Chapter 8: CH 8

Chapter 8: The One Who Rules the World.

“Whaat, although I may look like this, but I’m still Prince Milano’s aide nonetheless, and thanks to that I’m rather familiar with this continent. I can tell you stories that are accurate and way more interesting than the geographers who’re only about theories and stuff can.”

Kumahachi said jokingly before taking out an old map from his pocket, spreading it out on the grass. This map is much more detailed than the maps Selene has seen on her picture books, and its condition tells her that this map has been through a lot of usage. There are small memos on the map at various points such as ‘This country has many beauties’ or ‘Alcohol’s bad here’, indicating that he has actually visited there and obtained first hand information.

The map’s quite large when spread out, and although Kumahachi’s big enough to reach the map’s edge with just his finger while sitting cross-legged, Selene in contrast is small so she has to lean in to even take a look at the map. This is Selene’s first time ever seeing the map of the entire continent from a bird’s eyes view, as she had only ever seen maps of areas around Aquila Kingdom. The shape of this continent resembles that of Australia from her previous life.

“Now then, what should I tell Selene-dono first…… Well, let us talk about basic stuff first. Starting with here, the country that Selene-dono used to live in is Aquila Kingdom right here.”

“Un.”

Kumahachi’s rugged fingertip points to the bottom left part of the continent, to Aquila Kingdom which is Selene’s homeland, a country so small that it’s doubtful whether it’s really a country or not.

“And here, this is the country we’re heading to, its name is Helifalte Kingdom. As you can see, it’s the largest country on the continent.”

Kumahachi slides his fingertip from Aquila Kingdom to the upper right―― to the northeast of Aquila. At the same time, Selene frowned slightly. She has heard that Helifalte is a big country, but now seeing it on the map with her own eyes, its territory is truly ridiculous.

Helifalte alone occupies nearly half of the continent. As for the land in the other half of the continent, it is split between nations including Aquila as well. Although Selene has resolved herself to destroy Helifalte, but this quite an opponent now that she sees it. Selene’s head aches as she ramps up her ideas on how to destroy it.

As she looks around for any clues that could help with her strategy to destroy Helifalte, she noticed something mysterious. Helifalte’s a gigantic nation with equally gigantic label on the map sure, but the upper half of the continent is covered in white forest with no labels marked as any belonging to any nations.

Further north from there, there are no longer any forest symbols written on it, only a rough picture of huge rocky mountains. In other words, there are nearly no information regarding upper half of the continent.

“Up here, white.”

“Yes indeed. Since Selene-dono had never seen continent-wide map before, I’ll slowly explain each of them one by one to you.”

“Are you teaching Selene geography?”

As Selene and Kumahachi are talking while sitting opposite of each other, Milano, who has been with other squires a moment ago, is now suddenly standing right beside them. Behind him is a servant holding a large pot. It seems like that the lunch is ready and he has gone to the trouble of bringing it.

“Can I join you guys?”

Without even waiting for Selene to reply with “No”, Milano sits down next to Selene. Selene frowns, this is why I don’t like big shot guys like him that acts like they own the place, but it doesn’t seem like Milano noticed her expression.

The servant distributes lunch to the three sitting around the map. The lunch consists of preserved dried meat, soup with herbs and potatoes-like things in it and finally black breads. Following the other two, Selene dips the black bread into the soup before stuffing it in her mouth. Perhaps it’s because the ingredient’s quality are good, perhaps it’s because the skill of the cook, perhaps both, the slightly salty soup is simple yet delicious. And with this alone, it puts simple-minded Selene into a good mood.

I want to give this to Butler as well if possible, but it’ll be bad if a mouse appears in front of humans, so I’ll have to wait and feed him secretly later, Selene thought.

“Well, where were we again. Oh right, we’re talking about the white part on the continent. This place here is called ‘White Forest’.” (Kumahachi)

“White Forest?”

“Precisely indeed. As you can see, the entire forest here is white, yes? This happens because of magic.” (Kumahachi)

This is the first time Selene has ever heard of it. The maps she had seen so far has this white part as well, but since it’s simplified map, she thought that it was a snow country or that the map maker was omitting it out.

“The northern part of the continent―― or on this map, the higher up you go the denser the magic power in the area. People like me or Selene who has magic power can somewhat manage, but ordinary people like Kumahachi who has no magic power will lose their senses of balance, and they’ll be affected by what we called magic poisioning. That’s why there are only elves who live in this white forest.” (Milano)

“Don’t make fun of Kuma.”

“No, I’m not making fun of him or anything though……”

Selene snaps at Milano’s explanation. She thought that he was looking down on Kumahachi so blatantly as if he doesn’t care, but then Selene noticed an important piece of information.

“Elves? Long ears?”

“You know very well. Elves―― also called Long-eared Tribe or Forest People, they mostly never come out of the forest. Their appearance are very much like us humans, but since their race is adapted for living in the forest, they’re very good at handling magic. But then again, I’ve only heard rumors about them though, we humans don’t interact much with them.” (Milano)

“I see.”

“But still, for Selene-dono to understand this quickly, I’m very impressed. Selene-dono is still very young, yet you’re able to comprehend the explanation just now, that’s the sign of intelligence indeed.”

“Ehehe.”

Selene smiles proudly. Though her outward appearance may be that of a little girl, but inside her is still an old man nonetheless. Or rather, should she really be proud of this compliment at all though?

“Then, what about higher?”

“North of White Forest is the place called Dragon’s Peak.” (Kumahachi)

“Dagonー peekー?”

“The region past the White Forest is almost impossible for humans to traverse. The one who lives at the Dragon’s Peak, the one who rules this world, that one is……”

Kumahachi suddenly stops his sentence midway, turning his gaze to somewhere far away. Selene and Milano follows his gaze as well.

“That one over there.” (Kumahachi)

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Kumahachi said with a smile. Selene’s stupefied in surprise when she sees it, a colossal living creature cutting through the wide blue sky from far beyond.

“D-, dagon!?” (Selene)

“Is this your first time seeing a dragon? Well, they rarely flies all the way to the Aquila, the southern part of the continent after all.

As if ignoring what Milano said, Selene’s eyes are fixated at the colossal creature―― the dragon.

The dragon’s entire body is covered in fiery crimson scales, has a robust body and limbs as thick as logs, bat-like wings, as well as long tail and splendid horns on its head. Although it’s flying altitude is pretty high, but its body is so gigantic that it’s very noticable even from this distance.

The dragon, as if to implies that it’s the ruler of the sky, is flying leisurely through the sky without a single care for the humans below.

Selene’s completely stunned at the sight of the colossus that only appears in games or manga, but then she suddenly comes back to her senses and quickly tugs the hem of Kumahachi’s kimono.

“Kuma, Kuma! Quick!”

“W-, what is it my lord? There’s no need to be panic. Though its body may be huge, but they won’t come after us humans so there’s no need to flee……”

“Not that! Hunt!”

Selene’s extremely excited. The opponent’s lowering its guard, flying right above her position. This is the perfect hunting chance. We must strike it down by either blinding its eyes or using loud explosion noise so that it’ll fall to the ground.

Despite Selene’s rush, Kumahachi and Milano just keep looking at Selene without even moving. Aww geez, why are you guys so slow, thought Selene while getting impatient, but suddenly Kumahachi bursts out laughing while holding his stomach, even the usually composed Milano laughs as well.

Selene, unable to understand what’s going on, keep looking at the laughing two while blinking repeatedly, confused. To Selene who’s a fan of the game where four people partied up to hunt dragons, dragons are like deers or wild boars in her eyes, a fantastic hunting target per se. But Selene doesn’t have any friends at all, so she mostly has to play the game alone, but well let’s leave it at that.

“I can’t believe you’re saying that we shall hunt the dragon! Selene-dono, those things only happen in picture books or myths you know.”

Kumahachi somehow managed to answer her with trembling voice as he can’t stop himself from laughing. It took the two of them who have normal common senses a while before they finally understood what Selene meant by ‘Hunt’. Selene pouts in dissatisfaction, in which Milano opens his mouth to as if to appease her.

“Selene, dragons are creatures that’s on a totally different league than us. It’s as Kumahachi has said, the stories about people who obtained mighty power from contracts with dragons, or those that fight them for the whole three days and nights straight, they’re all purely just made-up fantasy.

“……No hunt?”

But Selene still won’t back down. She really wants to see the real dragon hunting scene after all. Selene knows that Kumahachi has that wondeful Tachi sword, even Milano has his luxurious-looking sword as well, so she thought that maybe the two can go on a quick dragon hunt.

Three days and nights? If it’s me I can hunt that flying dragon within fifteen minutes, complained Selene inside her mind. Selene’s not smart enough to give up.

“Well, be it hunting a dragon or riding a dragon, they sure sound like heroic tales aren’t they. What do you say Prince, how about you test your skills by subjugating a dragon?”

“No thank you. If I really want to kill myself that badly, then going to your country and commit that seppuku1 thing is way easier than confronting a dragon, and I can do it on my own too.”

Milano replies back to Kumahachi’s joke with another joke. Seeing that Selene’s still grumpy, Milano smiles bitterly while explaining further.

Not much is known about dragon’s ecology, but what we know is that they have a much longer history than that of human’s, and that both their magical and physical power is beyond what humans can compare. Unlike on Earth where human rules the world, in this world dragons are the apex predators.

On the other hand, the matter regarding their intelligence is still in debate. Some say that their intelligence equals that of human’s, many believed that they’re superior than human’s, there is also one stupid case study where a dragon is interested in a street performance in one of human’s town, so it descends onto the town’s square, but that ended up scaring everyone including the performers away as well, so it destroys the town in anger. But generally, people thinks that dragon looked at humans like how humans looked at ant’s nests.

“I seeー……”

Kumahachi and Milano are explained how great dragons are, and Selene finally back down. Meanwhile, as if it has noticed that the three little creatures on the ground are talking about itself, the dragon who’s still flying high in the sky abruptly swoop down with great speed, on the verge of crashing into the ground, generating a strong gust of wind in doing so. Selene hurriedly holds her hat with both of her hands so that it’ll not fly off.

Without wasting its swooping momentum, the dragon pulls up in an U-shape, soaring up through the sky as if to show off its power. After that it flies off to the northern direction with a speed like that of a falcon’s.

“Amazing.”

“Umu. Well, just like how a lion will not pick a mole as its opponent, they doesn’t have much interest in human. That’s why there’s no need to be so scared of them. Now that our stomach have filled up, I think it’s about time we depart again.” (Kumahachi)

Kumahachi said as he folds the map and put it back into his pocket. Even after the dragon has left, Selene’s still gazing at the northern direction where it disappears. Let’s leave her like that for a while, said Milano to Kumahachi as he helps him tidying up emtied bowls.

“Kumahachi, you have my thanks.”

“Why do you thank me?”

“It’s for teaching her about the continent. Seems like she’s pretty interested in it. That dragon also came at the perfect timing as well. So much so that I’d like to thank him as well.”

“This is not a big deal at all my lord.”

After the cleaning is done, the break time is now officially over, Selene climbs back into the same horse carriage before it starts to move forward again. Selene who had been lying on the couch listlessly with eyes like a dead fish earlier, is now sitting straight with a little smile on her face, seemingly thinking about something.

Seeing a subtle smile on Selene’s face where it previously looked depressed, Milano smiles in relief. The world is not something that is to be feared, there are many things that will excite you just like what happened just now too. Milano who wants to tell that to her is very happy to see her smile.

Milano sincerely thanked Kumahachi and the dragon who happened to pass by in his heart, before mounting his horse once again.

However, Selene’s still plotting evil schemes as usual. It was unfortunate that she wasn’t able to go on a monster hunting, but the information she has obtained is very useful. She’s quite interested in the elves, but now that she knows that dragons are very powerful, if she can somehow acquire a dragon ally then it doesn’t matter how powerful a country is, such an idea popped up in her head.

“Fufufu.”

Even though she had no concrete idea on how to execute such a plan, counting her chickens before they hatch, but imagining the prince’s panic expression makes Selene’s lovely lips bloomed into an evil smile.

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