Chapter 1: Calamity Resurrected! The Dragon of Pure Evil!
On our journey to deliver Llinger Kingdom’s letters across the lands, we saved a girl by the name of Nea from zombies. Her home, Ieva Village, was at the whims of a necromancer, a monster that could control the dead. She asked us to save everyone, and so we found ourselves sneaking into the necromancer’s manor only to realize that we’d walked right into a trap. It turned out that Nea was the necromancer, and she’d put on the guise of an ordinary villager to trick us.
To be more precise, Nea was half necromancer and half vampire. This gave her the power to control both the dead and the living. It was these powers that had allowed her to take control of our companion, Aruku.
After a hard-fought battle, we released Aruku from Nea’s grasp, and right when we thought that she was all out of options, she revealed that she still had an ace up her sleeve in the form of a black dragon. It stood more than fifteen meters tall, was missing a wing and an eye, and breathed a poisonous purple gas. The monster stood before us and roared—the sound almost knocked me from my feet.
The dragon looked like a picture I found in a notebook—one that I’d taken from Nea’s manor. There was no doubting that this was the dragon from the picture. As I looked up at the dragon, I felt myself freeze for an instant, but then I nodded calmly as our best course of action was revealed to me.
“Should we make a break for it?” I asked.
“Yep, let’s do that,” said Amako.
“Gwah!” added Blurin.
We came to our shared conclusion swiftly. Amako leaped onto Blurin’s back, and I hefted Aruku onto my shoulder.
“No way we’re going to stick around to fight that thing,” I said. “We’ve got Aruku, so let’s make tracks.”
Fighting something as dangerous as that dragon wasn’t worth the effort. I faced Nea and flashed her a grin, then laughed.
“Nea!” I shouted. “You went to all that trouble to raise your evil dragon, and it was all for nothing! You really thought that thing would be able to catch me? You idiot! You’re a weirdo shut-in and a klutz!”
“What?!” she cried, unable to believe we were fleeing. “You’re too righteous!”
It didn’t matter what she thought. I’d given her a piece of my mind, so as far as I was concerned, we were done. That whole song and dance about a zombie attack was all a made-up story anyway. There was no zombie attack at all. It was all just Nea’s lies. And sure, the villagers were under her control because of her vampiric powers, but on the other hand they were quite safe under her control.
The way I figured it, I could always come back and check on things when our journey was over and we’d delivered all our letters. Right now, there was no need for us to get caught up in any more trouble. But as we started running for the village to grab our bags and our horse, I noticed a change in the air.
“The wind,” I uttered.
It was being sucked up behind us. It gave me the creeps, so I turned around and saw the dragon. It was sucking the surrounding air into its lungs. Which only meant one thing . . .
“Blurin!” I shouted. “Look out!”
Blurin was still running, but when he heard my shout, he spun around so he could react to what was coming. When the dragon stopped sucking in the air, its throat expanded, and a purple gas began to spill from the open cuts on its neck and the edges of its mouth.
“If you’re going to do it, then do it!” I said.
The dragon opened its mouth and, with a rasping roar, launched a slimy purple hunk of sludge into the air. Blurin and I instinctively flattened ourselves on the ground in a panic. The sludge flew straight over our heads and landed in the forest, unleashing a horrendous odor as it sprayed across the trees.
“Looks like luck saved our butts,” I said, wiping the sweat from my brow and sighing with relief.
Whatever muck the dragon was spitting, we were fast enough to dodge it. That said, you could tell by the color and the stench that it wasn’t something you wanted to touch. Fortunately for us, the dragon’s aim had been way off, and we’d emerged unscathed. I hefted Aruku back onto my shoulder and looked to make another getaway, but then I noticed the effects of the dragon’s sludge.
“Oh no, the forest!” I said.
The trees were withering away.
They’re rotting! And that stench!
“It’s poison! I knew it!”
Bile bubbled up in my throat, and I was hit by a light dizzy spell. I quickly covered my mouth with my sleeve and healed myself. I frantically looked for the others and saw that Amako was looking deathly pale. Blurin was still fine, but getting any closer to the sludge was a dangerous move, especially with Aruku still unconscious.
“Don’t worry Amako, I’ve got you,” I said.
“S-sorry,” she uttered.
I lifted Amako from Blurin’s back and away from the wind carrying the poison, then healed both her and Aruku. Unfortunately, I knew that my actions were little more than a stopgap solution. As long as something was still producing the poison that blocked our way, we’d still be in danger of inhaling it.
“We have to get away from here, and fast!” I said.
But as I looked for a detour, another clump of sludge blocked our path.
“Huh?!” I exclaimed.
The dragon’s eyes narrowed as though it were evaluating us while looking down on me at the same time. I knew that look in its eye. I had seen it before, in the Llinger Forest, when I fought that snake. The gaze was exactly the same.