The One Who Slays Death's Incarnation

 

An average Swordsaint possesses combat strength

equivalent to roughly three black dragons, or two green dragons.

 

"Must you leave so soon? You're more than welcome to stay longer."

"No, if we take our time by our standards, a hundred years will pass before we know it."

The next morning.

I gave the village chief a half-joking reply to his entreaties and took my leave of Shirogane.

No one pressured us to stay, nor did anyone make demands of us. Quite the opposite: the entire village had turned out to see us off. Watching the children wave goodbye without a care in the world, I felt ashamed for ever suspecting ulterior motives.

"Come on, let's get moving. We've got a long way to go."

While I was still waving back at the children, Yuuka said this and marched on ahead. According to Chryse's senses, Ai's soul was still far to the east. We couldn't afford to dawdle, true, but…

"Someone's in a foul mood."

A dozen or so minutes after leaving Shirogane.

Perched on my shoulder in bird form, Rin watched Yuuka storming ahead on her own and whispered to me. Now that she mentioned it, Yuuka did seem different from her usual self. Looking back, she'd been acting off yesterday too. Normally so sociable and upbeat, she'd spent the whole time eating and drinking by herself, barely interacting with anyone in the village.

Surely it wasn't something as petty as being upset that nobody recognized her as a Swordsaint.

"Big Sis Yuu does seem a little on edge," Chryse observed, walking beside me. Soul colors reflected emotions, apparently. She couldn't read someone's exact thoughts, but she could get a general sense of what they were feeling.

"She'll bounce right back once she gets something tasty in her," Nina said.

"I can hear every word, you know!"

At that, Yuuka finally spun around and shouted. Well, none of us had exactly been keeping our voices down since Chryse's remark, and even if we had, Yuuka's hearing was exceptional beyond question. She'd surely caught every word since Rin's whisper.

"Did something happen?"

"… I mean, it's not really my place to say anything, but…"

Yuuka wore a complicated expression. Unusually for her, she was struggling with her words.

"That village—"

She started to speak, then whipped around to look behind us. In the same instant, a massive shadow fell across the ground. I looked up at once.

It was the most stout and squat dragon I'd ever seen. Round body, short limbs. Its neck was thick and stubby too, and only the pair of wings sprouting from its back spread wide, vast enough to blot out the sky.

"A green dragon."

I murmured, watching it fly overhead. I'd sensed the presence of other dragons constantly since leaving Scarlet, but this was my first time actually seeing one.

"Hey."

It probably hadn't noticed us. Nina gazed after the green dragon as it vanished into the distant sky.

"Isn't that heading toward the village we just left?"

Before any of us could even exchange glances, Yuuka had broken into a sprint.

"Wait, Yuuka!"

There was no stopping her. In an instant, she vanished into the distance. When Yuuka ran in earnest, no one could keep up. She was faster than Rin even in horse form, which said something.

… Nothing for it, then.

"Activate!"

I pulled the long staff from my back and triggered the enchantment sorcery carved into it. My staff was fitted with strike-force enhancement and strike-range expansion. An invisible force field of magical energy enveloped the tip, forming something like the shape of a broom.

"Witch's Broomstick!"

I had a wind spirit lift it into the air, and just like that, I had a compact flying device. Straddling the staff, the all-repelling force field blasted the air aside and accelerated me like a rocket. Low altitude only, but far faster than Flight sorcery, rivaling even dragon form as I raced through the sky.

The distance we'd walked vanished in an instant. I arrived at Shirogane in no time at all, and what awaited me was devastation.

The wall that had encircled the village was destroyed beyond recognition. Several houses had collapsed. Pockets of greenish mist lingered here and there, withering every plant they touched. The poisonous breath of a green dragon.

"Big bro!"

Yuuka called out to me, stone sword held high. Where she was looking, up in the sky, the green dragon I'd seen earlier circled overhead, spewing poison down at her.

An oblong glob of venom hurtled her way, and she cut it down without breaking a sweat. But unlike a blue dragon's lightning, venom had physical substance; even scattered, it ate into the ground and sent up clouds of toxic mist.

"M-Mentor! Please, you must flee!"

Hana spotted me and came running, shouting as she approached.

"Flee? No, I'm here to help."

Yuuka had instantly slain a blue dragon, which outranked a green. In a straight fight, there was no question she'd win. But that was only true when the enemy was within sword's reach.

The sole weakness of the girl who had claimed the title of Sword God: she had no means of attacking at range and couldn't fly. With the dragon circling overhead and raining breath attacks down on her, all she could do was play defense.

"You can't! Even if you're strong enough to be compared to a fire dragon, Mentor, there's no way you could stand against a real one!"

I blinked at Hana's words. It had never occurred to me that being called a fire dragon was taken as mere metaphor.

… Then again, three hundred years of separation could do that.

Still, what would the villagers think if they saw me—a red dragon—when a green one already had them fleeing for their lives? Transforming might give them a scare, but so be it.

"Big bro. Can you leave this to me?"

Just as I was reaching into my coat for the dragon scale, Yuuka called out. She must have had a plan.

"What do you need?"

"Buy me some time! Just two or three seconds!"

She makes it sound easy, I thought reflexively. The details were unclear, but if she wanted me to leave it to her, that presumably meant I shouldn't upstage her. Buying time without standing out was perhaps the thing I was worst suited for.

After a moment's deliberation, I unwrapped the dragon scale I'd already pulled out from the dragon-ward cloth. Only a dragon could sense it, but the overwhelming presence of a fire dragon saturated the air. The green dragon let out a low groan and turned its gaze toward me.

"Hah!"

That split-second opening was all she needed. Yuuka hurled a collapsed wall panel into the air, then leaped after it. And then, unbelievably, she kicked off the board mid-air and launched herself all the way up to the green dragon. Did that girl just quadruple-jump?

She swung her sword in a single flash. For an instant, I saw the green dragon's head sliding from its neck, but that wasn't what happened. The dragon itself seemed to have imagined the same thing, pawing at its own neck with a stubby foreleg, yet there wasn't a scratch.

And yet it was clear this was no miss. Standing atop the green dragon's back, Yuuka pressed the flat of her stone sword against its neck and murmured something under her breath.

The green dragon shrieked and frantically flapped its wings, wobbling off into the sky. Yuuka leaped from its back and landed with a light, effortless sound, as if nothing had happened.

"Thanks, big bro. Having you there made the threat a lot more convincing."

"Y-yeah… glad I could help."

The razor-sharp glare she'd leveled at the green dragon was gone; in its place was her usual sunny smile.

Then she turned to face the villagers, who were peering our way with timid apprehension, and drew a deep breath.

"Are you lot even descendants of the Swordsaints?!"

A thunderclap of rage shook the air.

I'd heard it from right beside her, and yet I could scarcely believe it had come from Yuuka—from that bright, carefree girl.

"A green dragon, of all things, and not one of you showed the spine to stand your ground! Not a single person drew a sword! You'd simply abandon your village and run… Pathetic!"

"B-but… it was a dragon. For mere humans to…"

The village chief started to speak, then stopped himself. Yuuka, by all appearances a mere human, had just driven off that very dragon. She was exceptional, certainly, but back in Scarlet, there were multiple Swordsaints who could handle a green dragon. She'd only asked for my help to minimize further damage to the village; had it come down to a solo kill, she could have managed with ease.

"… Sorry, big bro," Yuuka said with a deep, heavy sigh.

"Would you mind if I whip these people into shape? Just for, oh, twenty or thirty years."