Chapter 62
Isaac, the uninvited disciple of 〈Silent Witch〉, is publicly known as the Second Prince and Duke of Erin.
Though his official duties had decreased considerably since he renounced his claim to the throne, they had not disappeared entirely, and he also had work to do as a lord. Including invitations to tea parties and evening balls, he was fairly busy.
For that reason, he had to return to his territory once a month and attend to his duties as Felix Arc Ridill.
"Well then, I'm off to my territory for a while. Be careful to lock up, all right, Monica?"
"Yes!"
"I made some food that will keep for a while, so I'd be happy if you ate it."
Isaac knew that phrasing it this way would make even Monica, who tended to skip meals, eat properly.
Monica nodded obediently, then looked curiously at Isaac's shoulder.
Nero was perched on the shoulder of Isaac, who was wearing his overcoat.
It wasn't unusual for Nero, who was always begging for meat, to scamper around Isaac while he cooked. However, Nero wasn't particularly attached to Isaac, so he rarely went so far as to sit on his shoulder or lap.
"Nero, if you sit there, Ike won't be able to leave, will he?"
When Monica scolded him, Nero gave a smug little 'nya-ha-ha' and spoke in an affected, portentous tone.
"You see, this fellow said he wanted to entertain the great Nero-senpai at his estate. So, I decided to grace his estate with my presence."
"...Nero, at Ike's estate?"
Monica looked suspiciously back and forth between Nero and Isaac.
Isaac smiled brightly and picked up Nero by the scruff of his neck. He handled him as roughly as a stray cat caught stealing food.
"Yes, that's right. I wanted to entertain the great Nero-senpai at my estate."
"Hey, don't grab the great Nero-senpai by the scruff and dangle him around!"
Isaac breezily ignored Nero's furious yell and gave Monica his usual smile—while continuing to hold Nero in one hand.
"Well then, I'm off. My Master."
"Yes! Have a safe trip."
When Isaac had first become Monica's uninvited disciple, she had seemed hesitant to say, "Have a safe trip" or "Welcome home." This was Monica's house, after all, not Isaac's.
Even so, perhaps Monica had grown accustomed to having Isaac around. These days, she saw him off and welcomed him home as a matter of course. That made Isaac happy.
Savoring the small happiness in their trivial exchanges, Isaac left Monica's estate and boarded the carriage that had been waiting for him.
He then set Nero, whom he had been holding, on the seat opposite him.
Even though Nero was in the form of a black cat, Isaac had no desire to have a dragon capable of taking the form of an adult man sit on his lap.
"Now then, before we return to my estate, why don't we do a little shopping? We need to buy you some clothes."
"Clothes? I can reproduce some of them with my own power, you know."
"Really? I thought you could only reproduce that robe."
When Nero disguised himself as a human, he always wore an old-fashioned robe.
Isaac had seen Nero wearing servant's clothes several times before, but he had assumed that Nero had changed into clothing prepared separately.
However, according to Nero, he could reproduce other clothes as well, at least to some extent.
"That robe is easy to reproduce because I 'ate' it."
"...Hm?"
Something about that sounded odd, but Isaac's puzzled mutter was ignored as Nero continued chattering.
"For clothes other than that robe, I reproduce them by imitating what I've seen, so I can't quite manage the lining, decorations, and other fine details. When I tried to reproduce the academy uniform before, Monica's uniform was so strongly imprinted on my mind that I accidentally gave myself a skirt..."
The fact that Nero had once taken the form of a female student in uniform was shocking enough, but Isaac was even more concerned about something else.
"...You ate it? The robe?"
The black dragon disguised as a cat grinned ferociously at Isaac's dubious expression.
"What, you didn't know? High-ranking dragons can absorb information from whatever they eat. Well, it isn't as simple as just eating something; there are all sorts of troublesome conditions."
Nero said this as though it were common knowledge, but magical-biological researchers would probably blanch if they heard it. High-ranking dragons were rare, so almost everything about their ecology remained shrouded in mystery.
Isaac had a contract with Wildianne, a high-ranking water spirit, so he knew a fair amount about the nature of spirits, but he knew very little about dragons.
Then Isaac realized something.
If dragons absorbed information from what they ate and transformed based on that information...
"The reason you can turn into a human or a cat is..."
Instead of answering, Nero grinned, baring his fangs. It was a menacing smile utterly at odds with his feline form.
Isaac swallowed hard at the true nature of the cheerful black cat before him, then suppressed his agitation and asked with his usual smile:
"The transformation magic you and Wildianne use is fascinating. I take it it's different from illusion magic? It has a definite physical texture."
"A spirit's transformation and a dragon's transformation are similar, but they're different things. The biggest difference is this: you can cut a spirit with a sword, but it won't bleed. They're basically masses of magical power."
"Do you bleed?"
"Yeah. When I'm in dragon form, almost nothing can hurt me except for the spot between my eyebrows. But when I'm in human or cat form, a cut makes me bleed normally. I could even die."
Isaac fell silent for a while, carefully choosing his words.
"...So turning into a human or a cat is pretty risky?"
"When I got into a life-or-death struggle with the stray dogs of Southdoll, I seriously considered changing back into my original form."
The black dragon muttered with utter seriousness that the dogs kept calling for backup, and Isaac looked at him as though he could scarcely believe what he was seeing.
If anyone learned that Worgan's black dragon, which had once terrorized the Kingdom of Ridill, had nearly been killed by stray dogs and was on the verge of going all out, it could break the hearts of the formidable members of the Dragon Knight Corps.
"From a researcher's perspective, you'd be an incredibly fascinating subject. Monica never tried to study you?"
Monica didn't specialize in magical biology, but to anyone who studied magic, Nero was a living embodiment of mystery. There was no way he wouldn't stir their intellectual curiosity.
Yet Nero slowly swished his tail and, for some reason, spoke with a faraway look in his eyes.
"I once asked Monica, 'Don't you want to study me?' She got all fidgety and said..."
"'I'm not very good at dissection.'"
"...Wow."
According to Monica, anyone studying Nero from a biological perspective would naturally dissect and examine him. Dissection was an unavoidable step in mastering biology.
"She sometimes says terrifying things so casually. And what does she mean, 'I'm not very good at dissection'? She could at least say, 'I don't want to dissect Nero.' What a heartless thing."
"...That sounds like Monica."
Even Isaac, who was indulgent toward his master, could manage no more than that one comment.
As Isaac gave a wry smile, Nero looked up at him with narrowed, suspicious eyes and swished his tail.
"You aren't thinking of dissecting me, are you?"
Isaac answered Nero's distrustful question with the perfect smile of a Second Prince whom people praised as 'the very picture of sincerity and compassion.'
"Why would I do that to the great Nero-senpai?"
"With that shifty smile of yours, my willingness to trust you just vanished."