The boy stood alone in a sea of blood.
Collapsed buildings. Scattered wreckage. Cracked streets.
Countless bodies were lying there. They were all those who had been his friends and acquaintances.
Until its destruction, this had been a little village.
It had been attacked by a dragon.
He had learned afterward that upon the death of the evil dragon that had ruled the kingdom, some of the dragon’s private army, which had been stationed all over the country, had apparently begun acting on their own.
Although this dragon was already dead—it was the very thing that lay collapsed in the center of the village, bleeding from its neck. The blood that filled the village was mostly from that dragon. It was over fifty yards long.
The boy had killed it.
He didn’t know why or how he had been able to do it. When he’d seen it, he’d thought he could win. He had picked up a knife unconsciously, and before he knew it, he had been killing the dragon. Perhaps the boy was a genius.
A dragonslaying genius.
If that was what he was, then it seemed a genius wasn’t as big a deal as he’d thought—if he had only been able to kill the dragon and he hadn’t even been able to protect the village.
That evening, the royal knights came.
Leading them was a woman in her late twenties. She had a vassal with bad legs serving her.
Seeing the disastrous scene of the village, the woman said, “Did you kill the dragon?”
“Yeah. It wasn’t that big a deal.”
That wasn’t a bluff. It really hadn’t been a big deal.
The woman went to her knees before the boy. She didn’t even care about the blood all over the ground dirtying her knees, even though she was probably an aristocrat.
The woman drew the boy close and embraced him.
And then she said, “I’m sorry we were too late in coming. You must have been scared.”
He wondered what she was talking about.
Even while fighting a dragon over ten times bigger than him, the boy had felt no fear.
The woman took the boy in. She was gathering orphans and even taking care of them.
That woman was the Dragonslaying Queen.
After being taken in by the queen, the boy was assigned to the dragonslaying support squad. He had requested it himself. He thought that was probably where he belonged. At the very least, he was more cut out for it than doing farmwork in an orphanage.
There were many people in the support squad who admired the queen. They all said the same thing.
“She’s a genius.”
“There’s no one her better when it comes to killing dragons.”
A genius? Then she was no big deal, either.
He heard the queen say this:
“I want to make everyone in the kingdom happy.”
A mere genius couldn’t make that dream come true—just as he hadn’t been able to protect his village.
But—
Eventually, the boy learned.
There were people in the world who were beyond genius.
What should they be called? The boy could only think of one word.
God.
The boy saw the queen in her golden age.
She lightly waved her right hand. The light it emitted eradicated a foreign army.
She touched water with her right hand. The water she touched turned to a universal panacea.
The strange ring of her voice would cause all who heard it to feel happy, subordinating them to her.
Even with that much power, the queen never became a tyrant.
She only ever used that power for the sake of the kingdom’s happiness.
At the time when that boy became a man, the kingdom was complete: a country with no illness or injury, never exposed to threats by foreign nations and never fearing the terror of dragons.
Looking out over the kingdom from the royal castle, the man muttered, “This has to be the Kingdom of Eternity.”
The greatest paradise that humanity could create unfurled beneath his eyes.
Tears spilled from his eyes. For the first time since he had been born, a scene of beauty had made him cry.
He had to preserve this perfect beauty. He felt that was his mission, as someone born in this kingdom.
But soon after having created her utopia, the queen died. That was due to the corrosion of the Power of God.
At the very end, even God did not last long.
That was when the old soldier woke up.
Warren had returned from the party venue to the royal castle.
He recalled he had tried to take a bit of a rest in his room…but it seemed that, unaware, he had fallen into a doze. Unfortunately, getting older meant facing more physical limitations. He had worn himself out just from fighting a single dragon. More so than the physical exertion, the extreme concentration peculiar to combat had drained his energy—so much so that once the fight had been over, he hadn’t been able to move.
Oh, that was right. He had to go kill that dragon.
He had ordered the knights to take the dragon and princess to the castle. He had separated them, imprisoning the dragon in the tower and the princess in the dungeon.
He hadn’t had the knights kill the dragon because they didn’t know how it was done. There was a trick to killing a dragon. With their powerful vitality, if you didn’t hit it in the right spot, there was the risk it would rampage around with unexpected strength and be able to escape. Warren was the only one who could kill it quickly.
There was hardly anyone in the kingdom now who knew how to kill a dragon. The Dragonslaying Queen had died, and the queen’s support squad had also all died, aside from Warren. Those who hadn’t died in battle had died of old age. In the squad, Warren had been the youngest.
At the same time, he was also the last retainer who knew about the era of the First Queen.
Warren headed for the tower where the amber dragon was locked up.
The amber dragon was imprisoned in a room on the highest floor of the tower.
His body had been pierced with stilettos to weaken him. Being unable to exert himself, he couldn’t escape.
He could hear footsteps coming up the stairs. Someone was approaching the top of the tower.
He knew quite well who had come. Most certainly, either the old soldier called Warren or a knight had come to kill him.
This was the kingdom of dragonslayers. Evil dragons could only be killed.
At the end, the amber dragon struggled. He kept trying to get the stilettos stuck into his body out. But something like this couldn’t be worked out with effort or willpower.
The door opened, and someone came in.
The amber dragon was prepared for death, but…
<Ahh…how horrible…>
…the one to come in was neither the old soldier nor a knight.
It was the reigning queen, Kriemhild.
Kriemhild was also of the Siegfried clan, so she could speak the Dragon’s Tongue.
Kriemhild rushed up to him and started pulling the stilettos out from his body. She only had the strength of a girl, so it took her time to get a single stiletto out.
<I’m sure this will hurt, but please bear with it.>
It was true that pulling a sword out from his body hurt. But the pain Kriemhild felt was clearly greater than the pain the amber dragon felt.
<Hn—nnnnnnngh!>
The cursed crown was torturing her. Right now, she fundamentally could not do wrong against the kingdom. As she struggled to pull out the blade, a greasy sweat oozed out of her forehead. Blood was dripping from her scalp. It seemed the blood vessels there had popped. She was bearing with the pain as she tried to let the amber dragon escape.
The dragon didn’t tell her to stop—since he had to do whatever it took to escape from this tower and save Brunhild. Instead, he asked, <Why would you go this far to save me?>
<I have a request. Please take my sister and escape the kingdom. I don’t know how she did it, but my sister has escaped the dungeon. Find her and flee the kingdom.>
Even as Kriemhild was moaning in pain, she pulled out the stiletto that was pinning his wings. <Please fly my sister away on your wings. There is no place for her here in this kingdom.>
That was when he once again heard footsteps coming up the stairs. This time, they were clearly those of a man. From the quality of the sound, there was no doubting they were those of a soldier.
Warren had come.
Kriemhild hurried even more to take the stilettos out. Having fewer of them piercing his body had enabled the amber dragon to struggle a little, so he helped her to get them out.
As they set about removing the final stiletto, the footsteps broke into a run. He must have noticed someone was in the tower. The amber dragon would have liked to destroy Kriemhild’s crown before escaping, if possible, but he didn’t have the time.
Right as they got the final stiletto out, Warren came into the room.
The amber dragon was right about to break the window and get outside, but Warren had already drawn a new stiletto. He was faster than the escaping dragon.
He threw the stiletto.
“Stop it!”
The queen’s voice rang out through the tower.
Kriemhild cut between them, arms spread.
That wasn’t enough to stop Warren from doing anything. He could push her away to throw a stiletto, or if he changed the angle of his throw a little, he wouldn’t even need to bother shoving her aside. Kriemhild’s presence, her attempt to protect the dragon, was pointless.
But despite that…
There was the sound of wingbeats. The dragon had successfully escaped.
Warren couldn’t move. He stood by and watched as the dragon broke through the window.
The dragon, seen through the window, grew smaller and smaller.
Only the queen and her old retainer remained in the tower room.
Kriemhild, the black-haired queen, gazed at Warren curiously. Then she asked him, “Why…didn’t you throw the sword?” She understood her own powerlessness—she couldn’t even be a shield for the dragon.
Warren didn’t reply, tucking the stiletto under his coat.
Kriemhild’s voice as she had guarded the dragon was ringing out in Warren’s head.
The boy had also once admired a black-haired queen.
The sight of her sacrificing herself to protect another had, for just a second…looked like her.
“It’s a dragon! There’s a dragon out!”
As Brunhild was walking in the town, she heard people yelling.
When she looked up, it was right as the amber dragon was flying through the sky over town. The amber dragon was deliberately exposing himself, flying around in order to find Brunhild.
Brunhild called the dragon’s name in the Dragon’s Tongue.
<Bernstein!>
Reacting to her voice, the amber dragon looked down into the town. There were a number of village girls below, but he found the white-haired one among them and dived down, taking her in his jaws.
While rising into the air, he tossed Brunhild upward.
“Wahh…”