Pistrawne's Phantom Dragon (2)

Isaac Walker was quietly, but surely, being backed into a corner.

Just how long was he going to have to keep living like this?

Until now, he had suppressed the feelings welling up inside him and kept deceiving himself, but...

(...I've reached my limit.)

Isaac looked down at the enormous pile of carrots that had been tormenting him, bitterness impossible to hide on his beautiful face.

A few days earlier, a huge amount of carrots had arrived with a message from Raul Roseberg, the 〈Thorn Witch〉: 'The carrots turned out amazing! Eat them all together!'

The wooden crate packed with carrots was heavy enough that Isaac could just barely lift it with both arms—Monica, who was frail, couldn't lift it. There was no way one household could use up that many.

Over the past week, he'd gone around handing them out to acquaintances and neighbors, including Miss Lana Collett, but plenty of carrots still remained in the crate.

To make matters worse, Nero, the biggest eater in the house, had been away from home for a week.

Apparently, Isaac had offended him by ruffling his tail the wrong way.

Nero's words were: "You foolish human who ruffled my tail the wrong way! I'm not getting fooled by Nero-senpai anymore. I won't forgive you until you worship and praise me as Lord Nero and offer me a feast! Idiot, idiot!"

Well, he'd come back once he missed meat. That was the shared opinion of Isaac and Monica.

And so, for the time being, Isaac and Monica had to eat all these carrots between the two of them.

For the past few days, Isaac had dutifully used the carrots as sides for meat dishes and added them to soup, but honestly, he was reaching his limit.

(...Maybe I could grate them and make a cake.)

If he flavored it with citrus and cinnamon, he should be able to cover up the carrot taste quite a bit.

Isaac rolled up his sleeves, muttered, "All right," and steeled himself before starting to grate the carrots with a vigorous grate-grate, scrape-scrape.

Isaac's eyes as he looked down at the carrots were dark and shadowed, his expression so sharp it could be called a glare.

As a child, Isaac had hated carrots.

Truthfully, he still kind of hated them.

＊　＊　＊

Monica Everett, the 〈Silent Witch〉, was intrigued by the grate-grate, scrape-scrape sound coming from the kitchen and peeked inside.

In the kitchen, Isaac was rolling up his sleeves and silently grating carrots.

(What is he making today?)

Monica, who had eaten much the same things every day when she lived in the mountain hut, didn't get tired of food easily, so she didn't mind the carrot dishes they'd been having day after day.

More than anything, all the food Isaac made was delicious. So she was looking forward to it without reservation.

Monica glanced outside, thinking that she wished Nero would come home soon, too.

It had been almost a week since Nero ran away from home.

She tried to leave the window unlocked whenever possible, but there was no sign of Nero coming back.

According to Isaac, the reason Nero had run away was, "I accidentally slipped and ruffled Nero's tail the wrong way." To run away over something like that, Nero was a little too petty.

As Monica was thinking this while looking outside, she saw a mail carrier drop a letter into the mailbox in front of the house.

(A letter. Maybe from Minerva?)

A little while ago, she had sent a recently completed paper to Professor Rutherford at Minerva, the academy for training mages, for editing. Could this be his reply? Monica opened the mailbox and took out the envelope.

The sender on the envelope was the Southdoll branch of the Mages' Guild.

The Seven Sages and the Mages' Guild had fairly close ties, and each month they received some kind of notice about an academic conference, a request to give a lecture, or a report that one of the Seven Sages needed to review.

However, mail of that sort usually came from the Mages' Guild's headquarters in Baloa. It was a little unusual for something to come from the Southdoll branch.

Monica sat down, opened the letter, and found a request signed by the head of the Southdoll branch. After reading its contents, she jumped to her feet, making the chair scrape.

"Th-this is terrible...!"

Monica clutched the letter and called into the kitchen, where the grating sound rang out.

"Aike, Aike! I'm going to the Mages' Guild."

Isaac stopped grating the carrots and looked at Monica.

"The Guild? Are you going to headquarters?"

"No, the Southdoll branch. It seems there's a serious situation at the harbor... They sent an urgent request..."

"Could it be a water dragon?"

Monica's eyes widened at Isaac's words.

As he had guessed, the request from the Southdoll branch of the Mages' Guild was to hunt a water dragon that had appeared in the nearby sea.

The waters near Southdoll were not designated as a dragon hazard zone, but water dragons sometimes wandered into them.

Water dragon was a general term for lower-ranked aquatic dragons, and there were so many varieties that they could be classified in considerable detail.

Some had long necks, some had horns, and some had large fins. Their scales came in many colors, and the more unusual varieties included venomous ones and those that could live both in water and on land.

They also varied in size. Some smaller species were about Monica's size, while larger ones were bigger than ships.

The target of the current extermination request was a large species bigger than a ship.

"Aike, how did you know it was a request to hunt a water dragon?"

"The sailors at the harbor were talking about a large water dragon appearing. I thought it might be related."

Surprised to learn that he had gotten to know the sailors, Monica spread the request out so Isaac could see it, too.

"That's right. It seems a large water dragon appeared along the route connecting Southdoll and Alpatra, but..."

She trailed off and exhaled with a troubled expression.

The route connecting to the maritime nation of Alpatra was one of Southdoll's most important shipping lanes. If a large dragon had appeared there, it would deal a major blow to both fishermen and merchants.

Lana, who ran a trading company, was surely in trouble, too. Monica wanted to help however she could.

However, even for Monica Everett, the 〈Silent Witch〉, hunting a water dragon was by no means easy.

"I've never fought a water dragon before, so honestly, I'm a little unsure of myself."

Even the 〈Silent Witch〉, who had once shot down more than twenty wyverns at a time, would find it difficult to shoot a water dragon.

There were several reasons.

First, it was difficult to detect an enemy underwater. Detection magic could reveal its general location, but not precisely enough to pierce the spot between its eyes.

Second, underwater, water pressure and drifting debris caused the power and precision of attack magic to drop dramatically.

There were other issues, too, but broadly speaking, the problem with underwater enemies boiled down to "it's difficult to hit them" and "it's difficult to deal enough damage."

For Monica, shooting down a flock of wyverns was far harder than shooting down a single water dragon.

(The best of the Seven Sages at hunting water dragons is the 〈Cannon Mage〉, but... I can't imitate his way of fighting.)

Like other dragons, water dragons suffered almost no fatal damage from attacks anywhere other than between their eyes.

But with Bradford Firestone's high-powered, multiply enhanced magic, the 〈Cannon Mage〉 could inflict tremendous damage just by hitting the dragon's torso.

The 〈Cannon Mage〉's strength was that, thanks to his overwhelming power, he didn't need to aim accurately for a vital spot—if he hit it at all, he would almost certainly win.

Monica's strengths, on the other hand, were the speed and accuracy with which she cast magic.

Those strengths were of little use against a water dragon.

(Should I use an advanced homing spell? No... Even if it homes in, there's no point if the attack hits anywhere but between the eyes... If it were a medium or small water dragon, I could spear it and haul it to the surface, but this one's large, so that's probably impossible...)

In the end, the only way to pierce the dragon between the eyes with precision was to steadily work through the calculations and pinpoint its position.

To do that, she needed to know the currents in the waters where the water dragon appeared, as well as its exact species.

However, another problem arose with this "information about the water dragon."

Isaac, who had been poring over the documents, pointed out the issue.

"This is bad. The sightings of the water dragon are all over the place."

The request letter had included a summary of sightings of the water dragon they were being asked to hunt.

But the descriptions were completely inconsistent: some said it had a long neck, others a short one; some said its fins were large, others small.

The only thing they all agreed on was that it was "big enough to be larger than a ship."

"Based on the reports, it's unlikely to be a blue dragon, but we might want to be cautious."

The blue dragon Isaac mentioned was a higher-ranked water dragon. It was distinguished by beautiful blue scales and a pair of enormous horns.

The dragon reported this time apparently had no horns, so it was unlikely to be a blue dragon. Blue dragons were naturally docile and rarely approached ships.

If it turned out to be a blue dragon, it could use magic to control water, so they wouldn't be able to approach it by ship in the first place. If they encountered it and it attacked, they would be unlikely to survive.

"Hmm... Um, for now, let's set aside the possibility of a blue dragon and assume it's one of the large water dragon species."

Hearing this, the thoughtful Isaac immediately brought over a book of information on aquatic dragons and spread it on the desk. He quickly flipped through the pages, narrowing down the possibilities. He worked fast.

"The most likely possibility is a long-necked species, but it could also be a mutation of the large-finned species, which is normally medium-sized."

"Yes, cases like that have been reported in the past, so we should keep it in mind."

"The scale colors in the reports are all over the place, too. Some say it was blackish, others grayish... Yeah, we probably shouldn't rely on that."

"Yes. Underwater, scales can look different depending on the weather, and some species change color when they come onto land... So let's not worry too much about their color."

Monica and Isaac used the sightings to narrow the possibilities down to several species of water dragon.

After identifying about five likely possibilities, Isaac gave a small, wry smile.

"Some of the sailors even said, 'It's the phantom dragon of Pistrawne,' so the sightings probably aren't very reliable."

"The phantom dragon of Pistrawne?"

"Have you heard about the incident with the Evangeline eight years ago?"

Monica shook her head.

Monica remembered incidents related to magic to some extent, but magical creatures were outside her area of expertise.

"Eight years ago, the luxury liner Evangeline encountered a large water dragon and capsized in the Pistrawne Sea. Almost none of the passengers survived, but miraculously, some of the crew were rescued by a fishing boat that happened to pass nearby."

The surviving man had apparently testified as follows:

They had kept a constant watch on the surrounding area. And yet, the large dragon had appeared beneath the ship without any warning.

After listening to Isaac's story, Monica thought for a moment, then spoke.

"Um, did the ship capsize at night?"

"No, during the day. Apparently the weather was clear and the wind was calm."

It would be one thing at night, but it did seem a little strange that they'd failed to notice a large dragon approaching during the day.

"Based on the testimony, 'The dragon appeared as if out of thin air,' the dragon that sank the Evangeline came to be called the phantom dragon of Pistrawne, after the name of the sea."

From there, rumors apparently grew more elaborate, with claims like, 'The dragon punished the criminals aboard the Evangeline,' and, 'The phantom dragon of Pistrawne continues to prowl around the sunken ship to keep its treasure all to itself.'

And ever since that incident, sailors had begun calling large water dragons that appeared suddenly without warning, or whose identities were unclear, phantom dragons of Pistrawne, and fearing them.

"Um, couldn't something like that be explained by a lapse in the watch allowing it to get close, or a reef in the fog being mistaken for a dragon...?"

"Maybe."

Isaac readily agreed with Monica.

"People sometimes want to give a name to frightening things whose true nature they don't understand, don't they?"

"Is that how it is?"

If it were Monica, rather than naming something vague whose true nature was unclear, she would want to clarify what it was. Then, if it turned out to be something that had no name yet, she could give it one for the first time.

As Monica thought this, Isaac smiled vaguely and closed the book.

"By the way, I have a suggestion for this water dragon hunt. Would you hear me out, my master?"

Isaac returned with several bundles of papers from the document cabinet. Those were papers he'd been researching on his own, weren't they?

Isaac spread the papers across the desk. He wore an unusually serious expression, like a student standing before a professor to present at an academic conference.

"I've been researching a spell for underwater detection lately. I also tried to incorporate the shared spell proposed by Professor Prescott at Minerva... Do you think it might be useful for this water dragon hunt?"

Monica read through the magic formula written there, her face expressionless for a while.

After repeatedly calculating and verifying its contents, Monica slowly raised her head and looked up at Isaac.

"Aike, um..."

"...Yes?"

Isaac nodded with a stiff expression, and Monica spoke, moving her hands up and down for no particular reason.

"I really, really want to praise you as your master right now, Aike... but how should I go about it?"

"How about patting me on the head?"

Isaac said it jokingly, and Monica rose onto her tiptoes and stretched her arm as far as she could.

Since Monica was short and couldn't reach the top of Isaac's head, she instead gently stroked the area around his bangs.

"Aike, you're amazing, you're so amazing. My disciple is really amazing!"

Monica's cheeks flushed as she spoke excitedly, and Isaac smiled broadly.

"I'm honored, my master."

His elegant, beautiful smile twitched at the corners of his mouth, unable to conceal his delight.