Ch.926Millia, what do you mean by that?

– Ta-at!

As soon as my signal dropped, the party members who had been waiting on the lower floor emerged one after another and climbed onto the castle wall.

“That’s a dragon…!”

“…It’s huge.”

Joshua and Nigel looked up at the dragons with horrified expressions.

“Three dragons… if we win, I wonder if I could ask for one of them…”

True to her nature as a necromancer, Ophelia was already eyeing the dragon corpses.

“Gram…? Wasn’t this sword Joyeuse?”

With a murmur of confusion, Demian opened a spatial pocket and gripped the hilt of the holy sword.

“…Hey, Haschal. What did you mean earlier? Hm? Tell me. What did you mean by saying Demian is yours?”

…And for some reason, Millia was aiming her bow at me rather than at the dragons.

“Um… Millia?”

Her eyes were darker than even Hush’s skin.

Staring at me without even blinking, I felt a familiar terror as I unconsciously glanced at the arrow in her hand.

“What’s wrong? Won’t you answer me? Is it something you can’t answer?”

The dragon-scale arrow she had compressed below to wound the dragon. The arrowhead with sharp barbs protruding from it looked terrifyingly brutal.

What would happen if that were lodged in a human body and then decompressed? Wouldn’t the target be torn to shreds like meat, beyond recognition?

“…That shouldn’t happen.”

What do you mean by “shouldn’t happen,” Millia…?

Her voice was too frightening to question.

“No, well… you know, I meant Demian is our core fighting force, so don’t even think about touching him.”

I hurriedly opened my mouth to correct her misunderstanding, swallowing hard.

“I’ve trained him with blood and sweat to get him this far, and those lizard bastards are trying to mess with him without knowing their place. How could I stand for that?”

My explanation was that “mine” simply meant Demian was the core strength of Hestella that I had nurtured, nothing more.

“Right… they shouldn’t touch him carelessly. That’s something I cannot forgive.”

Millia, finally understanding my meaning, nodded in agreement.

“…It’s unforgivable.”

While staring at my face and chest alternately with lifeless eyes.

“Absolutely.”

…That was agreement, right?

—-

Anyway, the core forces for facing the dragons were now lined up on the castle wall.

Me, Demian, Millia, Joshua, Nigel, and Ophelia. Five heroes and one archmage.

Why only six people?

Well, besides me and Demian who could fly, and the four who could attack from a distance, everyone else would be useless on the castle wall.

They’d need their weapons to at least reach the dragons to inflict even a scratch.

The rest were all close-combat specialists to the bone, so they had nothing to do on the wall except eat popcorn.

That’s why they were quietly waiting near the castle gate, waiting for us to tear and break the dragons’ wings to make them crash to the ground.

「 Krrrrr…! Is that the owner of Gram…! Finally you show yourself, our sworn enemy! 」

Ismenios, recognizing Demian’s energy—or more precisely, the holy sword’s energy—let out a long roar with fiery hatred in his eyes.

「 That one? Krahaak! How amusing, an owner who’s not even as good as the guardian! The name of Gram has fallen! 」

Kudsedra mocked Demian.

As if wondering how the owner of the holy sword, essentially Carlos the Great’s successor, could be inferior to the successor of one of the twelve knights who served under him.

…This is annoying. To have my opinion align with a creature like that. It makes me feel like I’ve sunk to the level of that lizard.

“Well, I think what’s going to fall is you guys. Like your friend’s corpse down there, lying with its tongue hanging out.”

「 Krrrrrr…! 」

Unable to refute, Kudsedra closed his mouth and growled.

I pointed the tip of Durandal at him while slightly turning my head to glance at those standing behind me.

Faces mixed with tension, excitement, and anxiety.

Although they had trained hard, they didn’t seem confident that their strength would be effective against dragons.

…To be honest, I wasn’t confident either.

Whether they could really hold their own against dragons. Whether they could go beyond enduring to achieve victory. The only way to know was to fight directly.

“Listen carefully, everyone.”

However, even without certainty, I had faith. Faith that we wouldn’t all die here together.

“I’ll take the red one. You target the wings of that golden one. You don’t need to inflict major injuries, so don’t overdo it.”

Therefore, I instructed them to face Ismenios with their own strength. To at least survive until I tore Kudsedra apart.

“Especially, be careful because we don’t know what kind of breath it might shoot.”

“…Isn’t a dragon’s breath an attack that spews fire?”

When I emphasized this point of caution, Nigel carefully questioned with confusion.

“Usually yes… but not always.”

Most dragons, as Nigel said, mixed ultra-high-temperature flames with their breath, but occasionally there were dragons that breathed other elements.

Things like thick lightning, cold that could freeze an entire river, deadly poison that could easily melt steel, or laser-like compressed light.

Therefore, what exactly these lizard bastards would spew from their mouths was impossible to know until experiencing it firsthand.

You can roughly guess by the scale color, but that classification doesn’t always match perfectly.

For example, you can be 100% certain that a red dragon shoots flames, but a blue dragon might shoot flames, breathe cold, or rarely spit lightning.

That’s actually why I targeted Brosna first.

If it had been a dragon that breathed cold or lightning instead of flames, it would have been extremely difficult for me to deal with.

The only breath I can take and withstand is a fire dragon’s flames. If it shoots any other breath, you must avoid it rather than trying to block it.

‘I was hoping that golden one would die along with it… but that’s not easy.’

Kudsedra must be a fire dragon. That much was clear.

From the scale color to the temperament, it was obviously flame-like—it would be dereliction of duty if it didn’t breathe fire looking like that.

But that golden dragon, Ismenios—I couldn’t even guess what kind of breath it would spew.

It surely wouldn’t pour out gold from its mouth, so probably fire or lightning… but I couldn’t be certain.

“Also, since it knows how to use magic, if you see it gathering mana, split.”

“Split?”

“Create distance. So you can respond.”

“Ah.”

You need at least a moment to identify and respond to whatever magic it uses.

Even I couldn’t dodge lightning at zero distance without Defying Fate, so these slower ones would have no chance of avoiding or blocking it.

Demian might manage, but the rest, including Joshua, would be impossible.

“That’s all the advice I can give you. Now then…”

I put one foot on the crenellation of the wall and rested Durandal’s blade on my shoulder.

“Let’s go. To kill some dragons.”

A moment of silence.

Then.

– Woooong!

– Shing!

Demian fully drew out the holy sword he had only partially unsheathed, and Joshua also drew the pure white longsword from his waist.

Nigel floated three spears into the air, including the holy spear Eberond, and Millia nocked the arrow she had briefly aimed at me earlier onto her divine bow and drew the string toward Ismenios.

– Crackle!

Finally, Ophelia spread her arms wide and deployed no less than fifty magic circles behind her back.

With so many eyes watching, she couldn’t use necromancy.

She would have to fight with ordinary magic she had learned as a hobby instead of her specialty… but seeing that mana, there seemed to be no need to worry.

The dragon’s inner core must be good indeed. In the past, she wouldn’t have dared to waste mana so lavishly.

「 Have you finished your pointless discussion? Then now, it is time to die. 」

「 I will appease Brosna’s soul with your ashes! 」

The sky rumbles with their roars. Ismenios drawing in mana as if he’d been waiting, and Kudsedra glaring at me with his mouth wide open.

A crimson light began to flicker in the darkness of the red dragon’s throat.

So he won’t give us any more time to talk. Well, forty seconds is quite patient for a dragon.

Then… shall we get going?

– Kwaaaang!

I kicked off from the wall’s crenellation like a shell, igniting crimson flames by adding the rune’s fire to the power of murder karma concentrated on my back.

The flames briefly flared up like wings before subsiding, and the next moment, a dark red blaze erupted like a waterfall from my back and beneath my feet.

– Kwaooooo!

With a roar reminiscent of a fighter jet taking off.

“Hestella Kingdom Knights! Load the dragon-slaying crossbows!”

I shouted loudly as I charged toward Kudsedra, who was glaring at me with his mouth wide open, like a comet shooting upward.

“Target the dragons. That flashy golden lizard bastard!”

Letting the dragon-slaying crossbow operators on the castle wall know that the time had come to earn their keep.

“Yes! Queen Astika!”

“Knights of Landen—no, Hestella Kingdom! Open fire! Aim for the dragon’s wings!”

The knights’ shouts echoed behind me.

The next moment, hundreds of massive arrows poured down like an untimely downpour toward Ismenios hovering in the air.