Ransel’s performance sparked a little curiosity in Domingosen. He took the helmet, clapped it onto his head, and turned to look at the sky above the volcano. His whole body jolted. “This!”
“Well? I was right, wasn’t I?!”
The old man fell silent for a second, then slowly raised both hands to lift the heavy helmet off his head, rolling his neck as he did. “I haven’t even looked yet. This blasted thing’s so heavy, I nearly snapped my neck…”
“Didn’t you make the thing yourself?!”
“I designed it for you warriors. I never expected to use it myself. And you think it was easy to keep all the crystals needed for the detection arrays light enough for a neck to bear?”
The old man shakily adjusted the helmet—or, more accurately, the combat power measuring device—and carefully looked again at the enormous hole in the sky above the volcano.
The magic crystal screen inside the helmet glimmered as it displayed the results. As his gaze swept over line after line of readings, the old man couldn’t help widening his eyes.
“I haven’t used this thing much, but I’ve seen this kind of magical energy waveform a few times before. It was when we were hunting giant dragons… Could it really be?”
Ransel gazed up at the sky, where bursts of noise still rang out from time to time.
“Looks like it really is. My device doesn’t make mistakes, and you remember correctly. That’s a magical energy waveform unique to the Dragon race. Judging by the peak values and what’s happening up there, that giant dragon is probably close to adulthood—or even in its prime.”
“Could we get any unluckier? And if they’re fighting, there have to be at least two of them.”
Ransel scratched his head, looking troubled, then let out a long sigh. “So, old man… should we pretend we didn’t see anything?”
“Don’t play dumb.” Domingosen took the helmet off and caught his breath, then shot Ransel an amused glance. “Your eyes don’t look like you’re planning to pretend you didn’t see a thing.”
“Heh. Having to spend the next few days at the festival listening to those Association people hold some kind of meet-and-greet is already painful enough. We’re supposed to be the Dragon Slayers, after all. Letting a giant dragon right in front of us go would be a disgrace to the name.”
He stretched his arms and shoulders. Muscles honed and strengthened through countless battles were beginning to heat up.
Ransel grabbed the coat beside him, threw it over his shoulders, and called to his companions in the sea.
“Hey! Quit messing around! Time to get to work!”
…
“Dragon Thorn: Rapid Fire!”
Back in the sky, Aya was fully immersed in the fight, growing bolder with every exchange. He gripped the Storm Spear like a true knight’s lance, and dozens of thin blue-green lines shot toward Anticas in a sudden, rainlike barrage.
Even Anticas was starting to look at a loss in the face of Aya’s assault.
The sheer power and density of the attacks made most of the countermeasures he could think of useless. They weren’t enough to kill him, but being driven into such a miserable state by his own son was already a blow to Anticas’s pride.
Storm Barrier!
A wind wall of the same element wrapped around Anticas. This high-level Magic defense finally stopped Dragon Thorn, giving him a moment to catch his breath.
You little rascal. You can fire off a vicious combat technique like that over and over? Looks like you really mean to beat your old man head-on.
As Anticas considered how to respond, a faint, relieved smile slipped onto his face without him noticing.
He could manage these tightly compressed thrusts too, but firing them off repeatedly over long distances was far more difficult. It required an unknown method of Chi compression that even he, a Golden Dragon who’d lived for centuries, had never mastered—and it placed an intense strain on the body.
The only reason Aya could keep using it without any apparent side effects was that he wasn’t fighting alone right now…
“Aya, that’s so unfair! You could’ve at least told me before using my body…”
On Miss Ruka’s back, Tiran’s breathing had grown a little heavy, though the fierce wind at such a high altitude made it hard to notice.
One effect of the life-chain in a Dragon Knight contract was that mount and rider shared their life force. It had originally been designed to let human knights draw on the dragon affinity of their giant-dragon partners during the First Legendary War against the Demons, so they could stand against demon knights whose natural physiques were stronger than their own.
But with Tiran and Aya, things were different. A deal with the unknown god Tiran spoke of had made her body comparable to that of the Dragon race—a fact Aya had experienced firsthand when he and Tiran had fought hand to hand.
…Don’t ask what kind of hand-to-hand. In every sense of the phrase.
Anyway, Tiran’s life force was so powerful that she could even replenish Aya’s. So when Aya’s body took damage, the life-chain could send that life force back the other way.
“Could you put that in a more normal way?!”
Aya couldn’t help protesting through the contract’s telepathic link.
“Relax, relax. Nobody else can hear us on this channel.”
Tiran sat down casually as she reassured Aya. “Oh, wait—Aya, I think your dad’s about to do something.”
Aya blinked. The Storm Barrier, already on the verge of collapsing under his focused assault, was suddenly dispelled by Anticas himself.
A fierce wind howled. Anticas’s clothes snapped in the gale, his golden hair whipping wildly as he struck an imposing pose.
“My son—what the hell, at least let me finish what I was saying!”
Aya had learned the very best of Lady Tiran’s ways in this regard: never give your opponent a chance to show off. If you stop to talk, I’ll politely wait for you to finish? What, do you look down on me—or yourself?
And so, Dragon Thorn kept coming without a pause. His old man had to arch backward, then tumble down through the air in a series of rolls just to barely dodge it.
“Go ahead, Dad. I’m listening.”
Aya kept a straight face—and didn’t stop attacking.
“You little brat!”
Anticas was beside himself with frustration. When had this kid gotten so shameless? He was every bit as much of a little shit as his old man.
“Forget it. Listen. We’re not going to settle this easily if we keep fighting like this. Your dad’s here on vacation, not to get into a brawl, so let’s hurry up and decide the winner.”
“You mean we use the Laws?”
“So you’ve reached Holy Rank too, huh?”
Aya’s answer gave Anticas the confirmation he needed. He grinned, baring his teeth. “In that case, your dad’s not holding back.”
“…Bring it on.”
Aya looked calm on the outside, but a slight unease stirred inside him.
He’d never seen his dad use his Law—not even when he was a child and his dad fought powerful enemies like siege-class behemoths. So he had no idea what it was like.
He tested the Law of Vibration a little and confirmed he could use it at his current distance from Tiran. Only then did he feel a little more confident.
If all else failed, he could tough it out with an ice-shield defense Magic and absolute zero. According to Lady Tiran, in theory, that defense was impossible to overcome unless the opponent had reached The Realm and could rewrite the Laws at will.
