Since it was the anniversary of the village’s founding, we held a big celebration afterward.
I say celebration, but it was mostly a regular feast where we ate, drank, and hollered. The only difference was that the dwarves, who turned into very different people when drunk, were asked to party underground instead of on the surface.
The next morning, while most villagers were still passed out from the night’s festivities, I woke up at my usual time. I hadn’t been drinking obviously, so I went to bed like normal, and there was no reason for me to sleep in.
I went to sit on the bench I’d set up in the garden and quietly pulled out the book I’d borrowed from Myria.
“I’m kind of scared to read it, but I should at least take a look.”
I stared at the ridiculously ornate cover. The book was so heavy that just holding it made it feel intimidating.
The title was stamped across the front in big bold letters.
The Legend of Lord Luke
This was the book Myria had made without my permission as part of the founding day anniversary project.
“This title is so lame! It’s way too on the nose!”
The thought of this being mass-produced and spread worldwide was positively horrifying.
But the villager Totol had apparently poured his heart into writing it, so I couldn’t just toss it aside. So at the very least, I knew I should check the contents. Hopefully, they hadn’t made everything up...right?
Well, as it turned out, I’d been pretty naive. Not only was everything in the book exaggerated, but most of it had been completely made up. The worst part was my dialogue:
“Yes, this land may be barren. But where others see emptiness, I see opportunity! We shall build a village from this soil with naught but our bare hands and unbreakable will!”
“Hear me, foul orc king! Your luck ran out the very instant your shadow dared to fall upon my beloved village! Now tremble before my ultimate super attack! Mayor’s Wrath... Facility Press!”
“Where you hail from, your age, your race...none of that matters here! Every one of you, my dear citizens, is more precious than a gemstone—nay, you are my beloved kin!”
“What the heck is this? It’s complete fiction...”
Not only did I have no memory of ever saying anything like that, but the dialogue was written in a way that made me sound way more theatrical than I actually was. And I mean way more.
Plus, could you not randomly invent “super attack” names for me?!
“There’s no way I can let them mass-produce this. I have to talk to Myria and shut this down...”
Then the map function sounded an alert in my mind, signaling that something with hostile intent—either a monster or a human—had entered the village territory. A red dot showed on the map too, but I didn’t have to pull it up thanks to the alarm.
But honestly, our territory had expanded so much recently that the alerts had become nonstop. I’d gotten used to tuning it out, but this time, I couldn’t ignore it, which meant whoever—or whatever—the intruder was, they must’ve been really strong.
“Please don’t tell me it’s even worse than the orc king...” I muttered, turning to look northward.
As soon as I turned around, I saw an enormous figure looming above the tree line of the Forsaken Zone. It was so large that you couldn’t have missed it even this far away.
“Is that...a dragon?” I said.
“Mr. Mayor! There’s trouble! A huge monster just appeared in the forest!” Saten’s voice rang out in my mind via Telepathy.
“Warn everyone immediately!” I replied.
“Right away!”
Luckily, most villagers had already woken up while I’d been reading the book. I was sure many had already noticed the monster due to its massive size.
“It’s heading this way!”
I raced up the stairs and reached the top of the watchtower just in time to see it lumber out from the forest.
“Its huge body reminds me of an overgrown lizard. Yep, that’s definitely a dragon...”
“No, it’s not a dragon,” Philia said, approaching.
“Huh? It sure looks like one to me.”
“It’s something called a tree dragon. Don’t let the name fool you. It’s actually a plant-type monster, like a treant. You could say it mimics dragons.”
“Ah, it’s a mimic...”
Now that she’d brought it up, I looked at it more closely. Although it seemed just like a dragon at first glance, I noticed its body appeared to be entirely made of wood. Instead of scales, bark covered its outer surface, with leafy branches sprouting all over. And its eyes weren’t eyes at all, but gnarled hollows. Dragon or not, it was still dangerous.
“Judging by its size, I’d guess it’s ancient. It’s probably been rooted in the Forsaken Zone for centuries. I don’t think it’d be inappropriate to call it the boss of the whole forest. But why would it leave its home and come all the way out to the wasteland?”
According to Philia, tree dragons usually stayed rooted in place, absorbing nutrients from the ground—just like treants. They didn’t roam around hunting and eating prey like dragons did. However, they’d still attack anything that entered their territory without hesitation. Tree dragons were known to be incredibly territorial.
“It’s definitely coming straight toward us, right?”
“This isn’t good... We should evacuate all villagers without combat Gifts right away. Depending on how this goes, we may need to evacuate ourselves.”
I leaned over the railing of the watchtower. “Everyone get underground!” I shouted. “That thing could breach the village any second, so hurry up!”
Seren came running up a few moments later. “Hey, what should we do about that monster? I think even we’ll have a tough time dealing with it. That thing would launch Noel into the sun if he tried to stop its charge!”
Meanwhile, the tree dragon was already halfway to the village. It was surprisingly fast for something so big.
“Leave it to me.” I created a huge stone wall to guard the village, then used Facility Customization to turn it into a towering golem tall enough to stand head-to-head with the tree dragon.
“Go, golem!”
The golem charged forward to intercept the approaching monster, but the moment it got close, roots shot up from the ground. They coiled around the golem’s legs and stopped it in its tracks.
Then, the tree dragon moved past it like it was nothing more than an inconvenient boulder in its path.
“What the... All right, fine! I’ll make another one!”
When I started creating another golem, the tree dragon turned its hollow, knotty eyes in my direction.
Then it released a roar so fierce that it echoed throughout the village.
Hang on... It’s not just looking in this direction—it’s looking straight at me?! Don’t tell me it’s targeting me?!
The tree dragon reached the outer stone wall that separated the crops from the wasteland. Before I could react, it crushed the wall like it was nothing and stepped onto the fields. Thankfully, we’d just harvested everything, so there were no crops left for it to destroy.
There are more important things to worry about right now, though!
I was still desperately thinking of how to drive it off when the tree dragon abruptly stopped in the center of the fields.
“Rooo—ooooar?” it bellowed.
“Huh? What the heck is it doing?”
“It stopped moving?”
“Why isn’t it coming closer?”
We waited and watched it for a while, but it didn’t move an inch. It stood there like a giant tree rooted in place.
“What in the world is going on?”