Dragon's Bloodline

“Hey Serge, can I ask you something?”

When he became a second year, he was able to make friends that called him with his first name.

“Sure, I’ll answer if I can~”

Serge gave a suitable response. He was desperately transcribing notes from someone’s notebook he borrowed.

“Are you and Chris a thing?”

Buu—!

Serge fell forward against the desk, but the answer was obvious just by seeing his reaction.

“Sorry ’bout that…”

The girl was the daughter of the family whose residence he lived in. She wasn’t an existence he should make moves on.

He convinced the guy when he said that, but recently… Chris grew up pretty suddenly.

She was entering the category of beautiful in Serge’s sense of aesthetics, but she was suddenly getting taller, more well rounded, and womanly. It even looked like her long black hair was getting more glossy.

For the short Serge, this messed with his short complex.

“Well, maybe I should trying going on the attack?”

“I don’t really mind, but I think it’d be better if you didn’t~”

Ignoring Serge’s advice, the boy called out to Chris.

The marriageable age came quick in this world. Moreover for aristocrats, their partners had to be chosen quickly.

Although they were usually for tying connections between houses, it wasn’t as though none were for love.

However, even so, the boy suffered a defeat against Chris.

Above all, his mana was insufficient to talk to Chris.

That Chris was taking practically the same classes as Serge was.

Serge tried stopping her.

To begin with, if pushed, he’d say that Chris’ talent for magic wasn’t suited for battle. If anything, it was suitable for research, analysis, and pursuing magic theory.

Even so, with the Millennium practically on their doorsteps, she wasn’t able to bear being a scholar. Despite her father the earl and the masters attempts to change her decision, her will was firm.

What made her change so much?

The earl might have realized…

One day, he talked to Serge in the greenhouse.

“Is school going well?”

“Yeah, there are so many things that I wouldn’t have realized on my own.”

“Really now? That’s great. I wrote that in a letter to Carla, after all.”

The earl cut away rose thorns with some pruning scissors. The roses in this world had thorns as well.

“… By the way, what do you think of Chris?”

It came!

If he stammered here or wasn’t able to think properly he’d be disqualified.

“I believe that she is an excellent person. She is very kind.”

He thought that was a very safe response, but…

The earl laughed out loud. Was there something funny in what he said?

“Most assessments of her say that she’s big-headed or unsociable.”

“I believe that those are the impressions of people that, along with being envious of her, can only see what she’s like on the surface.”

“In other words, if you don’t envy her, that means you are paying attention to the inside?”

Umu. He failed a bit there.

“Well you know, I don’t think bad of you. Frankly, it’s just that at your preference of strict children is surprising.”

Was this not thanks to Carla? After all, the one to take care of him as a child and his now-deceased mother was Carla.

But even so, it was different. Carla certainly was a gentle person, but to the last, he only associated with Chris as a student. [1]

And then the earl finally came to his main point.

“In the event an emergency happens, could you take the girl to Ogress?”

The earl said something like that very simply.

“My son and I have duties to fulfill as our obligations as nobles. However, he is a woman. Her body is to marry another house.”

“Sir, that’s…”

It appeared that Azel sent the date that the Millennium would be coming to the upper echelons of the Magic City.

Battle training began to be included in their classes and it was decided that Serge would serve as a special lecturer.

Heading to Azel’s tower each day, he mainly researched space-time magic.

And then he would teach what he learned to Chris. Serge’s teaching method was good, but the girl’s own Gift allowed her skill to improve remarkably.

But even so.

Even so, against that opponent that even Serge couldn’t compete against, she wouldn’t be able to do anything at all.

He thought she would be better off studying grand magic or something like imbuing magic into the armor and weapons of troops.

Chris stubbornly continued desiring magic that would allow her to fight. To make it worse, she at least had some talent in it.

It was enough for her to overtake her brother, who had been studying the same offensive magic, with surprising swiftness.

“Really, why is she like that?”

“Isn’t that because she’s still aiming to be the hero’s follower?”

Two people were talking with each other in Azel’s tower while they sipped on Radam-prepared tea.

Even though they were talking, he was pushing his mana and was being trained.

“A thousand years ago. Shana Milgrid. As companion of the hero, she was the great witch that defeated the Demon King.”

“The hero that should’ve fought against the Demon King is the Demon King this time? How did that happen?”

He asked Valis the same thing, but he hadn’t gotten a satisfying answer.

“Hmmm… let’s put it this way. For you, what is human? How far does it go?”

“You mean like including elves and dwarves as humans?”

“Yeah. So? How far would you go including races?”

“Hmmm, ogres as well, same with beastkin… Basically, if they can communicate with us, I’d say they could be included.”

“Right. The hero thought so too. Then he included goblins, orcs, and other low-intelligence races, spending years… hundreds of years thinking about how to have them live together with humans.”

He heard about this the other day, the human-demon symbiosis thing.

The more he heard about the ideal, the more it sounded like he was a good man.

“You didn’t cooperate? Or rather, you want to stop it?”

“Un, either way, I thought it’d fail. But then now it looks like he might succeed. He actually made that thing…”

“That thing?”

“A golem. Thor called it a robot though.”

A machine. In other words, the power of science.

Uniting magic and science. That was what he had spent a thousand years on.

It was probably strong. It was the combination of two worlds’ strength. No matter how much someone was called a great sage, there was no matching up against that.

“What’d you do!? Did you defeat it!?”

Serge’s mana pushing interrupted, he shouted.

“I lost. Didn’t I say it the other day? The problem is with how I lose and what’ll happen after.”

“… The Great Collapse?”

He’d heard this key word many times. However, no one would tell him what would happen.

Azel said the name of the most famous human in history and the name of a person he’d never heard.

“The saint emperor… isn’t that someone from three thousand years ago? She’s still alive?”

“Even I’ve been alive for a thousand years. Is it really that impossible?”

Come to think of it, the saint emperor’s last moments as they learned it in history class was that she had embraced death in a secluded life.

“And that person named Alvis-san is…”

“When the other continents were destroyed, he survived. He’s not been alive for three thousand years as well, but he knows a lot. He doesn’t have a specific base, but he’s way stronger than I am, so it’d be great if you could get him to teach you if you meet him.”

A great sage among great sages, even Azel wasn’t someone who could compete with him. And then there was the Demon King that was even stronger than him.

However.

He believed that Ria would be able to do something about it.

“If it’s Nee-chan… if it’s Carla-san and Nee-chan, they will win, even if it’s the Demon King.”

“Yeah, according to the stories I heard, if it’s those two, they might just win.”

Azel’s expression became languid as he spoke.

“If they fight, that is.”

Right. Ria might not fight him.

She talked with ogres and vampires, yet fought against the werewolf and obliterated goblins and orcs alike.

For Ria, that wasn’t a contradiction.

“I… I have to get stronger, too..”

“Hmph, then how about you try and fight against Laplace today?”

“Ah, how about I not.”