Chapter 75 - Options the Boy Created (2)

“He looks very young. Can he do it?”

Volkov asked Rutiger as he watched the blond boy chase after the drivers.

His eyes were sharp, but his subtly unbalanced body showed that the boy’s vessel was not yet complete.

“He was the best choice I could make.”

“That boy?”

Age does not say everything.

Only experience, skill, and accumulated achievements can serve as the standards that decide whether a mission succeeds.

“That’s right. He’s even dragged a Death worm out from underground before.”

“... A Death worm.”

In that sense, among the drivers now heading toward Lindwurm, there would be no talent better than Vlad.

For this hunt, Rutiger had brought the best dragon driver he knew.

“Then it was an obvious decision.”

After hearing Rutiger’s words, Volkov quietly nodded.

He had thought Rutiger was the only talent worth watching in this generation of the Bayezid Family, but it seemed one more had been hidden away.

“Now we should move as well.”

“Understood.”

Having engraved another unusual point worth reporting to the Iron Duke into his mind, Volkov took up his javelins and headed toward the upper side of the canyon.

“...”

Before moving to the planned position, Rutiger turned his head and looked behind him.

Mircea, Captain of the dragon killer knights.

His blue eyes were watching the knights of the North as they left.

Calmly and coldly.

Instead of the sneer he had worn until now, he was simply watching the young dragon driver disappear into the snowy fog with a grave look in his eyes.

* * *

Lindwurm’s current state could well be called a rampage.

Every living creature had its own patterns of behavior, and Lindwurm was no exception.

But the sight of Lindwurm abandoning the territory it had established, ignoring even its habit of following the cold, and blindly heading south made it seem as though it had some kind of purpose.

“It’s up ahead.”

“Let’s circle around behind it.”

Among the groups here, the Iron Duke’s knights had been the first to begin the subjugation of Lindwurm, and they had been doggedly tracking it all this time.

Rutiger, too, had been able to determine Lindwurm’s location by using Age to draw out the information held by the captive barbarians.

The two knight orders had used the information each side possessed to determine where Lindwurm was, and now it was time to draw the white dragon out from there.

“Everyone, get ready!”

The knights, who had driven their horses in a wide arc and succeeded in taking position behind Lindwurm as it rested, began charging toward the white dragon with loud shouts.

GRRRR.

Lindwurm, deep in a sound sleep, suddenly lifted its head at the noise.

Even if it was only a remnant of a fallen dragon, it could still make instinctive judgments to a certain degree.

Gleaming armor.

And burning wooden sticks.

ROOOAR!

Realizing that these were not the barbarians it usually preyed on, but the gleaming humans who had given it painful memories, Lindwurm quickly rose and let out a roar filled with rage.

Remembering the javelins from that time, persistent and threatening, which had eventually torn away its scales, Lindwurm decided to avoid the place for now rather than confront the knights.

The instinctive judgment that, with time, was gradually coming to resemble intelligence made Lindwurm act that way.

“Damn.”

Vlad could not help being a little surprised as he saw Lindwurm not charge in immediately, but instead appear to observe the situation.

It was showing a different pattern from the Death worm, which had bared its teeth the moment it sensed a human presence.

THUMP.

The way Lindwurm moved intelligently, as much as the heart now pounding within him, startled the boy.

“It’s moving!”

“Block both sides!”

Having already let Lindwurm escape once before, the Iron Duke’s knights gritted their teeth and quickly approached Lindwurm’s flanks, thrusting the magic torches toward it.

They knew very well.

If they let Lindwurm slip away here, there was no telling where this vicious creature would storm into.

Bayezid did not know, but Baranoff did, and so the Iron Duke’s knights had no choice but to grit their teeth even harder.

“Now!”

From Vlad’s closed left eye, the knights’ auras spread outward, and the torch flames that absorbed that force began to swell threateningly.

FWOOSH!

Seeing the knights threaten it once again, Lindwurm drew in a cold breath, but neither the time nor the situation allowed it to spit it out.

ROOOAR!

Choosing to run rather than exhale its cold breath, Lindwurm first decided to escape this situation through swift movement.

If it could accelerate enough, shaking off the knights here would be easy.

Having already experienced it once, Lindwurm began racing out across the white snowfield without hesitation.

“Don’t let it break out!”

The knights, who knew that fact well, also desperately tried to block Lindwurm’s path, struggling not to give the white dragon room to leap.

A battle began between the knights and the dragon over who would seize the space.

NEIGH!

“Aaaagh!”

One knight, unable to fully avoid the sharp teeth, was rolling off his horse.

Along with the pitiful scream of the horse, red blood sprayed in all directions and splattered across the knights’ armor.

“Vlad! Come to the rear!”

Rutiger’s knights, who had already coordinated with Vlad once through the Death worm, and Vlad himself quickly began filling the gaps the Iron Duke’s knights had failed to block, barring Lindwurm’s path.

CLANG! CLANG!

“Shit! My blade won’t go in!”

“Don’t overdo it!”

Among them were knights who watched for a chance and struck Lindwurm directly, but the dragon’s scales did not easily allow the knights to wound them.

ROOOAR!

Though not quite to the level of the Death worm, Lindwurm, too, possessed scales beyond comparison with ordinary monsters.

To pierce them, knights with deep and steadfast worlds were needed.

“Breath!”

Lindwurm had finally created an opening.

Seeing the nape of its neck swell in an ominous shape, the knights quickly scattered, avoiding the dragon’s breath as it burst forth.

“Aaaaargh!”

One of Rutiger’s knights took the breath head-on and slowly came to a stop in place.

Though Dorothea’s inscription was shining, the fierce dragon’s breath would no longer permit him to participate in the battle.

“It’s stronger than last time! You have to dodge farther away!”

“Why all of a sudden?”

The Iron Duke’s knights could not help being shocked at the breath, now a level stronger than the Lindwurm they had faced before.

As time passed, it was becoming more cunning and more powerful.

The dragon’s blood, which had slept until now, had been stimulated by something and was slowly raising its vicious potential.

["You have to step forward! There are no more knights who can hold out!"]

“Tch!”

And here, there was one more being whose blood boiled more fiercely as time passed, just like Lindwurm.

“Vlad!”

“You there! Give me a torch!”

Though they had prepared as best they could, Lindwurm’s breath, far stronger than expected, was making the horses’ advance sluggish.

“Here!”

Between the knights slowly moving away from Lindwurm with their legs freezing, a pitch-black horse began to shoot out.

It was faster than planned and a movement that strayed from expectations, but in actual battle, judgments like this were sometimes necessary.

["You have to go toward its snout. The moment you drive it left or right, it will stray from the canyon’s position."]

“... This is insane.”

At the voice’s words that he had to use himself as bait and drive it all the way to the entrance of the canyon, Vlad was dumbfounded, but he also knew there was no other choice.

‘Will this work?’

In one hand, he held the magic torch he had received from the Iron Duke’s knight.

And in the other, he held Jorge’s dagger, and with it, Vlad quickly sliced his own palm.

“Ghh!”

He had heard that Mircea had sacrificed barbarians to imprint the taste of human blood on Lindwurm.

And if this plan failed, they would use Age’s tribe as bait, capture the dragon as they pleased, and trample all over the North.

‘Tell them to fuck off!’

I want to do my best, as much as you believed in me.

Even if my existence is utterly insignificant.

Thinking of Rutiger, who had nodded to him, Vlad raised high the hand soaked with blood.

The boy’s red-stained fist rose high into the sky.

“Over here!”

From the end of the boy’s desperate gesture on the swaying horse, red drops of blood began to trickle down.

“Here’s the blood you want!”

Drops of blood falling from the boy’s fingertips.

Lindwurm watched with wide-open eyes as the drops fell and left red traces on the white snowfield.

There was a thirst there that human blood alone could not quench.

It was what it had been searching for all this time.

ROOOOAR!

The white dragon let out a ferocious roar unlike anything it had shown until now and began accelerating rapidly toward the pitch-black horse.

As if it had gone mad.

As if all it needed to do was tear off that one boy.

“It worked too well!”

["... Maybe you shouldn’t have gone that far."]

Seeing Lindwurm grow incomparably more vicious than before when he had only cut a single palm, Vlad quickly seized Noir’s reins.

“Run!”

The already exhausted and frozen knights had fallen far behind.

...!

Realizing that it was now the only one left, Noir quickly began drinking in the boy’s flowing world.

The boy’s world was one whose color had not yet been decided.

But even that alone would be enough to raise a single star into the pitch-black night sky.

NEIGH.

On Noir’s forehead, as it ran at a speed so dizzying even to itself, a single snow-white horn began to form.

At the same time, Noir felt an indescribable sense of liberation and drew in a great breath.

This was it.

For this moment, Noir had come to the boy.

To become a little faster and a little more perfect.

Now, only two worlds were running across the white snowfield.

The fastest dragon, and the fastest horse.

And there was only one being who could wholly fill these two worlds.

“Let’s go!”

Only one boy, his blond hair streaming in the blowing snowstorm.

The roars of the fallen dragon and the forgotten unicorn began to echo across the white snowfield.

* * *

“It’s coming!”

Beside the spears planted in the ground, Volkov had been quietly closing his left eye when his adjutant’s shouted report reached his ears.

“How long?”

“It’s up ahead, so in five minutes... no.”

Unlike usual, the adjutant’s voice trembled as he reported in confusion.

“Three minutes, no, one minute!”

“What?”

At the adjutant’s report, which was almost a scream, Volkov quickly pulled up a javelin and infused it with aura.

The sight he saw with his lifted right eye was indeed enough to make the adjutant panic.

“It’s right in front of us!”

“What in the...”

There was a snowstorm cutting violently across the white snowfield.

It was a straight-line snowstorm so fast it even cut through the northern gale.

At the very front of that snowstorm was a gleaming pitch-black horse being struck by leaping snow.

ROOOOAR!

And behind it was Lindwurm, whose blue eyes had somehow vanished and turned into red eyes that looked as though blood might drip from them at any moment.

They were rushing toward the canyon.

“Signal the knights of Bayezid!”

The plan they had set up was nowhere to be seen, and all Volkov could see now was the single torch the boy had raised, pitifully swaying.

“And here I was told he was the best dragon driver...”

Letting out an exclamation that was almost a lament, Volkov drew his shoulder far back and raised his javelin.

“It seems those words were true!”

It was fine if the plan went awry.

As long as the result was good, everything was right.

With apology for having dared to doubt him and admiration for the boy, Volkov swung his spear with all his might.

SWOOSH!

The javelin Volkov fired shot toward Lindwurm’s forehead as it was too distracted chasing the boy.

* * *

["It’s coming!"]

Unable to open his eyes properly against the headwind, Vlad quickly lowered his head at the voice’s warning.

SWOOSH!

In that instant, there was a sharp sound of air being split as it brushed past Vlad’s ear.

That murderous sound was enough to make even Lindwurm, who had been chasing him, turn its head for a moment.

THUNK!

ROOOOAR!

It had not hit.

But it was an attack whose force alone could make the rampaging dragon turn its head.

‘That’s it!’

Though the attack had failed, Vlad gripped the torch he was holding tightly.

Though the process of driving it in had been a mess, from now on they would be moving according to the plan again.

Volkov’s intention was to draw the dragon into the narrow canyon.

Just in case Lindwurm tried to turn back and escape, he was cutting off its retreat with javelins.

“Where do you think you’re looking?”

Vlad boldly threw the torch he was holding and once again drew Lindwurm’s attention.

They were almost there now.

If he could just drag this thing to the canyon up ahead, Rutiger’s world, blazing like fire, would be able to finish it.

Rutiger’s sword had even split the Death worm’s outer shell, so surely it could split Lindwurm’s scales too...

THUD!

“... Ghk!”

Vlad, who had been rejoicing that the plan was almost accomplished, clutched at his heart as it suddenly dropped with a heavy thud and lowered his head.

["Vlad! What’s wrong!"]

“Ghhhhh...”

Even at the voice’s urging, Vlad could not easily lift his head.

Noir, worried for the boy’s safety, and even Lindwurm, chasing behind them, shook their heads as if in pain and began to slow.

Watching Vlad and Lindwurm pant for no particular reason, the knights waiting for their chance in front of the canyon entrance began to look bewildered.

‘What the hell is this!’

His vision narrowed into blackness, and anxiety and fear came over him as if his heart had stopped.

At the intense warning his instincts delivered, Vlad had no choice but to grit his teeth.

Do not beat any longer.

Do not go any farther forward.

“You... fucking piece of shit.”

Vlad deliberately ignored the warning coming through his heart, forced his creaking neck upward, and looked toward the place where the force was pouring out.

There was a point his pounding heart was indicating.

Deep inside the canyon, a man standing before the sobbing barbarians.

That man’s blue eyes were looking at the boy as he smiled savagely.

A force that only dragons could feel was pressing down on the boy and the white dragon.

Unadorned Sword

“Charge now!”

The white dragon and the blond boy had stopped right before the canyon.

Both were trembling by the shoulders as they stood still, looking as if they had seen something terrifying.

The only difference was that the boy was gritting his teeth and trying to force his head up, while Lindwurm was slowly backing away.

At the crossroads of resistance and submission, the paths of the two beings were diverging.

“Forward! Knights, move forward!”

At Rutiger’s urgent shout, the knights of Bayezid rushed out.

Since the prey had not fallen into the trap, the only chance to cross blades with it was now.

“What kind of bizarre nonsense is this!”

Even the experienced Lamund could only curse as he watched Lindwurm stop right before success.

‘It’s those bastards.’

There was no proof, but he could feel it instinctively.

Rutiger looked at the man standing in the rear, his eyes full of rage.

Mircea was watching the boy with his arms crossed and his eyes calmly lowered.

A truly satisfied smile hung at the corners of his mouth as he stood far away.

ROOOOAR!

Lindwurm, the fastest dragon.

The dragon, which had tucked its tail to avoid a world even larger than itself, quickly turned its head and tried to run toward the white snowfield.

Back to the place it had ruled, where that vast world could not reach.

“Sir Volkov!”

In that instant, Rutiger’s shout rang throughout the canyon.

Volkov’s world was a world that saw far.

His world, refined to send sharp things even farther, began to gather on the javelin.

“Where do you think you’re escaping to!”

From the fingertips of a knight who was almost heretical in choosing not a sword but a spear, and among spears, a weapon meant to be thrown, a violet flash stretched out.

With a speed an ordinary knight could not even react to.

ROOOAR!

But the timing was not good.

Lindwurm was trembling in terror because of the vast world right before it, and it had sharpened its senses toward every physical threat approaching it.

CRACK!

That was why it saw before the throw, and why it could dodge before it touched.

Using the fastest legs among the remnants of a fallen dragon.

“Damn it!”

As Volkov quickly pulled another javelin planted in the ground and prepared a second strike, Rutiger and the knights of Bayezid reached the white dragon.

“Buy time!”

Rutiger had even cut down the Death worm, famous for its hard outer shell, with a single stroke.

However, he needed time to burst the world deep in his chest out into the world.

Just as the boy had bought time against the Death worm that day.

“Hold!”

“We have to block its front!”

While the knights bought time with their bodies, Rutiger quickly closed his left eye and flicked his sword with his finger.

The resonance from the familiar vibration made him sink into a deeper world.

From above came violet flashes shooting down.

From below came the gleaming humans charging in, sticky and persistent.

Though it had lived until now without knowing it was a noble dragon, Lindwurm now knew, and seeing humans dare charge at it, it felt an unbearable rage.

ROOOOAR!

With a roar greater than the one it had given when charging at the boy, Lindwurm drew in breath with all its might.

The nape of the white dragon’s neck, filled with rage with even defense abandoned, swelled as if it would burst.

“Damn!”

Realizing the catastrophic breath that would soon come, Lamund quickly left the battlefield and ran toward the boy.

["Vlad! Come to your senses!"]

“You brat! What are you doing here!”

“...”

But even at the urging of the voice and Lamund, Vlad only trembled and could not easily move.

Noir, whose world was connected to the boy’s, was also trapped in the binding of the blue eyes before them and could not easily move its feet.

Others might not have known, but the boy was now continuing to struggle to lift his head against the vast world trying to swallow him.

“... I don’t know what it is, but this is hopeless.”

Seeing the boy rooted in place with his eyes wide open, Lamund turned around.

If he could not choose the best option, he had to choose the next best.

And the good of a retired knight was the boy who would shoulder the future.

“When you get old, the cold wind reaches all the way into your joints.”

FWOOOSH!

No sooner had Lamund finished speaking than Lindwurm’s breath came, like a pale mist.

A dragon’s breath that would freeze even an ordinary person’s soul.

“Hup!”

The old knight, sheltering the boy behind his back, gritted his teeth.

He prayed that the world he had built over his entire life would be hotter than the dragon’s breath.

Instead of raising his sword, Lamund crossed both arms, and shining aura began to settle over his body.

* * *

“...”

Vlad quietly steadied his breath in the pale mist lying cold around him.

Goosebumps rose at the approaching chill, but Lamund’s aura felt warm behind his back.

["You have to cut it off!"]

“... Ghhhh.”

The cold rushing in from all directions was stiffening the boy’s body, but Vlad forced his trembling hand to grip his sword.

The gaze sent by the cold eyes tangled around him like a spiderweb and held the boy fast, but even so, Vlad had to do it.

“Damn it!”

To oppose a vast world, his own world had to grow wider as well.

As the boy’s world searched desperately for a place to extend, Lamund’s warmth began to settle into it.

Another strand of color seeped into Vlad’s world, which had not yet decided on its color, and that light began to flow along the unadorned sword.

“Old man.”

“... Go.”

Lamund’s voice flowed through lips hardened by cold.

The old man had done what he had to do, and now it was the boy’s turn.

Listening to Lamund’s words flowing from behind him, Vlad swung the unadorned sword with all his strength.

The invisible cold nets cast over the boy began to snap apart.

* * *

“...”

Mircea had always maintained an easy posture, but at this moment, he was looking ahead with a hardened expression.

The pale breath Lindwurm had spat out was swept away by the wind, and the scenery within gradually began to appear.

A scene as though time itself had stopped.

Among the knights frozen by the cold, the ice crystals made by the snowstorm were glittering.

And cutting through that glitter, there was a black horse racing swiftly out.

Mircea uncrossed his arms and looked at the boy’s eyes as he brushed past him.

Blue eyes and blue eyes.

Though they were the same color, the eyes, each holding a different light, passed by one another.

“Amazing.”

With the cynical smile he always wore erased, Mircea looked at the boy moving forward with pure admiration.

The boy’s eyes were slowly leaving Mircea.

Without the permission of that vast world, but solely by his own will.

The boy’s sword had cut away his presence.

“Let’s go!”

There was an order to everything.

Having learned that from Joseph, Vlad realized that rather than charging at Mircea right now, he had to deal with the white dragon behind him first.

Only then would he be able to properly land a blow on the man who had tried to crush him.

Under the shield of the old knight, Vlad raised his head once again and drove the black horse toward the white dragon.

“Ghhhh...”

Everything in the canyon was frozen by Lindwurm’s cold breath.

The knights who had been shouting and charging moments before were the same.

Rutiger quickly circulated his aura and tried to thaw his frozen body, but the white dragon, which could move forward if it were given even an instant, began stamping its feet.

“Damn... it.”

Dorothea’s inscriptions were shining against the cold, but the knights still needed time to move.

Volkov’s javelins were shining as he fought alone atop the canyon to hold Lindwurm back, but that alone was not enough.

‘Have we failed?’

Feeling the sense of failure rising from below, Rutiger gritted his teeth.

They had done their best, but in the end, they had not reached it.

There were times when failure came by the difference of a single step.

“Mm?”

In that instant, a black figure swiftly passed through Rutiger’s field of vision.

“I’ll try to stop it!”

“... Vlad!”

It was the horse driven by the blond boy who had been lowering his head until just now.

The black-haired young man had lowered his head for a moment, but the blond boy had not given up for even a single instant.

That was why, now that everyone else had stopped, he alone could move.

["Give it everything you have!"]

“Aaaaaah!”

With the aura he had drawn up forced into the unadorned sword, Vlad struck Lindwurm’s hamstring just as it was beginning to leap.

CLAAAANG!

ROOOOAR!

At Lindwurm’s rough roar that burst out in that instant, Vlad screamed as if in desperation.

“It’s too damn hard!”

Vlad, swinging a sword at a being called a dragon for the first time, rolled his numb wrist and clicked his tongue.

How had Rutiger managed to cut a Death worm harder than this thing?

["If it doesn’t work, keep doing it!"]

“... Hnnngh!”

At the voice’s words, Vlad closed his left eye once more, and aura began to flow over his sword.

“Give me a spear!”

Seeing the boy suddenly leap out of the fog, Volkov found hope again.

In the end, the success or failure of this operation depended on time.

If Rutiger and the knights could move before Lindwurm accelerated, the subjugation would succeed, and if not, they would have to hand the chance over to the dragon killer knights.

“We don’t have many spears left!”

At the report from the adjutant handing him a spear, Volkov urgently turned his head.

“Shit.”

There were only a few of Volkov’s spears left planted in the ground now.

Time was not the only thing they lacked.

“We still have to throw them!”

The boy’s struggling alone could not stop Lindwurm.

Though Rutiger had called him the best dragon driver, that did not mean he was a dragon slayer who could finish it off.

Receiving one of the few remaining spears, Volkov swung his arm toward Lindwurm with all his might.

["You go right!"]

For Vlad, who was too busy dealing with Lindwurm right in front of him to keep track of Volkov’s movements, the voice gave instructions.

To accelerate, it needed distance, and in the end, the boy had to seize the space that would let it move forward, even if he had to do it alone.

CLANG!

“...!”

From the end of the sword swung fiercely, an ominous cracking sound began to ring out.

No matter how much it was wrapped in aura, a sword born in the back alleys could not stand against a dragon’s scales.

“Damn!”

Feeling the crack because he was holding it, Vlad’s face turned pale.

The sword the boy had looked at like a star was breaking.

["You must not stop."]

“But!”

["You can’t stay with that thing forever!"]

At the voice’s words, Vlad was left speechless.

The unadorned sword had hung in a place so high the boy had to look up at it, but the enemies he had faced until now had all been beings too much for an ordinary iron sword to handle.

It could be called a miracle that it had endured until now.

["Let that thing do what it has to do!"]

“...”

Beings that reach the end of their limits can only stop.

Just as the old knight had, the merely ordinary unadorned sword now had to stop as well.

“Damn it!”

The blacksmith of the back alleys had once said it.

If his sword ever held the boy back, he would not be able to bear it.

The boy remembered the blacksmith who had looked at him with deep eyes as he said those words.

CLANG!

“Stop!”

CLAAANG!

“I said stop!”

The boy was sobbing as he mercilessly struck Lindwurm’s legs while it began rushing toward the snowfield.

Along with the boy’s sobs, the unadorned sword was also breaking apart.

“You son of a bitch!”

Together with the fluttering snow crystals, white fragments of the sword scattered through the air.

Along with the boy’s flowing tears.

CRACK!

ROOOOAR!

As the white dragon flinched for a moment at the boy’s force, a violet flash shot down from above the canyon.

“That’s it!”

Thanks to Vlad’s desperate interference, Volkov’s spear flew in and lodged itself in Lindwurm’s knee.

Seeing that from atop the canyon, Volkov raised his hand high.

It was the last remaining javelin.

“Huu... huuuu.”

The blood flowing from the palm he had cut earlier was running down the unadorned sword.

The sword, having drunk the boy’s blood, was lifting its head with the last of its strength.

“This is the last time.”

Looking at Lindwurm’s blue eyes facing him, Vlad raised the unadorned sword one last time.

“The last time. Really the last.”

On the running horse, the boy exchanged his final farewell with the sword.

Thank you for bringing me this far.

“Here I go!”

Vlad, having caught up with the slowing Lindwurm, finally looked at the blue eyes he met right in front of him.

I can’t pierce your hard scales, but I should at least be able to pierce your gaze.

That would be enough for the unadorned sword’s final act.

“Goodbye.”

The unadorned sword, holding the boy’s aura for the last time, glittered on the snowfield.

Along with the boy’s shout, the star of the back alleys fell toward the blue eyes.

ROOOOAR!

On the white snowfield.

Together with the dragon’s scream, the unadorned sword shattered.

The sword of the back alleys, which had held the boy’s potential, became a star in its final moment.

* * *

Though it was not the high, high night sky, the sword had been shining.

Because it had been held in the hand of a boy who wished to shine by himself.

If so, the sword of the back alleys, too, had every right to become a star.

And the name that star left behind at the very end was the Dragon Slaying Sword.