When they faced the swarm of wyverns filling the sky, many of Elysium’s soldiers had already lost heart before the battle had even begun. How many would bleed before they drove those beasts away? Could they even drive them off at all?
But thanks to Minjun’s unexpected feats, the tide began to turn. At first, he had clearly struggled against the wyverns’ assault. Then, as though by some miracle, he began to overwhelm them completely. Seeing the wyverns falter, Elysium’s soldiers pressed their advantage with renewed courage. The tide never turned back.
After a fierce battle, Minjun and Elysium’s soldiers finally repelled the massive monster horde. An invasion on this scale came perhaps once every few decades, and the losses were not small. Still, given the size of the battle, they could have been far worse. Everyone thought so.
Once they had driven away the wyverns and cleared out even the small fry beneath the walls, cheers erupted.
“Woooo!”
“We won! We won!”
“I was worried today would be the end of Elysium.”
“Come on, you think this place would fall that easily? A dragon founded it himself, and it’s stood for tens of thousands of years.”
“Exactly. Today might be the day you die, Charles, but Elysium’s got tens of thousands of years left.”
“Bwahaha!”
Elysium’s soldiers celebrated their great victory while mourning the fallen and recovering their bodies. With a battle of that scale to clean up after, everyone was busy. Minjun watched them, wondering how he could help. Just then, he spotted Estelle tending to the wounded.
“Estelle, is there anything I can do to help?”
She startled at his voice and shook her head vigorously. “N-no. Please, go back and get some rest, Minjun. Leave this to us.”
“I’m fine. I’d feel a little awkward just standing around doing nothing... You really don’t need to feel uncomfortable asking.”
Thinking she might be reluctant to impose on him, Minjun waved his hands and repeatedly assured her it was all right. Even so, Estelle seemed terribly uncomfortable with his offer.
‘Why is she so uncomfortable?’
They were obviously short-handed, yet she had turned down his help. And that wasn’t the only strange thing. For some reason, the residents’ behavior toward him had subtly changed. Estelle and the other soldiers of Elysium could barely meet his eyes.
‘Before the battle, they had no trouble staring at me like I was some curiosity.’
What had changed? ‘Was I more impressive in the battle than they expected?’
If that were it, they would have thanked him and praised his efforts, not acted so uneasy. At first he couldn’t understand it. It wasn’t long before he found out.
Quite a few soldiers gathered around Estelle. Then, all at once, they bowed deeply to Minjun and cried out, “We humble beings greet the Great One!”
“O Great One!”
“... What?”
Why were they all bowing to him and calling him the Great One? The whole thing came so far out of nowhere that Minjun could only stare, dumbfounded.
“Um, I think there’s been a misunderstanding. I’m...”
“We know the unwritten rule against interfering with a Great One’s game. But you have done us an enormous kindness, so we felt it was only right to thank you properly...”
“Wait. Are you all—”
Their expressions, somewhere between fear and awe, and the words they were using made it obvious. “—Do you think I’m a dragon?”
They seemed to have mistaken him for one. Nothing else could explain this reaction.
“Are you... not a Great One?”
“That... can’t be.”
“... Oh.”
With his suspicion confirmed, Minjun bowed his head, embarrassed by their mistake. “... I’ll explain everything, but could you please get up first?”
* * *
That night, after everything had been taken care of, Elysium held a grand drinking party to celebrate the day’s victory. Most of those who had fought attended, and at Estelle’s urging, Minjun went to one of the taverns hosting the festivities.
The moment he appeared, everyone inside cheered and chanted his name.
“Minjun! Minjun!”
“A miracle sent by Lord Bellium! Lord Bellium’s incarnation!”
“Minjun, son of Lord Bellium!”
“Woooo!”
With their cheers ringing around him, Minjun squeezed through the narrow aisle and settled into an empty seat. Whether by coincidence or design, Estelle was sitting beside it.
“W-welcome, Minjun.”
“Thanks...”
They had talked easily when they first met, but now both blushed, too embarrassed to look at each other. It was because of the misunderstanding Elysium’s soldiers had had about Minjun a few hours earlier.
After seeing Minjun fight the wyverns, quite a few people, including Estelle, had concluded he was no ordinary human. He possessed a wealth of rare artifacts that an ordinary person could scarcely hope to obtain, wore not one but two pieces of jewelry made from dragon bone, and wielded a Dragon Bone Sword. When he used Dragon Fear, they were certain: he was a dragon playing a game while pretending to be human.
Every detail fit. They had genuinely believed he was a dragon and thought they ought to show him the utmost respect. Minjun’s explanation had cleared up the misunderstanding afterward, though.
“You must have been... quite startled earlier, Minjun...”
“No. It was just... a little surprising. Fascinating, too.”
It was strange to think Sia must have been treated like that by people who weren’t dragons. And if he someday achieved his dream of becoming a dragon, he might receive the same treatment himself. That was an intriguing thought.
But that was beside the point. There was no describing how flustered and embarrassed he had felt when a crowd suddenly bowed deeply to him. His face had burned.
“What of it? It just shows how impressive you were out there. And Estelle, why are you still embarrassed about that?”
“Ugh...”
Estelle dropped her head, unable to argue. Minjun cleared his throat, embarrassed too. Kutun, the dwarf seated across from him, burst into hearty laughter.
“Just laugh it off. Minjun, can you see how red her face is? Bwahaha!”
Still laughing as though the whole situation delighted him, Kutun held out a cup to Minjun. “Here, have a drink.”
“Thank you.”
The moment Minjun took it, Kutun called for a toast. Caught off guard, Minjun clinked cups with him and took a sip. He had expected liquor from another world to be quite different from Earth’s, but the color and the taste...
“This is... beer?”
Wasn’t it just beer?
“Of course it’s beer. But how do you know what beer is? I thought you came from another world.”
“We have beer in my world too. It tastes almost the same.”
“Ha! I suppose folks are much the same everywhere. Or do you have dwarves over there too?”
“No, we don’t have dwarves.”
“Right, right. Humans like their drink too, even if they can’t match us.”
Chuckling heartily at whatever amused him, Kutun emptied his cup, filled it again, and asked Minjun, “By the way, how can you wield dragon power in a human body?”
“Yes, I’ve been wondering that too,” Estelle put in. “It’s not entirely without precedent, but it’s hardly common.”
“Exactly. That’s why you jumped to the wrong conclusion and thought young Minjun was a dragon, Estelle. And why your face is still bright red.”
“I-I told you to stop teasing me!”
“Bwahaha! You really are fun to tease. Anyway, tell us about it, Minjun. Or is there some secret to the world you lived in? Maybe this sort of thing is common there.”
Eager to learn the secret, Kutun urged him on with a curious look.
“Maybe the secret isn’t in his world but in his girlfriend,” a large human man nearby said. “Didn’t you say your girlfriend gave you the artifacts and the rings you’re wearing?”
Kutun nodded and added with a joking laugh, “Or maybe the girlfriend you’re dating is a dragon. Am I right?”
“How did you know?”
“... Really?”
Kutun was so startled to learn that his offhand guess was true that his half-full cup slipped from his hand.
CLATTER!
“Oh, you old fool. Drunk already?”
“What? Don’t be ridiculous! How could I be drunk after only one cup?”
Rangs, a fox beastfolk sitting at the table behind them, snickered. Kutun, his pride apparently stung, snapped, “Anyone would have been stunned to hear that!”
“What news has you making such a fuss?”
“That young fellow from another world has a dragon for a girlfriend.”
CLATTER!
Rangs was so startled that he dropped his own cup.
“Kutun, now you’re going too far. At least tell a believable story.”
“It’s true! He just told me himself!”
When others nearby challenged him, Kutun shouted back indignantly. He was making such a fuss that it was hard to believe he was lying. If so...
“Is-is he really dating a dragon?”
“How is that possible? Did he happen to discover she was a dragon while they were dating?”
“Surely not. Even if he found out, it would be hard to carry on a normal relationship.”
“And they’re still together, knowing what the other is?”
Everyone at Rangs’s table sprang up and gathered around to hear Minjun’s story. People from other tables came over too, ready to listen. The once-boisterous tavern fell quiet, and more than half the people there were looking at Minjun.
With all those eyes on him, he hesitated. “Hmm... Where should I start?”
“I don’t know where you’re from, but it must be a remarkably open-minded world! I suppose dragons aren’t all alike. To think a dragon could date a human when they both know what the other is!”
“Shh. Be quiet. Young Minjun is trying to tell us.”
Minjun wondered whether he should tell them the truth. But this wasn’t Earth, so he decided it wouldn’t matter if people here knew. He told them how he and Sia had originally been an ordinary human couple, until an accident led to her reincarnation as a dragon. They had reunited through dimensional travel magic.
He left out that Sia was Shasha, a red dragon from this world, and that he himself intended to become a dragon for reasons he did not disclose.
By the time he finished, the lively mood had grown a little solemn.
“A toast to young Minjun and Lady Sia,” Kutun said, quietly raising his cup.
“To them.”
Everyone in the tavern rose and clinked their cups.
“It’s like hearing a moving novel.”
“What a heartbreaking story. I can hardly listen without crying.”
“... Yes. I can’t tell you how grateful I am to Sia.”
On top of that, though he hadn’t told anyone here, the incompatibility between their energies meant they could hardly even see each other.
“But there’s something I wanted to ask. I think someone sitting behind us said it earlier.”
When Kutun had dropped his cup, hadn’t the fox beastfolk behind him said something like that while teasing him?
“What did you mean when you said a dragon could date a human even though they both know what the other is?”
