By the time the story was over, the sunset had already begun to sink low, so we decided to impose on Morwen’s house for the night.
That said, I wasn’t some robber, nor did I use the awe or fear Morwen felt toward me to force her.
In other words, I paid properly.
Since she didn’t seem to have much need for things like money, I paid by giving her a private, one-on-one lecture for just one night.
Who am I, after all? Am I not the top instructor of the magic world, who has raised many disciples and turned more than thirty of them into archmages?
Among them had been a few children less talented than Morwen, so there was no room to doubt my ability.
When Morwen first heard my proposal, her reaction was the sort where it was plain to see she thought refusing would be pointless anyway, so she might as well give a perfunctory yes.
But it took only a brief moment to reverse Morwen’s distrust and the faint resistance still lingering in her.
Because I summarized and solved, in just four lines, a complex formula she said she had agonized over for months.
“……And so, the equations derived from this part you mentioned become consistent.”
“I see……! Then, if this were applied to a circuit like this one, with a nonlinear transmission coefficient…….”
The problem was that Morwen’s scholarly passion, once ignited, was far greater than I had expected.
And after successfully defending against an endless barrage of questions deep into the night, I was only barely able to go to bed when half the night had already passed.
This body already had no choice but to sleep a lot as it was…….
At times like this, I couldn’t help but envy Cassian, who had simply lain down on the floor and fallen asleep.
◇
Morning dawned.
Perhaps because I had slept less than half my usual amount, my head felt a little dizzy, but after shaking it lightly a few times, I managed to drive it away somehow.
I had intended to make do with my usual breakfast of salted jerky and hardtack, but Morwen brought out several loaves of bread, so I gratefully accepted and ate them.
“I feel a little bad. It feels like I’m taking away the food you need to get through winter.”
“No, it’s all right. If anything, what I received was far more valuable.”
As I tore off a piece of bread with my teeth and turned my gaze toward one corner of the house, I saw the desk where I had taught Morwen yesterday.
Perhaps curious about what was written there, Cassian peeked at it, but he only furrowed his brow and whipped his head away.
Unfortunately for him, I planned to teach him all of that within the next five years.
“By the way, I was a little surprised. I had only ever heard that great beings usually have little interest in those beneath them.”
At those words, I thought of the faces of a few Transcendents I had been friendly with.
There was the one who, though he was no longer like that now, had barged straight into a war in search of glory and destroyed both countries; the strange one who claimed he wanted to know everything and hid in the shadows to peep at people one by one.
There was the lizard that had been swimming through the sky for thousands of years, burning enormous amounts of mana all day long to feel the heavens; and even the one who simply hated light, made darkness, and shut himself inside it.
I tried to think of more, but, as if realizing it anew, I couldn’t think of a single normal one. Though I suppose Transcendents were bound to be that kind of creature.
Compared to them, I was definitely the most normal.
“……Mm, it’s not exactly like that. Though they have been somewhat quiet these days. Still, in most cases, I recommend running away the moment you see one.”
“Is that so?”
“There are more of them who aren’t particularly well-disposed toward mortals.”
After finishing the bread, I brushed the crumbs from my hands out the window and continued.
“Well, you’ll probably grow old and be buried in the ground before you ever meet any of the others.”
“That is true as well.”
Morwen replied to my last words with a faint smile.
Meanwhile, while Morwen and I were talking, Cassian had finished preparing everything needed to climb the hill on his own.
A bit of emergency food in case the investigation took a long time, gloves, a small spare backpack, and various other things.
Despite it being winter, we dressed lightly. The cold would only last until we reached the hill, and since it would get hotter the higher we climbed, there was no reason to wear our coats and end up burning through outerwear we had only bought a month or two ago.
Morwen took the lead on the path up to the top of the hill.
I had told her there was no need to follow us, but she volunteered to guide us, saying she wanted to see me use my power.
In any case, we still had to go up and find the egg in question, and having someone who knew where it was would make things end faster, so it was good for me.
As we climbed the hill little by little, I could feel the heat growing stronger and stronger.
Near the base of the hill, wearing short sleeves would have left you feeling a slight chill, but once we passed the midpoint, it became worse than crossing a desert in midsummer.
Now that we were close to the summit, sweat that dripped down evaporated the moment it touched the ground.
“Master, it’s starting to get seriously hot…….”
At Cassian’s dying voice, I turned around and saw him groaning while sweating profusely from his entire body. He was sweating so much that his face was drenched, making him look as if he had just washed it.
“Here.”
“No, it’s not water, that’s the problem!!”
“Just drink for now.”
Cassian was talking as if he might collapse at any moment, but he was still at a level where he could endure. It wasn’t as if his feet were being cooked, nor was he suffering full-body burns from the heat.
It was proof that he was unconsciously circulating mana to protect his body. It had been a good choice to run him ragged on a regular basis and cultivate his resistance to external influences.
That did not mean the pain he felt would disappear, but that much was none of my concern.
Ignoring Cassian as he cried that he was dying, we climbed the hill a little farther and finally reached the summit.
Like a crater, the terrain sloped downward toward the innermost part, but no matter how hard I looked, there was no green to be seen. Small trees, charred black, lay broken and scattered here and there.
But since it had been burned completely dry, and the ground was still burning in places, I couldn’t see where the egg Morwen had mentioned was.
“This way.”
Morwen carefully leapt over the shattered lumps of charcoal and headed inward. Looking closely, I could see faint traces of her having come and gone several times already, forming something like a path.
I slowly avoided the obstacles along with Morwen and followed behind her. Cassian, whose expression openly said he wanted to go back now, followed behind me as well.
After pushing past rocks and trees jutting up here and there and passing through a somewhat maze-like path for a short while,
Morwen stopped at a point still a little short of the center. The closer we got, the stronger the heat became, so it certainly seemed difficult for a human to endure long inside.
“You can see it, yes? It is that small, round, stone-like thing right there.”
I stepped up beside Morwen and stood facing the direction she pointed. Then I made a ring with the thumb and index finger of my right hand, brought it to my right eye, and slowly rotated it to adjust the magnification.
And at the center, a small egg resting as if half-embedded in the ground came clearly into view.
It had the same shape as the sketch in the book Morwen had shown me yesterday.
What could be called peculiar was that, despite supposedly being a dead egg, a faint image of a soul had formed inside it.
Yesterday, I had only heard fragments and could not be certain, but after seeing this, I finally understood why things had ended up this way.
I had thought that an abandoned egg had failed to hatch and died inside, simply burning the hill while emitting heat until its mana was consumed.
“That egg is still alive.”
Somehow, I had thought it was burning for far too long to be merely an abandoned egg.
“Pardon? That cannot be. No matter how long it takes for a dragon’s egg to hatch, nearly a century has passed…….”
“That’s not always how it works.”
Normally, for an egg to hatch, it has to grow sufficiently inside the shell. It grows using the nutrients contained within the egg, and when the time comes, it breaks through the shell and emerges.
But dragons are creatures that cannot live without mana. For dragons, to whom mana is even more important than blood, naturally, an enormous amount of mana is required for growth as well.
Under normal circumstances, it would receive the necessary mana from its mother and grow, and the time required for that would be roughly three years, or around ten years depending on the individual.
But compared to the land of dragons, where an ordinary person could die of mana poisoning just by breathing, this place’s mana concentration was practically a vacuum.
It was my first time seeing one endure for over eighty years, but in theory, it wasn’t impossible. It simply had not hatched because it had not yet fully matured.
“Then, are you saying that thing will remain like that until it hatches?”
“Well, if left alone, yes.”
I thought about how much a young dragon ate in a day, then concluded that it wouldn’t be a major burden.
Besides, raising a pet was good for emotional development.
I glanced at Cassian, then looked back at the egg and said,
“Since it’s come to this, I’ll take it with me.”
It might not be so bad to raise a dragon for the first time in a while.