Dragon's Nest

After being seized by the dragon, I was terrified, wondering how far it would carry me off, but the forced sightseeing flight ended surprisingly quickly. It felt like only a few minutes or so. It might actually have been even shorter.

The Dragon Witch landed beside the breached dam. A huge horizontal opening had been carved into its side, turning it into a cave, and that was her nest.

Shards of glass, gremlins, old coins, 100-yen and 500-yen coins, silver accessories, and jewelry cases covered the ground. It looked like the worst possible place to sleep. Though with a dragon's body and scales, I suppose it didn't matter if the bed was uneven.

There was also a faint floral scent, like perfume or shampoo. There was no animal smell at all.

Tossed into the nest along with the spoils she had stolen, I sprawled out limply before I could even complain.

My legs had given out, and I couldn't stop trembling all over. I had been forced on a flight through the open sky with no lifeline and no time to prepare, and it had probably shortened my life. The way I am now, I could probably go bungee jumping with a smile.

The Dragon Witch emptied the contents of her belly pouch into the nest, adding more glittering treasures, then shoved her head into the pile and squealed with delight. She was so innocent. The damn beast.

When I struggled to crawl away on my weakened legs, her tail blocked my path.

"No escaping. Let's see... It should be around here somewhere... Here it is. Handcuffs. I'll chain your feet to that statue."

"Tch!"

She tossed me a grimy pair of handcuffs with her foreleg, and I reluctantly chained my foot to the statue.

When I waved the foot chained to the statue, the Dragon Witch curled up like an enormous cat, settled herself in the center of the nest, and spoke to me in a relaxed tone.

"Dairi. I'm appointing you as my treasure manager. You'll polish my treasures and make them pretty, and make lots of new treasures, too. In exchange, I'll feed you all the meat you can eat. I'll protect you from monsters, too."

"That's not as bad a proposal as I expected. But I refuse. I don't want to be treated like a slave."

"You want to get killed?"

When I refused her orders, the Dragon Witch bared her fangs and glared at me with vicious eyes.

Scary. But to her, I was a valuable treasure-producing worker. She probably wouldn't crush me just because I'd annoyed her a little. I had to stand my ground.

Even if my opponent was a dragon, I could be assertive as long as it wasn't human.

"Quit with those cutesy sentence endings. Nobody wants that from a dragon."

"Shut up. I know this way of talking is painful for a woman in her thirties. I started talking like this when I mutated. It's not my fault."

"Seriously?"

"Didn't you know? Having your body or your sexual proclivities change through mutation is a classic witch thing. The Eyeball Witch's staple food became eyeballs. She's a one-eyed person herself, so she's seriously disgusting."

"Creepy."

Just imagining it was pretty horrifying. She sounded like one of the evil witches from fairy tales.

Well, she really was a witch. I tended to forget that because the Blue Witch, the one I knew best, looked like an ordinary woman wearing a mask.

I mean, yeah.

The Blue Witch.

"Isn't this a bit much? My witch companion is going to come flying to my rescue."

I said it boldly, while inwardly wondering whether the Blue Witch, having sensed something was wrong, would really come to save me, and taking care not to let that doubt show.

The Dragon Witch snorted.

"The Eyeball Witch? Tsugibi? Hachioji? None of them are my match."

"Not even the Blue Witch?"

When I mentioned the Blue Witch to the Dragon Witch, who showed no sign of disliking conflict with the other witches, her enormous body gave a sudden jerk. In a small, nervous voice, she asked:

"...Are you a citizen of Ome?"

"No."

"What, don't scare me! There's no way she'd leave Ome and come all the way to Higashiyamato. She stayed shut in even when a kaiju attacked!"

"She goes to neighboring cities all the time. She comes to Okutama pretty often, too. If this is Higashiyamato, then Ome is close, isn't it?"

"What do you know about the Blue Witch? If you're not an Ome citizen, she won't come to help you. She's a woman with a frozen heart."

My one usable bargaining chip was laughed off, and my confidence began to crumble.

She might be right.

If Professor Ohinata were kidnapped, the Blue Witch would probably freeze all of Tokyo solid if that was what it took to rescue the professor. But I'm just me. We're only business partners in the sale of magic wands. The Blue Witch has no obligation to save me.

She had wanted to hide me away to prevent my technology from leaking out, but... Hmm. Would she really help me even if it meant making an enemy of another witch?

"No matter what you say, I'm not letting you escape, so give it up. If you can process magic stones, you'll start with that. Cut them until they're sparkling and glittering!"

"Not process them in a way that increases their magical power?"

"What's that? Magic stones are beautiful. They're the greatest gems in the world. You will bring out their appeal to the fullest."

Aha. This really was all she could think about: treasures. For someone calling herself a woman in her thirties, she seemed to have a remarkably primitive brain.

She'd said her way of speaking had changed when she became a witch. Maybe her brain had mutated too, lowering her intelligence.

Snorting heavily, her eyes glittering greedily, the Dragon Witch rose ponderously and nudged me with the tip of her claw.

"Turn around for a moment. I'm going to take human form."

"You're transforming? That's kind of interesting. Can I watch?"

"What? You filthy pervert. Go read some porn."

"Oh, you're going to be naked. Sorry, I'll turn around."

I turned my back, squeezed my eyes shut, and covered them firmly with both hands. After hearing some rustling behind me, I heard an incantation.

"Though this body is not human, let at least the body itself be human."

There was a sound like a balloon bursting, followed by a gust of wind. After a short pause, I heard another incantation.

"If it flies through the sky and breathes fire, even a lizard is a dragon."

After another balloon-popping sound, she said, "That's enough. Look this way," so I stopped covering my eyes and turned around.

For an instant, the Dragon Witch looked exactly as she had before the transformation. But when I looked closely, I saw that the huge gemstone that had been embedded in her chest, like a mass of compressed flame, was gone.

The gemstone was being held between the tips of the witch's claws, raised right in front of my eyes.

The Dragon Witch said proudly:

"This is my magic stone, Meteor Flame. I'm going to have it made into a necklace that will look good around my neck."

"I heard the magic stone the Dragon Witch has is Blood Moon, which she snatched from the dead Vampire Mage."

"That's an unfounded accusation. This is Meteor Flame. I picked it up in Minato Ward and took it into safekeeping."

What a way with words. She had definitely stolen it in the confusion.

Minato Ward was the area once ruled by the late Vampire Mage.

I could easily imagine her rummaging through the Vampire Mage's abandoned home and stealing the magic stone, just as she'd rummaged through my house. Or maybe she'd peeled it off the Vampire Mage's corpse.

She was one hell of a thief, but putting that aside, the red magic stone before me fascinated me.

It was huge.

It was larger than Kyanos's magic stone and larger than the Octameteorite, which was fist-sized. It was about the size of a small melon.

There were a great many impurities inside, but the reflected light made them shimmer like living flames.

Fascinating!

Its shape was closer to an oval or a rectangular solid than a sphere.

Hmm. If I were making this into a necklace, should I use a baguette cut or an emerald cut?

The standard practice in gem cutting was to cut inclusions so they were invisible or difficult to see, but with this magic stone, it would probably look more beautiful if they were shown off instead.

A stone this large would require some ingenuity in the setting, too. A setting design that suited a smallish gemstone would probably look mismatched at this size. I could draw up several designs, then make full-scale wooden models and...

I came back to my senses when I realized the Dragon Witch was staring intently at me while I pondered the red magic stone.

"Ahem. I'll accept the commission to process this. I have tools at home, so let me go. I'll refrain from pressing charges this time."

"Your workshop is here. I'll have someone bring your tools over tomorrow, so spend today thinking about the design. I'm going to sleep now. Be a good boy and don't try to escape.

Eat the canned food lying around over there. You can look at the treasures all you want as long as you don't damage or dirty them. Touch the grave at the very back of the nest and I'll kill you. The toilet and bath are at the end of that side passage. You can use them freely when I'm not in there."

"A dragon-sized bath... Are you heating up a swimming pool or something?"

"It's a human-sized Goemon bath. I take human form only when I bathe, too. It saves on body wash and shampoo. Oh, the shampoo in the pink bottle is mine, so use the green bottle for guests."

I had just been given an astonishingly domestic list of instructions.

The Dragon Witch closed her eyes, rested her chin on her foreleg, and began to breathe softly in her sleep. She was living the good life, even though it was only sometime after noon.

I watched the Dragon Witch for a while, but when she started blowing snot bubbles from her nose, I became convinced she wasn't pretending to sleep.

All right.

Time to escape!

Being free to process the gold and silver treasures piled up in this nest sounded interesting, but being chained by the feet and forced to work like a slave was simply unpleasant.

The handcuffs were the problem.

The statue my foot was chained to was quite heavy. I could somehow carry it while walking, but there was no way I could get away while staggering along with a statue in my arms.

But I had a special skill.

I borrowed a hairpin from the wig of a mannequin in a gorgeous dress, half-buried in the treasure pile, and quickly picked the handcuffs open.

Hah! Fool!

You underestimated my dexterity. I'm a man who could conquer the world with his dexterity.

Handcuffs are meaningless against me, you fool!

Basking in the afterglow of victory, I muffled my footsteps and carefully tried to leave the nest.

But a tail thrust out and blocked the way.

When I looked over fearfully, the dragon had its eyes half-open and was giving a quiet growl, baring its sharp fangs.

A cold sweat ran down my back.

I walked backward to my original spot and put the handcuffs back on my foot.

When I waved the handcuffs to show her, the dragon closed its eyes and began breathing softly again.

This is hopeless. Is it some kind of wild instinct? I don't look like I can get away.

Help me, Blue Witch!

Come quickly!

Evening came, the sun went down, night passed, and morning arrived.

A whole day passed, but the Blue Witch did not come.

Instead, the person who arrived with the sunrise was a pudgy man in a suit.

"Well, I'm off to work. Zaizen, explain everything to the new arrival over there."

"Certainly, Witch-sama. Have a good day."

After the pudgy man bowed deeply, the Dragon Witch let out a huge yawn and took off into the open sky.

She was supposed to have a job transporting university graduates who were mages all across Japan. I guess she had a quota to meet today, too.

Even the self-important Dragon Witch apparently had enough sociability to accept work from the witches' assembly.

After confirming that the Dragon Witch had disappeared into the distance, I kept my eyes on the ground and pleaded with the pudgy man.

"Um, excuse me. The truth is, I was kidnapped and brought here. Could you... let me escape?"

"Ah... That would be a little difficult. My name is Zaizen Kintaro. I handle the administrative affairs of the Dragon Witch-sama's territory, more or less."

"If you defied her and let me escape, would she kill you?"

"No? She's a bit questionable when it comes to ethics, but she won't kill you as long as you don't really get on her bad side. There are districts with better public safety, but this one isn't all that bad. Um..."

"?"

"If you don't mind, may I ask your name?"

"Oh, I'm Dairi."

"Dairi-san, you've certainly had bad luck, but they say any place becomes home once you live there."

With that, the pudgy man taught the unfortunate prisoner all sorts of things.

The pudgy man... Zaizen Kintaro-san, apparently, had also been kidnapped by the Dragon Witch. He had been brought here for the idiotic reason that his name sounded auspicious, then chained up in the nest just like me. But after behaving obediently for about a month, he had been released.

If no one came to rescue me, would I be chained up here for a month? Give me a break.

"Dragon Witch-sama rules the area spanning the three cities of Musashimurayama, Higashiyamato, and Higashimurayama. Dragons are very powerful monsters, you see? Weak monsters won't approach territory saturated with Dragon Witch-sama's scent. Even weak monsters that appear within the cities flee. She also exterminates powerful monsters that appear despite the smell.

"Huh."

So she actually maintained public safety pretty well? She had kidnapped me, though.

"She doesn't arbitrate conflicts or crimes between humans, leaving those to local self-government, so the fact that there are few monster attacks doesn't mean it's peaceful here.

The greatest advantage of our district is meat. Compared to other districts, a great deal of meat is included in our food rations. Dairi-san, you probably rarely get to eat meat, do you?"

"Y-yes, that's right. I only get to eat good meat when we manage to catch a deer. So does that mean livestock farming is still alive around here...?"

Securing feed and caring for livestock should have been extremely difficult.

"No. Dragon Witch-sama brings back whales for us."

"Whales?"

I see. That certainly is big. Literally.

Whales are enormous marine animals. A single one can provide meat for hundreds or even thousands of people.

It was on a completely different scale from hunting, where you set traps for rabbits one by one or spend hours roaming the mountains to bring down a single deer. It was big-game hunting made possible by a giant magical creature: a dragon.

"We have a whale butchering team organized here. Besides meat, they collect oil and bones and use them as resources. They're popular items at the exchange market."

"Wow..."

"Do you have any special skills, Dairi-san?"

I almost answered honestly, but closed my mouth at the last moment.

The dragon already knew about my processing techniques. Zaizen-san, however, did not.

It felt a little late for this, but the Blue Witch had repeatedly told me not to flaunt dangerous technology, so keeping it secret was still the best choice.

I concealed the facts in a way that wouldn't contradict anything when Zaizen-san spoke with the dragon.

"I'm a gem cutter."

"Ahh... No wonder she took a liking to you. My condolences. In that case, shall we have you meet the recovery team later? You'll probably be seeing that team more than anyone else from now on.

The recovery team, you see, is a group that retrieves precious metals and gemstones from ruins. If they have room in their luggage, they also recover medical supplies.

They go with Dragon Witch-sama to devastated urban areas where there are no witches or mages, then spread out to recover whatever they can. Witch-sama watches over them while they work, so the risk of monster attacks is low, but accidents like falls and collapses still happen, and it's not as if monsters never show up. It's dangerous work.

Still, their rations are increased, they get to live in good houses, and they can take time off whenever they're not deployed."

"I see. That dragon has proper employee benefits, despite being like that."

"I set them up. If you need anything, Dairi-san, come to me first. Dragon Witch-sama is... a bit difficult."

Zaizen-san trailed off.

Hmm. This was said to be a region ruled by the Dragon Witch, but in practice, this man was the one running its internal affairs.

Witches and mages had originally been ordinary people. Not all of them would be the sort who could rally people together, like former politicians or company executives. It was questionable whether the Dragon Witch had thought that far, but having a powerful witch at the top while leaving domestic administration to someone else who was good at it seemed like a pretty sound system of government.

Conversely, a district ruled by a muscle-brained witch with no political sense who still wanted to handle domestic affairs herself sounded like trouble.

Just as Zaizen-san had said, the Dragon Witch's district seemed to be "not all that bad."

That said...

This was not my utopia.

For one thing, it reeked of people here. I could see humans wandering around ordinary residential streets right outside the nest. No thanks.

I wanted to go back to Okutama, to my ideal paradise where not a single person could be seen as far as the eye could reach.

"Um... This is hard to say, but since I was kidnapped, I'd really like to go back home. I'm going to escape on my own, so could you maybe pretend not to notice...?"

I asked him again, but he apologized sheepishly.

"I'm sorry. As I said before, that's difficult.

Dragon Witch-sama has an incredible sense of smell. Even if I let you escape, I think she'd catch you right away. Witch-sama can pick up the scent of her prey from very far away, and apparently she can even detect the scent of treasure."

"Ahh."

That explained it.

She must have caught the scent of the Octameteorite while passing over Okutama, using that treasure-sniffing ability. If she could smell something inside my house from high in the sky, there was no way I could have avoided her.

Giving someone such a selfish personality along with a dragon's capabilities was seriously nasty.

Or maybe gaining a dragon's capabilities was what made her selfish. Either way, it was bad.

Zaizen-san promised to arrange and bring the tools for gem processing, then left, saying he had other work to do.

Damn it. He didn't seem like a bad person, and he didn't seem particularly loyal to the Dragon Witch, either. But he also didn't seem to have enough of an obligation to help me.

Even if I escaped while the dragon was away, I couldn't get away if she tracked me by scent like a police dog. I didn't know the geography around here, and Ome was a long way away. There was no way I could reach the Blue Witch's house before the Dragon Witch noticed I was gone and caught me.

Ugh. Was I going to be worked to the bone here for the rest of my life?

Judging by Zaizen-san, who had once been in the same situation as me, I probably wouldn't be treated too horribly, but still... Wasn't that Stockholm syndrome? The thing where a victim starts to trust their kidnapper. I hated that idea.

She's a robber, kidnapper, jailer, and goddamn dragon! Don't forget it. Never forgive her.

Now that any hope of escaping on my own had vanished, my only hope was that the Blue Witch would come to rescue me.

I spent the entire morning waiting for the Blue Witch while fiddling with the red magic stone, but she never came.

She didn't visit Okutama every day, so it wouldn't be strange if it took her a while to notice I'd been kidnapped. But waiting around was making me more and more anxious.

Please, seriously. Come, Blue Witch. I've never prayed to anyone this much in my life.

But my prayers went unanswered, and around noon, it wasn't the Blue Witch who arrived. It was the damn dragon.

In a good mood, she pulled an ATM out of her belly pouch, dumped its contents into the nest, tossed the empty ATM outside, and spoke to me casually.

"How's it coming along? Is the necklace done yet?"

"Could it be finished that fast, idiot? I'm waiting for Zaizen-san to bring the tools."

"I'm looking forward to it. Once it's finished, I'll show it off at the witches' assembly. Everyone will be so jealous. Gwah-hah-hah-hah!"

The Dragon Witch roared with stupid laughter, but she and I noticed that something was wrong at the same time.

It was autumn. The weather was chilly, and there were even days when frost formed in the mountains.

But frost pillars forming on the ground in broad daylight was strange.

The frost pillars whitening the roads through the residential district spread toward the dragon's nest, as if announcing the approach of something.

I could clearly see the dragon's face, covered in red scales despite her reptilian features, rapidly turn pale blue with fear.

I, on the other hand, was overjoyed.

Uooooooooh!

She's here!

The Blue Witch is here!!!!!

Meanwhile, I was ecstatic.

Uoooooooooh!

Here she comes!

The Blue Witch is here!!!!!