Chapter 7: Undead

「Ruful!? What happened!?」
『A ghost showed up… Tia’s badly hurt!』

Ghost? What is she talking about?

「Got it, I’m coming right now!」

I didn’t understand, but it was clearly no ordinary matter. Judging from Ruful’s scream, I leapt to that conclusion and rushed to the window, then dove out from the third floor of the school building.

「Contact Nina!」

I shouted as I transformed into a dragon in midair—and three heavy things thumped down onto my back.

「Sensei! Let us go too!」
「I’ll have Nuck contact Nina‑sensei, o‑kay—」

It was the sofa with Ara, Mel—and Inis—riding on it.
I didn’t know what this “ghost” was. But if even Tia was badly wounded and Ruful was begging for help, the foe had to be serious. I’m hopeless at fighting aside from being a dragon at all. Honestly, I was grateful they were coming with me.

「…No, even I won’t call it a hassle when lives are on the line.」

Even so, having Inis along was unexpected. When I glanced at her, she averted her eyes and spoke as if making an excuse.

「—Thanks. Okay, hang on tight. I’m going to hurry!」

I beat my wings wide and shot straight up into the sky. The “Gyaa—!” I heard from my back was probably Inis. The high, delighted whoop must have been Mel.

「O my scale, which the giant girl clutches to her breast—point to thy twin!」

I tore off one scale and chanted; it fired a dazzling band of light toward the edge of the village. I fixed it onto the school roof and headed after the light. Nina is quick on the uptake—this should tell her everything.

Hiiro has grown enormous. In truth, it’s long since unfit to call a “village”; it’s split into several. In a ring around the original Hiiro, separated by less livable stretches like forest, river, and hills, other districts have spread.

Ruful’s plea for help came from the farthest edge—out of the forest near the northernmost mountain. Even pushing my wings at full speed, it was a flight of several minutes.

「Ruful!」

I spotted her easily from afar and folded my wings, diving in. I ignored the screams coming from my back.
Ruful was crouched on the ground, back hunched tight as if to shield something.

「What is this…!?」

Several black shadows had them surrounded.
Ruful’s arms and legs were scored with countless small cuts, and blood was flowing.

In other words, these things could injure Ruful’s body even under the protection of Giant’s Might.

「Blow away!」

I beat my wings and spoke a short spell. A tremendous wind roared, blasting the shadows swarming Ruful’s body away. With a wet crunch, they slammed into the ground.

「Are you okay, Ruful?」
「Sensei… Tia—Tia is…!」

Tears spilling in big drops, Ruful held out her huge palm to me.
Lying on it, limp and bleeding, was Tia. Ruful had been shielding her.

「Sorry… Sensei, I… messed up…」
「Don’t talk, Tia. You’ll aggravate the wound. Nina should be here any moment. Just hold on till then.」

Tia grimaced in pain and shook her head.

「I’m fine—this much… more than that… be careful.」

Panting roughly, sweating, Tia forced the words out.

「That won’t kill them.」

As if to corroborate her words, the black shadows lurched back to their feet.

「Ugh, what is that, gross!」

Inis saw it and cried out.
What hemmed us in were armored bears, horned mountain cats, giant pill bugs, and winged snakes—ferocious beasts you often see around here. But there were two abnormal points.

First: these beasts don’t form packs. Much less have I ever once seen different species cooperate to attack people.

And the other…
…was that, no matter how you looked at them, these beasts were dead.

On some, the flesh was gouged away and bone lay exposed.
On others, rotting chunks of meat hung from ulcerated skin.
Some had lost half their head and still kept moving.

Undead. The word flashed through my mind.

The wild beasts’ corpses rushed me without a single growl. Their speed wasn’t the sluggish shuffle of so‑called zombies, but the quick wild pace they’d had in life.

「Shadow! Become a branch‑spear bearing a hundred twigs, and pierce!」
「Jack Frost, please!」

Ara’s shadow split into many streaks like lightning and lanced through the beasts. Almost simultaneously, the Jack Frost Mel had summoned exhaled a blizzard and engulfed the grotesque host.

But—it didn’t work.

Even with holes punched through them by Ara’s shadow spears and frozen stiff by Mel’s spirit, the corpses showed no sign of slowing.
From neck wounds that would be fatal to any ordinary beast, they gurgled muddy blood, snapped their frozen limbs with crackling pops, and, unfazed, sprinted across the ground toward us.

「Sensei, wind again!」
「Wind, blow those things away!」

At Inis’s cue I reflexively sent the wind—but whether they’d learned or simply because it wasn’t a surprise this time, heavyweight corpses like armored bears and tusk boars dug in where they stood and held against it.

「Awake!」

Even that instant was enough for Inis. A line scored itself across the ground between us and the beasts, and then the earth heaved up into a wall about three meters high.

「Nice one, Inis! While we—」

Let’s grab Tia and Ruful and run.
—I couldn’t get the words out.
A winged snake vaulted the wall Inis had raised and stabbed into my throat.

Just as its name says, a winged snake is a serpent with small, membrane wings midway along its body. It’s extremely vicious, but only about a meter long. Flustered, I tried to tear it off, but with a dragon’s clumsy forelegs I couldn’t even get a proper grip on the writhing little snake.

Worse, a fresh stab of pain lanced deeper into my throat.
At this rate it meant to burrow inside my body.

A chill raced up my spine—and at the same time, part of the wall blew apart as if from an explosion. An armored bear’s corpse had smashed it with its claws.

「D‑damn…!」

This was wrong. Tearing through my scales, demolishing a conjured stone wall—no ordinary animal could do that. Not just their looks or their undying nature—their very insides were something else entirely.

「Mel! Can’t we burn them to death with Salamander!?」
「Nn‑nn… I don’t think that’ll work— I’ve got a bad feeling—」

At Ara’s words, Mel shook her head with a troubled look.

As if to bear that out, the winged snake latched to my throat whooshed into flame. A fire dragon’s blood is extremely hot—like magma. Wound one, and that’s what happens.

But even wrapped in fire, the winged snake didn’t stop moving. It didn’t care at all—its fangs dug in harder, trying to chew deeper into my throat.

「Butler‑chan, pull it out—ah!?」

Invisible Butler yanked, but only the snake’s body slithered free. I couldn’t see it given the angle, but it seemed the head alone still clung to my throat, chewing even now.

Burning fiercely—down to just a head—and still moving. Truly undying.
Sure enough, if we sicced a Salamander on something like this carelessly, we might end up the ones burned to death.

「Guh… ugh…!」

I clawed at my own neck where the head bit into the flesh beneath the scales, but my talons only scraped the surface—there was no getting out the winged snake’s head, buried so deep.

Worse, the horde that had smashed the wall was charging us all at once—the situation couldn’t be worse.

「R‑run…!」

I spread my wings wide, stepped forward, and somehow squeezed out the words.
At least the students—I cannot let them die.

「Wind…」

The wind I raised had barely half the strength of before; it only managed to slightly dull the beasts’ legs.
As the corpses of the beasts sprang for me, I steeled myself for death.

「…Kept you waiting.」

Just before those claws and fangs reached me—
—they were trussed up, right under my nose, their whole bodies bound tight by vines.

「For you lot, that was pretty well done.」
「Nina!」

I forgot the pain and called my partner’s name.