Chapter 19: Arcane Connection

"Ai!"

Screaming her name, I breathed fire to melt the ice.
But even under a dragon’s breath it didn’t melt—on the contrary, it spread and crystalized into a pillar that swallowed Ai.

"Hoo, hoo, hoo."

Jack Frost let out a laugh-like cry and hopped.
Its round body lifted lightly, and the snowman slipped away through the air.

"Hey, get back here!"

Dalga took off after it. If it was fleeing through the air, the one who flies best—me—should have been the one to give chase.

But I had no room for such calm judgment.

"Ai, Ai! Damn it… what do I do?!"

No matter how much I blew, the ice pillar wouldn’t melt.

"Sensei, move!"

Ken, having finished his spell, hurled a massively swollen ball of flame at Ai.
I just barely swallowed the words, "What if she gets burned?"

But it was a needless worry.

Even Ken’s magic didn’t so much as bead a single drop of water on the surface, let alone melt the ice.

"O thing redder than my scales…"
"Calm down."

If it had come to this, I’d have to use a spell—or so I thought, beginning a chant—when Nina gave my tail a hard yank.

"Sure, you’d melt it—but Ai would die."
"But if we leave her like this…!"

With her whole body encased in ice, there’s no way she can breathe.
As I recall, with asphyxiation you have to supply oxygen within five minutes or there’s brain damage and lasting aftereffects. We had no time to dither.

"She’s probably fine as she is. This is the same as a tree shedding its leaves and branches."

In contrast to my panic, Nina was infuriatingly calm.

"…You mean she’s hibernating?"
"Yeah, yeah, that. Tōmin. At least she’s not going to die right away or anything."

Her words and her usual breezy manner finally let me regain my composure.

"But how can you tell?"
"Huh? You can tell by looking."

…Looks like I’d need to get the full story from Nina later.

"That said, we can’t just wait for spring. How do we melt this?"
"If we beat that thing from before, won’t it melt on its own?"

I had the same hunch.
Or rather, I couldn’t think of any other possibility.

"Even if we erase it without a trace, it doesn’t die. So how…"
"Burn it over and over until it does die?"
"…Is it really that simple?"

Snow is, in short, frozen water. Even when water evaporates it only turns into a gas; it doesn’t vanish. That’s likely why Jack Frost can regenerate endlessly.
Smashing or slicing is useless, and if flame doesn’t work either, then what are we supposed to do?

"Damn it, sorry, Aniki! I lost him!"

As I was wracking my brain, Dalga came back, out of breath.

"I could tell it went out of the forest, but…"

The village is surrounded by forest on all sides.
Or rather, it would be more accurate to say we carved it out of the woods.
Beyond that forest lies a vast prairie.

"…This is a pain."

Between forest and prairie, the forest is obviously the easier place to hide.
But such common sense didn’t apply to us.
Because we had Nina—the forest’s avatar, the trees’ favored child.

Climb a tree, hide in the thicket, burrow into the soil—if it’s in the forest, it’s practically in the palm of Nina’s hand.
But when it came to searching the open prairie, we couldn’t rely on her power.

Even searching from the air would be almost hopeless—by night, at least.
Nights in the primitive age are terrifyingly deep and dark; from high above, you can’t see a thing.

"We’ll have to wait for morning. I’ll watch Ai—go get some sleep."
"But…"

Come morning, there was no guarantee Jack Frost would still be on the prairie.
No—there was every chance it had already gone even farther.
I couldn’t imagine lying down meekly in a situation like this.

"It’s definitely not in the forest. That means you’re the only one with any chance of finding it. I’ll yank you awake at sunrise—now sleep and save your strength."

What she said was so perfectly reasonable I couldn’t muster a peep in rebuttal.
Even so, I had no will to follow it.

I stared at Ai, imprisoned in the pillar of ice.
Her arms stretched out to either side, eyes closed like a Christ pinned to the cross. She ended up like this protecting me then. There was no way I could just leave her and go sleep.

That said, I also knew Nina was right.

With no leads at all—

"…There is one."

Suddenly, it hit me.

"O thing hard as rock, yet clear as the wind. O thing cold as shadow, yet dazzling as light—thou, the remnant that water became. Harken to my voice and show upon thy face the visage of thy master…!"

The pillar of ice encasing Ai.

Ice that even my fire couldn’t melt isn’t just chilled moisture; it’s plainly made by magic. Which means it’s strongly bound to Jack Frost—in other words, it’s a part of him.

Things that were once one share a magical bond, like how I sent my voice to Dalga through my scale. The hair and nails buried in a straw doll for an Ushi no Koku Mairi, or the second button from a school uniform a boy gives someone he likes—those are such items. They’re called arcane connections.

In principle, magic can’t be cast on what lies outside your sight. Magic requires recognition; you can’t recognize what you can’t see.

But if something is tied to an arcane connection, you can interfere with it by magic even without seeing it. The reason Nina can monitor this whole forest is that its trees are her arcane connections.

"Got it!"

I’d never treated a spell itself as an arcane connection before, but the scrying worked. Reflected on the ice pillar’s surface was Jack Frost climbing a mountain—beyond the prairie, to the south. I could tell as plainly as if I held it in my hand.

"Nina, here."

I peeled off a scale and handed it to her.

"You know how to use it, right? Tell me where he is."

There was no guarantee Jack Frost would sit still until I caught up. We needed someone to keep tracking him here. Nina could surely do what I’d just done with ease.

"…Got it."

Confirming her nod, I spread my wings wide.

"Wait!"

Ken called out to stop me.

"Sensei, take me with you!"

I hesitated for a moment at his words.
Not because he was at odds with me.
He certainly had powerful magic, but he had precious little combat experience.

Dalga, on the other hand, could only use Body Enhancement, but its power was tremendous.
Above all, he was used to fighting.

Even as a dragon I was only about three meters long at best.
I could carry only one of them.

Up on the mountain I wouldn’t have to worry much about collateral damage, and if we spoke strictly of firepower my flames far outstripped Ken’s. If I took anyone, Dalga seemed the better choice.

"Ken, sorry, but…"
"Aniki, take the kid."

But unexpectedly, Dalga himself threw Ken a lifeline.

"Me, I can barely stall him. Against that bastard the kid’ll be more useful than I am."
"…Old man…"
"I’m not that much older than you. Call me big bro."

They bumped fists lightly and grinned at each other.
I felt a twinge of envy at the bond they’d built.
The villagers respected me and were friendly enough, but in the end I wasn’t human, and there was a certain distance there.
The only one who treated me without that barrier was Nina.

Not that this was the time to be thinking about that.

"All right. Hang on tight, Ken!"
"Yeah!"

With Ken on my back, I shot up into the night sky.

"W-whoa…!"

On my back, Ken let out a scream.

"Amazing…!"

Apparently it was awe more than fear.
Come to think of it, this was the first time I’d flown with him on my back.
Only Nina and Ai could use magic to fly, so this was probably his first time seeing from this height.

"…So this is the view you always see, Sensei…"

Ken murmured.

"View or not, you can’t see a thing."

To be frank, the night sky was pitch-black.
The moon that was visible earlier was now completely hidden behind clouds; we truly couldn’t see anything. At best, the clotted black below was probably the ground.

Mindful of my altitude to avoid crashing, I aimed for the mountains.
Then, something hazy floated up in the pitch-dark sky.

There aren’t many things that show up over the sky on a night like this.

I blinked several times, thinking I’d misseen, and peered into the dark.

What emerged from the darkness was—


Dalga’s sturdy, manly butt.

"Pff—"

I couldn’t help it—I spat fire at the sheer absurdity.

『Mm. Judging by that reaction, it worked.』

At the same time, Nina’s voice reached me.

"Nina, what is this? What on earth am I looking at?"

Dalga’s butt hovered before me, keeping a steady distance as I flew.
I had no particular grudge against Dalga, but honestly, it was deeply unpleasant.

"Explaining it all mouth-to-mouth is a pain. I’m just showing you what I see."

Dalga’s butt vanished from view, and next came a giant close-up of Ai’s chest.

"Showing me what you see… how?"
"Who knows. I tried it and it worked."

This genius, honestly!!

"Anyway—this. That thing from before…"

A fingertip slid into view—probably her own, from Nina’s perspective.

"Is around here on the mountain."
"…Do not use her chest as your example."

The spot Nina indicated was the very tip of Ai’s generous swell.

"It’s easy to follow, isn’t it?"

Admittedly, it was extremely easy to follow.

Also—Nina, aren’t you staring at Ai’s chest a bit too hard?
If the phantom in front of me was truly her view, she was looking almost exclusively at it…

"Anyway, thanks. I know which way to go now."
"It doesn’t seem to be moving now, so keep going. I’ll tell you if it shifts."

With those words, the vision snapped off.

"Sensei, isn’t that it?"

"Isn’t what?"

"Look. That."
He seemed to be pointing, but I couldn’t exactly turn to follow his finger. In any case, there was still quite a bit of distance to the mountains.

I could barely make out the outline of the range; there was no way we could spot Jack Frost from this far out.
"Which one are you talking about?"

"That one, I said! You don’t see it?"
I’d been there before, so I had a solid sense of the distance to the mountains.

If it had moved far from there, Nina would have notified me.
"Look, it’s right there, so close!"

"Close? Ken, I’m flying at a pretty good clip. If it were close, we would’ve blown past it already."
With nothing for comparison and a ward to keep the wind off his back, he probably mistook our speed for leisurely—but in truth we had to be doing five or six hundred kilometers an hour.

"But it’s been right there the whole time…"

"All I can see is the mountain ahead…"
We both fell silent at the same moment.

Because we’d realized it.

Where our perceptions matched and where they didn’t.
And that Nina’s information had been wrong.
Jack Frost wasn’t on the mountain at all.

One of the two side-by-side mountains was Jack Frost.


One of the two side-by-side mountains was Jack Frost.