Chapter 12
A burly man searching for stories about monsters......
From the old scars all over his body, I could roughly guess who he was.
Probably.
“Ah! I’m sorry for the late introduction! I’m Serafin, a hero from the A-rank hero party Night Sky!”
He was a hero, all right.
His name was a little... estrogen-heavy.
Visually, he was the very definition of a macho man......
And if he’d come looking for me this directly.
“Could it be, the Hydra──”
“Hahaha! That’s right! Thanks to you, author-nim, I’ve survived three times! Otherwise, wouldn’t I have been rolling around somewhere in the Demon Realm as monster fodder!”
So it was him after all.
The GOAT of sales recovery!
I had been about to firmly clasp the hand he had offered in greeting.
“Ulysses! I declare it once more. Become my servant!”
Suddenly, a blond chuunibyou brat squeezed between us and shouted that bizarre declaration again.
What?
Was this kid a little out of his mind?
First I needed to deal with this little thing before offering my thanks to the hero.
“Haha......”
The hero was sweating bullets.
And Mr. Gilford was doing his best to avoid my gaze, as if he were becoming one with the wall.
What?
What was that supposed to imply?
“My name is Estea Golden Lindtberius! I grant a lowly short-lived species the chance to serve me!”
“Golden Retriever?”
“Estea! Golden! Lindtberius!”
With golden fur and the way she growled and barked, she really did seem like a Golden Retriever.
Just as I was about to toss out one more joke there──
“Y-you noble being? I-I think there may be some misunderstanding here, author-nim......”
A noble being?
This brat?
“Hmph, then open your eyes and look closely!”
With a line that somehow felt like one I shouldn’t repeat to anyone.
The Golden Retriever wore a smug smile.
The next moment.
A pair of horns sprouted from her head.
And a lizard-like tail grew from her backside.
“Let me introduce myself again! My name is Estea Golden Lindtberius! I belong to the lineage of the great Gold Dragon! You lowly short-lived species with only a little bit of useful talent should worship me!”
Suddenly, I recalled the moment right after I’d been possessed.
I definitely remembered wondering if this wasn’t the Skyrim universe, seeing dragons flapping their wings in the sky.
Of course, there was no College of Winterhold here......
.
.
.
After somehow enduring, together with the hero, Estea’s attempt to drag me off as a modern-day slave, servant this and servant that.
“Ooh! A development like this here......!”
By combining the two sofas in the reception room and half-lounging on them, I bought myself a little breathing room by tossing her some of my unpublished chapters.
And then.
“......Hero. By any chance, have you ever hunted a dragon?”
“Hahaha...... Impossible. And if what that dragon says is true, well, then it’s true—but Gold Dragons aren’t evil dragons. On the contrary, they’re benevolent beings.”
Do benevolent beings nowadays storm publishing houses to kidnap authors?
“Then you’re saying there are evil dragons too?”
“Ah, yes. That’s only from a human standpoint. I’ve heard that Red Dragons and Black Dragons live in the Demon Realm, but according to legend, all dragons once reached an agreement and decided to interfere as little as possible in conflicts between species. Thankfully, that is.”
“A balance patch, huh.”
“Balance......? Balance, hmm. Not an incorrect way to put it. In any case...... This may sound really strange, but there’s something I’d like to ask for your advice on, author-nim.”
Advice from me?
Someone who’d never even set foot in the Demon Realm?
Still, I couldn’t just brush off the hero who had come all the way here and made time for me.
“I may not be much help, but...... please, go ahead.”
The hero scratched the back of his head awkwardly.
Recently, a giant entirely made of metal had blocked our advance. It couldn’t even be destroyed by a holy sword, and because it reflects all magic, not only us but other heroes are having a hard time with it too. I was wondering if you might know anything.
Physical immunity and magic immunity?
What was that thing? I have no idea, scary......
“......Can’t you go around it?”
“It seems to function like a sort of guardian weapon, and what it’s guarding is something like the source of the monsters...... so we can’t just avoid it.”
Hmm.
A giant made of metal.
And it’s guarding something.
Something was tickling at the back of my mind......
Memories began surfacing in my head.
I definitely remembered that when the Argo expedition landed in Crete, they fought a piece of machinery that could be called the first robot.
“This might sound really strange, but......”
“Not at all. Even the smallest clue helps. Do you perhaps have any idea?”
“Like people, a giant hunk of machinery would naturally have a core running through the whole thing. That core might be the heart or the head...... but I’d like to put my money on the ankles.”
Even with my contextless suggestion, the hero frowned slightly, as though replaying those memories.
“The ankles, the ankles...... True, we didn’t try going there. We went for the head or the heart first. Of course, we couldn’t do any damage.”
“If it has a power source, wouldn’t it be more convenient to maintain in the lower body than the upper body? Maybe...... the heel?”
“Hmm, hmm. A fresh angle. Worth checking.”
Before long, the hero finished taking notes in his notebook, smiled brightly, and held out his hand to me again.
When I took it, the hero lowered his head, brought his face close to my ear, and whispered.
“Gold Dragons...... are greedy. If possible, I hope you won’t be kidnapped, author-nim, and that we can meet again.”
“......Thank you for the advice.”
I kept glancing at the lizard, still nibbling away at my manuscript as if savoring it.
I entertained the baseless hope that maybe I was descended from dragon blood.
.
.
.
After the hero left, stealing a slight glance at me.
“Bring the next chapter too! No, bring everything!”
I faced off against Estea, who had started making a fuss as if she were about to breathe fire from her mouth.
Before I knew it, the reception room had become a pure one-on-one, with nobody left in it except Gilford.
“Fus, Ro Dah!”
“......Are you insane?”
Unfortunately, I had no talent for Dragon Tongue.
Let’s leave the dream of becoming a Dragonborn who defeats an evil brat dragon at that.
“So, will you become my servant, or will you become my prey?”
The lizard’s vertically slit pupils glared sharply at me.
Gilford, who had faced that gaze earlier, was trembling so hard he looked ready to wet his pants.
......Strangely, I wasn’t all that intimidated.
Was Hector’s courage giving me strength?
“There is a saying that creation is a continuous string of pain.”
“Then does that mean if you keep inflicting pain continuously, creation will come out?”
Have you lost your mind?
What kind of line is that? Something a doctor would say.
“I write every day, grinding away at my soul. But that comes from my own free will...... If I were kidnapped by a dragon and forced to write, my creative drive would eventually wither away. A writer is, after all, a free spirit.”
“What, did you make a contract with a warlock or something?”
......
This brat’s communication skills are a little strange.
“No way. But...... I hope you understand just how hard creation is. So becoming a servant would be tremendously honorable...... but I’ll have to decline.”
“Why! Didn’t I say I’d feed you and let you sleep here? Write one chapter after breakfast, one after lunch, and one after dinner. What’s so hard about that?”
“......I’d rather you kill me. I’ll just die here.”
With the feeling of having given up on everything, she closed her eyes, spread her arms wide, and thrust out her chest.
Of course, it was a calculated move.
How far had the plot gone by the time our little dragon brat pulled back the curtain and peeked at my stockpile?
In the beginning, after getting past Sulla’s death warrant through wit and connections.
It had followed his process of escaping the purge by enlisting in the legion as an officer and building up his reputation.
After repeated valiant feats in the Battle of Mytilene, he received the oak civic crown, the sign of the most honorable officer, and then returned to Rome after Sulla’s death.
......And then, to stir up political attention, he pulled out the forbidden move of “I’m suing you!” only to get backlash and head off to Rhodes to study abroad.
Right after that.
- If you’ve got a problem, try killing me, you pirate bastards.
It had ended with a scene where, on the way to Rhodes to study abroad, he got kidnapped by pirates and then acted tough.
If she’d just been immersing herself in my novel until a moment ago?
That scene would naturally overlap in her mind.
When I stole a glance at her with narrowed eyes.
“Uuugh......!”
A tail flapping nonstop like a puppy’s.
A slightly rounded, troubled-looking pair of eyes.
The sight of her nibbling at her fingers.
It worked.
That’s the guts of a short-lived species.
* * *
After weathering a storm at the newspaper office.
I dragged myself home, completely exhausted.
I wanted to get home and rest as fast as I could......
Swish-swish.
“......”
Flap-flap.
“......”
It seemed she no longer even intended to hide it.
That crazy dragon brat from earlier.
Estea was stalking me, wagging her tail.
It had a dragon’s tail, so why did it move like a dog’s tail?
Had she been a dog in her previous life?
Sure, she could hide it, but if her tail was sticking out like that, how did she sleep?
She probably couldn’t lie flat on her back. Would she roll onto her side? Or maybe modify the bed to make a tail hole?
Shaking off the pointless thoughts, I turned around.
Whoosh!
The moment she made eye contact with me, she hid her body but left her tail poking out from around the corner in such a bizarre shape that I let out a sigh.
Why are you following me?
At my blunt question,
“......To maintain the dignity of a noble being, shouldn’t I at least know where the one who’s going to become my servant lives?”
“......?”
Estea declared, with utterly shameless confidence, that she still wasn’t giving up.
Persistent, this one.
“And your tail is showing.”
“Eek.”
.
.
.
“There, you’ve checked it yourself, right? Off you go, mighty dragon.”
“How insolent, servant candidate! This body will take care of it on its own!”
In the end, the dragon followed me all the way to the inn where I was staying.
Being a lowly human is miserable, huh.
And now I’m even getting stalked by a lizard.
Well.
“I’ll give you the chance to offer tribute to my especially great self──”
“Thanks. I’m heading in.”
Leaving Estea behind as she once again shouted proudly with her nonexistent chest thrust out and a hand on her hip.
I quickly opened the door and dashed inside.
Then my very own sweet home unfolded before me.
The study greeted me.
『Welcome back, Yul-nim. Would you like to eat first? Or take a bath? Or──』
“Stop.”
『Output has been stopped.』
......
Why did I teach it that prompt?
A wave of self-loathing washed over me.
But I’m a positive guy.
After all, no matter how I thought about it, the Pygmalion’s Conviction skill fit nowhere as well as it did in History.
Before that......
Wouldn’t it be better to thoroughly train her in advance?