Chapter 3
“Hmm... The sun’s already set...”
I wanted to turn into my dragon form and fly around a bit. And since things had turned out this way, I’d also wanted to head straight to Karts’s central square and check out the market.
But considering what it meant to be an Iceflower Dragon, I felt a little uneasy about going down into the city in dragon form.
There was no one coming to kill me, the North seemed peaceful, and the sunlight was pleasantly warm, so winter was surely almost over.
Winter would soon be over, and once again the North would be filled with the lively bustle of merchants, people’s happy chatter, and countless adventurers.
“Hmm... First, tomorrow I should polymorph into a human and visit Karts. The things I need to find out are...”
I was fairly certain that this was before the start of the Guardian Knight of White Snow arc, but I didn’t know how long before it was.
For now, I wasn’t hearing anything like the hallucinations that had been coming from inside me, and I didn’t feel like I’d suddenly go mad tomorrow and attack a residential area, so there was probably still some time.
“First, tomorrow I’ll go down and find out what year and month it is. Second, I need to make sure this really is Karts.”
The third thing was a little less important, but I was curious what Aiden looked like at this point in time.
Of course, even though I’d become a woman, I had no intention of developing romantic feelings for a man I’d never met, and I certainly wasn’t going to date one.
No matter what happened, I would never give my affection to anyone else, and I knew this wasn’t a situation where I could do that anyway.
“For now, the most important thing is... for this world to reach a happy ending, and for me to survive.”
Survival was my most immediate goal, but I wanted to add a few more things to what surviving meant, if I could.
I wanted to live in a peaceful world, one that carried on happily as it always had.
I wanted to watch over this world as an observer, seeing it run happily, without anyone suffering.
No matter how curious I was about Aiden, or Icaria, who could be called this world’s protagonist...
I had no intention of getting involved in their story.
“In the end, their story is their own... and as far as the Icarus Chronicle story has gone so far, my role ends with dying in the Guardian Knight of White Snow arc...”
My ending might be like the ones I’d seen: becoming an evil dragon lost in madness and devouring everything, or being cut down by a hunting party led by Aiden.
I hoped it wouldn’t go in either of those directions.
I wanted to live more than anyone. I wanted to take this second chance and make a life for myself here.
And even if I didn’t know what kind of ending awaited me, I still hoped mine would be a happy one.
I lay sprawled in the lair, surrounded by ice, and quietly lost myself in thought.
“...And if I get the chance, it might not be a bad idea to get acquainted with Aiden ahead of time.”
If I made friends with Aiden beforehand—or met him in polymorph form, hiding my identity instead of approaching as the Iceflower Dragon, and learned about his disposition and the sides of his personality the game never showed—it might be useful.
In the end, each of those things might become a stepping stone toward another ending, one I’d never known about before.
“...For now, I should head down to Karts tomorrow. It’s late tonight...”
Growl—
I looked around at the faint sound coming from my body as I lay there.
Since I hadn’t eaten anything after waking up, I was starting to feel hungry.
After all, I was only human in appearance because I’d polymorphed. My true form was still a dragon.
I wondered if my hunger and the amount of food I needed would follow a dragon’s standards too.
The problem was...
The biggest problem was whether there was anything in my lair I could use as money.
No matter how medieval the setting of Icarus Chronicle was, society still ran on a capitalist system.
I wondered if I’d have to find something to sell, but unlike in the usual stories about dragons, there wasn’t any gold, treasure, or anything like that in my lair.
“I’m huuungry... I’m so hungry... If someone were watching, maybe they’d bring me something...”
Feeling dejected, I lay quietly gazing up at the sky and pleaded under my breath, lost in thought.
Though it was an ice bed, it didn’t feel cold at all. I lay on its cozy surface, thinking of ways to satisfy my hunger.
For instance, a cup of hot broth with fish cakes from a street stall, the kind I’d sometimes buy on days like this.
Or a simple hamburger and fries to fill me up, with a refreshing fizzy drink.
There was also tteokbokki, which I’d never be able to eat here again, or bungeoppang stuffed with sweet custard cream...
I kept thinking of foods like spicy chicken feet, with cheese served alongside to take the edge off the heat.
Growrrrr—
“...C-can’t I find something to eat...?”
Even some jerky as hard as if it had been frozen would do. Hoping there might be something, I took a bite of the blue granule beside my bed.
You never knew—it was possible a dragon’s body could survive on minerals like these.
Crunch—
“Ow... That hurts... Why is this place full of nothing but useless chunks of crystal?!”
The moment I bit into it, I could tell that not even a dragon could eat something like this. I tossed the crystal and shouted.
All I could see was the foodless scenery of my lair: the hand-hewn Frost Crystal deposits making up the walls and the little gemstones scattered here and there...
“...Huh? A-aren’t these all gemstones...?”
Come to think of it, in the game, these were the kinds of minerals you picked up along the way if you weren’t too bothered, or left behind if you were.
But in the real world, materials like these must be incredibly valuable, right?
The item description had said that Frost Crystal was a gemstone mined only in the North’s most frigid regions and used in all kinds of fine jewelry.
And even apart from the blue-crystal walls of my lair, there were plenty of different materials to gather along the cliffs on the way to the entrance.
For example, Snow Ghost Grass, a sky-blue plant that alchemists would pay a pretty penny for.
The game had made 120 gold seem like pocket change for the players’ convenience, but in the story, 120 gold was a considerable sum.
A bowl of soup cost 3 silver, and 100 silver made 1 gold, so 120 gold would buy... soup...
“...I can’t do the math...?”
Somehow, being a dragon didn’t seem to grant me superhuman arithmetic skills.
Well, if being a dragon automatically gave you that kind of intelligence, everyone would want to be born one.
“For now... just because you could sell one for 120 gold in the game doesn’t mean it’ll go for the same price here... I’ll take five stalks of Snow Ghost Grass and three Frost Crystals.”
I was only doing this as an experiment, and I didn’t need a lot of money right away.
For now, I just wanted enough to buy myself a meal and quiet my hunger.
Besides, if I suddenly came into too much money, people would obviously get suspicious. And these weren’t common materials, so if someone asked where I’d gotten them...
It’d obviously be a problem to tell them the whole truth, and I wasn’t confident I could deceive innocent people perfectly, either.
After all, deceiving someone perfectly meant being meticulous and thorough, and right now, I was just one hungry dragon.
But hunting something and eating it was... Well, the last shred of my human dignity was pricking at my chest like a thorn.
Even though I’d become a dragon, tearing into a living animal with my teeth was just... physically, I couldn’t stomach it.
“Phew... I’ll take these, then... I don’t know if any shops will be open at this hour, though...”
Still, it was better to try something than do nothing at all.
“...Could I make just my wings appear and fly?”
‘...Just the wings... Hup?’
Fssh—
“Oh, it worked! It worked!”
They say the first time is the hardest, and the second wasn’t difficult at all. Simply picturing the shape of my wings and imagining a body with wings attached was enough to pull off a partial polymorph.
Of course, I didn’t have time to savor the joy of succeeding. My body had already spread its wings, ready to fly toward the busy streets of Karts for something to sate my hunger, and leapt toward the sky.