It is easy to take what belongs to others.

It is enjoyable to laugh at another's efforts.

Every time someone's challenge shatters into pieces, I feel an unbearable thrill.

Because your failure is proof of my perfection.

"Grrrr...!"

The ominous fragment in his hand burned hot.

Following the blood that flowed wildly through him, his once-blue eyes turned vivid blue, and the fangs he had clenched grew sharper and sharper.

As if that had been your true form all along.

"Haaaaah!"

The dragon's fragment had now been completely absorbed, losing even its shape.

Vlad drew his sword and struggled to shake off that ominous energy.

"... What a load of shit!"

THUNK!

Halfway up the cliff, with the dragon roaring behind him and pitch-black waves heaving below.

There, on that sheer and perilous face, Vlad drove his sword into the middle of the cliff.

That movement upward was not to follow the whisper echoing from within him, but to keep the oath he had made.

HUM— HUM HUM HUM—

Watching Vlad, the sword was crying.

Watching its master climb upward, trampling down the threats around him and the temptation within.

The sword of the World Tree, which had merely been young, was a being that knew who it was, but did not know what it wanted to become.

ROOOOAR!

"I said I don't want to live like that! You bastards!"

And now it knew.

What I wanted to become.

Vlad's rough roar toward the dragons awakened the unfinished sword, and each hand he desperately reached out showed the direction toward completion.

["Yes! Look up, as you swore to me!"]

Following Quijano's cry, Vlad's heart was beating.

To be exact, not from his heart, but from what Vlad had carried within him all this time.

"Gh!"

Climbing the cliff following Quijano's cry, Vlad suddenly let out a short groan at the heat he felt from deep inside his breastplate.

The pouch near his breastplate, which had abruptly grown hot, was where he kept the coins the old knights had given him.

"... Quijano?"

["It seems your sword is about to awaken."]

Rusty coins bought by old knights with their honor.

Though their heavily rusted surface looked shabby, inside them, where Vlad had failed to see it, a sparkling silver light was dwelling.

The color of the coins the old knights had tried to give Vlad was a true silver light.

["By the silver knight."]

HUM HUM— HUM HUM HUM!

Just as the boy had wanted to become a knight, the unfinished sword also wanted to complete itself.

And the reason Vlad had been able to become a knight was because there had been starlights to show him the right direction.

Like the silver lights slowly moving from Vlad's chest now.

The sword in his hand was shining.

The sword that had been born a star, yet wished to swallow the dragon's fragment for the sake of its master.

The proper true silver flowing according to the sword's will was protecting the young sword from the dragon's ferocity.

In that place now turned so black he could no longer tell where the sky was or where the sea was.

There was a single star shining alone, trying to be newly born.

The name of the star it wished to be was the sword that kills dragons, Dragon Slayer.

※※※※

"... What's wrong with that thing?"

Standing on the open sea and watching the battle between the two monsters, Barbosa could not help but sound puzzled as Leviathan's movements suddenly stiffened.

There had been the sudden attack from the Kraken, but until just now, Leviathan had clearly been showing the upper hand.

"No, why is the one who was winning running away?"

A dragon was, by nature, a being closest to perfection.

That was why it should have had no retreat in it, but the Leviathan now was unwinding its sleek body from around the island as if trying to escape in a hurry.

"One cliff... Damn, that's high!"

And the place Leviathan was looking at with panic in its eyes was the top of the cliff on Lemnos Island.

It was where Vlad, who had finally crawled all the way up from below, now stood.

"Bastard. You're even uglier up close."

The enormous Leviathan was right in front of him, so huge it was difficult to dare look up at it, but Vlad, wiping away his sweat, was only smiling.

The greatest dragon and the fragment of the most perfect dragon.

The bodies of the two that faced each other differed beyond comparison, but in the world of dragons, Vlad, who held the most perfect fragment, had no reason to be pushed back at all.

"Is it a little short?"

THUMP!

Vlad was measuring the distance between the cliff where he stood and Leviathan.

The moment he thought the distance he had to leap was too far, an ominous red color began to flow from the sword he was holding.

It was a new possibility the Dragon Slaying Sword, which had swallowed the dragon's fragment, was sending to Vlad.

"... No, it's not short."

Adding the ferocity flowing along the sword, his body became a little more perfect.

Feeling the elation that he could do anything, Vlad glared at the greatest dragon before him.

"This should be enough to reach."

The place where he stood was still the same, but the world to which he belonged had changed.

Looking at Leviathan, which had somehow become close enough to take in at a glance, Vlad raised his sword.

"... Whew."

Following the secret of the one-strike sure-kill that Quijano had taught him, Vlad crouched down deeply.

Like an arrow about to be loosed.

This swordsmanship, which had begun with the Swordmaster, had started from the swordsmanship of gladiators who valued a single strike above all else.

"Here I go."

["Yes."]

Swordmaster swordsmanship unfolding upon the body of a dragon.

At a possibility even he had never dared imagine, Quijano, too, felt as though his heart were pounding.

"Hup!"

When the ground he had kicked off from caved in, Vlad, who had been there only a moment ago, vanished.

All that remained was a faint golden afterimage and a small wind that swept in belatedly.

ROOOOAR!

The golden light that had begun atop the cliff had already leapt beyond Leviathan's roaring bellow and reached its body.

It was a movement that feared neither the waves below the cliff nor the monsters right before it.

CRRRUNCH!

"Tch!"

From Leviathan's body, where he had driven in his sword, came a chilling sound like bone being split, but Vlad himself clicked his tongue as if troubled.

Because the speed he had not predicted, even though he had done it himself, had carried him past the position he had aimed for.

"One more time!"

But though what had lodged in it was only a small sword, what had touched it was the threat to its very existence.

WOOOOOO!

Realizing the possibility contained in the Dragon Slaying Sword, Leviathan let out a great scream and thrashed its whole body violently to shake Vlad off.

"Damn it!"

At that motion, greater than most mountain peaks, the crumbling Lemnos Island shook precariously.

From that movement, great waves spread out, so large even the ships far away could barely keep themselves steady.

...!

The Kraken, too, was startled by Leviathan's sudden action, but the ancient spirit knew well what it had to do.

The Kraken began coiling its entire body around Leviathan as it tried to enter the sea once more.

So that it could no longer enter the sea, so that it would expose that massive body to Vlad.

At the sight of a snake and a squid, so immense they were almost majestic, gripping each other tightly, humans and dwarves alike lost their words and merely stared blankly.

"... I see it."

It was a situation like two ropes tangled together and pulled taut.

Feeling Leviathan's body trembling beneath his feet, Vlad began looking not at the head that had already entered the sea, but at the massive body coiled around the island.

Because in the sharply raised eyes of the dragon, the optimal path Auguste had taught him was already being drawn.

GRRRAK!

Pulling out the sword he had driven in, Vlad closed his left eye and began to focus on his own world.

To go to a deeper place, and to gather a wider plane.

In that way, he began gathering the worlds in contact with him and building his own world once again.

"Oooh..."

Rukhta, who had been weeping atop the collapsing island, let out an exclamation without realizing it.

Because above the ruins where everything was falling apart, he had seen a massive tree newly rising.

"Whew."

'The world that supports me is Quijano's world.'

'What I strive to be is an honorable knight.'

'What I hold now is the sword that kills dragons.'

'And the world supporting me from behind is the world of the spirit that guarded the sea.'

"Let's end this with this."

SHUNK!

A knight, a Dragon Slayer, and the savior of spirits. Vlad Aureo.

The world he had called forth pierced the body of the greatest dragon.

Like a mountain.

ROOOOAR!

"Haaaaaaah!"

With Leviathan's scream, Vlad began to run.

Cleaving through the body of the greatest dragon.

Leviathan's wound, which had begun from a tiny point, gradually spread into a line with Vlad's advance.

"My God."

A golden line slowly cutting through Leviathan's body.

Looking at that wondrous light, the dwarves of Nidavellir could not close their gaping mouths.

ROOOOAR!

A boy who had been born a dragon, yet dreamed of a star.

A sword that had been born a star, yet held a dragon's fragment.

The light created by the two of them was now forming a great circle along Leviathan's body, which was wrapped around Lemnos Island.

※※※※

HUM HUM— HUM HUM HUM—

"Hm?"

A desolate desert filled with nothing but sand.

In that place where everything was quiet, a man who had lost all color looked down at his crying sword.

"... It seems you are in a good mood for the first time in a while."

The silver knight trembling in his hand.

Until the moment it had just cut through the dragon's flesh, the sword had remained silent, and yet for some reason, it was now shaking as if reacting to something.

"Has something happened?"

"No."

Answering the woman's voice from behind him, Frausen quietly swung his sword and shook off the blood clinging to it.

A knight who now had not even a handful of glory left, only duty.

Before him, the Death worm once called the hardest dragon had been split in half and was soaking the dry desert entirely with its blood.

THUMP, THUMP...

As the Death worm's warmth faded, Frausen's heart was gradually stopping.

Frausen quietly brought a hand to his chest, felt that sound growing smaller and smaller, and closed his eyes.

"... It has finally stopped."

The heart of another being, not his own.

It was what kept his utterly dried-up body beating, but on Frausen's face as he felt that pulse, there was only a faint displeasure.

"Will this one suffice as the material you spoke of?"

"Of course. I have done it once before as well. Though that one was a young specimen."

"Then finish it."

Leaving behind the woman whose feet did not touch the ground, Frausen quietly walked away from the Death worm's corpse.

"Where do you intend to go next?"

At Lamashtu's question from behind him, Frausen quietly lifted his head.

After looking west for a moment, he soon turned and began looking in the opposite direction.

"... To the Central."

The Central of the Empire.

The place where he had killed the most perfect dragon, and where the oldest dragon now was.

With eyes containing no emotion at all, Frausen began walking toward the city he had built.

HUM— HUM HUM...

In his hand, as he slowly walked on, the sword's cry was gradually fading.

Like its master's heart, which no longer beat unless it had dragon's blood.

Frausen's eyes, which were looking beyond the desert, had already become those of the dead and were slowly sinking.