So, though I had decided to take the dragon egg, I had no idea what effect it might have if I carelessly cast something like telekinetic magic on it, so I had to bring it back myself.
But if Morwen and Cassian went any farther, they would literally be steamed to death before they could return.
I lightly flicked my finger and placed a barrier on Morwen and Cassian that blocked only the heat.
“Ha, now I feel alive. Would’ve been nice if you’d done this earlier.”
“Ah, truly astonishing. Such perfect and delicate manipulation of magic…”
Perhaps her experimental spirit had been roused, for Morwen touched a hot rock jutting up right beside her. When she found that she truly could not feel any heat at all, she reacted with wonder.
But it was not a magic that was simply wonderful in every way. Well, perhaps it was only wonderful for the people it had been cast on.
Because I was personally calculating and maintaining every single element that made up the magic right now.
At this level, I would only be a little tired for a day or two and that would be the end of it, but this was why I did not want to use complicated magic if I could help it.
It was likely a sensation the mages of this era, who used formulas to perform calculations simply, would never understand.
We descended the uneven slope and finally reached the center, where the heat we felt reached its peak. And in the middle of it, the dragon egg was half-buried in the ground, radiating heat.
Its shape was that of an egg, an oval with a slightly pointed end, and its size was roughly a little larger than a soccer ball. I had hardly ever touched one, and it was a very old memory, so I was not certain, but it was about that size.
By my standards, it seemed just right to lift with both hands and hold against my chest.
Careful not to break it, I brushed away the surrounding dirt and slowly lifted it. Just as it looked, it was quite heavy, about the same as holding two newborn babies.
“Amazing. I have seen a few dead specimens, but to think I would see a living dragon egg this close…”
“It is fascinating. At this level, its parents must be of quite a high rank.”
As I turned it this way and that to check the light of its soul, I felt it pulsing just as I had when I saw it from afar.
When I roughly looked through the inside, I saw that although it was still short of hatching, it had grown considerably. If I fed it mana properly from now on, it should hatch within the next few months.
“By the way, what do you intend to do with that?”
“If this had been a dead egg, I was thinking of cooking and eating it.”
“Huh, you can eat eggs laid by dragons too?”
“Of course. People make steak out of dragons, so why wouldn’t you be able to eat a dragon egg?”
I said that, but in truth, creatures like dragons that held an extremely high concentration of mana in their bodies could not exactly be called tasty from an ordinary person’s point of view.
First of all, if not cooked properly, they were so tough you could not even chew them, and it was not as if they tasted good either. They were basically an incomprehensible ingredient.
On top of that, if the mana was not sufficiently removed, an ordinary person could die of mana poisoning.
Conversely, for beings like me who could perceive mana as flavor, they were a delicacy one could never get enough of.
In other words, if I had cooked this, I would have been the only one eating it deliciously.
Well, I was not going to eat it.
“It feels a bit wrong to eat something properly alive as it is. I’m thinking of hatching it.”
“…Pardon?”
“I’m going to raise it.”
At those words, Morwen looked as if she wondered whether she had heard me wrong, while Cassian went even further and looked at me as if he thought he should have heard wrong.
Morwen’s expression soon returned to normal, but Cassian kept speaking in a voice full of disbelief.
“Master, you’re joking, right?”
“What, why are you so scared?”
“But it’s a dragon! Won’t we get eaten or something?”
“What a fuss. It’s fine when they’re young because they’re small.”
As dragons lived for an extremely long time, their growth was also very slow. They remained the size they were at birth for nearly five years, and though they gradually grew after that, their growth rate was never fast.
There were differences depending on the individual and the species, but not by much. All the more so since this egg seemed to belong to a higher species.
Considering that the one I raised before took about a hundred years to exceed my height while sitting, Cassian would probably die of old age before this one grew larger than him.
…Thinking of it for even a moment made that child’s final moments flash through my mind, and I felt slightly gloomy, but I shook it off right away.
“For about ten years, it should be as small as an ordinary baby.”
“…Even so.”
Cassian acted unconvinced to the very end, but in the end, he carefully put the egg into the spare bag he had brought as I instructed.
Of course, I also carefully wrapped the inside of the bag with a heatproof barrier. It would be a shame if it burned when I had not even had it for a year.
With the bag containing the dragon egg on my back, we left the hill, which no longer had any business for us, behind and descended.
Though the remaining heat still lingered and it was slowly burning, the object causing it was gone, so it would probably return to normal within a few months.
Even if it did not recover naturally, Morwen was, to my eyes, quite a capable mage, so she would be able to handle it properly.
Looking at the sky, it was not even noon yet. Since we had prepared and come up as soon as morning broke, it was only natural.
With so much time left, simply spending time in the village and moving again tomorrow felt like wasting too much time, so we decided to depart again just like this.
Just as we had gathered the luggage we had left at Morwen’s house and were about to leave the village, Morwen expressed her gratitude to me.
“O Great Being, I thank you on behalf of the residents of this village. And personally as well.”
“No need for that. I only did what I wanted to do.”
“No. I received teachings I had never received in my life, and I saw something precious I thought I would never have the chance to see. It is only right that I express my gratitude.”
Morwen repeatedly bowed her head and waist slightly, showing me respect.
…Mm.
It had been a long time since I had received such gratitude not from a child, but from an adult.
But as I always did, I did not reveal such emotions with my body and merely raised my hand slightly in response.
Morwen then opened her mouth to Cassian beside me as well.
“Child, the fortune you hold is not something easily obtained, so devote yourself to your studies.”
Then, with an attitude completely different from when she had shouted at Cassian the first time they met, she gently stroked his head.
At first, Cassian was startled and pulled his head back, but as soon as her hand touched him, he lowered his guard and accepted it.
The sight was the same as the expression that boy had made when he was much younger than now and I stroked his head.
“The teachings I received from that person amounted to only a single night, but for you, it is every day, is it not? If it is you, you will be able to become an archmage before long.”
“…Yes.”
The conversation ended briefly, and now it was time to go.
“Then, may your journey be peaceful…”
I lightly waved my hand at Morwen, who had bowed her head slightly, and once again set my feet toward the south.
◇
Another few days passed. There was no longer any snow piled on the road, but separate from that, the temperature was dropping lower and lower.
The sky was still clear, maintaining a cloudless blue, but this weather would not last much longer.
We had been traveling south all this time. But even so, how far could we have gone with a stride no different from that of a child?
Though we had come down to a region that was at least a little warmer, the speed at which the cold deepened as the year came to an end was far faster than the speed at which it became warmer because of that.
When we had just begun our journey south and met Kunrot, it had been cold enough that if we kept our coats properly closed, we could keep ourselves from shivering too badly.
But now, the water carefully stored inside our backpacks froze completely overnight.
It seemed the time had come to stop in some city for about three months and wait until the year passed and the temperature became suitable for traveling again.
And so, in the evening, inside the church of a small village.
In the small room we had borrowed for the day, I spread a map of this vicinity on the floor and spoke with Cassian.
With one hand, I rested my palm on the dragon egg, feeding it with mana as part of my recent routine.
“So, in the next city we arrive at, I’m thinking we should find lodging somewhere and see how things go for about three or four months.”
“Wow, finally!”
Cassian, who had endured traveling through the cold all this time with nothing but a coat, without magic or anything else, let out a cheer.
I placed my finger on the map and traced it a little along the coast.
Then, after passing over a few small villages, I pointed to a place shaped like a slightly protruding peninsula.
“Let’s go here. It’s a city called Klumpel, a coastal city slightly smaller than Baellund, where we stopped last time.”
Our next destination was decided.