Vol 2 Chapter 20 – Dragon【Vol 2 — Youth in the Midst of Calamity】

The wind whistled past, stirring the grass and trees with a restless rustle. The stillness wrapped around everything so completely that the sounds of nature felt like they were pressing directly against my skin — the silence was almost painful. The wind and the rustling leaves seemed to be laughing at me, and I couldn’t shake the feeling.

Standing before me with an unreadable expression, my father Lucas surveyed me and the unconscious girls without a word.

“…So. What are you planning to do about this?”

“…”

I didn’t answer. Couldn’t answer.

Seriously, what the hell am I supposed to do here?

I glanced over at the girls, who had drifted a short distance away. Just as my eyes landed on Elena, she let out a soft “Mmm…” and rolled over in her sleep.

My shoulders jolted upward.

Damn. I’m a total wreck right now.

Now that I looked more closely, my hands, legs, and hips were all trembling.

“Pathetic…”

Lucas muttered it like a tired sigh.

This guy… He has no idea what I’m going through.

My right hand had unconsciously balled into a fist, trembling with the urge to slug him, but doing that here and now wouldn’t accomplish anything.

I took a steadying breath and looked at Aria, Sophia, and Elena in turn. Sleeping like that, they were just… purely, genuinely adorable — these were the girls I’d fallen for.

I knew them. I knew that deep down, they were gentle, kind-hearted girls.

…Or at least, I thought I had known.

Maybe I’d been wrong about all of it from the very beginning.

That thought had barely crossed my mind when —

“— !”

Lucas flinched hard, his eyes sweeping the surroundings with sudden alertness.

“…Something’s coming. Stay sharp.”

“…Something?”

“Quiet — !”

The crunch of snapping branches and crushed undergrowth shattered the silence.

I turned — and there it was: a massive creature, easily over five meters from snout to tail, with rough coarse green scales, powerfully muscled legs, and razor-sharp fangs gleaming inside a gaping crimson maw.

“Tch…! Of all the times for a dragon-class to show up. I guess teleporting into the deep zone for safety backfired on us…”

Lucas muttered, frustration seeping through his voice.

Dragon-class. I’d heard the term before — among all the monsters that threatened humanity, they sat at the absolute top. The creature now standing before me was every bit worthy of that name.

It had wings, though they were disproportionately small relative to its massive body — flying clearly wasn’t on the menu — but that did absolutely nothing to ease my dread. A fear unlike anything I’d felt moments ago seized hold of me — pure, undiluted terror of death.

“Grrrr…”

The Dragon growled low in its throat, glaring between me and Lucas — then locked its gaze onto Sophia lying unconscious to my right, onto Sophia, who had collapsed and couldn’t defend herself.

Ba-dump.

Every hair on my body stood on end. I couldn’t just stand there — I was moving before I even realized it.

“…Stop.”

A small fireball launched from my palm and struck the Dragon square in the face. The flame snuffed out on impact almost instantly, but it was more than enough to seize the Dragon’s attention. Those massive eyes snapped to me with a piercing glare.

— Time seemed to freeze.

“GRAAAAAAAAAAWWWWWRRR!!”

An ear-splitting roar swallowed the forest whole. Before I knew it, a dense mass of high-mana flame — its breath — was hurtling toward me, filling my entire field of vision.

“You idiot!!”

Just as death began to feel real, Lucas shoved me aside and threw up a protective barrier squarely in front of us. The barrier collided with the breath, held for just a fraction of a second — then shattered, and Lucas was hurled backward.

“…Ugh.”

A sickening crack split the air — Lucas had been slammed back-first into a massive tree, and he was out cold.

“— !”

I felt the air sear around me and threw myself sideways without thinking. The Dragon’s breath swept through exactly where I’d been standing a heartbeat before — the very air scorched, and the sheer force of it was on a completely different level, beyond any comparison.

“GRRRRAAAAAAAAAAARRR!!”

The Dragon still had me in its sights, and this time it exhaled an even larger breath than before while simultaneously lunging to close the distance.

In that split second ————

A protective barrier materialized right in front of me, intercepting the breath. It cracked — a sharp, visible fracture ran through it — but it held without shattering. And from where the Dragon stood, an explosion roared.

Staggered by the shockwave from the barrier absorbing the blast, I caught sight of a burst of flame erupting from beneath the Dragon’s feet. The Dragon, blindsided from below, stumbled and crashed to the ground.

And then —

“— !”

The moment I saw it, I froze.

Standing ahead of me were Aria, Sophia, and Elena — all three of them — staring the Dragon down.

— What in the world.

Hadn’t they been unconscious? Had the Dragon’s roar snapped them awake? Lucas had used magic to put them to sleep — could they really have woken from that alone? And even if they had, to assess the situation this fast, to shield me, to protect me of all people —

“Why… are you…”

The words fell from my mouth, tangled with confusion.

The three of them turned toward me, glanced at each other briefly and grimaced — just for a moment. But their eyes quickly returned to mine, and then —

“This time, it’s our turn to save you.”

All three murmured it at the same moment, too softly for me to catch clearly — but something along those lines, I’m pretty sure that’s what it was.

They turned back toward the Dragon and raised their palms. The Dragon had just righted itself from the ground, turning its rage-filled eyes back toward us. The killing intent rolling off the most powerful species among all monsters was thick enough to make the very air tremble, and I stumbled backward without meaning to.

“GRAAAAAAAARRR!!”

The Dragon slammed its legs into the earth and lunged — and in that instant, several beams of white light streaked across the space and converged on the Dragon. A blinding flash detonated, swallowing everything in brilliance.

“— !”

The light was so intense I squeezed my eyes shut.

“…”

Once the glow faded beyond my closed eyelids, I slowly cracked them open.

There it was — the Dragon, charred black, collapsed flat on the ground.

“—…”

My mouth hung open. I had no words. There was no other explanation — those three had done that. In a moment that brief, they’d taken down a Dragon?

The overlapping waves of shock and confusion were more than my head could process. I pressed a hand to my temples — and Aria, Sophia, and Elena walked toward me.

My shoulders lurched.

They stopped just in front of me. Our eyes met all at once, and a dozen different emotions passed between us — that tiny sliver of time felt impossibly long.

“— !”

“Wh- whoa.”

Before I knew what was happening, all three of them had thrown their arms around me at the same time.

“— !”

“W-wait, what, huh?”

I had no idea what was going on, yet they held me so tightly it felt like they’d never let go.

“I’m sorry…”

“Huh?”

Aria’s, Sophia’s, and Elena’s faces filled my entire field of vision, pressed so close, and just as they opened their mouths to say something more, a jolt tore through me.

“— !”

Behind them — through a narrow gap between their figures — it caught my eye. The Dragon that had collapsed in a charred heap moments ago, the one I’d been certain was dead, was barely clinging to life, yet slowly, painfully, its body was moving.

In that instant, murderous intent drove into me like a spike. The Dragon’s crimson maw gaped wide, and everything seemed to slow to a crawl.

“Like hell… I’ll let you…!”

I shoved Aria, Sophia, and Elena aside and lunged forward a full step. I poured every last drop of mana I had into a desperate, clumsy protective barrier — and I think the Dragon’s dying breath hit me at almost the exact same moment.

The impact launched my body off the ground, and every inch of me burned as if being consumed alive. My vision began to spin, and a pale white haze crept in from the edges.

“— !!”

My name — screamed right against my ear, again and again — and with each cry, my consciousness drifted a little further away. At the very edge of my fading vision, I could see that those three were safe and unharmed.

A wave of relief washed through me.

The next moment, everything went dark.