Chapter 13 (1/2)

CHAPTER 13: Dragon-san Checks Her Hypothesis

About a month and a half after Nectar joined the effort of his fellow magicians, their army managed to carry out their coup with no major problems, take the castle, got rid of the old king and crowned a new one.

And that would mean that complaints from both the commoners and magicians would be on the rise.

Although it was now on a downward trend, somewhere around half a month from the moment of informing me about the coup’s success and hunting down the demon army, Nectar and Kyle wanted to meet with me. And so I came to the city.

Ah, as expected their mode of transport is the staff.

There were still remnants of the demon army somewhere out there, but right now they would pose no threat, especially for the two of them.

「…… It’s terrible, Lava.」

I think that the military uniform, similar in many aspects to the attire of mages from fantasy games, suited him way better than the criminal’s clothes, it looked really cool on him, but the way in which Nectar looked at me make me somewhat puzzled.

「Umm, did something bad happened?」

「Please take a deep and long look inside of your heart and think about it.」

I twisted my neck in confusion while Kyle continued to glare daggers at me, all the while sitting on the rug that they brought with them. I honestly had no idea what this was all about. Aside from eavesdropping and peeking at them through the magical scale, of course.

But judging from Kyle’s tone, it was something that was certainly my fault.

「…… One night, during the negotiations with the new King’s army, some of the most important people – including the former King – were trapped inside of the royal castle by a powerful magical barrier. The barrier was gone in a manner of ten minutes or so, but when the guards moved in to investigate the matter, the only thing they saw were the figures of the terrified ministers. It seems that they were witnessing something that they could not dare to speak about publicly. They all claim that the one to attack them was a woman who claimed herself to be a dragon, and that she came through the window and started to massacre everyone. However, there are no bloodstains and everyone that was present was accounted for. We are still investigating the poor fools, but we can’t seem to find the ones who started this whole hallucinations mess. Well, after all of that they agreed to step down from their position and pass all of the power onto us, so I guess it was good thing that we’ve managed to avoid the unnecessary battle and that many lives were spared.」

「Yeah, avoiding the unnecessary bloodshed sure is nice. Were there any other problems?」

I look away from Kyle’s suspicious gaze, sighing loudly.

I didn’t mentioned about that night or about Ligurila to any of them. Ligurila insisted on me not doing that.

「This is a problem, and a big one at that, Lava-dono. The officials of the provisional government are worried that the statements of the former king and other ministers may have been fabricated, that this dragon-woman wants to use them to get to power and rule from the shadows. If this continues they are seriously thinking that the former king’s lot would be far better beheaded or eaten by a dragon. The reconstruction plans are going to be stuck in place thanks to this unrest.」

Hmmm, this is indeed a problem.

I never have thought what I did that night would be taken so seriously, so much that they would even want to take testimonials about that.

「There are lots of people in the upper echelons of the government that tend to associate Lava-dono with the dragon attacker since she understood human speech. That being said, there are also those who don’t seem to get it that dragons are even more intelligent than us humans. We are aware of that, we talked to you, we can understand each other and each other’s intentions, but there are those who are not aware of any of that. I managed to contain the soldiers for now, but I can’t say what kinds of disrespect you are going to encounter from their side. We thought you might want to know about that ahead of time.」

Certainly, it’s not strange at all that people would not trust me and take my words for granted even if I promised not to harm them, since distrust towards predators was only natural for all living beings. Rather, it would be strange if there was someone who would trust my words without any kind of hesitation.

If someone was already convinced of something, there was no way for me to change that point of view. I could only accept that.

「That’s only because I used to attack all of those who approached me while I was re-adjusting the leylines. I have no interest in kings or governments whatsoever. But, well, I won’t deny that I was trying to kill two birds with one stone here.」

When I first arrived at this kingdom, I was genuinely curious about what kind of place it was, and through my scales I could hear how people were in funeral-like attitude and that war with demons could not be avoided.

Once I heard it, there was no way for me to simply un-hear it.

Fortunately, the number of people who were aware of the mastermind was rather scarce, so I could easily put them under the influence of my illusions and make them forget it by means of sending terrible nightmares upon them.

After all, illusions and dream visions were my specialty, and during the night I was almost unbeatable. There was nothing that I couldn’t do.

Oh, and if by some reason there was someone who would still resist it, I could easily raise the level and intensity of my nightmares or even force them to enter a contract with me as a last resort.

It’s not like I patronize humans or anything.

But still,

「–––– I thought that avoiding the unnecessary bloodshed would be for the best, but it seems that this solution caused them some major inconveniences as well.」

To this, Kyle corrected himself in a hurry.

「No, that’s not it. Actually, the appearance of Lava-dono has greatly helped us, and for that we are grateful. But, the problem lies in this guy.」

Kyle looks at Nectar in an obvious manner.

How is Nectar a problem here?

Then I heard Nectars words, the very first since I met them today.

「I wasn’t the one for whom Lava-sama donned the humanoid appearance –––– I am so envious of those blasted ministers right now!」

What’s this, it seems that you have the wrong idea here, Nectar-san.

I wonder if Kyle heard him? He let out a deep sigh.

「You see, after he heard that you changed your appearance to fit in, he suddenly became gloomy like that, saying things like it was him that brought you here in the first place and such.」

Apparently it was something that had to do with me, but what was I supposed to do?

I slowly turn my face towards Nectar, who was sitting with his head leaning against his knees, with his arms enclosed over his legs, rocking back and forth.

「Nectar-san?」

「…… I know…… You didn’t have to help us at all, and yet you did and it was all because of my selfish acts and wishes. And since it was me who was by your side all this time, I really regret that I wasn’t able to witness your transformation with my own eyes.」

Okay, some part of me thinks that I get it, and some other part doesn’t get it at all, but it all comes down to the fact that he was unable to satiate his academic curiosity?

Well, if it only about that, I can easily do something about it.

「Nectar-san, please watch this.」

Nectar looked with his mouth and eyes wide opened as I compressed my magical power and changed my appearance right in front of him.

I could also see that Kyle was stunned as well.

「It happened so fast. I thought that you would need some more preparation in order to do that.」

「Since my body is one big mass of magical energy, I can change my appearance rather freely. Although the dragon form is the easiest to take, I admit that. However, if the form I take is small, my magical powers get amplified accordingly, since I can take in more magic. But it can be dangerous, for a high quantity of magic can have harmful effects on other living beings. For example, normal humans would faint instantly if they laid their eyes on me. So far I was restraining myself from using that form, since my control over delicate streams of magic is not all that great. But thanks to the conversations I held with both of you, I finally managed to find a way to stabilize myself in this form by suppressing parts of my magical powers.」

Since my default form was that of a dragon, the moment I change it to something else magic power begins to ooze out of me and it continues to do so until I change back.

It even caused the deaths of smaller animals from time to time.

「In other words, you change the way others perceive you from the form of a dragon to that of a human.」

Although it was slightly different, I nodded as to confirm Nectar’s suspicions.

I told him that I was using my own scales as temporal storages form magical power, thanks to which I was able to bring my levels of magical power down to the point where humans would not faint in my presence.

It was Ligurila who helped me with experimenting on this idea, since she was really good at controlling various kinds of magic.

Those baby steps made me feel very proud of myself.

However, I could not produce clothes with this technique, so I ended up borrowing some from Ligurila, the ones she managed to procure from other dimension where she was storing them all, in a similar way that the teleportation magic worked.

Right now I was wearing a dress in the color of deep night.

「…… I, Was I useful to you, Lava?」

「Yup, very much.」

「I see, I’m glad.」