Chapter 17
The next Gate expedition was scheduled for tomorrow morning.
With some time to spare, I thought I should try to gather whatever information I could.
So I headed to World Tree University, the only place in the Holy Kingdom with a library.
I brought Terra along, too.
Well, there wasn’t any particular reason I’d brought her with me.
I just felt a little uneasy about leaving her alone among the elves.
Ha-eun was contacting the Association right now, so she couldn’t keep an eye on Terra.
And also…
“So why are you following me?”
“…Do you not know what might happen if dragons wander this place together?”
“Ugh, this is stalking.”
“….”
Beren was following me around.
Of course, it wasn’t as though following me around would cost him anything, since he was an elf.
- Boss, you’re not all that
- What are you talking about? The boss is damn pretty
- Her behavior isn’t pretty, though;
- Who stalks someone who says money, money, money every day?
- [KoiKoi] That’s true, though
- Big agree lol
Something about him just rubbed me the wrong way.
“…What are you staring at?”
“I was just wondering, if you were going to stalk me, wouldn’t a pretty young Sword Saint be better than some middle-aged guy?”
“….”
Even after hearing that, he didn’t so much as change his expression.
- You finally say something right for once
- Come on!! The middle-aged-man aura is the real deal!!
- You don’t know what you’re talking about;
- Honestly, a pretty girl is better, yeah
- Isn’t a Sword Saint coolest when they’re old?
I couldn’t even tell whether this man disliked me because I was a dragon or not.
First, he’d suddenly challenged me to a spar.
And now he was following me around like he was my guardian.
Tap—
At any rate, once I arrived at the library, I took books from the shelves and looked through them one by one.
[The History of the Elves]
[Elves in Mythology]
[Our Mother’s Sayings]
[The History of Elves and Mushrooms]
But none of them contained any information that could explain what had happened in the Gate.
Every record naturally depicted Kairan as a woman.
And the name of a country or city called Etherian appeared nowhere in any of the records.
Meanwhile, in the earliest parts of the history they did have, a rather prosperous nation suddenly appeared out of nowhere.
It was as if the beginning of their history had been deliberately cut away.
No matter how much their history had been erased, or how many worlds their people had crossed, some legends or oral traditions should have survived and been passed down…
Had the elves not noticed anything strange about this?
At the very least, there should have been some old treasure passed down from the past.
Wouldn’t you think?
And it’d be even better if I could take it with me.
Tap—
Just then, I turned at the sound of footsteps approaching.
An elf wearing round glasses came into view, carrying a good number of books and shelving them here and there.
Was she a librarian?
“Hmm-hmm~ Now, this one—”
“Hello.”
“Eek?!”
“Huh?”
Clatter—
She was so focused on tidying up that she didn’t notice me even as I approached, so I spoke to her.
She jumped in surprise and dropped every book she was holding.
Then she looked at my face.
“Gasp—The dragon I saw yesterday?!”
“Uh… yes, that’s me. Did I startle you? I can help you—”
“G-Go away, you monster!”
“Oh.”
- LMAO
- ‘Monster’ lol
- The boss’s face is so damn funny lol
- [I’mDying] It’s a monster, meow
- [BountifulHarvest] Gasp…
Well… I suppose that made sense.
Unless they were BountifulHarvest or someone close to her, there was no reason for them to have a favorable impression of dragons yet.
“…You should lower your voice.”
Beren, who’d been standing silently beside me, spoke up.
Only then did the elf girl seem to notice him. She jumped in fright all over again.
“S-Sir Beren?! Eeeek….”
She looked like she was about to faint.
“Um, I’m sorry if I startled you.”
I scratched the back of my head, picked up the fallen books, and placed them on the desk beside me.
As I did, Terra also picked up a book or two with her tiny hands and handed them to the elf girl.
“Here. Take it.”
“Uh… th-thanks….”
She accepted them, still looking a little dazed.
…Was Terra better than me at making people let their guard down?
“S-So, um… y-you…? Are you…?”
“Yes, I’m a dragon. I have no intention of hurting you, so don’t worry. Besides, you have this old guy here, too.”
“….”
At the words “old guy,” Beren’s eyes briefly flicked over to me.
Well.
He was an old guy.
“P-Please step back a little… I can’t calm down like this….”
“Oh, okay.”
When I stepped back as she asked, the girl finally took a deep breath.
Then she glanced at me and started trembling again.
…Am I really that scary?
- The boss always gets emotional whenever she sees kids
- She did freak out when you grabbed Terra’s horns last time
- So what do elves grab, then?
- Gasp!!
“Hey, watch what you say. I’ll kill—”
“Hic—”
“Sigh….”
I couldn’t even say anything…
It couldn’t be helped.
“Terra, why don’t you go talk to her?”
I spoke quietly to Terra.
“Me…? You mean me?”
“You’re cuter than I am.”
“What does that have to do with—”
Though she looked at me like she couldn’t believe it, she obediently started to walk over when I told her to.
But…
“Could you buy me a package when we get back?”
“Hm?”
“There’s a new 70,000-won package. The contents are…”
- LMAOOOO
- Mom, buy me that!!
- Terra is so damn cute…
- [Children’s Shelter] Please don’t use such rough language about Terra.
How should I put it?
I think I could understand, at least a little, how parents felt when their kids asked them to spend money on a game.
Why would you waste 70,000 won on something like that…
“I-Is that not possible…?”
Terra looked completely disappointed.
I sighed and spoke.
“Sigh… All right, I’ll get it for you.”
“Really?! Just give me the order!”
She was really happy about it.
Well… as long as she helped me out, I supposed it was fine.
What was 70,000 won, anyway?
“Just go talk to her. You know what we need to do, right? Ask about history and things like that.”
“Understood!”
Still, a librarian at a university might know a little more about things.
We might even get some unexpectedly valuable information.
Conversation was a tool that could prove useful in the most unexpected places.
“Greetings.”
“Huh?”
“I would like to speak with you. What is this country’s history like?”
Clack—
But watching her, I couldn’t help facepalming.
- She’s such an old soul…
- Still cute, though
- Wakya-pyahak lol
- Come on!! A dragon girl needs high self-esteem and casual speech…
If I kept reading the chat, my brain was going to melt, too.
“History? Y-you like history too…?”
“Uh… yes.”
“W-wait… How old are you?”
“What does my age have to do with it…?”
At that reaction, I sent Terra a fiery look from behind.
An unspoken demand that she answer properly, like we’d discussed.
Terra glanced at me, then quietly replied with a bright red face.
“I-I’m in elementary school.”
“An elementary school student? Dragons go to school, too… Then are dragons interested in academics even when they’re young?”
“That’s right….”
“Then… how about this? It’s a story about the history of mushrooms and elves!”
At this point, the elf girl seemed to be growing interested in and fond of Terra.
Her looks were a cheat. A total cheat.
Meanwhile, she looked at me like she’d seen a ghost.
Of course, Terra herself didn’t seem to like that.
“But who’s that monster—no… that person? Your mom?”
“Pfft—D-don’t say that! Do you want to offend Lady Goldie?!”
“Lady Goldie…?”
“She’s her guardian! Her guardian!”
“Uh… like an older sister?”
Having run out of anything else to say, Terra seemed to just blurt out whatever came to mind, and the elf girl eventually looked at me.
Still, thanks to Terra, she seemed to have let her guard down quite a bit.
“I’m looking after her for a little while.”
“Ah…”
“She’s interested in history from all over the world. I thought this would be a good experience for her, so I brought her along on a little educational outing.”
“If that’s the case… just a moment…”
As I watched the elf girl head deeper into the library, I patted Terra on the head.
“You did well enough.”
“…I feel like I’ve lost something important.”
“Don’t take it too hard. You helped me out.”
As we stood there, Beren caught my eye. He’d been fiddling with his scabbard for a while.
How could someone stand there without saying a single word?
I muted my mic for a moment and spoke to him.
“You said you’d take a look at Ha-eun’s skills this evening, right?”
“…That’s right.”
“If it goes well, come visit sometime. I’ll treat you to some beef.”
Of course, Beren wasn’t exactly someone I was fond of…
Still, if someone helped me, I had to make sure I paid them back.
If you received something, you had to give something in return.
At least, that was how it worked in a Gold Dragon’s worldview.
Nothing in life was free.
“…I’ll think about it.”
“But make sure you teach her properly, okay? So I can put it to use later.”
“…Then I should tell you one thing.”
“Hm?”
“Her swordsmanship… It seems she was forced to learn it.”
Forced to…?
Come to think of it, Ha-eun had never told me about her sword or swordsmanship, even after we met.
Now that I thought about it… something did seem strange.
“I don’t know who taught her, but her swordsmanship was awful.”
“…So help straighten it out.”
“I can correct it, but she’ll have to find her own footing.”
Of course. She could figure out that difficult stuff herself.
As I said that, I turned my mic back on and shrugged.
“H-Here! Take a look at this!…”
The elf girl returned and came over to us, holding out a book.
“What is this?”
“It includes even unverified unofficial histories. You might find it worth looking through!”
“Thank you.”
“And this, too!”
Then she put something like a lollipop into Terra’s hand.
“…? What is this?”
“It’s mushroom candy. There’s lots of it in the break room!…”
“….”
You should say thank you.
“Th-thank you.”
As Terra and I thanked her…
She looked at Terra and asked cautiously,
“Hey, is your tail real?”
“…? Does it look fake?”
“Not exactly… Could I touch it just once? I-I don’t mean anything weird!… I’m just really curious!…”
“….”
- Gasp
- Gasp
- That’s too much
Swish—
At her words, Terra pressed her lips together and looked up at me.
As if asking what she should do.
…It also looked like she had something in her mouth.
This was getting a little dangerous.
“Ahaha… A dragon’s tail and horns are a source of pride, so I don’t think that’ll be possible.”
“Oh… I-Is that so….”
With that, I thanked her once more and headed with Terra to one of the library’s desks.
The girl watched us with some disappointment, then disappeared behind the bookshelves, perhaps because she still had work to do.
After she was completely out of sight, I spoke quietly.
“You held back well.”
“It was dangerous. My fire breath had reached the back of my throat.”
She was pretty clueless, though.
Even so, asking to touch someone’s tail…
That was a bit much.
Rustle—
Thinking that, I turned a page in the book she’d given me.
“Oh… this is pretty impressive.”
[The Forgotten Empire of Etherian]
At last, I’d found the information we needed.
But why was something this important just shoved haphazardly in the back?
[Before We Begin]
[I don’t think any of my kin who can understand this writing—or even perceive it—still exist. For it is both a curse and a blessing from our mother, the World Tree.]
“…A curse?”
[But this is a truth that cannot simply be forgotten, so I intend to record everything here. I pray that even someone who is not of my kin will read this.]
Forgetfulness and a curse.
And a blessing.
Whoever had written this seemed to know something important.
[Also, so my kin will not lose this, I will leave unofficial histories not included in the curse at intervals.]
But…
[Etherian Culture]
[When an elven man and woman start a family, their nights together—]
[In Etherian, the love between two female elves—]
[There was an elf who married a human. A human who married an elf—]
…What is this?
Why was something like this written in here, too…?
The more I turned the pages, the more explicit the stories became, until I felt my face turning red.
There were even stories I couldn’t understand at all.
- ? Boss, why are you making that face?
- I’ve never seen that expression before
- Oh… this is a delicacy in its own right.
You gave this to me to show a child?
…Could this kind of thing be part of what was forgotten—
“What does it say? Your expression’s serious. Could it be about that gigantic dragon from before—”
“Terra, this isn’t something a kid should be curious about.”
“Huh? But I—”
“Quiet.”
“Y-Yes…”
- ?
- What is it
- Why are you making our Terra feel small?!
- Seriously, what a boss;
Once again, Terra was left feeling a little wronged.
Of course, that was beside the point.
[Treasures of Etherian]
The results were certainly worthwhile, but…