In the quiet little village, untouched by the world, early summer’s lush greenery filled every corner. The houses were crude and simple, yet a warm, homely air lingered over everything.
Only Leif, with her one horse, seemed completely out of place here.
Little Sani was still clinging to Leif’s leg. She glanced at the beautiful white-robed lady attendant behind Leif, reached out, wanting to grab the hem of her robe—only to be cut short halfway by her mother’s sharp shout.
The pregnant woman’s face was stern as she scolded her youngest daughter in the thick local accent of Eide Village.
“Sani, get back here. Now!”
Little Sani looked at her mother, then at the lady attendant, then called out softly:
“Big Sister Leif!”
Leif patted the little girl’s back.
“Be good. Go on home.”
The girl rubbed against her like a little kitten and lifted her round eyes to look at Natiaveda. The latter curled her lips into a faint smile. Sani stared, dazed, then buried her burning face in Leif’s clothes.
“Sani!”
Her mother called again. Seeing the child still wouldn’t move, she rolled up her sleeves and marched over to Leif, seized Sani, and dragged her away.
Then she raised her rough, wide palm and slapped the little girl hard on the back of the head several times.
Sani burst into loud sobs at once, plopped down, and refused to walk. But how could she resist an adult’s strength? Her cloth shoes were scraped off as she was dragged along the ground. The skin of her bare little feet was abraded, and blood welled bright and red from her heels.
The other children who had been shouting “Big Sister Leif!” and “Honor and bride!” were also hauled away by their elders. After a few sharp slaps, none of them dared make another sound.
The air fell suddenly still, leaving only the helpless sobbing of the little girl.
Sani had too many brothers and sisters at home. Her parents simply couldn’t keep up. As the youngest daughter, she naturally didn’t get as much attention as the boys. After she was weaned, it was often Leif who took care of her. After Leif left, Sani had missed her terribly.
She couldn’t understand why her mother, who used to be pleased that Big Sister Leif played with her, was now so furious. Aggrieved and in pain, confused but unable to put it into words, she cried her heart out.
The instant Leif heard Sani’s crying, the smile on her face collapsed. The cloth satchel in her hand slipped and hit the ground with a dull thud.
She looked at those once-familiar faces, and suddenly they all felt like strangers.
At last, the knight’s gaze fell on the old priest. She frowned and asked:
“Why?”
The black-robed clerics from the other parishes all turned to the old priest, Riley, hoping he would give an answer that satisfied everyone.
The old priest wiped the sweat from the tip of his nose, raised his head, and stared for a while at the dazzling sun. He did not answer Leif’s question. Instead, he turned to the assistant priests.
“…I have already discussed it with all the deputy priests of the parish. We have struck this girl’s name from the Register.”
The moment they heard her name was removed from the holy register, the villagers’ eyes filled with even more loathing and fear. Their gaze on Leif seemed to say: You are already a sinner beyond redemption.
Even little Sani knew that anyone erased from the register was a bad person. She hid behind her mother and no longer dared look at Leif.
Leif’s pupils shrank sharply.
She knew exactly how serious it was to be removed from the register. On this continent under the Temple’s rule, everyone’s name was entered in the holy book at birth. To be missing from the register was far worse than being an undocumented ghost in another world.
People here believed that after death, the position of one’s soul in the afterworld must also be reserved in the register. To have your name struck out meant you were no longer a child of the Lord, that your soul could only wander as a lonely, homeless ghost, never finding rest. Although priests did hold the authority to erase names, they only used this near-curse-level punishment for the most heinous criminals.
“Poor Samantha begged me not to tell anyone,” said the old priest. “But you carried a weapon as a babe, and once grown, your behavior only grew stranger…”
He sighed.
“I’ve cast the lots. You are a bringer of calamity by fate itself, a great danger to the Temple.”
Leif suddenly felt very tired, too weary even to speak.
Just then, a man with a face as red as a burning coal staggered out of a house—the half-drunk Garry, flushed from all the alcohol they had poured into him. His thick hand braced on the doorframe, his head nearly brushing the rafters as he squeezed his large frame outside. His bleary gaze found the brown-haired knight, and he grinned broadly.
“Hey, Leif…”
He hiccuped and turned his brown eyes toward the villagers around him, tongue thick.
“What’s with everyone…?”
But as his gaze slid past Leif and fell on the white-robed lady attendant standing slightly behind her, he flinched as if stabbed by something, stumbling back a step.
In that moment the mountainous bulk of the Seer Behemoth, his companions’ blood and bones, all flooded back into Garry’s mind.
He would never forget how this woman had casually lifted her hand and sliced in half the Seer Beast that had slaughtered half the knight order—as easily as flicking away a feather. What terrified him most was her utterly calm expression as she did it.
He was convinced she had deliberately delayed a moment, letting the insolent Yaron be drained alive by the Seer Beast before cutting it apart. She had only waited so she wouldn’t have to dirty her own hands killing Yaron.
She had saved them, yes—but whatever faint gratitude remained after that brush with death had long since been crushed beneath fear.
Because this woman felt no mercy at all for human life.
Garry sobered instantly.
“You…”
As his memory cleared, he vaguely recalled what the priest had said to Leif outside the house, and remembered the misunderstanding he hadn’t had time to explain. He stammered to the old priest:
“Leif, she—”
“Don’t let that name soil you.”
The old priest shot Garry a furious glare.
“But—but Leif, she… The Kingdom of Aeseya, the Seer Beast, it was her—”
“Enough. I know you only took the post of knight in the first place because of this girl. But she is no longer worthy of you now, Garry.”
Seeing Garry still wanted to speak, the old priest’s tone grew harsher.
“Don’t get yourself involved.”
Garry fell silent for a moment. His parents had taught him from birth that the priests’ words conveyed the will of the Supreme Lord and could neither be defied nor disputed. He had always obeyed that teaching.
But now, he couldn’t stop himself from trying to speak—especially when he felt the lady attendant’s cool gaze fall on him.
“The Seer Behemoth was killed by Leif…”
A blush of shame crept across Garry’s flushed face—not for having wrongly taken Leif’s credit, but for disobeying the old priest’s order to hold his tongue. He faltered at first, stumbling over the words, but the more he spoke, the smoother they came.
“All the merit is Leif’s. The knight you were supposed to welcome isn’t me. It’s Leif…”
The old priest couldn’t even begin to process what Garry was saying. This big lad he had watched grow up spoke in the very accent most familiar to him; he understood every word on its own, yet strung together they made no sense at all. The old priest’s mind was as stiff and rigid as Temple law itself, utterly incapable of accepting such a message as “a woman has become a knight.”
“Garry, you’re drunk to the point of raving.”
“It’s the truth.”
Afraid the old priest wouldn’t believe him, Garry repeated himself several times.
“It’s true, I saw it with my own eyes.”
Garry’s father, meanwhile, had been flattered and toasted by the villagers until he no longer knew east from west, and was dead drunk. The last coherent thing he remembered was what his drinking mates had told him:
Your boy has made it. From now on, the noble ladies of the city will be lining up to marry into your family.
He had firmly decided that he could not allow Garry to be dragged down by some unknown, restless woman. Hearing his son dare to talk back to the old priest, and fearing he would cause trouble, the man reached out, twisted Garry’s ear, and when he saw his son still wanted to speak, slapped him several more times in hopes of sobering him up.
“Hurry up and take him inside. Garry is far too drunk.”
The old priest gave the order, then removed his tortoiseshell spectacles and began polishing them with a handkerchief. The red marks the frame had left on the bridge of his nose were clearly visible. His cloudy gray eyes blinked twice as he muttered under his breath.
Before the priest even began to act, the villagers had already taken it upon themselves to drive Leif out.
By now almost everyone’s attention was fixed on the brown-haired girl in knight’s gear. No one paid any mind to what Garry had just said to the priest—even if they had heard, none of them would have believed it.
They pushed forward and stood before Leif, glaring at her with open malice.
“This isn’t a place for you.”
“Samantha never should’ve picked you up in the first place…”
“You left, so what are you doing coming back now?”
“You’re a cursed, ill-omened thing. Samantha probably died because of you.”
A middle-aged woman sneered.
“I always thought that old crone was creepy and off. No wonder the brat she raised turned out a little monster too…”
Leif’s parents were unknown, and she had appeared in the village under strange circumstances. She had heard this kind of gossip more times than she could count growing up. With an adult’s tolerance, she could usually let it pass.
She hadn’t truly been angry—until those last words hit their mark, igniting the fuse. She went off like a firecracker. Her dark eyes filled instantly with flames.
“Shut your mouth.”
The brown-haired girl’s gaze stabbed into the woman like a knife. The woman flinched instinctively—but then, glancing back at the crowd behind her, stiffened her neck.
“I’ll say what I like. What can you do to me?”
“That old hag didn’t know her place. No wonder no one would marry her. Having to live in the same village as her was shame enough. And you, running off outside to disgrace Eide Village as well?”
Hurting the defenseless was against a knight’s creed. Leif told herself to endure it.
Her fingers almost crushed her own palm.
No one noticed the white-robed lady attendant give Lily’s sorrel neck a couple of light pats.
Encouraged, the mare lashed out with a hind leg at the foul-mouthed villagers, each of them earning a solid kick. The last woman took two for good measure and ended up on the ground clutching her backside and howling—a ridiculous sight.
The young red mare was just as reckless as her previous owner, a bad-tempered troublemaker who didn’t know her place. She had at least the sense to avoid the pregnant women and the half-buried elders—but toward the priests, who represented the Temple’s will, she showed not a flicker of reverence.
She quickly reared toward the old priest. His face went paper-white in fright. Leif hurried forward, seized the reins, and forced the reluctant mare under control.
She murmured “sorry” several times and even made a show of smacking Lily a couple of times. But inwardly, shamefully, the thought rose unbidden:
Nice job.
In that instant, she finally understood why Sophie had chosen to gift her a crotchety, butt-kicking horse.
It wasn’t only to remind Leif of the little lamb she used to ride—at times when Sophie couldn’t dirty her own hands, Lily’s hooves were very necessary.
—
Leif led the mare by the reins. Natiaveda followed in silence, trailing at her back as they walked out of the village.
“I’m really sorry, Lady Natiaveda,” Leif said. “I dragged you along to get cursed at with me. I thought we could rest in the village, but now we’ll have to reach the nearest town before sunset.”
The lady attendant smiled.
“As long as I’m with the knight, being cursed or chased away is perfectly fine.”
“…”
Leif decided not to react to that and fished a carrot out of her satchel.
Lily was still sulking, tossing her head away from Leif’s hand. She had taken revenge for her owner and then been smacked for it. The blow to her equine dignity made her snort loudly through her nose. But when she caught sight of the dewy carrot in Leif’s hand, she hesitated, then nibbled it delicately with her front teeth and gulped it down in a few bites.
Leif stroked the sorrel’s head and fed her a few more carrots. Lily quickly forgot her grudge and tossed it to the winds.
They mounted up and managed to reach a nearby market town by evening, where they found an inn for the night.
They had no way of knowing that back in Eide Village, no sooner had they left than a certain high emissary of the Temple arrived.
The priests and villagers tacitly agreed not to mention the knight girl they had just driven away. But they hadn’t expected that when the Temple envoys saw the drunken Garry, they wouldn’t show the slightest trace of congratulation.
“The knight my lord wishes to meet,” they said, “is called Leif.”
—
The next day.
Kenny Town, in Selong County. A shabby little inn.
Leif was by the cluttered hearth, sorting through her things. She had already stored most of her gear in her system backpack—like her bulky armor, spurs, and such. Fortunately Natiaveda hadn’t been curious about where Leif was stuffing all this, saving her the trouble of explaining.
Sophie had given her a hundred gold Gesha coins for travel expenses. Before leaving Gino Royal City, Leif had taken out ten of them, converting nine into a mix of silver, copper, and iron Gesha for everyday use. After she used some of that to repay the loan she owed the lady attendant—before the terrifying interest could really start piling up—the debt-free knight felt light as air.
The remaining ninety gold coins she kept in a pouch. The system backpack had plenty of space for money, but Leif had this vague worry—What if it gets converted into system currency?—and an equally vague resistance—I’m not about to start spending money on this damned game. So she kept the pouch within easy reach.
Aside from dry rations and a waterskin, her satchel was mostly stuffed with snacks for Lily. Leif felt the mare was being wronged, having to endure such long-distance travel with her, so every time they passed through a town she would visit the market to buy vegetables for her. For a knight, opening her satchel and revealing a pile of greens and carrots tied with twine might leave others wondering if she was actually a vegetable peddler.
After a few knocks, the lady attendant came in. She saw Leif frowning at her knight’s sash.
“What’s the matter, Knight?”
“Without the Temple’s seal,” Leif said, fingering the black sash, “this thing is useless. But where am I supposed to get it stamped?”
Natiaveda walked straight to the window and peered outside. Then she smiled back at Leif.
“I don’t think you’ll have to worry about that much longer.”
Leif didn’t understand.
The lady attendant beckoned her over.
Down below, several black-robed Temple envoys were asking questions. A few townsfolk, faces full of flustered respect, were pointing toward the inn where Leif was staying.
The girl felt their faces were somewhat familiar and blurted:
“What are they here for?”
“Why, for you, of course, my knight,” Natiaveda said, eyes on the door.
Footsteps soon thundered up the stairs, and then came a knock at the door.
Leif let go of the window frame. The old, warped shutters clattered back into place.
“Please open up, miss…”
The anxious old innkeeper darted a nervous glance at the stern-faced black-robed clerics and knocked again.
He didn’t know if the guest inside had committed some crime, but all these priests had their lips pressed tight and expressions far too grave. The old man bitterly regretted his greed—why had he been so dazzled by money and let in two suspicious women traveling alone without any male escort? If they accused him of sheltering a criminal, what would he do?
“I—I know nothing, sirs. Nothing at all,” he stammered.
He didn’t have to wait long. Leif soon opened the door. Her face showed clear puzzlement.
The assistant priests and acolytes actually bowed to the brown-haired girl.
“Please come with us, Miss Leif. Our lord wishes to see you.”
Their tone could almost be called respectful.
The innkeeper’s knees buckled and he nearly went down the stairs. He clung to the rail and heaved himself upright. Guests in the nearby rooms poked their heads out, peering this way. Downstairs, people craned their necks and pointed upward, all wondering who this girl really was.
The clerics bowed again.
“Miss Leif, our lord requests your presence.”
They didn’t even dare utter the lord’s name, proof enough of how exalted that person must be.
Leif stared for a moment, then said:
“Please, don’t…you don’t have to do that.”
At some point Natiaveda had appeared behind her. She spoke casually:
“We paid a high price to rent this room for several days. We haven’t even stayed our fill.”
“L-lord,” the shopkeeper said with a twisted smile, “I’ll refund everything at once.”
Leif opened her mouth to object, but Natiaveda went on:
“That wouldn’t be right, innkeeper. You’re an honest businessman. How could you just hand the deposit back like that? It’s improper. Surely our holy gentlemen won’t interfere with common folk trying to earn their keep.”
“This… I…” The innkeeper was sweating through his shirt, desperate to show his loyalty to the Temple and entirely unsure how.
One of the assistant priests said stiffly:
“We will compensate him.”
“And you’ve frightened the knight besides…” Natiaveda said, eyeing Leif’s slightly dazed face with great concern as she moved to close the door. “She’s been traveling long and was badly treated in that village. She needs proper rest. You should come back another day…”
“Miss Leif, we beg your indulgence,” one black-robed envoy cut in. “The old priest has fallen severely ill. He begs that you return as soon as possible.”
“That’s enough, Lady Natiaveda.”
Leif put a hand over Natiaveda’s, sensing that if she didn’t stop her now, the woman would start extorting the clergy—probably not just overcharging them, but forcing them to sign some usurious loan contract before she was done.
“I’ll go with you,” she told the envoys.
—
At the entrance to Eide Village, everyone stood waiting.
Garry’s father had him by the hair.
“How did you let some scrawny little girl steal your glory when it was your achievement?”
“Dad,” Garry thought sourly, easy for you to say. That day he’d been goaded by his companions into luring the Seer Behemoth out. If Leif and that terrifying white-robed woman hadn’t shown up, he’d have been dead for sure.
Aloud, he said at full volume:
“You don’t understand at all. It was Leif who saved me!”
“You still dare say that?”
Garry’s father was livid—whether because his son’s face had been lost, or because he’d wasted so much money on meat and wine the day before. He smacked Garry’s head several more times.
“Is getting saved by a girl something to brag about?”
Garry, still groggy from his hangover, muttered under his breath:
“I told you already, the old priest was the one who wouldn’t believe me…”
Not just the old priest—no one here had believed him.
It wasn’t until the Temple’s high emissary arrived and the envoys repeated Leif’s name over and over that the villagers finally realized they’d been wrong. The mysterious young knight who had won great merit on her very first mission wasn’t Garry at all—but Leif, the girl they had just driven away.
All eyes turned to the old priest.
His rage and shame boiled over. With a strangled sound he rolled his eyes back and collapsed unconscious.
The envoys quickly noticed something was off in the villagers’ shifty expressions. Under persistent questioning, the truth came tumbling out. In fits and starts, they confessed everything they had done and said when they drove Leif out, and even revealed her origins.
The girl had not been born in Eide Village. She had appeared mysteriously on a snowy night, swaddled in cloth. Beside her lay a chopping blade and a strange, hollow rod of unusual make.
At first sight of the baby, every villager had felt a chill crawl up their spine.
Why was the child equipped with weapons? Why, when she woke, did she start flailing her arms and spewing harsh, incomprehensible syllables like some kind of curse?
The priest had cast divinations several times and each time declared that the child’s fate was dangerously inauspicious. Later, the village spinster Samantha stubbornly took the babe in. She even gave her the name “Leif Bai” because the child herself seemed to ask for it—what sort of infant could name herself the moment she started talking?
After a few years in Eide Village, Leif adapted. She never spoke those strange, unintelligible words again. Instead, she revealed a maturity far beyond her age. While other children were still playing in the dirt, she was already helping Samantha cook and do housework. This sort of precociousness was, on reflection, frightening.
But the other children didn’t know her story. Even if their parents explained it, they wouldn’t remember for long. Before the adults could stop it, the children had all become Leif’s little shadows, following wherever she led and coming home full of praise for “Big Sister Leif.”
Gradually the villagers’ first impressions of her faded, and they began to accept her as an ordinary member of the village.
When Samantha died and Leif reclaimed her chopping blade, she started seeming strange again. The fear that had lain dormant in the villagers’ hearts began to sprout and grow. Then she announced she was leaving to become a knight—and actually left. Two months passed with no sign of her being sent home.
So the villagers made up their minds: this girl was, in the end, a harbinger of disaster, something other.
If what the Temple envoys said was true, and Leif really had slain a great monster, then that only proved their point.
She herself must be an even more terrifying monster.
If she weren’t a monster, how could a girl possibly do such a thing? It went completely against the Lord’s design that women should marry and keep house.
And so, under this churn of dread and reluctant awe, the villagers finally saw Leif riding back into town.
Leif had come to meet this so-called “lord.”
For some reason, her first thought was of the white-robed lady messenger she’d glimpsed once in Gino Royal City. That woman had said they would meet again soon.
Leif had felt strangely close to her and was looking forward to seeing her.
But as soon as she arrived, she was told that the lord in question—busy with affairs of state—had already left.
The one waiting in Eide Village was a gold-robed priest who wanted only a brief meeting. Judging by the villagers’ trembling respect when they laid eyes on him, his status was lofty indeed.
Yet the “busy” lord outranked even this gold-robed cleric.
After Leif saluted, the priest took her sash and personally stamped it with the Temple’s seal.
The moment the imprint landed, a line of glowing blue text flashed before Leif’s eyes.
[First main quest: completed.]
As that line faded, the “Backpack” icon in her vision flared. She opened it with a thought and saw that Chapter One of the Dragon-Slaying Manual had unlocked.
Before she could look at it, the gold-robed priest cleared his throat delicately, snapping her out of her daze, and handed her a letter.
His face bore that particular blend of compassion and detachment common to high-ranking clergy.
“This is written by my lord’s own hand. The letter describes arrangements for your future. I hope you will not disappoint her expectations.”
“I will follow my lord’s will.”
Leif didn’t dare ask the lord’s name. But hearing the feminine pronoun the priest used, she was almost certain it was the same lady messenger, and she brightened at once.
Judging the thickness of the letter, she felt sure there was plenty inside. She’d been fretting over where to go after leaving the Kingdom of Aeseya. This letter would surely hold the answer.
The gold-robed priest’s sole purpose here, it seemed, had been to deliver this. Afterward, he and his assistants departed. His final words to her were:
“My lord instructs you to stay in the village for three days. Only after you’ve left Eide may you open the letter.”
Leif had no idea why—but she had no choice except to suppress her curiosity.
She had planned not to stay in the village at all, but since the lord had spoken, she could only obey.
—
Three nights later, about two hours before dawn.
Leif woke early. Without rousing Natiaveda in the next room, she dressed, slipped outside, and moved quietly through the sleeping village.
The late night air held a faint chill. A waning crescent hung in the western sky, laying a wash of silvery light across the fields. Trees cast shifting shadows over the earth. The village still slept; only one or two souls were awake.
The brown-haired knight held a few small pouches in her hands. She went from door to door, setting a pouch by each tightly closed door before moving on.
She never noticed the white shadow following her.
Whenever Leif put a pouch down, Natiaveda would stoop and pick it up. Opening one, she found two gold Gesha coins inside. She squinted at the sneaky knight with narrowed golden eyes.
Leif went on laying pouches. Natiaveda went on collecting them.
At last the girl reached the final house. She set down the last pouch, then straightened and exhaled. She was about to go back and wake the lady attendant—they had an early start, after all.
But when she turned, she found Natiaveda already behind her, hands full of glittering coins, and the little pouches scattered all over the ground.
Seeing this, Leif couldn’t help remembering the usurious loan letter Natiaveda had written her. Her eyelid twitched violently. She trotted over, grabbed the woman’s arm, and hissed under her breath:
“Why…why did you do that?”
“And why did you do this, Knight?” Natiaveda shot back, shielding the money. “They treated you so badly and you’re still giving them gold. If you don’t want it, you might as well give it to me.”
“You don’t understand.”
Leif sighed, realizing prying the money from Natiaveda’s fingers was hopeless. She pointed at a small house.
“That’s Liede’s family. When I was seven, I fell into the well, and their kids were the ones who fished me out.”
Then another.
“That’s Luke’s place. When I was eight, Samantha got sick and we almost ran out of food that winter. Luke brought us bread and jam every week.”
She pointed to another house.
“That’s old Felian’s. He’s a widower with no children of his own, but he loves little ones and he’s wonderful with his hands. He always carved wooden toys for us. If anyone’s table or chair broke, he fixed it without complaint…”
As Leif spoke, her voice grew hoarse, thickened with a faint nasal sound. Her dark eyes seemed a bit wet, though perhaps the knight’s pride wouldn’t allow her actual tears.
“If it weren’t for them,” she said, guiding Natiaveda’s hand as she put the pouches and coins back one by one, “I’d have been dead long ago.”
“Now they’re just…afraid of me. They don’t know what they’re doing.”
When they had made a full circuit of the village, Leif said, “I probably won’t ever come back here. If I just walked away, I’d feel like I still owed them. So this is just…buying myself some peace of mind.”
Her finger, scraped on a rock in the dark, had been bleeding. Natiaveda looked at that tiny cut for a long moment and said nothing.
—
Leif hadn’t planned to go back to sleep before dawn. She probably couldn’t have, anyway.
For no particular reason, she remembered the wild boast she’d once made to the lady attendant about “nearly slaying a dragon,” and decided to take her outside the village.
Stars strewn across the sky, the crescent moon veiled by a thin layer of cloud. The brown-haired girl walked in front, a chopping blade on her back, while the lady attendant followed behind. After about fifteen minutes, Leif recognized the patch of scorched earth where even now the grass had not fully regrown. She placed her hand on the dead, blackened tree a dragon’s fire had claimed and felt a twinge of emotion.
This was where it all began.
Who would have thought that just two months later, she would already be an apprentice knight?
The scene of that day was still clear in her mind: she remembered how she’d stood between the transformed dragon girl and the knight, her chopping blade braced against his greatsword until her palms nearly split. Then the girl had shifted back into dragon form; in those evil dragon eyes there had flickered something like curiosity. The dragonfire fell, the man burned to cinders. From him she’d inherited the game system.
Then…after certain things she very much preferred not to recall had happened…
Her level shot up, one ding after another.
When she turned back now, she found the lady attendant lying on the grass, propped on one arm, gazing at her. Gold eyes glinted with something unreadable.
“Yeah… I think the dragon was lying about here,” Leif said, studying the landmarks and gesturing with her hand. “She was wearing a white dress, looking completely innocent and pitiful.”
Natiaveda only smiled silently at her.
“What are you thinking, Lady Natiaveda?” Leif walked closer. “I know it sounds made up, but it really did happen.”
“Nothing. Of course I believe in the knight’s strength,” Natiaveda said, rising and leaning forward slightly so that her golden eyes were level with Leif’s.
The girl felt as though she had stepped into a dream. For a moment it seemed the woman’s features shifted, overlapping with another face in her memory. She shook her head sharply and heard Natiaveda murmur:
“Just thinking what a bargain it is to be good to you, Knight. A little kindness and you pay it back a hundredfold. If I’d known, I would have charged you even more interest back then.”
“You’ve done more than enough for me already. You even saved my life. I still don’t know how to repay you. I thought, if I ever got the chance, I’d definitely protect you…”
Leif, as if bewitched, spoke a little too quickly. When she realized what she’d said, she flushed with embarrassment.
“I was careless. You’re so strong, you don’t need—”
“To be protected?” Natiaveda laughed softly, then took Leif’s hand and drew it close, lowering her head to gently lick the cut on her finger.
A tingling, itchy sensation shot up from the wound. Before Leif’s eyes, the skin knit and healed in the span of a breath.
She looked at that face, inches from her own, and her expression went flat.
Above them, the stars burned bright. The moon had drifted a little further west. Summer insects rasped in the grass, suddenly sounding strained.
The knight’s hand went to her blade in an almost instinctive motion—no, in one she had rehearsed in her mind countless times. Steel caught the moonlight, a cold gleam sliding over Leif’s calm face. Both hands on the hilt, she brought the chopping blade down toward the white-robed lady attendant.
“It seems you’ve noticed after all,” Natiaveda said, casually lifting two slender fingers to catch the falling blade between them.
Her fingers looked as delicate as scallion stalks, yet they held a mountain’s weight. No matter how Leif strained and tugged, the blade would not budge an inch.
“It’s my fault. I can’t bear seeing you hurt,” Natiaveda said, eyes locked on hers. “But you could swing at me without the slightest hesitation—that does sting a little. Did you never consider, Knight, that if your strike had actually killed me…”
Leif’s gaze flickered.
“…Of course, my cute, delicate knight doesn’t need to think about that,” Natiaveda added, voice dripping with amusement. “Your weapon couldn’t do more than tickle.”
Stabbed in the pride and reduced to the level of “tickling,” Leif felt any fleeting softness in her heart vanish. She was almost dizzy with rage at this damned dragon.
When Natiaveda finally let go, Leif raised the blade again—
But couldn’t quite bring herself to swing it down.
No matter how often she told herself the woman in front of her was just a dragon in human skin, the thought of chopping into a human-shaped body made her stomach knot.
While she hesitated, Natiaveda slid an arm around her shoulders and pulled her close, laughter warm by her ear.
“Can’t bear to hurt me, Knight? Is it because you don’t like being rough with ladies? But honestly, even if you can’t kill me, it’s much harder if I change into my true form—harder to hit, worse for the blade. I’d hate to see you cry over a nicked edge…”
Leif was by now both flustered and furious. Struggling was useless. In the flash of a thought, she remembered that the Dragon-Slaying Manual had unlocked Chapter One when she’d completed the main quest.
She hadn’t had the chance to read it yet.
“Yes, this is where we first met, isn’t it?” Natiaveda murmured, leaning in to press Leif back onto the grass. “Do you remember what we did then? Would you like a little reenactment?”
“Dragon,” Leif said, summoning what dignity she could, “do you dare let me touch your tail?”
The effect was…odd.
The shameless dragon flushed scarlet and slackened her grip.
Leif scrambled upright and scuttled several steps away. She interpreted the blush as a sign she had struck a vital weakness and silently praised the Dragon-Slaying Manual. First move in the book and it hit the dragon hard.
Though…something about it felt off.
As the would-be dragonslayer pondered, something cool brushed her hand.
She looked down to find a slender black tail, leather-dark and scaled, nudging at her fingers. Natiaveda was still half in human form, legs unchanged, but a single dragon’s tail now extended behind her—like a miniaturized version of her true form. She was sitting with her back to Leif.
Offering up her own weak point this obediently…was beyond strange.
Maybe there was some other hidden mechanic, Leif thought. Maybe hearing the words “dragon’s tail” made the dragon’s brain go fuzzy…
In any case, she followed the manual’s first instruction:
“Caress the dragon’s tail gently.”
So she did.
The tail was cool, dry, and smooth under her palm.
More than once it twitched as if to withdraw, but in the end it stayed there, compliantly coiled in her hands.
Leif stroked for some time and still saw no sign of any “special reward” dropping. Scowling, she stroked even more gently, more carefully.
Several times she heard the dragon’s faint, unsteady breaths catch in her throat.
The tail seemed to grow warmer. Judging by the rising temperature, perhaps the true secret of Dragon-Slaying Style One was to make the dragon overheat and combust.
Curious to see Natiaveda’s expression, Leif scooped up the tail and walked around in front of her.
The dragon was biting her lip, her pale face a deep, fevered red, eyes shining wetly. For all that she was wicked, she’d been born with a face of pure innocence; now, colored with that blush, she finally had the allure of a true enchantress.
The knight’s mind went blank.
The tail slipped from her fingers.
Seeing Natiaveda’s complexion improve, Leif quickly scooped it back up—but this time the tail vanished from her grasp.
Natiaveda’s gaze was clearer now.
“Knight, do you know what touching a tail means to a dragon?”
“Of course,” Leif said stiffly. This was, after all, Dragon-Slaying Style One.
“Do you really?” Natiaveda leaned in close. “In my tribe, it’s a mating signal.”
Leif kept her face as straight as she could. Inside, her thoughts were in uproar.
Natiaveda stroked her pale, stunned cheek, a hint of malice in her smile.
“Knight, you’ll have to take responsibility for what you’ve done…”
She seemed ready to say more, but her gaze suddenly shifted upward, fixing on a point five feet above them. She murmured:
“Another summoning circle?”
She brushed Leif’s cheek with a final lingering touch and rose to her feet.
“Then I’ll just have to savor you next time. I’m sure it won’t be long.”
By the time Leif finally pushed herself up from the ground, some while after Natiaveda let go, her mind had been scoured clean by the sheer volume of new information.
She could hardly think at all.
With a dull thump, something landed in the grass nearby.
Leif crawled over and found a green gem the size of a pigeon egg. She would have bet anything it was about the same size as the emerald set in Sophie’s crown.
Above, Natiaveda’s beautiful, infuriating voice drifted down from the night sky.
“I left in a hurry, so for now, consider these shiny little stones the first batch of your bride price.”
As Leif wondered just how many “these” implied, the quiet field erupted in a hail of impacts.
She looked up.
In the light of moon and stars, a rain of gems poured down—gleaming in every color, sparkling with such brilliance they looked like fallen stars.
The summer insects forgot to sing. Even the moon seemed to pause in her course.
“Their radiance still pales before the knight’s, I’m ashamed to say,” came the dragon’s parting murmur.
