Chapter 64: Drau!

Middle Fire Month, 22nd Day, 600AGG

'Unnerving,' orichalcum claws tapered to a deadly zenith cleared away brush, glinting as drops of sunlight trickled past the thick forest canopy. 'A full day with no Mac'tal sighted?'

They were all undoubtedly ensnared in a sinister trap. Knowing didn't mean any of them could prevent it; where else could they go but westwards?

"It's not looking good, huh?" Dhartha caught up to him, finally having dismounted the slave. "Some nasty surprise shoved in their fur—or shells, I guess."

"Could be worse."

"How?"

"They could've hit us while we were mucking about in Ur'draga," if that had happened, there was no chance any of them would have made it out alive.

"That would have been worse…" The gnoll agreed, frowning in contemplation.

"Could be even less worse if you outfitted me in some adamantite."

"I didn't have an order for a gauntlet placed," Dhartha shockingly provided a straightforward reply. "And you know I couldn't snub the Kshatra's. Not there."

'He's not wrong,' with how tense the meeting had been, prioritizing a lower status beastman like him would have certainly incited an ill-afforded scuffle. "Fair."

"You usually complain more," his gnoll frie—employer's stare narrowed.

They weren't wrong. His nerves were just too tense for complaining. 'Who wouldn't be nervous?'

"『Heads up.』" Ghrik'sa interrupted their short conversation, skill-empowered words washing over the group. "『They're coming at us head-on.』"

'Not worth an ambush?' Jirs self-derisively scoffed. "It'll be safer if you go with the rest of the civilians."

"Eh? Being with the warriors is definitely better!"

"Suit yourself," when was being in the frontlines ever safer? Dhartha was no idiot, despite how often they acted the part, so were they sticking by him in a show of solidarity? 'Pft, he'd be the kind of person to do that.'

"『Swordstalkers up ahead! Rangers, you know the drill!』" The tigerman's adamantite axe split a Mac'tal with its sheer weight alone. "『Rearguards circle to the sides and take the civilians!』"

"Last chance, boss," Jirs calmed his nerves. Do or die, for here in this small woodland patch would their future be decided.

"We've been on our last chance for a while, you know?"

'True enough.'

And then chaos.

Swordstalkers swarmed from their hidden places, overwhelming the senior warriors in the fore were it not for Dhartha's gifts. Bolts of fire, frost, and fulmination were fired into the mass of demihumans, herding them with the acumen of a shepherd to his flock.

'They'll outlast us. With fewer than a hundred trained fighters, we'd need a living legend to survive,' all that he saw was adding to a progressively grimmer picture. 'But those legends all died in Kruurat apparently.'

Furthermore, these Mac'tal were vastly stronger than the pair that had ambushed him and Dhartha on their way to Ur'draga. Their shells were harder, appendages sharper; every aspect felt elevated for the sole purpose of slaughter.

Locating the cause was a simple matter: surrounded by a unit of lessers stood the foul creature bestowing its boons on the tide of vermin.

Arachnoid lower body joined to a humanoid upper with a few too many arms—though the head resembled a gut-churning mashup of spider and beastman. The closest thing the Mac'tal had to clerics: 'Sanctifier of Forms. As if we weren't already struggling.'

From what Dhartha had told him in the past, low-powered psychometabolistic buffs normally could not be applied on beings who weren't the caster. From what he was seeing in the present, it seemed nobody had bothered informing the spiders that what they were doing was supposed to be impossible.

"『I want that damn Sanctifier dead!』" Ghrik'sa's command pierced the chaotic din of battle. "『And keep those Weblords off our hides!』"

'Pounce.'

Jirs blurred into motion, claws unsheathed and reaching for the abdomen of the insectile aberration. His action didn't go unnoticed—the Sanctifier turned into a partially transparent mass—but that was unimportant.

'Ability Boost,Piercing Claw,Greater Power Claw.'

Enchanted metal tore through the Swordstalkers attempting to defend their enhancer, spilling their filthy guts over the forest floor, and ripped apart the incorporeal Sanctifier in a single blow.

'Next one,' Jirs spun in place, ten deadly points parting insectile flesh with a contemptuous disregard for their carapaces. 'Weblords are being conservative with their mana; there's not going to be a better opportunity than this.'

The cougarman threaded a path in the thicket of trees, Swordstalkers and Weblords alike dying in his trail. In a pitched battle such as this, he couldn't afford to linger on any single opponent for too long. Already, his stamina was beginning to wane: each Mac'tal requiring at least a single Martial Art focus to kill in one hit.

A few Kshatra's had fallen around him. With how many they started off with… their best hope was that the spiders hadn't bolstered the encirclement to the degree where it couldn't be broken past anymore.

'Clan Ur should be sending reinforcements from Ur'lathla,' he gritted his teeth as two『Energy Missiles』narrowly missed and scorched the civilians behind him. 'Everybody's scattering.'

Even bolstered by Ghrik'sa's orders, they could not muster the same lifelong discipline warriors trained. Therefore, it wasn't any surprise that noncombatants would begin breaking ranks and trying to make a run for it.

'Gods above and below, how many of them are there?' Stupid question: insect heteromorphs always breeded at an alarming pace—

Towering trees fell with a thundering crash, blocking off Ghrik'sa and the other Kshatras closer to the front. Three spindly limbs swished between them, dismantling the beastmen with mechanical precision.

The cuts were too perfect. Too clean.

Jirs shivered, tail tucking itself between his legs.

Eight purple, almost black, orbs focused on the demihumans that scrambled beneath it. Eight legs of similar color delicately weaved between trees and shrubbery. Eight razor-sharp feelers that may as well be fangs eerily moved around like puppeted limbs.

If Jirs had never heard the tales warning of this heteromorph before, he would've been surprised at how quietly something so large and brutal could maneuver through the forest's tangle.

Before its jaws and blades, armies broke.

In its wake, settlements lay silent.

"Bladereaver."

Here was a foe he—no, an entire army—of beastmen would be hard-pressed to defeat. There existed no weak spots to exploit in its joints and underbelly. There was no armor that could perfectly defend against its strikes. No strategies save for overwhelming violence.

'In our current circumstances, that is,' Jirs morbidly grinned. If only they were closer to Ur'lathla, if only there was a fortress they could rally around—

"Hey," the sound of fighting felt so far away as Dhartha slowly dragged his gaze from the Bladereaver towards him. "You gotta be kidding, right?"

"Run."

"Hell yeah I'm running—oi, what about you?!"

"Get my siblings out of Srlschr," he hardly believed the foolishness spouting out his mouth. "And give them however much you still owe me this season."

"Go get them yourself!" Dhartha snarled, fumbling as they caught the bag Jirs tossed at them. "Dumping your personal problems on me is highly unprofessional!"

"Breaking contract would be too, right?" Why was he doing this? There existed a slim probability of survival if he made a mad dash for it by himself.

"Fuck the contract!"

He ignored Dhartha and addressed the Ga'mal. "Slave, take him away from here. As far away as you can run."

"We're not going anywhere!" The gnoll pounded on the Ga'mal's hump. "Yassin, this is a command: let me down!"

"Apologies, Master," and the slave really did seem apologetic for refusing to remain in this forest of certain demise. "I'm afraid we must leave."

"You—!" Yassin rushed Dhartha into the viridian depths, following behind the other civilians who had already fled the scene.

"Safe travels," Jirs murmured, forlornly staring at their backs. "Friend."

"We can't kill that damn thing," a neighboring Kshatra released a hollow laugh. Strange how they talked normally to a Sudapra once death was imminent. "What a way to go out, eh?"

"Don't give up so easily," he yanked the tigerman's scruff, preventing them from being skewered by a squad of Swordstalkers. "Make them suffer for it. The longer we stall, the more time everybody else has to escape."

"Tch," they raised their weapon to continue the gruesome toil. "I don't need you to explain it."

Jirs ignored the beastman, focusing on the horde bearing down upon them instead. Weblords were being conservative with their mana now that the Bladereaver was there to reap the diminishing ranks of the demihumans. Small blessings, he supposed.

"Broodfucker!" The Kshatra pulled a Mac'tal off his shoulders and hissed as blood stained their matted fur. "Spiders can't even land a fatal hit to end this shit—"

Jirs barely caught the Bladereaver's shank flicker. It split the tigerman in half with nary a sound and came for him next with all the preamble of Death itself. In that one fraction of a second, he frantically tried to twist his body out of its trajectory.

No luck; the blade followed the motion, and his eyes, the blade. Time seemed to slow and crawl to a halt, but he could no more move his form than he could a mountain.

Then the last option he had was to tank the attack. Somehow.

"『Greater Reinforce Hide』!"

The honed edge slammed against his reinforced fur, knocking him airborne and into a tree that snapped under the force of his limp body.

"Hrgk," Jirs coughed out a spurt of blood as a trembling paw checked his wounded abdomen. 'I-Intestines.' The casual, almost dismissive strike had almost ripped the entire length of his entrails out his torso in spite of the defensive Art.

He was going to die, cut down like Ghrik'sa and the rest of Clan Ur's warriors, but before then…

His body could still move, couldn't it?

Jirs struggled to his feet, batting aside a Swordstalker while advancing upon a Weblord. There was no way the Bladereaver would be wounded by any of his attacks, not in this state.

A numbing cold filled his rapidly emptying veins. Another Mac'tal fell to the ground in roughly torn chunks.

One more. One more. Where were they? His vision, once as sharp as an aarakocra's, was so blurry.

Ah.

'They all left,' after all, why waste precious mana on a walking corpse? 'This is it, huh?'

The Bladereaver's leg descended upon him like the claw of Dyurga herself.

'That's fine—'


"Food's becoming less of a problem!" Yuriko cheerfully pumped her fist. "Ehm, that is what you were trying to say, right?"

"At present, yes," Draudillon couldn't help but crack a small smile. Couldn't tear her eyes away from them either. "But planting in the way we are now isn't sustainable in the long-run."

"Because um, dirt health?" The angel leaned over, struggling to peek at the document she was holding—one that had nothing to do with the topic at hand. "I think I remember reading about it somewhere…"

"Your 'Net?' " The virtual structure Yuriko had spent incalculable amounts of time perusing still seemed wonderfully fantastical to her: a plane of existence facilitating nigh-instantaneous access to the entirety of Human wisdom. With that mentioned, it was odd how her beloved wasn't more… sage-like despite having an advantage no scholar wouldn't trade their soul for.

"Well, I sure didn't learn about it in school," they cupped their chin. "Would've been cool if I remembered more stuff I read."

"It can't be helped; at least you still have the chance to make up for it now."

"Mm…" Yuriko kicked their feet back and forth, body swaying to and fro. "Na, nevermind. Making excuses won't change anything."

"Excuses for?"

"Like, the company I worked for was pretty good compared to some other places, y'know? I had enough time to learn useful stuff, but I didn't. Moment I got back home, I'd eat some nutripaste before hopping onto my dive setup and conking out 'til it was time for bed."

'Finishing work only to sit and dream in a chair—everyday with next to no exceptions,' Draudillon struggled to prevent the corners of her mouth from turning downwards. 'Doesn't that paint a horribly dismal image?'

With how they described the state of their old world, could she sincerely say it wasn't sympathizable?

A world whereon tens upon hundreds of millions could reach each other with a thought yet were still so very lonely. A world choked by its own progress.

A world Yuriko used to live in. Twenty-five years. It should have been surprising that they could, could shine in the way they did after growing up in that environment, but it wasn't.

She supposed—the angel made it difficult to envision them as anyone else.

"Your time here must feel quite jarring then," a hint of pained melancholy leaked into the undertone of her voice. "I'll ask again: are you certain you're content with your current state of affairs?"

"I like it," Yuriko firmly answered. "Doing things that matter. Being able to learn and make a difference for other people. I'm fine doing what I've been doing."

The angel looked down, chewing on their inner cheek, and back up with a glower. "Actually, I should be asking if you're okay."

"I assure you that I'm more than satisfied with my life," her chest ached with fondness for the woman beside them. "I'm heartened to hear you feel the same."

"Yeah, well, it's thanks to you," Yuriko bashfully mumbled and scooted closer to her. "A-Anyways! The farming things you were talking about!"

"Yes, I—as I was saying, the land can only sustain continuous growing seasons for so long before it needs to rest," Draudillon became excruciatingly aware of how little space was separating them. "Because of that, I was considering hiring druids to maintain a healthy output and eventually reduce the number of farmers needed to feed the kingdom."

"But wouldn't paying for so many druids be hard right now, Drau?"

'Huh?'

" 'Drau?' " The dragon queen could already feel the skin of her face growing flush with heat. A nickname? This was, she never had anyone address her so casually; not even Martin dared to be so familiar.

Yuriko seemed to have noticed their lapse as well, the angel's expression rapidly becoming a reflection of Draudillon's. "A-Ah, is it too rude? I'm sorry, I won't do—"

"It's fine," her voice had an unusually husky timbre to it. No, no, Yuriko asked a question. She needed to answer that instead of spacing out because her heart was pounding so loudly. "If it's you, I don't mind."

'Drau. It sounds so… affectionate. We really are that close, aren't we? I want to hear her say it more—'

Draudillon cleared her throat. "And to answer your question, we're only hiring a few to figure out how to best employ them: the most useful spells, skills, other relevant knowledge… all of that before attempting to implement druids on a larger scale."

The potential of nature-focused divine casters to improve the productivity of a region was invaluable. Where the nutrient depletion caused by planting crops may have once forced farmers to allow for fallow cycles, druids could enable a year-long growing period in spite of soil status and weather.

Unfortunately, the occupation wasn't a common one in most human cities. Urban environments weren't conducive to teaching the druidic arts for obvious reasons—though maybe she could one day develop some class of urban druid?—which made them all the harder to find. 'Though a fair number of them do end up becoming workers or adventurers.'

Either way, she had a few options: import beastman druids, hire through a foreign branch of the Adventurer's Guild or take in lesser-known locals, and train her own standardized circle run directly by the Crown. This wasn't a task she had to rush—making careless mistakes would be a waste.

"Sounds tough," Yuriko scrunched their brows together. "I didn't know there was something like a Druid's Guild though…"

"That's because there isn't. Not here at least. The few of them affiliated with adventurers moved elsewhere for the most part."

In the end, it seemed adherence to the 'natural order' was secondary to one's life. Her lips twitched in annoyance; troves of knowledge and strength hoarded by mercenaries who could've cooperated with the greater community for the benefit of all.

"And it's hard to hire those guys because they're from a foreign branch?"

"Precisely. Add on the fact that I've been poaching their contractors in the Draconic Kingdom, and you can see why they might not be too receptive to my requests," Draudillon absentmindedly rubbed small circles on the back of Yuriko's hand. "But that's the gist of it. Now," she waved the document in her other hand. "Please read this later when you have the time. In the meanwhile, I'll be reviewing the list General Ergast delivered this morning."

The angel hummed in agreement, and the pair fell into a tranquil silence as each perused their respective reading materials.

'Identification tags for her summons,' She found her mind drifting towards the contents of the form held between Yuriko's fingers. 'Priestess Varenne and their colleagues brought it to my attention during today's Court session, and they were working with Yuriko the past two days… meaning the effectiveness of summons is hitting a bottleneck without proper organization.'

"Okay!" Draudillon nearly dropped the general's list, startled as she was by the angel's sudden declaration. "I'll go see the blacksmiths now!"

"See you tonight then—"

Hadn't she promised herself to talk about Crystal Tear with them just the other day? For a second, a part of her faltered and wondered if it was fine to let her beloved find out for themselves. The same portion of existence marking her equally nauseous and nauseated.

'You've shared so much more with her already. And do you honestly think it would be preferable for someone else to eventually enlighten her?'

She shouldn't put it off any longer—but the urgency didn't make the prospect any more appealing. It never did.

"There's… one more thing I've been hiding from you," in the privacy of her chambers, the dragon queen bowed her head, hand tightly gripping the skirt of the angel's dress. "Do you happen to remember the name Crystal Tear?"

"Crystal Tear? They were the team at Almersia, right?" Yuriko frowned as they dredged up memories of the reclamation. "Two girls, two guys? One was a wizard, and uh, a paladin?"

Draudillon nodded, dreading what was to come next with every fiber of her being. "Amrel, Alvarin, Casilda, and—Cerabrate, their leader. Heroes who've proven their worth and have attained the highest possible rank in the Adventurer's Guild."

"They were kinda careless though…"

"Adventurers tend to be less than conscious of anything not immediately concerning them," she snorted, sounding more assured than she actually was. "To keep it short: on our journey to Kruurat, when I told you that I took on the form of a child for the kingdom's sake, a significant motivator for that decision was Cerabrate—"

"What do you mean?"

There was no going back now.

'She's not going to hate you,' reason and logic felt so weak in her mind. Her composure, her discipline—all of it was pierced by a gaze fit to burn a hole into the sun itself. 'She won't. She even apologized for calling me what I am'

"He has," she struggled to meet the pair of golden eyes. "A certain preference. The kind relating to age."

"…"

"As you might imagine, acting and appearing in such a manner made him more receptive to my requests for aid. Affording the typical rates of an Adamantite ranked team was otherwise impossible with how the Crown's coffers were strained by our ongoing tributes to the Baharuth Empire and Slane Theocracy. Crystal Tear's help was necessary since those two nations weren't sending sufficient aid. How could they? To expect them to cover the entire eastern border would have been delusional."

Ah, she was rambling.

It would be better if she stopped talking. Shifted the conversation to another subject, a more palatable one. Hadn't she said enough already?

"In retrospect, it was rather manipulative of me, wasn't it? Enticing someone with a false appearance for the purpose of having them risk their lives for me… even if I found it distasteful, that doesn't justify—"

Slender limbs wrapped themselves around her with painstaking love, two hands holding her close with a gentleness she had come to associate with one person alone.

Draudillon couldn't breathe.

Not because of the embrace she found herself in, nor the words she had resolved to bring to light yet couldn't force out no matter how hard she tried.

It was pathetic. Really, what kind of ruler lost their composure so often and completely?

But even so, she was accepted in her entirety—yes, even a partner as deserving of condemnation as Draudillon Oriculus. There were no traces of rejection in Yuriko Hanami's touch, heartbeat, and voice:

"You don't have to do anything like that ever again. I promise."

'Things like fate and miracles are surely wasted on me.'

Then let the gods, the World, waste them on the fool that was the Dragon Queen.

"And you," she shifted the angel's head so that they were now face to face with each other. "Shouldn't overlook these flaws so easily."

"I, I—uh?!"

She closed the already non-existent distance between them and silenced Yuriko's flustered stuttering.

It tasted every bit as good as the first.