Voidnir.
Monsters of unknown origin, with no telling where they had crawled out from.
Because of those sons of bitches, the Pernia Continent was on the verge of destruction.
“Damn it.”
Sky Island.
The last refuge left to humanity was packed with people, and the sick swarmed everywhere.
I was one of the sick as well.
My limbs were intact. But my mind was not.
“Damn it.”
Muttering the word for who knew how many times today alone, I tipped back the bottle of liquor.
I was a body that could be sent into battle at any moment, but if I didn’t drink at least this, I felt like I wouldn’t be able to endure how pathetic I was.
Apparently, watching that sight was too pathetic to bear.
The quartermaster who had taken the liquor out of the rapidly emptying storeroom said a word.
“Sir Dragon Knight, you should stop drinking. We do not know when you may have to go into battle.”
I laughed, ha.
“A Dragon Knight without a dragon. Funny joke.”
I was a Dragon Knight.
A member of the Dragon Empire’s finest combat unit, one who fought while riding a dragon.
But that meant nothing now.
The commander, my seniors and juniors, my fellow members of the 1044th cohort.
And the partner dragon who had been with me until now.
They were all dead.
There were still some whose whereabouts were unknown, but in a war like this, the missing were no different from the dead.
Here and now, on Sky Island, I was the only person from the Dragon Knight Order.
“Damn it.”
Gulp-
Muttering that damned word once again, I drank.
The dizzying rush of alcohol distorted the memories of defeat drifting through my head.
I wasn’t originally the kind of person who relied on this sort of thing. No, to be precise, I thought I wasn’t.
But everyone’s deaths had made me weak.
Especially my partner.
The death of the one who had been with me for ten years had thrown a stone block into my heart.
‘It wasn’t supposed to turn out like that.’
The battle from that time played in my mind.
The operation had been perfect.
The analysis of our forces, the placement of personnel, and the execution of tactics had all fit together like clockwork.
But then, the slight margin of error that arises in reality.
The enemy’s desperate struggle that had to be answered with improvisation.
Because I failed to deal with it, I lost my partner.
My partner had been a young dragon.
By human standards, they were over a hundred years old, but that was by human standards. In truth, he was a kid who had only just stepped into society and still needed plenty of looking after.
The fact that I had lost such a child made me feel even more shitty.
‘I should’ve done better.’
If I had been stronger and sharper.
If I had possessed the strength to overcome the crisis.
But I had none of that in me.
A scrap of a mage. An idiot who only knew how to play petty tricks.
Because of a failure like me, he died.
“…….”
Regret overflowed inside my heart.
It wasn’t liquor eating away at my body, but remorse.
“Damn it.”
That was when I was being swallowed by the past, rotting away from within.
Ding, ding, ding, ding-
In an instant, the surroundings turned red, and an emergency bell rang out.
“Raid!”
It seemed the Voidnir had come swarming in again.
The combatants on standby rushed out in a panic. I let out a sigh.
How many monsters would come this time?
Even this place, called humanity’s last refuge, might not be able to hold out much longer.
I rose from my seat.
I had lost my dragon, but I was still a combatant. Even if I wanted to stay still, they wouldn’t leave me alone.
I assembled a formula and cast detoxification magic.
It wasn’t perfect, but it could clear enough of the alcohol from my system to deal with the small fry.
Just then, a voice calling for me flowed from the magical communicator I had taken off.
<<Eugene! Eugene Brace! Are you listening? Sortie! Answer me!>>
It was the captain of the special unit, cobbled together from defeated soldiers.
“I’m listening.”
I said that, then picked up the communicator and inserted it into my ear. No doubt I would hear a few nagging remarks about whether I had been guzzling liquor again, then be sent out onto the battlefield.
That was what I was thinking.
Then unexpected words blew away the faint traces of alcohol still lingering in me all at once.
“……There’s a dragon who joined us from somewhere else?”
***
“Is this Sky Island?”
An island floating in the sky.
But there was nothing mystical about its entrance. Tents were spread everywhere, and crowds of grimy people milled about.
“Please go this way.”
After guiding the refugees who had come with me to one side, I soon encountered a soldier who had run over after hearing the news.
He was a soldier in charge of gathering and managing soldiers or combatants who had arrived from outside.
When the soldier saw my uniform, his eyes widened.
“You are from the Dragon Knight Order! Your name is……?”
“Bella.”
The fact that I had no surname seemed to make the soldier realize that I was a dragon. He glanced around, then seemed to notice something and asked carefully.
“Um, where is your rider?”
“……Dead.”
“I am sorry.”
“It’s all right.”
Simply acknowledging that fact made rage boil up inside me.
I bit my lip and controlled the anger circling endlessly through my body.
Meanwhile, perhaps because he was still happy that the combat force of a dragon had joined them, the soldier gave me a small smile and explained Sky Island’s situation to me while guiding me around.
“You will likely be assigned as a member of the aerial unit and sent into battle. I will inform the commander. And your quarters are this way…… Meals are over here…….”
The soldier kindly told me this and that…… but in truth, I barely listened to him. I merely followed him around like a puppet, answering yes, yes.
When I came to my senses, the soldier had gone somewhere and vanished.
Before I knew it, I was in the middle of a marketplace where refugees came and went.
“Give it here! That’s precious food, and there’s barely any left!”
“You bastard! That’s my spot! Get out!”
There was not enough to eat, nor enough places to lay one’s body down. Most people were fighting one another for even the smallest convenience.
Or else they had lost all strength and were crouched in a corner, eyes hollow.
And I was no different from them. A lone rock lying on the ground caught my eye.
I sat on it and stared blankly up at the sky.
Eeeee- a ringing filled my ears, and afterimages of the past began prodding at my brain.
Three days had passed since I lost my partner of ten years.
Because I couldn’t believe it, I counted the days once again.
Three days.
To be precise, 64 hours and 30 minutes ago.
That was when that child lost her life.
“This isn’t right.”
A lament slipped from my mouth.
My partner had been struck by an enemy surprise attack and died without even being able to scream.
She had been a brave person. She was a child with the courage to protect the weak and stand against the strong.
Even if she were to die somewhere, she was the kind of child who would leave something behind.
‘And yet she left so emptily.’
It was all my fault.
I should have paid more attention. I should have observed the situation more carefully.
It had been a predictable ambush. Looking back on it now, it had actually been a simple feint.
Grrrk-
The sound of my teeth grinding echoed through my skull. Anger raced through my whole body.
Stupid bitch.
If I had been more cunning and flexible, if I had possessed even a single fragment of wisdom that could predict the future.
Because of a fool with nothing but a body to her name, that child had died.
Until now, I had lived with pride as a dragon.
But now, that pride had been smashed into fragments.
Strongest living creature, my ass.
I couldn’t even protect my own partner.
Never had I felt as wretched as I did now.
“Haa…….”
I let out a sigh and was about to bury my face in both hands.
Ding, ding, ding, ding-
A bell rang from somewhere.
The murmuring lasted only a moment before terror spread along with screams.
‘Enemy raid.’
There was no need to infer anything. Not even a few dozen seconds later, the soldier who had guided me earlier came running.
“La-Lady Bella! It seems you need to sortie right now!”
In truth, I had also only just fled after leading refugees away from an assault by a large army, but it could not be helped.
Because this place was the edge of a cliff with nowhere left to retreat.
I was the last surviving dragon. The Dragon Knight Order had been annihilated, but I was still alive.
Whether I had a rider or not, if I could fight, then of course I had to lend a hand.
“Understood.”
I nodded and rose from my seat. Then I steadied my breathing and began arranging my chaotic thoughts so that I could fight.
That was when words I had never expected struck my ears.
“They say there is a surviving member of the Dragon Knight Order. He happens to be a rider who lost his partner, so perhaps you should sortie together……”
“What did you say?”
***
When Eugene and Bella found each other, they spoke at the same time.
““Why are you the one left at the end?””
The two of them were at Sky Island’s sortie grounds.
At the center of the island, the bell announcing the enemy raid was still ringing out, and everyone around them was cursing as they prepared to sortie, boarding wyverns or airships and the like in order to face the enemy swarming in.
Amid that chaos, the two quietly glared at each other.
Bella said,
“I refuse to carry a frivolous man like you.”
Eugene sneered.
“I don’t want to ride a stiff-necked dragon like you either.”
The two of them were comrades of the Dragon Knight Order’s 1044th cohort, who had enlisted in the same year. But they had never gotten along that well.
Bella disapproved of Eugene, who always slipped through everything with a sly attitude, and Eugene also did not look kindly on Bella, who disapproved of him.
Bella pinched her nose.
“You smell of alcohol…… Is this a situation where you should be drinking that garbage? You are out of your mind. You expect me to put a hollow-headed fool like that on my back?”
“I blew it away with magic anyway, so what does it matter? And what are you going to do if you don’t want to carry me? Does now look like the time to throw that kind of tantrum?”
It was not that they hated each other enough to want the other dead. But they did not like each other either.
One thing was certain. The two of them did not match.
Because they argued whenever they met, people called the two of them the rivals of the 1044th cohort.
“What are you doing?! Dragon Knight, sortie immediately! The airspace has already been seized!”
The commander’s shrill shouting came through the magical communicator fitted in Eugene’s ear.
Bella clenched her teeth with a grating sound and looked at Eugene. Eugene also faced her with an expression full of dissatisfaction.
But what could they do?
There were only two dragons and riders left.
“It cannot be helped. Get on!”
With a flash of light, her true body appeared.
She was a silver dragon whose shoulder height alone exceeded several meters.
Bella bent her foreleg and made a place for Eugene to climb up. Eugene grumbled as he climbed the rope ladder of the saddle that hung down beneath Bella’s nape.
“Damn it, why is your neck so stiff? You’re pointlessly huge.”
Bella snorted.
“That is not something to say to a lady.”
“Lady, my ass. We’re all about to die now.”
“Even if I die here, a lady remains a lady. I am different from you, who have no manners whatsoever.”
Bickering all the while, the two flew up into the sky. They only had a moment to shoot barbed words and air their complaints at each other. The instant they rose into the air, they had to face monsters rushing in from every direction.
“Kaaaargh!”
“Hsssss!”
Ones with bat wings that spat venomous stingers, ones that flew like dragonflies while swinging blades. Every direction was filled with grotesque monsters.
They were strange lifeforms collectively called Voidnir. Tired beings that the two of them had killed by the thousands, tens of thousands, until now.
“Haaaaah!”
Bella cried out and charged into the horde of Voidnir. She shredded monsters with her wings, tore into them with her teeth, and ripped them to pieces.
Startled, Eugene shouted from her back.
“Don’t just charge forward like a brute! I’m not a warrior like Monica!”
“How pathetic. Must you be so cautious even when facing mere small fry?”
Eugene finished casting.
BOOOOM!
The shell of mana he fired pierced through a cluster of monsters and flew onward.
As Eugene wove magic in succession, Bella said to him,
“There are still mountains of enemies left to deal with. Do not draw on my mana so recklessly!”
“If you’ve got time to nag, focus on what’s in front of you! More are coming!”
There was not a single thing they agreed on.
Both of them were veterans who had rolled across battlefields for years, so they somehow managed to keep fighting, but nothing about their teamwork matched.
“What are you doing, you idiot?!”
“You fool! Move properly!”
Before long, even curses began flying back and forth.
Originally, the two of them were not people this sharp. Under ordinary circumstances, even if they disliked each other, they would not have hesitated to cooperate when fighting.
But after losing their comrades in the Order and, above all, the partners with whom they had sworn to share their lives, the two were in an extremely sensitive state.
They had no room to be considerate of the other. There was no space in their hearts to accept the other.
Even so, they somehow survived that day.
The two returned to Sky Island’s landing grounds and faced each other.
“……Tch.”
“……Hmph.”
They did not know how many more battles like this they would be able to fight.
One thing was certain. As long as no other riders or dragons remained, they were each other’s final partner.
Eugene grumbled.
“This is the worst. To think I have to stay with an idiot like this until the very end.”
Bella clicked her tongue.
“I feel the same. Truly, this is unbearable.”
At the time, they thought that was the end.
Unable to understand each other, they regarded the other as a burden that would make the road to the afterlife heavier, or as the final stain left on their lives.
It had seemed as though their definition of each other’s existence had ended like that.
Until they succeeded at ‘that.’
There was a technique called Dragon Lance Charging.
It accelerated a dragon’s body, weighing several tons, to supersonic speed and drove it, along with all of its mana, into a single point at the tip of a lance.
It was a consummate technique said to be virtually unblockable.
However, there was no one who could use it in actual combat.
In effect, it was no different from ramming into the target by turning one’s own body into a cannonball.
In order to survive, the dragon and rider had no choice but to share and divide the recoil transmitted through the tip of the lance.
In other words, it was a technique that required intimate cooperation, as if a dragon and a rider, two different beings, had become one body.
Only after the number of Dragon Knights who died attempting Dragon Lance Charging because they could not withstand the recoil of the technique surpassed double digits did people say it.
That Dragon Lance Charging required resonance of the soul.
That it was a special technique usable only by those whose souls were connected, even if their bodies were separate.
The term that emerged from this was this.
Twinstella.
A soul mate called a twin star.
A title for a dragon and rider capable of Dragon Lance Charging.
And Eugene and Bella spoke at the same time.
“To think you were my ‘Twinstella’…….”
“To think you were my ‘Twinstella.’”
The two were floating in the blue sky.
Below them, a gigantic body was falling while letting out an eerie cry.
GROOOOOOOOH-
It was a monster difficult to describe in words.
An oval body like a whale’s, a carapace on its back, and countless tentacles beneath its belly.
Attached to the end of that round torso was a head with vicious teeth like a crocodile’s.
More than anything, what stood out was its overwhelming size.
From head to tail, it was over several dozen meters long. A giant beast that seemed capable of crushing an entire training ground beneath it.
People called it a Behemoth.
And in that Behemoth’s torso, a large hole had been bored in the shape of a cylinder.
It was the result of the Dragon Lance Charging Eugene and Bella had unleashed just moments ago.
Eugene watched the falling monster and let out a short breath.
His body was hot.
His vision swam from the heat, as if his head had been shoved into a furnace and pulled back out.
The sensation he had felt the moment they succeeded at the Charging, as if their souls were mixing.
The silver dragon carrying him, Bella, must have felt the same, because she remained silent as well.
Neither of them really knew what had happened to lead to this.
Only one thing came to mind.
In the midst of the fierce battle, just before the Behemoth tore them to pieces.
At the moment of absolute crisis, something had meshed together, and the two of them had moved at the same time.
It felt as though gears that had been creaking had been perfectly locked into place by some small impact.
The exhilaration of something blocked suddenly opening and the stability brought by perfect harmony mingled together, sending a shudder through his entire body.
Eugene and Bella read each other’s breathing and looked back at one another.
The person who had seemed so distant now felt impossibly close. Their bodies and minds were so intertwined that he could barely tell who was Eugene and who was Bella.
An indescribable, strangely powerful sense of unity.
But unfortunately, the two had no leisure to savor that sensation.
GRAAAAAH!
AAAAAAGH!
BOOM- CRAAAAASH!
The roars of beasts rampaging everywhere, the screams of people swept away by them.
And even the explosions bursting from the weapons of those fighting back. All of it was proof that the final desperate struggle was dying down.
Realizing that there was not much time left, Eugene sighed.
The strike just now had cleared away the monsters in the sky, but on the ground, the melee still continued.
It was obvious that the now-empty sky, too, would soon be blackened again by another swarm of flying monsters.
No, already—at the far end, he could see a black wave pushing in.
Like a swarm of locusts, a horde of black monsters was staining the horizon dark.
Monsters.
Monsters.
Monsters.
No matter where he looked, he saw nothing but monsters.
“Is this the end……?”
Bella lamented. Then she said,
“What a shame. If I had known sooner that you were my Twinstella, perhaps we could have stopped it before things became like this.”
A Dragon Knight bound by the soul was not invincible.
But if they were the strongest duo, one that made one plus one not two, but ten.
Perhaps they might have been able to change the tide before things reached this point.
But it was already too late.
Eugene and Bella had each had different partners, and after those partners died, they had merely formed a pair because each of them happened to be the final remaining dragon and rider.
Learning now that the two of them were soul mates was nothing more than a cruel trick of fate for which nothing could be done.
Just as Bella realized that and let out another sigh.
Eugene, who had been silent, suddenly opened his mouth.
“No…… There’s still a way.”
“There is still a way?”
Bella asked back as if it were absurd.
She jerked her chin toward the wave of Voidnir surging in from the distance.
“What means could possibly remain to deal with that?”
“The Regression Magic Circle.”
“…….”
Bella fell silent. After a moment, she let out a groan and spoke.
“Yes…… With that, perhaps we could attempt something. But was the temple not occupied by those monsters?”
The Regression Magic Circle was the final method proposed by Archmage Nidbolg.
Since there was no way to stop the Voidnir at this point, they would instead send someone back into the past.
Then they would make it so this never happened in the first place.
It sounded absurd, but if it were possible, it was a plan anyone would want to try in times as desperate as these.
But it had failed.
Regression magic was a massive spell that twisted the laws of the world, and activating it required an enormous amount of mana.
And while they were gathering the mana necessary to activate the Regression Magic Circle, the Dragon Temple where the magic circle had been laid out was taken by the Voidnir.
Eugene said,
“It’s a magic circle made using the ley lines, so activation itself should be possible. There hasn’t been any information that the terrain near it changed.”
“Even assuming the magic circle remains, how do you intend to get there? The Voidnir must have already taken control of the place. If it were the Archmage, perhaps it might be possible…… but did he not pass away a few days ago?”
“We can do it.”
Eugene spoke with certainty.
“If you and I truly are Twinstella.”
If the two of them truly were that, called the pinnacle of dragon cavalry, then breaking through the Voidnir army and reaching the magic circle would be possible.
But Bella was cautious.
“What about activating the magic circle? To activate it, a key is required.”
“……If it’s the key, I have it.”
Eugene reached into his chest and took something out.
A sharply shaped lump of gemstone, reminiscent of a large nail or awl, reflected the light and glittered in rainbow colors.
The key to the Regression Magic Circle.
By driving it into the magic circle, the spell would activate.
When an item Bella had thought had gone missing after Archmage Nidbolg’s death appeared in Eugene’s hand, she asked as if dumbfounded.
“Where did you get that? Surely you did not steal it?”
Eugene shook his head.
“Sir Nidbolg gave it to me. On the night before he passed away.”
“……What?”
Several days ago, on the night before the great battle against the Voidnir was scheduled.
Nidbolg, whom Eugene had thought had died, suddenly appeared in the barracks where Eugene was sleeping.
And he abruptly held the key out to the flustered Eugene and said this.
“Here. With this, you are the last. Try your best.”
There had been no other explanation.
With those words, Nidbolg vanished like a mirage, and the only thing left was the radiant jewel in Eugene’s hand.
After listening to Eugene’s explanation, Bella narrowed her eyes.
“Leaving aside the fact that you are only saying this now…… you? Did he say you?”
“Yes.”
Eugene nodded.
He gripped the key tightly and said,
“It seems Sir Nidbolg saw the future.”
“……Are you saying the current situation is the Archmage’s arrangement?”
“I don’t know for sure, but for now, that’s what we have to think.”
A brief silence lingered. There was much to consider.
But the two of them were soldiers who had served as elites of the Dragon Empire. They made their decision quickly.
“Then…… we have no choice but to try.”
“Right. We just have to take this and charge into the Dragon Temple.”
Their agreement was reached. Eugene, seated in the saddle, pulled on the reins.
“We have to move now. Their main force is here right now.”
Looking at the Voidnir filling every direction as far as the eye could see, Bella murmured,
“If we go, we will not return. Are you prepared?”
“If things stay like this, we’re all dead anyway.”
The world was already full of monsters, and the people who remained were barely enduring on Sky Island, with nowhere else to go.
They had no future anyway.
Eugene laughed.
“And you, even though you say that, don’t want things to end like this either, do you?”
Ha, Bella laughed back.
“True. That was a foolish question. We cannot let it end like this.”
Bella flapped her wings. As the dragon’s wings beat, the air burst with a boom.
The dragon with mysteriously glittering silver scales soared into the sky at explosive speed.