Sunlight poured down on me through the open ceiling of the dim cave, like a stairway to heaven. The scene was so peaceful that I yawned and closed my eyes, my tail swaying happily. Lord Reineke snuggled up to me as I petted his back. Fine silver strands of his fur soared into the air, shimmering in the sun’s rays. Droplets of melting snow trickled down the cavern walls like a quiet song that heralded the coming of spring.
My name was Lune Renard. When I was eight years old, my parents abandoned me during a monster attack and I became an orphan. I hid in the temple of the great fox spirit Lord Reineke until Liam Renard found me, and his marquisate family took me in as their adoptive daughter. It had already been a year since then, and I was now nine.
In fact, in my past life, I had been executed by a mob, but Lord Reineke decided to grant me a second chance to redo my life. So great was his pity for me that he gave me divinely blessed fox ears and a tail, and reincarnated me as his spirit contractor.
“Are you sleepy, Lune?” asked a boy who was using a scrubbing brush to rub Mr. Dragon’s back. This was my older adoptive brother Liam, gazing at me with gentle eyes the color of twilight.
Liam was the heir of House Renard who would one day take over the territory. He was fourteen, five years my senior. He had made a spirit contract with the Lord of Darkness, Nott, whose very name was a taboo—though this was a secret just between me and him. It was already rare for children to make spirit contracts, let alone with one of the Lords. My brother was truly exceptional. I loved how kind, clever, and strong he was.
“Nope. Lord Reineke yawned first and it spread to me,” I replied, a little embarrassed.
Liam smiled. “If you’re ever sleepy, just say so. I’ll carry you back.”
Lord Reineke scoffed irritably. “I will carry her. You can stay out of it, Liam,” he said out loud, wrapping his tail around me.
How much Lord Reineke could interact with the human world changed based on the amount of faith people had in him. When we’d first made our contract, he couldn’t speak to humans too often without straining himself. But now that the citizens of the Renard domain had greater faith in him, he could address people as he pleased, even just to wisecrack.
Still, it’s unusual for him to do this, I thought giddily, feeling like a protected cub.
But then the dragon wrapped his tail around both me and Lord Reineke.
Liam rubbed the back of his neck. “Sheesh. Everyone loves you, Lune,” he mumbled.
The dragon flapped his massive wings. Another boy who was atop the dragon’s back to scrub his scales let out a surprised yelp. This was Bal, although his real name was Baldr. He was the illegitimate son of the king, and the queen was after his life. To hide his identity, we dyed his blond hair orange, and House Renard claimed he was the son of a distant relative that they were looking after.
In my past life, Baldr had been the leader of the revolutionary army that toppled the royal family, and the one who had condemned me and my family to death.
“Hey! That startled me! If you’re gonna flap your wings, at least tell me first!” Bal complained, smacking the dragon’s back with the scrubbing brush.
“Bal! You cannot treat the dragon like that!” Liam warned, but Bal just laughed.
“I bet he didn’t even feel that.”
Mr. Dragon chuckled.
“Indeed. It’s like the bite of a flea,” he said, although only Lord Reineke and I could hear him.
Dr. Guillotin, Theo, and House Renard’s knights were also here today. We had come to give Mr. Dragon medical treatment, as well as check on the ice room that we had set up inside the cave to store his shed scales. If the scales were left to rot, they’d eventually turn into monsters. However, if we processed them properly, they’d turn into something with very similar properties to magical ore. We kept any excess that couldn’t be processed immediately here in the ice room, and Theo was checking to see if we could have even more of these rooms in the cave.
Liam and Bal were giving the dragon a massage, while I passed the time by chatting with Lord Reineke. Thanks to regular treatment, Mr. Dragon’s health was much better these days.
“My strength has returned to me. I would like to take to the sky,” the dragon said.
I passed his words onto Liam.
“He can’t leave through there, though,” Liam said, pointing at the ceiling.
The dragon’s cave had once been sealed. When we broke that seal, Liam made the opening in the ceiling inaccessible to anyone other than those who had been present for the occasion by using dark magic to conceal it. All a normal person would see from the outside was a grassy field.
“There’s still some residual light magic here, so I don’t think a monster like the dragon could get out anyway,” Liam added.
“And we might be in trouble if people see a dragon flying through the sky,” I said anxiously.
Dragons were legendary beings, and nobody even knew there was one living in our kingdom. Worse yet, dragons were feared as monsters.
“He might even get killed. I mean, every adventurer yearns for the title of Dragonslayer,” Bal said.
Mr. Dragon huffed. “You think a human could kill me?” he said with a mocking laugh. Yet in reality, he still wasn’t fully recovered.
“Maybe you should wait a bit longer...” I began, but before I could finish, the dragon abruptly stood up.
“There’s no such need!” he protested, turning toward the ceiling.
The startled Liam and Bal clung to his neck so they wouldn’t fall off his back. The ground began to shake, and I could hear a cracking sound.
“No! That entrance is dangerous!” Liam shouted. “There’s a magic circle drawn by the royals. If you pass through it, they will be notified!”
“As if I care!”
The dragon took a step forward.
I ran over and stood in front of him, spreading my arms out.
“Please wait!”
“Out of my way!”
Mr. Dragon let out a roar. Seconds later, Dr. Guillotin, Theo, and the knights appeared from within the side passage.
“Ohh! Darling dragon, you’re already so full of energy!” Dr. Guillotin exclaimed cheerfully. “Perhaps it’s time to start your rehabilitation!”
“Rehabilitation?” I asked.
“Oh yes! Flying right off the bat might be dangerous. We must begin by strengthening his chest muscles first!”
“What do you mean?”
“You see, flying is not just about the wings. The chest plays a vital role too,” the doctor explained.
Mr. Dragon and Lord Reineke listened with interest.
“My sentence has been shortened, and so I must leave this domain next month. That’s why I’d like to begin Mr. Dragon’s rehabilitation before then,” Dr. Guillotin said.
The dragon fluttered his wings in surprise, hitting the cave’s ceiling and causing bits of earth to scatter down.
“His...sentence? Wait, this man is leaving?!”
“Dr. Guillotin’s sentence was shortened after his research on constrictive roundworm disease was acknowledged,” I explained. “He’s leaving the Renard domain in a month and going to the capital to become a professor in the academy.”
The doctor pursed his lips at my words.
“I don’t want to go to the capital, though,” he grumbled. “They won’t let me have the freedom I need for my research, and if something happens again, those idiots will hold me back. And when I think about how I won’t get to see Lady Lune or my darling dragon again... Aah, it’s so depressing...”
“Regardless, you can’t disobey an order from the royal court,” Liam reasoned calmly.
“I know. Besides, if I insist on staying in Renard, they might get suspicious of this place. If they discover my darling dragon...” Dr. Guillotin’s whole body shuddered, and he lovingly petted the dragon. “I don’t want my precious dragon to become someone’s test subject.”
“I’m not your dragon. And I won’t let anyone experiment on me,” the dragon said. Despite his words, instead of threatening the doctor as usual, he was allowing the man to pet him.
Mr. Dragon must be lonely.
I decided not to say that out loud and risk offending him.
Dr. Guillotin pensively looked over the dragon’s body and the slightly damaged ceiling.
“I would like my darling dragon to be fully recovered by the time I leave, but it might be impossible to carry out rehabilitation inside the cave.”
I looked up at the ceiling too.
“So how about we make a new entrance? Theo can explain the rest!” Dr. Guillotin exclaimed.
Theo’s face reddened.
“W-Well, I’ve been thinking of making a new entrance over there for a while now,” he said, pointing at the side passage his group had emerged from earlier.
“That leads to a dead end, right?” I asked.
Liam nodded. “But according to Master Theo, there might be a cave behind one of the walls.”
“R-Right,” Theo said sheepishly. “There’s a small crevice that lets in a breeze. I knocked on the wall out of curiosity, and the sound was more hollow than the other walls. So I thought it might lead to the outside.” As usual, he spoke while looking down and hunching over.
I ran up to him and took his hand.
“Incredible as always, Master Theo!”
He quickly looked away from me.
“Not at all...”
“All right! Let’s get excavating!” shouted Bal.
“Um... To do that, I’d like to test something out,” Theo said timidly. “I asked Dr. Guillotin to make a powerful explosive through the use of the pseudo magical ore.”
“In my estimation, the explosion should be bigger than usual, so it would be best to test it in a secluded place,” the doctor added.
Originally, the two men had struggled to break the boulder that blocked the entrance to the dragon’s cave. Hence, they had researched a more efficient way to pulverize rock.
I had already known that a powerful explosive would be discovered, as it had been used in my previous life to open up the road leading to the Renard domain. However, the explosive was a liquid, and while powerful, it was too reactive with fire, which had led to many accidents.
I’d racked my brain to come up with a way to make it safer until Lord Reineke taught me about it. He instructed us to make pseudo magical ore by soaking Mr. Dragon’s molt in the liquid explosive, adding raw lacquer tree sap to prevent it from igniting or exploding through ordinary fire, and coating it with black powder. Through this method, it would only ignite through the use of fire magic, and when it did explode, it would have tremendous power.
Theo must have finished creating this explosive magical ore and now wanted to experiment.
“Go ahead and try. The ground here is so hard that not even a dragon like me can dig through it,” Mr. Dragon said snidely. It seemed he was convinced we’d fail.
But Lord Reineke put on a smug look in response.