I ran after the fleeing Tailtiu, but the gap between us wasn’t getting any narrower. I might have had a bit more of an advantage if we were on the game trails that we had used to get through the forest up until now, but because the road was paved, we raced along faster than usual.
“Tailtiuuu!” I shouted. “I’m telling you, it’s a misunderstanding! A misunderstanding!”
“A-As if!” she replied. “I heard it all with my own ears! You said you want to eat a dragon! While pointing at me!”
“It wasn’t me who was pointing, for one!”
As you might expect from a paramount, especially one who possessed power approaching her Ancestor, she remained persistently ahead of me even though I was sprinting as fast as I could. Then again, we were still on the paved part of the road. If we kept going, we would enter the dense forest, where she wouldn’t be able to get away or hide from me if I sharpened my senses.
At least, that was what I thought.
“Hyah!” Tailtiu exclaimed.
“Ahh?!”
With a bright flash, Tailtiu suddenly turned into her black dragon form and started to take flight. For a moment I was overcome with surprise at how she was moving, like a plane speeding down a runway, but I knew that if she got away, she would sulk and cry by herself. I had been treated with kindness by all sorts of people coming to this island, including Tailtiu, so I couldn’t just stand by and watch her go.
“H-How about that?! I bet you can’t chase after me now! Give up already, darling!” she shouted, looking back at me. She sounded a bit lonely. As she flew, she flapped her huge wings many times, shaking the thick forest trees.
“Hiyah!” I exclaimed.
“Huh?” Tailtiu let out an astonished voice, maybe because I had come flying through the sky after her. “H-How are you flying?!”
“I learned from watching Mina fly a while back!”
“Th-That isn’t something you can just learn so easily! This is why everyone says, ‘Sometimes I can’t stand you,’ darling!”
I wished they wouldn’t say it. Lately, whether it was Reina or someone else, everyone had been treating me like I was some strange other species called “Arata,” and it made me pretty sad to hear it.
✦ ✦ ✦
Regardless, our game of tag had left the ground, but...
“Gah, just as I thought... I can’t get used to this,” I said to myself.
In fact, I had practiced this Floating magic once before, but it was quite difficult. Staying balanced in midair was tough, and even now I was doing everything I could to not fall. This was no doubt the result of my lack of practice; I had thought about practicing in secret and then surprising everyone with it, but that was now coming back to bite me.
“If I’d known this was going to happen, I should’ve just practiced without trying to keep it a secret.”
Tailtiu soared through the sky unimaginably quickly for her huge body. I was using all my power to chase after her, but I wasn’t getting any closer; on the contrary, she was actually pulling ahead.
“T-Tailtiuuu!” I shouted her name.
She didn’t reply, but somehow I got the feeling that her speed had decreased a little. She was also repeatedly glancing back at me, as if to make sure that I was keeping up with her.
“Is she worried about me?”
To be sure, I wasn’t skilled with Floating magic. If I messed up my control just for a moment, I would probably plunge all the way to the ground headfirst. Still, I knew that I would have died long ago if that could hurt me. Tailtiu should have known that too, but...
“Actually, what if... Does she just want me to pay attention to her?”
That might have been why she was looking at me from time to time. After everything she had been through, she was the type of person who easily got lonely. Though she had been swept away by her emotions and flown away, if no one had followed after her, she would have no doubt cried to herself alone while hugging her knees again.
“Heeey! Can you forgive me already?!”
“H-Hmph! I don’t care about someone who says they’re going to eat me!”
I didn’t sense any anger or sadness in her voice. She seemed to have realized during our chase that she had gotten the wrong idea. First, I felt relieved. It was way more fun to have a lively time with everyone than it was to get into fights. A part of me thought that even this chase was a bit entertaining.
“Now then, before anything else, I have to catch her.”
I’d probably never reach Tailtiu with this unfamiliar Floating magic if she seriously tried to escape. But, the fact that she wasn’t letting herself get too far away from me meant she was flying just barely fast enough for me to keep up.
“If that’s how it’s going to be...”
I remembered a wind spell Reina had used before. If I can just use wind magic to give myself a boost while flying!
Turning around, I held up both hands and released a burst of mana with an exclamation of, “Hah!” That moment, an intense gale sprung forth, and just as I predicted, I caught up to Tailtiu with tremendous momentum—
“Ah...”
“Huh?”
But right after that, I overtook her.
“D-Darliiing! Hold on, where are you goiiing?!”
“I-I didn’t think about how I would stop myseeelf!”
I rapidly flew farther and farther away from her. Unused to Floating magic, I couldn’t use it to counteract the momentum of my full-power wind spell. As I broke through the surrounding clouds, I could see Tailtiu in the distance, trying her hardest to chase after me. Darn, I’ve completely reversed things.
“A-Anyway, if I just use wind magic in the opposite direction...”
I changed the orientation of my body once more, only to find a huge scarlet dragon waiting with its mouth open.
“Huuuh?!”
Surprised, I reflexively fired off a wind spell, accidentally blasting the dragon in the face. That seemed to be just enough to let me precisely halt my momentum, but then the dragon swooped down on me with obvious anger, probably because its supposed prey had suddenly attacked it.
“Wh-What do I do?!”
In video games and manga, dragons were the strongest species. However, there were any number of more powerful beings on this island. Besides, I’d defeated a dragon when I was summoned outside the island recently, and this one seemed to be about as strong, so beating it would be simple. But if this dragon just so happened to be one of Tailtiu’s acquaintances...
“Darliiing, that dragon’s steak is delicious, so you absolutely cannot let it get awaaay!”
“Got it!”
It seemed that Tailtiu regarded dragons as food.
I glared at the approaching dragon. It stopped, then let out a terrified “Gyaaah!” before turning tail and fleeing. It had seemingly understood who the predator was, but it was already too late.
“O wind!” I said. I held up my hand and produced the same blade of wind that Reina had used before, and it lopped off the dragon’s head. Unable to even cry out as it died, it slowly plummeted to the ground. Letting it go would be a waste, however, so I grabbed the falling dragon’s wings.
“Phew...”
It was rather hefty, but my body was strong enough to hold it up with no issues.
“D-Darliiing!”
“Oh, Tailtiu.”
“Don’t, ‘Oh, Tailtiu,’ me! H-How did you overtake me! It’s, i-i-i-it’s not right!”
Her breathing was quite heavy after having flown as hard as she could in her dragon form to get here. Every time she flapped her wings, a violent gale blew, swaying the scarlet dragon in my hands from side to side.
“Sorry, my bad. I’m just not that good with fine control yet.”
Tailtiu let out an exasperated sigh, returning to her usual human form. “Hahh. This is why I can’t stand you sometimes, darling.” The only change from her normal look was that she kept the dragon wings on her back and was using them to fly.
“Oh, so you can do that too?” I asked.
“Hmph. It’s because I can’t fly if I don’t keep my wings.”
“Wow...” I unconsciously let out an amazed reply. There was a certain, picturesque quality to a beautiful girl with black wings floating in the sky.
Then, I glanced down at the dragon I was holding. The massive creature was missing its head, expelling a gushing waterfall of blood. To any onlooker, it would have looked like something out of a horror movie. The blood was drifting in the wind and turning into a cloud of fine droplets, but on the ground it probably looked like it was raining blood.
“By the way, darling...”
“Yeah?”
“Are you going to take that dragon home and eat it?”
For a moment I worried what her intent gaze could mean, but then I remembered what she had said earlier: That dragon’s steak is delicious, so you absolutely cannot let it get awaaay!
“Say, Tailtiu...”
“Hm?”
“You don’t have any aversion to eating dragons?”
“Of course not, why would I? They’re so delicious.”
“I see.”
It wasn’t like I had been expecting her to say something along the lines of, “I could never eat my own kind!” but I also wasn’t quite sure I was comfortable with her actual reaction.
“Darling? By any chance, do you see me and that dragon as the same?”
“What? No, I mean, not the same, of course, but you’re an Ancient Dragonfolk, so I thought that maybe you’re both similar species or something,” I said, sounding like I was making excuses.
Tailtiu looked exasperated.
“Darling, it’s the same as Luna or that pervert wolf eating an Emperor Boar, you know.”
“Huh? Oh, I see.”
From my perspective, Ancient Dragonfolk in their dragon form resembled dragon monsters pretty closely, but apparently they were completely different. That meant that Tailtiu’s “They’re so delicious” definitely didn’t entail cannibalism.
Slurp.
Tailtiu had clearly turned her gaze to the dragon and was greedily drooling. There was only one way I was going to use it.
“Okay, let’s cook it after this.”
Tailtiu nodded, overjoyed. I had obviously made the correct choice.
“All right, why don’t we go back?” I said.
“Mm-hmm!”
Thus, the chase that had begun from Tailtiu’s misunderstanding signaled its end, and we returned home.