Bang! Boom! Rumble!
“Ugh…”
A deafening noise shook the very ground. Violent tremors ran through Haran’s body where it was pressed flat against the floor.
“Ugh, so loud…”
Bang —!
Strange surroundings filled Haran’s eyes as they snapped open in irritation. His body felt waterlogged, heavy and sluggish, and his head was foggy.
Where is this? I was…
The thought didn’t get very far. A thunderous boom rang out, and a massive chunk of rock began falling toward where Haran was lying.
“AAAAAGH!”
Haran let out a full-throated scream at the sight of the boulder hurtling toward him. Following pure instinct, he rolled to the side and barely managed to dodge — but it was too soon to breathe easy.
“Aah! Aah!”
The things flying at him afterward were just as enormous as the first boulder.
Help, I’m an archmage, not a punching bag!
Whether something had gone wrong with his body or what, his mana wouldn’t move either. Only then did he remember that he had performed the dimensional transfer from inside the prison.
I actually succeeded!
He’d succeeded in the dimensional transfer! The fact that his mana wasn’t responding properly was probably just a temporary side effect from drawing out and expending such a massive amount of mana all at once.
No. Now’s not the time to be thinking about that!
The boulders were casting a dense shadow over Haran’s body. He wrung out every last scrap of strength he had and rolled right, then left. The acrid smell of dust tickled his nose.
“Hah — haah…!”
Fortunately, nothing else came flying at him after that. He let the tension drain from his body and reclaimed a brief moment of calm. Only then did things he hadn’t noticed before begin to come into view.
That’s…?
Not too far away, the back of a man came into sight. He was aiming at something enormous, his sword wreathed in blue sword energy.
…A dragon?
The “something” the man was facing off against was a dragon. And given the type and the size —
“A fire-type lesser dragon. Sub-adult.”
No sooner had Haran finished muttering than the man kicked off the ground and leapt. Simultaneously, a breath attack erupted from the dragon’s maw. The man cleaved through the breath with his sword wrapped in sword energy, jaw clenched tight.
Bang! Boom!
Having barely withstood the breath, he swung his sword. Once, twice, three times. He scattered sword energy toward the dragon’s arms and legs and hurled a dagger at it.
But that was all. For all the noise his attacks made, they weren’t landing any meaningful blows. Unable to watch any longer, Haran narrowed his eyes and muttered to himself.
“Ah, that’s not how you kill a dragon.”
As the sluggish battle dragged on, serious wounds were stacking up across the man’s body too. The slowing speed of his sword swings suggested he was approaching his limit.
Grrr —
The man barely dodged the dragon’s tail as it whipped toward him. Using the momentum, he raised his sword and kicked off the ground.
Oh?
Haran’s eyes tracked the man’s movement. He had leapt with surprising lightness, all the way up to near the dragon’s nape.
Right, from there, aim just below the neck…
But the man’s sword came down on the wing membrane instead of the neck. Haran’s face crumpled.
“No.”
A sigh and a backseat commentary slipped out involuntarily at the frustrating sight.
“That’s not where you hit.”
His voice wasn’t particularly loud. But the man seemed to have heard it — his shoulders gave the briefest flinch.
“Below the neck.”
Haran said it almost without thinking.
“When it inhales, you aim for the inside.”
The dragon’s ribcage swelled. In that instant, the scales parted like a fish’s gills opening. The man hesitated for just a moment, then redirected his sword. This time, not the wing — he drove it into the inner shoulder joint.
Kraaagh —!
The dragon screamed and staggered, losing its balance. It was a shame he hadn’t gone straight for the neck, but the shoulder joint wasn’t a bad choice either.
“Now!”
Haran clenched his fist and shouted. Without a trace of the hesitation from before, the man’s sword finally drove deep into the inner neck — cutting through the gap between the parted scales.
Shhk —
Black blood splattered in every direction, and the dragon’s body began to tilt sideways. Haran raised his voice before the man could let his guard down.
“It’s not over yet! You have to drive it in deeper!”
The dragon’s size couldn’t be underestimated. With a neck that thick, he needed to push through to a deeper point and sever the lifeline.
The man seemed to understand. He readjusted his grip on the sword hilt, now slippery with blood, then threw his full body weight behind it — driving it through the neck with everything he had, as if intent on burying it all the way to the hilt.
Grrrngh —
The dragon, which had been convulsing and writhing, finally collapsed completely. A heavy thud sent dust billowing up and obscuring the view. Haran gazed at the shape beyond the rising haze.
The fallen dragon. And above it, the silhouette of a human, sword still plunged in.
It looked like a scene from a hero’s saga in one of those street theater performances he’d seen once. Even so, Haran’s assessment was blunt.
“Seems a bit thick in the head, but the skill’s not bad.”
Fortunately or not, the man crumpled to the ground without a sound before Haran even finished speaking — and didn’t hear a word of it.
“Huh?”
The dust slowly settled. Haran limped over to the fallen man, belatedly making his way toward him.
“Ah, damn it. What’s wrong with the leg again…”
His left leg wasn’t cooperating, which annoyed him, but checking on the man’s condition came first.
“Hey. You, the swordsman.”
Up close, the man looked terrible. His clothes were in shreds, and the body visible through the tears wasn’t in any better shape.
The most serious-looking wound was near his chest, where his heart was. Somehow he’d gotten a fist-sized hole gouged into him — dark red blood was welling up and spilling out of it in surges.
At this rate, he’d die. Haran knit his brows and clicked his tongue.
What a waste.
Over his long years, Haran had made a habit of spotting promising talent and raising it. Those who showed aptitude for magic he cultivated himself; those who showed aptitude for the sword he rounded up and sent off to the military academy with his full backing.
Every person he had marked went on to make a name for themselves in their respective field. That was how sharp Haran’s eye for talent was.
He listened to my advice without any fuss earlier, too. Might as well save him.
Successfully completing the dimensional transfer was already cause enough to feel good. He could afford to extend this much goodwill to the first person he’d encountered after crossing dimensions.
“Let’s see… using magic right now seems out of the question…”
He reached out and tried to channel his mana — and failed. As expected, there was clearly some side effect from having forced such a large-scale spell through all at once.
One good spell and he could fully restore even someone half-dead.
Haran clicked his tongue in disappointment and looked for another way. It didn’t require much thought. There was an excellent material right beside him.
“Hey, mind if I borrow your sword?”
Haran patted around the unconscious man’s waist, pulled out an empty scabbard and a sword roughly the length of his own forearm, and drew it. Then, using the scabbard like a walking stick, he made his way over to the dragon’s corpse.
Let’s see, the heart should be… mm. Here.
He had studied dragons until he was sick of the sight of them. Haran reversed his grip on the sharpened sword and slid it between the dragon’s scales without much difficulty.
Thud — tear — scrape —
The quiet sounds of cutting through hide, fat, and muscle rang out softly. Viscous blood dripped steadily down Haran’s arm.
“Haah, phew… this is killing me.”
A cold sweat had broken out across Haran’s forehead without him noticing. Even so, the end was in sight.
He pushed his arm into the opening he had made with the sword. After rooting around through the flesh a few times, his hand closed around something hard and warm.
Found it.
Haran grinned and pulled it free. What lay in his exposed hand was a dark red stone — the treasure known as the Dragon Heart.
Thump — thump — thump —
The fact that it was still pulsing meant it was in perfectly good condition. Haran smiled with satisfaction and turned his steps back toward the man. With every step he took, drops of the dragon’s black blood fell to the ground.
“Still alive?”
Haran nudged the man’s shoulder with the tip of his foot. The man’s brow twitched. He’d been worried the man might have died in the meantime — fortunately, he was still breathing.
If he’d gone and died before I could get back, I was going to keep this for myself.
“Lucky bastard.”
Even as he said it, he settled himself down beside the man without delay. Then he pressed the Dragon Heart into the wound on the man’s chest.
With a wet, dense sound, the Dragon Heart pushed its way into the man’s body. It was meant to save him, but the pain of having his wound forced open must have been considerable — the man’s limbs shuddered violently.
“Huh, the size fits almost perfectly.”
Haran watched with the detached ease of someone observing a fire across a river, and finished the job. Once he had pushed the Dragon Heart as deep as it could go and withdrew his hand, the man’s breathing stopped.
He wasn’t particularly worried, though. Before long, the surrounding mana began rapidly converging on the man’s body — centered on his heart.
Haran observed the entire process of the man dying and coming back to life with rather keen interest.
Thump — thump —
The sound of his heartbeat grew noticeably clearer than before, and the ragged breathing evened out into a regular rhythm. The wound on his chest where the Dragon Heart had been embedded, along with the other injuries scattered across his body, began closing at an unnatural speed.
Good. No more risk of him dropping dead.
The strength drained out of Haran’s body.
He had been framed out of nowhere, betrayed by both the emperor and his own disciples, bitten off his fingers one by one to complete the magic circle and execute the dimensional transfer — and then, on top of all that, had to face a dragon in a body that was in absolutely terrible shape.
Well. I wasn’t the one who fought the dragon.
Thanks to the man, he’d come out of it safe as well. Haran lightly patted the man’s cheek, which was beginning to regain some color.
“Consider it your payment for fighting in my place. You.”
