“Whoooa!”
Experiencing teleportation for the first time was scary enough, but what was even scarier was how high up I’d reappeared.
“Why does this planet have to be rouuund?!”
Because the planet wasn’t flat, you had to be really careful about calculating coordinates when teleporting people behind the horizon. That was what Movi had said, and apparently, that was why she always ended up having people drop from the sky instead of appearing on the ground. She’d warned me ahead of time, so I’d been prepared for it, but it was still scary.
“Yeowch!”
Landing hurt a little, but I managed to distribute the impact across my body to avoid breaking any bones. This could have been my coolest landing yet...if I hadn’t yelped in pain at the end.
“Friede?!” dad shouted, sounding surprised. He was transformed, so I couldn’t really read his expression, but his voice was still the same.
“I came to help you, dad!”
Heck yeah, I managed to say it! My dad was so strong that he could handle pretty much any opponent by himself. After all, he was the legendary Black Werewolf King. But just this once, he was up against a foe even he couldn’t defeat alone. And that was why Movi had teleported me over so I could help—though I hadn’t realized teleportation was so scary.
“Graaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!”
“Wha—”
The dragon’s roar was louder than I expected, and it fired off its breath without giving me a chance to do anything.
“Funya!” I made another weird noise because I was still a little nervous. If I didn’t properly absorb its attack, I’d be reduced to ash. There was a ton of mana in the fire breath, but that just meant I got to restore a bunch of my own mana.
“Too bad! I can heal from mana attacks, just like you!” The dragon probably couldn’t understand me, which honestly was probably for the best, since that meant it would keep on wasting its energy trying to hit me with its breath.
“Friede, what are you doing here?!”
“Oh! I’m, uh... I’m here to tell you that the city’s...preparations are...ready!”
Now that it was up against three people at once, the dragon was just lashing out at random. It moved pretty fast for how big it was. It had to rear back for each swing though, so its attacks were still easy to dodge as long as you were paying attention. Wow, how many days did you spend fighting this thing, dad? You really are something else.
“Dad...you should retreat! Firnir can carry you...all the way back...to Doneiks!”
I dodged out of the way of another attack. Is it just me, or is this dragon targeting me more than the other two?
“That way...we’ll be able to lure...the dragon...to the city too!”
The dragon’s attacks were so persistent that it was hard to talk. Though dad was able to dodge them with ease while holding a conversation. He wasn’t even out of breath. Noticing how I was struggling, Firnir finished the explanation for me.
“Oh yeah, Rolmund’s engineers put out a giant stockpile of magesteel outside Doneiks, so as soon as you bring the dragon over, we can carry out your plan.”
Unlike me, Firnir wasn’t being attacked very often. I guess Movi was right. The dragon prioritizes enemies with high mana capacities.
“The dragon...feeds on mana!” I shouted.
“Yeah, I know,” dad replied. “It doesn’t actually need to eat, so it just hunts things to satisfy its predatory instincts. But now that it’s left the mana-dense forest, it’s started slowly starving. Soon it won’t have enough mana to keep its massive body functioning.”
My dad was a scholar of magic, so he’d already figured this all out. What was really impressive though was that he was giving me a lecture on what he’d learned while in the middle of battle.
“There’s a limit to how much mana it can store, but by increasing its body mass, it increases that upper limit as well. Without mana to support it, the dragon’s bones and organs will be crushed under its own weight. The dragon is slowly but surely killing itself right now.”
Dad dodged ten claw swipes while he gave that whole speech. What in the—my dad’s even more of a monster than the dragon!
As he continued dodging, he turned to me with a smile and said, “I’m glad you guys are here, since I’m nearing my limit. I don’t have the strength to defeat this thing, and I’m getting tired of defending forever. Mind helping me with my retreat?”
“You got it!” It felt good knowing other people were relying on me. I probably got that from dad.
He canceled his transformation, then hopped onto Firnir’s back. She started galloping towards Doneiks, and I followed behind her. I thought the dragon would try to run after us, but instead I heard a loud whoosh behind me. What was that?!
“Friede, it’s gonna take flight!” I turned around and saw that the dragon had spread its wings. If it flew away now, our plan was done for.
“Dad, what should I do?!”
“It can’t actually use its wings to take off! It needs to use mana to propel itself into the air. I’ll try and get on top of it before it leaves!”
Dad tried to transform again, but he wasn’t able.
“Crap, my body won’t...”
“You’ve already been fighting for three days. A normal person would have been dead by now. I’ll go instead!” I turned around and started running back towards the dragon.
“Don’t do anything reckless, Friede!”
“I won’t, don’t worry!”
I was slowly but surely starting to understand what it was I could and couldn’t do, what I should and shouldn’t do, and what I would and wouldn’t do.
“I’ll serve as our guidepost! Tell everyone that things are still going according to plan!” I shouted.
“Got it! As soon as the communicators start working again, I will!” dad said.
Oh right, you can’t use communicators too close to the dragon, I forgot. Once I got the dragon away from dad, he’d be able to lead everyone from the backlines like a vice-commander was supposed to—which was why I’d volunteered to take over dragon-luring duty from him. Unlike my dad, I actually was a low-ranking officer without much strategic value.
As I ran, I made a hand sign with my thumbs and cast a presence-reducing spell on myself. With this, the dragon would have a harder time perceiving me. The hand signs weren’t actually a requirement to cast this spell, but they served as a substitute for an incantation so I wouldn’t get out of breath by casting. Iori had taught them to me, and apparently all of the Heavenwatchers used them when they needed to stay discrete.
The dragon turned my way, but for a few seconds, it had trouble figuring out exactly where I was. While it absorbed mana, it seemed it was still affected by spells.
“Graaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!”
It swiped at the ground to my right with its claws, and I quickly jumped onto its foreleg. I climbed up as fast as I could, then ran over to a small dip in its back where its wing connected to its main body. The dip was small enough that a transformed werewolf wouldn’t be able to fit inside it, but I could. Using suction magic, I firmly attached myself to its scales to keep myself from getting shaken off.
The dragon looked around in confusion, then remembered what it was originally planning on doing, and leaped into the air with a mighty beat of its wings. I felt weightless for a moment as the ground rapidly shrunk beneath me.
“Whoa...” I muttered, careful not to raise my voice.
Already I was way higher up than the height Movi had teleported me to. The clouds were close enough to touch. Unless they mastered levitation magic, no werewolf would be able to jump this high. The plains stretched out endlessly below me, and on the horizon, I could see the fortress city of Bernheinen. You better not go that way...
Fortunately, the dragon was only interested in places with lots of mana. It must have gotten quite hungry after three days of fighting. Honestly, I felt a little bad about it. The dragon hadn’t asked to become like this. Sadly, it wasn’t intelligent enough that we could talk to it, so our only option was to kill it.
In minutes, Doneiks came into view, and I could see the hunting grounds we’d prepared outside the city.
There was a crescent-shaped camp with humans and demons running to and fro, readying the cannons. Right in front of the camp was a huge pile of magesteel, put out to lure the dragon. We needed to get the dragon exactly in that spot or the plan would fall apart completely. However, the dragon continued to circle the skies above the encampment and showed no signs of descending.