Chapter 89
The White Dragon's roar rang out across the night sky, where the pale blue-white light of the 〈Ice Spirits' Snow Lanterns〉 danced.
Entangled in Raul's roses, the White Dragon desperately spread its wings and tried to take flight. But they couldn't let it escape now.
Neither Melissa nor Raul could use flight magic. If the dragon got away, they would lose their only means of saving Cyril.
(Hurry, squirt...!)
Between roars, the White Dragon gritted its teeth in pain.
Melissa hurriedly poured mana into the rose vines, reinforcing them. If they were bitten through, their lifeline would be severed.
Entangled in the rose vines, the White Dragon bled from between its scales, its beautiful body becoming mottled with red.
Other dragons would not be wounded by mere rose thorns, but the White Dragon was a fragile dragon. Every time it struggled in agony, bloodstained scales fluttered down onto the snowfield.
"Let go of Toure!"
"Give me my friend back!"
Veronica and Raul shouted their opposing demands as ice blades and rose vines clashed.
Veronica's ice blades sliced through the rose vines, and Raul immediately regenerated them.
Veronica had already lost her left arm, and her remaining limbs were riddled with holes. From the missing portions, mana spilled out in white particles of light instead of blood.
Even so, Veronica's cold hostility had not faded. Though her expression was doll-like and blank, the aura radiating from her entire body was imposing enough for a higher spirit.
Veronica was desperately focused on cutting Raul's vines and had not noticed Monica diving into the White Dragon's mouth.
Don't notice, don't notice... Melissa prayed, but Veronica suddenly lifted her head and looked up at the White Dragon.
"...Toure?"
Veronica's eyes fixed on the vine extending from the White Dragon's mouth. She had noticed.
Veronica raised a hand. An ice axe formed at her fingertips and swung down toward the vine serving as their lifeline.
Raul chanted briefly and swept his right hand.
"I won't let you!"
One of the vines restraining the White Dragon stretched out and caught the ice axe.
At that moment, the rose vine twitched. It was Monica's signal.
Melissa poured all her remaining mana into the rose vines and pulled them toward herself.
Melissa wasn't actually gripping and pulling the vine, but she still planted her feet firmly. This sort of thing was all about attitude.
With her smeared lipstick curling into a feral smile, the fourth-generation 〈Thorn Witch〉 shouted from the depths of her belly like a fisherman hauling in a big catch.
"Heave-hoooooo!"
＊ ＊ ＊
Cyril and Monica's bodies surged upward, wrapped in wind mana.
Monica's flying was terribly unsteady, but the vine connected to her led the two of them outside.
Without that vine, escape would have been nearly impossible. Monica's flight magic was that clumsy. Basically, she could only jump, with no fine control whatsoever.
The vine forcibly hauled their bodies higher and higher as they veered right and left.
All Cyril could do was hold Monica tightly against him. Her right arm had almost no strength left, and her left arm was trembling. She was nearing her limit.
Beyond the narrow throat, everything was pitch-black, and they could not see the sky. The White Dragon must have closed its mouth.
"...I'm sorry."
Monica muttered and cast wind magic.
The compressed mass of air forcibly pried open the White Dragon's mouth.
The view suddenly opened wide, revealing a night sky filled with dancing pale blue-white light.
Feeling the cool night wind all over their bodies, the two of them, drenched in the White Dragon's saliva, burst outside.
At that moment, Cyril realized that Monica was limp in his arms.
"──Monica?"
There was no answer.
As soon as they burst outside, the wind mana enveloping Cyril and Monica vanished, and their bodies began to fall. Their flight magic had cut out.
The White Dragon's mouth was as high as the second or third story of a building.
At this rate, they would be smashed against the ground.
(Make it!)
Cyril chanted rapidly and created an ice slope directly beneath himself.
At the last possible moment, their bodies slid down the ice slope and reached the ground. Raul ran over to them.
"Cyril! Thank goodness, you're safe!"
"I'm fine. More importantly, Monica..."
Monica was slumped against Cyril, who sat on the ground, her face bloodless as she took shallow, repeated breaths.
Her faintly opened eyes were vacant and unfocused.
As Cyril and Raul stood there in panic, a woman's hand reached in from the side and forced something into Monica's mouth.
"A textbook case of mana deficiency."
Saying that, the freckled red-haired woman stripped away the white cloth wound tightly around Monica's right arm—it was apparently part of her coat.
Beneath the coat, things were as bad as expected. Blood seeped from all over the arm, and the wrist where the vine had been wrapped was dark red from being forcibly pulled.
As Cyril grimaced at the sight, Monica looked up at the red-haired woman and moved her bloodless lips.
"Big sis... this..."
"It's a mana-infused candy. It has only enough mana to alleviate mana deficiency, so don't use magic."
"Yesh..."
Monica nodded while rolling the candy around in her mouth, and the red-haired woman peeled away the rose vine digging into her arm.
As the red-haired woman efficiently pulled out the thorns, Cyril looked at her in confusion.
"Excuse me, but you are..."
The woman turned her gaze toward Cyril and smiled brightly.
"I'm Melissa Roseberg, Raul's elder sister. Pleased to make your acquaintance."
Cyril did not know why Raul's elder sister had accompanied them, but apparently she, too, had lent her strength to rescue him.
"...Lady Melissa. Please look after Monica."
Cyril entrusted Monica to Melissa, then stood and turned to face the White Dragon.
Entangled in Raul's roses, the White Dragon continued to groan in agony, its entire body stained red.
At its feet, a woman stood close beside the blood-covered White Dragon and cried out in anguish.
"Toure! Toure!"
She was a woman Cyril had never seen before, with pale blond hair and violet eyes.
But Cyril immediately realized that she was the ice spirit who had abducted him.
He could feel the bracelet around his left wrist connected to her by a thin thread of mana.
That spirit had not only abducted Cyril, but had also entered into a contract with him without permission—probably so she could move freely among humans.
...And in the end, she had tried to feed Cyril to the White Dragon.
How could Cyril not be angry? His anger boiled up inside him as he ground his teeth.
The distraught ice spirit noticed Cyril standing up, shook her pale blond hair loose, and glared at him with hatred in her eyes.
"...You hurt Toure, human."
The spirit's voice was full of a cold anger that chilled the spine, and Cyril shouted back in a voice that rang out clearly.
"Right back at you! How dare you hurt my junior, spirit!"
"Shut up! Let Toure eat you!"
"Who would just let themselves be eaten?! If you're going to borrow a human form, learn some human common sense!"
Cyril's voice was far louder than the ice spirit's insults, and Raul gazed at him with admiration.
"Amazing, Cyril. You've finally started lecturing a spirit."
At Raul's mutter, Monica, supported by Melissa, let out a little breathy laugh.
"...That's the Cyril-sama I know."
Cyril Ashley was so furious at the spirit before him that he did not even hear the exchange behind him.
Cyril raised his left arm and held up the bracelet that had been forced onto him.
"And to top it all off, you entered into a one-sided contract...! If you've entered into a contract with me, then you're my contracted spirit, aren't you?! In that case, it only makes sense for you to obey me!"
The spirit snorted at Cyril's words.
Having lived far longer than humans, the spirit must have seen Cyril as nothing more than an insignificant, fragile creature.
The contract, too, had been forced upon him with no regard for Cyril's wishes—in the spirit's eyes, Cyril was nothing more than a convenient puppet.
"What can you do, frail human? You are only a provisional contractor. You don't even know my true name."
In a contract between a human and a spirit, the spirit gives its true name to the human to whom it lends its power.
By weaving that true name into a magic formula, the human can control the spirit. But Cyril, whose contract had been forced upon him, had never been told this spirit's name.
The spirit stone set into the bracelet bore the spirit's name, engraved in the spirit language.
Almost no humans in the modern era could read the spirit language—which was why this spirit had assumed Cyril could not possibly read it.
"...I am Cyril Ashley, descendant of the 〈Lineage of the Wise〉!"
Cyril was neither omnipotent nor a genius.
Even so, from the day he was taken in by the House of Marquis Hioon, Cyril had read the vast collection of books in the manor and continued his studies.
Even if Cyril could never reach Claudia's level, he wanted to be able to hold his head high as the heir to the 〈Lineage of the Wise〉.
That was why Cyril could read the spirit's true name engraved on the bracelet.
"Obey me, Ice Spirit Ashelpike!"