「Why the hell the exit portal is in the skyyyyyyyyy!!!! 」
Since we began our long free-fall from the altitude of about 3000 meters above the ground, Kyle did nothing but complain and scream.
Oooh, I wasn’t aware that the grip in my left hand was so strong.
「No, I mean, it would look pretty bad if we just broke the barrier and entered as if we owned the place. 」
I initially thought that the protective barrier would be spread all over the capital, but it turns out that it was only spread over the royal castle.
Then, even though we were in the air, Nectar bowed down his head with most surprising dexterity.
「I appreciate your concern, if you were to break down this barrier, it would take more than a year to erect it again. 」
「How in the hell can you be so calm, Nectaaaaaaarrrrrr!!!??? 」
I think that there was a whole lot that Kyle wanted to say, at least his body language was indicating that.
As for Nectar, since he was falling right by my side and with his trusted staff, this whole situation didn’t seem to bother him that much.
When we reached the altitude of 2000 meters above the ground, I reverted back to my original dragon form and had both of them sitting on my back. Our falling speed dropped a few times, with each time a spasm appearing on Kyle’s face.
「If you wanted to avoid the barrier so badly, then why didn’t you use the nearby plain for a landing pad? Wasn’t it empty? 」
Hmm, I am pretty sure that I had my reasons for not doing just that.
「I think that this way of entrance is far more suited for a dragon like me. This time I wanted to avoid getting you two into trouble, and since I tend to forget about my surroundings and pay no attention to any humans in the vicinity, I thought it would be ………… Alright, coming from the plains would just take too long. 」
Besides, I didn’t wanted to dirty my dress.
For a moment out there, I thought that the expression on Kyle’s face was that of pure amazement, but quite contrary, his expression was rather serious.
「I can’t swear the magical oath to you. However, I can stop other people from making bad speculations about you. This I swear I will accomplish with my full power. 」
Are you serious?
「You don’t really need to worry about it that much, since this situation is something of my fault to begin with, but since you’re offering, then I’ll gladly accept. 」
As my dragon form approached the ground, there were people who started to gather in the castle’s gardens and walls, raising their heads and gazing upon me with amazement, making a whole lot of noise in the process.
People across the town and in the castle seemed to have understood what was going on. It looks like my grand entrance was super effective.
After making sure that we were low enough for people to hear us, I raised my voice as to get past the wind’s roar.
「Greetings, humans! I have come to pay visit to your new king.」
I wonder why, but for some reason Kyle let out a deep and tired sigh.
—
Anyways, I managed to safely land in the castle’s garden, although there was an entire forest of swords pointed at me when I did, but fortunately both Nectar and Kyle managed to somehow mitigate this whole situation. Then, when the new king came out of the castle in a hurry together with his officials, I turned towards him and greeted him.
Since it would be kind of problematic for a dragon to talk to them, I turned into my human form in order to say to them what needed to be said. That way I wouldn’t have to explain it to each and every one of them separately.
And thanks to that little demonstration of my abilities, there was no reason for them to suspect Nectar of anything anymore. Needless to say, I was rather pleased with myself.
The new king proved to be the complete opposite of the old one, being a young man in his late teens compared to the old and senile man.
According to some gossips that I overheard later, apparently he was an illegitimate child of the king who ruled the country during its golden age.
It seems that all of his relatives were no more, purged by the previous king along with any other child that was of a similar age, so that they would not raise any claims for the throne in the future.
Fortunately, there was a magical tool that could be used to prove if someone was blood related to somebody else, and that very tool was used during the new king’s coronation to ascertain his claim for the throne.
Something like that was currently going on.
「Um, this is, I mean, Chaos Dragon-sama? Just what are you going to do with us……? 」
「Hmm? Ah –– Oh, yeah, right, I completely forgot about that. 」
Although I was once called Chaos Dragon around these parts and was attacked by the former king’s troops while I was properly doing my job, I already managed to forget all about. But lo and behold, now he managed to make me remember about it all once again.
「Let’s see … I hold no grudges against the human race, but it is true that the former king did something unforgivable. Thus, I might as well warn you, if you ever try to do something similar, you are going to regret it. But it’s not like you were thinking about doing anything like that, am I right? 」
「………… !!!!!!!!! 」
It was pretty amusing to see King-kun acting like that, so much that I smiled deep inside of my mind.
Then, seeing the reaction of their King-kun, all of his ministers reacted in a similar matter, looking quite shocked and awed.
It was rather mysterious, but oh well, I carried on nonetheless.
「Do not try to harm me in any way, then you have absolutely nothing to worry about. In other words, if you keep on being good to me, I have no real reason to be mean to you, unless you try to harm those important to me. Understood? 」
「O-Of course! 」
I declared something like that partially as a joke (although I imbued my words with a little bit of magic) and as a reaction to that their faces went from red to pale, and suddenly everyone was nodding vigorously.
Seeing everyone reacting like that was a real confidence booster.
Also, if the internal affairs go smoothly and peacefully, the culture should flourish as well and there could only be good things coming out of it.
「That was really overdoing it, Lava-dono! What are you going to do if every young man is going to start falling for you, huh!? 」
I thought it was a pretty good idea, but apparently Kyle had a completely different opinion on that subject.
We were guided to a guest room and the three of us were currently sitting there. Kyle was constantly frowning his eyebrows and looked as though he had a strong headache.
He also smacked my forehead with his hand. Of course it didn’t hurt at all. I just put my hand to the place where he smacked me out of reflex than anything else.
「…… My friend, I dare you to try this again with me. I double dare, try this again and I am really going to get angry! 」
「Oh, fancy that you bring that up! Didn’t you heard a word I said earlier!? 」
「I, if you so desire, Lava, I can also smack you once or twice!! 」
「Why are you trying to make a competition out of it, Nectar!? 」
Even if they try to go as far as placing some kind of spying equipment here to try to eavesdrop on us, upon entering the room I cast the eavesdrop prevention magic, so now we could freely talk about anything that we wanted. Not that we had anything to worry about in the first place, if you asked me.
Because I am a dragon, even if someone was standing at the other side of the walls here I would be able to sense them using my heightened senses, so they might as well come out with it to openly. But if they had to use magic to that, I could tolerate that to some extent.
That being said, being eavesdropped on was not pleasant in the slightest.
However, when I told them that I wanted to drink some tea, they instantly responded to my request and there was this girl that brought it to us together with some sweets! A true maid serving you tea and sweets! It looks like Kyle and Nectar’s reputation went up significantly, having been recognized by the dragon himself.
Thanks to that opinion circulating about, the position of two magicians, being already quite low even despite their innate abilities, got slightly better, which was a good thing, I guess.
Thanks to that, for the first time in the last 300 years I could taste the nostalgic taste of madeleines! It almost made me cry tears of joy!
Without thinking it through, I shook the hand of the maid who brought us the sweets.
「Madeleinesssssss!! If you were to sell them in a shop you would get rich in no time! Thank you so much for bringing them to us! 」
It was then when I realized that I was shaking the maid’s arm way too hard, so much in fact that tears began to well up in her eyes, and it was also then when Kyle smacked me to the head.
It would also seem that seeing my delight upon eating the sweets, Nectar decided to use his talents to learn how to bake sweets.
After that we were also invited to dinner hosted by the new king, but since it sounded troublesome and knowing that my table manners left much to be desired, we decided to ditch the proposal.
We instead decided to invite some friends and fellow magicians, where we could talk easily, all the while chewing in the dishes that Nectar managed to cook.
It turned out that the superior taste of Nectar’s cooking was something that was well-known among his fellow magicians.
Ah, there is nothing that could possibly beat a bowl of hot, steaming, fluffy rice!
Someone even managed to procure a bottle of alcohol and started to distribute it amongst us, so you can well imagine that it was quite a sight to behold, humans getting drunk together with a dragon!
I was seriously surprised to see that Nectar was proving to be a heavy drinker who was handling his liquor quite well, as well as to see that Kyle was doing not so great, with his face getting all flushed. Someone even managed to maneuver him into confessing his love to the girl in their unit as a joke, but since he was drunk he took it very seriously and actually did it. Things started to go south when the girl actually blushed and was ready to accept his confession, and that’s when things began to go even more south.
It looks like he had a whole bunch of rivals to compete with for the girl’s attention. What a merry band!
Among the cheerful and drunk atmosphere Kyle started to argue with other men, each trying to prove that they would be the most suitable partner for the girl, while I watched it all with enthusiasm.
Dragon’s words have the power to become reality, so be cheerful! Be happy!!
In the end, thanks to the sea of liquor that flowed on that night, I got to know everyone in here so well that they started to call me ‘Dragon-san’ and got me involved in singing a popular drinking song the words of which I managed to memorize in an instant.
「Well then, see you, Nectar. Be sure to contact me from time to time. 」
「Of course! We are definitely going to see each other again! 」
The next morning, Kyle and his men said their goodbyes to Nectar, since there was nothing here for them to do and so they decided to go back.
Adjusting the teleportation circle proved to be a lot harder than I initially expected it to be, not to mention that I was mentally tired from drinking so much yesterday in such a large company, and since it would probably cause the local people heart attacks if they saw me flying over the castle, I was unable to return to my dragon form.
I thought that doing this early in the morning was going to be a good idea, but I was dead wrong on that one.
Oh well, just don’t blame me if I end up sending everyone somewhere else entirely by accident, for example, like, umm, to the nearby town instead. I would probably die from sheer embarrassment if they remind me of such incident on our next meeting.
Not that it was going to influence my life in any way, but still……
It also happened that right around that time, we started to receive various kinds of invitations from the king’s officials to things like balls or welcoming parties that were organized here in the royal palace.
One of such officials was a minister who would always stay by the king’s side.
Soon, we received a word that Nectar’s presence at the meeting was required.
They were going to open a branch of Magical Academy in a small town nearby. This town was one of the towns that got struck with a dragon-panic upon seeing me. This branch was to devote its research to studying leylines and serve as a mean of communicating with dragons, and Nectar was appointed to be the head of this institute.
There was other work that came with the position, but basically it was the same kind of work that he used to do for the Kingdom, but even so he would always find the time to come to see me once a week in the plains with his staff in hand, just so that he could relax, or to take a nap…… Is it just me, or was he using me as an excuse to slack off?
Since I was the one who asked Nectar to conduct the research on the leylines, I would always read through the documents he would bring to me, just to make sure there were no mistakes in them.
…… Oh, right, I remember a conversation we had over a month ago, the one that we had with not a single spoken word, and I remember that Nectar is supposedly the biggest genius in the whole country.
A whole month has passed on such peaceful moments, but the matters at the royal castle didn’t seem to go so good.
One day, Nectar said something to me, sounding considerably worried:
「Kyle is looking more and more tired as of late…… 」
I heard that Kyle was appointed as the head of all mages, a tiring and grueling job, and lately it was getting especially hectic.
I also looks that it was something that was in some way related to me.
It looks like both Kyle and Nectar were receiving invitation to the official parties and tea parties that were addressed to me, and were very busy attending on my behalf.
Nectar was also beginning to look tired.
I told the king that such matters meant very little to me, and I thought it was only natural for me to refuse them all, but they kept on sending them nonetheless, as if it was to tease me or to try my patience. Yup, this had to be it.
I was truly grateful to Nectar and Kyle for handling those matters in my stead.
「I would like to help you somehow, since it looks that Kyle is getting a little bit overwhelmed with his work. Any suggestions? 」
「Let’s see. It is partially my fault as well. Maybe I should just stop and agree to go see him at the king’s place. 」
「I wouldn’t do that. Messaging is just fine. Apparently, if Lava showed up at the king’s castle, it would have the opposite effect on him. 」
「Ahh ––So that’s it, huh? Then maybe we should try to think of a way to get all of his accumulated stress disappear? 」
After all, I am indebted to them for all that they did for me, and so I just can’t help it but to worry about it.
「Thank you very much. 」
Though Nectar looked kind of saddened, we kept on thinking about a solution of some sort, but in the end I was unable to think of anything else but contacting Kyle telepathically through the scale. Then suddenly, a thoughtful voice could be heard coming from the magic scale.
If it was something along the things that I already told Nectar, I didn’t mind sharing that information at all. Also, I remember that some of the people from Kyle’s unit wanted to hear about it as well, so maybe they could sneak out and come here?
I heard that Kyle decided to come to the plains to listen about the story, and so two days later he was on his way here together with his men.
By the way, getting from the castle to this plain takes a whole day’s worth of journey on horseback.
The horses from this world were really strong and well-built, running as fast as cars back on Earth. Maybe I should try that way of transportation for myself one of these days.
They were covered in dust and with bitter smiles on their lips, but their eyes were shining brightly.
Their enthusiasm managed to influence even me, and so the lecture was going on way after the sun went down.
Kyle was the most enthusiastic person of the whole bunch, and as he was going back he looked livelier than when he came here, so it looks like he managed to at least refresh himself in some way, which greatly pleased Nectar and I.
After that, the number of magicians that wanted to take part in the lectures steadily increased, so they asked Nectar and Kyle for permission, as a result of which from time to time there were whole study groups learning about magic under the blue sky.
The only qualification one needed to have was to be a newbie when it comes to magic, one that wanted to learn about magic more than concerning himself with the fact that a mighty dragon was the teacher.
When it comes to speaking openly to a dragon, the hurdle was set quite high, so the participants would also sort themselves out through that way, but at the same time I was feeling kind of guilty, I was a magic newbie too, in a certain way.
Once that matter is taken care of, the actual lesson can begin. Actually, they are not all that long to begin with, but the plain became a forum of some sort, one on which magicians could share their discoveries with one another and discuss things. In addition, on the first day there was a heated debate that lasted for almost a whole day.
It was a fresh experience for me as well, being able to talk about magic with people who weren’t afraid to speak with me just because I was a dragon.
Well, there were also those who wanted to touch my body all over with ragged breaths and flushed faces, so I would lie if I told you that this was not unpleasant in some way.
Once they were able to fluently speak the ancient language, they have sworn to me that they would not try to take my scales from me without permission, and so far no one was eager to break that oath, but since I was a walking mass of magical power, it surely must have been tempting to do something like that.
And since Nectar was always here to scare the potential perpetrators away, the incidents of that kind are yet to occur.
Even though Kyle’s duties were making him work harder and harder by the day, like contacting and managing different departments of mages and the formalities that came with it, he would always make sure as to keep a free spot in his schedule to come on the first day of every month and participate in the debate.
It looks like coming here has made him a little bit more cheerful and Kyle started to look like he was genuinely having fun.
However, no matter how many times I declined, the invitation would not stop coming in.
Apparently there was someone in the castle who was adamant on sending all of this invitation despite being told not to, and this whole situation was slowly beginning to get out of control, taking its toll not only on me but on my friends as well.
One day, there was even a herald who came all the way here to my tranquil plain only to read the king’s message to me in a loud and high-pitched voice.
He was using a lot of terms, titles and honorifics that I have never even heard before, so it was actually hard for me to decipher what it was all about, but I guess it could be summarized as this:
First –– Please use your human form when someone seeks advice from you regarding magic. It will be more efficient that way.
Second –– You may be called for help in case of emergency. If there will be war you would be asked to help resolve it.
Third –– The King would be overjoyed to welcome you in his castle. Accepting the offer comes with many various benefits.
Fourth –– since you are staying here in our country, we would like you to give use some of your scales and nails as compensation for your staying expenses.
Should you not abide by these rules your beloved magician will…………
………… What was that? That last part?
There was supposedly more to the announcement, but since the herald was far away from me I didn’t quite catch it, but it looks like they wanted to force me to have an audience with the king. How troublesome.
Later on, I contacted Nectar.
「Would you like to go and see Gramps together with me? 」
「It would be my pleasure! 」
It was that kind of reply that would show just how beside himself with joy he was.
Since the restoration of leylines was almost over, it was a high time to fulfill my promise.
I provided the ancient knowledge to Kyle and his fellow magicians, so they could continue to look after the place. It would be okay for me to do that, right?
Then we notified Kyle that we were going for a bit and that we would surely bring him some kind of a souvenir from our trip.
As soon as we arrived, Gramps told me that he would like me to re-adjust the leyline that got slightly disturbed.
I happily accepted, left Nectar with Gramps and flew to the place where I was supposed to work. When I got there, I found many more places that I could do better, and so I got to work, all fired up.
I finally managed to finish my task, when I got back I have found both Gramps and Nectar talking enthusiastically and occasionally even crying, which was caused by them drinking over half of the liquor barrel that we had brought ourselves as a souvenir.
「What are you guys talking about? 」
「I was just giving this young man some bits and pieces of advice, right? 」
I was genuinely curious about that men-talk of theirs.
Wait, does gramps even have a gender?
Maybe it was all because of the liquor that he drank, but Nectar managed to actually bring it up.
「Lava is always going to be someone dear to me, forever and ever. 」
I don’t know why, but for some reason I found that flushed face of his to be extremely sexy at that moment.
By the way.
As soon as we left the plain, it seems that our sudden disappearance have caused quite a stir in the local authorities.
And since Nectar also disappeared at exactly the same time, he was almost immediately brought into the cross-fire of questions when we finally got back. But since Kyle was the only one who knew the real circumstances surrounding our escapade, he managed to talk his way out of it with simple: “I made the Chaos Dragon angry. I’m sorry.”
All of the magicians who participated in our lectures supported that theory, so it was surprisingly easy to get away with it.
Well, it was not the king who was angry with our disappearance, but rather one of his close associates.
Moreover, it seems that Nectar managed to pull some strings in that regard, and ultimately managed to calm the king and his ministers, at the very least for a little while.
「Looks like Nectar managed to do a fine piece of splendid work. 」
Even Kyle seemed to be impressed.
After that it was made known to the other countries that from now on this country would be under the Dragon’s protection, but truth to be told I had very little to say in regards to this matter.