Arc 3 - Chapter 36: Dragon

「My name is Yu Valarfin.」

「My name is Yu Valarfin.」

「My name is Yu Valarfin.」

Fifty ships carrying six thousand people were sailing on the Jade Lake. There was no wind, they had to hang on to the oars as hard as they could to get to Cornelia's help as soon as possible, and so they did.

There were too few ships in the harbor to take all the soldiers to the siege at once. Even finding fifty ships was a miracle in the truest sense of the word. So the best they could do was to move the army in two parts.

The first group to join the siege included two thousand archers and four thousand infantry. The commander of these troops was, for the time being, Sivina.

After the ships dropped off the first group, they would return to bring the other troops under Link's command.

"The sea and the lake are both scary... All waters above my height are scary."

The first time he traveled by ship was when he was in Rolderhelm and since then he had been afraid of being in the sea.

"I thought you'd get angry with Livia. Your calmness surprised everyone, including me."

He was afraid of traveling by ship. When he was on the water, he would suddenly imagine himself under the water and think he was drowning.

He couldn't stop the idea of falling under the water from coming into his mind. In fact, the more he tried to block this thought, the more he imagined himself drowning and the vicious circle began.

It was another problem that he felt nauseous when he was moving. There were no waves, but Yu still felt nauseous. Dealing with his fear and trying to keep his food down at the same time gave him a headache.

"Of course I'm angry, Yu. Under different circumstances I would have made him regret his birth, but don't underestimate my twelve years of knowledge. I am a supreme being, I know when to exercise restraint."

"Why didn't I see your twelve years of knowledge and self-restraint in the Wizarding Academy case? If it wasn't for Maron, we would have been kicked out."

"Don't open the books of the past! Superior beings don't have to explain!"

He did not blame her for the way she had behaved towards Salery and Stella at the Wizarding Academy. Yurine was right about her behavior at the time. They were likely to get in trouble for what she did that day, but when he thought about it calmly today, he knew that he would have said the same thing in her place.

"But it still makes me sad to remember Stella."

Sometimes he remembered that day and felt ashamed of Yurine's behavior. They should have been more respectful towards a woman, a mother.

"And you're three years old, how did you accumulate twelve years of savings?"

Without a logical explanation, the little sword fairy put her hands on her waist and puffed out her chest.

"It's complicated, you can see my being a superior being as the answer."

"That's not even an evasive answer. The fact that you tried to hide it only piqued my curiosity."

Whenever the subject turned to Yurine's past or something about herself, Yurine was afraid to talk about it.

Yu wondered why she didn't tell him. Mistrust could never be the reason for not telling, after what had happened at Wizarding Academy, both Yurine and Yu trusted each other completely.

"I wonder if the reason she doesn't tell me is because she doesn't see me as close, but I know she sees me as her father. I wish she would tell me, I wonder why she doesn't tell me as much as the things she avoids telling me."

He had been honest and opened up his past to her, but it bothered him that Yurine kept hers secret.

"Come here."

Yu was bored and didn't feel like reading a book right now. So he called Yurine, who was pacing around the cabin, over to his seat.

Yurine came and sat down next to him without a word. To pass the time, Yu undid Yurine's braided hair and started braiding it again.

"Yu, how long do you think it will take to win the war?"

"So you think it's a foregone conclusion that we're going to win? I don't know, I really don't know. It's hard to even form an opinion."

Cornelia had started the siege in the winter, but never once attacked the walls. By starting a siege in winter, she was only wasting resources.

"I wonder how such a person could win the only victory for the Zodyanist side. It's not even stubbornness, only sheer stupidity."

He simply braided Yurine's hair behind her back. There was no need to try too hard, as she was going to mess it up before going to bed at night anyway. A little time would be enough.

"But the royal army coming at us is our real problem. Although it was foolish to lay siege to Vermia so early, the royal army must want to eliminate Cornelia. With her gone, there is no hope for the Zodianists and their victory is almost certain."

Apart from being a commander, Cornelia was popular and a hero to the people. With Cornelia gone, the people would be demoralized and easier to conquer.

"Tch... If we defeat the army that's coming for us, we can somehow take the city, but after that there will still be problems. Maybe we can conquer as far as the Ethalot border and say that we want to come under their protection with the land we conquer. In return, all we want is to enter the mountain."

When he finished braiding Yurine's hair, he kissed the top of her head and leaned back.

"But if I were Ethalot, I would not agree to this. It would be difficult to defend the lands beyond the mountains."

Their main goal was to gain the prestige or the power to enter the territory that Ethalot considered sacred. If Yu Zao Long offered them that power, Yu would join his side without a second thought.

"Are you free?!"

Speaking from outside the captain's cabin, Sivina was excited and knocked on the door like a creditor.

"Yes, you can come."

When the door opened, they saw Sivina with her mouth hanging open. She was holding her sword tightly with one hand and waving her other hand in the air. She could only utter four words.

"Jade Dragon, up there!"

The beautiful Virgo Knight ran out onto the deck, lowering his hand in the air and motioning for them to come. Yu and Yurine got up from their seats and followed her onto the deck.

They were in the middle of Jade Lake, in a deep blue that seemed to stretch on forever. Night had fallen and rain clouds covered the sky.

Everyone was on deck except the rowers. All thirty of the roaron warriors were here, and the deck was covered with the soldiers who traveled with them. Everyone looked up at the giant green creature circling in the sky.

"Wow!" said Kigaro, breathlessly watching the dragon.

The roarons all looked like curious kittens. Never in forty years would he have thought that two-meter monsters could look cute. So he chuckled.

When the dragon was in the sky, Yu could put one finger in front of his eyes and cover the entire body of the animal. But since he knew how big airplanes flying in the air were, even if they looked small, he could infer the size of the dragon.

The Jade Dragon was probably big enough to swallow Yu in one go. As its name suggests, it was green, resembling an emerald flying in the sky.

The dragon had four legs and wings much larger than its own body. Its tail, which was longer than its body as it soared through the air, was perfectly straight. 

"There is a common legend among the people about the Jade Dragon." Yurine started to tell a story Yu didn't know. "One of them says that the greatest of heroes will slay the Jade Dragon. The Jade Dragon and this legendary hero are two eternal rivals destined to fight. The dragon always watches over the Jade Lake, waiting for his eternal rival to arrive."

Hero was a title Yu Valarfin could never achieve. If the legend was true, it meant that he had nothing to do with dragons.

But he tried to picture in his mind what kind of monster his opponent would be. The dragon looked big enough to easily devour a human, and for someone to take it on alone, it would have to be a monster at least as dangerous as the dragon.

"It's a stupid story, an expression of the human desire to destroy everything. The dragon has never harmed a traveler of the Jade Lake," Yurine concluded the legend.

"Magnificent, but also frightening." Sivina made her own comment without listening to story.

"I think peaceful stories are more uplifting than stories about war. Maybe the dragon is always flying over the lake to protect the travelers."

Yu didn't believe there could be a destiny that had been set so many years ago. Maybe he was as weak as an ant, but there were people on this earth whose power was beyond Yu's imagination.

Hero or not, anyone strong enough could kill a dragon. Fate had no influence.

"There are things in the outside that we can't even imagine."

Kigaro kept a watchful eye on the dragon soaring freely in the sky. For Kigaro, for Yu and for everyone else, the dragon in the sky that painted a deep and lovely shade of blue by the moonlight, was truly mesmerizing.

When he took his eyes off the dragon and looked at the other ships, he saw all the soldiers gathered on the decks to watch the dragon.

"Sivina, could you fight the dragon?"

"Please don't be ridiculous, it takes an army to fight this. It's not something one person can defeat."

"When we were in Rolderhelm, you said that one man cannot fight against two. Link fought five roarons in front of me."

"I've only been to Elhaven and Rolderhelm before I accepted your job offer. It wouldn't be possible to fight two against one with the people where I am because the people of those two countries are stronger than the rest of the world." Sivina puffed out her chest with pride as she said this. "But in İlonya or Mora, I can fight against a few people too, I realized that when I came here. And if Link Yachi Long could stand up to five roarons, it shows the weakness of the roarons. Five people who look like them should be able to take down one person easily."

If the proud roarons hadn't been distracted by the dragon hovering overhead, he was certain that some of them would have challenged Sivina to a fight.

Fortunately they were all mesmerized by the dragon on the sky.

"There are marvelous creatures in the world I live in, but for all the marvelous things in it, there is a terrible, merciless, deadly world. It's like a big tree; its branches touch the clouds, but its roots reach under the ground, into the darkness."

As he looked around at the other ships, he noticed something. There was smoke coming from one of the ships far away from them.

"Hey! What's going on?"

Hearing Yu's voice and looking in the direction he was looking, the others also noticed the smoke. The smoke soon turned into red flames that cut through the night.

"FIRE!"

A loud voice, he did not know who it belonged to, came from a different ship and reached his ears.

"What's going on?" Yurine asked.

"There's a fire on a ship far from us," Sivina replied. One of the ships carrying the third battalion was on fire.

"Where did this come from?!" Yu held Yurine's hand. Yu was the one who needed protection, but his instincts told him to protect Yurine.

They could have evacuated people from the burning ship, that was not the problem. The problem was that a fire had started out of nowhere. The only source of fire on the ship was candles, and precautions were taken to ensure that the wood that made up the ship did not simply catch fire.

"Oh my God..." Sivina was the only one who could speak in the face of what they saw.

Yurine would have done a better job of protecting someone, but Yu followed his instincts now, just as he had followed his instincts in the Sigma Tower, and closed himself on Yurine.

A powerful arrow of flame shot from the burning ship towards the dragon flying in the sky. The arrow danced through the air, spinning and soaring, and managed to hit the dragon's chest in the big sky.

"What is this!" the roarons roared, seeing such magic for the first time.

As the flame arrow struck the dragon's chest, it exploded like a firework and its fragments fell on them in a shower of fire.

Their own ship had luckily escaped undamaged, but the flames falling on other ships were about to trigger new fires, and people were in a panic, trying to put out the fires before they grew.

The dragon above let out a roar of pain as a flame arrow struck him. It sounded like the roar of a tiger and the trunk of an elephant. He lowered his head and began to descend towards the ground, searching for his attackers.

"Fuck, who did this!" Yu couldn't stop his legs from shaking when he saw the dragon coming towards them.

He felt like he was standing in the middle of the road and a big truck was coming towards him. But this one had no intention of sending him to isekai.

Another flame arrow shot out of the burning ship and headed towards the dragon. This time the dragon managed to dodge the magical attack and learned where the arrow had come from.

Until now, the Jade Dragon had never harmed a traveler on this lake.

But no traveler had ever been so foolish as to attack the Jade Dragon.

The dragon must have been as surprised and angry as Yu. The dragon swooped down and passed over the ship Yu was on, and Yu caught a glimpse of the infernal flames gathering in dragon's mouth.

The wind created by the dragon's flapping wings was so strong that everyone on the ship fell to the ground. The dragon passed over the other ships and approached the burning ship, the one from which the flame arrow had been fired, and spewed flames from its mouth.

A few people managed to get off the ship by boat, they were the luckiest. The less fortunate jumped into the lake to avoid being burned, those who couldn't swim struggling, those who could swim paddling towards the other boats.

The most unlucky were those who were exposed to the dragon's flames. The survivors had jumped into the lake to try to extinguish the fire in their bodies, but they were unable to swim and would surely sink beneath the water.

Others were burnt to ashes in the fire.

"Why did this happen?"

Yu was about to cry with fear. He saw that even the roaron warriors were terrified, some of them couldn't even stand up after they had fallen.

"Is this thing... Is it a God?" he heard a roaron's whisper. He fell to his knees.

Sivina's hand was locked on the hilt of her sword and her eyes were twitching. Even Yurine, the most powerful being here, was terrified.

She had just argued that the dragon was harmless, and now to see it attacking, she was confused. She was hugging Yu's waist.

「My name is Yu Valarfin.」

「My name is Yu Valarfin.」

「My name is Yu Valarfin.」

「Help!」

Yu looked around. Some of those on his deck did not dare to get up from the floor, while others were shouting Azer's name.

"How did this happen? Why did it happen?"

If even Yurine was too scared to fight, what could Yu do to reach land safely?

"Don't attack..."

He saw arrows rising from other ships. The roarons and other soldiers on this ship might have been frightened, but on other ships there were a few brave fools who could fight the dragon.

"Don't attack... Don't attack..."

The arrows didn't even hurt the dragon, they just hit his skin and fell on the water. Although the dragon was unharmed, it could feel the arrows hitting his body.

"DON'T ATTACK, YOU FOOLS! YOU'RE ONLY PROVOKING HIM MORE!"

The dragon soared through the sky without posing any threat. He only attacked them because they fired the first shot and provoked the dragon.

Now they were attacking more, making him even angrier and giving him a reason to attack them. And unlike a flame arrow from a wizard's hand, their normal arrows didn't even hurt the dragon.

"I'M TELLING YOU TO STOP!"

His voice did not reach the other ships while everyone else was screaming. The dragon gathered more flames in his mouth, and along with his rage, he unleashed his flames on the ships that had attacked him.

The ships had no chance against the dragon's flames. As the ships were engulfed in flames, people pushed each other into the water to get into the boats.

The soldiers were now terrified, they were not even real soldiers. Still, those who saw no point in running away grabbed their arrows and attacked the dragon. It was their last resort.

Arrows that could easily kill a human being did not even tickle the dragon, and as they attacked, the dragon's anger grew and it retaliated in kind.

"Yu? Yu? What do we do?"

Tears were streaming from his daughter's big red eyes. Yu couldn't blame her for crying, the horror of the creature before them was making even him cry.

But when it came to a fight, if Yurine had nothing to do, then Yu had nothing. He couldn't get his voice to the other ships, and the people on his own ships were afraid. In his desperation, he could think of no plan.

"I will shout until I am heard and hope they obey me. There is nothing else I can do."

He ran to the edge of the deck and shouted.

"DON'T ATTACK! DON'T ATTACK!"

He hoped that first those on ships close to his own would hear his voice, and then they would spread his message to the other ships. If everyone stopped attacking, the dragon might stop attacking. After all, what the animal was doing was retaliation.

"DON'T ATTACK!"

He screamed at the top of his lungs. Tears were streaming from his eyes as he screamed, and there was no way to stop the spittle from flying out of his mouth. Meanwhile Sivina and a few roarons, realizing his plan, ran to the edge of the deck and started shouting.

Life was at stake, and since they could not win against the dragon, the only thing to do was to stop attacking and hope for mercy. They shouted.

"DO NOT ATTACK! DO NOT ATTACK! DO NOT ATTACK!"

As the dragon headed toward the other ships from which the arrows had come, a few more people who had heard Yu's voice understood him and began to shout.

Still, their voices were insufficient and the frightened soldiers kept attacking.

The dragon flew over Yu's ship again, and it was when it was over Yu's ship again that it flapped its wings to stay in the air.

The dragon's wings were so big and the wind it created was so strong that those on deck could not withstand the renewed wind and lost their balance and fell to the ground.

"Uh?"

Yu, Sivina and the roaring roarons were on the ground. When Yu heard the sound of wood splintering, he lifted his head and looked up. The mast of the ship was falling on them.

In fact, it was falling exactly on Sivina. Sivina was on her feet and would normally have easily avoided it because of her speed, but both the impact of the dragon and the surprise caused her to freeze.

"Fuck!"

It was just instinct. He lunged forward and pushed Sivina, narrowly saving her from being trapped under the mast, but then lost his balance as the ship shook and the floor under the mast shattered.

As he fell from the ship, he heard the roar of the dragon, the whistle of arrows and a little girl calling his name.

"YU!"

Yu fell into the water and began to struggle. He could not swim, he had never needed to learn.

When his sister was trying to teach him to swim, she told him that people can't swim because they are afraid. If he had tried to face his fear that day instead of getting out of the water and returning to the safe sandy surface, he would not be drowning now.

But he could not change the past. When the salt water entered his mouth and nose, he tried to spit it out. His effort made more water enter his mouth.

When his lungs filled with water, he vomited it out against his will. So far he had managed to stay afloat by struggling, but his arms tired sooner than he could have imagined.

"I don't want to die."

Yu Valarfin could not hear a sound any longer because of the water filling his ears. The strength in his arms gave out as more salt water entered his mouth and nose and filled his lungs. A woman spoke.

「Help me.」

As he sank beneath the water, he was still struggling to move his exhausted arms, the effort draining what little energy he had left.

The water burned his eyes, not being able to breathe burned his lungs. When he was under the water, he opened his mouth to expel the air that had accumulated in his lungs and the water rushed into his mouth.

「Help me.」

Unable to keep his eyes open any longer, he closed them, but they continued to burn.

He could no longer move his arms because he had no energy left in his body.

He couldn't think of his loved ones above the water.

"When I can't even help myself, I can't help you..."

At the moment of his death, the rest of the world was gone. The only thing that still remained was the little light in his mind, which he could barely keep open.

Before that light disappeared too, he felt an energy filling his body and managed to raise himself above the water by flapping his arms.

He didn't know what happened next, the last light that sustained his mind disappeared.

***

"Your name is..."

He threw up.

He couldn't understand why he was vomiting, but he threw up all his filth on the sand. Green, yellow and black vomit covered the sand.

It was embarrassing to say, but he had probably peed himself. At least it wasn't obvious because his clothes were completely wet.

Of course, wetting himself was the last thing on his list of things to worry about. He still hadn't recovered and realized what had happened.

He put his hands on the sand and managed to lift his upper body. As he did so, a wave hit him in the face and his face sank into the sand as his weak arms failed to hold his body up.

"The woman in my dream..."

He got up again, using his arms for support because his legs were not strong enough to stand.

"Was that a dream?"

His mind was still not working properly. Another wave hit his mud-covered body, but this time he didn't fall to the ground.

"YURINE!"

~HMMPH~

Yurine was the first name he remembered as the events unfolded in his mind like a lightning bolt. What had happened to her? He had to reach her!

But his scream brought with it another sound.

The voice was coming from behind him.

And the voice he heard did not belong to a human being.