After a while, Hajime decided he’d put on enough of a show. Deciding to finish it off, he quickly stepped into the dragon’s blind spot, then kicked it onto its back once more. Taking advantage of its sluggish movements, he pulled his pile bunker out of his Treasure Trove.
Atsushi and the other guys began murmuring to each other, but Hajime ignored them and fixed the anchors in place. Once that was done, he activated his Lighting Field. He’d picked the pile bunker because he hadn’t tested it out at full power yet, so wanted to see what it could accomplish.
He set the azantium-coated stake spinning, making sparks fly off the bunker. He had no doubt his four ton stake would instantly kill the dragon.
However, as the saying went, even a cornered mouse would bite a cat. It was when a beast was wounded that it was at its most dangerous. It seemed black dragons were no exception.
“Graaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!” With an ear-splitting roar, the dragon let loose a monstrous shockwave. It was no more than a haphazard explosion of mana, but it was powerful enough to shake loose Hajime, who’d not only strengthened his already ridiculously powerful body to the limit with body strengthening, but had also had the pile bunker’s anchors to keep him in place. The force nearly wrenched his artificial arm out of its socket. The dragon then rolled over in an attempt to send Hajime flying.
“Uoooh!?” He stumbled back a few steps. That was enough to foul his aim, and his pile bunker fired harmlessly up toward the sky. Hajime spared only a glance to the stake that had vanished into the horizon before turning his attention back to the dragon. He correctly predicted that it would attempt to take Will with it in a final futile act of resistance.
“Tch, Shea!”
“R-Roger!”
Hajime chided himself for letting his guard down before calling out to Shea. Using the ice wall as a foothold, Shea leaped into the air, then hurtled toward the dragon like a meteorite, using her shotgun blasts to propel her forward. She was determined not to miss this time.
In perfect condition the dragon might have stood a chance at dodging, but weakened as it was, it had no hope of escaping Shea’s wrath.
Shea poured as much mana as she could into Drucken, turning an already heavy warhammer into a dense force of destruction. It slammed into the dragon’s head with a resounding crash.
The force of the blow had Shea doing a near handstand as her body flew into the air, and the dragon’s head slammed into the ground with earth-shattering force. After the shockwaves died down, silence reigned on the mountainside.
“Phew. That should make up for my mess up earlier. But man, this thing’s tough...” Shea exclaimed in surprise as she put Drucken away.
Her surprise was to be expected, as while many of the scales on its head had cracked, and some had shattered, it was in surprisingly good shape. Its defensive power was truly fearsome.
“Hmm? Yeah, looks like it’s at least as tough as the monsters in the abyss. Wonder how many mountain ranges it had to pass to get here.” Half-amazed, half just annoyed, Hajime walked up to the collapsed dragon. His Sense Presence told Hajime the dragon was still alive, so he moved in to finish it off.
The giant spike Hajime’s pile bunker had fired into the sky smashed into the ground between them.
What perfect timing. Hajime was suddenly reminded of the idiom More had told him. “Only a fool kicks a dragon’s arse.”
Hajime activated his Steel Arms and pulled the stake out of the ground. He carried it on his shoulder as he circled around to the dragon’s rear. Then, he held the spike like a javelin, and prepared to toss it into the dragon’s ass. The massive black spike would be more than enough to finish the job.
Everyone grimaced as they realized what Hajime was planning on doing. True, shattering the dragon’s scales seemed like a daunting task, but this was still too much. Everyone except Yue and Shea shuddered at his merciless decision, but Hajime paid them no mind.
“Let’s see how you like this being shoved up your ass, you stupid dragon.” Without a moment’s hesitation, he plunged black the spike as far into the dragon’s butt as he could.
A second later—
“Aaaaaaaaah! How dare youuu!” The dragon let out an anguished scream as it opened its eyes.
As the spike had only gone in halfway, Hajime had been planning on punching it in further, but the dragon’s screams, which sounded very much like words, surprised him so much that he unclenched his fist.
“My backside~ My poor backside~” Its pained, agonized, and oddly impassioned scream was so unexpected that it shocked everyone stiff.
It would seem that this dragon... was no ordinary monster.
“Take it out~ Please take it out~” The voice that echoed through the riverbed sounded pitiful. And decidedly feminine. The dragon’s jaws weren’t moving, so she was clearly using some kind of wide-area telepathy to broadcast her voice. That made sense, as it was unlikely a dragon’s mouth and vocal cords would be able to produce anything resembling human speech.
However, it was impossible for monsters to understand or use human speech. The only exception being a strange fish with a human-shaped face. Leaving that aside, no other monsters had been seen using language of any sort.
Though the presence of a black dragon here itself was out of the ordinary. It made absolutely no sense for a monster on par with the creatures Hajime had faced off in the labyrinth to be wandering the surface like this. And if by some chance there was a dragon’s nest nearby, there’s no way it would have remained hidden.
That left only two possibilities. First, that it was an undocumented kind of monster that had come from beyond the fifth layer of mountains, where no one had ever explored. Or second...
“Are you... one of the dragonmen?” The dragon stiffened up upon hearing Hajime’s question. However a second later it let out a defeated sigh. It appeared that it hadn’t wanted the fact that it was a dragonman to be found out. Still, at this point, she could no longer hide it. It would be pointless to try and deny it now.
“How could I make such a blunder...” she muttered regretfully. She wasn’t sure if the boy before her had found out because of how odd her movements had been while she was controlled, or because she’d accidentally spoke after being nailed in the ass... Chances were it was both.
“...Indeed. I am a proud member of the dragonman race. There are a number of reasons why I ended up here. I will explain all, so may I please ask that you remove that object from my anus? I am nearly out of mana. And if I was to return to my original form as is... suffice to say my backside would end up in a most... unsightly state.”
Hajime’d still been unsure when he asked, but it looked like his guess had been on the money.
Hajime was quite frankly amazed by this strange “luck” of his. Ever since he’d arrived in this world, he’d had a penchant of running into rare or unique existences. Yue was a vampire, a race thought to have gone extinct three hundred years ago. On top of that, she was royalty. Meanwhile Shea also exhibited traits of atavism, or at least that was the prevailing theory, and now he was face to face with a dragonman, a race thought to have gone extinct five hundred years ago. Fate seemed to enjoy matching him up with extraordinary people.
“...What are you doing here?” As Hajime was still pondering over his strange karma, Yue took over the questioning. Even for a vampire the dragonmen were a legendary race. And just like Yue, this dragon was quite possibly the last survivor of her race. Naturally, Yue was interested. Curiosity sparkled in her eyes.
“Like I said, I will explain so please take that thing out of me... My mana is nearly depleted... Hey, stop that! Don’t keep pounding it in! The stimulation— The stimulation will—”
“Yue’s the one asking questions here, you punk!” Hajime said, acting like a common thug, and started pounding on the spike with his fist.
The black dragon writhed and screamed. The solemn dignity she’d radiated upon their first meeting was nowhere to be found.
“What’
s a member of a lost race doing here of all places, and why are you so determined to kill a single adventurer... I’m pretty interested in the answer myself. I suppose I can delay shoving this all the way through to your mouth until you answer at least. If you want to show me your gratitude, hurry up and talk.”
The dragonman’s actions had been so unnatural that he was willing to delay killing his enemy until he figured out the details of what had happened. Of course he didn’t stop pounding the spike in, just slowed down a little.
“Aah n-not sho hard~ I-I’ll talk, so stop!”
Aiko and the others were appalled by Hajime’s callous attitude, but he ignored them. But if he kept going the dragon probably wouldn’t be able to talk so he stopped. He kept his hand on the spike so he could resume at any time though.
Relieved, the black dragon let out a sigh. She hurriedly began explaining what had happened. Hajime wasn’t sure if the sensuality he sensed in her voice was just his imagination or not
“I was being controlled. I had no intention of attacking you people. However, the man who took control of me ordered me to find and kill that young man and his comrades.”
She beckoned to Will with her gaze. Will started trembling again, but he bravely met the dragon’s gaze. Something inside him had changed after watching Hajime’s fight.
“But why? And how?”
“Allow me to start from the beginning. I am...”
In short, this was what happened:
There was something the black dragon needed to do, which was why she had left the dragonmen’s hidden village. That something was to investigate the visitors that had been summoned from another world. While there were many more details, the gist of it was a dragonman with especially good perception had sensed a huge outpouring of mana a few months ago, and had surmised that someone had come to this world.
The dragonmen had a policy of non-intervention when it came to the affairs of the rest of the world, but they couldn’t afford to remain ignorant about these mysterious visitors, and thus sent someone to investigate.
That someone had been the black dragon Hajime had just fought. Originally her plan had been to cross the mountains, then transform into a more human appearance and mix in with the people. From there she would have hidden her heritage as a dragonman and set about gathering information. On her way here, she had stopped for a rest in the valley between the first and second mountain ranges. As there were still dangerous monsters roaming that area, she had used the special magic granted to all dragonmen, Dragonification, to transform into her black dragon appearance before settling down to sleep.
While she was still sleeping, a man hidden in the shadows of a black robe had appeared before her. He had used a combination of dark magic to brainwash her and erode her mind little by little.
Of course most people would have been woken up by such an assault. However, this is where the dragonmen’s bad habit worked to the man’s advantage. As More had mentioned before when he was explaining the proverb, dragonmen were notoriously hard to wake in their dragon forms. Only a good kick to the arse could rouse them from their slumber. That being said, dragonmen were also known for their immense willpower, and a dragonman of her caliber wouldn’t have been easy to control.
The reason that man had been able to take over her mind so perfectly was because...
“He was a truly terrifying human. His proficiency with dark magic was so great that I daresay he must have been some kind of genius. And he had had nearly a whole day to work his magic on me. I may be fearsome, but even I cannot withstand such an attack...” She trailed off sadly, as if that had been the greatest blunder of her life. Unfortunately for her, Hajime was merciless with his words.
“So what you’re telling me is that you were in such a deep sleep that you didn’t even notice when someone was hovering over you casting magic on you for an entire day?” Everyone looked at her like she was an idiot. However the dragon only stared off in the distance and continued as if he’d said nothing.
She did, it seemed, have some semblance of an excuse. Flying across the sea had been an exhausting ordeal, but her mission required speed. So when she had stopped for a rest, she’d placed herself in a deeper slumber than normal. Either way, it was obviously her mistake that led to this situation, though she didn’t admit it.
The reason she knew this mysterious sorcerer had spent an entire day taking her over was because even under his mind control, her original personality and memories had remained. They had just been locked inside her. And it seemed her ears had picked up someone muttering “I can’t believe this took a whole day...” after she’d awoken.
After that, she’d been forced to do the robed man’s bidding, and had assisted him in bringing the monsters on the second mountain range under his control. Then one day the herd of Bulltaurs he’d sent over to the first mountain range had been spotted by Will’s party, and they had been ordered to eliminate all witnesses. The robed man was worried survivors might report their appearance, which, while unlikely, could have led people to guess there was someone in the mountains controlling monsters. In order to make doubly sure everyone was annihilated, he’d sent the dragon over as well.
Then, right as she’d found Will, she’d been attacked by an unknown entity who’d beat the living shit out of her. Fearing for her life, she’d started to panic. Which is what had caused the earlier mana explosion.
The rest everyone knew. She’d then attempted one last suicide rush at Will, as per her orders, when Shea’s skull-shattering blow had landed on her, followed by an extremely painful object shoved into her ass. The combined shock of it had blown away the mind control, returning her to her senses.
She wasn’t exactly sure if it was the head blow or the butt-spike that had done the job though.
“...Are you fucking kidding me.” Once the dragon finished her explanation, a low, trembling voice echoed through the silence. Everyone turned around in surprise. There was a murderous rage in Will’s gaze as he glared at the dragon, his hands balled up into fists.
“...Are you saying it’s not your fault because you were controlled... that it’s not your fault you killed Gale-san, Navare-san, Lent-san, Wisry-san and Kurt-san!?” The anger he’d felt at the death of his comrades had continually been building up underneath the mountain of panic that had occupied his thoughts until now. Finally, it had boiled over in a violent outburst of shouting.
“......” The black dragon didn’t reply. She stared quietly into Will’s eyes, absorbing his pain and anger. That calm attitude only served to enrage Will further.
“Besides, who’s to say you’re even telling the truth! For all we know this is all bullshit you made up so we spare your life!”
“...Everything I told you just now is the truth. I swear it on my pride as a dragonman.”
Will opened his mouth to protest again. But he was cut off by Yue.
“...She’s not lying.”
“What proof do you have that...”
One look from Yue silenced Will. After he trailed off Yue returned her gaze to the black dragon and continued.
“Dragonmen are known for their integrity and loyalty. I’ve lived far longer than any of you. And when I was around, stories of dragonmen were far more common. She staked her pride as a dragonman on her story. It’s no lie. Besides... I know what a liar’s eyes look like, and she’s no liar.”
Yue gazed off into the distance as she said that last part. She must be thinking about what happened to her three hundred years ago.
There was no doubt her life before meeting Hajime had been full of lies and deceit. Even the people she thought closest to her had turned out to be liars.
And it was because she’d averted her eyes from that truth that she’d been betrayed. Her somewhat unique life experiences had made her very sensitive to lies and liars. And her conclusion was that the dragon before them was no liar.
“Oh, I did not expect to see those who still knew of us in this day and age... Wait, how long d
id you say you’ve lived?” Thinking that there were still people alive that told stories of her people’s race, the dragon spoke in a pleasantly surprised voice.
“...Long. I am a survivor of the vampire race. Three hundred years ago, our monarchs looked to the dragonmen as models of how to live, as well as how to rule.”
In other words, to Yue the dragonmen were symbols of righteousness. At the very least, she spoke of them with respect. That had played no small part in her decision to stop Will’s tirade.
When she heard about Yue’s heritage, the dragon was even more surprised.
“Unbelievable! A vampire... and three hundred years old at that... I see. Our sources from the outside world had told us the vampires had been wiped out, but I see their princess still yet lives. I believe your name was...” It seemed this dragon had lived at least as long as Yue, if not more. But the way she spoke about events, it seemed that while she kept a distance from the affairs of the world, she wasn’t ignorant of them. The dragonmen must send people out to mingle with other humans and gather news relatively often. Which is why she was surprised when she’d heard the vampires’ princess had survived. Needless to say, Aiko and Yuka and the others were even more shocked. Their jaws were hanging open.
Yue headed the dragon off before she could speak Yue’s original name.
“Yue... that’s my name. The person I treasure most in this world gave it to me. Please use that.” She was blushing slightly, and holding her hands close to her chest, like she was cupping something dear.
Sparkling waves of happiness were radiating off her. When they saw her expression, the girls all looked like they’d spotted a buffet of sweets, while the guys blushed, captivated by her words. Even Will’s anger dimmed slightly.
But then he thought back to the kind adventurers who’d taught him so much, and he found his rage again.
“...Even so, it doesn’t change the fact that you killed them... Even if it was against your will... you still did it! Gale-san said he was going to propose once this mission was over! Just what did they die for...” He understood logically that the dragon wasn’t to blame. But he couldn’t help himself. Even if he understood it in his head, he couldn’t accept it in his heart. He ground his teeth together as a dark fog of anger enveloped his thoughts.
Arifureta: From Commonplace to World's Strongest Vol. 3 Page 14