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Translated By Arcane Translations
Translator: FusionX
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“…Ah.”
It was a reaction like finding something she had forgotten.
The exorbitant compensation, the pirates and the Chokugen Faction, the bloody memories of the past, the cardinal’s unreasonable demands, and so on.
Sen felt that her vision had narrowed because she was overwhelmed by so many situations. This wasn’t why she had come here.
To meet the Dragon God Shakarim through Dragon Priestess Jane. And to receive help and stop the approaching apocalypse.
“The compensation is nothing. It’s not something we need to be responsible for in the first place.”
“…That’s true.”
“We have to pretend to be swayed for now to stay close to the Dragon Priestess, so we’re taking a strategic approach!”
Eve was scrubbing her fists as if to make them squeak. It seemed enough, but it was with the momentum of checking weapons for the coming war.
“Evidence is easier to find than you think. The cardinal’s unreasonable demands aren’t a big problem either.”
Sen felt relieved by Eve’s comforting voice. She admitted that she had become impatient as soon as she realized the Chokugen Faction was involved.
“Oh, Sen. I think I’m going to be hitting someone for a while, could you teach me how?”
“Hitting someone for a while?”
“Yes, about a hundred times?”
“…I can teach you how to put power into your punches.”
“That’s enough!”
Eve immediately started practicing her punches, and Sen began correcting her posture. I wondered what was going on, but she was teaching her because it was her friend’s request.
“Oh?”
Eve, who had been throwing punches towards the coast, suddenly pointed her finger in the direction her gaze naturally fell.
“Ships?”
“Hmm?”
It took Eve a while to put her glasses back on, which she had taken off for exercise, but Sen just had to turn her head.
She could see the black flags with skull emblems fluttering mercilessly on the approaching ships.
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“Cardinal, do you really think this is what the Dragon God wants? How can you be so brazen!”
Inside the tent, Dragon Priestess Jane was fiercely scolding Cardinal Theosander. Not only had he killed all the prisoners, but he had also openly destroyed the evidence.
“Did you think I would collude with you and give false testimony? I’m the only one who can cast two votes in the oracle. The dragon-kin don’t take my words lightly!”
The Dragon Priestess, disgusted by his unreasonable actions, wanted to shout even more fiercely, but Cardinal Theosander responded with an unusually cold tone.
“Your Holiness, if the humans obtain evidence here, you will die.”
“…What?”
She wondered what he suddenly meant, but Theosander began to criticize the naive priestess, asking if she still didn’t understand.
“The 730th oracle was held on the day we departed. To dismiss you as the Dragon Priestess.”
“W-What are you talking about? What right do the elders have to dismiss me!”
“The vote has already been decided and concluded. It wasn’t something I could stop.”
Cardinal Theosander began to plead with the Dragon Priestess with sincere eyes.
“Your Holiness, you must not fall out of favor with the elders now. If you side with the humans here, all that awaits you is a false accusation and a cruel execution.”
“Ah…”
The Dragon Priestess had been thinking about it for a while.
The current system was truly distorted.
The current system of the dragon-kin was too heavily influenced by the remnants of the old Dragon God.
Follow what the Dragon God says.
It was a very simple structure, but the Dragon God had closed his eyes and fallen asleep.
The highest authority had disappeared, and the Dragon Priestess alone wasn’t enough to replace it, so they elected elders.
But over time, there were too many elders.
Being able to cast two votes in the oracle was a powerful weapon, but the remaining twelve votes could join forces to oust her, and the arbitrary management continued, leading to this result.
“I will go and explain that you have made a significant contribution to holding the humans accountable for the compensation. So please, stay put. Just rely on me.”
“I can’t…”
Despite the pressure of losing her position as Dragon Priestess, being falsely accused, and possibly being executed, Jane tried to hide her trembling shoulders and opened her mouth, but…
“Jane! Stop it!”
Cardinal Theosander finally exploded at Jane.
“I’ll protect you! Damn it! You’re going to die because of your useless stubbornness? There’s a lifeline right in front of you, but you won’t grab it? You’re so foolish!”
“C-Cardinal?”
Jane was bewildered by the sudden change and called out to him, but his words poured out like a flood.
“Stay put. Okay? I’ll talk to the elders. You just have to marry me and live comfortably by my side.”
“……”
“You say your words have credibility? But you won’t even get a chance to speak! What nonsense!”
Cardinal Theosander, who had been fuming, seemed to have burned out his emotions, and he took a deep breath and calmed down.
“So, you understand? Stay put. Then I’ll take care of everything.”
I’ll be your savior.
Theosander whispered this in Jane’s ear and slowly turned around. There was a disturbing commotion outside.
Theosander left the tent, and Jane, trying to hold her trembling body together, slowly knelt down.
She wanted to pray.
In this situation where she felt like she would collapse at any moment, Jane knelt down and tried to hide her weakness.
Losing her position as Dragon Priestess wasn’t the problem, nor was the fact that she wouldn’t be able to communicate with the Dragon God Shakarim anymore, nor was becoming Theosander’s wife.
That level of sacrifice was nothing to her.
But the fact that nothing would change even with such a sacrifice.
That merely protecting herself was the result of her last struggle was frustrating and pathetic.
Why.
Why had it come to this?
The days when everyone lived happily under the protection of the Dragon God were shorter than she thought.
Jane finally realized why God had closed his eyes, but…
The entrance to the tent opened slightly, and a man with light footsteps entered.
“The situation is better than I thought.”
Holding a rope for restraints.
“Do you get seasick easily?”
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“Damn it, are they really pirates?”
My throat was sore from shouting at Jane just now.
I was swinging my sword and forcing my voice to give orders, but I was being overwhelmed by the sudden appearance of pirates.
Boom! Boom! Boom!
The sound of shelling continued.
‘Damn it! I can’t believe they really came to the Royen Sea!’
Since Cardinal Theosander thought there was no way they would come to Royen, he had sent the troops that could stop the pirates to the Salamander Sea.
He was here for the humans’ on-site inspection, not to stop the pirates.
Perhaps because they had been attacked twice before, their response wasn’t completely inept. The Inquisitors specializing in magic were forcibly offsetting the shelling.
Then, without warning, the shelling stopped.
“Did they decide that shelling was useless?”
Then, he judged that the pirates wouldn’t try to engage in close combat with them, so they would naturally retreat.
Theosander felt the credit for stopping the pirate attack for the first time being placed on his shoulders.
Boom!
The sound of shelling rang out again.
However, it wasn’t a cannonball.
“A human?”
A human, curled up in a ball, was flying instead of the cannonball. The person, who seemed to have coated their entire body with mana and landed without any impact, immediately drew their sword.
“Let’s goooo!”
That wasn’t all.
Other pirates, also coating their entire bodies with mana, were pouring towards them. Close combat unfolded without even needing time for the ships to dock.
At first, it was ridiculous.
It was laughable that they would dare to engage in close combat with them, but.
The battle with the pirates, who would do anything to win, was more difficult than expected.
Strange projectiles were mixed in with the shelling that came with the humans. They immediately spread throughout the battlefield, stinging their faces and forcing tears to flow.
“Tear gas!”
The worst possible battlefield for dragon-kin with sensitive senses.
I wondered how the pirates had such a thing, but they covered their mouths with the cloths they had been wearing around their necks as if they were used to it.
Each cloth was enchanted with a spell to regulate breathing.
“Form a formation! Create a barrier with magic! Don’t let those scoundrels set foot in our space!”
Theosander demanded that they create a mana barrier to push away the gas, and the Inquisitors obeyed his order, even though it was a strain.
In the end, they were fighting the pirates, who were rushing in from outside where the tear gas was rampant, with a mana barrier between them.
They were caught off guard by the sudden attack, but the Inquisitors couldn’t be pushed back in a head-on fight.
The battle slowly progressed, expanding the range of the barrier like a game of Go. Theosander had a relaxed smile on his face.
But the smile froze at the sight in the distance.
At the edge of the battlefield.
He saw Jane, her hands and feet tied, being kidnapped by the pirates.
“You bastards! What are you doing to my beloved!”
Theosander felt dizzy from the blood rushing to his head.
This couldn’t be happening.
The only woman suitable for him, a cardinal, was being dragged away by mere scoundrels.
Theosander, imagining what might happen to her on that ship, bit his lip so hard it bled.
“Stop! Stop, I say!”
With a heart-wrenching pain, he hurriedly drew his sword and ran towards them, but.
The kidnappers were already on a small boat, heading towards the pirate ship.
Jane’s pretty face was the main reason she was taken onto the pirate ship.
They gave him scornful looks, asking if he was running away from the battle, but as soon as they saw Jane’s appearance, they drooled and shouted for him to get on their ship quickly.
So, Jane, I, Eve, and Sen boarded the nearby pirate ship. Eve and Sen covered their faces with hoods to avoid unwanted attention.
“Wow, she looks sweet.”
“Wouldn’t it be okay to have a taste?”
They were talking as if they were cannibals, but I knew it was just the pirates’ unique way of talking dirty, so I boarded the deck and said coldly,
“She’s the Dragon Priestess. The Lord goes first.”
As soon as I mentioned the Pirate Lord, they all became silent.
“We know. Don’t try to act cool! It’s rude.”
“Tsk.”
“I just want to lick her soft skin.”
“What a knight. His loyalty is crazy.”
I deliberately acted as if I was protecting the Dragon Priestess while listening to the disgusting words of the pirates, and they got even more annoyed.
“You’re not originally from our ship, are you? Go to the cabin and wait. We’ll transfer you to the Lord’s ship, so just wait.”
With all the pirates’ attention on us, we headed inside. Perhaps because they were in the middle of a battle, there was no one in the cabin, so I felt a little relieved.
Eve and Sen took off their hoods, but immediately put them back on because of the pungent smell coming from the ship.
They realized that the magic on the hoods that blocked the tear gas also blocked the violent stench of the pirate ship.
“Ugh, I almost threw up.”
“There are strange smells mixed together.”
The inside of the pirate ship reeked of disgusting, lewd, and raw, rotten smells.
Even Dragon Priestess Jane seemed to be struggling, keeping her mouth shut and holding her breath, so I put my hood over her mouth.
“Phew, thank you.”
Jane finally opened her mouth and breathed deeply.
I frowned as I looked around the inside of the pirate ship.
“I used to feel wronged when girls said there was a weird smell on the men’s floor, but is this what it feels like?”
Usually, the person who smells doesn’t know they smell, right? I wondered if the pirates didn’t know they smelled like this.
Anyway, there didn’t seem to be any need to search the pirate ship.
Now that her breathing problem was solved, Jane cautiously asked us,
“But why did we come on a pirate ship?”
I had just told her to run away and brought her here, so I didn’t explain why we had to get on the pirate ship. It was that urgent.
I confessed honestly.
“We need a ship to see the Dragon God.”
“……!”
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