REFDL 24

“Can I take him out?”

“Uh, that’s…”

Clunk.

While Nitan hesitated, the man flicked his middle and thumb fingers. The four sides collapsed outward like a disassembling structure.

I found myself standing in an open space. My pupils dilated.

Magic…!

I properly examined the man.

He was such a textbook mage, I wondered why I hadn’t noticed right away.

A dark-colored robe reaching down to his shins.

Geometric patterns embroidered in gold and navy thread adorned the cuffs and hood, while a circular emblem depicting the moon and this place’s capricious starry sky was stitched onto his chest.

He looked like a real mage…!

It made sense why the man looked like a wet rag.

After all, mages were bound to suffer from chronic fatigue and overwork!

“Can I touch you?”

Nod nod nod.

“Hmm. Hmm. So this is what it feels like. Hmm.”

Kek. Kek… kekeke!

“Ah, does this tickle? You’re ticklish too. Do other dragons get ticklish? Knum didn’t seem to…”

The man continued touching me here and there. He occasionally nodded, or stared. And then, with a truly miserable expression, he said,

“Ha, that was really good.”

“……”

His body was so drained of energy that his expressions couldn’t keep up with his words or feelings.

Nitan, who had been watching quietly, cut in impatiently.

“You’ve had your fun. Hand him over now. We need to get this done before the Captain arrives…”

…Did he just say ‘need to get this done’?

“Ah. Right, I did.”

“Right, yes?! You didn’t seriously forget to bring….”

“Ta-da.”

The man spread both palms. A pendant necklace dangled from each hand, hanging between his fingers.

“First, this one…”

In the blink of an eye, the man tried to hook one necklace onto my snout… but couldn’t.

My snout was several times larger than the pendant’s hole.

“…….”

“…….”

The man tried again with my front paw. It wasn’t easy, getting it caught on his claws. It even got tangled between my bent toes.

The man wasn’t exactly dexterous. Instead of untangling, the necklace got even more twisted. Unable to watch any longer, Nitan stepped in to help retrieve the necklace.

Nitan glared at the man.

The mage didn’t seem to care.

“I should use this first.”

“But… you said it might not work well.”

“No.”

“That’s different from what you said earlier…”

“The chances of failure are much higher. Saying ‘it might not work well’ is too optimistic.”

“……”

Kyak…

Ni-Nitan, hang in there…!

“Alright, then…”

He hooked another necklace around my toe. A ruby-red gem that resembled my scales sparkled. Was it the sunlight? It seemed to shine unusually brightly…

…Huh?

My surroundings grew larger and larger.

Nitan, startled, and the mage, still hollow-eyed and expressionless, were both affected.

I quickly realized. It wasn’t the surroundings that had grown; I had shrunk.

Kyak?!

It felt similar to when I’d just escaped the nest. The mage grabbed me, now back in my slipper size, with both hands and lifted me up.

“Oh. Success.”

“……?!”

“I didn’t think it would work, but it did? Hmm. This part… seems related to being human-friendly after all. There’s a theory that the source of a dragon’s resistance stems from psychological aversion…”

Thud!

Nitan shoved the mage aside and snatched me up. The mage flew like a piece of paper, rolled several times, and landed face-down on the floor. He didn’t even twitch. He looked dead.

“Uh, sm-small, if it’s like this!”

“…….”

I wished he’d speak human.

My reincarnation buff lets me understand human speech somehow, but alien languages are impossible.

Meanwhile, the mage returned. Blood dripping from his nose. He crawled on all fours across the training ground floor.

“The one on the front paw. Move it to the neck.”

He didn’t seem to care about the blow he’d just taken. Nitan did as ordered. The necklace around my neck vanished as if melting into thin air.

Nitan squinted and stared at the spot on my body that would be between my collarbones if I were human.

“There’s a tattoo now?”

“If you want to take off the necklace, just think ‘I want to take it off’ while scratching the tattoo. If you want to return to your original form, it’s the same. Convenient, right…?”

The mage, still sprawled on the floor, stretched his hand upward.

“Now let’s put this on too…”

Nitan hung the necklace. It too vanished in the same way. A new tattoo appeared beside the existing one.

“…Speak.”

Huh?

“Anything. Just speak.”

I blinked in incomprehension.

Only then did the mage, brushing himself off and standing straight, check his robe here and there and speak.

“The first necklace… is a shrinking spell. I developed it to apply to dragons, but because of their resistance. It never worked on any dragon… so it was one of the failed experiments I kept researching alone. The second necklace was originally for humans. So… it has a translation spell cast on it.“

“…..!”

I immediately opened my snout.

[Speak!]

“…..?!”

It wasn’t that the dragon’s voice wasn’t coming out.

But a larger resonance drowned out the dragon’s characteristic roar. It boomed like speaking through a microphone.

[I. Speak!]

Perhaps it was because of the artifact’s limitation, the words came out fragmented!

But what mattered was that I could now clearly convey my thoughts!

[I speak! I can speak!]

“Ooh!”

Nitan exclaimed in admiration and lifted me up.

I turned to the mage. I asked, filled with intense longing.

[Is there a magic to become human?]

“……”

Nitan looked flustered, but the mage thought before answering.

“You want to become human?”

[Yes.]

Living as a dragon wasn’t bad. If I’d been human, I wouldn’t have survived a single hour, let alone a day, in the Sea of Trees.

But now it’s different.

I entered the human world.

And for reasons unknown, I’m on the verge of falling into the hands of a man who seems to despise dragons to his very core.

If I become human not only would it be easier to live here, but the man wouldn’t hate me anymore either.

Beyond that, it’s nothing but advantages.

I could even fall in love!

It’s been over two months since I started living as a dragon. Yet my self and soul still define me as human.

That meant romance with a dragon, or doing… that kind of thing, was physiologically impossible.

As my body grows, the dragon’s instincts seem to be growing stronger, and it was already bothering me.

If my body could change back to human, that worry would vanish completely.

Of course, it’d be a shame to give up the uniqueness of being a Kremlis. The best would be to become human, and then become a dragon again… that thing commonly called polymorph!

“There isn’t…”

Huh?

“At least, not that I know of…”

…Wait, not that you know of?

I pushed the frustration aside.

That means!

“The Magic Tower. I’ll look into it. Maybe no one cares, so it doesn’t exist. Hmm. A new perspective. Very interesting…”

His expression screamed ‘interest my ass, I just want to pass out and sleep for three days,’ but having roughly understood this mage, I nodded. He seemed very reliable.

The human issue can wait.

For now, I decided to start with what I’d most desperately wanted to convey until now.

[My, name…….]

“What is going on here?”

Thud.

The footsteps sounded like thunder.

Both me and Nitan, who was holding me, froze.

The mage beside us made a quick judgment.

“Then I’ll see you later…….”

Traitor…!

Kaelus didn’t even glance at the fleeing mage. His blazing eyes pierced both me and Nitan simultaneously. A low, gloomy voice, like something risen from hell, growled with fury.

“Explain.”

“……”

[…….]

The rage was fleeting.

Kaelus listened to Nitan’s explanation and grasped the situation.

“…Alright then.”

He judged it more appropriate for them to manage and monitor me, and thus.

Clank!

Locked up?!

…And so began my new life in the mansion… no, my life of confinement.

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4. Small, Slow, Steady

Step 1. Prepare a large cage.

Step 2. Prepare a shrunken Kremlis Dragon.

Step 3. Place the dragon in the cage.

…I state that this entire process was carried out by Kaelus’s hand, and not a single milligram of my will was added.

‘…….’

For reference, the cage was generously sized.

To put it in terms of a small dog’s perspective, it would be about the size of a 6-pyeong (19.83 square meter) studio apartment.

The internal environment wasn’t bad either.

Velvet bed. Silverware. Toys…….

All were small but proper items.

The intricate craftsmanship even embodied a spirit of mastery.

Meals consisted of fresh raw meat and fruit served three times a day, and a servant would even slip a reed toy through the cage bars to play with me separately.

…No!

I smacked the reed toy with my front paw.

What do they think I am?! A cat?!

Swish. Swish swish.

‘…….’

…This damn reed toy!

I chewed the reed toy I’d hooked with my claws, biting it several times to vent my anger.

Kaelus, surprisingly, didn’t treat me badly. If you asked if he treated me well, that wasn’t it either. He just ignored me.

But thinking back to the days when he tried to kill me without mercy…

He’s become human.

Yeah. There was no disputing that.

Anyway, the servants who had been ordered to “take reasonable care” of me pretended not to, but they doted on me excessively, calling me cute. Living there was very comfortable.

The feeling of being loved normally.

It wasn’t bad.

However, there was one very serious problem…