Chapter 1: The Beginning of Everything / Prologue

「See? The ones you were talking about—they're those guys, right?」

Staring at what Nina pointed at, I was stunned.

「That... those are humans?」
「They look kind of like me, they’ve got round ears, and they live in stone nests. Matches, right?」

Nina perked up her pointed ears proudly and puffed out her flat chest. She wasn’t wrong.

「Are there... are there any other humans with similar looks but a different way of living?」
「I don’t know that many, but they mostly live the same way.」

At that answer, I figured, well, of course.
I looked again at the scene Nina had pointed out.

From the low hill we overlooked a cave gaping open in the mountainside.
Maybe they were heading out to hunt: a handful of men came out holding spears made by lashing stones to the ends of sticks. Both they and the women seeing them off wore nothing but wrapped animal pelts. At most a dozen or so people lived there. It wasn’t a village—hardly even worthy of being called a settlement. What lay there was the life of primitives.

「You’ve got to be kidding me...」

Magic exists, Dragons race across the sky, mysteries breathe, and fairies make their homes here.
In a world that could only be called straight-up fantasy, I’d unconsciously assumed there’d be at least a medieval Europe level of civilization.
But that was a huge mistake.

Come to think of it, equating fantasy with medieval Europe is just a trope of more recent novels—especially the so‑called light novels.
I should probably be grateful there are at least humanoids I can actually communicate with. If this were a world with nothing but soft‑bodied creatures like slimes, I’d have been far more despairing.

...That said.
I couldn’t help letting out a deep breath.

「Wah—h-hey, cut it out! You trying to burn me!?」

Nina jumped back, guarding her head with both hands.

「Ah, sorry, sorry.」

I hastily shut my mouth.
It’s been ten years since I got this body, and I still hadn’t gotten used to it.

To a Dragon’s body where every breath came out as fire.

「For now, let’s try talking to them...」
「Eh, you’re going? They don’t understand speech, and they’re vicious, you know?」

When I pulled myself together and muttered that, Nina warned me, looking baffled.

「It’ll work out somehow—probably. Nina, will you wait here?」

I spread my wings wide and shot up high into the sky.
By my estimate it was two or three kilometers to the humans’ cave.
Since my very body had changed, I had no confidence in my sense of distance or time, but it felt like less than a minute before I touched down in front of the cave.

A little girl who happened to be at the entrance looked up at me, screamed, and collapsed on the spot.

「Ah, it’s okay, little miss. It’s okay—I may not look it, but I’m a good Dragon. I would never eat—」
『Enemy!』

Cutting me off, spears came flying from every direction.
I see. No wonder people call them savage, I thought, watching the spears bounce off my scales.

「I don’t mean you any harm. Could you not attack me?」
『Run!』

When I spoke extra slowly, one of the men who’d thrown a spear shouted something. The women took the children and fled into the cave. Hm. This is troublesome.

「I, not want, to fight. Understand?」

Careful not to exhale, I nudged a fallen spear along the ground with my snout and pushed it back toward them. I hoped that would get across that I had no hostile intent.

The men exchanged bewildered looks, then gingerly picked up their spears.

「So you still don’t have what you’d call language...」

Watching them, I became sure. They had short, command‑like words—Attack that thing, Run. But nothing beyond that for complex exchange existed yet.

And their attacks were just stone spears thrown by hand. At the very least, there was no one here who could use magic like the Elves.

「Sorry for startling you.」

Knowing it wouldn’t get through, I said it anyway and climbed back into the sky.




「How’d it go?」
「No good. We couldn’t communicate at all.」
「Told you so.」

When I shook my head, Nina gave a strangely smug grin.

「And here I thought I’d finally met humans...」
「So stop breathing fire already!」

Whoops. Did it again—another sigh.

「Sorry, sorry. To me it’s just breathing...」
「An “oops” that burns down the forest is not okay.」

Hands on her hips, Nina huffed in anger.

「It’s getting dark. Let’s turn in for today.」

She stretched out an arm, and the trees lowered their branches as if it were the most natural thing. Elf magic. Nina casually peeled off her clothes and lay down on a bed of leaves among the trees.

「I told you, it’s improper, so don’t.」

She made no attempt to cover herself as she reclined, her snow‑white skin almost dazzling to the eyes. She looked a little over ten years old. Still immature, yes, but old enough that it was hard to know where to look.

「So what is this “improper” thing supposed to be, anyway?」

As always when she asked that, I was at a loss for an answer.
Elvish had no concept for “improper.” Or rather, it didn’t even have a word for “embarrassing.” To them, clothes were to protect from heat and cold; nudity wasn’t something to be ashamed of.

「Come on, hurry up.」
「Yeah, yeah...」

Trying my best not to look at her as she stretched both arms out toward me, I went over and coiled myself around her bed.
As a Fire Dragon, my body was warm and apparently pleasant. I, however, stayed on edge for fear I might accidentally exhale too much in my sleep.

Meeting humans, though, made me realize one thing.

That the Elves’ lives weren’t so different from theirs. “Forest folk” sounds nice, but they don’t really build houses; they sleep in trees like this and live off forest game and nuts. In other words, hunter‑gatherers. I’d never thought about it because it was hard to imagine Elves plowing fields and keeping cattle, but they’re downright primitive.

Of course, with magic to command the trees, hear their voices, and receive their fruit, they can live that way quite stably. But I can’t help feeling that’s what holds their civilization back. As long as there’s a forest, they can survive, so there’s no ingenuity, no progress. I even felt they might one day be wiped out by humans who did develop civilization.

And that applied to me as well. Dragons are absurdly strong. I don’t struggle to hunt prey, and I have no natural enemies—probably the apex of the ecosystem. But that life, too, is sustained only by hunting. Hardly what you’d call civilized.

What on earth should I do—


Then, like a revelation, an idea flashed through my mind.

「A school!」
「W-What!?」

The word I’d only meant to think burst out of my mouth in excitement, and Nina sprang up, eyes darting.

「A school, Nina. We’ll build a school.」

Of course, Elvish has no word for “school.”
But I told her my idea, utterly absorbed.

And that was the beginning of a long, long—yes, mind‑numbingly, unimaginably long—story.