Chapter 104
“Um, Tower Master.”
The afternoon after the test drive.
“Tower Master? Tower Master~?”
Beside the buggy, which had returned to the lab amid Montefio’s lavish praise,
“Tower Master. You can’t do this here.”
the Tower Master clung tightly to the buggy… and showed no intention of letting go.
“Akion, I am terribly hurt.”
“Gack.”
Because she was terribly, terribly disappointed in Akion.
“How much have I sacrificed for you….”
“You took knowledge in exchange.”
“The money I sponsored and the alchemical knowledge I gave you are valuable too….”
“I paid you fair value for all those parts you said you needed.
As Akion had said, a perfectly reasonable exchange had taken place,
but the Tower Master had been willing to hand over even the underwear off her back for Akion.
“I don’t know. I am hurt.”
“Oh my god.”
And yet Akion had excluded the dragons from developing something as incredibly fun as the buggy.
Still, the Tower Master had a connection with him, so surely she deserved an exception. That was why she was now sobbing away like this.
“Sniff, sob….”
- Knock, knock.
“Gasp, I’ve never seen the Tower Master cry before!!”
“Wait, she really is hurt?”
Was it really appropriate for a two-thousand-year-old to whine like a child?
‘Heh heh, softhearted Akion must be weak to tears…!’
In truth, half of it was an act.
Because she wanted to ride the buggy.
And the other half?
She really was hurt.
Thus, from an angle Akion couldn’t see, the Tower Master signaled someone,
“Hmm….”
“That’s… what I think it is, right?”
“Mm-hmm. Back when she was a hatchling….”
The dragon elders, including that someone, Asterion, caught on to the signal with their dragon instincts.
“Ahem. Akion. As you know, Seed was never one to show her hurt feelings.”
“But for her to act like this… It’s been a long time. I once accidentally broke a statue she treasured, and she was so hurt that she didn’t say a word to me for two years.”
“We’re practically strangers, so we can call it a surprise gift, but Seed isn’t, is she?”
Thus, dragons whose combined ages totaled well over ten thousand years joined forces and began gaslighting Akion.
It was their way of showing him just how frightening a dragon’s sulk could be.
“Two years?!”
“Mm-hmm. Our grudges last longer than you would expect.”
“Compared to humans, our lives are practically immortal.”
“With things like this, you have to make up immediately after a quarrel!”
To a human, even a single year was a long time.
What kind of pressure would a dragon put on a human by staying beside them for years without saying a single word?
Even Akion, who had grown close to them, would have felt the strain.
And if scaring him created a chance to get a buggy?
“Akion.”
“Yes, Grandfather Asterion.”
“Do not create regrets in your relationship with dragons. Do you know how often reconciliation comes through apologies left in a will?”
Then it was a profitable deal!
The dragons were rich enough anyway, and they had already calculated that even a mere chance to obtain one buggy would be a gain.
“Oh dear, Tower Master~!”
Akion had apparently fallen for the sinister conspiracy of the four dragons.
He carefully approached the Tower Master, who was half acting and half genuinely hurt, and attempted to make peace.
“I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings. You know me—I’m not the kind of guy who would do that.”
“Hmph.”
Akion had always held the upper hand, after all.
Hadn’t his outstanding scientific knowledge always shaken her and everyone around her to the core?
His flattery seemed to restore the Tower Master’s authority, and she was swept up in satisfaction.
“Your Highness, Your Highness. Doesn’t the Tower Master seem to be indulging her ulterior motives?”
“It does look that way to me.”
Of course, the fact that he immediately noticed her stiff shoulders and massaged them was incredibly endearing. Anyway.
The Tower Master decided to indulge herself a little… and use this opportunity to teach Akion a lesson.
She was a dragon, after all.
Shouldn’t a cute and lovable disciple-in-training like Akion respect her?
- Knead, knead~!
“Since you’re the dragon who’s helped me the most, I’ll give it to you first when the buggy is finished.”
“Hmph. Fine. You’ll paint the steel frame my favorite green, right?”
“Of course, of course. Anything else you want?”
“In that case….”
Though she worried that disciplining Akion too much might make him sulk,
a considerable amount of ulterior motive—not merely a little—popped out of her heart….
“This is permission, not a request.”
“Yes, yes.”
“When you call for me, I permit you to call me by my name rather than Tower Master.”
Since he already knew her true name, she figured there was no problem with allowing Akion to call her by it.
In reality, it was a request.
“Ah… Seed, right?”
“Mm-hmm.”
“Seed… ma’am? Lady Seed?”
“If you don’t mind, I’d prefer you call me Sister Seed.”
“That’s beyond shameless.”
So Sister was a no-go….
The Tower Master herself had brought it up, so she knew it wasn’t exactly appropriate.
Still, wasn’t calling it shameless a bit much?
She considered increasing the intensity of her dragon sulk, but….
“Then, Teacher Seed.”
“Hmm. Not bad.”
She was satisfied with the title Teacher, which sounded slightly less imposing than Professor.
Besides, being called Teacher felt like a title that made her closer to her disciple.
“Good. From now on, I permit you to call me Teacher Seed.”
“Yes, yes. So, about that.”
Having obtained everything she wanted, the Tower Master then…
- Haa….
“Eek.”
A shiver ran through her as Akion’s breath reached her ear.
Was this lecherous disciple daring to tease his teacher?
Amid the mixture of taboo thrill, anger, and delight….
“Teacher Seed, could you stop pretending to be sulky now?”
“What?!”
She had been caught pretending to be sulky!
*
“How did you figure it out?”
Flare, who had no involvement beyond being a dragon, escaped punishment.
In other words,
“A-Akion. My arms are getting tired; can I put them down—.”
- Smack!
“Urk?! Aicirel! Put away that long fan!”
“Keep your hands up. Akion said not to put them down.”
The Tower Master and the three dragons, including Asterion,
the four great dragons were standing with their hands raised against the lab wall as punishment for gaslighting Akion.
As for how Akion had noticed,
“How long do you think I’ve spent with the Tower Master? I know all her speech and behavior when she’s lying. And it was suspicious how the three dragons suddenly changed their attitudes too….”
“Ahaaa…….”
The answer came back that they had been stuck together for over three years, so how could he not know?
Flare had asked the question, but somehow felt defeated.
“A-Akion. What embarrassing things are you saying….”
- Smack!
“Urk! I was holding them properly this time!”
“Sorry. It was such an eyesore that I smacked you without thinking.”
Akion decided to leave Aicirel and the Tower Master bickering over there,
- Jingle.
and handed the key to Flare, the only innocent one among the five dragons.
“Young Master? What is this….”
“The key to Buggy No. 1.”
“What?!!”
It was the key to the buggy that was just entering its final stages of completion!!!
“Y-you’re giving it to me?! Why me, instead of those great beings over there…!”
“Almost no one among the people around me urgently needs this buggy, and the only ones desperate to have one are Her Highness the Imperial Princess standing in front of me and the four dragons over there holding their hands up….”
Akion planned to keep making buggies anyway.
Although the Empire had plenty of flat terrain, its roads were basically off-road.
To cross places like mud pits, an off-road vehicle based on this buggy would be essential.
“I’m going to make the next car right away anyway, so it’s only a matter of order and doesn’t matter. You can have this one first.”
However, since the dragon elders who had tried to gaslight him were so infuriating,
Akion decided to transfer ownership of the first buggy to Flare.
“Wow, wowow…!”
Everyone tended to fixate on the word first.
First, original, custom, crafted by a master’s hands, and so on….
“I-I, is it really okay for me to take it?!”
Buggy No. 1, made by Akion, had all of those qualities.
Flare looked toward the dragons holding their hands up, wondering if it was really all right to seize this opportunity,
- Grit, crunch!
“My Akion’s… first caaar…!”
“S-Seed. Calm yourself….”
“Aren’t you getting too worked up…?!”
“Now, now, Seed. For this uncle’s sake, please hold back— Gasp, don’t shoot such murderous intent at me!!”
The Tower Master was grinding her teeth with such jealousy that Flare wondered if she ought to give up.
The Tower Master looked ready to go mad with rage at having Akion’s first stolen by someone else.
“It’s okay, it’s okay. Right, Teacher Seed?”
“Did you think I’d be satisfied with some paltry title like that?!”
“The next buggy I’m making is a custom buggy for Teacher, painted green.”
“Do you think that will calm my anger?”
“I meant that we could make it together… I’m sorry if you didn’t like that.”
“Who said I didn’t like it!!”
- Swish, swish!
“Tower Master. You’ve become a complete bitch.”
But how could she refuse when he was offering to make one for her too?
The Tower Master’s tail wagged furiously, undeterred even by Goldie’s cold stare.
“In that case, why don’t you ride it home today? I’ll put on an underbody plate and side panels for the doors so you can ride without getting splashed with mud or anything.”
“Th-thank you, Young Master…!”
Still, it seemed that the first buggy belonged to Flare.
“If I ride this back… His Majesty will surely be surprised too!”
“Come to think of it, doesn’t His Majesty have dragon blood flowing through him too?”
“……I’ll try to keep it hidden as much as possible.”
She held the first car’s key tightly, feeling both moved and worried.
* * *
And the next day.
- Stomp, stomp.
“Oh, Princess Flare. Where’s the car?”
“It was taken from me….”
“What?!”
Flare came to the lab for work, dejected.
“Surely it wasn’t His Majesty the Emperor…?”
“Not at all! I didn’t even show it to His Majesty….”
The identity of the vehicle thief known in America as Grand Theft Auto was….
“My brother Alonso.”
“……Third Prince?”
Her half-sibling, who held the right of succession to the throne second only to the Crown Prince.
“The one rumored to feel inferior to the Crown Prince?”
“Th-that rumor is true, but anyway, he said he’d drive it to the Astarix ducal family’s banquet during the upcoming harvest festival.”
It was Alonso Fandragon Astarix.
As far as Akion knew, Alonso suffered from an inferiority complex because he was less capable than the Crown Prince.
He seemed to be the kind of bad person who took it out on his siblings.
The Seventh Princess was favored by His Majesty the Emperor, but her claim to the throne was effectively the weakest, so Alonso must have found her an easy target.
“This kind of thing happened so often that it’s hard to even tell His Majesty the Emperor.”
“Stealing things… is an everyday occurrence?”
“He always did that when I was little. It always ended with him returning the item and apologizing… He hasn’t done it in the past few years, but I let my guard down.”
Akion felt a sense of déjà vu about the incident.
And for good reason….
“Young Master. You’re not saying that because you want to be arrested for insulting royalty, are you?”
“More importantly, Goldie, isn’t this similar to the Countess’s fan incident?”
“Huh?”
Wasn’t this all too familiar, the way someone invoked their authority to extort someone else’s belongings?
Just like with Countess Lucretia.
“Grating, isn’t it?”
Akion felt his insides twist.
Akion knew perfectly well that the Seventh Princess’s maternal family, House Asterion, lacked much political power.
But even if they were half-siblings, could he really steal his little sister’s gift?
“But, Your Highness, now that you’re strong, couldn’t you just subdue him by force? And you could simply tell him I gave it to you.”
“If I did, a political offensive could put both me and my maternal family in danger. His Majesty’s centralization is still incomplete… Besides, he took it before I could say anything. He’s still as stupid as ever.”
And he was going to show off to his maternal family as though the gift Akion had given him were his own?
Akion wondered whether this was simply common sense in a romance fantasy, and checked his own common sense once again.
“Then, can I attend the Astarix ducal family’s banquet too?”
“You can go, but it would be rude without an invitation.”
“Why would it be rude? I’m going to retrieve a gift I gave him.”
But going to retrieve that gift without an invitation was rude?
Akion knew that, too, but honestly, this presumptuous behavior relying on the power of authority gave him an intense sense of déjà vu.
That was why Akion, who found it incredibly infuriating… resolved to teach him a proper lesson through mirror therapy.
“I’ll bring Teacher and those three dragons over there.”
- Grit, crunch!
- Crack, crunch…!
“How dare he take something my Akion gave me…!”
“Heh heh, young people these days are so rash, trusting entirely in a single title.”
“Wait. I have some Masters and Archmage children I’ve made connections with. I’ll contact them and come back.”
“Heh heh, he should have known what he could get away with coveting… I’ll get some exercise for the first time in a while.”
Four dragons were furious that the buggy they considered their own(?) had been taken from them.
“With everyone riding buggies, too.”
In other words, Akion was going to attend the Third Prince’s banquet with all of them accompanying him, riding their buggies.