“That bird’s bigger than I expected, isn’t it?”
Cassian drew out his staff and aimed it at the wyvern flying through the sky as he spoke.
It was fairly high up, so it was hard to judge its size precisely by eye, but even a rough estimate was enough to tell that its body was longer than the three of us put together.
Its entire body was covered in dull brown scales that barely shone, and each wing was about two-thirds the length of its body.
What stood out was that it was wounded all over, and the membranes of its wings were riddled with holes here and there.
Since creatures like that relied more on magic than lift to fly, it probably had no issue staying airborne, but still.
I shaded my eyes from the sun with my palm and looked up at the wyvern in the sky.
“Looks like it lost a fight and fled here.”
It was a little embarrassing to call it that, but wyverns were, technically speaking, a species that fell under the category of dragons.
And dragons were beings that guarded their territory fiercely unless they had a close relationship with someone.
In other words, no matter how far that thing had come from, there was a high chance it had lost a fight, had its territory taken, and fled here.
That was why it was hunting humans who looked easy at first glance.
Unfortunately for it, it had chosen the wrong prey this time.
“I think it’s coming down……!”
No sooner had Cassian lowered his stance slightly and gone on guard than the wyvern spun once in the air and came hurtling straight toward us.
It stretched its head forward, folded its wings slightly, and glided down, intending to swallow us whole in one bite.
But of course, there was no way things would go as it wanted.
—Kwaaang!!
—Kyaaaaak!!
“Ghk……!”
The defensive magic Cassian hastily deployed collided obliquely with the wyvern’s fierce charge, deflecting its path slightly upward.
Perhaps because the attack was so heavy, the impact transmitted through the defensive magic made Cassian lose his balance for a moment, but not enough to make him fall.
The wyvern, on the other hand, had taken the impact across its entire body at an unexpected moment, and several of the scales on its already injured parts shattered and fell away.
“You little……!”
Cassian planted his feet a few times to regain his balance, then immediately raised his staff and aimed at the wyvern.
Before I knew it, pale blue sparks were crackling at its tip.
The wyvern quickly recovered from the shock and soared back into the sky, but Cassian’s magic reached it faster.
An arc discharge fired from the tip of his staff struck the wyvern’s body.
“Huh?”
It was blocked by the scales, dispersed, and scattered into the air without causing almost any damage.
“What the hell? It’s completely fine.”
While Cassian was flustered, the wyvern had already risen high into the sky again and begun looking for another chance to attack.
“What did I say when I explained fighting dragons to you before?”
“That they’re incredibly tough, and…… right. You said they have extremely strong mana resistance.”
“Wyverns are still counted as dragons, so their scales are fairly strong. They’re still hard for you to pierce.”
That last attack would have been enough to send something the size of an elephant straight to the other world in one hit, but it still wasn’t enough.
However, judging from the way its scales had shattered right after colliding with the defensive magic, there was an answer.
“Then I’ll just do this.”
Cassian found the answer on the spot.
He aimed his staff at a suitably sized rock nearby, then poured mana into it and lifted it into the air with telekinetic magic.
The answer was to simply smash it with brute physical force.
It might be resistant to impact, but that only meant that hitting or cutting it at a human level was meaningless. If you used magic to slam a powerful blow into it, there was only so much it could do.
“Aim for the head if you can.”
“I know.”
Especially if that blow landed on the head.
People’s skulls were tough too, but if they got hit by a rock about half the size of their head, they would end up closing their eyes for good soon enough.
Whether it was a dragon or a wyvern, as long as it was a living creature, that did not change much.
Cassian spun the rock he had lifted, gradually increasing its speed, and timed it with the wyvern beginning to glide down again before accelerating it all at once and firing.
The wyvern’s head, flying in a straight line down from the sky, lined up with the rock coming at it head-on, about half its size.
“Got……!”
The wyvern realized it and twisted its body in a hurry, resulting only in a few scales around its neck being broken.
This time, the wyvern did not seem to have taken much of an impact, but perhaps it had been startled, because it rose back into the sky.
Cassian looked up with an expression that said he had almost had it and was frustrated he had missed.
See, you shouldn’t have raised a flag.
After rising that high, the wyvern seemed wary of another attack like the previous one, and merely circled in the sky, showing no sign of coming down.
At a glance, it even looked as though it was frightened and hesitating over whether to attack or not.
“What’s with it? Why isn’t it coming down?”
“……Prepare defensive magic.”
But to me, using mana sight, the intense mana gathering around its throat was plainly visible.
“What?”
“Hurry!”
Sure enough, the wyvern suddenly lowered its altitude, opened its mouth wide, and displayed the heat condensing inside as if to show it off.
And just as it was about to be fired—
“I’ll do it!”
Iliana stepped slightly forward, stretched both hands out, and deployed defensive magic in front of us.
At the same time, a breath attack containing a considerable amount of mana enveloped the defensive magic, and Iliana’s still imperfect barrier began to crack here and there.
“Urgh……!”
Fortunately, however, the barrage of breath ended before Iliana’s defensive magic completely shattered.
In that interval, Cassian used telekinetic magic to uproot a suitable nearby tree and hurled it straight at the wyvern.
The wyvern tried to evade this time as well with its dazzling movements, but a sudden torrent of water poured down in front of its eyes and blocked its vision.
It was Iliana.
She was quite exhausted from using defensive magic, but in that brief opening, she had thrown in water magic.
—Kuaaaak!! Kwaak!!
The wyvern let out a cry more like that of a huge bird than a dragon, twisting its body to shake off the branches and trying to take flight again.
But once that much of an opening had appeared, it was already as good as too late.
“Die!!”
Cassian immediately poured as much mana as he could into a large rock nearby and tore it free.
It was not even comparable to the wyvern’s head in size; it was a huge rock, slightly taller than Cassian himself.
And he hurled that rock straight at the wyvern’s head.
—Kwajik!! Ujijik!!
The sound of wood breaking and the sound of a head being smashed mixed into a dissonance I would rather not have heard.
If there was one fortunate thing, it was that thanks to the rock, we did not have to see the head bursting apart in vivid detail.
I would have been fine, but showing that to Iliana was a bit……
“Hah, hah……”
“Haa, haa……”
Perhaps because they had wrung out their mana all the way to their maximum output, both Cassian and Iliana collapsed on the spot, breathing roughly.
In particular, the rock he had launched at the end could be considered the maximum output Cassian was capable of producing right now.
Looking at Cassian, he still had about half his mana left, but it had been a fairly forceful use of mana.
Even so, considering he had used large amounts of mana in succession, it was impressive that his mana was barely disturbed.
And in Iliana’s case, honestly, we had done a few rounds of practical training, but I had not expected her to step forward like that.
I had been prepared to cover for her if the defensive magic was pierced, but she had endured well.
Her decision to blind it at the end had also been good.
“Well done. Both of you.”
“Hah, ha, haha……!!”
“Haa, ha, hehe……”
When I patted each of them on the head, the corners of their mouths rose as if they were pleased.
There were truly many areas to improve on, but separate from that, praise had to be given where praise was due.
And as they spent a while catching their breath and recovering even a little stamina—
—This way!
—I’m certain the sound came from over here!
—Today, for sure!!
With that much commotion, there was no way people nearby would not gather.
They were still a little distance away, but I could sense people converging from all directions.
If other people saw this scene, it would certainly become troublesome, so it would be better to leave quickly.
I lifted the exhausted Cassian and Iliana with telekinetic magic.
“Whoa?!”
“Hwah!”
Both of them flailed their arms and legs at the strange sensation of floating in the air, but they were not in any condition to walk quickly right now, so there was no helping it.
“Bear with it for a moment.”
“M-Master, wait, hwaaaak……!”
And for a very brief moment, I rapidly kicked off the air and leaped upward, giving Cassian and Iliana some preliminary practice in how to use flight magic.
……It seemed to have been very frightening.
I reflected on it a little.
◇
Time passed, and it became the 11th day of the 14th month.
When we stood on the summit of a fairly high mountain, an even taller mountain range spread out far in the distance, and a rather large city could be seen a little below it.
That was this year’s destination, Deuardim.
Even just looking at it from this far away, its scale was considerable, not falling behind Klumpel or Baellund, where we had stayed last year.
A little over a hundred years ago, it had been smaller than that, but from what I had heard through rumors, the count ruling it these days was apparently quite capable.
“We’re almost there. It’s over there.”
When I pointed to the city faintly visible in the distance, an emotion of finally crossed Cassian and Iliana’s faces.
“Though we won’t be going into the city.”
When I continued, a slightly uneasy question appeared on Cassian and Iliana’s faces.
“Eh, what? Then where are we staying? Don’t tell me we’re staying in the forest.”
“Of course not.”
No matter who I was, I had not the slightest intention of making the kids sleep out in the raw wilderness.
I had made them sleep outside for a few days as part of cold-resistance adaptation training, but doing that for months would be insane.
“At the foot of this mountain, there’s a house belonging to a former disciple of mine. Let’s go there.”
As recently as twenty years ago, his letters had not mentioned that he had moved, so he was probably still living here.
……Right?
“Will it be all right……?”
“It’s a more decent house than you’d think. You don’t have to worry about freezing to death.”
And above all—
I was running low on money now, and the rent was free.