And now it’s morning!
Rise and shine, me!!!
Good morning one, good morning all!
It’s me, Crow! The guy who was about to go fight a huge-ass dragon to the death!
Man, I thought a coward like me would’ve had nightmares about my ass getting killed and so not been able to sleep, but I snoozed like a baby!
I felt weirdly satisfied and my skin was positively glowing! I felt great! I wonder why that was...
What a mystery! I must’ve had a really nice dream!
“Oh my, Crow, you’re awake! ♡” Tiana greeted me.
Huh. She looks more attractive for some reason.
She was wearing an apron and looked like she’d been cooking, so she had this young wife aura to her.
“How are you feeling, Crow, dear? Tee hee, you were sleeping, and you still were so... Hee hee hee... ♡”
I was so...? So what? Also, did she just call me “dear”?
“Tiana, are you all right?” I asked.
“Hm? Oh, I’m perfectly fine! Never mind that. Here, I’m just about done with breakfast! Eat up!” she commanded.
Hell yeah, breakfast! I’m hungry as hell for some reason! Wow, look at the length of this sausage! This must be, like, ten centimeters long! It looks great, Tiana!
“Hmm... On second glance, it looks so small now that I know one three times as long... ♡”
Wow, she had a sausage that long?!
“Oh, I would love to try that,” I said.
“You want to try your own...?! I mean, if you bend really hard... Wait, no! What kind of degenerate fetish is that?!” she exclaimed, beet red for some reason. “Oh crap, thinking about it gave me a nosebleed!”
Holding her nose, Tiana rushed off to the bathroom.
What the hell?
✦ ✦ ✦
“Unfortunately, this is as far as I can come,” Tiana said.
After breakfast, we had arrived at the bottom of the Luna Mountains so that I could begin my ascent to fight the dragon. Tiana couldn’t accompany me any further since, as the mission specified, I had to fight the creature alone.
“The document is cursed, see, so disobeying the terms would result in immediate failure. If there were anything else I could do to help you, I would...”
Aww, Tiana! What a sweetheart!
In her place, I’d definitely have refused to come anywhere near a mountain range where a dragon was lurking. I mean, it’s scary as shit! And it’s not like she’d die for abandoning me to my fate.
Instead, she’d been nothing but generous to me. I was so grateful!
“I thank you, Tiana. You have truly been a great help,” I said, putting on my perfect hero face and taking her hand. I had to be sure to thank her properly now, since who knew if I’d ever get the chance again? “I will never forget what you have done for me. It is thanks to your help that I can give my all in this fight.”
“Oh, Crow... ♡”
Seriously, though, thanks! You’ve been a huge help!
It was probably thanks to her that I felt so good.
“SOUL... SMELL EXQUISITE SOUL!” the sword at my hip exclaimed.
Muramasa had never had such an extreme reaction, which probably meant the dragon was, like, terrifying. And I really didn’t wanna go find out.
“EAT MASSIVE SOUL... EVOLVE!”
I’m sorry, what? Did it just say “evolve”?!
It was a sword! What did it mean, it could evolve?! Inanimate objects couldn’t do that! Quit dreaming, dammit!
“INANIMATE OBJECT DISCRIMINATION!”
“It’s the truth, all right?!”
Well, I mean, yeah, it was an aethereal arm, and they did have weird properties I couldn’t really wrap my head around, but evolve? Really?
Now I was curious. But also, I had a dragon to fight, so I’d worry about that after.
Welp, gotta do what I gotta do, I guess. I don’t wanna cause Iris trouble by blowing this mission. And, you know, I don’t wanna die.
This time, I was gonna give it all I had.
With an even sharper gaze than before, I turned to Tiana to say my goodbyes.
“I’ll be going, then,” I said.
“Right. Please, come back for us, Crow, dear! ♡”
Huh? Who’s “us”? Oh! Must mean Commander Fiana’s worried too! So I gotta come back for both their sakes! Yeah!
Why was she waving at me with one hand and rubbing her belly with the other, though?
Indigestion from all that sausage?
✦ ✦ ✦
“SOOOOUL!”
“Stoooooooop! What the heeeeeeell?!”
I’d started climbing the mountain thinking, Man, I’m gonna take my time, but Muramasa wasn’t having it. A few minutes into the climb, my body had begun a mad dash up the mountain, running as fast as it could like some sort of military drill from hell.
Wheezing and panting, I cried out, “I’m gonna die! This stupid jerk of a sword is gonna kill meee!” Then, to the sword, “Dude, my heart’s gonna explode! You do know that once we find the dragon, shit’s gonna get serious, right?! Right?!”
“VESSEL STAMINA GOOD! TRUST!”
“No, no, no! No ‘trust’! Worry, damn you!”
I mean, to be fair, I did seem to find the strength to whine while dashing up a mountain at top speed, so there was that, but still!
“Dammit! It’s your fault these past few weeks have been nothing but going all out! Obviously, I’ve built muscle, but jeez!”
Still, wouldn’t it have been better to conserve my energy for the upcoming battle? We didn’t really know much about the target, and Tiana had said that some dragons could even cast spells! Just mindlessly slashing away at it could get us caught off guard. All that stamina he was making me waste running around could’ve been put to better use figuring out what kinda skills our enemy had!
“VESSEL! MOTIVATION MAXED! EXCITED!”
“Yeah, it better be fucking maxed! I’m gonna die if it isn’t!” Man, I don’t wanna use my peaceful brain cells for this. My combat motivation is basically nonexistent...
“EXCITED! EXCITED!”
Whether or not it agreed with my reasoning, however, Muramasa allowed my feet to slow down a bit. That was probably the first time it had actually listened to me! Maybe it’ll be willing to go along with another request, I thought.
“Hey, Muramasa, don’t you think a total weakling like me isn’t fit to be your vessel? Why don’t we part ways after this battle, eh?”
“NEGATIVE. MINE. FOREVER.”
“What do you mean, ‘negative’?!” I didn’t want to be with this thing forever! That sounded like hell!
I’m gonna tear you off of me someday! Just you wait!
“Listen here, you bloodthirsty sword, I don’t like fighting! I wanna take it easy and, like, fall in love, or something! One day, I’m gonna have a devoted wife and we’re gonna have a baby and everything.”
“ALREADY DONE.”
“Say what?”
The hell was the dumb thing going on about? I still had my v-card. Hell, I hadn’t even kissed anyone yet!
Wanting an explanation for that weird statement, I demanded, “Hey, what do you mean by—”
“GROOOOOOOOOOOOOAR!”
Deafening explosions echoed from the mountain’s summit, interrupting my interrogation of the piece of trash sword.
A massive black shadow descended upon me.
“What the fuck?”
Look, I’d seen the claw marks back at the village, so I knew it was gonna be big. But this?
“That’s humongous!”
A black dragon, over three hundred meters long, glared down at me with its red eyes.
“GROOOOOAR!”
Eeeeeek! The thing looked really mad, like “How dare you step into my territory!” mad!
“M-M-Muramasa, we can kill this thing, right?! Right?!”
“YES!”
“Whoa, really?!”
“IF YOU TRAIN FOR A YEAR. YES.”
“Wait, that’s not a yes! What the hell?!”
✦ ✦ ✦
And that’s how Crow died!
Thanks for reading, everyone!!!
(To be continued, actually.)
✦ ✦ ✦
Tiana, waiting at the foot of the mountain, was absolutely stunned by the appearance of the black shadow.
“No way...”
Normally, dragons were approximately a hundred meters in length, but that colossal beast was easily more than three hundred.
Three times the average. Far outside the curve.
“That size, those black scales... That’s one of the Seven Calamities!”
That terrifying moniker rang painfully in the back of Tiana’s mind.
In the thousand years since aetherborn first appeared in the world, there had been seven who were deemed such a peril, so impossible to contend with, that they’d been sealed away.
Those creatures were known as the “Seven Calamities.” Hundreds of magus knights of old had sacrificed their lives to finally contain them.
“There’s no mistaking it. That’s definitely one of those beasts! Nidhogg, Blight of the Heavens! How?! Why is it here?!” she exclaimed, nonplussed.
Only the king was supposed to know where the Seven Calamities were sealed, in order to prevent them from being accidentally released.
“No way, right? His Majesty wouldn’t have unsealed that dragon just to get at Crow, right? That wouldn’t happen. Would it? I mean, setting it free could kill even His Majesty himself...”
So what was that thing? Not Nidhogg, but something else entirely?
Or was the king that much of an idiot?
She just couldn’t wrap her head around it. Not that it mattered—if Crow didn’t kill that monster, his life would most certainly be forfeit.
“Please, Crow! Don’t die!”
It was all Tiana could do to pray for his safety.