“Dragon eggs!” one shouted. “Those’ll fetch a high price!”
“So they were guarding a treasure,” another said, ogling the treasure. “I can’t believe the Sword Hero didn’t realize it.”
Ren tended to miss things like that, I say.
“I don’t like those guys,” Keel said, rubbing up against Father and grabbing onto his cloak.
“They do seem like the slave hunters we encountered before,” Father agreed. “Are you thinking about the lumo incident or when the soldiers attacked your village?”
Keel nodded.
“I understand,” Father said. “They may be monsters, but the way they exterminated them . . . They weren’t even the ones who took out the boss.”
It made me sick to my stomach to watch those adventurers try to seize a prize they hadn’t even earned. It was the sort of thing a pig would do, I say. The adventurers may have been men, but I was starting to see them as pigs instead. Some of them went to collect the treasure while others continued to slaughter the few remaining monsters.
“P-please, stop!”
A voice came out from the back of the den.
“Please, no more, I beg you!” The voice was wracked with grief. “Don’t kill anyone else! Father . . . please save us . . .”
Keel’s ears twitched and she immediately glanced over in the direction of the voice. She was clutching Father’s cloak with a surprised look on her face.
“Hey, there’s a kid in there!”
I saw ugly smiles light up the adventurers’ faces as they turned in the direction of the voice. “Hah, they must’ve been raising a demi-human to rape! Let’s capture and sell it.”
More screams of dying monsters came out of the cave.
“I won’t let them!” growled Keel. “I’ll go fight ’em!”
“No, Keel!” Father said, trying to hold onto her.
Keel wriggled out of Father’s grip and charged into the dragon den.
“All right, I guess we have no choice,” Father said. “Motoyasu, you come too! And you too, Sakura and Luna!”
“Got it!”
“Okay.”
“Keel!” Father hurried after Keel, while Sakura, Luna, and I followed them into the dragon den.
“Hey! What’s up with this dog?!”
Keel leapt barking and growling at the adventurers, already having rushed around them to protect something on the other side. Since their bodies were between us and Keel, I couldn’t see exactly what it was, but it must have been the voice that we had heard before.
“Don’t get any closer! Arf arf!”
“Uh . . . who are you?” It was the voice who had asked for help before.
“Get out of the way, stupid dog! Is it a therianthrope? What is a filthy demi-human doing here?”
“Hang on, that’s a dog demi-human! We could make a huge profit selling something like that. Capture it!”
“I’m telling you to back down!” roared Keel, leaping forward, grabbing the extended arms of an adventurer by the teeth, and sending him flying. He landed in a heap in front of us.
“You,” Father called to the man in a threatening voice.
The man straightened up and spun around to face us.
“What? Who are you? There’s this weird dog in our way. If that’s your dog, then I’m gonna—”
“The dog is mine,” Father said. “I set him on you.”
The adventurer glanced back into the den and then at Father again, who kept his cloak closed tight to conceal his shield.
“You’re saying that you sent an evil hound against us?”
“Only because you’ve been committing actions that are obviously unjust,” Father said.
“Unjust? How could capturing a filthy demi-human possibly be—”
As he glared at Father and then at me, he suddenly stopped, noticing Sakura and Luna in their filolial queen forms. By this point, the filolial queen forms were widely known to be the bird gods that had roamed around Melromarc helping people. We were known across the whole country. We had even sold medicine and food right here in the village before heading up the mountain.
“H-hang on!” called one of the adventurers. “Isn’t that the dog that goes around with the saint of the bird god?”
“You’re right!” Keel snarled. “And I won’t forgive what you’ve done! Arf arf! Arf arf!”
I had never heard Keel get this angry before.
“I know that you’re adventurers, so I didn’t come here with the intention of stopping you from taking a dragon’s treasure. But . . .” Father said with a glint in his eye as he stared down the adventurer and put a hand into his cloak. “You’ve given me no choice. If there’s someone back there that’s a part of that treasure, I will protect them. You want to sell a person? Then maybe I should never bring my medicine and food to this land ever again!”
“S-saint of the bird god!” cried the adventurer. “There must be a misunderstanding! We were going to protect it! It was held captive here by the dragons!”
Keel and the leader of the group of adventurers overheard Father speaking and stood aside to let him come forward. I finally saw what Keel was trying to protect.
What in the world? It was none other than Filo-tan’s doctor’s assistant!
She was still a young demi-human with dog ears and a tail, not too different from Keel. She had helped take care of Filo-tan and the other filolials . . . I had always wondered about her hair but realized now that it resembled a dragon’s cut.
That was definitely her. I remember how she always pacified those dragons that Filo-tan despised so much.
“We were just going to return her to where she belongs,” one of the adventurers started to say. But that was obviously just an excuse. By that did he mean a slave’s tent? Perhaps she had been a slave at one point before, but she belonged here, in the dragon den. The assistant rushed over to protect the last surviving monster.
Keel and Father stared blankly at the scene and then glanced at each other.
“Unfortunately, I overheard everything that was said before,” Father said. He looked farther into the dragon den. “The dragon eggs . . .”
“Those are ours!” one of the adventurers shouted, holding them tight.
Father let out a long sigh.
“Then let us handle the remaining monsters. They’re ours.”
“B-but!”
One of the adventurers started to protest, but Father gave him a glare that could be felt even from within his hood and cloak.
“If you’re just going to protect them, then you shouldn’t mind us doing the same job, should you? Or were you thinking about doing something else besides protecting them as soon as we got out of your way?”
“Fine, fine,” the leader said. “But isn’t it dangerous? That is a demi-human with the monsters, after all.”
Father ignored the adventurers and went over to the assistant. The dragon creature she was holding growled as Father approached.
“It’s okay. I won’t hurt you.”
Father gently extended his hands toward the assistant and the dragon, who stared back blankly.
Any living creature will come to like Father in no time, I say. But monsters are monsters, of course, and without a monster seal, you can’t totally ignore the possibility that they might attack.
“Let’s get you out of here,” Father said. “Otherwise, more might come later. So I want you to come with us.”
“Yeah!” Keel barked. “There are lots of bad guys out there! You’re not safe here!”