“Did you hear that news? A few days ago…….”
“Well, the dragon….”
“……the Black Dragon….”
Murmur murmur. Whisper whisper. Something or other about the Black Dragon.
With every step he took, rumors about the Black Dragon brushed past his ears.
‘What a commotion, what a commotion.’
It had been two days since an unwelcome guest named teacher had shown up at Ainel’s house carrying a bundle of luggage. In just two days, the news that the Black Dragon had appeared had spread all the way to Audrit.
That showed just how much influence dragons had on humans. Since it had been thousands of years since a dragon had revealed itself in the human world, it was bound to be controversial.
‘How on earth am I supposed to deal with this?’
Ainel was a quarter dragon—only a quarter dragon blood mixed in him—but in every way he was closer to a dragon than a human. His own sense of identity, his tendencies, his magical abilities. And even his lifespan.
That’s why he found the current situation quite distasteful.
This situation where ‘dragons’ had been reduced to mere gossip fodder for humans.
“I’m back.”
Having lived alone for hundreds of years, Ainel found it quite awkward to greet someone upon returning home. It was even more awkward to find the curtains he’d drawn before leaving now wide open.
Ainel entered the guest room looking for Klad. The curtains in the guest room were also wide open, with sunlight pouring into the room.
“Did you open the curtains, Master?”
“Yeah.”
“But you hate sunlight.”
“I don’t hate it. It’s not like I’m a demon.”
The Klad that Ainel remembered didn’t particularly like the sun. Something about how seeing the bright sky reminded him of the Lord God and the Duke West’s house that he created, which made him uncomfortable.
Since someone who said they couldn’t stand the sight of sunlight wouldn’t have changed their mind after only a few hundred years of sleep, this change must be because of the human from the West family who came with him.
Ainel approached the window and closed the room’s curtains.
Swiiish—
“Leave it. I said humans need to get sunlight.”
Just as Ainel expected, the reason Klad was sitting in a sunlit room he didn’t even like was because of Jake, who was sleeping like the dead.
For the past two days, Klad had stayed by Jake’s side with an irritated expression on his face. He probably thought that if he just frowned, it would look like he found it annoying and troublesome, but to Ainel’s eyes, it only looked like devoted care.
“Not long ago, some uninvited guest barged into where I live and caused a disturbance. Since then, I never know when someone might come, so I always keep the curtains drawn.”
“Barging into a dragon’s house—they must have no fear.”
“He was quite the lunatic indeed.”
Since the homeowner wanted to close the curtains, Klad couldn’t insist otherwise.
Instead, he created an artificial sun the size of a fist and made it float above Jake’s head. Even if it wouldn’t have the exact same effect as natural sunlight, he hoped it would at least provide the warmth of morning sunshine.
‘Wow.’
Watching Klad, Ainel let out a brief exclamation of admiration inwardly.
At one point, Ainel had tried to track down Hero Jake West’s whereabouts to investigate his background, but couldn’t find any trace of him anywhere and concluded that he must have died somewhere. There was no way he couldn’t find the whereabouts of a mere human.
But if he was under a dragon’s protection, that changed things. If a dragon decided to protect someone, no one could find them.
Not even a god.
‘No wonder I couldn’t find him.’
There had been times when he suspected the hero might be under a dragon’s protection. However, dragons dislike interfering in human affairs and getting involved in divine matters. So he thought there would be no dragon who would cherish and protect a hero who was both human and chosen by a god, but it turned out to be his own master, of all dragons.
Ainel shook his head as if he’d seen something he shouldn’t have.
“The rumor that a dragon appeared has spread all the way here.”
“Already? That’s fast.”
“The entire empire is in an uproar. Do you know when it was last recorded in history that a dragon revealed its true form? When the first hero established the Duke West’s house. In fact, there’s even talk that dragons are imaginary creatures and what stayed by the first hero’s side was just a large wyvern, and now a real dragon has appeared. Of course the rumors would spread.”
As his explanation grew faster, Klad turned his gaze away from Jake to look at Ainel.
“Are you angry by any chance?”
“Of course not.”
No matter how he looked at it, he seemed angry, but there were too many possible reasons to know the exact one.
“Because of this incident, rumors are spreading that all the recent bad gossip about the Duke West’s house was false. Thanks to that, the duke’s house’s status, which I worked so hard to drag to the bottom, is now soaring to twice what it was before.”
The Black Dragon had been known since ancient times as the guardian of the Duke West’s house. And now that a crisis had befallen the Duke West’s house, the Black Dragon had appeared.
The empire’s citizens interpreted this phenomenon very simply. That the Black Dragon, guardian of the Duke West’s house, had appeared to prove that all the rumors surrounding the West family’s hero were false.
Of all people, those who witnessed the Black Dragon’s appearance and spread the rumor were the village residents who had tried to kidnap Jake. Along with the news that the Black Dragon had appeared, they also conveyed that the hero was there, which soon became distorted and widely spread as the Black Dragon protecting the hero from the Duke West’s house.
“Don’t worry too much. No one would think the dragon is carrying the hero around under his arm beyond just protecting him.”
“…Are you being sarcastic, Ainel?”
“Of course not. What complaints could I possibly have to be sarcastic toward my master who disappeared without a word for hundreds of years and only appears when needed?”
So that seemed to be the cause of his anger.
“Since the glorious achievement of receiving a dragon’s protection went to the hero individually rather than to the duke’s house, the duke must be frantic by now.”
“Right. The louder the voices praising Jake become, the more disadvantageous it is for him, so he’ll desperately try to connect this incident to the duke’s house somehow.”
But no matter how the duke struggled, it would be difficult to overturn this matter.
The location was too far from the duke’s castle to insist that the Black Dragon’s appearance was for the entire duke’s house, and it was difficult to explain why he would have gone there to claim it was for himself. He also couldn’t argue that the dragon didn’t appear for Jake. If he did, the Black Dragon would become something that appeared with no connection to the duke’s house at all.
The duke had no choice but to remain silent. Even if by some chance the duke tried to overturn the situation somehow, Jake’s side wouldn’t suffer any losses. The more he struggled, the more vulnerabilities would emerge, and they could just exploit those.
Every situation was flowing in Jake’s favor.
With just one exception—that Jake couldn’t wake up.
“Are you that worried about the hero?”
“We have to move together for a while, but he keeps collapsing and being sickly, so it’s annoying.”
“That’s not the face of someone who’s annoyed.”
Ainel approached the sleeping Jake and sprinkled sparkling powder over him. He had crystallized divine power by infusing it into an empty mana stone instead of mana, then ground it finely into powder.
There was tremendous loss of divine power in the process, but Jake’s already weak body had become so frail from exposure to demonic energy that he couldn’t even accept healing magic, so this was an unavoidable choice.
“Fortunately, demonization or demonic energy poisoning hasn’t progressed. Since we removed the demonic energy before it could accumulate in his body, there shouldn’t be any problems with his heart or mana circuits.”
“What’s the cause of him not being able to wake up?”
“He’s just shocked, that’s all. After resting and recovering for a few days, won’t he wake up on his own?”
Klad reached out toward Jake, who was sleeping like a corpse. He was trying to cast a cleaning spell for Jake, who liked cleanliness.
However, Ainel, who noticed what Klad was trying to do, stepped forward first and cast the magic. Knowing that the pain in his heart and headache from breaking the covenant interfered with using magic, he acted before Klad could use his mana.
“Rest.”
Bang—
The room Ainel left was so quiet that even faint breathing couldn’t be heard. Klad sat down on the single-person sofa placed beside Jake’s bed and let out a sigh.
“Haa.”
He hadn’t planned to interfere this much in human affairs. He couldn’t understand at all how the situation had reached this point.
‘When this guy wakes up… I should leave soon.’
Since his identity had been revealed, he could no longer stay by Jake’s side. The rumor that a dragon had appeared had spread because of him, so he planned to resolve just that and then leave.
However, as the Black Dragon with the mission of guarding the boundary between the divine and human realms, he couldn’t just stand by while humans tried to encroach on the divine domain. He would have to remain until he stopped the duke’s conspiracy to disrupt the order between races that the god had decided.
Now that things had come to this, it wouldn’t be bad to watch the duke’s self-destruction.
While he was at it, if he watched until Jake took the duke’s position…….
‘Let’s just sleep.’
The throbbing headache made it hard to organize his thoughts. Klad buried himself in the sofa and closed his eyes.
