Episode 54: Spirit Dragon
I returned to the base with Houryuu using Spatial Jump.
Some faces looked refreshed, perhaps because the final farewell was over, while others seemed melancholic.
The women were distributing drinks to them. I accepted the one they brought to me.
“It’s alcohol…”
Apparently, it was made in the village. Delicious. It seemed like the various meats I had secured and stored would finally be consumed. Well, I’m providing the lower-grade stuff that can be obtained in large quantities, like Orcs and Buruburu, since the higher-grade meats are too precious.
Meat with Unified Space Force-era sauce is good, but I actually prefer meat seasoned only with salt. That’s probably because I’ve been living mainly on that since I came to this body.
“What’s that?”
“We are delivering prayers to Toragrus-sama.”
“Very big, great person.”
They’re offering prayers to a wooden statue of some sort. Looks like a Dragon? Well, it makes sense that it would be an object of faith… but still.
Just beyond my line of sight, in the direction of the former village, a black shadow began to appear.
“Could it be coming? Is it a ritual instead of just prayer?”
“Yes. It is a joyous day. It is our custom to offer some to that one when we drink alcohol.”
“Whoa… you can summon a guardian Dragon…”
“It seems that they only come when they are nearby and it suits them. To be able to see their revered face, today is a very auspicious day.”
“Saaaaaaaaakeeeeeeeeeee!”
That roar! What about the sake!? The black shadow slowly began to move towards the base. It slipped through the base’s Barrier and landed slowly in the open space.
Ah, crap!?
“My Lord!”
“Claffy-sama!”
“Guarding is pointless. Lower your heads, it’s a Spirit Race… a Spirit Dragon-sama.”
“…Ho, another human who knows my origins.”
“As for Spirit Dragon-sama…”
“Hmm? Boy, you are certainly…”
“No, we’ve never met. Surely, yes.”
Cold sweat ran down my back. I glanced at its form, and it was indeed a magnificent Black Dragon.
Its size was about forty to fifty meters? Black, shining scales. As expected, the Barrier didn’t activate. Proof that it’s not a Monster, but a Spirit Race.
“Ah, it’s sake, right! I’ll bring it out now! Is a barrel okay!?”
“Oh, that’s right. It’s you! The small fool who attacked me!”
“That’s not meeeeeeeeeee! I didn’t do ittttttt!”
I only attacked with a rocket launcher, the ES-66, a little!
“Fuhahaha! You were helpful back then! I never expected an attack that could scorch my scales from that distance!”
“…My Lord?”
“Claffy-sama?”
“King-sama?”
“Your Majesty?”
Stop! Don’t look at me like that!
“It’s not like that, I was just too focused on the battle. I was culling the Monsters in the Black Forest, and there was a huge Dragon! You’d attack, right!?”
“No, we would run away.”
“Yes, we would run away.”
“We would prepare to die.”
“I was on edge!”
Back then, Dad had egged me on to check my weapons while dealing with a large number of Monsters.
The Black Forest has varying degrees of density. The area around the Beastmen’s village had fewer Monsters and lower quality ones compared to the forest managed by our village.
In the Black Forest near our village, the Green Blood Clan wouldn’t have been able to occupy the town so brazenly.
“I was thinking of tearing you limb from limb and destroying your entire race when we met again.”
Please don’t!?
“…Well, whatever. It’s a reward for defeating the Behemunoth. I’ll let it slide.”
“Behemunoth?”
I don’t recognize that name.
“It is the name of an Earth Beast.”
“What! Your Majesty has already defeated it!”
“As expected of Your Majesty!”
“Our King!”
“Banzai!”
“No, no, wait a minute. Earth Beast?”
“You defeated it, right? I saw it briefly. And that Sword at your waist, it’s part of its body, right?”
“Ah, eh? Oh! That thing!”
The huge beast with the bull’s head. That was an Earth Beast!
“You defeated it without even knowing its name? Quite a bold story.”
“It attacked me with a lot of enthusiasm… and I defeated it before it could get close.”
I used the ‘Dragon Formula to Create Ice’ from the Shikigami and created a Dragon-shaped familiar to act as the vanguard. It used its claws and ice breath to hold it back, while I blew it away with a barrage of ES-66 fire.
It was about the same size as this Spirit Dragon-sama.
“Well, that’s about it. I decided not to interfere unless I was attacked. It was a violent creature, but part of nature. I can’t cause the extinction of a single species.”
“Ah, was it the last one?”
I feel bad about that.
“More importantly, the sake.”
The Spirit Dragon’s body emitted light and shrunk.
“Alright, it’s been a while, but no problem. Give me sake.”
There stood a man with long black hair, wearing a Unified Space Force uniform?
“I copied that man’s clothes because they looked cool.”
“Ah, is that so? And here’s the sake.”
I offered him a barrel.
“Can I drink this much!? And give it to me in a cup!”
“Ah, yes.”
I thought he was going to drink it whole.
“Ah, you don’t know? In the first place, I can’t taste it properly in Dragon form because the amount is too small, and I can’t get drunk because my body structure is different. But if I transform into a human, my body becomes human-sized, so I can enjoy the taste and get drunk. But I can only eat and drink the amount that humans can handle.”
“I see. Then how about some snacks?”
“Oh!”
They probably knew about it. Grandma Hotaru was giving instructions. When the sake and snacks were arranged on the table, Toragrus-sama looked satisfied.
“A Dragon, into a human?”
“A Spirit Race? What is a Spirit Dragon…?”
“I’ll explain it to you, so don’t say anything rude. Really…”
“Y-yes.”
“To put it simply, this star. They are ancient and powerful beings born when the world is filled with Magical Power.”
When life is born on a star, atmospheric circulation begins.
And when that circulation begins, the circulation of Magical Power in the natural world also begins. Any star with the breath of life will harbor Magical Power. Magical Power circulation always occurs.
In such circumstances, beings called ‘Spirits’ are born on stars with a certain level of Magical Power or higher.
Spirits, also known as living Magical Power without will, travel the stars and cover the world to fill it with Magical Power.
“Among those Spirits, there are those who connect with living things.”
In the case of the Human race, they are the ancestors of beings such as Elves and Dwarves.
The reason why Elves are magically superior and Dwarves are physically superior is that the Spirits are strongly connected to their souls.
Of course, there are also those who become the ancestors of Monsters. Spirits have no will, no good or evil.
“Among them, there are particularly special beings called Spirit Race-sama.”
The names vary depending on the star, but they are called World Trees or Golden Trees. Like Toragrus-sama, they are called Spirit Dragons or Ancient Dragons, and sometimes even Demon Lords or Gods.
They are created when multiple Spirits concentrate on the soul of a single creature and dedicate their existence to it.
“What’s different from the ancestors of Elves and Dwarves is that it’s not one-on-one.”
Spirit Races are born when multiple Spirits are incorporated into one soul.
If it is a creature with a Magic Stone, the Magic Stone dissolves into the body and begins to circulate. They are beings without Magic Stones who can handle Magical Power. They are the same as humans. Of course, they are different from Monsters, so they can pass through Barriers without any problems.
“You know more about it than I do.”
“Well, I’ve had opportunities to learn about it.”
Depending on the star, they may be standing as the guardians of that star. And there are also Spirit Races who don’t allow anything to come from outside the star, and will absolutely kill them!
The Unified Space Force didn’t want to subjugate them, but sometimes they had to be defeated for self-defense.
They are opponents that can be defeated with proper preparation… but not opponents that can be challenged with weapons that people can carry.
“They’re about two hundred times stronger than normal Dragons.”
“You can’t normally meet Dragons.”
That’s true.
It seems that Toragrus-sama is the type of person who can get excited on their own if you give them sake and food. A truly generous Spirit Dragon-sama.
With that in mind, we had a meeting about the future.
“You want to increase the amount of salt you can secure, huh?”
About two weeks have passed since the entire village moved here. Problems are starting to arise in their daily lives.
The main problem is that they can no longer secure the supplies they used to be able to secure. It was easy to move here using Spatial Jump, but it would take three or four days to actually go from here to the village ruins.
There were also requests to be able to secure the supplies that the warriors had been unable to secure due to their injuries.
“Iron, rock salt, and eggs, huh?”
There used to be a mine for iron, but it seems to have dried up. Instead, they would defeat Monsters such as Iron Oni Soldiers and Iron Oni Horses that appeared in the mine, bring back their bodies, and refine them.
“Yeah, it’s just like our village. It was already far, but now it’s even farther, making it harder to get to.”
Apparently, the rock salt comes in large chunks. They’ve been chipping away at it little by little and bringing it back to the village, and they’d like to continue doing that if possible. But the distance has increased again, it seems.
Both are dangerous processes, involving travel through the forest, but they say they’re used to it, so it’s not a problem.
Still, it’s not entirely safe. I want to avoid injuries when securing essential supplies.
As for eggs, they used to have chickens, but they all died from a disease. They want me to buy some from outside if possible. I could buy one or two, but buying a bunch would be tough.
I wonder if we can increase their numbers successfully?
“I wish we could trade alcohol and crops with someone…”
I’d like to do some bartering on a village level. It’s not impossible to prepare things according to their requests, but it’s difficult to prepare large quantities of things like wheat every time.
Especially salt. It’s easy to buy enough for personal consumption, but buying enough for the entire village would be a huge amount.
It’s difficult to get that much prepared for us. In territories with low distribution, the lord and those connected to him manage it at that level.
“I wonder if there’s a sea somewhere. Preferably with a village or town that makes salt.”
“A sea, you say?”
“I’ve never seen one, milord.”
“There is one, you know?”
“Eh?”
While Grandma Hotaru and I were racking our brains, Toragrus-sama tilted her glass and looked over at us.
“A place where people live by the sea, right? It’s over there, over there. Just a little Spatial Jump away.”
She pointed at the mountains behind us, saying it in a light tone. Well, I haven’t checked the other side of the mountains yet, so anything could be there.
“What, what’s with that look? I fly around this area, you know? I know the human territories.”
“Do you often visit such places?”
I’d never heard of Toragrus-sama when I was living in the village or the Royal Capital of Brostwill.
She didn’t show up in class, and Barbatos and Beatrice didn’t seem to know her either.
“I don’t go because it’s noisy. Who would want to go to a place where they don’t offer you alcohol but point arrows and spears at you?”
“Ah… I see.”
Villages and towns would normally prepare for an attack.
“They also offer sacrifices. What am I supposed to do if they offer me one? You understand?”
“N-no.”
I don’t understand.
“In the first place, the mana is thin in human territories, so it’s suffocating. Ah, this area isn’t considered a human territory, you know? It’s good to relax in places with dense mana like this. There aren’t many places like this where people live and offer you alcohol and food!”
“I see.”
Even in the village, alcohol was precious, so they probably couldn’t offer it very often.
“Still, I should check it out.”
“We shall accompany you.”
“I-I will too.”
“Oh?”
Using Spatial Jump, I appear on the highest point of the mountain behind us. When I open the door because they say they’re coming with me, there’s Barbatos and Beatrice, Houryuu and Asahi, and for some reason, Toragrus-sama with meat in her hand.
From there, we walk a little and arrive on the other side of the mountain, opposite the base.
“Mountains are continuing, but I see.”
I take out Watcher 8000 and look far into the distance.
Below us spread more mountains and forests. And wilderness. I can certainly see the sea in the east. A village or town… there it is!
“Do you know where that is? I think it’s around here.”
I roughly draw a map of the country of Brostwill on the ground and point to it.
“Another country, perhaps?”
“I’ve never heard of any exchange with the other side of the eastern mountains. I knew there were other countries beyond the southern desert and across the western sea, though.”
Barbatos and Beatrice both tilt their heads.
Yeah. I don’t know either. Even in the academy’s classes, they talked about the southern country and the country across the western sea, but they only taught us that the north and east were monster territories.
“What’s that?”
“It’s a tool for seeing far away. Would you like to try it?”
“Oh! This is amazing!”
I hand the one I was using to Toragrus-sama and take out a new one.
“Should we make a tunnel through the mountain? Or should we hollow out the underground and make an underground passage?”
“Your Majesty’s scale of thinking is enormous…”
“It’s hard to climb up and down, right? And monsters come out.”
It’s difficult, but it might be better to make a tunnel through the mountain and through the forest. If it’s underground, the dungeons that don’t show their faces outside can be on a level where you don’t understand the scale, so the danger is high.
“My eyes!”
“Toragrus-sama!?”
“Ah.”
I forgot to tell her not to look at the sun.