Adventure Awaits! Huzzah! 30

Himmel could feel as his sword sank deeper and deeper into the dragon.

He could also feel as his sword began being pushed away. The Manakete’s transformation wasn’t slow, and as he began to grow, Himmel naturally began being pushed back. Nonetheless, Himmel tried his best to twist his sword in deeper, trying to do as much damage as possible.

He didn’t know if he would be able to cut the monster at all once his transformation was complete, so this opportunity was one that could not be wasted.

“Tch…!” Eventually, Himmel was finally forced into jumping back. His sword had almost gotten stuck on the monster’s hide, but thankfully he had grasped it with enough strength to avoid a fate that would have definitely meant death.

“Filthy crusader!” The dragon roared, the sound alone being enough to shake the whole castle. “I’ll drain that tainted Naga blood of yours with my own fangs and claws!” Despite saying that…

And despite being big enough to destroy the room they were in… Himmel did not feel very afraid of his threats. Mostly because the dragon had a massive bleeding wound on the side of his body, massive enough that he would probably die without Himmel doing anything as long as the dragon didn’t get medical assistance.

So if nothing else, Himmel wouldn’t be going alone to hell. “Come and do it then.” He braced himself for the dragon’s attacks.

Not that Himmel knew of any sort of defense that would work against a dragon. Kris had taught him to fight soldiers and mages, not giant lizards of destruction. 

The dragon tensed his body and prepared himself to lunge at Himmel. One would normally think such an action would be impossible for a beast that could barely fit in the room, but the walls around it might as well have been made out of paper for the monster. So its size was really no issue even inside of a building.

But in the end, the Manakete never managed to make its attack. It wasn’t just fighting Himmel after all.

Alm dashed at it, and hit the beast’s scales with as much force as he could. His sword wasn’t of high quality, and Alm was very much aware of this, so he didn’t even attempt to stab the monster. Instead he held his own sword like a hammer, and hit the Manakete with its pommel. 

The dragon’s scales might as well have been armor, and historically hammers had always been great at dealing with such things.

Then there was Celica. She knew how to use a sword as well, but instead of trying to do the same trick as Alm, she opened her palm and used Fire Magic against the dragon. Typically such a thing wouldn’t do much, but Celica was no common mage.

The dragon ended up roaring once again, this time from pain. “You bastard…!” It gave up on lunging pretty quickly, instead it decided to breathe fire at Himmel.

Hundreds of thoughts quickly went through Himmel’s head.

I wonder if that dragon is really as experienced as he claimed. I mean, this guy is being overwhelmed by three teenagers. — Am I going to die here? There was that prophecy… — At least this time it was Alm who got us in this mess, not me. Though then again, I did attack the bastard. — Hey, are dragons really as tough as I believed? I think if this wasn’t such an enclosed area I wouldn’t be scared at all. Oh well, I guess the dragon would start flying then—

All completely useless thoughts. It was just Himmel trying to escape the situation. After all, even if he was an adult, he didn’t have much experience fighting giant monsters. But… even if his mind had frozen, his body had not.

By instinct… an instinct that had been built onto his body after years and years of training, Himmel raised a hand, one that was not carrying his sword, and fought fire against fire. Using Fire Magic to counter the dragon’s fire breathing.

Normally such a scenario would probably just mean the fire would hit both people. This wasn’t just normal fire however, this was magic. And so, perhaps due to some property of it, the two attacks actually clashed against one another.

Himmel immediately saw that he had not died, and pushed all his power onto that spell, blasting through the dragon’s own attack. He did not sit idle afterwards either, instead he jumped towards the beast, and stabbed its head with his Silver Sword.

Sigurd truly had fine tastes when it came to weapons… or perhaps Arvis did, because the Silver Sword penetrated cleanly through the Manakete’s skull. It was enough to where Himmel began wondering if earlier he had made a mistake by retreating instead of just killing the dragon right there and then.

“Maybe Manaketes aren’t all that strong…?” He mumbled those words out, still not sure he believed what he had done.

The dragon did not respond. It was hard to do so when you were dead.

Had… Had Celica’s prophecy been wrong this whole time? Or maybe Himmel had just challenged fate and won…? Or maybe this was just not the right dragon. Whatever it was, Himmel would live to fight another day.

Now he just had to run away from this city before they got arrested and executed… Something that he had done in the past. He had to be the dumbest motherfucker in the entire world, there was just no way—!

“Seliph!” Deirdre rushed towards him. It must have been unbelievably scary to face off against a dragon while holding no weapons, so she sounded absolutely panicked. “Are you okay!? Did that thing hurt you!?”

Now brought back to reality by her shouting, Himmel began pulling his sword from the Manakete’s skull. “Yeah, I’m fine—”

Deidre interrupted him, hugging him. “Please be okay…! Please be okay…!” He didn’t really feel all that okay.

Mostly because being suddenly tackled by this woman felt weirdly scarier than facing off against the Manakete in the first place. Himmel didn’t really have the mental energy to push her off or something like that though, so he would just have to take it.

Well, he had bigger fish to fry anyways. “Like I said, I’m fine. We should all book it away from here as fast as possible though.” Invading a castle was supposed to be really hard, so how hard would it be to run away from a castle?

And they didn’t have to just worry about the castle either. There was also the fact that the city was closed off to worry about… And that was not even mentioning that differently from Zofia, Himmel didn’t exactly have a good grasp of the geography of Archanea.

There were only two paths he could pick, going North which would lead to… somewhere. Or try and find a ship, which he would definitely not manage in such a short time. Maybe he could try and rush the Captain into taking them to Jugdral?

And speaking of the Captain, he needed to regroup with the brats. Julia, Clair, Faye, and Kliff were… somewhere. Oh, and there was Epona too… 

Maybe he should just leave them behind? It’s not like they were complicit in this crime, so maybe it was better to abandon them so they could keep being innocent. Though then again, considering they had all come in as a group, maybe that was a foolish dream in the first place.

Celica nodded. “Right! But if anyone is wounded, please speak up! I’ll heal as fast as possible!” The advantages of being a priestess.

Alm, being the only other one who had fought, raised a hand… it was bleeding. “I cut myself a little bit. It’s no issue though—”

“Shut up. Give me that thing here before it gets infected!” Celica basically yanked him to her side.

It was a good thing she had done so, because if she hadn’t, Himmel would have. Alm may have tried to play it off, but the cut actually looked pretty nasty. Himmel was guessing Alm had left the blade slide when he used it as a hammer, and basically sliced himself… Well, considering it had disoriented the Manakete pretty badly, it had probably been a worthy trade.

As Celica healed Alm, Deirdre kept checking over Himmel.

He raised an eyebrow. “W-what are you doing? I already told you that I’m fine—”

“I know, but sometimes adrenaline can make someone ignore their wounds. Sigurd did it all the time.” …Fair enough.

An awkward atmosphere was established. They needed to run away as fast as possible, but they couldn’t while Alm was getting healed. Something that didn’t take long, definitely less than a minute, but even so… for Himmel it felt like an eternity of worrying.

And in the end, a minute proved to be too long.

“What’s going on here!” Soldiers broke through one of the doors, entering the dining room like a colony of well organized ants.

It was impressive that they had mobilized so fast. Himmel could only guess they had already been in stand-by just in case before the fight had even started. Or maybe the soldiers of Grust just made the knights of Zofia look like dumb babies. That was very much possible too.

Himmel awkwardly positioned himself to a fight, he said awkwardly because Deirdre was still holding onto him, as if she could protect him from a squad of dangerous soldiers. Naturally, he wasn’t the only one who got ready for a fight. Alm and Celica prepared themselves too.

Though if Himmel was being honest, he would rather not fight. He didn’t know these soldiers, he didn’t want to cut down random grunts. Still, he would choose his own life over the lives of strangers.

And then the soldier on the front, the one who had led the charge, sheathed his weapon. “Someone finally killed that bastard! It was about time!” Huh?

While Himmel was confused, the man walked ahead of him, completely ignoring the idea of attacking Himmel at all, and instead… spit on the Manakete’s corpse.

This was not going to go how Himmel thought it was going to go. Hopefully that would be a good thing.



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Back when Himmel had let his anger get the best of him, and killed the king, he had received some support from the priestess that he had saved. It hadn’t been anything too crazy, a priestess did not have enough power to save someone who had slain a king, but her silence alone had already been meaningful.

Now, Himmel could only guess that he was in a similar situation.

The commander hadn’t just spat on the dragon’s corpse, he had also taken the dragon’s seat on the table, and now was comfortably resting his feet on top of the table… Except the table had been more or less completely destroyed. The “table” the commander was resting his feet upon was the Manakete’s corpse.

Himmel gulped. “So… we are free to go?” And there was the part that made him more afraid than anything.

This commander was just letting them go, as if they hadn’t just killed the governor of the area. Was this some kind of weird trap? It had to be, right?

The commander nodded. “Yep. I’m guessing you guys are with the rebels?” They definitely weren’t! “Normally I would need to have everyone here hanged, but…” He glared at the dragon’s corpse. “Since you guys did what everyone wanted to do anyway, I have to pay you guys back. Grust may once have been the nation of thieves and barbarians, but even those have their own pride.”

“...” Himmel did not know what to say, it sounded way too good.

Celica pounced on the offer though. “We will definitely accept that… but is it okay for us to just lounge around the city?”

The commander shook his head. “Nah. It’s a pain, but Dolhr does want reports from their dragons here and there… I give it a month before anyone realizes what happened.” He snorted. “Normally it would take way less time, but this bastard over here liked shutting himself off for days, since he didn’t want to associate himself with humans. So people won’t raise an eye at him disappearing for a while.”

Celica raised an eyebrow. “Even if that is the case, would you and your man not get blamed for this?”

The commander shrugged. “Nah. When I say the Manakete liked to shut himself off to not associate himself with humans, I meant it. There had been times where people went weeks without seeing his ugly mug. If they were lucky.”

The commander then looked at the roof, his eyes widened as he remembered something. “Oh, and don’t worry about my man snitching either. Most of them either hated the guy, or won’t go through the bother of reporting this because the most Dolhr would ever give is a mocking comment about how they are just doing their job.” The man sighed. “Honestly, if there were some kind of monetary reward in the cards this would have gone very differently…”

Well, as far as Himmel was concerned this was going very differently than literally any possibility that he had ever conceived off.

Had Gallerius just been that hated? Now that Himmel thought about it, he had been warned about the guy by common soldiers, so he definitely wasn’t popular. Considering the Manakete had been acting as a governor, and presumably kicked off the family that used to rule before him… Yeah, there was no way anyone here could have ever liked him.

Still, this sounded way too good.

Good enough that Himmel felt as if he had to speak up. “So that’s it? You believe us to be rebels, but you will let us go with no strings attached? There’s no way—”

The commander waved him off. “Believe what you want to believe. If you want to start a fight, be my guest.” The man frowned. “You guys will probably just slaughter my soldiers though. No one here can stand up against a descendant of Anri, princeling. Ain’t no Camus around.”

Descendant of…!?

Huh, the Manakete had roared about Naga’s blood. Roared so loud that everyone in the castle had probably heard it. Himmel had blue hair, a exotic trait that was also carried by the royalty of Altea.

Himmel finally understood what was going on. “You… Are you a secret rebel? Is that it?” That had to be why he was being so lenient.

Let’s say Himmel was indeed of the royal family of Altea… In that case, it only made sense to let him go as a rebel. As someone who could wield the legendary Falchion, he was one of the few people in this world who would be able to stand up to Medeus. There was no way a rebel would ever kill him.

Himmel couldn’t wield Falchion of course, and he came from a completely different troublesome royal family, but the commander must not have known that. Now that Himmel thought about it, he doubted Gallerius had bothered to tell anyone why he had invited them to this banquet.

Their lineages were still a secret. That was good. 

The commander scowled. “I’m no rebel, but… I’m a true child of Grust. Working alongside dragons? I’m fine with that, it makes my stomach sick, but I can handle it. Bowing my head to them though? That’s going way too far. That cowardly king of ours might have forgotten where his blood comes from, but I have not.”

Ah, so it was that, huh… Just like the man who Himmel had watched being executed.

It felt like he had just stumbled onto a world of politics that he knew nothing about. No, not stumbled, crashed through it made more sense considering he just killed the governor of a city. Which was a step down from a king of course, but at least Himmel had come from Zofia.

Meanwhile he had no connections to Archanea.

Himmel narrowed his eyes. “I see. Then… we thank you for your kindness.” There was no way he was going to correct the guy and tell him he wasn’t a descendant of Anri.

The man grinned. “And I thank you for your sword arm. Seriously, how the fuck did you even cut this thing?” He motioned to the Manakete's corpse. “Bastard felt like he was immortal… I once hired a maid to poison his food, and the guy didn’t even feel it.” He tried killing Gallerius in the past!? “Actually, that’s not right. He did realize it happened, he just ignored it.”

Alm interjected with stuttering. “H-he did? Then what happened to the maid?”

“Got eaten.” Ah. “Anyways, I’ll be letting you guys go now. I’ll also tell the soldiers at the walls of the city to let you guys pass through, assuming you guys want to leave by foot.” He put a hand on his chin. “Oh, and do try covering your faces. That one month will become a lot less if people recognize you all as the fighters involved in the Arena incident.”

Celica immediately stepped onto Alm’s foot, simply being reminded of his fuck up had pissed her off. “Yes, that is a tremendously good idea, sir.” 

“Ouch…! Why though!?” Such a dumb comment merited no response.

They… they were really going to get away with this, huh? And not only that, but they were kind of getting rewarded for it too. Himmel didn’t know if they would leave the city by foot, but it was nice to have another option opened to them.

You know, it felt kind of unfair that when Himmel screwed up he ruined everybody’s lives, but when Alm did it, everything got better.

Surely Himmel could take a bit of the credit for this!? He contributed a little bit, right!? Then again, considering the face Celica was making towards Alm, maybe it was good if the boy kept all the credit. Himmel didn’t want any part in that.

So… things were looking up? Maybe?



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AN: The other day I dreamed that the Genealogy Remake had been announced, but it was only coming to the Wii U.

This is how downbad I am Nintendo. Please announce that game already, I know you guys are working on it, my mind can't take it anymore.