Chapter 73 – 73 – On the Way Back, the Sky Was Clear
Instead of the old-fashioned, damp wood grain of the past, the brass-colored frame is made entirely of metal. Instead of a rusty tin statue, the bow of a sea goddess carved from crystal.
The Handgun, which appears to be somewhat more stylish than when it departed, is neatly tied with strong chains and ropes, like a string basket.
From what I heard, there is no need to calculate the wind and sail, but four dragons are there to lift it and move it. It looks like it will be a very luxurious return.
One minor problem is that one of the dragons who volunteered is ‘Nidroga’s cousin.’
“Sister, I’m not feeling well, so I might fall asleep while flying.”
“Please don’t talk nonsense.”
“I have a backpack full of awakening herbs. Light a fire in the boat and let the steam into my nose – no, sister!”
While Nidroga was scattering hemp leaves into the sea, someone sneaked up behind me.
“Let’s take a look. It was fun thanks to you all.”
“Ah, yes. Thank you so much for taking care of me.”
When I quickly nod my head and turn around, I see an attractive mature woman with relaxed, narrowed eyes.
But now that I know the various expressions hidden behind those narrow eyes…
“After all that happened, are you still scared of me?”
“…Rather than fearing him, he is someone we should respect. There are so many eyes watching him, so it’s hard for me to talk to him in a friendly way.”
If you act arrogant just because you hung out for one night, you’ll end up losing face as a porter. The other person’s generosity is not permission to look down on them.
However, Rod slightly twisted the intention.
“Does that mean that if you don’t have eyes to see, you can still show off your cool side?”
“···Well, that is…”
It wasn’t until Rod smiled and told me it was a joke that I stopped freaking out. Rod, who was pleased, added:
“Don’t think you’ve discovered Rod’s slutty side. He wouldn’t do that to just anyone.”
“··· How dare you think such a thing? Didn’t she say that she had grown to a great height in the years near Nidroga’s age?”
“I remembered. I guess that night was quite relaxing.”
Rod waved his arm as if he was shy, but glared at me with provocative greed in his slightly opened eyes.
The tension that makes you salivate. Rod eventually burst into laughter and patted my arm to calm his expression.
“Please take care of Nidroga. She is now a full-fledged adult, so she will soon be able to stand on her own in the world without her mother’s help.”
“You are still one of my most trusted colleagues, but as you said, I will do my best to help you until the day when you no longer have to worry… Of course, if that day comes before my life is over.”
Maybe it was presumptuous. I, who had followed Rod’s example by adding a joke, was taken aback when Rod lowered the corners of his mouth and his face hardened.
“I’m sorry if I was rude-“
“No, no. It’s just similar to what someone said.”
“Who are you talking about?”
“···Nidroga’s father was an ordinary human being.”
What Rod says while smiling again has many implications. All I could offer to comfort him was a nod of his head.
“Dragons live with the identities of their neighboring races. According to old stories, it is the gods’ consideration.”
“What kind of consideration are you talking about?”
“To be precise, it is a consideration not for us but for the world. If we love our neighbors in the fields and our friends in the sea, we will not be able to use that power carelessly to burn and dry up the houses of our friends.”
Rod looked at our party members as they checked in with sad eyes. At that moment, Nidro was laughing and joking with the party members.
“It was a consideration to protect the weak around the world from us, the strong. But…”
“···The dragon who fell in love with them was not considerate.”
Rod looked at me with slightly admiring eyes.
“That’s right. Who cares about the sorrow of the strong? The soul inside this shell is not a supreme monster, but just a person. Why do we have to live endlessly counting the things we have lost and those who have passed away?”
The tone of voice is light, but the traces of tears contained within are heavy. I imagined the hundreds and thousands of years of having to keep my wounds as a weak person inside a dragon’s shell.
He reminds me of what he said about not arbitrarily raising the threshold of pleasure. It may work the other way too. Sadness can kill a person more easily than joy.
“Sometimes I think like that. ‘Why do I have to live as a human being?’ And what’s scarier than when I think like that is the thought that someday I might have those same feelings even when I go to Nidro.”
“Are you thinking of the party members and me?”
“So, I ask you a favor. Since this has come to this, please love me as much as you can.”
“Usually such words are followed by a polite request to leave my daughter for that reason.”
“That can’t be right. You said you wouldn’t be a mother who blocks your daughter’s love. Someday separation will come, and sighing over what’s been lost will inevitably follow. The best ointment to apply to that scar is…”
Nidroga’s mother sighed and raised the corners of her mouth.
“It was a happy memory.”
“···Then my mission will be to give Nidroga pleasure without regret.”
“The mission is a bit heavy. I will ask you to do it. I believe you will do it as well as you have done so far.”
Rod tilted his head for a moment. And I quietly added it as if it wasn’t planned.
“It was the same for me too. It was nice not to be lonely for a while.”
A moment of intense worry crossed my mind. The other person’s generosity is not permission to look down on them.
I’m not very knowledgeable about etiquette, and I don’t even know much about etiquette in Dragon’s Nest, which is beyond the common sense of the general public. So this may be more rude than you can imagine.
I hugged the person who seemed lonely. Rod seemed embarrassed and waved his hands in the air, not knowing where to put them.
“Oh my goodness.”
“Me too. Goodbye, Ragnaroka. I hope to see you again someday before my time is up.”
Ragnaroka laughed as if he was taken aback. However, as if she didn’t dislike me, she gently patted my back and whispered to me.
“Before time runs out. That’s too dramatic. I’ve never said goodbye.”
“···Is that so?”
Ragnar Loka tilted her head in the opposite direction again, sighing as her conflict meandered.
She said, “She is also my daughter’s lover, so she actually tried to let me go cleanly. She said such cute things and hugged me…”
An aggressive smile passes by his eyes. Ragna Loka suddenly grabbed the back of my head with a strong grip and pulled me to her shoulder.
And she whispered in a somewhat harsh tone into the shocked woman’s ear.
“It brings back memories of that night, which was so great that I still regret it.”
“Ah.”
Rod quickly let me go. And he enjoyed watching me walk backwards.
···Behind that eye smile is an insidious monster that is hundreds of years old. I decided to never forget that fact in the future.
Because I might meet the monster I woke up again soon.
In fact, it is more enjoyable than scary. Ragnaroka’s laughter didn’t seem so lonely anymore.
————-
A warship rises into the sky like a lie. The size is completely different from our party’s rattling room that Nidroga flew up with.
There is also a sense of stability. I was worried about motion sickness, but when the ground under my feet stopped shaking, I gave up for a while.
The same seemed to apply to the sailors. The sailors in the handgun party shared their positive outlook, saying that it would be a more pleasant trip than expected.
And that peace was shattered by the unexpected remarks of a bold male sailor.
Morgan declared, lifting her chin proudly.
“I’m transferring, father.”
“Where.”
“It’s a special monster destruction and removal party.”
“Where is it?”
“The party that my father first called a big social gathering for women.”
The sailors were very embarrassed. It wasn’t just that they didn’t yet know that Morgan was a woman.
The whispering sound is loud. ‘You want to transfer to another party? Even before the contract period ends, with just a few words?’
‘No matter how family you are, you dare to openly tell the captain of a privateer ship sponsored by the state that you will leave the ship-‘
“I allow it.”
Captain Aleister Tomko said grumpily, scratching his ears. The sailors became even more embarrassed.
The helmsman with thick arms cleared his throat and lifted his head.
“···Um, Captain?”
“Why.”
“I would like to give you some careful advice. Only ladies can join the party the navigator just mentioned and-“
“Morgan, show me.”
Morgan proudly let her hair down, revealing the feminine physique she had hidden beneath her coat.
The captain stopped Morgan without even turning around as he grabbed her by the sleeve in front of her chest.
“I didn’t tell you to take off your bare skin. If you want to see me shoot down the people who are observing your body, you can take it off.”
“You can’t do that. No matter where I belong, the handgun party members are my precious colleagues.”
“I thought about it well. And now, if there are people who are secretly thinking to themselves, ‘How dare a woman who is a bad omen at sea dare to board a ship, my constipation has not improved for several days?’… I personally will use gunpowder. “I am willing to widen the entrance with steel and pierce it, so tell me now.”
“You say so. Everyone, don’t even think about it. You are my precious colleague.”
Morgan shrugged her shoulders as if that was what happened.
The sailors innocently opened their mouths. I guess I couldn’t even imagine that the respected navigator who ate at the same table, shared joys and sorrows, was of the opposite sex.
“She was a woman?”
“I can’t believe she was a woman.”
“···Actually, I thought that might be the case, navigator. I may have been wondering for days and nights if there was a problem with my identity. If I confess my love even now, you will accept it – I will pick it up! I’m sorry, captain! Please help me! “
Captain Tomko, who had spent a great deal of his patience restraining himself for a moment, put back into his belt the pistol which had blown off Adamantton’s leg.
Morgan shrugged her eyebrows as if she were angry at her father.
“But you’re giving me permission much more readily than I expected. Why?”
“I grew up riding all kinds of boats, so I think it wouldn’t be a bad idea for you to gain knowledge and study the world. They could teach you a lot. Isn’t that right, ‘Lan Bantai’?”
···Why are you suddenly…?
“Yes, that’s right.”
“Morgan, you can take your salary out of the settlement on your own. I’ll have to find a new person to do the accounting. And Bantai, you follow me. I have something to tell you.”
“···If you have anything to say-“
“About my daughter. She’s joining your party, so I’d like to tell you to take good care of her.”
“···You can say it here-“
“Follow me.”
Growled the captain. I quietly looked over the gunwale.
The scenery is completely different from when sailing through the sea water. Because we are flying in the sky, the water seems very far away.
If I were on the water, I would have been able to swim, but now, if I were to be pushed and fell, I feel like my heart would stop before I could fall.
I swallowed my saliva and followed Tomko.
Tomko locked the captain’s cabin door as soon as I came in. And then he collapsed into his chair and sighed as if the ground was falling.
As I stood there in front of the door, Tomko got annoyed and pointed to the chair across from the table.
“Don’t tremble.”
“···If you tell me to sit down, I will sit down. But I swear that I have never tried to lie to the captain-“
“You’re not afraid of the woman who controls dragons by force, but I’m scared and wait for her permission? Don’t play funny games.”
Tomko dried his face and sighed again. Then he stopped rubbing his face and glanced back at me.
“Did you do it?”
“···Yes?”
“I told you not to do anything foolish. You went to Lord’s hideout under the pretext of seeing his daughter. And you stayed there all night. The next day, Lord, who was not your daughter, suddenly appeared at the court with a wide expression on her face, and the Mancellarion Line “Storm was treated so leniently that it would be difficult to find a match in history.”
“···Well, that is…”
“Some will say that it is not strange in the first place, since she is trying a completely different line from the previous Lords’ reign of terror. Most people who witnessed the trial will say that my guess is purely far-fetched and that the Lords were Mancellarion in the first place. “He would claim that he had simply decided to forgive.”
“···I think so too…?”
“Yes, it is reasonable to think that way. But you are not rational. If there is a person in the world who touches Morgan Tomko on Aleister Tomko’s ship, I will not hesitate to diagnose that bastard as a madman.”
These days, it seems like we are often beaten by facts. I also had no idea that such a wild beast lay dormant within Tan Bantai’s gentle personality.
This is not a thought I am proud of. It’s a feeling of shame. The prospect that he will not survive expulsion is becoming increasingly clear.
“You must be crazy. I’ll ask you again. Did you say it?”
“···I’ll spare my words. I said something nonsense in the first place, but the moment the rumor gets out somewhere-“
“The bodies of you and me, with our hair cut off by the Lord, will be loaded side by side on the Handgun, and we will have a Viking-style funeral where the entire ship is burned and taken to hell.”
Tomko stared at me as if I were a bomb that couldn’t be handled. The fact that the famous Captain Tomko was afraid of me filled me with more fear than pride.
“Why on earth did you do something like that? I hope you didn’t ask Mancellarion Sunstorm for mercy on the Lord you dragged into bed.”
“···What kind of fortune teller are you? How on earth do you do all that-“
“···You are clearly a lot crazier than I thought. Let’s do it this way.”
It is clear that Captain Tomko is receiving revelation from God. As I looked at Tomko with suspicion, Tomko took an unexpectedly polite attitude.
“Anyway, it is clear that you have connections to the Dragon Lord. And judging from the signs, there is a high probability… Anyway, from now on, I will treat you as an equal ally. If you get into trouble, you can sell my name. “Send my crew if you need to.”
“… That’s a huge benefit. I don’t know if I deserve it, but I really appreciate the favor.”
“In return, I have a favor to ask. My daughter.”
“Morgan?”
“I honestly don’t understand. Your attitude is that it doesn’t matter if you already have multiple lovers. I asked for advice from a trustworthy person just to be sure, but they said I was never possessed or brainwashed in any way. Morgan is a guy who does what he does. “Rather than watch him burn the ship or point a gun at my head again, I have no choice but to accept it.”
He said he would point a gun at my head too. It seems like my father can’t handle his temper.
Touching the wrinkles under his father’s stress-stained eyes, Tomko reached out his hand for me to shake.
“I’m begging you to put down your face. Don’t let tears flow from that child’s eyes… If you do that, I swear, it’s none of my business whether it’s Ishtar or Lord, I’ll turn you into a piece of meat.”
I swallowed my saliva. And I accepted the handshake.
