Striving

 

Only those who continue to reach out their hands

will find there is no such thing as a place that cannot be reached.

 

Seasons changed and time passed, a torrent of time sweeping everything away.

"Alright, let's go!"

At the outskirts of the village, by the road that stretched south.

Everyone watched as Lufelle raised a large iron hammer and declared,

"Hayah!"

The iron hammer, which was made entirely of metal including its handle, struck the ground with a thunderous sound and shook everything.

It was really less of a hammer and more of a giant stamp.

Swung down by Lufelle, the stamp carved its pattern into the surface of the ground, creating a makeshift magic formation. Immediately, a small form flew into the circle.

It was Tia.

"Activate!"

Pressing her small palm into the formation, Tia spoke the activation phrase.

Immediately, the earth was split open like a piece of unfolding origami, creating a trench. It was then compacted and paved like a cobblestone road. I couldn't help but hold my breath at the beauty of the magic. There was no one else who could have done this as well as Tia.

Water flowed into the new waterway as it connected to the reservoir. It was connected to a bay so far away that not even my eyes could see it, a bay where merfolk lived.

"Yay!"

"Good work!"

"Really, it took a long time."

People started to cheer.

We'd connected Scarlet to the merfolks' bay with a waterway, a major project.

Something that had taken over thirty years was now complete.

"We did it, Lufelle."

"Tia!"

The small woman raised her palm toward the giant girl.

Not missing a beat, Lufelle went to strike it with a finger.

"I keep telling you to hold back—are you trying to kill me!?"

Tia, dodging the giant finger aimed at her palm as if it were a giant hammer, shouted back despite the smile smile on her face.

Both of their smiling faces were covered in dirt.

Endowment magic that relied both on engraved runes and an activation step. Its greatest feature was that it could divide the intention, meaning, and will required for magic into separate parts.

Intention came from the person who engraved the runes. Meaning came from the engraved runes. Finally, will was entrusted to the person who activated the magic.

If one were to compare it to cooking, intention would be the recipe, meaning would be the ingredients, and will would be the chef.

The same recipe and same ingredients could create vastly different dishes depending on the chef.

And Tia was a first-class chef without a doubt. Perhaps because of her small body, the precision and delicacy of her magic was unmatched by anyone else.

Lufelle could use her large body to swing the hammer and carve the runes of a large endowment magic.

With Tia being the one to activate it, an extremely detailed waterway built itself up from the formation.

With the combined strengths of the two of them, this major project was completed.

"I somehow managed to make it long enough…"

"It's not good luck to talk like that."

I couldn't help but frown at Aqua who'd said that with a relieved expression.

The wrinkles carved into her face as she looked out over the waterway from her wheelchair were obvious to anyone.

The hair that had once been spun like golden threads had lost its color and was as white as snow.

Having lost Yutaka two years ago, she seemed to have aged even more.

"Exactly! Mother's still plently healthy."

In stark contrast to Aqua, Yuuka was still young and beautiful.

"Of course… now that they've finished waterway, all I have left is to look forward to seeing my grandchildren's faces."

"Then I guess you'll just have to live another hundred years."

Yuuka spoke as if she were boasting.

She was similar to Yuuki when she was a child, but she didn't look like her at all now. Rather, the red hair that reached down to her waist reminded me of a young Aqua, back when she had blue hair.

To put it another way, although she was a considerably beautiful young girl who was popular among those in the village, there was nothing going on in the relationship category for her.

Even she herself said that she prefered reliable older men. It wouldn't have been so bad if it were thirty years ago when she at least looked her age, but I didn't think there were any men who were both older than her and unmarried… there definitely wouldn't be if she gave it another twenty years.

As an aside, though I didn't ask her about it, she went out of the way to tell me "Mentor's definitely older than me, but…" and rejected me. How regrettable.

"… Come on, let's go home now that it's over. It's bad for her body."

"Mm. Alright."

Nina pulled my arm and I nodded.

Having started to grow colder, the winter chill was probably unbearable for Aqua.

Just as I tried to move Aqua's wheelchair, the waterway suddenly started to ripple.

"What!?"

It wasn't that the merfolk had come right away. Although water had started filling it some time ago, it was still far too early. The water hadn't even reached the bay yet.

However, it was clear that something large was moving through the water. Although I had no idea what sort of large creature could be making its way through the flowing water without having to come up for air, something was doing just that.

Nina similarly stared at the surface of the water, her nerves on edge. Yuuka stood in front of her, holding her waist-length sword.

Suddenly, I felt a sense of déjà vu. I felt like I'd seen something like this before…

Ah—

"I'm back!"

"Watch out—!"

Towards the shadow that had suddenly leapt out of the water, Nina's arrow, Tia's fire, and Yuuka's sword flashed. At the same time, I ran and charged towards the shadow that had appeared.

"Eh—!?"

Whose surprised voice was it? Still unable to have fully processed it, I flew towards her—toward Rin. Still in human form, my body was no more durable than a human's. But the coat I was wearing was different.

My coat, made from my dragon scales, easily withstood everyone's assault. Feeling the impact of the attacks on my back, I embraced a soft body with my arms—

—and continued by falling straight into the waterway with Rin from the momentum.

 

＊　＊　＊

 

"Haaah, that surprised me~"

"That's our line!"

Nina's eyebrows twitched while applying ointment to my back in response to Rin's carefree words

By the time I'd managed to calm down Yuuka who'd been apologizing to me over and over again and returned home, my clothes were completely soaked. When I took them off, my back was covered in a single, swollen bruise.

"Nina, could you be a little more gentle…?"

"And you! You're too reckless! Here, take this!"

Accidentally voicing a complaint at the way Nina was mercilessly rubbing medicine onto my back, I let out a small cry as I was slapped.

Although my dragonscale coat was very durable and didn't let heat through, it wasn't like it could absorb all impacts. For example, if someone were hit by a metal rod on soft fabric, they'd still take some damage from it.

It was unfortunate that I'd been protecting Aqua from the back. While I figured that she Rin could have more or less taken Nina and Tia's attacks, Yuuka's was meant to be an instant killing strike that would have cut her in half and I was the only one who could have stopped it.

I'm thankfull that Lufelle didn't join in on the attack. She was being careful and stayed back to observe the situation, but if I'd been struck by that hammer, even with my dragon scale coat, I probably would have died.

"Yuuka, you were so small but you've gotten so strong~"

Although she was the one who was almost bisected, Rin was smiling as she spoke to Yuuka.

"Yuuka was a child back then, of course she's grown up by now."

Nina pointed out. Thinking about it, she was right. Rin had left on her journey back when Yuuka was probably around five years old.

"Huh? I know that much obviously~. And even though Aqua's changed a lot, she's still lively. As for Yutaka… I'm sorry."

"It's your fault for not contacting us like you'd said."

Nina was probably angry about Rin not coming to Yutaka's funeral and about what had happened today. Rin had been contacting us every day for the first ten years, but as expected, she'd simply stopped one day.

Although communication magic using my scales was convenient, it had one drawback. I couldn't contact a specific scale unless it was in my possession.

I'd given my scales to dozens of people, but they were all connected to each other.

If they contacted me, however, I could talk to them one-on-one.

"That's because the scale Mentor gavee me broke."

Rin took a small bag out of her bag as she spoke.

"It broke?"

"Something happened all of a sudden and I couldn't get through."

There was not a single crack in the scale that had been taken out. Even though I'd given one to Nina seven hundred years ago, it was still usable and I couldn't imagine it breaking so easily.

"Give it to me… Can you hear me?"

Nina took the scale from Rin's hand and whispered it to her lips. In addition to the sound of the air being shaken, I could hear her voice in my head.

"I can hear you. I can hear your voice too… It seems like it's working."

When I replied by speaking in my mind, the scale vibrated and made the intended sound.

"Huuuuh?"

"If we assume that age isn't a factor… then maybe there's a limit to the distance. Rin, how far did you travel?"

The farthest I've tried so far is probably the distance between the lizardman village and the merfolk bay. I hadn't measured it exactly, but it should be somewhere around a few hundred kilometers.

"Mmm… This is this village, and this is the lizardman village. There's a mountain here, a river here, and I followed it until I got to the giant's village…"

While speaking, Rin drew a rough map on a piece of paper. The lines were drawn without hesitation, and the positions were roughly correct. Eventually, she started drawing places I didn't know about and a map that covered an area many times larger than what I'd seen was completed.

"I think it stopped working around here."

Rin pointed to the middle of the map. The distance between Scarlet and Shig's village alone looked to be about a thousand kilometers.

"You went pretty far."

"Yep. I was surprised when I found a village that was hostile to any non-humans."

"Did you make it out okay?"

"Yep. I can do this after all."

Rin's tail changed into a human leg and her ears changed into human ears.

"Because you could transform into a human?"

Rin nodded in response to Nina's question. It was a wonderful transformation magic, but it seemed that she still couldn't speak while in that form.

"I'm not sure if they treated elves the same, but there were many villages that are hostile to non-humans."

"Well, I guess we're special."

We're a village where people have to live with a dragon, so it'd be easier for them to get used to races like elves and giants who look much more similar to them.

"But I didn't expect them to start throwing rocks and spears at me just for getting close, saying [Get out of here, monster!]."

"Sounds similar to what happened to another certain person here."

Nina smiled as Rin returned her legs to their original form. It was another nostalgic story… huh?

"Huh? Isn't that a little strange?"

I suddenly realized something and tilted my head.