With Zack leading the charge, the adventurers slid down the hill and to the battlefield—the eastern shore of the lake. When they were fifty meters out from the dragon, the advance troops, who were in a semicircle around the dragon, cheered. There was a platoon’s worth of knights working ceaselessly on defense, darting in to keep the dragon in place before darting back out to safety. It was exhausting work.
The knights’ forces had been split in order to handle potential stampedes across the entirety of the northern region. The northern knight corps’ best had also been dispatched to handle the habitats of smaller dragon-type monsters and other large magical beasts. All of this had meant that the advance and suppression squads here on-site lacked manpower. A single platoon was simply not enough to take on a creature straight out of a fairy tale. However, their orders to not engage had paid off, and none had been severely wounded.
“The suppression team has arrived!” shouted a knight.
“About time! All troops, we give one last push and then we gather the injured and pull back! Regroup at the defensive line!”
“Mages! Ready a barrage of flame magic... Fire!”
The squad of some twenty-plus mages launched their flame magic simultaneously, and though it did not have an elemental effect, the sheer force of their attack pushed the dragon back, its feet catching in muddy pitfall traps and sending it off-balance and tumbling to its side. This was all the advance squad needed to begin its retreat. The suppression team, meanwhile, took up position.
Alec stood by the lakeshore, shocked. The chill of the lake itself should have frozen the ground white, but the ice had melted—it was dry, even warm under his feet. It was the remnants of the work the advance troops had done to ready the battlefield with their magic.
“Let us knights keep the ground maintained,” said the commander of the advance troop. “You just focus on fighting!”
The chill of the lake was constant, and it would not relent—in time the ground would once again freeze over. The knights were therefore doing the backbreaking work of keeping magic running through it to give the adventurers stable footing.
“Many thanks,” said Zack.
“Don’t mention it, it’s our job. And it feels good to not have your feet frozen.”
Alec felt like he’d seen the knights’ spell somewhere before, and was told that they’d used Shiori’s housekeeping magic as a base upon which to build the spell they used. The developer of the spell had attended Shiori’s lecture, and the idea had hit him when Shiori had told him about softening the ground to make for more comfortable bedding while out on expedition.
“I’d love to hear more about it at a later date,” said Shiori.
The knight smiled in response, then took off, taking those under his command with him.
While all this was going on, the dragon was stuck in the muddy ground the knights had prepared earlier, and was struggling to pull its gigantic body free. For a moment, a thought flitted through Alec’s mind—couldn’t they just keep the dragon sinking and seal it beneath the surface again? Very quickly, however, he realized this was little more than a stopgap solution—the dragon had awoken, and it stood here defiant before them. Sealing it away would only mean that it would one day wake again to cause more trouble. They had to make sure it never got that chance.
“But damn...” he muttered. “It’s huge.”
He’d known the magical beast was big, but up close he was almost overwhelmed by its size. In truth, he felt it was too big a monster for humans to be fighting. This was not like the fire dragons he’d fought before, which were small and lithe in order to allow for flight. The ice dragon they faced now was like the size of a small mountain. When he thought of how it had been sleeping for so many years, completely unbeknownst to the people of Storydia, he shuddered.
Up close, and past the muddy pitfalls, Alec spotted other holes and fractures in the ground, above which were chunks of dirt and ice—the remnants of the earth and ice magic used to slow the dragon down. Based on the size of the fractures and the chunks of rock and ice, they’d bound the dragon with considerable magic. And yet, with brute strength alone the beast had powered through.
What bothered Alec now, however, was that the dragon appeared totally fine. Steam wafted from its feet, and it was obviously soaking in searing-hot mud, but it did not appear to feel a thing.
“Wait a moment,” said Nadia. “The heat’s not having any impact on it.”
“So perhaps air-conditioning magic won’t have an effect?” pondered Shiori.
“Zack, should we try?” asked Nadia.
Zack stared at the dragon for a moment, but answered quickly.
“Don’t bother. No point wasting your magic.”
Exposing it to heat over a long period would most likely prove ineffective. It also meant the adventurers had lost a potentially powerful opening gambit.
“So it’s impervious to both heat and cold? Oh my,” muttered Nadia.
“We’re going to have to hit it hard with physical attacks, then,” said Alec.
“Yep. We’ll just have to make that work.”
Alec would have preferred to avoid fighting something so big up close if it had been at all possible. With their huge bodies, dragons were dangerous even when they weren’t trying to be. They could move meters in a single step, and just a light movement of the front legs could send a fragile human body flying through the air. A brush with the claws, too, could rip skin from the bone.
That meant their first order of business was to lock the dragon’s movements down. Earth-type dragons were smaller only than ice-type dragons, and given what they were up against, Zack could bury his greatsword to the hilt in the thing and he still wouldn’t reach its heart. The legs and tail that protected its body were also huge, and they would not be severed in a single strike.
All the same, the adventurers had little other choice.
Nadia and her mages quickly shifted their strategy to allow for a focus on a close-quarters battle. Shiori joined up with the medics now that it was clear her air-conditioning magic was no longer necessary—she took out the potions in her pouch and replaced them with supplies from the supply squad and medicine from Nils. Rurii and Bla, ever the considerate slimes, put themselves on defense and the transporting of the injured.
The dragon slowly settled itself back on its feet. It realized it was up against different foes now, and settled its gaze on the adventurers, who were ready and in position just as the knights gave the word that they had successfully pulled back.
“Let’s do this!” barked Zack. “Nadia, Daniel, freeze the dragon!”
His voice echoed clearly.
If my older brother were alive, Zack would be the commanding general of the entire Storydian Knight Corps right now.
It was an instant in which Alec saw a vision of an alternate future—the path that Zack might have walked. He pushed it into a corner of his mind and readied himself to move in.
“Total Freeze! Helt Frossen!”