The amphibious assault ship Fredegund.
It was the name of the battleship that had killed the silver dragon, with five escort ships in tow.
The captain was Sigebert Siegfried. He was a naval officer of the Norvelland Empire.
Sigebert was the head of the Siegfried family, a clan famous for being dragonslayers. But he didn’t look much like a dragonslaying hero. He was tall but too skinny, with a constant nasty look in his dot-like eyes. His voice was low and quiet—and oddly viscous. On top of that, he spoke very slowly. A ruby pendant hung from his neck.
Sigebert was watching the blazing island with a fed-up expression.
Another Eden’s gone and burned up…
The islands that the dragons protected were all called Edens. They dotted the world, and all of them were overflowing with resources unknown to humans—such as the fruit of knowledge that appeared in legend—or so it was said.
So it was said, because no one had ever actually acquired these fruits of knowledge.
Whenever a landing operation had been attempted…or rather, when a dragon was killed, the island it inhabited went up in flames. But then occupying the island without killing the dragon was very difficult. Once before, a dragon had been taken alive, at great cost—but the moment it had been captured, the island burned all the same.
As a result, all that could be acquired were the cinders, which came to be known as the Ashes of Eden. But this was also fairly valuable as a resource. Even as ash, creations of Eden were very powerful.
Now Edens all over the world were turning to ash.
Normally, one should be searching for a way to occupy the Edens without setting the islands ablaze, but there were reasons that wasn’t possible. Since the product known as the Ashes of Eden was very energy dense, all the nations on Earth were looking to acquire it.
The Norvelland Imperial Army, in which Commodore Sigebert served, held an advantage over other nations in the conquest of Edens, but at the same time, they absolutely couldn’t afford to fall behind.
They were at an advantage over other nations because they had Commodore Sigebert—that is to say, the dragonslayer Siegfried. The progress in modern weaponry was remarkable, but it was still difficult to kill a dragon. So that was where a dragonslayer was needed. The Balmung Cannon, which only Sigebert Siegfried could control, would kill any dragon in one hit. The technique could only be executed by one of the Siegfried blood, and no other nation could emulate it.
The reason they couldn’t afford to fall behind was because the Norvelland Empire was lacking in its own resources. The Norvelland Empire was one of the great powers on the continent of Europa, but a major part of that was that they had managed to monopolize the resources of Eden through their ability to kill dragons. There were still not many examples of other nations succeeding in occupying an Eden, but there would certainly be more to come. And so, they had decided that they didn’t care if it was just ash—they would forestall other nations to retrieve all the resources from every remaining Eden.
The soldiers took the landing boats to Eden, doing their best to put out the fires, but well, it would be ash this time, too. The researchers had said that “We don’t understand the logic, but the fruits of Eden burn from the inside out.” It was as if God was refusing to deliver them into the hands of humanity.
Eventually, one of the landing vessels returned. Sigebert didn’t concern himself with it, figuring it was just the vanguard back with some ash.
But before long, Sigebert’s good friend raced up to him in a panic.
“Oh, God! Sigebert! They found something incredible!”
It was a man called Johann Sachs. He was quite flustered, but he did, in fact, have the rank of colonel. Sigebert outranked him, but the two had a friendship that went beyond that. Still, when they were in the field, the man should have been treating his superior officer with respect. His subordinates were watching, after all.
“Calm down. You’re turning forty this year,” said Sigebert.
“You’re the same age as me! Agh, good God! Just come out here already! Hurry! She might die! Then you’ll definitely regret it!”
With Colonel Sachs dragging him along, Commodore Sigebert headed to where the landing vessels were kept.
The girl was unconscious on her back on the iron floor. Her silver hair had a bewitching luster to it. She was a mature-looking girl. She was wearing a red dress, but her right arm had been blown off, and she was still bleeding.
“…What about her? This is the woman who just about died defending the dragon. I saw her, too.”
The Siegfried clan had superhuman abilities, perhaps because of their heroic blood. He had fired on the dragon from over ten miles away, but he had been able to clearly see what had happened there.
It was rare to find people living on Edens. But they would always die with the dragons or burn up like the fruit did. The researchers divided them into two camps. There were those who washed ashore on an Eden and would ultimately take their own lives once the dragons perished. Then there were those who were born on an Eden and would naturally catch fire once the island began to burn. Sigebert wasn’t sure how the researchers arrived at these two classifications of humans discovered on Edens.
This girl seemed to be of the former.
“Let her die with it.”
Even without him saying that, this girl was going to die anyway. It was one thing to lose an arm, but the blast had also taken a large chunk out of the right side of her chest. Her right lung was gone—there was no way she was going to survive.
“You idiot! Look at her left wrist!” Sachs yelled.
“…Hm?”
Tattooed on her thin wrist was the crest of a certain noble family.
✦ ✦ ✦
The silver dragon…
The one I loved was right in front of me.
I rushed up to him and embraced him. The scales that should have been hard were soft like a rotten fruit. The harder I squeezed, the farther my arms sank into his flesh.
Something sticky came to fall on top of my head.
The dragon’s body was melting, becoming liquid. The dragon’s head, which had half liquefied, had fallen into my hair. His bodily fluids dripped from the ends of my bangs, and I licked them away with my tongue.
I buried my face in his stomach.
Like nibbling, like eating, like biting, like slurping, like drinking, like licking—
—like kissing…
I am taken into him. I take him in.
It didn’t feel so bad. No, I’ll say it clearly. It actually filled me with euphoria.
Violating the will of the one I loved to become one with him…
…felt so comfortable it defied imagination…
…and so good it frightened me.