It was Calldawn, the famous sword that had claimed one of Valacirca’s eyes. It was an enchanted sword that had been handed down through generations of dwarves and had probably existed since the time of the gods.
“Hero of the flame. Please... look after my grandson... and... this mountain...”
His voice came out hoarse and raw. Then, the armor being worn by Lord Aurvangr’s ghost, and his flesh too, slowly started to break down.
“Grandfather? Oh no... Grandfather?!”
Of course. I’d been told. Valacirca’s flame could incinerate even souls. Lord Aurvangr’s soul had most likely been roasted by the dragon. Its shape had probably become unstable a long time ago. It was probably reaching its limits just holding together for this long.
Tragically, heartlessly, the specter slowly melted and broke down, until...
“Not yet.”
A soft voice and a power as gentle as the breeze stopped the collapse.
“Not yet.”
It was my god. The Herald-flame of Gracefeel, goddess of the flame, had spoken.
◆
“Hearken, ye that cannot retain your souls.”
My god’s words were not only directed at Lord Aurvangr. I looked and saw that several hundred of the dwarves in that army were in a similar condition. As they roasted, melted, and their spectral bodies started to break down, the warriors still kept their will to fight; yet even that seemed more than they could hope for.
“All ye that are burned by the breath of the dragon and can no more return to samsara.”
She seemed to speak calmly, but there was a certain sorrowful quality to her voice. And then—
“O ye that are born in this world and lived well! O ye that endured!”
My god, who had always spoken with few words and a level tone, shouted loud for the first time. Her words were filled with unmistakable praise for the lives they had led. They were words of gentle appreciation, praise, celebration, and direct justification.
Though they were ghosts, some of the dwarves trembled or broke down crying. To have one’s way of life validated by a god—could there be any greater honor, as a person or a warrior?
“I shall bestow upon you a final blessing! If even in death, after your souls have perished, you yet desire to bring forth good and righteousness—”
The flame danced in the air. It was beautiful and yet frail, like a firefly dancing through the night sky.
“I shall guide you! Gather unto the heroes that live in this time!”
The divine flame danced. It was the souls’ guiding lantern, preserving them before they came apart and beckoning soul after soul to our side. One after another, they came flying towards me and the others. I braced, but there was no impact or pain. However, their feelings came through to me. I felt their regrets, their lamentations, their unfinished business; and I understood their fervent desire for the victory they had been unable to achieve.
Come with us, they said. Please, let us go together. Fight alongside us.
As their words echoed inside my heart, mysteriously, power seemed to well up within me. The exhaustion weighing down my entire body like a lead weight began to vanish. My hazy mind became refreshingly clear. I felt as if I could immediately sprint into action.
Everything looked so clear to me now. These warriors’ souls, left to roam around the mountains that had been brought to ruin by the dragon, had almost been lost. But now, they were giving me power. I could tell without being told that their souls had been passed on to us.
Menel, Reystov, and Ghelreis also accepted those souls with somber expressions. And once he had confirmed that all of the burned souls had gathered with us, the soul of Lord Aurvangr, which was close to breaking apart, extended a hand towards Al. Al took it.
“Grandfather...”
“I will not say I’m sorry. My grandson, please, bring life back to this country and its people.”
“I know. Please leave it to me!”
The two of them looked at one another. Then, the soul of Lord Aurvangr scattered into golden particles and disappeared into Al’s chest. The god of undeath’s Herald muttered:
“What a pity. It seems I must share the fun.”
Then the foul-dragon gave a pensive growl and spoke sedately.
“It looks like you’re ready, Faraway Paladin.”
Even as the situation unfolded like this, Valacirca still didn’t start attacking us in haste. He waited calmly for us to completely finish.
“I... guess you didn’t do that out of kindness.”
“Khahaha. Of course not.”
The injured dragon spread his wings and drew himself tall.
“It is much like aging alcohol. Before I crush the heroes, I wait for them finish all their preparations, get everything in order, fill themselves to the brim with hope, and march towards me. The moment when their faces warp in despair...”
He bared his fangs.
“...is my greatest pleasure.”
There was no hint of a lie in Valacirca’s words. He probably had seen off more heroes than he could count that way, and incinerated them down to their souls.
“Now challenge me if you dare, Faraway Paladin. Either I will bury you here, and another page will be added to my chronicle of terror, or you will slay me here, and I will be spoken of in tales of valor across the four corners of the world.”
The dragon’s whole body brimmed over with miasma.
“Now is the moment of truth.”
I couldn’t answer him straight away. I looked at my god.
“Here I go.”
“Yes. I command thee again.”
The Herald-flame of the goddess flared up with an unmissable flash of brilliant light. And she, Gracefeel, goddess of flux, gave me my order in a solemn voice.
“Go, my knight. Slay the dragon, and pay that which you have vowed.”
I looked about at my allies and the ranks of dwarven ghosts.
“I swear on this sword, on the flame, on all the souls of warriors that dwell within me!”
I lifted the golden sword high, raised my voice, and shouted at the top of my lungs.
“The evil dragon shall be slain!!”
In response, a battle cry of hundreds shook the mountain.
“Roar, fire of courage!”
“Our enemy, this is the end of your evil!”
“The time for retribution has come! The hour of justice is at hand!”
“Bellator! Bellator!”
“Fortis Fortuna adiuvat!”
As if in reply to the countless shouts shaking the earth, the foul-dragon howled. The final battle began.
◆
“RRRRRRRRAAAAAAAA!!”
The dragon’s roar shook the Great Cavern. It was a terrifying, draconic howl, which without serious preparation would be enough on its own to wear down your soul and leave your mind vacant. He lashed out with his claws at the same time. Screaming out loud, I swung my sword in a horizontal arc, knocking his attack off course, and I stepped in close.
“Sagitta Flammeum!”
“Flame, protect me!”
The dragon’s Word and my Sacred Shield blessing collided and wore away at each other. With a bright flash, both were dispelled.
My entire body was full of energy as I moved. Fervent heat filled my chest. Crystal-clear consciousness extended to every part of my body. I felt as though I had perfect control over everything down to the finest movements of my fingertips. I could anticipate and follow the enormous masses that were the dragon’s arms and legs even without looking as they assailed me from above.
I dodged his claws, pierced his scales, got behind him, cut him open. The blade of the enchanted sword Calldawn vibrated, producing a wondrously clear tone. No matter how many of the dragon’s scales I cut off, the sword remained unscratched and unblemished. It didn’t seem that even the slightest speck of blood had marred the blade. I was keeping Overeater sheathed for now, but Calldawn might have been just as sharp, perhaps even sharper.
>
Valacirca gave an angered roar, but he still made no attempt to avoid a close-quarters battle. He swiped at me aggressively with his claws, trying to crush me with them. Now that an army of this size had appeared with me as their standard-bearer, he must have decided that it was better to suffer a few flesh wounds to eradicate me quickly than take it easy from afar.
He committed to each decision and never hesitated. His arms, which reminded me of the trunks of enormous trees, gouged through the air with a mighty sound, swinging first left then right. My tension high, I dodged those swipes and saw my timing to draw in close again, but before I could—
“■■■—!”
The unfamiliar Word spoken by the dragon coincided with my field of vision lurching to a horrible angle. Sludge had spurted out of the supposedly solid ground, and my right foot had sunk into the soil.
Panic struck. From my previous world’s knowledge, I recognized this as liquefaction, but I couldn’t come up with a Word to counter it on the spot. This Word hadn’t been passed down into the modern age. It was a Lost Word, forgotten since the age of the gods.
I had no way of responding. I had no idea what would even work. I couldn’t speak a Word on reflex, and I had no time to think!
“Now crush!!”
In that moment of hesitation, a palm the size of a large table, with fingers like human torsos and sword-like claws, came tearing down towards me. The strike had the dragon’s whole body weight behind it. If I took it directly, there was no way I’d be able to endure it. Even if I resisted it a little, I would be completely crushed. My leg was caught and I was in no position to instantly jump out of his range. I couldn’t escape.
His palm slammed down. Dirt was thrown into the air.
“Will?!”
“Sir Will?!”
My allies shouted. And for the first time, Valacirca gave out a clear cry of pain. He stared at his missing finger in utter disbelief. I had struck back with the blade of Calldawn, severing a single one of his fingers, and fit myself into the gap just before his palm hit the ground.
The dragon’s fingers were as wide around as a human’s torso, but that was just thin enough to sever with a single swipe of my sword, as long as I timed it right. And I’d been exchanging blows with him for long enough now to have a perfect grasp of the timing.
Although Valacirca was a battle-hardened dragon—no, because he was a battle-hardened dragon, the tempo, rhythm, and patterns of his attacks weren’t that complicated. He could crush most opponents just with his unfairly huge body and his countless Words. He had no need to add in other tricks like complicating the tempo and rhythm of his attacks or coming prepared with multiple different attack patterns.
A tiger doesn’t train in the martial arts to take down its prey. This dragon was exactly the same. Natural predators don’t bother with unnatural things like training or tricks. They have no need to. In terms of both raw physical ability and years of practice, I couldn’t compare. But if there was one thing I could exploit, this was it.
I pulled my foot out of the mud and moved straight into an attack, taking advantage of how much losing a finger had shaken him. But Valacirca was not to be underestimated. He immediately let loose a powerful binding-type Word, attempting to ensnare my legs. I was forced to hammer a Word of Negation into it and take a leap backwards.
The way he used support Words was extremely skillful. Even though he’d probably never trained in anything like martial arts, his use of Words must have made many a skilled hero suffer a very bitter defeat. He wasn’t just using straightforward attacks.
“RRRRRRRRRAAA!!”
“AAAAAAAAAAA!!”
His howl and my battle cry intertwined. Sword and claw, Word and blessing crossed each other again.
“Fiiiire!”
Countless arrows shot from the side towards the dragon’s enormous body. Apparently, while I’d been facing the dragon from the front, Al had led a platoon around the side.
“Chaaaarge!”
Another platoon of dwarves charged at the dragon from a different direction.
“Hahaha! Yes!!”
The foul-dragon gave a roaring laugh, and his rampage grew ever more furious.
◆
With a single swing of the dragon’s claws, a warrior in full armor was diced into pieces and flung through the air. With a single sweep of his tail, the top halves of several warriors literally disappeared. Dragons were beings close to the Words. Not even ghosts could escape their clutches.
But the dead dwarven warriors would not be cowed. They didn’t flinch, they didn’t fear. Roaring in unison, they kept moving directly forwards towards the dragon. They buried swords and axes into his legs. They pelted him with longbow arrows and crossbow bolts. His scales blocked most of them, but it was here that the wounds I’d inflicted on the dragon finally started to pay off. Bit by bit, damage started to accumulate over his body.
“There!”
Menel’s own arrows blended into the endless volley, the elementals of air applying slight corrections to his already deadly accurate aim. One after another, the arrows sunk into the wounds I’d inflicted at the exact spots the dragon was bleeding from.
The arrowheads were not shining with the radiance of mithril. They were black as sin. Then I realized. He had slathered the mithril arrowheads with the hydra venom he’d obtained in the marsh. Hydra venom was such a strong poison that a single drop of it could cause a large and vicious beast to roll onto their back convulsing. No matter how large or tough Valacirca was or how strong his miasmic nature, a poison that intense being delivered repeatedly into his wounds was going to have its consequences. If it had been Menel’s arrows alone, the dragon might have had some way of dealing with them, but right now there was also the incessant rain of arrows from the dwarves. Using the other arrows as camouflage, Menel was free to chip away at the dragon from afar.
Bit by bit, Valacirca’s movements began to dull. And as they did, Reystov, Ghelreis, and the dwarven spirit warriors daringly took their blades to him. More of the dragon’s scales were torn off. Reystov’s approach was different from mine. He didn’t try to cut directly into the scales; instead, he slid his blade into the small gap behind them and sliced them off. That is, he inserted his blade between the dragon’s scales as it was moving around. It was a feat of monumental speed and masterful technique.
“Pests!”
Valacirca’s supple tail swept sideways to slam into them.
“Now, everyone!”
All around Ghelreis, the dwarves put up layer after layer of shields, using the ground and their bodies to support them at a diagonal angle.
“We are invincible!”
“Roar, fire of courage!”
As the dwarves bellowed, the wall of myriad shields was built. Magic shields engraved with Signs activated one after another.
“?!”
The dragon’s tail swept in, but veered diagonally upwards. The ordinary dwarves and their countless shields had made no attempt to avoid the blow. Instead, they had knocked it off course.
“Give us back—”
By that time, Al had drawn close to the dragon’s legs.
“Our home!”
With his abundance of physical strength, Al held the halberd clad in divine fire high above his head and brought it down with a full swing into the dragon’s leg. At the moment of impact, there was a tremendous sound. It was a volcanic, explosive strike, as if the god of fire’s fist had been delivered directly to the dragon’s leg.
At last, Valacirca’s enormous bulk toppled off-balance and crashed to the ground with a thunderous boom. This was our chance. We could finally take aim at the vulnerable parts of his body that had been inaccessible before because of the dragon’s sheer size. The tide of battle had begun to turn in our favor!
I ran towards the dragon’s huge body. As I did, a chill ran down my spine. The foul-dragon Valacirca was grinning.
◆
Black smoke spilled from Valacirca’s mou
th. In fact, I could see his belly and throat glowing red. It was obvious that an enormous amount of miasmic breath, storing the overwhelming heat of lava, had built up inside his belly. He looked ready to burst.
The realization hit me. For a very long time now, Valacirca hadn’t used his breath. This situation was exactly what he’d been aiming for. He had allowed his breath to overflow inside his belly all this time and drawn the main warriors in towards him, waiting for exactly this moment, when he could engulf himself and everything around him!
“I didn’t want harm to come to my treasure, but...”
If I had to guess, he was confident that he was the only thing that could withstand this heat. Valacirca had called himself the king of poison and brimstone and brother to lava. His own heat and poisonous breath would never be fatal for him, even if he pushed his own limits, storing up more than his body was meant to handle and expelling it all at once. This was Valacirca’s final trick. If that breath left his mouth, we were finished.
“Gallant warriors...”
“Maxima...”
I left the whole concept of making decisions behind me.
“This is your destruction!”
“Acceleratio!!”
I blindly incanted a Word and kicked off the ground. Action-reaction abnormalized. I could feel the bones fracture in my takeoff foot. As I pushed the bones throughout my body to breaking point, I flew towards the dragon’s throat like a bullet.
Everything became gray. Time moved like molasses. Valacirca’s eyes locked on me as I flew towards him. I saw him go for the breath anyway.
I raised up Calldawn and screamed a battle cry. The warriors’ memories I held within my chest told me the Word needed to draw out the power of this enchanted sword. It was a sword that the god of fire, Blaze, had given to his own minions as they headed into the darkness of the underground. Generations of dwarven lords throughout history had imbued it with mana in annual ceremonies. And its true nature was just as its name implied.
“Solis... ortus!!”
Blinding light and fire erupted from the golden sword, eradicating the darkness covering the Great Cavern in an instant. The incandescent blade of light, the miniature sun that the silent god of fire had given to his minions, plunged into the throat of the wicked black-dragon. The dragon’s scales, the tough muscle in its neck—none of it mattered to the blinding blade.
The Lord of the Rust Mountains (Complete) Page 33
