Chapter 3: Chance Encounter

「Hah, hah, hah!」

Breathing raggedly, the girl was running for her life through the forest.
She zigzagged, weaving between the sparsely standing trees, and ducked under the roots of a giant tree that arched wide like a gate.
The next instant, the giant tree shook and a deep crack split its trunk. Then it burst apart into splinters, and a beast of dark red-black hues appeared.

At a glance the beast resembled a bear, but its bulk easily exceeded five meters. The claws at the ends of arms as thick as logs were long and sword-sharp, and instead of fur its whole body was covered in scales like armor.
This was literal desperation. If she stopped, she would be eaten and die. If one of those thick arms swept her, the slender girl's body would be torn clean in two.

When the girl glanced back mid-run and waved her hand, the trees rustled; branches and leaves stretched to block the armored bear's path.
She was clearly manipulating the trees, and the trees moved of their own accord despite having neither bones nor muscles.

It was, unmistakably, what could only be called magic.

She was only just keeping ahead of the armored bear, whose mass dwarfed her own, thanks to this magic. But even so, the bear could shatter it with a casual swipe of a forepaw. It was nothing more than a stalling tactic.

Gradually her legs began to slow, while, as if in inverse proportion, the time it took the armored bear to smash through the trees shortened.
It seemed certain she would be caught by the armored bear sooner rather than later.

…No choice.

I spread my wings, steeled myself, and beat them. In no time the girl who'd been a speck was right before my eyes, and I dropped down there, snapping branches as I came through.

「Eek」

The girl gasped, stopped, and her legs gave out as she crumpled on the spot. Well, chased by an armored bear from behind only to have a dragon in front—it's hard to blame her.

However, to the dragon and the armored bear, the girl no longer mattered.

…It's a lot bigger than I thought.
Even accounting for it being almost bipedal and me being quadrupedal, the armored bear I was seeing up close for the first time was huge. In terms of height, it was more than two and a half times my size.

I shouldn't have come out.
Only now, I was starting to feel a little—no, let's be honest.
I regretted it from the bottom of my heart.

I've never been good with conflict to begin with. In my previous life I never even got into a single fistfight.
For my first battle to be against so mighty a lord of the forest—never mind that my body now is a dragon—that's just too much.

But— I cast a glance at the girl collapsed at my side. I've never seen a human in this world before so I can't be sure, but by the standards of my previous life she'd be twelve or thirteen, maybe. I can't just leave such a young girl—and above all, a precious magic-user—to die.

「Run, quickly.」

Keeping my eyes on the armored bear, I said that, but whether she didn't understand or simply couldn't move, the girl didn't so much as twitch. Worse, perhaps taking my voice as a threat, the armored bear lunged at me.

No, not you.

Before I could say as much, the armored bear closed the distance with terrifying speed and raised those sharp claws to strike at me.

It happened so suddenly I couldn't dodge. In fact, I reflexively squeezed my eyes shut.
That blow, swung for my neck, struck with a dull crack and snapped.

Not my neck. The armored bear's claws.

Everyone there stared, dumbfounded, at the bear's claws. I hadn't done anything. Quite simply, those claws couldn't withstand the armored bear's own brute force and the hardness of my scales.

The first to snap back from stupefaction was, as expected, the armored bear.

It clamped both arms onto my shoulders as if embracing me. I'd heard that in most wild animals, not just bears, the strongest muscles are in the jaws. Seeing that slashing with claws didn't work, it immediately switched to its most powerful attack.

「Wah!」

Faced with a king of the forest that unhesitatingly chose the best move, all I could do—pathetic as it was—was let out a yell.

And yet the armored bear yelped and jerked away from me in a panic. Its chest area was scorched, trailing white smoke. I was briefly confused—what had happened?—but understood at once. My breath had hit it.

In the fiction I'd seen in my previous life, dragon breath was treated as a dragon's special finishing move, but in the body I've been reincarnated into, that isn't an accurate understanding.

It's not a technique or anything. The act of breathing itself is high-temperature flame. Just as humans inhale oxygen and exhale carbon dioxide, my mother and I exhale fire. Simply by breathing normally, flames leak from our mouths. That seems to be what dragons are.

However, for that massive armored bear to shriek and leap back, the fire inside me must be far hotter than I had thought.

If just breathing can deal damage, even I might be able to manage this. I took a step to close the distance, and the armored bear dropped to all fours, readying a charge. Pride of a king, perhaps—it had no intention of retreating despite the wound.

As the armored bear came barreling in like a bullet, I pursed my lips and blew a sharp breath. I'd long since confirmed that doing so let me spit a thin, long flame. Back when I'd first been reincarnated as a dragon, I'd played around with fire in all sorts of ways.

But—

I had no idea it had this much power. I'd never breathed it at a living creature before. As the savory smell of the armored bear—its upper body charred pitch-black and its head blown away without even bone left—hit me, I shuddered at the result I'd wrought.

When I glanced aside, the blonde girl was staring at the armored bear's corpse, trembling like a leaf. Did she think she was next? Seeing how her face had gone deathly pale, I found myself growing calm instead.

Noticing my gaze, the girl turned her eyes toward me, and naturally, we found ourselves staring at each other.

『D…did you save me…?』

Suddenly, the girl opened her mouth and said something to me. Her tone sounded like a question, but as expected it was in words I'd never heard, and I had no idea what she was saying.

「Don't be afraid. It's all right。」

Speaking slowly, I lowered my face to the ground. In a human body you can lower your weapon to show you mean no harm, but unfortunately in my current state I'm like a walking arsenal. At least I could press my jaw to the earth so my fangs and flames wouldn't show.

『Looks like… you saved me.』

As she spoke words similar but slightly different from before, the girl inched cautiously closer to me. It was then I finally noticed she was a little different from the humans I knew.

Peeking through her waist-length golden hair, the tips of her ears stood sharply pointed.
Her face, still retaining plenty of childishness, was almost unbelievably well-formed.

White skin and blue eyes like a Northern European, a high-bridged nose, lips as delicate as petals. A slender, willowy frame and long, thin limbs—young as she was, she had the look of a top model. She was somewhat grimy from that whole flight, but such things couldn't begin to hide the beauty overflowing from her.
She looked like the race that often appeared in fiction in my previous life—an elf.

I deliberately didn't answer her words and waited to see what she'd do.

『Warm…』

She gently set her palm against the tip of my nose and murmured a single word.

「“Attakai?”」

I echoed her word, trying it out.

『Mm-hm, that's right. You're really warm.』

She smiled brightly.
That was my first encounter with her—Nina.