Epilogue

Later. Due to the scattered elements and magical power from the ice dragon's corpse, Lunéville experienced some abnormal weather in the way of snowfall.

While the commission completion was being processed on the branch's first floor, both Ilya and Frank, as well as Annabelle, a branch staff member that assessed raw materials, scowled at the ice dragon's horn that was taken out to be assessed on the third floor's parlor.

"Ilya… what do you think?"

"… Either way, it's strange."

Right. When Anabelle asked that, Frank responded saying that the horn was odd.

Usually, horns in general—not just a dragon's—would reflect the elements that the creature carried. The color on the surface was irrelevant, but the color on the inside… for ice dragons, it should be blue with some green particles sprinkled throughout.

However, the color inlaid in this horn was black.

"… Monstrification."

"Monstri… what?"

"Do you know about the thing called miasma?"

The two looked at each other and Frank nodded.

"It's the mist that turns something into a monster when you stay in it too long, right?"

"That's the general consensus, but it's actually different. It's toxic to most living things, but it is something like a drug for monsters that invigorates them and increases their magic source. Miasma is similar to a powerful medicine that incites monsters into mutating and enhances them, sending them into a frenzy. It is called monstrification as the miasma mutates the magic source inside the bodies of monsters."

Although the two people were staring in puzzlement at first, Frank opened his mouth in confusion before long.

"But didn't you say that dragons aren't monsters?"

"Yes. That's why it is unlikely."

If it went through monstrification, its nature would be forgotten, and it would travel meaninglessly… even the reason it attacked people until being injured could be explained by its intellect dulling.

However, the problem was something different. What caused it?

The only things that are able to cause monstrification and tamper with the bodies of living things that aren't monsters… was a demon.

Demons that were powerful enough to even interfere with the bodies of divine beasts, higher forms of life?

Those capable of that? They were called evil gods.