24 Dragon-chan escorts a pigheaded noble

Once I learned that the other escorts for Lord Salbert were Weiss and co, I met up with them to discuss who we would have in authority while on the request, and they all tried to push it to me due to my having been an adventurer longer than any of them, and my being stronger than all of them combined. Unfortunately, Lord Salbert had a bit of a problem believing that I could be stronger than a B rank nearing A rank, considering that I was a C rank fresh out of D.

"So, Weiss, is your party, including your temporary subordinate, ready to leave?" (Salbert)

"Yes, we are" (Nene)

"What made you think that I asked you?" (Salbert)

"Well, you asked Weiss, but she's not the party leader, and as I assumed the question should actually be answered by the leader, I answ-" (Nene)

"Exactly. So, who is the leader? The man in back? The blonde? The girl in red? It couldn't be yo-" (Salbert)

In sync, everyone wordlessly pointed at me, as Salbert's eyes opened wide.

"We've decided to follow Nene, who is one with the most experience here, ignoring the factors of age, sex, noble blood, or maturity, and who is also the one who could probably be said to be the strongest in the country, and thus the best protection around, even better than the protection on the King... Like, "she could level a country if she felt like it" levels of strong" (Red)

"Just like Ruby said" (Jaune)

"You made a much more elegant speech on the fly than I would expect anyone else here could make, maybe save for Nene" (Blonde)

"Sis, stop, you're gonna make me blush" (Ruby)

"Ruby, you might want to change country to continent in regards to what she could level. She could probably level a city with a sneeze" (Weiss)

Just then, Ruby (The Gold-bordered Red Dragon, not the girl) popped her head out of my cloak and looked confused.

"Oh, Ruby... uh, how to put it... you numbskull, she was talking to the human girl named Ruby" (Nene)

"Oh? What happened to Rubel and Lapis?" (Weiss)

"Rubel wanted to be sunbathing for a while, and Lapis is still in my hood, see?" (Nene)

"Yes, yes, this is all very fascinating, but can we get a move on? I'm already two days behind schedule... I don't really care who is the leader, I just want one that performs well" (Salbert)

"Well, I've been the leader for a party that contained two S ranked adventurers several times, so I think I can perform well as leader. Hell, one of my disciples is rank S, and he hasn't surpassed his teacher by a long shot. Consider that, and you can also understand why they said I should be enough on my own" (Nene)

"Hmph. You say something unbelievable like that, and you even seem to be looking down at me. I'll have you know I'm a noble, and you aren't, right? Didn't think so. Learn some respect" (Salbert)

Later that day, as we were setting up camp, Salbert decided to voice some more complaints.

"You know, I'll bet you don't actually have any real skill as an adventurer, I think you are just a parasite. You haven't done anything at all while we've been traveling. All of the monster attacks have been dealt with by the ones with real skill" (Salbert)

"I'd like to point out that all of those monster attacks happened while I was the one at the reins of the horses pulling your carriage, and that I stayed back to ensure your safety from any that might sneak through. None did, but... These were the roles we had decided upon in advance. If you have any further complaints about my performance, I could swap with the entirety of [Frozen Beacon] tomorrow, such that they defend you as I fight off a few dozen Goblins, some Orcs, and anything else that comes up" (Nene)

"No thanks. I don't want to see you get killed, and I don't want to have my guards leave my safety to some incompetent, overconfident fool, one who is even more so than normal for you commoners" (Salbert)

This is going to be a long, LONG quest... if the horses would be fine with being carried by a Dragon, I'd be tempted to ask some of them to fly us, the carriage, and the horses to the capital, but... they would panic too much, sadly. A few days later, and I reached the end of my patience.

"So, you say I should learn respect for those who hold a higher position in the aristocracies of their respective countries? You might want to learn to ask what position others have before you unilaterally assume that said person is just a commoner" (Nene)

"Nene, just a moment... come here. So... are you sure you want to reveal this? I know how it feels to just get looked down upon like this, but it doesn't mean you have to-" (Weiss)

"Remember what I said? I don't want to hold my position over people, unless I am mad enough to want to make people cower in their boots, or unless they are the kind of asshole noble who look down on people, including the adventurers hired to guard them, just because said people are commoners" (Nene)

"Oh... Fair enough, I guess" (Weiss)

"So, as I was saying... you should learn to not think that everyone who appears to be a commoner is less noble, less valuable to society than a noble is. Otherwise, you might end up pissing off an Empress. Just a friendly reminder" (Nene)

"Who do you think you are to be able to tell me something like that? You have some nerve, talking to your betters like that. I'll have you know that I don't have to rate you highly once we get there. I have enough pull that I could make you get dropped to F rank. You've been pissing me off with your haughtiness and-" (Salbert)

"You've been pissing me off with your haughtiness. You're right, you don't have to rate me highly, but I can rate you poorly too. I even have a good deal of pull with Sanya, more than you do, actually, and could get you to be banned from posting requests at the adventurer's guild, and even buying from the commerce guild if I really wanted to. I should be saying the bit about talking to your betters to you, actually. To answer your first question... I'm that Empress you might end up pissing off. My name is Nene Drachen, Empress of the Drachen Empire, S ranked adventurer, and the winner of the most recent tournament. That should tell you how strong I am. If you wish to threaten to crush a newbie adventurer, you did so to the wrong adventurer. I have a sneaking suspicion that you won't be dealing with the adventurer's guild any time soon, nor will you be dealing with the capital's branch of the commerce guild for a while. Just... How foolish can one get? You should at least be able to tell how strong I am by the fact that my armor is scales of a God Dragon and by the fact that I have at least two God Dragons as my summons. If you didn't notice, well... I can't really blame you, considering the fact that nobody in this country really believes that God Dragons exist, due to the fact that they don't show up, like, ever. Even so, I will let you off just this once. JUST. THIS. ONCE. On my list of most hated kinds of people, nobles who don't care about keeping their power base, the commoners, happy, come in fifth, after rapists, kidnappers, mass-murderers, and serial scammers. I won't be taking any more requests from you, and I hope to not have to see you again. Please try to stay out of my sight from the time this request is over onwards" (Nene)

"Why y- I... tch. Fine. I'll try to avoid you, less because I don't want to make you mad, and more because you have given me a new most hated kind of person: the disgraced aristocrat who still tries to rest on their former glory when talking to aristocrats who haven't been disgraced. Allow me to say that you can go die in a ditch somewhere, your name lost in disgrace" (Salbert)

"Disgraced is not the right word. I'll correct it by saying that I'm like one of those nobles whose land was near the border, and whose land got trampled by an invasion, just on a country-wide scale, and the invasion was a natural disaster. My loss of a power base was not my fault at all, and there was nothing anyone could do about it, so it's something where you do not have the right to imply I made a mistake in ruling my country. You also don't have the right to say to your escort that they should die, and you seem to have forgotten that, even without my being the Empress of the Drachen Empire, I still have enough achievements to have my name go down in history. Remember the part about my being an S rank, and the winner of the tournament? Remember the part about being in control of multiple God Dragons? Congrats, you have pissed me off enough that I will request the guild to have you pay me as if I was acting as an S rank, not a C rank. You just lost more money hiring guards than this trip will gain you, all because you don't care what others think and how they feel. Alternatively, I could leave you to not have me as a guard, and you to not have to pay me, with you signing a contract stating that this request will not be marked as a failure for me. It's your choice. However, I can tell that there's an Elder Dragon on the road ahead thanks to my detection magic, so... [Frozen Beacon] will be outclassed enough that they won't be marked as failed if they do what I did and leave you behind" (Nene)

"I'll pay, if that Dragon does show up. If not, you don't have to act as a guard, and I won't pay you" (Salbert)

"There seems to be a Dragon just ahead. It appears to be a... Golden Dragon... Nene, you're up!" (Weiss)

"Ruby, can you take care of it?" (Nene)

"Of course not! I'm just a C rank! I can't beat a Dragon who's just shy of being able to be called Ancient" (Ruby)

"I wasn't talking to you... sorry. Ruby, can you come out of my cloak and deal with the Dragon? If it might want to serve me, I'd be fine with that. I'd just have to bind it with a contract" (Nene)

Ruby flew out, spoke to the Gold Dragon, was denied, grew to full size, and made the Dragon submit. I walked over, roared in Draconic, asking her to allow me to bind her to my service, and she tried to bite me in reply. I just punched her jaw shut, an act that the adventurers and Salbert were able to see clearly with the help of some spyglasses I'd lent them. The Dragon tried again, and I did the same thing, before saying that that was her last chance, and that if she continued to resist, she'd die. She bathed me in Dragonflame in response, but I just made my cloak go into my hoard, as I let it hit me.

"Hmmph. I would have expected more from the humanoid you call your Empress... wait, why aren't you panicking? I just fried your master and turned her to ash you know" (the Gold Dragon, speaking in Draconic)

"Because I'm unharmed. I can't be hurt with flames of that level. Now, it's my turn" (Nene, also in Draconic)

I then released some violet flames from my mouth in her direction, not enough to hurt her, but enough to scare her.

"Care to bind yourself to me now? If not... I will just add your scales to my Hoard, and show the stone in your breast as proof that I killed another Dragon who wouldn't bind me. You'd be enough to prove that I can be a B rank adventurer, but... I don't want to be one... what should I do..." (Nene)

"You could let me go in that case. My attribute is Light, so my magic stone is worthless due to the size and intensity of the light that it would produce. My scales aren't as strong as the ones you wear, and they are hard enough that they can't be worked well by human hands. My meat is probably tasty, but you can't carry it all, and it'd spoil before you got anywhere. There's nothing in it for you to kill me, so just let me go" (Dragon)

"You know, I think you'd make a decent advertisement if I froze you with {Everlasting Ice} and displayed you near my shop. Whad'ya say to that idea?" (Nene)

"Ha. I could melt it faster than you could produce it" (Dragon)

"Fair. I could use {Draconic Invite: Cocytus} and you'd die instantly from your blood freezing into spikes" (Nene)

"Pfft... ahahaha... You can't use that, it's a spell that only a Dragon can use. Nice bluff though" (Dragon)

"{Draconic Invite: Abyss}" (Nene)

The area around me in a sphere about 100 meters across was enveloped in darkness so deep, not even Dragonflame from a God Dragon could light it up, it held the power to eat away at the minds of those looking at it, and the darkness lasted for several seconds before I dispelled it. When I did so, the Dragon was looking at me with fascination in her eyes and surprise written all over her face.

"You... A humanoid... called 'Empress' by a Gold-Red Dragon... who can use {Draconic Invite} magics... you wouldn't happen to be bearing the family name of 'Drachen' would you?" (Dragon)

"Indeed I am. Nene Drachen, here to ask, one last time, if you will bind yourself to my service or die" (Nene)

"Tch. Fine. It's better than dying... I, a worthless Dragon calling myself Aura, hereby bind myself to the service of the Drachen Family until the end of time, upon my pride as a Dragon, and should I breach this contract, I shall know the pain of becoming less than a lizard" (Aura)

"I, the Dragon bearing the weight of my entire race, hereby accept the oath sworn by the one calling herself Aura, and make an oath in return to not dishonor her, unless she is deserving of it. To this, I stake my own pride as a Dragon, for as long as she shall serve me {Draconic Art: Subordination Contract}" (Nene)

"{Draconic Art: Oath of Subservience}" (Aura)

"Now that that is over and done with, could you shrink to miniature form and come along with me? I'll introduce you to the rest of my subordinates later, for now, I have a job that I've been hired to do" (Nene)

I ran back to the group, trailing a Gold-Red Dragon and a Gold Dragon. When I got there, Salbert had a smug look on his face, and I didn't know why. A few days later, we got to the capital, and Salbert came along with me to talk to Sanya, at which point he flat-out accused me of trying to scam him by faking an attack by a Dragon who was actually one of my subordinates.

"So, you are telling me that she did all of that, went through all of that effort, just to get a bit more money out of her employer? I'd like to point out that she has no need for that sort of ploy. Her savings, just the amount on her guild card, is more than what your entire territory is estimated to produce in a year. The amount she'd get from a ploy like this is a drop in the ocean compared to what she has saved up on her card, let alone what's probably in her storage magic" (Sanya)

"Indeed. What I have in my Hoard is probably worth about... a billion times what's on my card? Maybe an order of magnitude or two more than that, actually. The reason I wanted you to pay me as if I was an S rank instead of a C rank is because you lost my goodwill by treating me like dirt, and by continuously disparaging the ones hired to guard you. That goes against guild policy, and I was planning to not even bring that up, and just say that I had put in the work of an S rank, not a C rank, and that would be the end of it. However, your attempt to discredit me and even going so far as to get me thrown out of the guild on false charges is enough that I think you deserve the punishment for what misdeeds I can no longer ignore. Sanya, what is the usual punishment for antagonizing adventurers you've hired? Was it a month-long ban on use of guild facilities?" (Nene)

"That would be correct, however... Attempting to discredit and expel an adventurer on false charges is punishable by a six-month-long ban from your use, and it applies to anyone hired by you as well. That means... You can't buy anything from the commerce guild. You can't hire any adventurers. You can't buy or sell land. You can't continue to rent land that's already been rented. Your guild balance is frozen. You can't even send letters via the guild. To sum it up, you seriously messed up. I'll be kind and let you hire adventurers at ten times the normal rate to guard you on the way back to your city, something that normally wouldn't be done. However... You can't do anything else with the guilds for a long, long while" (Sanya)

"I'll be even kinder, if Sanya will accept these terms: You can have it get reduced to three months, so long as you stay out of my sight and don't do anything to make me mad for the next two years" (Nene)

"I think that's fine. However, if you, your family, or your subordinates do anything to antagonize an adventurer before this punishment is over, you will get three more months added to it every time you antagonize an adventurer, instead of the usual one month. Alternatively, you could beg the King to reduce your punishment even further, but he might just take your title away from you altogether... Hmm... that gives me an idea... if you would still be affected by this punishment three years from now, I will go to the King and recommend that you lose your title as punishment. You did, after all, antagonize the leader of a foreign empire, someone the King has said, in front of over a hundred people of influence, is one of his best friends, the one who single-handedly stopped the recent war with the Regulus Empire without any casualties on our side, and who is also the winner of the tournament this year. That's pretty damn close to trying to harm the King's name, his reputation, and the foreign relations of the entire kingdom, in other words, you have come quite close to treason. Add to that making the guilds your enemy while abusing noble, that is to say, governmental authority... straining relations with the whole country... Well, a hanging would actually be less punishment than most would get" (Sanya)

As we were talking, Salbert was getting paler and paler, until his face skipped right over bloodless and reached chalk white, and then it reached ghostly pale as she listed all of the ways I'm important to the King. He payed me ten times what an S rank would normally be paid for that kind of a request, and [Frozen Beacon] was also paid ten times more than normal. He agreed to the terms we'd laid out, finished his business in the capital, and fled to his own territory after hiring a B rank party at ten times the normal rate.

I, meanwhile, went to the castle to give some curry bread (karē pan, for the Japanese name) among other things, to the King and Flora. The King then called me to a private room and informed me that Regulus had changed its slavery system, and even went so far as to have their Emperor get elected every ten years, with a max of two terms per person. He also informed me that there was a painting from a renowned artist, as well as several smaller copies made through magic, on display in various art museums around the country.

The paintings depicted a purple-haired, cat-eared young girl, wearing the scales of Gold-Purple Dragon, sleeping on a Gold-Blue Dragon who was also sleeping, despite them being in the middle of a lake of molten stone. There was even talk of statues of that scene, as well as some of the scene of a swarm of Dragons melting the castle, some even going so far as to be colored with gemstones and precious metals, being made in some places, including the courtyard of the new castle and on either side of the gates to a Duke's mansion, so that nobody would ever forget what happened. Upon hearing that, all I could think about was that I just wanted to crawl in a cave and live there for a few centuries... Fortunately, few people come here from Regulus, so the rumors wouldn't be likely to be associated with me... right?