Chapter 11: The Dragon’s Shadow
The golden light faded by degrees, the last of it dissolving into the canopy overhead until the forest looked the way it had before. The forest around them remained unnaturally quiet, as though every creature inside the Entrance Realm had felt the eruption and decided silence was the safest response.
His smile slowly widened.
Vedas noticed immediately.
"Want go?"
Arthur looked over. "Obviously."
Vedas held his gaze for another second, then turned back toward the distant glow that still lingered faintly above the trees. "...okay."
Arthur’s grin widened further.
Vedas looked at him. "...why smile?"
Arthur laughed. "That’s progress."
Not long ago, Vedas had pressed himself against the back of his neck and covered his head with both hands at the approach of something large. Now he was looking at the site of an explosion that had bent the trees and emptied the sky of birds and decided he wanted to see what had caused it.
The group started moving.
Mithra fell into step beside him while Melo trotted ahead, occasionally sniffing at the air. Behind them, Cassian and his followers followed as well.
Nobody admitted why they were following.
Arthur suspected they all already knew.
Curiosity usually won.
Several minutes into the walk, another set of beasts rushed towards them. But Vedas charged ahead with Taurus following behind.
Several monsters fell one after another.
A bear.
A snake.
A boar.
Another bear.
Vedas didn’t even slow down.
[Level Up!]
[Level Up!]
[Goblin Warrior ]
[Level 8 —> Level 10]
Arthur laughed. "Double digits."
Vedas looked down. "...Already?"
Arthur pointed proudly. "You’ve only been a warrior for an hour."
Vedas blinked. "...That sounds ridiculous."
"It does." Arthur grinned. "Imagine tomorrow."
By the time they were closing in on the area of golden glow. Vedas were already at level 10, with nothing ahead of them but the thinning glow and the sound of the forest gradually resuming its usual business.
Arthur asked the question he had been sitting with since the ceremony that morning. "So who exactly is Leon?"
Mithra looked over. "Leon?"
"Yeah!"
"He’s strange."
Arthur immediately looked interested. "Good strange or bad strange?"
"Neither." Mithra thought for a moment before continuing. "I’ve seen him a few times over the years. He was always training alone."
Arthur blinked. "...Voluntarily?"
Mithra nodded. "Every day."
"No one tried to train with him?" Arthur asked with a raised brow. "I’d have kept bothering him."
Mithra smiled. "I believe you."
"We all believe you." Cassian muttered with his followers nodding.
"Well people tried," Mithra said. "Early on. He didn’t respond to it or seem to care. Of course, they kept trying, but when they saw how he trained, they all gave up."
"Huh? Why?" One of the followers asked in surprise.
"The way Leon trained and learned things left them feeling inferior."
Those words left them stunned.
"So he gave up because he didn’t expect them to stay." Arthur said lightly.
"Yes, I’m sure you notice he never joins in on the conversation or tries to be the center of a group."
Arthur slowly nodded. "Yeah, before we came inside here. I saw him standing away from others, and even when some people approached him. He didn’t act like Cassian."
Cassian, who was following, eyes twitched while his followers blushed and looked down.
Mithra was quiet for a moment. "It gets worse."
The group, without anyone acknowledging it, had grown slightly quieter. Now everyone was listening, even Cassian.
Mithra folded her arms. "When we were younger, I saw him fight a Bronze Rank Beast Tamer."
The entire group froze.
Cassian stopped walking. "Wait... What?"
Mithra nodded. "Exactly."
"Today was Awakening Day." He furrowed his brows.
"Yep."
Cassian stared. "Which means Leon was still a normal human."
"Yes. He had no beast while the Beast Tamer he fought had their own beast and a year of experience."
Then three followers spoke at the same moment.
"That’s not possible," said the first.
"A Bronze Rank?" said the second.
"With a beast?" said the third.
The tall follower pointed at Mithra. "You’re misremembering."
"I’m not," she said.
"You were young. You probably didn’t understand what you were seeing." Another of them quickly said with a nervous smile.
"I was fourteen," Mithra said. "I understood what I was seeing. Besides, it isn’t something I could misremember...No one at the time could."
"I agree, that isn’t a sight you would forget." Arthur nodded.
"T-the Bronze Rank must have been very new," another follower quickly said. "Like, barely ranked. Someone who just got their beast and had no idea what they were doing."
"They had a year of experience," Mithra said.
"Still," the follower quickly pressed. "A year isn’t that much."
"A year is enough to win against a normal human with no beast," Mithra said. The words were gentle and completely firm at the same time. "Bronze Rank means something. Everyone here knows even the weakest one is five times stronger than a normal human."
"Then the beast was weak," another one said as he gripped his hair.
Mithra looked at him. "It was an Ironback Hound, a B-Rank Beast."
"Maybe the Beast Tamer had a bad day–"
"That still wouldn’t close the gap." Mithra bluntly said.
The follower opened his mouth and then closed it.
Even Cassian looked disturbed before he sighed and said. "Accept it, you guys... Leon really was abnormal and a monster before even getting his Golden Dragon."
The four followers shivered.
Arthur stared. "I can’t wait to fight him someday."
Everyone turned toward him.
Cassian sighed. "Even after hearing all of that?"
Arthur blinked. "Why not? I want to understand how he did that."
Cassian and his followers’ lips twitched.
He then moved close to Mithra and asked. "How did he beat the Bronze Beast Tamer though? As you said, the difference in strength should be huge."
"That’s usually true," Mithra said.
"So then—"
"Leon predicted every movement before it happened," Mithra said. Her voice stayed the same even tone it had been the entire walk. "Every attack that came, he had already left the place it was aiming at." She paused. "I remember standing there wondering which one of them was the Beast Tamer."
Several followers laughed nervously.
"The fight wasn’t close." Mithra continued, her voice quieter. "At the end, the Beast Tamer was crying."
The sounds from the followers stopped.
Cassian blinked. "What did Leon do?"
"Nothing," she said. "He just stood there looking at him. He didn’t look angry. Didn’t look proud." She shook her head. "He didn’t look happy."
"Why wouldn’t you be happy after winning that?" another follower asked, more to himself than anyone. "That would be the greatest thing I’d ever done in my life."
"I think..." She hesitated. "I think he didn’t want to win."
Her words left Cassian and the followers stunned. They couldn’t imagine anyone not being happy they defeated a Bronze Beast Tamer as a normal human. That was stuff of legends and something to make you look down on all your peers.
Arthur frowned. "...That doesn’t sound fun."
Mithra looked at him. "What do you mean?"
Arthur shrugged. "Winning should make both people want to get stronger. Not make one of them cry."
"Huh? I guess that might be it."
"You think so too?"
"I remember him glancing at the people watching and them flinching without knowing why." She thought for a moment. "And then he walked away like he had given up on something."
The tall follower cleared his throat. "I still think the Beast Tamer probably had a bad day."
Nobody responded.
After a moment, even the tall follower stopped pushing it.
...
They began passing other students heading in the opposite direction approximately ten minutes before they reached the ridge. A steady stream of them was heading the opposite direction.
Arthur stopped one of them. "Why are you leaving?"
One student looked exhausted. "This path leads to the exit."
Arthur blinked. "The exit? Of this realm?"
The student nodded and then laughed weakly. "Trust me. You’re better off turning around and waiting for the next two hours before the time runs out."
He tilted his head. "Why?"
The student stared for a second. Then pointed further down the trail. "Leon’s down there."
Several students nearby visibly flinched at the name.
Arthur’s eyes lit up. "Really?"
"He’s been stopping everyone heading toward the exit," another student said.
"Stopping them, how?" Arthur asked.
"Challenging them," the student said. "Except challenge isn’t quite the right word."
A third student, a girl with dried mud on her uniform, rubbed her neck. "I thought he was looking for a decent fight."
"Was he?" Arthur said.
She stared into the trees. "I lost in one move." A bitter smile appeared. "I didn’t finish standing up."
Another student raised his hand. "Same."
A fourth student with grass in his hair looked embarrassed. "Our whole group challenged him at once."
Arthur glanced over. "And?"
"We lost faster," the student said with a sigh.
Cassian’s followers stared at the student. "At once?" one follower said slowly.
"At once," the student confirmed.
"Your whole group lost against one person..."
"Yes."
The tall follower did not say anything this time, but Arthur could see his legs were shaking.
Melo slowly opens one eye. "...Kyu."
Arthur nods. "Yeah. That sounds serious."
"There are still people challenging him?" another follower asked.
"A few," the exhausted student said. "Every person who gets down there thinks they’ll be different." He shrugged. "Then they aren’t."
Cassian folded his arms. "Fools."
Arthur rubbed his hands together. "I really want to meet him."
Mithra immediately sighs. "...I knew you were going to say that."
Arthur’s smile widened. "How can I resist? It sounds fun."
Melo slowly looked up. "...Kyu..."
Arthur nodded. "Don’t worry. We’ll only say hello."
Melo looked completely unconvinced.
Mithra laughed. "That’s exactly what worries her."
...
The trees thinned over the last several minutes, and then they reached a ridge. Everyone stopped.
The landscape below looked like a battlefield after a natural disaster. A massive crater occupied the space before them, with ten trees that had been flattened. The ground was blackened and cracked.
Arthur’s eyes went across it slowly.
The beasts came into focus one by one. An Ironfang Wolf on its side. A Stonehide Bear with its head down. A Venom Serpent coiled in the stillness of something unconscious. An Iron Antler Stag with its legs folded underneath it. A Shadow Panther at the edge of the crater’s rim. A Flameback Boar leaning against a broken tree with blood running from it.
Six beasts.
All of them lay out.
The students who had been with those beasts were sitting or kneeling on the ground nearby. One of them said in disbelief. "Not even one attack... How is the gap so big?"
"I... I thought we were strong? Why does a monster like this exist with us?" A girl trembled as she held her body with tears.
Another shook his head. "The dragon moved once. That’s all I saw."
The fourth was looking at his own hands as if questioning reality.
Cassian stared; even he looked shaken. He spoke eventually, quietly, more to himself than to the group. "Taurus could probably fight three of those beasts." Nobody responded, and Cassian continued. "Maybe."
His gaze remained fixed ahead. "But six at once? That should be impossible for anyone in this exam." The last silence was the longest. "...As expected of an SS Talent."
Nobody answered, because there was nothing to add.
Arthur followed Cassian’s line of sight to the center of the crater.
Leon stood there, and the word that applied to him in that position was untouched. No dirt on the uniform or sign of effort, and that same blank look on his face like defeating six beast tamers wasn’t something he would remember.
Beside him stood the Golden Dragon, its scales catching what light remained. Its eyes remained fixed on the world with the confidence of a creature that had never known defeat.
The wind came through the ruined space below and moved across the crater and the flattened trees and the students sitting on the ground.
Arthur stood at the ridge and looked down at all of it.
Behind him, the tall follower said, very quietly and in the specific tone of someone arriving at a conclusion they had been resisting. "Okay. Maybe the Beast Tamer didn’t have a bad day."
Nobody laughed.
Yet Arthur’s grin slowly widened. For the first time since entering the Entrance Realm, something had genuinely surprised him.
"I was right."
Mithra looked over. "About what?"
Arthur never looked away from Leon. "This world keeps getting more interesting." He rubbed his hands together. "I can’t wait to see what’s next."
Comments