Instead, they shivered violently on Bash’s shoulder, clad in the fur of an animal they’d hunted along the way. In fact, Zell was practically wrapped around Bash’s neck in an attempt to absorb his body heat. “Oh, Boss, your neck is so warm and steamy…” If the renowned fairy warrior Zell happened to see another of their kin shivering and carrying on like this, no doubt a torrent of sharp-tongued abuse would ensue. You aren’t worthy of being called a fairy! You bring shame to the entire race! You’re a disgrace to the local community! …That’s what Zell would usually say. But even the great Zell had no choice but to shiver and cower inside furs in a land like this one. Or perhaps Zell would spin it a different way. Observe the adaptability of the fairy race, Zell might say. But ironically, Zell’s very behavior at present was a clear sign that little adaptability was on display. For even the great Zell was no match for this cold. “Right.” As for Bash… As an orc, he was resilient against both intense heat and bone-chilling cold. He was pretty much A-OK. Of course, he could feel the cold. That was why he, too, was wrapped in furs. If fairies are like flowers, then perhaps orcs are like those little weeds that grow in the cracks between tiles. “But, Boss, where the heck is the demon town? I mean, I’ve never been here before myself, but I would’ve expected to run into someone by now…? It’s weird! Don’t you think it’s weird? Not one trace! Maybe the demons were wiped out a long time ago?!” “Not likely. They’re a stubborn bunch.” For the past few days, the two had been wandering around, searching for the demon town, but they hadn’t been able to find any sign of life, let alone a town. In fact, in this vast snowy plain, it was almost impossible to sight any living creatures at all. At night, you might see some deer and foxes. Maybe a polar bear. But for some reason, almost nothing roamed during the day. Probably most of the creatures here were nocturnal…but there was something strange about the creatures they saw at night. It was hard to make out, but they seemed to move…in an odd, slow way… Like maybe they were creatures that were actually active during the day but were being forced to stay awake at night instead. “…!” Maybe that was what gave them both the feeling that something was off. And thanks to that, Bash was able to move at the slightest hint of something being wrong… “Pleurgh!” Bash had just suddenly plunged headfirst into the snow, filling Zell’s open mouth with a load of frost. Bash burrowed into the snow, shoving it aside, then made a hole with his finger in the crust, just large enough to look out from with one eye. “…Gack, I just inhaled a lungful of snow! Ack, I’m frozen! Wh-wh-what did you do that for?” “Quiet. Look.” Zell clamped their fairy lips shut at Bash’s imperious command, then zipped into the hole Bash had made, peeking out. “Whoa…” Zell recoiled instantly. It was up in the sky. Floating through the clouds… Just as casual as taking a stroll. If Zell had been flying around earlier, then the fairy no doubt would have noticed it much sooner. It stood out against the environment even from afar, its red scales glittering in the sunlight. The flapping of its gigantic wings was almost audible, even from here. It wasn’t hiding itself at all. In fact, it almost seemed to be flaunting itself… The habit of a creature with no known predators. “A dragon…” The most powerful creature on the continent of Vastonia. “…” Even noisy Zell fell silent upon beholding the dragon. An instinctive fear had taken hold. It was the same for Bash. Buried in the snow, he looked up at the sky, clenched his molars together, and gripped the hilt of his sword. “…It’s gone.” When the dragon was no longer in sight, Bash crawled out of the snow. He scanned the entire sky several times and then took a deep breath. “So this area is a dragon’s habitat, huh, Boss…?” “Seems so.” “Wow… Just look at me, I can’t stop trembling…” Zell had been shivering even more ever since seeing the flying beast. It wasn’t the cold. It was fear. “Yeah…” As for Bash, although he was wary of the dragon, he was still his usual composed self. “You’re a dragon slayer after all! I guess you’re not scared of dragons in the slightest, eh, Boss?” “I wouldn’t say that. Fear is still a factor.” “You say that, but you’ve beaten a dragon before! Excessive modesty is poison to the body! Come on, tell me! Say you’re not scared of dragons! In fact, say that if a dragon saw you, it’d tremble with fear and pee its pants! I want you to reassure me, Boss!” “I’ll say the words if it would make you feel better, but to a dragon, I’m no more than a caterpillar. It wouldn’t tremble at the sight of me.” Bash had no intention of lying or joking about this. Even the bravest warriors have fears. Bash wasn’t immature. He wouldn’t deny it. If it came to a fight, he’d summon all his strength and charge forward, trembling and unleashing his war cry. But that didn’t mean that he’d ever underestimate a dragon. It was true that Bash had defeated a dragon once before, but that didn’t change the fact that this creature stood at the pinnacle of all life on this continent. A single victory over a dragon meant nothing against this immutable truth. It was still a fact that a dragon could reduce hundreds of orcs to ashes in an instant. Of course, Bash would fight if necessary, and win. Prepared or not… A fearsome beast was still just as fearsome. “If you fought that dragon right now, do you think you could win?” “No. There’s no way to deal with a beast like that in this barren, snowy plain. Unless we had some means to drag it down to earth.” “Well, I don’t have anything like that! So that being the case, I guess we’d better make sure it doesn’t spot us.” It was too risky to walk across the snowy plains unprotected. Dragons have good eyesight. Luckily, they hadn’t been spotted yet over the last few days. If they had been, they would have been reduced to ashes by now. “So this is why there are no living creatures during the day.” “During daylight, it’s the dragon’s domain, huh, Boss…?” “Then we wait until night.” “That’s right. If we act carelessly, we’ll get spotted and roasted for sure!” Zell nodded, still wrapped around Bash. Neither Bash nor Zell was particularly fond of night sneaking. Still, there was no choice. Right now, daylight was more dangerous. At night, they could move in relative safety. “Anyway, right now we just want to locate the town as fast as we can… Though since we’re not having any luck even after this much searching, I’d settle for finding some sort of beast’s den. The magical beasts around here seem to make their nests in places where they can easily hide from dragons, so it’d be good to use one of their nests as a scouting base, right, Boss?” “So we hunker down, then.” One eye on the direction in which the dragon had gone, Bash rearranged some snow to form a snow cave around them and then sat down cross-legged. Then he closed his eyes. If they were to work at night, then they had some free time on their hands. Bash could work for days without rest, but when the opportunity for a break presented itself, he was wise enough to take a load off. “Hmm…?” However, a familiar sound reached Bash’s ears. The sound of many people fighting. Battle cries and shouts. Then, a few seconds later… A sound he’d only heard once before in his life. A loud roar that rattled the bones. The roar of a dragon. A dragon whose breath could tear the ground asunder. It was the sound of a battle. By the time Bash arrived on the scene, the battle was already over. The ground was littered with corpses. There were about ten of them sprawled on the ground. Half of them were charred. The others had severed limbs. The dragon appeared in the distant sky, and it was clear that it had something in its mouth. Someone. And they were alive. Even with the dragon’s fangs piercing their body, the person was still flailing their arms around. But for all the signs of life they were exhibiting, the individual’s fate had already been decided. They would either be ripped to shreds in the air or taken back to the nest and devoured… Bash waited until the dragon was out of sight before carefully approaching the bodies. They had more or less become charcoal. The ground, now devoid of snow, had been scorched black, with little fires still flickering here and there. The corpses blended in against the charred ground. “They actually tried to fight a dragon with less than a dozen people…?” Bash muttered to himself as he counted the bodies. Most were dismembered, but judging by the number of total limbs, there were less than ten of them altogether. Even if they’d started fighting somewhere other than here, and these were all who had made it this far… There couldn’t have been more than twenty to start with. No matter how hard they tried, they weren’t strong enough to defeat a dragon. Would any intelligent demon be so foolish as to fight a dragon with this few warriors? It was possible that they’d been ambushed while traveling, but it was hard to imagine that someone native to this area would so carelessly venture out into dragon territory. If it was such a safe place, Bash and Zell would have encountered a demon or two long ago. “Boss, the footprints appear to lead from the mountains.” Bash lifted his head and looked. Yes, he could certainly see traces in the snow showing where the demons had come from. Footprints leading up the mountain. Then it made sense to assume they’d fought the dragon with a larger number of troops to start off, lost that battle, retreated, and were then pursued. “Ah! Boss! One of them’s still breathing!” Zell gasped in the act of zooming around the scene. Bash headed over to find a person whose entire body was charred but who was still gasping for air. Their eyes were open, eyeballs unburnt… But it was hard to tell if they were conscious or not. It was impossible to discern the race, let alone whether it was male or female. But they must have had a very high resistance to magic since they hadn’t been instantly killed by the dragon’s breath. So it had to be either a demon or an elf. But an elf seemed unlikely. Must have been a high-ranking demon. In any case, Bash looked up at Zell and issued a command. “Help them.” “Got it!” Zell scattered fairy dust all over. Fairy dust, whiter than snow, with an occasional glint of gold, went for a hefty price at trade. But now Zell was scattering it with abandon. But the injury was… Considerable. Even with fairy dust, a full recovery was impossible. Merely the charred outer layer of skin cracked into pieces and fell off. Yes, the entire outer skin layer had been turned to carbon. But underneath, new skin was being generated. “Can you save them?” “I don’t know, Boss. Maybe. Demons have a lot of life force, so I’d wager they’ll squeak through.” If they did survive, no doubt the burns would eventually heal and the skin would return to normal within a week. But it was also possible that they’d die before the skin could completely regenerate. Fairy dust couldn’t reanimate corpses. Bad luck. That’s all. That kind of thing happens quite often. “The others are dead for sure, Boss.” “I see. Then let’s hide before the dragon returns.” There was presently no sign of the dragon returning. Once the dragon had bested its enemy and fed, there would be little reason for it to stick around. But there was also little point in trying to figure out the motivations of such an unusual creature anyway. The best thing to do would be to get away quickly. “Ah, Boss! There are rocks over there! It might be easier to find a place to hide there!” “Got it!” And so Bash and Zell carried away the half-dead survivor and made for the rocks. Bash and Zell found a rocky area with a cave where they could hide from the dragon. They killed the magical beast that dwelled there and waited for nightfall. The entrance, with thick icicles hanging down, was easily visible from the ground but would be difficult to see from the air. After all, this cave was the nest of a magical beast. Like orcs and fairies, magical beasts are equally afraid of dragons. And it would be even truer for the magical beasts that inhabited this area. In that case, the dragon would not be finding this cave. After waiting for the sun to go down, Bash and Zell crawled out of the hole and began scouting the surroundings. The person he’d saved earlier was strapped to Bash’s back. Outside, things were unexpectedly bright. A huge full moon asserted its presence in the sky, its light reflecting off the snow and casting a faint glow underfoot. Orcs aren’t a race with particularly good low-light vision, but Bash’s eyes had adapted to the darkness of the cave. Additionally, there was a glowing light source (in the form of a fairy) nearby, so he could get a fairly good view of his surroundings. With it being this bright…you might think there would be no point in waiting until night. But dragons weren’t nocturnal. So things were fine. “It’s pretty well-populated out here.” “That’s true. This is what happens in areas with dangerous predators. I mean, the forests where the elves live are quiet at night, aren’t they? They go out hunting at night.” “That’s right.” In the night landscape covered in snow and ice, they could see many creatures on the rocks that hadn’t been about during the day. There were feathered lizards, quadrupeds covered in bristles, and round, furry creatures that could have been either mammals or insects walking around freely. When the nameless creatures saw Bash, they scurried away as fast as they could. “Well then, Boss, I’ll go take a look.” “Yeah.” Zell took off as Bash watched. Scouting at night is a risky operation for a glowing fairy, but neither Bash nor Zell paid it much heed. It was something they’d done countless times since the war. And anyway, conducting reconnaissance in a place like this during the day would be much riskier. Also… They were sure they’d have better luck searching at night. It was a hunch, yes. But a hunch born of what they’d already figured out from experience. The dragon flew by day. Bash hid, Zell hid, the magical beasts hid. Now the magical beasts that roamed in the night had fled to hide upon spotting Zell and Bash. This indicated the existence of people who hunted magical beasts at night. Bipedal creatures similar to orcs… Which had to mean… “Boss! Over there!” “Right.” On Zell’s signal, Bash set off. It was visible beyond the rocks and over a hill. A building, constructed on the edge of the cliff, resembling a giant castle. There were fires burning and signs of people milling about. A town. There was indeed a town there, magically crafted so that it couldn’t be spotted during the day. “Is that the Gije Fortress…?” The “Unimpregnable” Gije Fortress. The fortress that was never once attacked during the war… Right there in front of them now.
Chapter 42
14 min read