I don’t like them. And the dragons that people use are just half-breed dragons mixed with weaker monsters, really.” Hmm . . . So it was like when an invasive foreign species messed with the ecosystem back in Japan. Native species had been pushed to the brink of extinction due to black bass being released in lakes there. There would be problems similar to that. Or issues with crossbreeding leading to native species being driven out or becoming extinct, I guess. “The real problem is the pureblood dragons that refer to themselves as dragon emperors. Those dragons have zero regard for race. They’ll even try to mate with humans.” They did sound like troublesome creatures. Hmm? Wyndia seemed upset. “They have manners!” she shouted. Why was she talking like she knew about dragons? And seriously, she was really annoying when it came to monsters. “There are even races of demi-human mixes, already. The aotatsu demi-humans are a well-known example,” Rat explained.
Aotatsu? “Ao” was “blue” in Japanese. “Tatsu” could mean “dragon,” so I guess “aotatsu” was supposed to be referring to the azure dragon. The white tiger race was called “hakuko,” so it made sense. I’m sure one of the past heroes must have chosen this name too. “Although, the pureblood dragons do have manners and are well-behaved as long as they don’t go into heat.” “And the reason you looked disgusted is because this egg is one of those vile dragons?” “Pretty much. The high-level monster seal for dragons allows you to restrict reproductive activities, so make sure you check that box. Otherwise, all of the village monsters are going to be violated.” It didn’t really make sense to me. I spent all of my time hunting dragon couples in the monster hunter game I’d played. It seemed strange that the dragons didn’t wipe out the humans and demi-humans if they reproduced so aggressively. “The Dragon Emperor would never allow that!” shouted Wyndia angrily. Dragon Emperor, huh? I kept hearing that name. Fitoria had mentioned it. They’d talked about it in Kizuna’s world too. “Oh yes, the legendary king of the dragons that supposedly fought the queen of the filolials, right?” Rat replied. “I heard about that thing in the other world. Is there one here too?” I asked. “It’s just a legend. It’s questionable whether either creature actually exists. Oh, wait . . . I think I heard the queen of the filolials is the one that held the Spirit Tortoise off, right?” So basically, there must have been some legend about the dragon threatening the existence of humans and demi-humans. And then the queen of the filolials showed up to kill it, I guess. “But despite supposedly being so promiscuous, I’ve hardly run into any dragons. The Tyrant Dragon Rex is about it, I think,” I said. “That thing was fearsome. We fought a dragon once in the coliseum too,” Raphtalia added. Oh yeah. We’d instantly killed that one, so I’d completely forgotten about it. “Dragons are generally only found in regions that people don’t visit. Have you ever been in dragon territory, Count?” asked Rat.
The roads I’d traveled were pretty much limited to where I’d gone peddling wares. Now that I thought about it, I’d hardly ever gone up into the mountains or into any caves. We’d gone hunting in the mountains just before catching Ren, but that was about it. I did remember fighting some part-dragon monsters then. “Ren’s fought a dragon. Right, Ren?” “Yeah. I went and defeated it based on what I knew from a game and ended up causing a huge mess. I don’t know how I’ll ever make up for that.” I guess he legitimately regretted it, because he started looking really depressed. Ren had an excessively strong sense of responsibility. “If you’re sincere about doing your best to save the world, I’m sure that’s enough,” I told him. “Yeah, I guess so, but still . . .” “You know that you can’t make up for it by dying, right?” If any of the other holy heroes died, it would make my job harder when the waves struck again. Fitoria had told me that, and the reality of it had become clear in Kizuna’s world to a certain extent too. I couldn’t let Ren die. “. . .” Wyndia had been glaring at Ren for a while now. “Well, they have their territories and they don’t leave them, so you won’t run into any unless you purposely head there to find them,” Rat continued. “I see. Either way, I don’t believe in wasting resources, so let’s hatch it and raise a dragon.” “The more the reconstruction progresses, the less the village feels like the Lurolona I remember!” Raphtalia exclaimed. Rat would be tending to the monsters and plants. I imagined the village being a farm, and now I couldn’t think of Rat as anything but a farmer. She would be the farmer, and we could harvest some herbs or something using the bioplant. We could make a profit using the monsters too. It was exactly like one of those relaxing farming games we had back in my world. “Raising a dragon is a hassle. You’ll get a taste of what dragon knights have to deal with,” said Rat. “Oh yeah. I remember seeing some of them when we fought the Spirit Tortoise. They weren’t very strong.” I recalled seeing them screaming and falling out of the air after being attacked by the Spirit Tortoise familiars.
“Who knows what will happen when you raise one though. It might develop differently, like the filolials,” she replied. “Hmm . . . You have a point. I’ll be careful.” And so I decided to hatch the dragon egg. That said, it would be a while after performing the monster seal ceremony before the egg actually hatched. I had to be the one to do the hatching, apparently. Rat looked like she was in a bad mood as she went about taking care of the preparations. And then . . . “Why the hell do I have to carry the egg on my back?!” I had to carry the dragon egg around on my back to keep it warm. “Can’t Ren do this?!” I glared at Ren. “No . . . It would probably rot if I touched it,” he replied. Ren was still suffering from the effects of his curses. It wasn’t like I had forgotten that. One of the consequences for using his curse skills was that the quality of anything he touched deteriorated. Because of that, he was being careful not to touch anything. “No! Definitely not the Sword Hero! Even the Shield Hero is a better choice than him!” Wyndia insisted that it be anyone but Ren. I kind of wanted to ask her why she was being so hostile toward Ren, but . . . whatever. I’d just think of carrying the egg around as one of the hardships of raising an expensive dragon. “Where is Raph-chan?!” I asked. “Why are you bringing up Raph-chan now?” Raphtalia responded. “I need to pet her to destress!” Nothing could beat Raph-chan at times like these. Why wasn’t she here?! I found out later on that she’d been taking a nap back at the village, by the way. “Hahaha! You’re so silly, bubba!” Keel was pointing at me and cracking up. “You bastard! Damn it! I can’t do this, after all! All I really need to do is register it to me, right?!” “You can’t register yourself as the parent if you don’t carry the egg. This is part of laying the groundwork for a successful registration. If you don’t do this, it will end up ignoring your commands all the time, so just deal with it!” Rat sounded annoyed when she replied. Were dragons really that much of a hassle? I almost wanted to just get rid of it right away.
“They’ll really ignore commands?” I asked. “Yes! I’m a monster researcher, so you better believe it!” “The fact that you’re saying it is exactly why I can’t believe it . . .” “What was that?!” “Okay, okay. Fine. I get it.” Damn it. What a hassle. And then Filo returned with Melty in tow. Her timing was terrible. It was like when that one really annoying classmate sees you make a fool of yourself. “Ahahahaha! Naofumi! What is that?!” “Shut the hell up, second princess!” “You promised you wouldn’t call me the second princess!” “Then don’t laugh at me, you idiot!” “Idiot?! Did you just call me an idiot?!” “Umm . . .” Raphtalia didn’t know what to say to all this. The strange look on her face just made it worse. Then Atla butted in. “I don’t know what it looks like, but if it makes Mr. Naofumi uncomfortable then we should dispose of it.” “Buying one would be expensive, so no!” I shouted. Sheesh . . . Why did things have to turn out like this? “Okay, Count. What do you want to do about the dragon’s gender?” Rat asked. “Huh?” “We can influence the gender by adjusting how warm we keep the egg. You can choose whichever gender you prefer.” I think I’d heard about egg temperatures determining the gender of certain reptiles. I guess the same was true for dragons. “You’d probably prefer a . . . female, right? It might be able to use a human form like your filolial variant, after all,” Rat continued. “And what are you basing that on? Keel said something similar before. Is it because I’m surrounded by females?” I slowly looked over toward Filo. “Whaaat?”
Assuming it did exhibit a special pattern of development due to me raising it, which gender would be best? If it ended up being able to use a human form like Filo, I could imagine things getting really messy if it went into heat. With that in mind, I’d want to choose the gender that would spare me from becoming a victim.
“Male it is.” “I want to know why you decided that after looking at Filo,” Melty said with an uncomfortable look on her face. Wasn’t it obvious? I’d be more likely to make it out unscathed if it were a male. “Okay then. I’ll make sure it ends up a male. You just relax and keep the egg on your back. You should only have to carry it around for two or three days before it hatches,” said Rat. “Yeah, whatever. Damn it! This isn’t funny!” “Once again, I look forward to working with you, Count.” And so the village ended up with its own resident alchemist. That wasn’t quite how the average day went though. I would usually go out hunting later in the day, if I had some spare time. That day I’d made an appearance in the castle town and dealt with Rat and the mountain of gifts, so there hadn’t really been time for hunting. Once evening rolled around, I made dinner and fed the villagers. “Bubba! I want seconds, bubba!” “Sure, if there’s any left.” “Of course there won’t be any left! Make another batch!” Making enough food to satisfy Keel and all of those other growing pigs was real manual labor. After all was said and done, it was pitch dark outside by the time we finished eating dinner. “Stop it, Brother! Let go of me!” “No!” “Alright, Fohl, I’m counting on you to look after Atla. Don’t let her get away tonight.” “I . . . I won’t . . .” I passed Atla off to Fohl after he got back from training. “Mr. Naofumi! There’s no way you’ll stop me from getting away, Brother!” “There’s no way I’ll let you get away!” I could never decide if those siblings got along well, or terribly. Just as Atla and Fohl left, Sadeena showed up with Raph-chan on her shoulder. “Little Naofumi! Let’s have some fun!”
“The drunkard has arrived.” “Good evening, Sadeena,” said Raphtalia. “Oh? Isn’t it about bedtime, little Raphtalia?” “You’re right. The children should be getting to bed,” I replied. “Stop treating me like a child!” Raphtalia shouted. I had a feeling we repeated this same exchange every night. Some of the slaves were afraid of going to sleep and it was Raphtalia and Sadeena’s job to go stay with them until they managed to. “Alright, we’ll make sure the children go to sleep. After that, let’s have some fun, little Naofumi!”
“Hell no!” “You know you want to!” Sadeena started to pull her vest off, but Raphtalia grabbed her shoulder. She was emanating murderous intent. “Sadeena?” she said. “Oh my!” Sadeena giggled like it was all a game, but I really wished she would stop already. “That’s too bad. I’m game any time you are though!” she said. “Go to bed already!” Sheesh . . . Speaking of Sadeena, she had continued to level here and there after her reset and was already level 62. I couldn’t help but think her method of fighting might have been more effective than Filo’s power-leveling. Fohl had reset his level on the same day and he was still only level 39. “Alright, Sadeena. Let’s go,” Raphtalia said. “Yes, ma’am! See you later, little Naofumi.” “Yeah, whatever.” The morning had started off early with taking care of the monsters, and it ended up being a long, busy day. I didn’t have time to go level at all. I wondered if maybe I should go level with Sadeena. That would probably be kind of like making a bargain with the devil though. Ren couldn’t swim, but maybe I should try sending him as a sacrifice next time. I was just thinking maybe I should go to sleep when I heard a knock on the door. “Naofumi, are you there?” asked Ren. He’d shown up just moments after Raphtalia and Sadeena left.
“What’s up?” I asked. “Umm . . . After what happened this afternoon, I went out with Eclair and the slaves. I figured out what the consequences for using the gluttony curse were.” “Oh? What is it?” Checking his stats hadn’t been enough for Ren to tell what the consequences of the gluttony curse had been. He’d been testing likely effects one by one, so figuring it out had taken time. “It looks like I can’t gain experience until the effects of the gluttony curse wear off.” “Ugh . . .” He had sacrificed experience points to use the skill, so I’d suspected that he might not able to gain experience for a while as a consequence. “And you’re sure it wasn’t because you were fighting near me?” I asked. “Yeah.” Way back when I was in Kizuna’s world, we’d done some testing to figure out more about the penalties for holy heroes fighting together. One of the penalties was not being able to gain experience when fighting near another hero. It turned out that “near” meant a radius of around one kilometer. It was a distance that felt rather close, and yet far at the same time. If we fought within a kilometer of each other, we wouldn’t be able to gain experience. If he had been further away than that and still wasn’t able to gain experience, then it was likely that was due to the effects of the curse. Damn. Ren had it at least as bad as me. All of the curse effects he was suffering from affected his development. We’d have to wait for the effects to start wearing off before we could really work on getting him stronger. He was as good as useless with the way things were now. “And you came to tell me that?” “Yes. I also wanted to ask if you would check my writing practice for me.” Keeping Ren’s future in mind, I’d been teaching him the written language of this world. I wanted him to be able to read magical tomes so that he could learn magic. The problem was that only I could check his quizzes, since no one else understood Japanese. Maybe I could teach Rishia Japanese. She’d managed to learn the languages of the other world pretty quickly. “I have to get up early tomorrow, so I was about to go to bed. You mind if I give you the graded quiz back tomorrow?”
“That’s fine. I’m sure you’re worn out. Get some rest.” “Yeah.” Maybe I should’ve seriously considered having someone take Ren to the hot springs on the Cal Mira islands. They were supposed to be effective against curses. The curse that Raphtalia, Filo, and I were suffering from couldn’t be fully healed that way, it seemed, but Ren’s cursed weapon hadn’t been powered up. It would probably work for him. I could make some scheduling adjustments and send him to the islands with Eclair. The activation was probably over, so using a portal skill shouldn’t be a problem. Even if it was, I could just have Raphtalia bind to the hourglass in the underwater temple and then she could use Return Dragon Vein to take them close to the islands. “You should go with Eclair or the old lady sometime soon and focus on healing,” I told Ren. The trip only took one day by boat. If he went with Eclair or the old lady, he wouldn’t have to worry about wasting any time. They could get some training in on the way. It wasn’t like he couldn’t spare a day off from studying writing and magic. I was teaching him, after all. If everything went as planned, he should be able to learn it more quickly than I had. “Okay. If you say I should, then I’ll go.” “You’ll be able to put up a good fight once you implement the power-up methods.” Ren was training now, but he was also working on implementing the power-up methods I’d told him about. The effects of the curses didn’t directly affect his combat, so he shouldn’t lose, even if he did happen to run into any of those creeps that were trying to kill the heroes. Probably. Just to be extra safe, I’d send Eclair or the old lady to protect him. That should be plenty. “Alright, I’ll send someone with you tomorrow, so be expecting that.” “Later, Naofumi.” After Ren left, I got in bed and went to sleep. And that was a typical day of mine at the village. The things I had to do varied from day to day, but that’s how my days went, more or less. I was always busy. Ugh . . . I really needed to go level up sometime soon. This egg on my back sure made it hard to sleep. It was afternoon, two or three days later. “Mr. Naofumi.”
Raphtalia glanced at me with a slightly bitter look in her eyes. Even I felt like we might have gone a bit too far. “I’d say things turned out pretty good,” I said. “Yup. We did all of this in just two days. I really am a genius,” Rat replied. Rat and I had modified the bioplant. The results had been truly impressive. Getting an expert involved really made a big difference after all. We’d registered Rat as one of my slaves. I made sure that she hadn’t been lying to me about anything. The slave curse we used on her was a powerful one too. There was no way I was going to let her get away. Betrayal would mean death. I wasn’t planning on lowering my guard, but Rat was absorbed in her research and seemed to be content with her current treatment. On to what we’d done. I’d asked her to focus her research on developing a bioplant variant that could be used to create simple housing. I figured I would be getting more slaves eventually, so I wanted to build more dwellings. I’d thought maybe our interesting little plant could take care of that. The experiment had been a success. Rat developed a convenient bioplant that would take on the form of a house when instructed to do so. She named it “camping plant.” I was really tempted to make a wisecrack or two about that one, but the name did describe the plant’s purpose perfectly, so I couldn’t really argue with it. The plant used photosynthesis to convert sunlight into magic power during the daytime. At night, that magic power could be used to make the plant’s flowers give off light. The slaves were as adaptable as ever, and they had no problems getting settled in the camping plant houses, despite the fact that the whole idea seemed a bit dangerous at first. The nice thing about the houses was that we could just use weed killer to get rid of them when they were no longer needed. To sum it all up, we had successfully developed an extremely convenient and simple dwelling environment. And now the village was covered in green plant-houses, which was why Raphtalia was criticizing me. “Sorry,” I told Raphtalia. “About what?” she asked. “You’re upset because I’m turning your village into a mysterious fantasy world where people don’t belong, right?” I answered. “Well . . . I guess there’s no avoiding it. I understand the merits.”
Raphtalia aside, Rat had been really ecstatic about the modifications we’d made to the bioplant. She called it a “revolutionary” use of the plant. I wasn’t sure about “revolutionary.” I’d just used the shield’s abilities to modify it. The shield had a strong effect on the outcome. I made the rough modifications, and then Rat tweaked the details. My next request was for her to develop a bioplant variation that could create medicinal herbs. I would have been happy with a bioplant that could make medicine, but she’d told me that would be too difficult. We’d had several failures before arriving at the current camping plant, of course. The first prototype had been a man-eating house, for example. Rat told us it was dangerous and repeatedly said not to go inside, but Wyndia and Filo ignored her and excitedly ran in. The plant ate them. But Raphtalia and I destroyed the plant and managed to get them out safely. The faces of the villagers were full of mixed emotions when that happened. Other than that, I’d had Rat take a look at the monster eggs. She noticed right away that my monsters exhibited extraordinary development. She came and asked me about it. When I told her about the maturation adjustment on my Monster User Shield, she got really excited and spent a while looking the shield over. “Wow. I’d heard that monsters raised by heroes would be more advanced. I guess that explains why,” she said. “Yeah, probably. Do the other heroes have something similar?” I asked. Since Ren was at the village, I’d had him test it out before. He’d gotten a similar weapon. “The hero I know never mentioned anything like that to me,” she replied. “I see.” Then again, she didn’t get along with Faubrey’s seven star hero very well, apparently. She’d mentioned the hero being really uptight. The hero really disliked unconventional research like monster modification or alchemy, which was her specialty. It seemed like she didn’t really want to go into the details, so I hadn’t asked her about what kind of person the hero was. Besides, I’d already requested that the hero get in touch with me so that we could talk. I really should have heard back long ago. Anyway, research into using a bioplant variant to produce food was well underway too. The flavor of the food was already more than adequate, so I’d leave the rest up to Rat. She could work on creating some variation in the types of food produced. I had the slaves taking care of raising the monsters, so we would probably be able to really get serious about our peddling operations before long.
“This seed made building a laboratory for myself simple too. It’s done nothing but good for us,” said Rat. Rat’s lab was a huge building that she’d built using the camping plant. She’d brought a massive test tube from who knows where and set it up in the lab. It was filled with bubbling liquid, and some kind of monster was floating in the liquid. It reminded me of some kind of mutant beast in a science-fiction film. When I first saw it, I couldn’t help but wonder if taking her in might have been a mistake. All of this had happened over the past two days. That was a lot of change for two days. Too much, maybe. A huge laboratory had been added to the village in only two days . . . Wyndia and Rat had become rivals when it came to the monsters, by the way. Wyndia thought it would be best to strengthen the monsters by having them fight. That clashed with Rat’s assertion that modifying them was the best way to make them stronger. They were both looking for ways to make the monsters stronger, so regardless, they couldn’t hate each other. The two of them were always busy discussing something or other. That said, Wyndia was obviously far less educated than Rat, so it seemed like Rat was just toying with her more often than not. “Alright, I’m going to focus my research on the bioplant until I get tired of it. Let me know when you can provide some funding for other research.” “I will. I want to start working on modifying the monsters directly too,” I told her. The offensive capabilities of my subordinates were of paramount importance to me. There was no way around it. It had become clear from the fight with the Spirit Tortoise that I could never have too many allies. And having stronger monsters could only make things better. Crack! Crack! I heard cracking sounds coming from my back. I guess the egg was about to hatch. “I can feel signs of new life,” said Atla. “Yeah. You can sense that, huh?” I replied. I took the egg off of my back and looked it over. “Is the egg hatching?” asked Raphtalia.
“Looks that way.” The egg was a lot bigger than Filo’s had been. A crack formed on its surface, and a baby dragon slowly began to emerge. “What do dragons eat, anyway?” I asked. “I’m guessing meat,” said Raphtalia. “Do we even have any meat?” I wondered out loud. We’d had some smoked meat and some dried meat in the village storehouse, but I wasn’t sure if there was any left. “It depends on the type of dragon, but this one is an omnivore,” said Rat. Thank goodness. We could feed him fruit from the bioplant. We had been harvesting more than we needed lately, and it was slowly becoming a key product of our peddling operations. “Kwaaaa!” The baby dragon peeked his head out of the egg and squeaked at us. Hatching a monster sure brought back memories. It was just like when Filo . . . No, she’d been a lot more energetic. The baby dragon was about as big as my head. He was definitely bigger than Filo had been when she hatched. “The thing sure is shaped weird,” I said. The baby dragon looked like a fat little gourd with pathetically tiny wings on its back. He had a fat tail and two horns, but still didn’t have scales yet. I scooped him up into my arms. His body was warm. “Kwa!” The dragon blinked several times and then looked me in the eyes. “Kwaaa!” He raised one of his hands when he squeaked, as if he were saying hello. That reminded me. I figured I should absorb a piece of the egg shell into my shield. I picked a piece up and held it up to the shield. Zap! What was that? The shield sparked. I recalled something similar happening while we were in Kizuna’s world. It had been the Demon Dragon Shield that time, I think. It had reacted similarly then. “Tee hee . . . He sure is cute. It reminds me of when Filo was just a chick,” said Raphtalia. She was poking at the baby dragon with her finger. The dragon was biting at her finger playfully. Was this creature really supposed to turn into a sex fiend? “So this is a dragon. I can feel an incredibly warm life force stirring,” said Atla.
She gave the baby dragon a warm welcome too. Based on what I knew about dragons, I imagined they wouldn’t get along with white tigers. But that didn’t seem to be the case here. “Alright, I should do a quick checkup,” said Rat. She looked the baby dragon over carefully, poking him lightly here and there. “Good. No major problems. Healthy, overall. Looks like a male. Everything went as planned,” she said. “That’s good,” I said. A male meant it shouldn’t be a problem even if it displayed an abnormal development pattern and ended up being able to use a human form like Filo. Then again, just being able to use a human form would be a problem in and of itself, but whatever. When Rat let go of the baby dragon, it flew over to me and started climbing up my leg. What a little rascal. “I guess you have a good idea of how to raise him, right?” Rat asked. “Think so?” “I recommend you start taking him out to hunt from early on. The amount of food growing dragons eat is just scary,” she said. “You’re telling me?” “Ah, that’s right. You’re surrounded by a bunch of kids that might even be able to out eat a dragon, aren’t you?” she replied. Rat took my wisecrack in earnest and nodded. She’d stole the punch line, and hearing it come from her mouth just made me depressed. “What kind of dragon is he?” I asked. “It’s a wyr. They value devotion highly and are one of the most loyal types of dragons. They are a mix between purebloods and tyrellas.” “Tyrellas?” “A tyrella is a big lizard-type monster. They can’t fly, but they make for excellent transportation. They’re rare though.” “I see.” I had no idea what she was talking about. I’d never seen one. Then again, I hadn’t actually seen that many different kinds of dragons either. “They aren’t found in Melromarc, so you might not be familiar with them. They’re not kept as pets around here either.” “Oh really?”
“It’s a monster you’re more likely to see in Faubrey, Shieldfreeden, or Siltvelt.” “I see.” “Is this the dragon from that egg?!” Wyndia came over and approached the hatched dragon excitedly. “Kwa!” The baby dragon wasn’t shy at all. It was acting cute to get as much attention as possible. “Alright, I guess we’ll take him out to hunt later,” I said. “Yeah! I don’t think Filo will be happy though.” Wyndia nodded in agreement. She was playing with the baby dragon. All said and done, Wyndia was good about doing as she was told. She didn’t try to complain about killing poor monsters or anything like that. On the contrary, she usually got really excited about going hunting. She seemed to be all about the strong preying on the weak. I didn’t understand her at all. But she was probably right about Filo not being happy. Dragons and filolials were natural enemies, so there was nothing we could do about that. “Your name is Gaelion,” she said. “Who said you could name him?!” “Mr. Naofumi, the village children all chose the name together,” said Raphtalia. “Oh, really? In that case, I guess it’s okay.” Coming up with a name was a hassle, anyway. I probably would have named it something lame like Dran. Considering that, Gaelion didn’t seem bad at all. “I’m going to go show him to everyone!” And so Wyndia took charge of Gaelion and we took him out to level with the other villagers. I hoped he would grow up and become a strong fighter quickly. “I miss Raph-chan,” I said. Raph-chan had been sitting on Filo’s head a lot the past couple of days. She seemed to really like it there and wouldn’t come to me when I called out to her. That made me kind of sad. “Oh yeah, I wanted to ask you about that. Where did you find that monster?” asked Rat.
I glanced over at Raphtalia. She had a really bitter look on her face. I wondered what I should do. Giving a detailed explanation would probably just end up causing trouble. But Raph-chan was my favorite. I wanted to make her stronger so that she could help out even more than she already did. I decided to explain, after all. “Raph-chan is a shikigami that I made in the other world. Shikigamis are the equivalent to what we call familiars in this world. I used a lock of Raphtalia’s hair as the base material and out came Raph-chan.” “Mr. Naofumi! That’s your answer after pausing to think for so long?!” Raphtalia snapped. Well, of course. “I can use my shield’s abilities to enhance her various attributes, just like with the bioplant. Doing so seems to require different materials and consumes energy though.” I was always tinkering around with Raph-chan’s attributes. Enhancing them required materials, so I was making progress slowly but steadily. On a fundamental level, it worked a lot like powering up my shield. “I didn’t know there were familiars like that. I thought it was a new type of monster,” said Rat. “Making a new type of monster like her is my goal,” I replied. “That’s news to me! What are you thinking, Mr. Naofumi?!” exclaimed Raphtalia. Oh, damn. I’d accidentally revealed my aspirations to Raphtalia. “And I guess you’ve been secretly planning to do this for some time,” she said. “Hmph. I won’t change my mind about this one, Raphtalia. I can’t let Raph-chan be the last of her kind.” “I don’t understand why you’re so passionate about her.” No matter how much two people trusted each other, there would always be things they couldn’t understand about each other. But I didn’t think that was necessarily a bad thing. It wasn’t just because Raph-chan looked like Raphtalia. I really liked how she always played along with me too. “What are you upset about, Raphtalia? If that’s what Mr. Naofumi desires, then it’s your duty to accept it as his retainer,” said Atla. “I’m upset because it’s exactly the kind of thing I shouldn’t accept! Think about it, Atla. Would you want someone to make a monster out of your hair?”
“If it were a monster that Mr. Naofumi would adore, then I would happily offer a lock of my hair!” I thought about making a shikigami or familiar from a lock of Atla’s hair. I pictured a little white tiger. If such a thing existed, I was sure it would be cute. But it was hard to imagine it being as cute as Raph-chan. “Mr. Naofumi, I can tell what you’re thinking just by looking at your face. I don’t know why you like Raph-chan so much.” Ugh . . . Raphtalia had read my mind again. “I couldn’t tell what he was thinking this time. But I won’t let you win like that again,” said Atla. What was she getting worked up about? Did Atla really want to read my face? Had she forgotten she was blind? “In that case, Count, why not try raising the mutability of the familiar’s attributes?” “After what happened with the bioplant, I really wanted to avoid doing that.” “It’s not like mutation can’t produce favorable results too, you know. If you trust the familiar, then surely increasing the mutability just slightly is an option.” Hmm . . . She had a point. “The legends say that the heroes created the filolials. Since you like her so much, maybe a monster based on her could end up becoming the next filolial,” Rat continued. What a glorious thought. And it wasn’t unrelated to Rat’s goal of creating a useful monster like the filolials. It would be killing two birds with one stone. I would get to make Raph-chan stronger. Rat would get to create the next filolial. That settled it. I’d try raising Raph-chan’s mutability just a bit. I’d turn my familiar into a monster. “Please don’t do that, Mr. Naofumi,” Raphtalia pleaded. “I won’t let anyone take away Raph-chan’s future. Not even you, Raphtalia.” “Oh, jeez . . .” She must have sensed my strong sense of determination, because Raphtalia didn’t push the issue any further. “Anyway . . . Enough about that. We still need to go visit the old guy at the weapon shop today.”
I decided to change the subject and avoid any more argument. The old guy was probably finishing up the katana I’d asked him to make right about now. “Understood. Let’s go then.” Raphtalia always let me run away from arguments in the end. That’s what I liked about her. And so we left Rat behind and used my portal to make our way to the old guy’s weapon shop.
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