Chapter 251 - The Dragon Hunt Arc, Part One
Western Demon Continent
Grayrock Barrens
No fertile soil here.
No broad rivers.
And none of the prosperous towns you find scattered across the human nations.
Just wind, sand, rock, and people scraping by.
My name is Garu.
I'm a hunter of the Demon Race, about as ordinary as they come.
If there's anything that makes me special, it's this: there's an earth dragon living near my village.
A real dragon.
When we first found out, everyone thought they were going to die. That's just what a dragon means. Creatures like that have no business living near ordinary villagers.
But as it turned out, the dragon wasn't particularly interested in us. It didn't attack the village. It didn't tear down any houses. It just claimed the vast mountain region north of us and went about its life there, sleeping, hunting, moving around.
That's where the trouble started.
Because those mountains were our hunting grounds. The best place for medicinal herbs. The only place where certain precious ores and monster materials could be found.
At first, people still ventured in. You have to make a living. You can't just starve because there's a dragon nearby.
But as time passed, fewer and fewer people went in.
And fewer and fewer came back.
Three years ago, the strongest hunting team in the village entered the mountains. Sixteen people. Only one returned.
He'd lost an arm. He was covered in blood. And something in him wasn't right anymore.
For half a year after, nightmares woke him every single night. And every time he jolted awake, he screamed the same thing.
The dragon woke up.
The dragon woke up.
Run.
Run.
Nobody ever found out what they saw in there. That man never said. Not until the day he died.
Later, a herb gatherer spotted the dragon from a distance. Word was that on that day, the entire mountain range shook. The massive body rose from the canyon. Boulders tumbled. Trees fell in sweeping crashes. The whole mountain seemed to come alive.
After that, nobody went near.
Day by day, the village grew poorer. Then poorer still.
Eventually, people started starving to death.
So the village chief finally made up his mind to hire adventurers. Everyone pooled what they could, a little from each household. What we scraped together in the end was a sum so pitiful, even we were embarrassed by it.
The village chief took it to the nearest large town.
A month later, he came back with a grim face.
No one took the job.
That wasn't surprising. It was a dragon, not some ordinary monster.
Second month. Third month. Still nothing.
The mood in the village turned heavy. People started talking about relocating. But relocating to where? Barren as this place was, it was still home.
Then one day, news spread from the tavern.
Someone took the job.
Nobody believed it at first. Then more and more people started talking about it, and the village chief came running back to tell everyone himself.
Someone really took it.
The whole village erupted.
I ran to the village entrance with everyone else, wanting to see who could possibly be reckless enough to take on a dragon.
And then I saw two people.
A man and a woman.
The man had golden-brown hair and looked to be in his thirties. He wore a magnificent robe with a dragon-like pattern on the back that radiated a kind of natural authority. In his hand was a staff that looked expensive at a single glance.
The woman had long black hair and was carrying a thick notebook. She looked like a scholar.
I stared at them for a while. Something about them seemed familiar, but I couldn't quite place it.
Then someone nearby sucked in a sharp breath.
"Wait... that couldn't be... Lord Rudeus?"
The air went still.
Then the whole village entrance exploded.
"What?"
"Lord Rudeus?"
"The fourth of the Seven Great Powers?"
"Magic King Lord Rudeus?"
My eyes snapped wide. I looked again, harder this time, and finally recognized him.
The portraits.
I'd seen the portraits. One hanging in the tavern. One with a merchant caravan. Even the bards mentioned him in their stories.
Rudeus Greyrat.
That legendary figure.
Why was he here?
The village chief had clearly panicked. He'd been planning to walk over and discuss the reward, but now his legs were shaking.
Rudeus seemed to notice our reaction. He offered a gentle smile.
"No need to be nervous. We just accepted a commission, that's all."
His voice was calm. Gentle. But something felt off, and I couldn't pin down what.
He was smiling. But it felt like there was something between him and us, a pane of glass you couldn't quite see. Polite, but not warm. Friendly, but distant.
The black-haired woman beside him didn't seem to notice any of it. She spoke up directly.
"The commission is to drive away or subjugate an earth dragon, correct?"
The village chief nodded frantically. "Yes, yes — but, um, Lord Rudeus... our payment might not be..."
His voice got smaller and smaller until it trailed off entirely. Everyone knew we couldn't afford the fees for someone like him.
Rudeus waved a hand. "It's fine. Mainly I'm here to accompany a friend gathering research materials. The dragon is just something to handle along the way."
Along the way.
We all went quiet.
A dragon. Along the way.
Those two words together just didn't sit right.
The black-haired woman seemed completely used to it. She flipped through her notebook without looking up.
"Alive is preferable. If that's not possible, the corpse will do. Dragon blood takes priority."
Rudeus sighed. "I know. You've said it five times."
"Because you're genuinely very forgetful lately."
"When have I been forgetful?"
"Heh. Yesterday's dinner — which dish did Eris make?"
"...Braised fish?"
"She didn't cook yesterday."
"..."
"And furthermore—"
"Stop."
Rudeus raised both hands in surrender. "I get it. I get it."
The woman nodded, satisfied, and went back to her notebook.
I found myself feeling a little sorry for the earth dragon.
Because the way they were talking, it didn't sound like a discussion about a dragon. It sounded like a discussion about what to have for dinner.
Just then, Rudeus raised his head and looked north toward the mountains. His gaze seemed to pass straight through the dozens of kilometers between us and the peaks, reaching deep into the range. Then he slowly closed his eyes.
The next second, I felt something change in the air.
Something invisible swept across the land. It lasted barely an instant, but every hair on my body stood up. My breathing stalled.
A few seconds passed.
Rudeus opened his eyes.
"Found it," he said calmly.
The whole village went quiet again.
Found it?
Just like that?
The village chief stared at him, mouth open, unable to respond.
"Lord Rudeus... you can already see it?"
"Yes. About 47 kilometers from here."
He said it the same way you'd say there's a rabbit hiding behind that tree.
The woman looked up from her notebook. "Is there a nest?"
"Looks like it."
"Any dragon eggs?"
"...No."
She looked mildly disappointed.
Rudeus smiled. "Let's go."
"Now?"
"Yes."
"It's barely noon."
"The sooner we finish, the sooner we get back. I still need to pull a tooth for Tina."
"Fine, fine."
She nodded, then glanced over at us. "We'll head over first. We'll let you know the results when we're done."
A magic circle lit up beneath their feet. Light spread outward.
Both of them vanished.
The village fell silent again.
Nobody spoke for a long time.
"Is it over already?"
"Probably not..."
"It's a dragon, after all..."
"That's a dragon we're talking about..."
Nobody knew. So everyone waited.
At noon, most people didn't go home. They gathered at the village entrance and stared north at the mountain range, as if staring long enough might tell them something.
Nothing happened all afternoon.
Then, just as people's minds were starting to drift,
BOOM!
The ground shook. A tremor rolled through the earth, and everyone lurched to their feet at once.
"It's happening!"
"The earth dragon woke up!"
"Is that a dragon's roar?!"
A second BOOM followed right on its heels, louder than the first. Gravel rolled down the nearby hillside. Children burst into tears. The old men went pale.
In the distant mountains, a pillar of earthen-yellow light shot into the sky. Visible even from dozens of kilometers away, like a colossal stone column driven straight through the world.
Then a third.
A fourth.
A fifth.
The earth kept shaking. The mountains kept roaring.
It looked like the end of the world.
People started praying. Some looked like they regretted ever staying. A few began to wonder aloud, had Lord Rudeus angered the dragon? If it went berserk, would the village survive?
Then something changed.
The distant sky lit up with blue.
Just a small point at first. Then it expanded. And expanded. And kept expanding, until it stretched across half the horizon, a colossal magic circle suspended above the mountain range like a second sky.
Everyone stood frozen.
Because it was too big. Even from dozens of kilometers away, the outline was perfectly clear. Countless runes rotating. Countless rings of light woven through each other. A structure so vast it dwarfed the mountains beneath it.
Someone nearby was trembling when they spoke.
"What is that..."
Nobody answered. Nobody knew.
Then a pillar of blue-white light came down from the heavens and crashed into the center of the mountains.
BOOM!
This time, the houses shook. Hairline cracks split the ground. Dust rained from the rooftops. People stumbled and sat down hard in the dirt.
Then,
Silence.
Complete, total silence.
The wind stopped. The tremors ceased. The mountains made no sound. It was as if none of it had ever happened.
Everyone stared into the distance with blank eyes.
Nobody knew what had just occurred.
People trickled home at dusk, but nobody slept.
The next morning, the entire village was gathered at the entrance again before the sun had fully risen.
A magic circle appeared in the center of the square just as the first light broke.
Rudeus and the woman stepped out.
They looked exactly the same as always, actually, they looked like they'd just woken up from a full night's sleep. Clothes clean. Hair neat. Not a single mark on either of them, as if yesterday had been a walk in the countryside.
The only difference was the woman now held several glass bottles. Inside them swirled a golden-red liquid, and the look on her face made it obvious she was pleased.
Rudeus was yawning.
The village chief sprinted over. "Lord Rudeus! The dragon —"
"Dead."
Simple as that.
The crowd went dead silent.
Dead?
Really dead?
The disaster that had haunted this village for years, just gone?
The village chief's mouth hung open. He couldn't find words.
Rudeus continued. "The corpse is still out there. The bones and scales are well-preserved. You should organize people to go deal with it. If you sell to a merchant guild, it should be enough to keep this whole village comfortable for several decades."
Several decades.
The villagers' heads were spinning.
It was a dragon. Even a single scale was worth a fortune, let alone a complete corpse.
The woman added, "Don't touch the internal organs carelessly. Some are poisonous. I've already marked them."
The village chief nodded so hard it looked like his head might fall off. "Yes, yes, absolutely, we'll be very careful!"
After that, the two of them started chatting like nobody else was there.
What to have for dinner tonight. Rudeus's daughter. Rudeus's wives.
The rest of us had nothing to say.
To them, the earth dragon really was just research material. Not the terror that had strangled this village for years. Just a thing they'd gone and dealt with.
Finally, Rudeus looked at the village chief.
"Commission complete. That mountain region is yours to use again."
"Thank you!"
The village chief dropped to his knees and pressed his forehead to the ground. The people around him followed. I went down too, because we didn't know any other way to say what we felt.
I looked up from where I knelt and stole a glance at Rudeus's face.
His eyes were indifferent.
Our gratitude landed on him like rain on stone. He felt nothing.
Still, he smiled.
"It's nothing. That's that, then."
He turned to the woman.
"Home for dinner?"
She nodded. "Yes. Your home."
"By the way — can you cook?"
"Heh... does a fried egg count?"
"Don't Japanese people call that tamagoyaki?"
The woman rolled her eyes. "You just roll up a fried egg. What's the difference?"
"Texture?"
"Stack a few fried eggs on top of each other and you get the same texture."
"...You always manage to shatter my illusions about Japanese food in about three sentences."
"That's just reality. Let's go. Back to your place."
"Yeah. Let's go home."
The magic circle lit up.
They were gone.
We stood there in the square, not quite sure what to do with ourselves.
Many years later, when this village had become the wealthiest in the Grayrock Barrens, the old ones would still tell that story to the children. The earth dragon. That afternoon. The legendary Magic King who passed through.
And the story always ended the same way.
That monster which had driven the entire village to despair, to Rudeus Greyrat, it really did seem to be nothing more than something handled along the way.
➤ Next: Dragon Hunting, Part Two