Dodging Volkan’s sword swing, Orphen punched the dwarf into the ground before turning to the other one—Dortin—and narrowing his eyes. “So?”
“Er, there’s not really much I can say if you’re asking me about my brother’s antics...” Dortin said plainly.
Orphen decided to ignore that. Stepping on Volkan’s head to pin him in place as he flailed about, his face buried in the sand, Orphen asked, “Are you guys bored or something?”
“It’s true that we don’t really have anything to do,” Dortin said bluntly.
Orphen was at a loss for a moment before he remembered something and asked, “I don’t suppose you two can pass through the spirit sorcery barrier, can you?”
“Brother charged at it a few times in his boredom, but he flew back in a really amazing way every time. It was like...a rainbow, I guess.”
“No good, eh? Wait, why was it like a rainbow? Not that I really care...”
He hadn’t really been expecting anything when he’d asked, but he felt like he was understanding less and less as time went on. He sighed. “Maybe there’s no way to get through it. And even if there is, there’s no way for us to understand how dragons think...” he grumbled.
Orphen turned around, noticing footsteps approaching. They dragged slightly as the lord of the Imminent Domain approached, faking an injury with a cane. Almagest showed himself with an affected smile.
The lord thanked the dwarves and then turned to Orphen. “How are you going to negotiate with them if you can’t understand the way they think?”
“Do you know something about them? Or about that barrier?”
Orphen glared at him, but the lord shook his head, unperturbed. “Nope.”
“You were planning on attacking the sanctuary with the Deep Dragons, right? Are you sure you didn’t know about this barrier from the beginning?”
“I’m sure it would be thrilling if I said, ‘actually, you’re right’ here, wouldn’t it?” He laughed as if that were a truly funny joke. “But old friend, that wouldn’t be fighting fair. It’s true that I have somewhat expanded perception compared to you, but I’m not omniscient. Just like how your considerable strength doesn’t make you omnipotent. I’d predicted the sanctuary’s defenses, but I didn’t think a Deep Dragon would be unable to penetrate them. It was rather short-sighted of me.”
“So you’re not smirking at us because you knew this would happen?” Orphen pressed the point, ignoring the lord’s sarcasm.
He got down from Volkan’s head and stepped closer to the lord, though he didn’t touch him. He stopped close enough that his fingertips would be able to reach him and said, “You seem rather calm for how much you keep saying we don’t have any time.”
“Well, I’m not busy running around doing pointless things like you are. I have plenty of time to keep calm.”
Suddenly... “Now! He’s once again made the foolish mistake of looking away from the immortal fighter, the Great Vulcano Volkan! Hence, I shall use this opportunity to launch my fatal surprise strike, uhh—doryaoooah!”
After a shout, Volkan leaped up from the ground and flew at Orphen in a rainbowlike manner, so he hit him with his fist to slap him back down to the ground.
Volkan had charged speedily at him only to be handily repelled, but he still had the strength to mutter to himself as he crumpled to the ground. “Why... Why did my surprise attack fail...? I should have been able to kill him after reuniting under the same sky...”
“How many seconds do you think passed between when you said ‘now’ and when you attacked?”
“Hmm... Now that you mention it, maybe I should have just gone with ‘die, you bastaaard’ after all...”
Volkan popped back up, surprisingly unhurt, though Dortin ran over to help him anyway.
Looking down at the two of them, Orphen sighed and asked, “The reason you two are here is just because you can’t get back through the wasteland on your own, right?”
“Yes.” Dortin nodded.
Orphen looked between the two brothers.
Now that he thought about it, he didn’t know that much about how dwarves lived. He had never tried to find out. Common knowledge said that they lived on the southern tip of the continent, confined to their own territory where they lived quietly in an area of extreme cold. Orphen had come to know a little more than that from what he had experienced, which couldn’t really be called common experiences. He knew they were sturdy, and that they would find a way to survive most of what was thrown at them. They were smart...either equally or more intelligent than humans.
If the ghosts the white sorcerer Damian Rue had summoned were to be believed, there were male and female dwarves, but he wasn’t sure if that meant the same thing it did for humans. There was a story about a scholar traveling to Masmaturia to learn about dwarven biology. Dwarves had a similar society and family makeup to humans. The scholar decided that it wasn’t that difficult to understand dwarves—at least compared to incomprehensible creatures like dragons.
But the scholar realized that dwarves had a strange custom. Once per month, they would gather in a square at night and all clobber each other until morning. What kind of festival is this? the scholar asked them. The dwarves said it was propagation.
One hundred dwarves gathered in the square. They spent all night indiscriminately fighting one another, and when morning came, all of a sudden there were one hundred one of them. Not even the ones who had been fighting could tell who had multiplied.
The scholar soon grew ill after witnessing such an occurrence, and was still recuperating today. People said his study was sure to be published after he fully recovered.
That scholar didn’t actually exist. A lot of people believed it was nothing more than an urban legend. Orphen had never taken it very seriously himself. But he found himself remembering that story now, and he found himself somehow more inclined to believe it than he once was.
After bowing his head for some time, Orphen finally looked up and opened his mouth. What he was about to say weighed heavily on his heart. “Your debt...”
Volkan swiftly cocked his head. “Hmm? What debt?”
“...It feels like you really don’t remember it. Well, that’s fine. You don’t need to repay it anymore,” he spat it out quickly. “I’m gonna bring it up to Pluto tonight. We should send the wounded and those who can’t stay here for much longer back to the capital... If you go with them, you should be able to make it back there.”
He looked down at the two of them and they were just staring up at him blankly, not looking particularly surprised.
He waited a few moments and there was no reaction.
Orphen finally pressed them. “What, you don’t have anything to say?”
“Well, we’ve fallen for that one once in the past...” Dortin said coolly.
Orphen shook his head. “No, I’m not asking you to do something in exchange or anything this time.”
“Really?” He was very incredulous.
Orphen nodded, his eyes narrowed. “Yeah.”
“You’re not gonna say, like, ‘I won’t ask you to do anything in return, so repay your debt instead’?”
“No, there’d be no point in that...”
Finally, Orphen felt like he saw Dortin’s eyes move behind his glasses, though Volkan still didn’t seem to know what he was talking about.
Opening his mouth wide with shock, Dortin shouted, “Wh-Wh-Wh-Why?! I thought that was the one thing that would never happen even if the world was destroyed!”