The Green Dragons of West Ridge

“Big news! IT'S BIG NEWS, I TELL YAAAA!!”

It was a little after noon when Toreta Kan Toredeta, the show-off green dragon, came flying back to West Ridge, cackling all the way.

“Shut up! You, Kan! Can't you fly any quieter! I'll kill you!”

The one who barked that at Kan as he came down into the pack's nest in an uproar was the pack's leader, the green dragon Samezan Same Sazamezama.

He was a battle-hardened veteran who held this rough pack of green dragons together through sheer strength alone.

His body was a size bigger even than the other green dragons, who were usually the size of a hut, and an old scar running from his forehead across his right eye doubled the menace he gave off.

He had gotten that scar when he challenged the pack's former leader for his seat and beat him handsomely, and it was his pride.

“Hehe, sorry, Booss! But really, it's huge news! Even you'll be shocked when you hear it, Boss, I tell yaa!”

“Then speak up already. If this turns out to be some trivial nonsense, I'll crush your throat so you never squawk again.”

Samezan glared at Kan.

But Kan, apparently awfully sure of this “big news” of his, didn't care one bit about the menace.

“Yessir, here's my report! It's about that pale pink old hag in the east, see? Would you believe it...... at last! Looks like she's gone and kicked the bucket!”

“......What!?”

Hearing that report, delivered with dramatic pauses and big, exaggerated gestures, Samezan really was shocked, just as Kan had said.

Kan watched him with a smirk.

Because that somehow ticked him off, Samezan punched Kan for starters.

“Ow! What was that for, Booss! That's harsh!”

“Shut up. Continue your report. Are you certain about this?”

Kan wiped the blood from his mouth, spat out a broken fang, and continued speaking with a pained expression.

“Yessir. It's certain. First off, that old hag's magic power, the stuff she had spread all over the east, is completely gone. Looking from a ways off, she's nowhere at her nest, and more than anything, that whole area reeks of the old hag's blood, it's real awful! With all that, there's no mistaking it, she's dead!”

“Hmm......”

Samezan began to think, deftly scratching the back of his head with the wings extending from his back.

The pale pink old hag in the east...... Oka was like a thorn in their side for Samezan and his pack, who desired supremacy over Mount Nanga.

Despite her ridiculous color, she was a powerhouse capable of driving away a pack of green dragons all by herself.

That old hag, was dead......

“What about the corpse? Could you confirm it?”

“No, I couldn't...... but that smell of blood is definitely the old hag's. Even if she's alive, there's no doubt she's critically wounded, sir.”

“Hmm...... hmm, hmm, hmm...... kukuku, I see, I see, so that's how it is!”

Samezan couldn't help but let a smile slip.

At first, Samezan suspected this might be a trap the old hag had set to lure them in, but that old hag had never used such methods before.

If so, she wouldn't start using such cowardly tricks now.

She had either truly died, or she was critically wounded.

“Right, you lot! I'm heading to East Ridge now! I'll go confirm the old hag's corpse myself!”

Samezan roared it out in a single bellow.

“Eh!? The Boss is!?”

“There's no need for the Boss to go all that way!”

“That's right! Leave chores like that to us young dragons!”

The youngsters of the pack buzzed, but Samezan silenced them with a shout.

“Shut up, you morons! Weren't you listening to Kan!? He said that old hag might still be alive, at death's door! ‘A cornered Chiwanwan will tear out a dragon's throat’, don't you know that proverb!”

“We don't know it......!”

“That's our Boss!”

“Boss, so smart!!”

“I can't go putting you young'uns in danger! I'll find the old hag's corpse. And if she's still alive on her last legs, I'll kill her! You lot just sit tight in this nest and wait like good boys for my triumphant return!!”

“““B, Booss......!!”””

Such consideration for the young dragons' safety!

And, glimpsed in every word, deep intelligence (?)!

The young dragons were impressed and became completely quiet.

And yet Samezan, grinning as he watched them, truth be told didn't care one bit about the young dragons.

The reason Samezan wanted to confirm Oka's corpse himself was that he planned to devour her body, absorb her magic power, and make it his own.

In other words, Samezan just wanted to keep all the power he could take from Oka to himself.

If Oka was still alive on her last legs, so much the better.

If she was half-dead, she'd be easy to kill.

If he took down the hated enemy that had tormented the pack for so many years, his standing as leader would go up too.

It was all upside.

In fact, even if Oka was already dead, he'd just say he had fought her and killed her.

Yeah, he'd do that.

Inside Samezan's head, cunning scenarios were being assembled one after another......!

“Hehe, then Boss! We're counting on ya! ......By the way, there's one thing I wanna check, sir?”

“Hah?”

The one who spoke up then to Samezan, smirking as he counted his chickens before they hatched, was the show-off Kan, his neck lowered almost to the ground in humble deference.

“The Boss slaying the old hag...... of course, I'd like that, sir, I've got no objections. I just wondered if you could give us young'uns one chance to make a name for ourselves, you see?”

“......What are you getting at?”

Annoyed at having his thoughts interrupted, Samezan asked Kan, a little grumpily.

Kan groveled lower still, pressing his head, his wingtips, his arms and his chest all to the ground to show his submission, yet he was grinning as he spoke.

“Yessir! That old hag, she kept humans like pets, right? Getting rid of them, see? We were thinking you might leave that to us!”

“What, that's all...... do as you like.”

At Samezan's words, a cheer erupted from the youngsters!

“Hear that, you lot! Boss gave the okay! We can kill humans however we like!!”

Kan turned around and egged on the young dragons!

“Alriight! Let's kill, let's kill! Kill all the humans!”

“Let's swallow 'em whole!”

“Are you stupid? Tearing them limb from limb is obviously better, isn't it?”

“Let's squish 'em flat~”

Imagining a feast of slaughter, the young dragons got all worked up and clamored over one another!

Samezan watched them with a snort of contempt.

(Hmph, idiots. Eating a few measly humans won't do much for a dragon's power. Getting hooked on whatever fun's right in front of you, that's why you lot stay third-rate forever.)

But, he didn't say any of that out loud.

Samezan laughed boisterously and shouted toward the young dragons!

“Alright! You lot, ready!? Now, I go old-hag hunting if she's alive, and you go human hunting! The time's finally come for us to stand at the top of this mountain! Get fired up!?”

“““““OOOOOOOOOOOOH!!!”””””

Now, Samezan had been making fun of the young dragons, but it could well be said that he, too, was plenty shallow and foolish himself.

Because.

Oka was dead, or dying.

He had been so overjoyed at that news that he hadn't so much as looked at the one thing that mattered.

Just what had attacked Oka?

He hadn't even considered that.

Someone who surpassed even Oka had intruded into this mountain.

That possibility had never even occurred to him.

......And the bill for that would come due soon enough.

Paid with their lives.

◇ ◇ ◇

Paan!, it went.

Suddenly that sound rang out, and a young dragon's head burst.

With a dosari, the young dragon's huge body collapsed onto the rocks.

Blood came gushing from the neck that now ended in nothing.

It had happened just as they spread their wings to take off and hunt humans.

“Eh......?”

Another young dragon who had been watching let out that sound, without the faintest idea what was going on.

Paan!, it went.

In the next instant, his head was blown away in the same manner, and he died.

“E, enemy attack!? Enemy attack!!”

“B, bolster the defenses! 【Body Strengthening】!”

“It's a sniper! Where from!?”

““【Air Protect】!!””

A moment later, the young dragons began to panic!

Amid all that, Samezan, being the pack's leader after all, was the calmest of the green dragons.

“Look, there! That runt did it!!”

Samezan had clearly seen the moment the young dragon's head was blown away.

He had clearly seen that it was caused by a flying stone, and he had grasped which direction it had come from.

That was why he was the first to understand what and where their enemy was.

The young dragons all looked in the direction Samezan pointed.

There stood a human girl.

With black hair fluttering in the wind, murderous intent burning in her black eyes, and wearing blood-soaked clothes, she stood atop a great rock across the valley.

In both her hands, stones.

Then, in the next instant.

The stone vanished from the girl's right hand.

She had hurled it with 【Stone Throw】, at blinding speed!

“Hih!!”

One of the young dragons couldn't help but scream, but that stone never reached them.

The 【Air Protect】 used by several of them had worked.

A wind barrier raised with a dragon's vast magic power was sturdy, and the stone dropped to the ground without ever reaching the green dragons.

“He...... hehe! What, don't scare us like that!”

“A mere human, thinking you can defy the great green dragons!?”

“We'll make you pay for killing our comrade!”

Seeing that, the young dragons were suddenly full of swagger and began squawking.

Meanwhile, the girl...... Emi, seeing that her 【Stone Throw】 no longer got through, moved at once to her next step.

Without a flicker of expression, she hopped from that great rock onto another.

And then onto another great rock, and from there onto yet another...... hop, hop, hop, hop, bounding along, she came closer and closer to the green dragons!

“W, what is that thing!? She's coming closer!?”

“She's only human, and she thinks she can fight dragons up close!?”

“I'll tear her limb from limb! 【Air Cutter】!”

“【Air Cutter】! 【Air Cutter】!!”

At Emi, the green dragons began their attack, flinging scattered blades of wind with their magic.

But still, they didn't hit!

By the time the magic they fired hit the great rocks and sliced them into pieces, Emi had already jumped to another great rock.

She was too fast!!

“You morons! Lead her with your magic!! Aim at the rocks that runt's about to jump to, and fire!!”

“Oh, I see!”

“That's our Booss!!”

Following Samezan's shout, the young dragons changed their aim.

The great rock where Emi had first stood and the green dragons' nest were cut off from each other by a deep, wide valley, and from that valley, here and there, tall, thin great rocks like thorns jutted up toward the sky.

In other words, for Emi to reach the green dragons' nest, she had no choice but to hop across those thorn-like great rocks, and to the clever green dragons, her path was very easy to read.

“【Air Cutter】!!”

And so, this happened.

The great rock Emi had been about to leap to was sliced to pieces by magic beforehand, and Emi, her foothold gone, fell straight down to the bottom of the deep, deep valley.

One more jump, and she would have reached the green dragons' nest......!

“Alriight! We did it!!”

“Hehehe! Stuuupid!!”

“Gyahahahaha!!”

The green dragons roared with laughter, though the corpses of two of their own lay right beside them.

For the green dragons of Samezan's pack, strength was justice, and even a comrade, once dead, was nothing but meat.

“............”

But, amid all that, only the leader Samezan felt a strange unease, and glared toward the valley with a scowl.

“Hehe, hehehe! How d'you think that runt got squashed?”

“Splat, head first~!”

“Let's go look!”

“......Hey...... hey, come back!!”

Three young dragons, getting carried away, walked to the edge of the cliff to peer down.

Samezan had a bad feeling and tried to call them back...... but his shout came just a few seconds too late.

The young dragons had already stretched their necks over the cliff edge to peer into the valley bottom, and then, in the next instant......

Of the three, two had their heads cut from their bodies, and the heads dropped down into the valley!

“E, eh......!?”

The remaining one had burned what happened in that instant into his eyes.

The instant the two whose heads were taken had peered over the cliff.

Something small and black came racing straight up the cliff face at a ferocious speed and, both arms spread wide, slipped right between the two.

And just like that, both heads dropped off at the neck and tumbled down the cliff.

Yes, the remaining one had burned what happened in that instant into his eyes.

But, even so, he couldn't understand what had happened in that instant.

To him, who saw humans as nothing more than snacks to play with and eat, there was no way to understand that Emi, who should have fallen down the cliff, had run up it with 【Silverfish】 and, with that momentum, used a two-armed 【Great Mantis】 to send the two heads flying!

“You idiot!! GET OUT OF THE WAAAAAY!!”

“Eh? Eh? Eh?”

And that remaining one could not understand the meaning of the leader's shout either.

It was all so sudden that his mind couldn't keep up.

Emi, having run straight up the cliff, launched into the air with that momentum, spinning round and round with the noon sun at her back...... and with the force of that spin, she used 【Mantis】 to send flying the head of the last one, frozen stiff by the suddenness of it all.

Before the three hunks of meat had fallen with a dosari, dosari, dosari, Emi landed on the rocks of the green dragons' nest and at once began charging at the remaining green dragons with ferocious force!

“E, 【Air Protect】!!”

The defensive magic that had stopped her stone sniping did nothing against Emi, driving herself forward explosively with her feet planted on the ground!

“【Air Cutter】! 【Air Cutter】!!”

“U, uwaah! Why won't they hit!?”

And the colorless, invisible blades of wind, which by rights should have been hard to evade, Emi kept dodging with the bare minimum of movement!

Now tilting her head, now giving a small hop, now shifting her course a little left or right, she kept running without losing any speed at all!

If it was magic, then however colorless and invisible the blade, there would always be magic power in it.

Against this girl, who was capable of 【Magic Perception】, such petty tricks were useless!

“Gah! You bunch of morons! Don't panic, it's just one runt!? SURROUND HER AND KILL HEEEEEEEER!!”

“R, right!!”

“You got it, Booss!!”

“Get ready to die, ruunt!!”

Jolted out of their jitters by Samezan's bark, the young dragons readied their claws and tails.

But, even seeing that, Emi didn't slow down in the slightest.

Far from it, she used 【Grasshopper】 to spring forward, closing in on them with a burst of speed that caught the green dragons, whose eyes had gotten used to her earlier pace, completely off guard!

A few seconds until contact.

Or so they had thought, but the next instant, before they knew it, the black-haired girl was right in front of them.

“Wh, why you!!”

Thrown off before he could even start, that young dragon tried in a panic to rip Emi apart with his claws, but he was too slow.

Like the young dragons before him, he had his head cut off and died.

Carrying the momentum of beheading that young dragon, Emi charged at another.

Using 【Magic Strike】, she punched him with all her might.

“Gogyaaaa!?”

The impact was so great that the young dragon she hit fell with his bones shattered and his flesh and blood blasted away, and died.

But Emi still didn't stop.

This time she wrenched stones off the rocks jutting from the ground and, spinning around, let them fly with 【Stone Throw】.

One, two, three.

Loosed one after another, every one of them flew true, blowing the young dragons' heads apart.

At such close range, the 【Air Protect】 they had put up beforehand wasn't working!

“You're wide open, RUUUUNT!!!”

The young dragon who tried to jump Emi from behind was sliced up all over by the invisible threads of magic power spread around her...... by 【Magic Slash Thread】, and died in pieces.

“I can't take it anymore! H, HELP MEEEEE!!”

Seeing his comrades being killed one after another, the show-off green dragon Kan was seized by panic and tried to fly away from the spot.

But, that decision came too late.

Kan flapped his wings and floated into the air, but strangely, no matter how much he flapped, his altitude didn't rise.

When he fearfully turned his long neck to look behind him, his tail was gripped tight in the black-haired girl's hands!

“HI, HIYAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!”

Emi, the soles of her feet bonded fast by 【Adhesion】 to the great rock where the green dragons nested, would never lift off, however desperately Kan beat his wings.

“No!! No!! No......”

Kan bawled in terror, but the next instant Emi slammed him into the ground with all her might, and he died with every bone in his body shattered.

(What...... is this......)

Samezan was stunned.

A few minutes since the first young dragon was killed by 【Stone Throw】.

And a few dozen seconds since the close-quarters combat had begun.

In that span, so very short, his pack had been wiped out, leaving only him, the leader.

(What...... is she......)

Samezan glared once more at the small black human who had ravaged his pack.

Soaked in dragon blood and dyed bright red from head to toe, the girl tore a handful of meat from the nearest young dragon's corpse, and, stuffing her cheeks with it scales and all, raised her fists at Samezan.

(Interesting...... now ain't this interesting!!)

Samezan trembled with eagerness and grinned savagely!

For the green dragons of Samezan's pack, and for Samezan too, strength was justice, and even a comrade, once dead, was nothing but meat.

If a comrade got killed, that just meant he had been weak.

Sadness, frustration, no such feelings welled up in him.

If anything, what he felt was anger at Kan for trying to run.

“Now...... let's kill each other, runt......”

Samezan shifted his bulk ponderously and settled into a fighting stance.

He applied 【Body Strengthening】 to the absolute limit and unleashed 【Intimidation】.

Emi's 【Intimidation】 and Samezan's 【Intimidation】 clashed, and with a mishi mishi, the very air creaked and groaned.

“If you think I'm the same as those small fry so far...... THINK AGAAAAAAAAAAIN!!!”

With that one roar, Samezan, laughing, lunged at Emi!!

◇ ◇ ◇

Mount Nanga was dyed red by the setting sun.

“............”

Emi lay sprawled spread-eagle on a rock, simply staring in silence at the sky as it gradually darkened and the stars began to twinkle.

The fierce battle had left the rocks all around unrecognizable; boulders were shattered and the ground split open, a dreadful sight.

And here and there, everything was stained black with blood.

The blood of the green dragons.

Until just a few hours ago, this place had been the nest of the violent green dragons, and now it was those green dragons' graveyard.

The green dragons were all dead.

Slaughtered to the last by Emi.

The pack's leader, Samezan, had been a strong enemy.

Had she let her guard down even a little, it would probably have been Emi's corpse lying here.

But, she won.

Though wounded and bleeding, she grasped a razor-thin victory.

Samezan had died laughing, looking satisfied.

The green dragons were all dead.

And their corpses, not just the meat but even their scales and bones, had all ended up in Emi's stomach.

The green dragons became food for Emi's body, and for her soul.

Now, the only one remaining alive in this place was the winner, Emi.

“............”

Now, Emi, was crying.

Dyed by the bright red sunset, lying on her back without a word, she let tears spill from her large eyes.

Was she mourning the green dragons, her enemies?

No.

Was she despairing of her own life, spent fighting like a beast?

No.

Did the wounds from the battle hurt?

No.

A stomachache, from eating too much?

None of those.

For roughly this past year, Emi had gone on suffering.

Through the blessing, or the curse, of the Black Dragon's blood, she had been tormented without end by a hunger that could never be filled, and had gone on devouring living things like a beast.

She had eaten the giant turtle, eaten a wolf pack, eaten a great bear, eaten an ancient dragon...... and other monsters besides, anything she could lay her hands on, she had kept putting in her mouth.

At times she had even taken a remnant of a god into her body.

And yet, her hunger, which had never once let up.

At the moment she devoured the green dragon pack.

At last.

......Was filled.

In other words.

She had, at last.

............At last!

Gotten, full!!!

Okay, so, Arc 11 is now complete.

Time for the usual afterword.

In this arc, Oka-chan demanded sacrifices, but looking back, a character who wanted sacrifices had already appeared before Oka-chan.

Jarnayaharma. Do you remember him?

However, in his case, such a background wasn't described in much detail, and he was hunted by Emi out of nowhere, like a random attack.

For this author, it felt kind of unresolved, you could say, and wanting to write a proper story about sacrifices was my motive for starting Arc 11.

Anyway, if you enjoyed it even a little, I'm happy.

Thank you always for the bookmarks, the rating stars, the reviews and the comments.

‘The Omake Reincarnator’ will continue from here on.

After all, Emi-chan is still only 8 years old.

I don't plan to suddenly skip ahead so she's grown up before you know it, or anything like that.

......Really, there's still a long way to go.

I'd be happy if you'd keep me company from here on.

I humbly ask for your continued support.