Editing/Standardisation: Medicine Melancholy
Original Translation: Medicine Melancholy
Wyverns.
Among the dragon subspecies, these winged creatures with dragon-like heads are the most prominent of them all.
Many species of wyverns typically formed group of males and females, living separately but not too far from each other.
However, during the breeding season, the males each build their own nest and tried to attract the females by hunting and offering food to them.
This is also the time when danger significantly increases, as the males have the tendency to kill and devour the infants other than their own offsprings, perhaps out of the primal instinct to leave descendants… Once the offsprings reach a certain age, the females gather with their young in one place and keep the males away.
All in all, wyverns mostly minded their own business, and aside from the few “strays” that are expelled from their group, they rarely come down to attack human settlements for food… or so it should have been.
Unlike regular vywerns that are usually green in color, the wyverns that were attacking Rolandia right now have bluish-white scales and feathers growing sporadically on their bodies.
They’re Frost Wyverns, native to the snowy continent of Nordglacier. Instead of breathing fire, these wyverns exhale ice and snow, creating blizzards in their wake.
The abnormal thing about this situation was that sightings of Frost Wyverns were exceptionally rare, even within Nordglacier.
According to adventurers who followed their tracks, the Frost Wyverns’ habitat lied beyond the dense coniferous forests to the west of Nordglacier, atop the harsh and frigid mountains where few humans dared to set foot.
They were never supposed to appear so close to a human settlement…
Iris
In the distance, another wyvern was engulfed by an intense beam of lightning and reduced to a charred corpse, plummeting to the ground.
The one who fired said beam was most likely Leonhardt-sama, whom I saw performing the same attack before.
Around the castle, translucent platforms seemingly conjured by Titilia-san’s magic spread in all directions, upon which the elite soldiers bravely engaged in combat even at this moment.
But… there were simply too many of those massive bodies soaring through the sky.
Unlike dragons, wyverns hunt in large packs.
Therefore, while their individual capabilities might be significantly inferior, depending on the circumstances, they can become far more troublesome than a solitary dragon.
…And that was exactly what was happening now.
The city was echoing with screams and shouts from all corners, but little could be done to calm down the panicking crowd that had gathered.
If the wyverns circling overhead were to descend upon them… undoubtedly, a massacre would occur.
For the time being, the massive ballistae stationed throughout the city kept firing warning shots to keep the wyverns at bay.
In support of that, and to minimize damage throughout the city, attack magic, primarily of the wind attribute, was launched from the sorcerers atop the walls, including Milly-san.
As I observed the wyverns with Eagle Eye, a question spiraled in my mind.
Why only the females?
Female wyverns, often staying on the ground to incubate their eggs, seem to have sturdier legs compared to males. It’s also said that many of them have developed sharper teeth and wings for intimidating or repelling predators and feeding their hatchlings.
Most of the wyverns attacking the city, if not all, perfectly matched these characteristics.
In other words… there was no male among them, unnaturally so.
“…Your Highness, watch out!”
“Kyah?!”
My train of thought was suddenly interrupted as someone grabbed me in the collar.
The next instant, one of the soldiers who had been guarding me and Milly-san atop the wall—a young one, still rather inexperienced—pulled me down to the floor.
For a moment, panic threatened to overwhelm me, but I quickly grasped the situation and somehow managed to regain my composure.
It seemed the young soldier who pulled me down was wielding a shield with his opposite arm as he held me, and just as I managed to separate from him… a fierce blizzard engulfed my surroundings.
One of the wyverns had decided to target our position and unleashed its breath upon us.
“Are you alright?! That was so reckless!”
“Don’t worry about me, just keep your head down, please!”
With a firm grip, my head, covered by the hood of my robe, was pushed down by his hand, urging me to take cover.
I considered casting “Protection”, but I had to save that spell for Milly-san in case she was attacked, so now all I could do was hope that the shield, enhanced by the “Enhanced Armor” I cast earlier, would hold. The sense of urgency left me biting my lip.
“How dare you do that to Iris-chan, you big fat lizard?!!!!”
Milly-san finished her incantation, and a brilliant lightning bolt released from the massive magic circle drawn at her fingertips pierced through the wyvern spewing the blizzard, shooting up into the sky.
The breath enveloping us stopped.
As the paralyzed wyvern began to descend, a wire with a hook at its tip seemed to entangle its neck. In the next moment, Hayato-kun leaped onto its back, swiftly climbed up, and with a short dagger in hand, severed its neck halfway.
When Hayato-kun gracefully jumped off the headless wyvern, landed perilously on top of the gate, and readied his weapon once more, I finally breathed a sigh of relief.
“Iris-chan!”
“I-I’m fine, this soldier was protecting me the entire time… Can you stand up?”
I assisted the soldier who shielded me, taking the full brunt of the blizzard, and helped him rise.
“Y-Yes, Your Highness… I can only pray that you forgive me for pushing you down so rudely earlier…”
“No, it’s not like that at all! I’m the one who was at fault for being absent-minded in this emergency situation. Your actions were far from rude!”
I shook my head, then bowed to the soldier as thanks for his help… Though, if Lenny-san were to see this, she’d probably scold me again for not acting like a lady.
“You have my utmost gratitude for saving me from that wyvern. Please, show me your wounds.”
“Y-Yes…”
With oddly robotic movements, the soldier obediently showed his arm, the one that held the shield.
Said arm… was in terrible condition.
It was completely frozen, with severe frostbite visible everywhere. The chainmail he wore was torn in places, shredded and torn all over, perhaps due to the flying ice shards.
…If not treated immediately, it may need to be amputated.
“Please stay still. I’ll treat it now.”
With his consent, I hovered my right hand over his arm.
Immediately, the ice that had frozen his arm fell away, and underneath, the injured arm, covered in wounds, regenerated back to its healthy state.
Seeing him clutch his now-healed arm as if in disbelief, I breathed a sigh of relief.
Suddenly, I felt a slight warmth on my forehead, and I pressed it with my free left hand.
“…Milly-san, what’s wrong?”
When I looked up, Milly-san was looking down at me with an expression of astonishment for some reason.
“Iris-chan, what was that you did just now…? Sorry, now’s not the time for that.”
“…?”
Brushing off her previous concern, Milly-san turned back to the direction where the fighting was still raging.
As I followed her gaze…
“Uhhh… We may have stood out a little bit too much, nya…”
Despite her light tone, Milly-san’s demeanor was tense, her gaze was fixed on the three wyverns flying in, seemingly identifying us as high-priority targets after witnessing the recent lightning strike.
A commotion erupted around us. From the queue in front of the city gate, screams of those who noticed the approaching danger echoed one after another.
“If it comes to this, I’ll go all out…”
“You can’t, nya!”
As soon as I attempted to cover the entire crowd with “Protection”, Milly-san adamantly rejected that idea.
“There’re too many people here!”
“But…!”
Below us, under the gate, people who had hurriedly taken refuge there in this crisis were crowded together.
Thanks to Leonhardt-sama’s coverup, the people of this city only knew me as a Saint who only happened to be present, and they didn’t know my true identity.
The soldiers, of course, knew that I was “Irisria”… but except for some who fought by my side before, the majority didn’t know anything beyond that.
If I were to support them with all my strength, I could reach all of them with protective magic… But to do that, I would have to expose my wings.
With so many civilians present, it’d be impossible to cover up my identity if I exposed myself.
Until now, we’d relied on mercenaries and soldiers, individuals with a well-established chain of command, and overall, they were trustworthy. That’s how I was able to give it my all.
However, it was completely different this time. If I were to reveal my identity here and now, there would be no way to prevent the news from spreading among the general population.
But… I couldn’t just sit back and watch everyone get hurt because of it.
From above, one of the wyverns assumed a posture to release its breath.
Within its would-be line of fire, I saw…
…a woman instinctively embracing what seemed to be an infant to protect it, probably her child.
“…No!”
Before I knew it, I couldn’t stand still anymore.
Gathering my resolve, I prepared to cast “Wide Protection”, and…
BOOM!
First came the resounding boom of something like a cannon going off, but amplified several times.
Then almost simultaneously, the sound of something akin to a thunderbolt striking nearby, accompanied by the eerie sensation of singed air, reverberated through the air.
“…?!”
In shock, I stared ahead.
One of the wyverns, the same one that was about to unleash its breath, had been instantly blown to smithereens by something that hit it from the side.
Perhaps wary of the unidentified attack that instantly killed their kin, the other two wyverns ceased their attack and ascended to a higher altitude.
“…Phew… Looks like I made it just in time for the good part…!”
All of a sudden, a light-hearted voice came from behind.
Turning around, at the staircase leading into the gate, there stood a figure spinning a ridiculously long, boxy rod in his hand and readjusting it on his shoulder, appearing out of nowhere.
And that rod… the smoke rising from its muzzle clearly indicated that the previous attack was his doing.
“Yo, long time no see. How have you been?”
Raising one hand, the figure casually greeted me as he walked along the top of the gate.
A man clad entirely in red.
Red coat worn haphazardly.
Red hair, as well as a bandana covering one eye, and cheeks adorned with a fire pattern.
Though flamboyantly dressed… there was a striking familiarity in his expression. In fact, I knew him well from various events we attended together.
“…Higami-san?”
The person we’d been looking for ever since we arrived in this world, who was once our superior.
The art director of “Worldgate Online” development team, Higami Kyouya… or rather, his in-game avatar, stood before me.
Author’s Notes:
At last, a reunion!
By the way, the detail about wyverns killing and devouring infants was derived from real-life animals. Asian black bears, for example.
APM - Translation 