Chapter 37 (2/2)

“You idiot! If we slow down even a bit, it’ll catch up to us!”

“But! But at this rate Ange isn’t going to make it!”

From what Loren could see, even though the dragon didn’t kill her so that it could feed off of her negative emotions, the wounds that it inflicted were quite fatal.

Since she was coughing up blood, it was most likely that some of her organs were damaged, and all the shaking wasn’t helping at all.

But compared to the bone dragon chasing them, the speed of the horse wasn’t exactly what he could call fast, and if they slowed down even a little, it would catch up immediately.

“Are you telling Ange to die!?”

“If we get caught by that pile of bones, we’re all going to die!”

Loren sighed as he found out that Broas didn’t think that even with all of them fighting, they wouldn’t be able to defeat the bone dragon.

Dragons were indeed terrifying creatures.

Loren knew for a fact that the only reason he was able to retrieve Ange from the bone dragon’s jaws was because it didn’t think of Loren and the others as a threat and was letting its guard down.

“Hey priestess. Your name is Roll, right?”

Loren called the blue haired girl dressed like a priest, who was clinging onto the caravan trying not to get flung off.

She was in a crawling position on the floor, but managed to nod in Loren’s direction.

“You can use divine arts, right? I don’t care if you use them up to your limit, so go ahead and heal her.”

“Hey, are you sure? If we end up having to fight that dragon, we’d need a priest’s divine arts, or else…”

Loren calmly replied.

“If we end up fighting it we already lost at that point. Using them now or later makes no difference.”

“You…”

Klaus looked at him with a surprised expression.

Even if it was as Loren said, if they end up fighting they would lose for sure, it was normal to think like Broas, having divine arts be available to heal during the fight, so Klaus didn’t expect Loren to say he didn’t care if they used all the charges.

In fact, since Roll was in Klaus’ party, he could have told her to use her divine arts to heal Ange.

But even so, he had no intention of letting Roll use her divine arts because it could be some of their lifelines later on.

“I can’t let my priestess use hers though. If she dies even after the healing, you’ll have to give up.”

After saying that, Loren carefully walked up to the driver’s seat to check up on Lapis.

There was no source of light to help them see except for the moonlight, and even so it was pitch dark.

Even though it was almost impossible to see anything and the road was really bad, Lapis kept the caravan going at full speed in the dark.

Loren felt afraid not being able to see ahead of them moving at this speed, but Lapis didn’t look scared at all, but instead looked ahead with a serious expression.

“Can you see where we’re going?”

Loren asked Lapis as he remembered that her eyes were prosthetics, and Lapis glanced at him.

“Of course. I can see everything clearly.”

“That’s going to be awkward to explain to the others. They haven’t noticed yet, but they’re going to think it’s weird when they do.”

“Just tell them I have really good night vision. If that doesn’t work, tell them it’s all intuition.”

Although no one noticed yet because of they were focused on the dragon chasing them, Lapis being able to drive a caravan in pitch darkness without any hesitation was too unnatural.

It wasn’t something anyone could do, and while Loren was thinking of ways to explain it when they do finally notice, Lapis gave him very halfhearted suggestions.

“I hope they’ll believe it.”

“Rather than that, could you fetch me the red-haired boy from the back?”

Loren faltered at Lapis’ sudden request, not knowing what she was trying to do.

“Red hair…you mean Klaus, right?”

“I don’t know if he’s Klaus or just an idiot, but the red-haired one.”

Loren didn’t understand what she wanted to do, but since she was asking for someone specifically, he decided that it must be something important. He went back inside the caravan and grabbed Klaus, who was watching over Ange as Roll used her divine arts to heal her, by the back of his collar.

“W-what are you doing!?”

“What do I do with this?”

Loren walked back to Lapis with Klaus struggling in his hand and raised him in front of Lapis and asked. Lapis let go of the reins with one of her hands and extended it out to Loren.

“Please hand him over.”

“Sure.”

Loren held Klaus up to Lapis, still holding him by the back of his collar. Lapis then grabbed him by the front of his collar, and suddenly threw him towards the horse that was pulling the caravan.

“Whoa!?”

Klaus yelled in surprise as he flew in the air, landed face down on the horse’s rear half, and held on for his dear life.

If he fell, he would either be trampled by the horse or run over by the caravan, and even if he did dodge those, he would become prey for the bone dragon.

“W-what is wrong with you!?”

“Stay there and use > on the horse!”

Lapis swung the whip as she yelled at him.

It should’ve hit the horse, but instead it hit Klaus, who was hanging on to its rear, and he let out a cry of pain.

“We’re going to get caught at this rate! If we don’t want to get caught you need to use > on the horse and speed it up. Hurry!”

“I’ve never used it on something living before…”

“You were boasting about it so much earlier, so just use it!”

As Lapis swung the whip again, and Klaus let out another cry and a pale light began to emit from his hands.

The light disappeared into the horse, and Loren felt the horse suddenly go faster. The shaking increased as well, so Loren grabbed a rope to keep himself steady.

“See, you can do it if you try! Now do it stronger! You don’t have time to fall asleep! We need to keep this up until morning!”

“Is it going to help when morning comes?”

“Bone dragons are weak to sunlight even amongst other undead monsters. It should stop chasing us once morning comes. Come on! The light is becoming weak again!”

Klaus’ painful cries rang out in the peace of night as Lapis swung the whip over and over.

“Well…He won’t die, I guess.”

Loren thought what a pitiful sight it was, but there was no way he was going to stop Lapis from what she was doing. He urged Shayna, who was about to poke her head outside to see what’s going on, back into the caravan, sat down, and closed his eyes, trying to shut out the image of the bone dragon and Klaus getting whipped out of his mind.