Thinking back on it now, my relationship with Ratatosk was the worst from the very first meeting.
Back when I had yet to fully take on the form of a dragon, when my wings and legs were still short, do you know what she said the first time I met her?
‘What the hell. I came down because I was curious what might be on the ground, and all I find is a pig lizard that can’t even walk properly?’
My joy at finally meeting an intelligent being I could converse with lasted only a moment; faced with that torrent of abuse out of nowhere, my mind went more or less blank, and I couldn’t even give a proper reply.
Ratatosk spent a good while making fun of me, then, just as she had appeared, she zipped away along the roots, and our first meeting ended in the worst way possible.
After that, whenever she had the chance, she would come down to where I was, tease me, or say whatever she wanted and run off. It was impossible to feel any affection for Ratatosk.
Putting that brief recollection of the past behind me, I looked ahead. Ratatosk’s face was twisted with anger, but her outward appearance was nothing but cute.
O God, why did you grant such a cute appearance to a rodent with such a rotten personality?
If you were going to give her anything, you should have given her the looks of a sewer rat.
Since reincarnating as a dragon, I had seen more than enough beings who were disgustingly human while claiming to be gods, so I did not believe in God, but I still lamented inwardly.
“What? What’s with that creepy look?”
“It’s nothing.”
“It’s not nothing. Pig lizard, you were imagining something creepy again, weren’t you?”
“Do you have proof that I was?”
“Hmph, shameless as ever. You sinister pig lizard.”
Needlessly sharp, aren’t you.
Clicking my tongue inwardly at Ratatosk, who was watching me with a gaze that had not shed its suspicion, I changed the subject.
“More importantly, what brings you down today? More sowing discord? Or are you lonely because you have no friends?”
“Hey! I have lots of friends, you know!”
“Pfft!”
“D-did you laugh? Did you just laugh at me?”
“Ahem. Ah, Ratatosk. That was the funniest thing I’ve heard recently.”
Her, with that personality, having lots of friends.
As if.
Unable to hold back, I chuckled for quite a while. Ratatosk’s face flushed bright red, and from somewhere inside the fur on her chest she pulled out a round acorn and hurled it at me.
It seemed she had thrown it with all her might, but my scales were far too hard for me to be hurt by an attack of that level.
“It only tickles, so stop throwing them.”
“Eek! You uselessly tough pig lizard! Just you wait! I’m going to tell the eagle lady at the top everything!”
“Ah, that’s a little…”
The one I mentioned earlier, the target Ratatosk kept trying to turn against me.
If I resided at the lowest level of this enormous tree, then she was the opposite: a lofty being who had built her nest at the very top of Yggdrasil.
When I first saw her, I wondered what kind of eagle could be that huge. On top of that, she was strong enough to fight me, a dragon, head-on in physical combat, so much so that I had even felt my life was in danger.
If Ratatosk seriously stirred things up and made us fight, I would have to put my life on the line too.
So I stopped laughing at Ratatosk and spoke awkwardly.
“Don’t go tattling to the old lady.”
“Hm… Did you just say ‘old lady’?”
“Oh, fuck.”
“I understand very well now what the pig lizard thinks of Eagle Sister. I’ll go tell her properly!”
The moment she finished speaking, before I had any chance to answer, Ratatosk shot up the roots in an instant. I lifted a leg and covered my face.
During our last fight, I had lost my temper and called her an old lady, and the phrase had stuck in my mouth, causing me to slip up.
It seemed that before long, a storm different from the blizzards would be descending upon this place.
***
Time flows without mercy.
A considerable amount of time had already passed since I teased Ratatosk and ended up filming a full-blown monster battle with the old eagle lady.
I have no idea what Ratatosk said to stir her up, but the old eagle lady came all the way down to the lowest level of Yggdrasil, furious to the ends of her feathers, and our fight lasted more than a week. My entire body was left in tatters, and I had to devote myself to recuperating for quite some time.
Honestly, that old lady only has brute strength going for her.
If you’ve lived that long, shouldn’t you have nothing to say even if I called you a granny instead of an old lady?
Dragging my battered body near the roots, I lay there repeating sleep, meal, sleep, meal while recovering. During that time, Ratatosk also came by several times and laughed at the state I was in.
I had no strength to reply, and if I said a few wrong words, she might bring the old eagle lady down again, so I gave no answer at all and focused only on recovery.
Time passed like that, and now all my wounds had healed, leaving not even scars.
Perhaps because I had become a dragon, it was nice that ordinary wounds did not even leave scars.
I moved my fully recovered body this way and that, checking my condition.
“Nothing wrong.”
After confirming there was nothing wrong with my body, I was tearing into Yggdrasil’s roots and wondering how to take revenge on Ratatosk, who had put me in this state, when—
Sniff, sniff—
For some reason, the taste of Yggdrasil’s roots was strange today.
It was not that they tasted bad.
It was just that, rather than fresh fruit, they tasted like roasted fruit cooked evenly, somehow?
At the taste of the roots, which carried a strange warmth that should never be found in the lowest level of Yggdrasil, I raised my head and looked at the enormous root stem leading to the trunk.
“No, what the fuck is that?”
I was so shocked that the curse slipped out without me realizing it.
Because black smoke was rising from the root leading to the trunk of Yggdrasil that I had looked up at.
What the hell happened?
To see with my own two eyes what had happened, I hurriedly spread my wings and prepared to soar into the sky.
And just before I took off—
Piercing through the snowy mist, someone approached together with countless dead.
Seated atop something resembling a palanquin drawn by the dead, she had the appearance of a beautiful woman.
However, unlike her ordinarily beautiful upper body, her lower body was dyed a dark bluish color similar to my scales, which told me that she was no ordinary being.
I thought the voice sounded familiar; so it was an acquaintance.
“May I have a moment?”
“Hel? What brings you all the way here?”
The lowest level of Yggdrasil.
The rightful ruler of Niflheim, the hell of the dead where snow and fog raged, and one of my few conversation partners: Hel.
At her appearance, I stopped trying to fly for a moment.
“You intend to head upward, do you not?”
“Of course. Look at those roots. It seems something serious has happened above.”
“Then could you take these ones with you?”
Hel said, indicating the dead she had brought with her.
Since it was a request from someone I was friendly with, I wanted to grant it if at all possible, but…
“Carrying the dead on my back is a bit…”
“You do not need to carry them. Like this.”
A mysterious pattern was drawn in the air according to the gesture of her hand.
I had once seen the arrogant old man who lived above use something like it in the past.
They were called runes, if I remembered correctly.
Light shone from the runic characters she had drawn, and a giant ship made of pale ice appeared. The dead boarded the ship one after another.
“Please take this ship and drop it into another world on your way upward.”
I wondered what sort of request this neighbor, who rarely asked for favors, would make, but it was not a difficult one.
Yggdrasil, the wedge and tree that supported the worlds.
Among the nine worlds Yggdrasil held entwined, the place where we were now was Niflheim, the lowest level.
Since I would be climbing the roots anyway, I would end up passing by other worlds, and moving one ship along the way was not particularly difficult.
“Hmm… It is not especially difficult. Is anywhere fine as long as it is another world?”
“Yes. That will be enough.”
“Then I shall do so.”
I could just drop them off in Midgard.
“Thank you. This is hardly enough to call a reward, but…”
She took a fist-sized orb from within her robes and handed it to me.
Inside that orb, the power of Niflheim, where I had lived my entire life, was swirling.
An essence formed from a portion of a world.
Most objects could not even affect me, but that might be able to increase my power.
For me, it was something like wild ginseng.
“Oh come now, you didn’t have to.”
“No. Since you are granting my request, I must properly repay you as well.”
“Is that so? Then I shall receive it gratefully.”
I accepted the orb she handed me and put it into my mouth.
The essence of Niflheim had a strangely mint-candy-like taste.
Enjoying a new flavor for the first time in a while, I rolled it around in my mouth for a bit, then swallowed it. As expected, my power increased a little.
Having gathered my strength, I prepared to fly.
When I flapped my enormous wings, the wind drove away the surrounding snow, ice, and fog. I lightly lifted my body into the air, then seized and lifted the ship carrying the dead.
For a ship with countless dead on board, it was not especially heavy.
“Then I shall be off.”
“Yes. I hope we may meet again next time.”
“??”
I expressed my confusion at her incomprehensible words, but Hel simply waved her hand and saw me off.
As the black smoke grew thicker and thicker, I thought I would ask her what she had meant when we next met, and rose upward.
And as soon as I pierced through the smoke and arrived in another world, at the sight of the world burning, I unconsciously dropped the ship full of dead that I had been holding in my feet.
W-what in the world is going on?
Whoosh! Fwoooosh—!!
A fire giant, larger than a great mountain and burning all over, raised a sword befitting its size and swung it toward the world.
The fierce flames that began from the fire giant were burning Yggdrasil, the enormous tree whose end could not be seen, and the nine worlds hanging from it.
The heat scorched my skin just by approaching, so I retreated to somewhere moderately warm, opened my mouth wide, and watched as the worlds and the tree burned.
“Wow… So that thing can burn too.”
Seeing the world come to an end, even the solemn tone I normally tried to maintain would not come out.
Not to brag, but the roots of that tree were my staple food, and when I occasionally lost my temper, I had used it as a punching bag or to grind my teeth, so I knew: as befit a tree that supported the worlds, it was not ordinarily sturdy.
It was a tree tough enough to endure even my poison.
And yet that tree was burning without even being able to resist.
Soon, unable to withstand the burning flames, one world fell from the tree and collapsed.
Watching blankly as the worlds were destroyed one by one, I muttered.
“The world’s fucking doomed.”
What do I do now?