Chapter 32
A moment ago.
“Cao Zhi’s... Seven-Step Talent?”
“So this is, what, survive if you recite a haiku within seven steps? You've got all kinds of skills.”
Right after the clock struck midnight, I was a little dumbfounded, so I bantered with Historee for a while.
And, naturally.
“Really? You’re really hitting me?”
“Of course.”
I even ran a direct experiment.
“Hmm... But, well, Kim Yul can be annoying sometimes, but I don’t really feel like hitting him with any emotion. It feels like my emotion module is broken.”
“Your writing sucks.”
“I can’t forgive you!”
Historee’s heartfelt fiery slap came charging at my cheek with AI-level precision, but.
Thwack.
“Eh, wha──”
It was clearly coming straight at me, and all I had done was take one light step forward.
It sliced through the air and then launched a body check straight into me.
I wondered if one more step would have let me dodge that too, but human compassion isn’t the same as that of a tin can, so I couldn’t bring myself to do it.
“......Thank you.”
“I think you’d better move a little less violently.”
“Yes.”
Along with the squishy-soft sensation I felt for the first time in my life, the first experiment had come to a futile end.
After that, too.
“A boring, pretentious jumble of letters.”
“I’d rather reenlist in the army than read your writing.”
“This would probably be more entertaining even if a professor wrote it.”
After enduring soul-crushing abuse and Historee’s truly relentless assault.
During the seven steps I took in a panic, I learned that I could completely evade physical damage directed at me.
“......Are you all right?”
“Do I look all right?”
“No.”
It was information I didn’t want to know, but there was also a cooldown.
About thirty minutes.
I learned that after the handprint was clearly etched onto my cheek.
.
.
.
And now.
The instinctive step I took the moment I saw the dagger saved my life.
Do they say the brain starts working faster when a person feels their life is in danger, or is it Hector’s blessing keeping my thoughts calm?
Even though death had just brushed past me, I could calmly grasp the situation.
An outfit that was unmistakably that of an assassin.
A hopelessly outdated, idiot-sounding expression.
And obvious hostility.
“Oh?”
Second attack, second step.
Unlike the exaggerated movements you’d see in an action movie, they were crisp, as if finely trained.
Most likely, my opponent was a professional assassin who had killed countless people.
Three steps, four steps.
I kept walking a little farther out of pointless impatience.
Only on the fifth step, after letting every fleeting instant pass by.
“Hyaaah!”
I swung the practice wooden club and aimed for the assassin’s wrist.
By my own calculation, it was a mathematically perfect trajectory, and even the lingering aura of Hercules within my body would have smiled and given it a thumbs-up.
There was just one minor problem.
“Not bad.”
The dagger’s blade was instantly wrapped in white light, lengthened, and cleanly sliced my club in half like tofu.
Hmm.
So that was the sword aura only a master at the pinnacle could unleash.
Before the club and my body were turned into Kim/Yul, I took one more step forward.
“Hyaaah! Nureongi!”
At the same time, I grabbed the scale of Nureongi that I had made into a necklace and hung around my neck, and prayed fervently.
That instant.
“Eek?!”
“Hrk──”
At the same time, Nureongi fell out of nowhere and crushed the assassin.
My seventh step touched the ground.
And.
“What the helllll! Herculesss!”
Nureongi’s scream echoed through the street.
* * *
“Today’s feed is──!”
In a house near the train station in the imperial capital, where newspapers arrived fastest.
Esthea was rolling around on the bed, warming up to enjoy her one and only hobby: reading novels.
She was even savoring the feel of a hardcover, something she hadn’t tasted in a long time, not a newspaper-serialized novel.
It had already been several weeks since she’d been shaking Ulysses by the collar.
- Haa... at least read this.
As expected, writers are the sort who’ll produce something if you shake them hard enough; unable to withstand her persistent advances, he had given her the novel he published while living elsewhere!
Unfortunately, Historee, the Nureongi countermeasure team, had been away, so the tragedy was that Kim Yul’s carefully stockpiled reserve of Nureongi feed had been completely stripped away.
Well, for Esthea herself, it was a comedy.
Feed! Mamma!
“Heehee.”
In truth, the title didn’t really appeal to her.
Olympus Story, huh.
She couldn’t really guess what it was about.
But even if the title itself was some bizarre dish, if the author’s other dishes had been gourmet, then the contents were likely to be gourmet as well.
Still, among the subtitles, the one that looked the tastiest, ‘The Heroic Tale of Hercules,’ was what Esthea began happily gobbling up.
And then.
Flap, flap…….
Swish, swish…….
Thump, thump!
The sound of pages turning, the sound of a tail swishing, and the sound of that tail thumping the blanket every time she reached a satisfying passage echoed through the quiet room.
Hercules! Good!
Hercules! So cool!
Devouring it in a flash with Nureongi-style reading, Esthea let a satisfied smile bloom at the corners of her lips.
“A man-eating horse...! That’s a terrifying imagination!”
She even briefly imagined a monster horse that devoured dragons, and had a delightful time, but.
Suddenly.
“Eh?”
Esthea felt as if her body were cutting through space and being sucked somewhere else.
Esthea, flustered by a phenomenon she had never experienced in her life.
That was only natural.
Because the first time in her long dragon life that she had ever given one of her scales as a gift to someone was now, and she hadn’t imagined Kim Yul would use that chance so quickly.
The next moment.
Esthea was summoned into the air, still all rolled up in her blanket.
And.
“Eek?!”
Letting out a foolish scream, she mercilessly crushed the person directly beneath the summoned spot.
And.
“What the helllll! Herculesss!”
She couldn’t accept the sudden change in situation, and a fierce reaction burst out of her.
Esthea, who had turned ferocious like the protagonist of a violent novel, roared, but the next instant.
“Grrr, this is again...! I’ll skip the aisatsu!”
The man who had been pinned beneath her suddenly pulled back, then rushed at Esthea and swung.
No.
He had tried to swing.
“What are you?”
“......!”
The moment his eyes met Esthea’s, his body froze like stone, and that was the end of it.
“Hmm.”
She tapped the arrogant man’s cheek with her tail, tap, tap.
Esthea put her dragon-like intelligence and insight to work.
Judging from the situation.
This man had made Ulysses fear for his life, so Ulysses had borrowed the power of her scale to summon her.
All because of one human.
All because of one worthless human.
“A novel’s only fun when you can keep reading it──!”
“Hrk──”
Clapen’s teeth painted the dark night sky.
.
.
.
“Exactly, if you’re a writer you should stay home and write quietly—why’d you come outsideee!”
Esthea, having crushed the unconscious Clapen and used him as a chair, snapped while repeatedly slamming her tail against the floor.
Even after taking the dragon’s wrath head-on.
“You can go out for a walk sometimes.”
Kim Yul answered sheepishly, scratching the back of his head.
The moment Esthea saw that and tried to raise her anger gauge a little more.
“Ugh. I feel like the psychological stress is suddenly going to make me take tomorrow off──”
“That won’t dooo!”
Esthea’s anger instantly died down.
Right after that, she flew over to Kim Yul and clung to him, swishing her tail just like Nureongi.
“Ulysses, taking a hiatus is a sin. Such things should not exist. Mm? So, mm?”
Esthea had already completely forgotten any awareness that she was clinging to an insignificant human.
Kim Yul did not miss that opening.
“Hmm, then if you grant just two requests, I think I could do a bonus update tomorrow too......”
“A-a bonus update!”
The swishing of her tail tripled in speed.
A perfect temptation for Nureongi.
It was bait only Kim Yul, who had steadily observed Historee carrying Esthea around and feeding her all this time, could wield.
“Grrr......”
Looking down at the groaning assassin Clapen, who was writhing with his front teeth gone.
“By any chance, might the great dragon also be able to dominate a person’s mind?”
Kim Yul deliberately added an extreme honorific to maximize the persuasive effect.
“Ahem! Of course!”
The effect was tremendous!
“Then, could you shake him down and see if you can find out who ordered him to kill me?”
“That’s easy!”
Esthea rose with an ahem and instantly wound her tail around Clapen.
Esthea swiftly brought the limp, flopping Clapen right in front of her and placed her hand on his head.
And.
“Solam veritatem dicere debes──”
At the same time that Esthea’s cheerful voice dropped a tone, a soul-shaking incantation flowed from her mouth.
Kim Yul’s eyes widened slightly.
And.
Clapen, half-conscious, opened his mouth and began to form sounds.
“Vertus...... duke-nim...... di-di-hadyeot......”
His pronunciation was terribly slurred from the shock of having his teeth knocked out, but Kim Yul understood it exactly.
“Duke Vertus, then.”
Kim Yul muttered that name in a low voice.
“Ahem! Shall this great dragon take care of it?”
Esthea puffed out her chest and growled as if she were about to breathe fire at any moment, but.
Kim Yul quietly shook his head.
“Revenge isn’t something you leave to someone else. I have to personally make him pay for it to truly count as revenge.”
Kim Yul’s gaze gleamed with a sinister, vicious light, as if he were imagining the thesis advisor who had rejected his dissertation.