“Can you still stand?”

—xx·xxxxx, sitting on the ground won’t kill a dragon.

“Ah, my name is…”

Blur first, then edges. Dragon Exorcist wakes on the battered battlements of her hometown, staring at endless forest and snow-shrouded mountains.

A faint name scatters on the mountain wind. Panic swells; she clutches her chest as a dry retch rumbles up her throat.

No.

Not her breasts. Not her armor.

There should be a hole here, punched by the Demon King. To shield archers, she threw herself into the heavy blow. She should feel pale bone splinters. The spine was spared, but the wound was deep.

Yet her chest holds nothing. Only coarse homespun—a child’s shirt her father once gave her, a tiny flower stitched on the shoulder—

Warmth brushes her shoulder. A hand like sunlit bread.

“If you can still hold on, then—”

Familiar floods in. Deep as old roots.

It’s her father. She knows it without turning.

Ah. Memory rises like mist.

This—this is childhood before iron. No weight of plates. She runs free under green canopy. She dances along stone teeth of the wall, light as a sparrow.

She lifts a hand to the bright sun, opens her palm, and drinks in that airy lightness.

It feels easy.

She wants this stream of days to keep flowing.

But bread costs coin. The draughts that tune dragonblood cost coin. The Church funds you, but never for free.

Slay the dragon. Trade the head for everything you own.

A dragon’s low roar rips the sky. It rides the wind like a blade.

She reaches for the hand on her shoulder. No warmth. Only sticky wetness. Blood. Molten fire. The texture is too familiar. Her blood is her weapon. She doesn’t need eyes to know.

“Can you still stand?” The call comes again, a second tide.

—xx·xxxxx, your wound needs urgent treatment.

Sun, castle, forest melt into a burned hellscape. Ash-gray and coal-black smoke and embers stack like stormclouds that swallow the day.

Shock tightens her gut. Dragon Exorcist grips her left arm, then flinches and lets go as phantom pain bites down.

The Demon King had tossed a hand. It hit like a siege ram. One punch crushed a Construct, then snapped her arm like a dry twig. To keep fighting, she jammed the broken bones back into the ruined gap. She whipped her bloodline’s healing. She pinned the fracture, just enough to hold a sword.

It hurt like knives in meat. Splinters like little blades buried in muscle. Every motion sliced her from within. Even a warrior like her barely used that trick to stay in the fight.

She checks her arm. No warped shape. No shattered bracer. She squeezes her fist. No pain. Calm like a winter lake.

She’s no longer on the wall. A great dragon with russet-red scales sprawls at her feet. Boiling dragonblood turns ground to a crimson mirror. Its eyes are still wide, locked in fury, yet they’ll never close. Lava-light dribbles from razored teeth.

Her gun—her original, un-upgraded, twenty-year-old Dragon Slayer Rifle—has been rammed through the wyrm’s crown. It pierces skull, brain, and jaw, then pins the head to the earth like a black nail.

“If you can still hold on, then—”

She remembers. This—this is her life.

Dragon-slaying.

But slaying a dragon isn’t an ending.

It’s not a tavern story. After a kill, she doesn’t stroll in for a drink, then a hot bath and sleep.

Even after a thousand trials to down the dragon, Dragon Exorcist must hack off the head as proof. She strips precious loot and packs it into her tower shield for extra pay. She hunts a creek to rinse her armor, so she won’t terrify villagers.

Only after all those chores does she drag her tired body to a rented bed. She files the head with the Church.

She could burn through coin and drown in silk and song. But pleasure rots resolve. It nudges you closer to death the next time you face a dragon.

So she won’t. She can’t choose that path.

It’s chase the wyrm, slay the wyrm. Chase, slay. What else could matter under the sky?

Rich, yet busy. So busy she doesn’t even have room to feel lonely. No time to complain that she doesn’t live like a Hero.

She feels part of the world, but never a keystone. Her work brings no pride, no glory. Just steel and ash.

Only dragon-slaying. Besides dragon-slaying, she doesn’t know what else to do.

Weariness pools heavy. She wants a nap first. Then she’ll cut off the head and keep working.

“Can you still stand?” The third call. Same words, three hearts. First gentle. Then anxious. Now despairing.

—xx·xxxxx, run! That thing isn’t something humans can fight—

Deep inside, the scene turns again. Scorch-stink and rot blow clean on a briny sea wind. Azure sky and azure sea kiss at the horizon till they blur like ink in water.

Dragon Exorcist hugs her knees and sits on warm sand. Memory returns like tide. Lost history. Story details. Regrets. Everything else.

She knows what’s coming. Soon, beyond the skin of the sea, twisted horns will break the water. A colossal head will follow. Then a body so vast it fills every gap in sight.

Seven heads, seven crowns, ten horns. The great Red Dragon.

Abaddon.

Enemy of God.

Doomsday.

Final Calamity.

The place where hope goes extinct.

Human steel crumples before It, fragile as paper in rain.

Human effort, struggle, resolve—before It, they’re jokes told by children.

The deep earth rumbles. The planet itself seems to weep for the promised end.

“If you can still hold on, then—”

A tune bubbles up. She doesn’t know its name. A tavern dancer once hummed it. It stuck like a burr.

She hums it when hunger gnaws like a wolf.

That man’s canned fish tasted awful. Next time I’ll treat him—

She pushes up from the sand and walks toward the Red Dragon on the waterline. Her steps stretch. Her pace quickens. Her heart turns to fire.

She charges the thing that stands for despair.

—not for a reason!

—Who says I must bargain for payoff before I can move?

—Who wrote that rule in the sky?

—Why can’t I just do what I burn to do?

—I know I can’t win. So what?

—I feel this is the most meaningful thing in the world. Even someone who only knows dragon-slaying can try to etch a mark in history!

Black-gold bones. Mithril plates. Orichalcum edges. She calls them up from the well of memory. The human-shaped dragon dons armor once more. It meets wind. It meets waves. It runs. It charges.

Her bolt-harpoon fires from afar. The chain yanks her across thousands of meters. She clambers up and locks onto the dragon’s head like a storm-crow.

A single “ordinary” scale is a football field wide. You could probably see that red patch from orbit.

She thinks that and grins. Frenzy and joy knot tight. She hums the tune’s loudest line.

Piercing mode, engage.

Ah, blood flows—so it can be killed after all!

Forward cannon mode, engage.

A rain of blood spatters her armor, painting it crimson. It can’t douse the furnace blazing in her chest.

“If you can still hold on, then—”

——————

“—then cut off her head, Dragon Exorcist!”

To keep the flame-seal intact and buy the Hero a sliver of ground, she has bled almost dry. Her veins feel like empty rivers.

Her body and armor are riddled and torn. Her bulwark tower-shield lies in pieces. Her Dragon Slayer Rifle has lost a third of its length. The break has jammed the mechanism. It won’t transform again.

—If you can still hold on, then cut off her head.

—Of course I can. Trust me. I’ll do it.

The chain retracts. It coils around her wrist-cuffs like iron snakes. Her numb hand—nerves maybe dead—finds the rifle’s grip.

Her stance rises by reflex, a ghost remembering a dance.

With this dried-corpse of a body—ruined as it is—she believes she can step forward. She can swing!

Stini grips his spear with his last hand and skewers the Demon King upon the tip.

Raven is mortally wounded. Her Construct follows her dying will. It burns its last mana. A lightblade erupts with ripples of subspace shards. It lances through the Demon King’s chest and heaves her upward.

Catherine’s bow lies snapped into sections. She holds an arrow in each hand. She nails them into the Demon King’s eyes from behind, then yanks back and forces her head to tilt—

—so the throat shows like a moon-slice.

Swing. All you must do is swing—

Black blood fountains up like a geyser. It sprays wide, a night-rain. Way more than a human body should hold.

Shock freezes the Demon King’s face. The head spins off and climbs into the air like a black comet.

Good. Dragon Exorcist says it in her heart. Good. I did make something happen.

At last—the word flows like a vow fulfilled by a ghost on its pyre. Dragon Exorcist bathes in bloodrain and lets out a long, satisfied breath, yet she no longer has strength to pull air back in.

Her armor, a weave of black and crimson, tips heavy and falls backward like a felled tree.