With the immediate emergency put out, it was time to take stock of the situation.
I’d expected the human army to unveil some trump card I didn’t know about. But I’d assumed it would be a physical weapon at most—something like a harpoon or a crossbow.
Poison that targeted a dragon’s heart, though.
“Medicine! Do we have more medicine?!”
“Yes, come here! Lay them down over here!”
Fortunately, with the help of an ancient dragon, we had found a way to treat it.
But at this rate, victory in the Belzena war was far from certain. Even now, dragons struck by crossbows were streaming into the cavern without end.
Even if we managed to keep them alive, it would take time for them to recover fully. The dragons who had opened their eyes earlier still couldn’t even sit up.
To win a war against the humans’ poison, the important thing was to stop creating more wounded in the first place.
As I sorted through the tangle of thoughts, I turned to Ordin without thinking—and met a familiar set of eyes.
“...Where is Varen?”
The moment I saw eyes that reminded me of Varen, the truth burst out of me like a sneeze. I asked, then let out a long, heavy sigh at how pathetic I sounded.
But I couldn’t help it. The more the dragons seemed to be at a disadvantage, the more my anxiety kept surging up.
What if Varen got hit by a crossbow? What if he’s already been poisoned? Every negative assumption took over my head.
Every time I thought of Varen, my fingertips trembled, and I curled them into a fist to hide it.
Ordin swept his slow gaze over me.
“Va...ren... is....”
He’d barely clung to life, but speaking still seemed difficult; Ordin’s breathing faltered again.
Neira frowned at the sight, turned to me, and spoke in her husband’s place.
“Varen will be fine. A human....”
I expected her to say it wasn’t a human’s place to interfere, but Neira couldn’t finish. She hesitated.
The fist Ordin was holding around her hand had tightened hard.
After a brief pause, Neira continued in a noticeably softened voice.
“It’s not something a human needs to worry about.”
I forced the stiff line of my mouth upward.
Even now, outside, the sound of something ripping through the wind rose together with agonized screams.
It was a war so brutal you could hear it without seeing it. And whether a human worried about the dragons at its center wouldn’t change anything.
But my head and my heart kept moving separately. My gaze—heavy with lingering attachment—kept drifting toward the cavern mouth.
"Gah—everyone, move!!"
Varen’s voice rang through my mind at intervals.
His urgency made my anxiety spike in sympathy, and then, a beat later, He’s still alive. He isn’t hurt, and I’d feel relief.
Just then, hellfire-hot heat rolled in from the cavern entrance. At the same time, crossbows burst one after another under dragon flame, and a gale shoved its way deeper into the cavern.
I stared outside with worried eyes—and in the blink of an eye, a golden body flashed past.
"Damn it, damn it! Where the hell are you?!"
Varen’s desperate voice narrowed my eyes.
What does he mean, where? What is he looking for?
A chilled, cooled-down temperature brushed over the back of my hand. When I turned my head, Ordin was reaching toward me with effort.
Still deathly pale, he looked straight at me.
“Hu...man... hu...man....”
Only stuttering syllables came from Ordin’s mouth, carrying no meaning I could grasp. My brow knit in frustration.
Then a secret I still hadn’t told Ordin surfaced in my mind. I didn’t know why yet, but perhaps because of Aylos blood, I had an ability ordinary humans didn’t.
I lowered my upper body and whispered into Ordin’s ear.
“Ordin, you don’t need to speak. I can hear the dragons’ language.”
When I straightened again, a faint dragon’s gaze shimmered in his blue eyes.
As if the paralysis hadn’t fully released, Ordin worked his stiff lips, then bit down hard.
A deep, weighty voice soon rang inside my head.
"I can’t find any trace of the humans. Nothing is visible."
It was unmistakably Ordin’s voice.
I nodded slightly and answered out loud. I could hear dragons’ language, but I didn’t know how to send words directly into someone’s mind.
“The humans are using concealment magic. Even if you can’t see them, they’ll have left traces from hauling their weapons in.”
"No—there’s nothing. I couldn’t find a single footprint."
Not a single footprint. How was that possible? Even just listening to the explosions, there had to be more than one or two crossbows.
Had they moved even that by magic? Who came up with an operation that hid even wagon tracks?
"We have to find the humans who are hiding. Help Varen. I’m asking you."
At Ordin’s desperate voice, a dull ache punched under my sternum.
He was right—we had to find the hidden humans and kill them. Otherwise, poison-coated crossbows would keep threatening dragons without end, and the war would never finish.
More than anyone, I wanted to help Varen. Letting go with both hands and praying for his safety didn’t suit me.
But in a battlefield that felt like the world had been turned inside out, what help could a weak human possibly offer? If anything, I’d be a hindrance.
“How am I supposed to....”
I opened both hands—hands that held no power—and stared down at them.
They were hands I’d grown quite used to now.
There wasn’t a single callus on my palms, and my fingers were pale and slender. They were the perfect hands of an aristocrat who had never done a day of hard labor.
Then something occurred to me—something I hadn’t tried even once since possessing this world. There was something I’d never even been tempted to want.
If I truly was Ceryl Aylos, couldn’t I use Aylos power as well?
When I’d heard it was a ruined magician family with only a feeble amount of mana, I’d assumed it wouldn’t amount to anything and never even tried.
But now that I knew Aylos had been the first Dragon Hunter... maybe...
"No. No—there’s no Aylos presence coming from you."
When I looked up at him with startled eyes, he wore a stiff face and an awkward smile. In that instant, a strange sensation cut across my mind.
All this time, I hadn’t been curious about the innate abilities dragons possessed. The same had been true of Ordin.
Whenever I felt Ordin’s gaze—like it could see straight through me—I’d found it unsettling. When he read my inner thoughts as if by instinct, I’d chalked it up to the experience of a dragon king.
I’d told myself it was just my imagination and let it slide...
But was it...
Is he reading my thoughts?
"I’m sorry. I couldn’t bring myself to tell you—I thought it might make you uncomfortable."
...Right. There was a dragon who could see the future, and another who could possess an ❖ Nоvеl𝚒ght ❖ (Exclusive on Nоvеl𝚒ght) ancestor.
A mind-reading ability wasn’t impossible, either.
I tried to accept it as something plausible, but it wasn’t easy. Even sitting still, my face kept burning.
Despite the urgent situation, my thoughts locked up. I forced my rigid mind to move and tried to recall what I’d been thinking in front of Ordin all this time.
Mostly I’d worried about the Belzena war... and I’d agonized over my feelings for Varen...
And above all, I’d cursed Neira out nonstop.
When I pressed a hand to my forehead and dropped my head, a kindly laugh flowed through my mind, right on time.
"Hahaha. Don’t worry. I’ll keep it a secret from Neira."
Was I supposed to be grateful for that, or resent him?
I narrowed my eyes sharply and glared at him, and Ordin tightened the hand that was holding my wrist.
Heat began to seep into the spot where he gripped me. Even though his own body wasn’t intact, Ordin was pushing something into me.
“What are you doing, Ordin!”
My voice burst out in panic. I tried to yank his hand away, but even on the verge of death, a dragon was still a dragon. He silently kept forcing his power into me.
And yet, the sensation was strange. When Varen poured life force into me, it felt like my entire body was being filled to the brim.
This felt different—like the way it might feel to open your eyes for the first time after living your whole life in darkness. Every cell in my body was coming alive, and all five senses were sharpening.
A flood of sensation I couldn’t handle was pouring into me.
“Hhk... hhhk....”
My breath caught hard, and my upper body pitched forward. Reflex tears welled up and blurred my vision, but through the moisture I could still see clearly—even a single grain of sand rolling on the ground.
More than anything, what was hardest to endure was sound. It wasn’t simply that the volume had increased.
I squeezed my eyes shut against the unknown pain. But even without focusing, every sound in this world burrowed into my eardrums.
The sound of thick logs slicing through the air, the powerful wind raised by dragon wings.
The taut creak of bowstrings being drawn, the heavy sound of wheels crushing stones as they rolled.
"Bring Lightstones! Brighten this place!!"
"Aaaagh!! You bastard, raise the barrier properly!! The flames are hitting us!!!"
And even the frantic, vicious voices of humans.
My eyes flew open, and the tears pooled there fell in heavy drops.
I stared at Ordin with a dazed face—and without realizing it, I let out a murmured groan.
“...Found you.”
