Dragon Knights are the Dragon Empire’s strongest military group and elite forces capable of strategic deployment.
In a word, they are the highest-grade manpower and dragonpower responsible for the defense of the nation.
Because of that, the welfare provided to Dragon Knights is exceedingly generous.
High pay is a given, and above all, they are granted luxurious mansions built on prime land in Alframe, the capital of the Dragon Empire.
Naturally, the state also hires butlers and servants to manage the house and attend to their convenience.
“It feels new even seeing it again.”
Eugene Brace, the legitimate son of the House of Count Brace, murmured that as he looked at the mansion standing before him.
As he slowly looked around, he saw a beautiful garden arranged by a skilled gardener.
Fish frolicked in a pond made by drawing in a waterway, and neatly trimmed trees stood here and there.
Inside the gate of the mansion, which looked to be four stories tall, more than ten maids were busily coming and going.
Even the carpet laid inside was said to cost as much as a year’s salary from when he had worked as a researcher at the Magic Tower.
Eugene whistled.
“I hope I get to live here for a long, long time this time.”
A Dragon Knight’s term of service was ten years. But in his life before he returned, Eugene had not lived there for ten years.
Because during his service, the war against the Voidnir intensified, and the capital became a barren plain.
Eugene watched the servants busily carrying the moving luggage.
Beside Eugene’s belongings, stacked haphazardly like a heap of trash, he could see the bundle Bella had brought.
Unlike Eugene’s, her belongings were modest, but one bundle stood out.
When he quietly looked inside, it was full of cute stuffed dolls.
‘They’re promotional goods for travelers from the Rudolph Merchant Company.’
There was no one in the Order who did not know that collecting them was Bella’s hobby.
‘Is Hiruka in here too?’
Hiruka was the name of Bella’s cherished comfort doll.
He remembered that until the very last moment when they performed Lance Charging together, a pony-shaped doll with gray fur and a golden crown had been hanging there.
“…….”
Eugene stared silently down at the bundle.
What would happen if he tossed an ember in there?
Would she burst into tears, explode with a bang, or show him something else interesting?
Then,
“What are you doing?”
Bella looked at Eugene as if she found him suspicious.
“Hm? Nothing.”
Eugene played innocent, but Bella did not let go of her suspicion.
She quietly moved her feet and slipped between Eugene and the bundle. She looked like a mother protecting her daughter from a pervert.
“Do not turn your eyes this way.”
“I haven’t done anything yet, so why are you acting like this?”
“Yet? Did you say yet?”
The two glared at each other and growled as usual.
Looking at the two of them, whispering voices came from behind.
“They look passionate this early in the morning…….”
“As expected of Twinstella. They must be dating, right?”
Angered by the ridiculous conversation, Bella turned around.
The servants who met her fearsome dragon visage flinched in surprise and bowed their heads.
“Shh, shhh!”
“P-pretend to work!”
Watching them focus on organizing the moving luggage again, Bella sighed.
“Damn it. I keep hearing strange rumors.”
“What does it matter? We were acknowledged as Dragon Knights, so it’s fine.”
Eugene shrugged.
Just as he said, the two had received Commander Algina’s permission, formed an official partnership, and succeeded in joining the Dragon Knight Order.
They were mixed-sex Dragon Knights born for the first time in a full 700 years.
Their sudden appearance brought voices of dissatisfaction from many places, but that lasted only a moment. When it was said that the two were Twinstella, all that accumulated dissatisfaction turned into expectation.
A handsome man and a beautiful woman, said to be connected by the thread of their souls. Of course people would talk.
Whenever the two went somewhere together, the sound of people whispering came nonstop from every direction.
Things like they were a match made in heaven, or that they might already have a child.
Those stories seemed to be quite stressful for Bella.
Looking at her fed-up expression, Eugene clicked his tongue.
Knowing that telling her not to mind would be useless, he simply turned the conversation elsewhere.
“The servants will handle the organizing anyway. Let’s go do what we need to do.”
“……Fine.”
“When is our training camp entry date?”
New fledglings who had only just entered the Order were recognized as Dragon Knights only after receiving several months of grueling training, commonly called ‘Hell Week.’
That was something everyone knew.
Even so, there was no way Eugene truly did not know when the training camp entry date was.
Judging that there must be meaning hidden in his words, Bella briefly considered them, then soon turned to Eugene as if she had realized something.
“In two days.”
“Then we only have time now.”
Bella nodded.
“Yes. We must meet the Archmage today.”
It was time to go meet Archmage Nidbolg, the one who had sent Eugene and Bella back to the past.
***
Nidbolg was in the Rainbow Magic Tower at the western edge of the Dragon Empire.
Even by horse, it was a distance that would take several months, and if one was unlucky enough to meet the wrong season, it could take more than half a year.
Therefore, if they wanted to go there and return within two days, they needed a dragon’s flight ability.
Because the mansion provided by the Order belonged to Dragon Knights, its grounds had an open space where a dragon could take flight or rest in true body form.
After finishing her transformation in the open space, Bella rumbled in her throat and lifted her head.
GRRRRR-
Her silver scales glittered in the sunlight and flowed down like ripples.
A long neck, a supple, flexing tail.
And even the enormous wings attached to her back.
Her shoulder height alone was three meters, and her body length exceeded ten meters. When Bella spread her wings as if stretching, the four-story mansion beside her trembled.
Because she had received basic equipment as soon as she joined the Order, a large saddle sat on Bella’s back.
It was a magical saddle that stayed compressed and hidden while the dragon was in human form, then expanded with her when she brought out her true body.
Eugene grabbed the rope ladder hanging down and climbed onto Bella. Then he pulled the ladder up and tied it so it would not flap around and get in the way, checking Bella’s body condition from the saddle.
‘Originally, she felt like her entire body was a lump of muscle.’
Compared to when he had ridden her before, she felt distinctly slender.
“You’re still a bit thin. Are you lacking exercise?”
Bella turned her long head and shot Eugene a sideways glare.
“I have not finished growing yet, you fool. Muscles are not something you simply build. They must develop naturally in accordance with the body…….”
Having reached the level of a master when it came to training the body, she lectured Eugene for quite a while, bringing up all sorts of technical terms.
Eugene, a mage, blocked his ears as if he was sick of it, and Bella furrowed her brow and sighed.
“Flight permission?”
As a nation that possessed the Dragon Knight Order, the Dragon Empire managed territorial rights even over the wide-open sky.
If one flew around recklessly just because one could fly, one could be shot down by magical attacks from the ground. Perhaps they might even encounter other Dragon Knights patrolling the airspace on the way.
Eugene nodded.
“I got it in advance. Let’s go.”
“Understood.”
Bella answered primly. Then she flapped her wings and shot up into the sky.
***
It took the two of them half a day to reach the Rainbow Magic Tower.
The Magic Tower stood tall, carved out of a mountain peak. The wall surface, which looked like a rock face, was mixed with metal and gleamed in strange colors like oil floating on water. That was why the structure had been named the Rainbow Magic Tower.
Eugene collapsed at the entrance of the Magic Tower.
“Hah- haah!”
Looking down at him, Bella clicked her tongue.
“I am the one who flew all the way here while flapping my wings the entire time, so why are you pretending to be exhausted?”
“Hah, hah! I-I’ve only just come out of the Magic Tower……! I-I’m going to die!”
Only after becoming a Dragon Knight had he continued training, built up his body, and increased his stamina, but Eugene’s current body was terribly fragile.
Riding a dragon was far harder than it sounded. For example, it was similar to sitting on a rope strung over a sheer cliff.
The wind blew fiercely, and his body shook as though he would fall off at any moment.
To avoid falling, he had to clamp the saddle with his thighs, and even that was extremely difficult.
Magic could assist him only for a while. A long flight had truly drained Eugene’s stamina to the bottom.
He had no feeling in his crotch. It was not a battlefield where his life hung in the balance, so there was no need to scrape together what little grit he already lacked.
Eugene groaned.
“Stop exaggerating and get up.”
“I-I can’t get up!”
Good grief. Bella sighed and knelt.
She hauled up Eugene’s limp body and supported him.
When their bodies pressed together, Eugene’s nose twitched.
Bella’s body gave off an incredibly pleasant scent.
He had no idea how she had trained, but her body, muscled all the way to the brain, was softer than a blanket.
On top of that, once the scent of sweat from flying all the way here mixed with her natural body scent, it gave off an unbelievably alluring fragrance.
It was the first time he had been this close to Bella in human form.
Before he realized it, Eugene blurted out,
“You smell really good. What perfume do you us— Gack!”
Eugene, who had been struck mercilessly in the side, spat out a choked breath.
“You rude man.”
Bella grabbed the half-unconscious Eugene by the nape and dragged him into the Magic Tower like a sack.
“A-are you all right?”
The staff who received guests ran over in surprise.
Bella held out the insignia of the Dragon Knight Order to them, and she was immediately guided to a reception room together with Eugene.
Eugene was thrown onto the sofa in the reception room.
It was about thirty minutes later that he rose from his seat.
Someone had kindly placed cold water on the table beside him. After he drank it, he felt his mind clear a little.
“You are awake.”
Bella was sitting on the sofa opposite him with her legs crossed. She filled an empty cup with water in a natural motion and said,
“A problem has occurred.”
“What problem?”
“They say the Archmage has gone missing.”
“……What?!”
The moment he heard that, his mind snapped awake as if cold water had been poured over him.
Nidbolg was a dragon who had stayed in the Rainbow Magic Tower for centuries.
He had not been living in seclusion somewhere. He had remained active the entire time and met people from outside.
Eugene, too, had often come and gone from the Rainbow Magic Tower for paper presentations and research, so even before he became a Dragon Knight, he had spoken with Nidbolg several times.
As Eugene remembered it, at this point in time, there had been no incident where Nidbolg had gone missing or anything of the sort.
‘Something’s gone wrong.’
Was it the influence of regression magic, or some other unexpected variable?
Eugene hurriedly rose from his seat.
“Where are you going?”
“To meet an older friend I know. If it’s him, he may know what happened.”
The one Eugene sought was a mage named Fram Ederson.
He was someone Eugene had met at the Magic Tower Grand Competition, where Magic Towers competed by presenting one another’s research results, and they had become fairly close.
And he was also Nidbolg’s disciple.
***
“Brother Fram, what in the world happened?”
At Eugene’s question, Fram wore a troubled expression.
“I don’t know the exact details either. From what I heard, he suddenly disappeared about a week ago.”
A week ago.
Eugene and Bella looked at each other.
A week ago was the day of the Dragon Master Assembly.
In other words, the point in time when Eugene and Bella returned to the past.
‘Stay quiet for now.’
When Eugene spoke with his eyes, Bella nodded.
After quickly organizing his thoughts, Eugene bluffed lightly to Fram.
“The Archmage disappeared, but I’m surprised there hasn’t been an uproar.”
“He is an eccentric person, after all. People are simply assuming that is how he is. Apparently, a hundred years ago, he suddenly left and came back after several years too.”
That was true. Who would worry about a mage who had lived for centuries? He was a monster capable of causing landslides and calling tsunamis with a single gesture.
Eugene acknowledged that point too.
“There are even people who are happy about it. They say they have finally escaped from that demon’s clutches.”
Most of Nidbolg’s disciples became Archmages who left their names in history.
But that was not a reward given without any price.
Nidbolg was a mage with greater academic passion than anyone, and he was sincere about the study of magic. The fact that he was a dragon who had studied magic for centuries without ascending proved that.
And becoming his disciple meant having to keep pace with that academic passion.
Nidbolg was famous for not letting go of disciples he had accepted.
There were only two ways to escape his embrace.
Present research results at a level even he could acknowledge and be recognized as a mage in one’s own right, or grow old, die, and become a skeleton.
Countless youths who became Nidbolg’s disciples with passionate hearts left the Rainbow Magic Tower as cold corpses.
And even those who occasionally achieved great accomplishments and received his recognition were mostly shriveled old people when they finally left the Magic Tower.
That was why he earned the nickname, ‘Demon Who Kills Youth.’
It was a title of terror that made mages shudder with fear.
Eugene clicked his tongue.
Nidbolg’s disciples were outstanding. If the capable people who had been trapped by Nidbolg came out, the Rainbow Magic Tower would actually run far more smoothly than before.
For now, that was.
But the Archmage’s absence would definitely become a serious obstacle in preventing the Voidnir invasion that would happen in the future.
Eugene suddenly remembered.
The sight of Nidbolg from before the regression, who had suddenly come to him and left words like a prophecy.
Eugene asked just in case.
“Did Sir Nidbolg perhaps…… say anything strange before he disappeared?”
Fram was silent for a moment. He looked back and forth between Eugene and Bella for a while before opening his mouth.
“By the way, what business brought you here looking for Sir Nidbolg?”
Eugene thought for a moment and said,
“There was something I wanted to ask him about Twinstella. The two of us are that.”
“Twin, stella……?”
Fram’s eyes widened.
“Good heavens, Twinstella! I heard Twinstella can communicate with each other through telepathy. Is that really true?”
As expected of Nidbolg’s disciple.
In an instant, Fram asked with the eyes of a boy full of curiosity. Eugene grinned.
“We can’t use telepathy, but we can write about a hundred numbers identically without looking at each other’s papers.”
“Eustace’s Test! You took that test?”
“Yeah.”
“To think that really works. That is incredible.”
Fram looked at the two of them with pure admiration. Then he soon spoke.
“Actually, Sir Nidbolg said something to me a few days before he disappeared.”
He searched inside his clothes. From his pocket, the cord of a necklace slid out.
“He told me that if I saw a man and a woman I liked, I should give this to them.”
It was a key.
A red jewel was embedded in its golden body. A loop was attached to the head of the key for ease of carrying, and a necklace cord was connected to it.
‘It’s not an ordinary key.’
He could feel powerful mana writhing from the key.
“At the time, I wondered what sort of cryptic riddle Sir Nidbolg was giving me again, but looking at it now, I think he was talking about you two.”
Fram held out the key as if telling him to take it, and Eugene accepted it.
“What…… is this?”
“It is the key to Sir Nidbolg’s private laboratory.”
“Private laboratory?”
“Yes. He is someone with many secrets by nature. I have never gone in there either.”
“Where is the laboratory?”
“The lowest underground floor of the Magic Tower.”
“……Are we allowed to go in?”
“Yes. It is not a key that can be used simply because you have it anyway. Security magic has been placed on it, so the key will not work just because anyone uses it. If what Sir Nidbolg said truly refers to you, the key will activate and the door will open. If not, nothing will happen.”
Nidbolg did not do meaningless things. Fram’s words contained that trust.
“Good. Thanks.”
After thanking Fram, Eugene immediately moved toward the underground floor of the Magic Tower.
Since the underground floors had not been fitted with water pipes or other convenience facilities, most of the space was simply used as storage for luggage.
CLACK, CLACK.
An automated golem was operating the lift that descended underground.
– Where are you going?
When they climbed onto the lift, the golem holding the chain asked while lighting the gemstone eyes embedded in its square head. Eugene held up the key he had received from Fram and said,
“The lowest floor. To Sir Nidbolg’s private laboratory.”
– Understood.
The golem began lowering the chain. With the sound of the chain rattling down, the lift descended.
As Bella watched the mana lights dotted along the outer wall of the lift shaft rise above them, she said,
“This is confusing. We were told the Archmage had gone missing, and now we are suddenly being guided to his private laboratory. Does the Archmage possess the power of foresight?”
Eugene nodded.
“He might. I had a similar experience too, so I asked Brother Fram just in case.”
“But…… no matter how much power of foresight he has, how did he learn even about us returning from the future?”
“I don’t know that. But I doubt that power called foresight works so conveniently.”
“Why?”
“If he could predict the future with perfect accuracy, there would have been no need for us to return in the first place.”
“That is true.”
As they talked, they reached their destination.
RUMBLE-
With a heavy sound of metal settling, the lift stopped moving.
Unlike the other underground floors, which were widely opened like corridors, the lowest floor was blocked tight on all four sides, and only a large door stood alone, barring the wall.
After examining the door, Bella said,
“There does not appear to be anything like a keyhole.”
“Wait. It’s probably a type of door that operates by mana.”
Eugene infused mana into the key in his hand.
Then the jewel embedded in the key flashed, and red lightning shot from within it and struck the surface of the door.
CLACK. There was a sound of a latch unlocking.
“It worked.”
GRRRR. The door rose along the groove in the wall, and the magical glow-lamps came on, beginning to illuminate the inside.
In that way, Eugene and Bella entered the laboratory.
“What a mess.”
That was Bella’s first impression of the laboratory.
Just as she said, the laboratory was full of clutter.
Books, test tubes, wardrobes, shelves, various odds and ends, and objects whose identities could not be known were piled up at random, forming mountains.
A path where they could barely move their bodies had been made, and in the center of the piles of objects was a broad space.
“It looks more like a prison built out of trash than a laboratory…….”
That was Eugene’s assessment as he looked around.
He immediately operated his mana and unfolded detection magic.
SWOOOSH!
Waves of mana spreading from Eugene’s body swept through the inside of the laboratory.
Nidbolg could not possibly have guided the two of them here without any thought, so Eugene was trying to find some special object.
That was when it happened.
RATTLE!
One side of the piled-up objects collapsed, and from within, a black shadow rose.
“……?”
Bella moved reflexively and blocked Eugene’s front. Eugene focused his detection magic in the direction of the sound.
The black shadow walked toward them with noise.
Rattle, rattle. Its body swayed like a flame just before going out, making it look perilously unstable.
Bella clenched her fist, and Eugene wove defensive magic just in case.
And when it soon revealed itself beneath the light of the glow-lamps, the tension left the two of them all at once.
It was a doll.
No, should they call it a golem?
It was a practice doll used by novice mages learning golem magic.
“……I don’t feel any dangerous mana.”
Eugene said that and released his detection magic. Bella, too, confirmed with a warrior’s sixth sense that the doll standing before them was not threatening.
“What is this? Is it a golem the Archmage used as an attendant?”
Just as Bella tilted her head.
The golem’s neck moved with a creak, creak, and the eyes attached to its block of wood blinked toward the two.
– So it is you.
A somehow familiar voice.
The expressions of Eugene and Bella stiffened as they realized its identity.
The golem’s mouth clacked and clacked as it continued speaking.
– The me of this timeline is already dead.
The golem’s voice continued mechanically.
It was the voice of Archmage Nidbolg.