Side Story 54. Dragon Slayer (3)
Side Story 54. Dragon Slayer (3)
"Caaoooooo-!!"
As expected of a winged lizard that was about 300 years old. It was huge. I reckon it would be 200 meters long with its outstretched neck high in the air. It emitted a terrible cold air throughout its body — just peel off the scales and it would be a perfect refrigerant in the refrigerator.
"Hmm, shall I run away first?"
The damn frost dragon stared at me as soon as it came out as if it had heard me or perhaps I was just in a very noticeable place. Looking back, I could see my father smiling, so it seemed that this was where he had intended for me to land.
"Caaaooooo-!"
The frost dragon blew a dragon breath at me, perhaps thinking it was I who had thrown the stone.
I rushed off the branch. The tree I was standing on was completely frozen by its breath, and it shattered. I would have died if I had gotten hit directly.
I landed dozens of meters down and ran towards the village without once looking back. Only idiots would deal with that from the front. I was not as foolish as my brothers.
"Caaoooo-!"
The frost dragon began to shoot blocks of ice at me. I admired this extremely primitive and ancient magic. As expected, dragons were different. I couldn’t believe it’s using magic like nothing even in this horrible environment of Olympus.
"Aigoo!"
I threw myself to the side and avoided the blocks of ice. Then, I kept running.
- Can you win by just running away like that?
I heard my father's voice from somewhere. I wanted to get angry at him and yell — would it be possible to beat such a monster, but the priority was to run away because the tail of the frost dragon was falling over my head.
"Hap!"
I pulled out my mithril sword, threw out a sword aura to hit away from the dragon's tail, and immediately escaped with all my might. My sword only made a small scratch on the dragon's tail and delayed the fall. Only a few breaths later, it landed where I was standing just then, creating a huge hole. "Uwack! Tweh tweh tweh!"
I spat out the dirt that flew into my mouth. But since it seemed we're almost there, shall I start hunting for dragons?
I took out Dragon Grass from my pocket and hung it on an arrow. Then, I crushed it to release its fragrance, placed the arrow on the crossbow, and shot it towards a cliff.
The small arrow flew fast and far, as expected since it was a bowstring made of dragon tendons.
"Kyarururu~!"
The frost dragon sniffed, turned to the direction of the arrow, and began to head toward the cliff.
Dragon Grass was like Silver Vine for dragons.[1] Normally, it contained a lot of mana, so it was often used as a magic reagent, and sometimes warriors used it to tempt dragons during hunting.
I wanted to run away like this, but even if I managed to, I would be caught again by my father and thrown in front of the dragon. I had to at least seriously injure it during this opportunity. I took advantage of the dragon’s distracted gaze and moved to its blind spot.
When the frost dragon approached its head towards the arrow-embedded cliff, I shot another arrow and cut off the vine entangled on the cliff.
Crash-!
When the vine was cut off, the trap I had prepared on the cliff was activated, and huge rocks began to fall. Distracted by the Dragon Grass, the frost dragon was hit by rocks as it reacted late.
"Caooooo-!!"
The frost dragon suddenly got hit by the rock and cried out in anger as if it was in a lot of pain. If it died so easily, my brothers wouldn’t have been beaten so.
It was as expected. I then fired an arrow towards the forest to cut off the vine. Then a large spear followed from inside the forest. The boulders hit the dragon on its head. I don’t know if it had noticed the spear, but it didn’t avoid it; may be thinking that a toothpick-like spear would have no effect.
Boom-!
As soon as the spear touched the frost dragon, it caused a huge explosion. I had cast magic on the spear so that when I cut off the vine, the mana stone attached to the end of the spear would supply mana.
"Caaooooo-!!"
The frost dragon bled and suffered from the unexpected explosion. However, the magic on the spear was not explosion magic.
To begin with, Olympus was a magician’s hell and even if I did cast explosion magic on the spear, it was bound to fail. So I cast 25 extremely simple magics, such as fire magic at the level of a small torch and wind magic at the level of a breeze.
That huge explosion was the result of small magic bursting due to the environment of the Olympus Forest and caused an amplifying effect. If it was a magician's hell where magic could not be used as intended, all you had to do was use its environment. A magician could only be a magician when he knew how to use the environment.
"It’s my present! Take it!"
I cut off the vines by shooting arrows over and over again, and spears flew towards the dragon from all directions.
Boom! Boobooboom-! Boom! Pop! Boom!
In the middle, there were subtle firecracker-level, which were more of failures to be called explosions, but in general, huge explosions occurred.
"Ohh, nice! One more time!”
Before the frost dragon came to its senses, I loaded an arrow in the crossbow and fired it to cut a vine.
Boom! Pop! Pop! Boom! Ba-ba-bang! Pop!
It cried, but the cry was buried in the sound of the explosion and could not be heard. It was bleeding all over its body and looked hurt.
"Grrrr!"
Staring with bloody eyes, it exuded Dragon Fear.
"Ugh!"
I couldn't move because my whole body had become stiff due to the Dragon Fear. The frost dragon looked at me before running towards me, mouth agape.
"Hap!"
I shouted and activated martial arts all over my body to relieve the paralysis and burst five smoke bombs at once.
Boo-boo-boom!
The frost dragon slowed down for a while when the acrid smoke suddenly rose, and I quickly jumped up and got on its head. In order to kill it, I had to aim for the reverse scale on its neck, but the location of the reverse scale was different for each dragon, so I had to find it first.
"Take my bombs!"
I pulled out safety pins from 5 tear gas bombs and threw them into its nose. There was an explosion-like sound from inside a cave and tear gas blasted out.
"Caaooooo-!!"
The dragon began to struggle with tears and a runny nose. In order not to fall off, I held two daggers in both hands and stuck them into its skin.
"Ughh, it's cold! I'm going to freeze to death!"
Perhaps because it was a frost dragon, it gave off cool air like the top of Mount Olympus in the middle of winter. I held two high-frequency flutes in my mouth and crawled towards its neck, stabbing the dagger.
"Ugh!"
I lost the dagger because of its ruckus but quickly took out a new one and stabbed it into its outer skin.
"I almost fell! Ootcha!”
It was unfair I had to suffer like this. However, I had to find the reverse scale first. I put in all my efforts to crawl towards its neck, but my hands froze due to its cold and erratic movement and kept losing hold of my daggers.
As I neared its neck, it succeeded in getting rid of the tear gas from its nose and its movement slowed down. I blew on the high-frequency flutes that I was biting with all my might.
“-!!”
I couldn't hear anything, but the frost dragon flinched and stiffened. I kept blowing vigorously and hung from its neck to find the reverse scale.
Where is it?! The damn dragon's vital point! There it is!
After finding the reverse scale, I marked the spot near the reverse scale by stabbing the dagger. Unfortunately, with my power now, it was too much to pierce through while I was hanging like this.
As soon as I marked the spot, the frost dragon shook me off its neck.
"Uaaahhh-!"
As I fell, I threw the five flash grenades that I had. Then, I hung a rope from a small arrow, shot it into a cliff, and propelled myself to the field using the rope.
Bang! Ba-ba-bang!
"Kieeeecck-!”!
A flash of light exploded near my head, and I quickly covered my eyes with my arm. The amount of light was so overwhelming that I couldn't block it with just my eyelids, so there was a risk of blindness.
The frost dragon screamed and because I had my eyes closed, I couldn’t land properly and ended up rolling in the field.
"Gasp! Gasp!"
This is so damn hard. Because I had been clinging on top of the frost dragon's body, I was aching and had frostbites all over. I didn't want to deal with things like dragons again.
Based on the sound, the frost dragon was screaming in pain and making a fuss. Based on my gut feeling, I counted down the duration of the flash grenade inwardly.
… Five, four, three, two, one!
When I moved my arm and opened my eyes, I could see the dragon swinging its neck around and screaming, its eyes hurting. It had very likely lost its eyesight just now. Because of that, it became more ferocious. But if it couldn’t see me, I could win.
I ran towards its tail and butt to beat it up definitively. Then, I released the safety pin of my special bomb and threw all of my bombs under its tail.
Boo-boo-boo-boo-boom-!
“Kaaayykk-!!”
The frost dragon couldn't even scream properly due to the tremendous pain and instead trembled. Just as there wasn’t only one vital point in humans, there was also more than one for dragons.
If the reverse scale was a human’s solar plexus, the vital point I bombed with my special bomb was the same for the dragon as in a human.
Yes, the genitals of lizards were fatal vital points protected between the tail and buttocks. In other words, my special bomb hit a bad spot and exploded.
"Ahahaha! Call me Shanghai Den, you damn lizard!"
"Grrrrr....!”
The low cry of pain from the frost dragon seemed to ask if it had become a eunuch. I pulled out a magic wand and drew in mana.
"There’s only one trajectory. The ends of the seven spear fix the future."
This was an incantation I had developed especially for today. I had read hundreds of books just to make this magic.
"What occurs is a single result. One death that encompasses dozens of possibilities."
Do you know how hard it was to convert a myth-class curse into a great magic capable of being used by a madosa?! Damn lizard!
"Grrr... Caaaooooo!!"
Oh, I'm doomed.
In the meantime, the frost dragon growled at me, having recovered somewhat.
Damn it, it's too close!
It swung its tail towards me.
"Ugh!"
I couldn't move because I was attempting a great magic, so I flew away after being hit by the tail. Still, perhaps because of its misfortune and pain, fortunately, the strength in the tail was weaker than expected. In addition, it didn’t hit me fully because it hadn’t fully recovered its vision.
"Cough! Uwack!"
However, the impact was not small, so my leg seemed to have broken. In addition, my mana refluxed and I vomited blood in a field where white flowers were in full bloom.
Ugh, I'm dying.
"Caaaoooo!!"
The frost dragon looked at me with trembling eyes. That’s trouble.
"The spear of thorns are cursed!"
It spread open its mouth and quickly stretched its neck out towards me.
Ah, I'm too late.
Perhaps because it was a magic that I had never used properly or because I was impatient, the magic did not go as well as I had anticipated.
A little bit, just a little bit more time!
Right then, a strong gust of wind blew and countless white petals bloomed in the field and flew up to veil its vision. The petals stuck to its eyes and slowed it down.
"Go! Gae Bolg!"
A red flash emanated from my magic wand, penetrating its reverse scale along the target I had marked with the dagger.
"Caaoooo-!!"
It fell to the ground while letting out its last dying roar. I dropped the magic wand in my trembling hands and plonked on the ground.
"Hahaha. I survived.”
I really thought I was going to die. I was lucky. I would have died if that strange gust of wind that blew the petals hadn’t bought me time.
Of course, my father would have been watching somewhere and saved me somehow, but I couldn't help but break out in cold sweat.
I heard a presence from behind and looked back. My father was standing behind me.
"Father..."
It was strange. My father would have praised me for taking down the dragon somehow, but he was just staring blankly at the sky.
The sky was full of white windflower petals scattered with the wind. They drizzled from the sky over me and my father. As if dancing, a windflower gently fell on my head.
As if it were telling me I did a great job.
1. A plant known to elicit a euphoric response in cats - Wikipedia. ?