Dances with the Dragons

A sound as clear as a bell rang out.

Drawing a red trail of light behind it, a ring bounced and rolled along.

It was silver, and it rolled with a tinkling sound.

A red jewel set in the silver band shone as if emitting its own light.

The ring, its red jewel vivid and bright, continued to roll.

It rolled between blades and gold coins, past people whose faces were shining with joy and love, teary with sorrow, and twisted with hatred and jealousy. It rolled past claws and fangs, past eyes glowing in the darkness, past the beastfolk.

As it rolled and bounced along, the red glow of the jewel grew brighter.

Like a wicked seductress who grew more beautiful each time she beguiled men into fighting over her, the ring glowed a deeper red with every drop of blood and tear that was shed.

It almost seemed to be laughing as it bounced along with a chime.

As if the red jewel were a deep crimson eye, it had gazed upon the world.

In the end, the rolling ring was halted and sealed into darkness among wails of lament and furious shouts.

Silence reigned in the encompassing darkness.

It was a silence that stretched on endlessly.

Unable to bounce and roll, the ring's crimson eye seemed displeased. The gem that had once resembled freshly spilled blood sank into a dark sullen red.

Being ignored by everyone in the darkness drained the ring of its power.

In time, with the end of history itself, the ring too would decay and crumble away. Those who had cast the ring into darkness had believed this.

The time that seemed to last forever was suddenly shattered. A thin needle of light turned sharp as a blade and in that instant everything was set free.

The ring awakened from its long slumber.

A hand seized the ring before it had fully woken up.

It was set loose into the world beyond.

In the hands of the one who stole it and fled, the red jewel flared brighter just once.

The ring rejoiced at being freed and anticipated the bloodshed and destruction that would follow.

We scream and keep on asking. Until someone places the beautiful pure silver dagger. Against the heart that lies deep within my chest. Tell me. The truth of those lies and roses. Sigmund Wahrenheit "Posthumous Poem Funeral While Living" Imperial Year 489.

Roar!

A thunderous roar shook the air and the treetops. My eardrums and even the small bones of my ears trembled from the force.

The dragon before us was completely covered in red scales.

It raised a thick, muscled foreleg high. From each foot, five sword-like claws extended out. When it brought its leg down with a thunderous crash, the hard bedrock cracked.

At the end of its long, snake-like neck was a head like that of a lizard or crocodile. Lined up in its massive jaw was a row of dagger-like fangs.

The fire dragon was about the size of a house. Looking up at it from below, it towered over us like a mountain.

It was truly a majestic sight, worthy of being called the king of beastfolk.

Its eyes that blazed with a fierce orange light caught sight of us. It bent its long neck down so low its head nearly scraped the ground.

From between the ground-hugging dragon's fangs, breath came out as scalding steam. Spellcasting mark compositions began to be traced out with a pale phosphorescent light. Just before the dragon's scorching breath could be unleashed through spellcasting, I finished weaving my own spell.

My spellcasting power guided by my will had reached my magic sword, Judge Yorga, a sword that could also cast spells. At its hilt, the embedded orbs' calculations focused and converted the spellcasting power. The hilt's magazine rotated, using the substituted elements inside the selected spellcasting shell casing as a catalyst to start to interfer with the laws of nature.

The spell I had been weaving was amplified by the blade, the tip of the sword traced out a glowing spellcasting mark composition. I activated Exploding Roar, a third-tier chemical alchemy spellcasting technique. Pale yellow crystals of trinitrotoluene formed, detonating with mercury and lead azide as primers. A shockwave traveling at 6,900 melters per second, along with blades of steel, struck the dragon.

The fierce explosion shattered the fire dragon's crimson scales, tore into its flesh, and sprayed blood everywhere.

With eyes blazing with fury, the dragon, shook off white smoke and fresh blood.

Driving its claws into the earth, its massive body and neck reared up. The rapidly deployed explosive spellcasting hadn't managed to deliver a fatal wound.

Above the dragon's head, a shadow descended from the heavens. A white blade like a waterfall swung and struck the dragon's thick neck.

In a single stroke the tough scales, muscle, and bone were all severed.

Blood sprayed from the cross-section of the dragon's neck. In the torrential rain of blood, the massive blade of the Dragonslayer Nereto sword pierced the earth.

Above the blade, I could see my partner Gigina's fierce smile.

The severed dragon head flew between us. Trailing blood, the head fell to the earth. It landed with a heavy thud and from between its clenched fangs, flames from its incomplete spell slithered out like a snake.

Massive amounts of blood poured out from the fire dragon's neck and torso.

The shell casing of a twelve-caliber spellcasting bullet ejected from the magic sword onto the bedrock. A high clear tone, much like a silver bell, rang out, announcing the end of battle.

I exhaled the breath I had been holding and sheathed my heat-tinged blade.

It wasn't the dragon the report made it out to be.

Gigina's silver eyes gazed at the dragon's head lying on the ground.

Disappointing. Among my glorious drakken tribe, we have a saying: "Prey and women are better the stronger they are."

Don't you think problems and troubles are better the smaller they are?

You set a new low for personal potential.

Your brain is not just small but non-existent. Must be rough to have been born defective.

The latest fashion is shortening ones height by about a head, isn't it?

Gigina swung his blade horizontally and I ducked down to avoid it. The sharp blade just missed my head, shearing off several strands of hair.

I leaped back near a tree. Gigina had already sheathed his blade and was yawning.

It was business as usual. We were still the same old offensive spellcasters.

I adjusted the position of my perception glasses by touching my fingertips to the bridge of my nose.

Before me lay the dragon's massive corpse.

◇◇◇

It was a night light by a waning moon, casting out a clear blue light.

The asphalt road was etched with cracks. Cars parked on the street had been reduced to rusted skeletons, their tires all burst. Road signs had snapped in half, stop signs lying on the sidewalk.

All the windows of the buildings lining the street had been shattered, revealing dark interiors. A chilly, early-spring night breeze blew through the desolate town.

We had taken shelter on the first floor of a building on the verge of collapse. Gigina sat on the concrete floor while I'd settled on a chunk of wall debris.

Most of the ceiling had caved in, leaving bent rebar jutting out from the broken concrete. The waning moon was visible beyond the twisted metal.

A campfire burned in between us. Thin smoke from the weak flames drifted up toward the night sky.

I pulled out my phone and activated its holographic display. A grid of light wove itself together to form a three-dimensional map. I checked our current position, we were twenty-eight kilomelters northeast of Elidana City, the county seat of Elius County in the Zebern Dragon Empire. We appeared to be in the town of Glassica, which was just a frontier territory.

Glassica had once been inhabited. But after beastfolk rampages and changes to the boundaries of the Dragon Protection Buffer Zone, the townspeople had evacuated. The entire town had been abandoned. In frontier areas far from Elidana and the satellite city clusters, ghost towns like this weren't uncommon.

In this forsaken town, it was only Gigina and I here.

We were enveloped in nothing but silence. The only sound was the occasional crackling of wood in the campfire.

To return to Elidana now, we'd need to pass through the Dragon Protection Buffer Zone. Cutting straight through the frontier forest crawling with beastfolk would be too dangerous, so we had no choice but to wait until daybreak.

I remembered that the magic sword propped against my left shoulder wasn't working properly. I pushed up the scabbard with my left thumb and inspected the blade.

Moonlight shone down on the pale blade of the supreme sharpsword class magic sword Judge Yorga.

The blade was 802 millimelters long, made of delibium spellcasting silver alloy. The total handle length, excluding the mechanism, was 301 millimelters. The hilt was decorated with rivets. Three linked orbs—that served as event induction calculation devices—were embedded in the mechanism block.

The sword's weight on my shoulder confirmed to me that twelve-caliber spellcasting bullets were loaded—twelve rounds in the magazine and one in the chamber, for a total of thirteen rounds.

It was an automatic magazine-type magic sword I'd used for years. In a way I felt like it resembled me a little.

My reflection stared back at me from the blade.

Some woman had once said I resembled the film actor Ragmanov. But resembling an actor who'd gone insane from a venereal disease and poverty, who had murdered his wife and children and then killed himself wasn't exactly a compliment I could appreciate.

I might have gentle features, but endless worries had left me with a permanent scowling expression. Today I looked especially bad.

I pressed the corners of my eyes to relieve the fatigue. My stomach was acting up with a dull ache, probably from the excess acid. Minor functional disorders, fatigue, and mental stress. My blood pressure and blood sugars were low. However, I judged it wouldn't affect my work performance.

A bitter smile touched my lips. Analyzing my own body like molecular components was a bad habit of chemical alchemy spellcasters like myself.

I operated the magazine to select a spellcasting bullet. When I pulled the trigger with my left index finger resting on the hilt, an empty shell casing popped out.

I cast a first-tier chemical alchemy spell, Subjugating Acid. I swallowed the magnesium hydroxide and aluminum hydroxide it generated. The antacid took effect, easing my stomach pain.

Of course, I could also suppress gastric acid with H2 receptor antagonists like sucralfate or roxatidine acetate hydrochloride, or use atimozin, cimetidine, or ranitidine to protect the gastric mucosa, but memorizing all those molecular formulas was too much hassle.

Stomach ache, alchemist?

Gigina must have been watching my spellcasting mark composition.

Actually worried about me for once?

Didn't expect you to be that cautious, that's all.

His voice had a steely edge. Gigina, a sword dancer, stroked the scabbard of the massive Dragonslayer Nereto propped against his shoulder.

His blade-colored hair swayed in the night breeze, and his steel-gray eyes were fixed on the flickering campfire. If he'd just keep quiet, Gigina could easily be mistaken for a sculptural masterpiece, crafted by a master artisan.

Beneath his heroically masculine brows were the stern eyes of a warrior. His nose was all elegant lines and his lips were tinged an ominous red. The contrastting elements of his face combined together perfectly to create his striking beauty.

However, his personality was darker than the shadow in a dead black cat’s eye on a moonless night. His ridiculously long name, Gigina Jardy Dolk Mereios Ashleigh Buff, felt like some kind of torment in itself.

Silence fell upon us again.

Gigina kept staring at the flames. His silver eyes looked past the fire toward our company vehicle parked on the roadside.

More specifically, he was staring at the fire dragon's head in the back seat company van.

The head of the fire dragon alone was the size of a human torso.

What a load.

I let out a complaint.

If only a certain someone hadn't insisted on bringing back the whole head, we could have just taken a part of it back instead.

It's my clan's custom to show respect to dragons.

Gigina's answer was quick and ready. The fire dragon's eyes seemed to be watching us from the van's window, which didn't improve my mood. Don't hold a grudge against us, I thought as I changed the subject.

Anyway, it was a rotten job.

This is exactly the kind of work we do as offensive spellcasters. Quit complaining.

Gigina smiled thinly.

Or would you rather become some well-behaved offensive spellcaster who follows all the regulations from EMES and ENOK, that Independent Protection Association for Spellcaster Markets and the Spellcaster Beneficiary Committee?

We're not spellcasters who support research and corporate activities—we're offensive spellcasters.

I matched Gigina's grin with a sardonic smile of my own.

We cast offensive spells to exterminate dragons, giants, disasterians, and other beastfolk, and also hunt down criminal spellcasters like ourselves, and barely scrape by doing it.

So we use the various associations when it suits us, but we have no intention of following their meaningless regulations and recommendations.

Gigina had summed it up perfectly. In any case, the commissioned job was finished. I stretched my back and held my hands up to the campfire.

Tomorrow I'm going to watch Vokkul with Baylik and Iango.

I leaned back against the collapsed stairs. Gigina looked at me before continuing to gaze at the flickering flames.

Ball games are pointless.

I wasn't inviting you anyway.

My retort made Gigina's expression sour.

So what are your vacation plans, Gigina?

I'm under no obligation to tell you.

We were at a standstill. No human being on earth was capable of holding a normal conversation with Gigina. Probably there were none in other dimensions either.

Our conversations always went like this, but since we ran an office together, we couldn't stay in complete silence forever. I resented my own kindness and sociability.

Look, I know I'm a failure as a human being, but you could at least speak to me like a normal person.

Gaius, you sound like some exotic animal screeching. Drop dead first, then we'll talk.

Ugh, you're the worst. Hey, could you tell the guy to your right—no, two seats to your right—that if he hurried up and killed himself, the whole world would throw a party?

Your personality is a total extinction event.

Don't talk when your own soul is disintegrating.

That reminded me of last month's issue of Friends of Spellcasting, the offensive spellcaster trade magazine. In the poll for "nastiest offensive spellcasters," chemical spellcasters like me had taken first place among the six groups. To be honest, I wasn't happy about that.

In contrast, my partner Gigina was a biological spellcaster and they were ranked sixth. Since biological spellcasters came from a school with many swordsmen and fighters, they apparently weren't considered to have straightforward, nasty personalities—but I'd like to present the man before me as Exhibit A to the contrary.

More silence. A conversation with Gigina was as fruitless as trying to grow two crops a year in permafrost.

Gaius, your Exploding Roar earlier was inadequate at that distance and with that amount of power. If my follow-up had been 0.1 seconds slower, you would be dead.

At least I was careful not to get my partner caught up in it. Should I make sure to drag you down with me next time?

With your dirty fighting style, you could have used the fourth-tier Crying Phosphoric Death to take it down from a medium range.

This bastard was always like this. Acting like he was some kind of expert, spouting off grandiose theories about how best to fight dragons.

Most of what he said was actually correct, but I had about as much desire to listen meekly as a demon has a conscience.

How could I use Crying Phosphoric Death, which generates isopropyl fluoride methylphosphonate—basically sarin gas—in that kind of close combat? If I can't control it perfectly, we'll both croak.

That's why you should train regularly.

Gigina sounded exasperated. Being lectured by Gigina, who had reached the thirteenth grade, a first-class offensive spellcaster, left me with no leg to stand on as a twelfth-grade practitioner.

I knew your jump attack was coming, so I figured a moment's delay would work in my favor. Killing is what drakken tribe is good at, after all.

At my words, Gigina closed his eyes. He didn't seem to be listening.

The next moment, I felt a chill on my neck.

The massive blade of the Dragonslayer Nereto was touching my carotid artery. My breathing stopped.

Gigina's sword was drawn at high speed, but I hadn't caught the moment when this massive blade had started moving or seen its trajectory.

Don't you dare speak of the drakken tribe, scum.

Gigina's lips twisted into a sneer as he spat out that warning.

The drakken tribe has hunted the inhuman beastfolk since ancient times. It's our calling.

His voice carried a razor-sharp intensity.

Among offensive spellcasters, we are the warrior tribe that created the dragonslayer profession who specialize in fighting dragons. It's no exaggeration to say that we developed the foundation of modern anti-dragon combat techniques, technology, equipment, and tactics.

His eyes were fixed on mine.

Don't you dare speak of such things, bastard.

What a pain-in-the-ass clan. What a pain-in-the-ass partner.

Gigina was of the drakken tribe.

He was only half from that tribe, though. That might be one of the causes of his pain-in-the-ass personality.

My reluctant partnership with Gigina was like watching a firework display in an ammunition depot. In other words, it felt like dancing about with a noose pulling at my neck.

The firewood in the campfire popped, like the sound of breaking bones.

I moved back from the blade at my neck. Gigina withdrew his magic sword. I let out a long breath.

Don't always try to solve things with a blade. Is it your clan's law, or a chronic condition? Can't you relax unless you're killing someone?

I'd like to cut out that diseased tongue of yours since all it does is spew filth.

When I looked away from Gigina, the fire dragon's head came into view again. The eyes that had once blazed with fire were now clouded over in a dark, murky crimson.

I understand that you hate the humans who've decreased your habitat.

The fire dragon's eyes were accusing.

But even if you entered the Glassica Dragon Buffer Zone, once you eat humans, humanity has no choice but to hunt you down. Don't resent us so much.

My excuses would never reach the dead dragon.

Perhaps neither of us had much luck.

It happens sometimes. A traveling merchant unknowingly wanders into dragon territory—those buffer zones the Tianlun Agreement established between the Empire and the dragons.

He kept speaking with his steely tone of voice.

With their habitat already shrunk down to almost nothing, dragons go berserk when their sanctuary is invaded, and they devour the human encroachers. But their rage doesn't stop there, they go after the surrounding residents too.

So that's how we ended up with two merchant casualties and three from the frontier guard unit.

Thinking back over the whole mess just reinforced how grim the situation was.

And now the fire dragon is dead too. It's a vicious cycle.

As I studied the fire dragon's head, something bothered me.

Hey, Gigina. Don't you think there's something's off here?

What, did the village idiot catch sight of himself in a mirror?

No, isn't it a bit small to be the dragon described in the report?

When the dragon before us was alive, it had measured 19.5 melters from head to tail.

According to the DDMM—the Pan-Drakken Dragon Measurement Method you so graciously told me about ages ago—dragons reach about 20 melters in total length anywhere from ten to a hundred years after birth, give or take.

My unease deepened.

After that, they grow another melter every hundred years. So at two hundred years they're 21 melters, at three hundred they're 22 melters. The older they get, the bigger they grow, and the stronger their magic and combat skills become.

The pieces clicked into place.

The report said the dragon was about the size of a house, so I was expecting some ancient terror at least four to five hundred years old. We even hauled out our most powerful spellcasting tool for this. But the dragon in front of us was only about a hundred years old, it was practically a juvenile. The coloring matched the dark shade mentioned in the report, but it was dark red—definitely a fire dragon.

Gigina mulled over my observations and reached his own conclusion.

The people that reported it were panicking. You can't blame them for seeing it as bigger than it really was. But you're right, the discrepancy in size is way too large.

Gigina thought this over calmly.

The report mentioned a mated pair of dragons, so the other one is probably the more powerful, house-sized dragon.

Anticipation gleamed in Gigina's steel-colored eyes.

It might even be a longlife dragon.

Don't even joke about that.

I pulled my blanket up to my chest. The words "longlife dragon" sent a chill down my spine. I should get some sleep until morning. A yawn started to escape my lips.

My yawn caught in my throat. Gigina had already sat up in a crouch.

Gaius, can you sense it?

Yes.

Gigina and I leaped over the collapsed wall and emerged onto the street.

An empty asphalt road. Rusted abandoned cars. A town lined with dark gray buildings.

But we already knew.

Even though I wasn't a spellcasting swordmaster trained to sense killing intent, I could feel it when something got this close.

Despite their massive and clumsy appearance, they were surprisingly agile. They could flex their long tails to slip between stone pillars. They could completely conceal the sound of their crushing footsteps and the radiant heat and carbon dioxide emissions coming from their bodies with the use of quantum interference barriers.

But they weren't good at concealing their killing intent.

After all, there were no life forms on this earth they needed to fear or hide from.

A thunderous roar rang out.

The wall of the building ahead cracked and shattered. Chunks of debris rained down on Gigina and me like shrapnel.

We immediately dove for cover. We rolled to a stop on the asphalt. The billowing dust fell as a smokescreen around us.

Through the white smoke, metallic scales glinted. Five gleaming claws appeared and descended. The deep, rumbling crash of shattering asphalt reverberated through my chest.

Next, a massive reptilian head emerged from the white smoke, like some prehistoric lizard or crocodile. The waning moonlight illuminated its horns and revealed the piercing, frozen eyes characteristic of dragonfolk.

Green pupils swept from right to left, taking us in.

Looks like we found the real cause of all this damage.

So that fire dragon from earlier was just taking advantage of the chaos and going on a rampage.

The dragon before us was black, its scales a gleaming jet-black.

Biologically speaking, it belonged to the crawldragon genus, the greatdragon family, and the scaledragon order. It was a related species to the flame-breathing fire dragons and the chlorine gas-spewing green dragons. This one, however, was a particularly viscious dragon species known for breathing strong acid.

Its raised head reached the height of a second-story window. Its long neck led down to a house-sized torso supported by powerful limbs. When its massive tail swung casually and struck the asphalt, even that light contact was enough to completely shatter the pavement.

My perception glasses measured the dragon at a total length of 27.7855 melters. According to DDMM, that made it roughly eight to nine hundred years old.

This is the worst.

The curse escaped my lips before I realized it.

Don't tell me it's actually in the longlife dragon class.

As dragonfolk aged, their intelligence and spellcasting power increased. Most importantly, their sheer size made their combat ability equivalent to natural disasters. Dragons that had lived for a thousand years developed a metallic sheen to their scales.

Humanity called dragons that had lived a thousand years longlife dragons, with equal parts awe and fear.

Over the last three years, between our previous agency work and now, Gigina and I had defeated eleven dragons, even some over five hundred years old, but none of that mattered here.

Even for the drakken tribe, it's nearly impossible to survive a fight with an invincible longlife dragon.

Gigina was muttering under his breath.

Though it wasn't quite a longlife dragon, we were facing something nearly equivalent to one.

The black dragon's green eyes looked down at us. I could feel the overwhelming magical power radiating from those glacier-like eyes. My entire body went rigid.

Reflexively, Gigina cast a first-tier biological enhancement spell called Awakening Flourish. Monoamines such as norepinephrine and dopamine flooded through my brain's locus coeruleus and elsewhere, jolting my consciousness into sharp clarity.

Still, my body was frozen with a primal fear.

Simply by existing, the dragon possessed the commanding majesty of a king of the beastfolk that overwhelmed all living things.

ORUH!

Gigina's lion's roar marked the start of our desperate battle. His fierce cry shattered the paralysis gripping my body.

The rotating magazine of Gigina's raised Dragonslayer Nereto consumed a spellcasting bullet as he charged forward. He activated the third-tier biological enhancement Crabshell Armor. Reinforced alloys embedded in his body surged outward, forming hexagonal plates that covered his skin. The reinforced chitin and hardened cuticle armor, along with his enhanced muscles, made his entire frame grow larger.

A helmet and face guard materialized over Gigina's head from his back, transforming him into a demon's visage. His eyes glowing through the gaps in the armor burned with a fighting spirit.

The charging drakken warrior was now completely encased in armor.

Gigina veered to the right while I went to the left to avoid the dragon's deadly breath. We approached from opposite ends of the street. Staying together would mean instant death.

Rushing past the buildings like a hurricane, Gigina reached behind his waist with his left hand. He grabbed three metal cylinders from his leather belt, gripping them between his fingers, then hurled them forward.

These tools, called sealed spellcasting grenades, allowed even non-explosive spellcasters to activate low-tier explosive spells.

The thrown grenades exploded right in front of the dragon's eyes. But the blast and steel fragments suddenly vanished just short of their target.

My perception glasses confirmed that a fifth-tier arithmetic quantum spell called Anti-Spellcasting Cataclysm Barrier had been deployed.

The spell worked by interfering with action-related quantum constants and wave functions through observational effects. By applying even stronger interference, it could reduce a spell's power or completely nullify lower-tier ones. It was a powerful defensive barrier used by dragons, ancient giants, and disasterians.

However, the grenades' menace and disruption effects had let us close the distance.

The dragon moved forward. Its right foreleg, as thick as a palace pillar, came down. When it stomped on an abandoned car in the road, it crumpled like paper.

The dragon swept its giant tree-trunk-like left foreleg horizontally at Gigina when he came into range. Its strike carried the destructive power of a battering ram at a gale-force speed. Gigina ducked low to evade it. The dragon's claws scraping across the warrior's helmet and armor sparked pale blue sparks.

It then raised and let its left leg crash down, shattering and pulverizing the asphalt. Gigina rolled sideways through the black debris. Underneath his helmet, he was grinning fiercly.

For a drakken warrior, a longlife dragon was the ultimate prey. They feared it, revered it, and therefore must slay it.

While still rolling, Gigina slammed his heel into the cobblestone, coming to an abrupt stop, then he shot forward just above the ground like a bullet.

He raised the twisted parallelogram that was the Dragonslayer Nereto to shoulder level and swung. The blade struck the right foreleg that was supporting the dragon's weight.

The blade cleaved through armored scales, sliced through tough muscle, and blood erupted in a crimson spray. Gigina's heel cracked the asphalt as his swing followed through. The dragon's massive right foreleg was completely severed. Everything from its elbow down went spinning through the night air.

The dragon roared in agony and swung its left foreleg. As Gigina retreated, the severed right foreleg crashed to the ground with a deep, resonant thud.

The dragon must have been shocked that its heavily armored body had been cut clean through.

Spellcasting swordmasters like Gigina weren't ordinary humans. The mitochondria in their muscle cells were several times more numerous than in normal people, dramatically enhancing their maximum oxygen capacity and muscle strength.

Having demonstrated this superhuman strength, Gigina closed the distance between him and the dragon once more.

The dragon swung its left foreleg at Gigina. The drakken warrior dodged away with a leap. The building wall that caught the dragon's blow instead was instantly reduced to rubble.

I activated Exploding Roar. The trinitrotoluene explosive detonated, hammering the dragon with blast waves and razor-sharp steel fragments traveling at approximately 6,900 melters per second.

A building collapsed. The street corner was engulfed in a billowing white smoke. The dragon suffered virtually no injuries from my explosive spell, but it did lose its vision so lashed out blindly with its tail.

Gigina was beside me, watching for an opening.

In Gigina's hands was a true sharpsword class magic weapon. The drakken tribe called them dragonslayer swords, and this one was the blade Gigina had named Nereto.

The blade was as wide as a child's shoulders, curved at the base and middle, resembling a twisted parallelogram, with a total length of 1,071 millimelters. It was forged from Ganasite, a heavy spellcasting alloy that had a Knoop hardness and durability scale surpassing even diamond. It was a specialized magic sword enlarged specifically to slice through the massive bodies of dragons and beastfolk and destroy them.

Blood still streaming from its severed right foreleg, the dragon lashed out with its tail. Gigina's blade intercepted the attacking appendage.

With a thunderous crash, the tail was deflected, smashing through another building wall.

The explosive smoke cleared. The dragon faced us from across the street corner. Its pupils had narrowed to slits.

It had finally realized that we weren't merely prey to be devoured and killed, but offensive spellcasters with the power to destroy even the great dragonfolk themselves.

The dragon reared its neck back, inhaled deeply, and rapidly expanded its chest cavity. Spellcasting mark compositions materialized before its jaw.

Just as its throat swelled and it was about to release its deadly breath, my spell had finished forming.

I cast the fifth-tier electromagnetic lightning spellcasting technique Electric Thunder Orb. A pale blue sphere formed at the tip of my magic sword Judge Yorga and launched forward. The crackling bolt of purple lightning flew at light speed and struck the dragon's interference barrier.

The plasma created by the spell was in a condition where electrons and atomic nuclei of atmospheric atoms became extremely ionized. On impact, it possessed enough destructive power to instantly vaporize as much water as was in a garden pond.

The dragon's interference barrier and the plasma bolt both erupted up into a tremendous flash. Quantum interference was layered upon quantum interference, a scattering pale blue radiant light.

Finally, the crackling lightning broke through the barrier. The bolt meant to strike the dragon's chest hit its wounded right foreleg instead, instantly vaporizing it into a spray of blood and flesh.

The dragon had raised its already injured foreleg as a shield, having realized the barrier alone wouldn't stop the attack. A chill ran down my spine. A black dragon with superior defenses was the worst possible opponent.

In the dragon's eyes, now having lost a leg, hatred burned like flames. The spellcasting mark compositions had finished forming at its mouth.

With a massive exhale, the spell activated. A deadly torrent erupted forth.

A massive wave cast its shadow over me. At the same moment, something slammed into my body. Gigina had rushed in from the side and rolled us both to safety.

I recovered my footing after the tumble.

The dragon's breath had completely transformed the landscape of the abandoned town.

The asphalt where I'd been standing was bubbling like boiling water. The stone statue behind me had dissolved beyond recognition—its features and limbs indistinguishable—and was letting off steam. The pungent, irritating smell of strong acid, like rusted metal, filled the night streets.

What the dragon had spewed was called aqua regia and it had been generated by the third-tier chemical alchemy spellcasting technique Sulfuric Blaze Flow.

Aqua regia, a mixture of concentrated nitric acid and concentrated hydrochloric acid, was an ultra-strong acid that could dissolve even stable metals like gold and platinum due to the chlorine and nitrosyl chloride. If a human were to bathe in it, they would experience the hell of dissolving alive.

The aqua regia generated by the dragon's enormous spellcasting power was so potent that even the vapor coming from the acid caused a searing pain in my eyes and nose without direct contact.

Through the vapor, I could make out a black shadow and pale blue phosphorescent light.

Second shot incoming!

Gigina launched into the air while carrying me. I could see a torrent of acid surging beneath our feet as we landed on an abandoned car.

I groaned out in agony. Acid had splashed my back legs, eating into my jeans and jacket, and I was in excrutiating pain as my skin and flesh melted away.

The dragon flexed its tail. The largest whip in the world lashed toward us with devastating force. With a thunderous crash, the abandoned car was pulverized.

A moment earlier, Gigina and I had leaped into the air. We watched the car body get shredded into metal fragments from above before landing. Leaving me behind as I was unable to spellcast, Gigina began to sprint. He circled right, moving into the dragon's blind spot created by its injured right foreleg.

Spellcasting mark compositions appeared in front of the dragon's mouth, and the fourth-tier chemical alchemy spellcasting technique Silver Ridge Frozen Breath activated. Liquid nitrogen at the extremely low temperature of -195.8°C shot out under high pressure.

Over a dozen ice spears struck Gigina's dragonslayer sword. He spun his long anti-dragon combat cloak and raised it with his left arm to block the freezing blast.

Bitter cold air swept across his cloak and shell armor, freezing them solid.

Gigina had simultaneously activated a second-tier biological enhancement spellcasting technique: Antifreeze Egg. The antifreeze proteins generated within his body prevented ice crystals from forming, while thyroid hormones raised his body temperature to withstand the cold.

With frost coating the surface of his shell armor, Gigina sprinted forward like an arrow. He came to a sudden stop, scattering ice fragments as he dodged a strike from the dragon's left foreleg.

By the time the dragon's foreleg had smashed into the asphalt, Gigina was already airborne. He kicked off the dragon's elbow to launch himself even higher.

Above the black dragon, he raised his blade, bathed in moonlight.

His massive rotating blade came down toward the dragon's skull. The black dragon arched its neck backward, escaping the lethal strike.

Its great jaw opened, and dozens of dagger-like teeth closed in on Gigina.

The tip of Gigina's dragonslayer sword glowed as he activated a second-tier biological transformation spellcasting technique Air Wheel Turtle. Compressed air expelled from nozzles on his back and soles sent him into rapid descent. The dragon's jaw snapped shut on empty night air.

Gigina rolled forward through the air. At the end of his arc, his dragonslayer sword struck deep into the dragon's left foreleg. The dragon let out a pained cry and swung its right foreleg—the one that had been reduced to just an elbow. It only grazed Gigina as he jumped backward, but his helmet shattered.

His silver hair fell loose as he landed beside me.

A trickle of fresh blood flowed from his forehead, tracing down his cheek to his lips.

That was a close one, looks like this won't be so easy after all.

Gigina's pink tongue licked away his own blood.

Across the road, the dragon began spellcasting. The wounds on its right leg, missing everything beyond the elbow, and its slashed left foreleg started to bubble. A skeletal structure formed, then muscle fibers, blood vessels, and nerve tissue wove together. Scales covered everything over, and within three seconds, the five claws of its foot had completely regenerated themselves.

This was a dragon's healing spellcasting ability. It didn't even need any spellcasting bullets.

This was what dragons were.

It was one of the strongest life forms on earth, possessing advanced intelligence, powerful spellcasting, and massive bodies. Even with our spellcasting and sword techniques, we couldn't manage to inflict so much as minor injuries. What should we do? I wished someone could tell us.

At the crossroads of the deserted town, Gigina, the dragon, and I faced each other in a triangle.

It was a desperate situation, we were both wounded by super-strong acid, freezing air, and devastating strikes from the dragon's massive body.

But Gigina beside me was actually smiling. He ejected all the empty shell casings from the Dragonslayer Nereto's revolving chamber. He loaded six custom 22-caliber super-large spellcasting bullets all at once. With the sound of scraping metal, he cocked the hammer.

Well then, ready to go?

He spoke with the corner of his mouth curled in a smirk, clearly provoking me.

Of course.

Even against a dragon, I wasn't about to accept my fate like some kind of peaceful priest and go quietly to my death. Better to die fighting and struggling. It was simple, but that was my philosophy.

It's way too reckless to go head-on against that barrier. We definitely need a different strategy.

At my words, Gigina gave a slight nod of understanding.

Gigina charged. The dragon responded by moving forward quickly.

The dragon struck downward, but Gigina caught the blow with his blade. Even he would die instantly if he took the full force of a blow from a dragon weighing dozens of tones. The massive arm was deflected along the blade in a shower of red sparks.

Its follow-up attacks from its left and right legs and long tail couldn't catch Gigina's high-speed movement. But even he couldn't advance further against a barrage of attacks where each strike meant instant death.

A heavy downward leg strike forced Gigina to retreat as the blow shattered the asphalt. The black dragon reared its neck up high, preparing to release ultra-strong acid again. It had realized that I was weaving spellcasting from behind, waiting for an opportunity.

Gigina threw his Dragonslayer Nereto, which he treasured above all else save his mother and his pride.

The blade cut through the night air, spinning as it flew. It struck the dragon's jaw, piercing through the lower jaw along with the spellcasting mark composition that had been forming, scattering light. The release of its death breath was forcibly halted.

Ultra-strong acid overflowed from dragon's mouth, and a muffled scream escaped it.

An opportunity. I cast a second-tier electromagnetic lightning spellcasting technique Thunder Whip. A single bolt of lightning raced from the tip of my magic sword.

Mockery flashed in the dragon's eyes. Lightning of a mere million voltols couldn't even penetrate the dragon's scales, it merely scattered purple electricity uselessly against the rapidly deployed barrier's surface.

The electronic tendrils were neutralized by the barrier but they still clung to Nereto's handle that protruded outside the barrier from the dragon's jaw.

The deadly current ignored both barrier and scale armor, flowing from the handle through to the blade into the dragon's body. The electronic torrent boiled everything from its jaw to brain, neck, torso, internal organs, before exiting through its left rear leg into the asphalt.

The dragon's entire body, burned from within, trembled. White smoke rose from its mouth and nostrils as it spilled blackened, boiling blood.

The dragon endured by thrusting its forelegs into the asphalt. Its heat-clouded eyes moved. The dying dragon's neck plunged rapidly downward.

Its upper and lower jaws opened wide, rushing to devour me.

The dragon had made another mistake.

Gigina sprinted in from the side, intercepting the dragon's descending neck. The impact sent his body flying backward.

But he had locked his hands around the handle of the blade embedded in the dragon's lower jaw.

Gah!

With a demonic roar, both of Gigina's feet drove into the asphalt. He couldn't stop his momentum and his heels carved twin furrows through the pavement.

Dragonslayer Nereto's rotary chamber spat fire as the spellcasting bullets activated.

The fifth-tier biological enhancement spellcasting technique Steel Demon Strength activated within Gigina's body. His enhanced muscles expanded throughout his frame to the point of destroying his shell armor and blasting away the screws holding each piece together. He buried his heels deep into the asphalt, stopping the dragon's charge in its tracks.

Through spellcasting, red fibers (slow-twitch muscle fibers) used oxygen in the citric acid cycle to optimally break down glycogen and glucose to produce adenosine triphosphate (ATP). At the same time, white fibers (fast-twich muscle fibers) used creatine phosphate and ATP with maximum efficiency, triggering contractions through the ATP-CP metabolism. Enhanced neural transmission between the fortified slow-twitch and intermediate muscle fibers allowed for the synthesis of large amounts of creatine phosphate and ATP.

When overload occured, signals from Golgi tendon organs in ligaments and joints normally suppressed motor neuron activity through spinal reflexes that prevented tissue damage. This protective mechanism was bypassed by routing Golgi tendon organ signals directly to the motor cortex, forcibly blocking the generation of inhibitory signals from the spinal cord.

The enhancement affected muscles in his legs from the sartorius muscle to the triceps surae, quadriceps femoris, gluteus maximus and gluteus medius.

It spread through the external oblique and rectus abdominis, serratus anterior and pectoralis major of his torso.

The power coursed through the rhomboid major, latissimus dorsi, and trapezius of his back.

It reached the deltoids of both shoulders and the triceps and biceps in his arms.

Approximately 400 types of muscles throughout his body, totalling 650, expanded to their absolute limit. The tremendous strength generated by the superhuman's entire frame was channeled together, focused at a single point on the handle of the Dragonslayer embedded in the dragon's jaw. With that he swung forward at full force!

The blade drove forward, tearing and crushing scales, muscle, and bone. The sword carved through its jaw to the dragon's skull and beyond into air.

The dragon's head flew past Gigina and crashed into a building wall. Trailing black blood, it tumbled down to the road.

A silence and stillness fell that made my eardrums ache.

The dragon's neck, having lost everything except part of its lower jaw, crashed onto the asphalt. Both forelegs that had been supporting its weight snapped, bringing the creature to its knees. Small bat-like wings flapped once, and the black dragon's mountain-like body swayed.

From swaying, it started tilting, and then it fell all at once. With a deafening rumble, the black dragon's body collapsed.

Massive amounts of blood streamed across the asphalt like a black river from the severed neck.

A tributary of the blood river reached my feet.

I exhaled the breath I'd been holding without realizing. Gigina was soaked head to toe in the black dragon's blood.

Unable to stand due to fatigue and injury, I thrust my magic sword into the asphalt as a makeshift cane and leaned against it. I dropped to my knees on the asphalt and took deep, ragged breaths.

Gigina, who must have been more severely injured than me, knelt on his left knee. He deactivated his shell armor and muscle enhancement spellcasting, then exhaled.

Gigina, you were waiting for me to kneel first, weren't you?

Who would kneel before you?

Nobody could possibly like Gigina. My partner was definitely an unpleasant guy.