Chapter 16: Progress

Dragon Era 652

Sawa-sawa—the rustle of leaves in the wind.
From far off comes the gotogoto of the millstone turning.
Faint on the air, the toasty smell of freshly baked bread.

I deepen my focus.
Patapata—the wingbeats of birds flying overhead.
Lively, far-off voices of people talking.
Ants’ feet pressing the earth make no sound—only fine vibrations reach me.

My senses sharply catch and grasp each mote of dust drifting in the air, even each grain of sand composing the soil beneath my feet.

Then, without warning, a foreign body bursts forth. A small clump of flame pops into empty space; in an instant its heat output multiplies massively and it’s hurled at me.

「Disappear.」

But just before it hits me, it obeys my spell and disappears.

「Aah, come on! I really thought it’d work this time!」

Tia appears out of the void and grinds her teeth in frustration.
She’s been practicing ambush attacks out of Concealment.

Her tiny body is hard to spot to begin with, easy to hide.
On top of that, once she hides herself with magic, even a dragon’s senses can’t find her.

「No, this time I had no idea where you were right up until the instant the flame came out. And that’s only because I knew it was coming and was focusing. In a real fight there’d be nothing I could do.」
「Sensei zones out, so that’s about right.」

I try to be supportive, and she shoots back something harsh.
Which is also proof of how earnest she is.

「Just you watch...」

Suu—Tia’s figure blurs away. It’s not just that she’s become invisible.
Even the faint flutter of her wings, the light sweet scent—every sign of her presence is gone. What started as a simple hard-to-see trick, she has honed this far chantless; the effort that took is no ordinary thing.

...But.

「Found you, Tia-chan!」

A small shadow darts past and grabs up the empty air with both hands.

「I keep telling you every single time—don’t grab so hard!」

Tia pops into view and yells at the little girl clutching her—Yutaka and Light Blue’s daughter, Yuuka.

「I wonder how Yuuka keeps knowing where Tia is.」
「Why doesn’t Onii-chan know?」

Her guileless eyes throw the question back at me, and I’m at a loss for an answer.
It’s not that I’m especially dull.
At least in this matter, Rin, Ruful, Yutaka, Light Blue, even Nina are the same.
The only one who can find Tia once she vanishes is Yuuka.

Whether it’s some inborn talent of hers or has to do with being a half-elf, I have no idea—but it’s possible there are others besides Yuuka who can pierce Concealment like that.

And so today again Tia hones her magic.

「Ahh—you were over here!」

Light Blue comes panting up.

「Geez! I always tell you—stop wandering off on your own!」
「Yuuka, did you sneak out again?」

I ruffle her hair with a wry smile; she tilts her head, a question mark on her face.

「Just a second! I only looked away for a single second! I swear—there were Water Apple blossoms and I thought, oh, it’s that season already, and looked—and when I glanced back she was gone!」
「There, there. It’s okay—I get it.」

Yuuka is frighteningly good at slipping through people’s openings.
Barely five, she’s already mastered the Sword Clan technique of circling into an opponent’s blind spot in the instant their attention wavers, and does it unconsciously.

Unfortunate, perhaps, that the target it gets used on is mostly Light Blue.
If it were just sneaking off to play that’d be one thing, but she’ll blithely wander into dangerous woods, so you can’t relax. I have this feeling that one of these days she’ll casually go and bag an armored bear.
Yutaka wasn’t especially blessed with talent, but Yuuka is without question a prodigy.

「Well, if she was with Sensei and the others I can relax, so fine... She never listens anyway!」

Just as Nina foretold, motherhood’s baptism has toughened the former beauty up. Personality aside, she used to give off a more delicate impression; now Light Blue carries quite the air of a mother.
Well, even from the side it’s clear Yuuka’s a handful to raise. She’s an honest, good kid, but she’s too active and so fearless she does things that make our hearts stop. Spend every hour with that and you’re bound to toughen up.

「Ah, it’s Ruful-chan.」

Whether she understands her mother’s feelings or not, Yuuka, at her own pace, picks up Ruful’s footsteps and twirls around.

「Rin-chan’s there too. Heeey!」

Spotting the mermaid girl drifting in the air alongside the giant girl, Yuuka waves both hands vigorously.

Hmm. It’s not that her five senses surpass a dragon’s.
I noticed Ruful and Rin before Yuuka did. Ruful’s footsteps stand out—her body is huge, after all.

Rin flies with her tail undulating as if swimming, so there’s no wing sound and she’s hard to notice, but not completely silent. In dragon form I can catch it just fine.

「Sensei, we finally opened up the forest!」
「Oh, at last!」

I cheer for Ruful, face black with mud, hefting a huge shovel and pickaxe. She’s become a full-on civil‑engineering girl.

After giving up on opening the waterway with dragon breath, she ended up steadily turning over the earth, laying brick, and building the road by hand.

Elven magic can easily manipulate branches and leaves, but it seems moving roots sunk firmly into the earth is quite difficult. I feel like the Elder used to do it casually long ago, but Nina said ruefully it’s still beyond her.

So most of Ruful’s work is muscle. Day after day she steadily fells trees, digs out roots, and widens the path—plain, plodding labor. And this big yet still childlike girl did it without a word of complaint.

「If there’s a road through the forest, the four-legs (centaurs) can pass easily. Trade will move along. This is a tremendous achievement.」
「But it wasn’t just me—everyone in the village, and Rin‑chan and Luka‑chan, helped too.」

When I praised her without reservation, Ruful answered, shyly smiling.

「If I could transform into a dragon like Sensei, I’d have finished a lot sooner.」

As she says it, Rin uncaps the water skin at her waist.

「This is the most I can do right now.」

The water that drips out doesn’t touch the ground; it writhes in the air, spreads, and changes shape.
Forelegs tipped with sharp claws. Thick, weighty hind legs. A face sprouting long horns and fangs, a long neck. A pair of bat-like wings, down to each fine individual scale, all recreated.

It’s a splendid dragon of water. Aside from being colorless and transparent, it’s so precise and faithful you could mistake it for the real thing—crafted like a work of art.

「No, that’s plenty, isn’t it?」
「Not at all. It’s way weaker than Sensei, it can’t fly, and it can’t even breathe fire. Besides, I want to become a dragon myself—I’m not trying to make one.」

Puffing her cheeks in displeasure, Rin—rarely—lets out a bit of a gripe.
Putting aside Yutaka and Light Blue, busy with childcare, Tia and Ruful have achieved solid results in their research themes. But even ten years in, Rin’s research still shows no path forward.

Well, the goal of becoming a dragon does feel too high to begin with. There is a case where it’s been done, so in principle it shouldn’t be impossible, but...

「Hmm... then why don’t we go ask, for reference, how to transform into a dragon?」

A case where it’s been done—that phrase sparks an idea, and I speak.

「Ask who?」
「The pioneer.」