4. a beetle’s blessing on this wonderful world!

I said ‘dragon’, but she didn’t exactly match my idea of one. Her scales were iridescent white, with four feathery wings sprouting out of her back, a snout that resembled a turtle’s, and the branchy horn as she possessed in her human form. If I had to guess, I’d say she was about the size of a giraffe, with a similar silhouette, plus wings that seemed longer than she was tall.

Hisui unsubtly skidded behind me. Was this a dream, or…?

This was too coherent to be one, but… I mean… surely we hadn’t actually…. unless…

The dragon roared. It looked intimidating and stuff, but the problem was that it sounded like her fake roar as a human. “Awaken! Now!” She… said? She wasn’t moving her mouth, but it was her voice. “Or I’ll eat whoever is weakest.”

Without thinking, my gaze traveled to Hisui, who was now hiding behind me. Time to assuage her fear with the power of words. (Kidding. I hated how dumb I sounded when talking most of the time.) “I’ll, um. Distract her.”

“Really?”

I nodded, then pointed at the stall.

“Oh. So… you want me to hide there?”

I nodded.

“While I tap into my magic?”

Up and down went my head.

“What if she eats you?”

I shrugged.

“Then I won’t hide. Just distract her until I awaken, and then we can switch.”

I gave her a thumbs-up. With the enemy growing to twenty times its original size, my plan to weaponize the stall was now under operations; I’d get her to destroy it, then jam a piece of wood from the resulting debris into her eye or something. The dragon, whose tail passively-aggressively batted the ground like a cat’s, visibly perked up as I approached her. “Ready?”

How the dragon expected me to fight her was beyond me, but I nodded anyway. If she’d meant to kill us, she could’ve easily done so the moment she transformed. This entire thing was a ruse. As if to prove my theory, she pounced very, very slowly. I could’ve walked out of the area of attack.

Hisui crouched below a mushroom, tapping her head with both hands. She was far enough that I wouldn’t have to worry about her getting hit by accident.

Since I “dodged” the “attack”, the dragon’s jaws clamped on air, and she stayed there… waiting…

…yeah, no.

How was I supposed to harm her now if her moves were so painfully choreographed? I kicked the dragon’s throat, correctly assuming that she wouldn’t even budge. “Attack me,” I told her. “Properly.”

“Hmm… if I do that, you’ll die.”

“Don’t care.”

The dragon turned to glance at me with a huge, golden eye. “You’re one of those, huh?”

I didn’t know if ‘those’ went against her pursuit of ‘good ones’, but I frankly didn’t care. I was being stupid and irrational and I knew it. This entire thing was really beginning to get on my nerves.

“Are you a god or a beetle?” She asked.

“Neither.”

“Pick one.”

“No.”

“So you weren’t the one to choose ‘god’.” The dragon’s slitted pupil narrowed. “Then I can eat you.”

It was too fast to dodge this time. I threw my weight to the side, but her fangs slashed my arm anyway—from my bicep to my shoulder. I couldn’t even clutch at the wound before she slammed a claw against the spot I’d landed on. I rolled away before it hit, just barely. When I stood up, I stumbled.

“You’re smiling,” the dragon said.

I shouldn’t be, but it was nice to finally get something out of this disaster. With that said, my arm was almost numb from pain. I had to calm down. I was being stupid and irrational again.

I broke out running. This time, instead of clawing or swiping, she used dragonbreath… with sparkling sound effects... but anyway, purple fire trailed behind me. Grass and mushrooms visibly writhed beneath it. The dragon didn’t stop until she seemingly ran out of breath, after which she panted. With each breath, little puffs of smoke blew out of her mouth.

Before long, she was trailing after me again as I ran towards the stall. She moved like the lizard she was. Now, I just had to—

She lunged again.

—not die. Barely, I leaped away from her fangs. Her jaws clamped onto the bathroom stall, crushing it instantly. The dragon thrashed, spitting out the toilet paper roll and some wood. “Bah! Gross! GROSS!”

Apparently there was a plumping system in Korova; the torn toilet gushed out water. It wasn’t sparkling, sadly.

“Some of the WATER got into my MOUTH gross I hate you I hate you I hate you!”

I reached out for whichever piece of wooden plank looked sharpest.

“I don’t care anymore I’m done DIE!” The dragon spun, slamming her tail not against me, but Hisui.

Due to the flames, I couldn’t see—or hear—what happened, but I felt it.

If I moved fast enough, I’d save her. I thought that, and then I moved fast enough.

Right before I tackled Hisui away from the attack, a mushroom spontaneously burst from the grass, shielding us both. Thus, I ended up awkwardly toppling on top of her.

“Woo!” She raised her fists to the air. “There we GOOO!”

I might as well have not been there at all. Good, actually. I rolled off of her, to no response. Very nice. Amazing. Still on the ground, Hisui clasped her hands together, closing her eyes; more shrooms emerged around us.

In the world outside of the mushroom shield, the dragon asked, “Wait, which one of you awakened? Wood magic isn’t… hmm… probably the girl. Hey, this is between the pipsqueak and me!”

“Nope.” As she sat up, Hisui laughed. “I win! I wiiin!”

The ground shook. More and more mushrooms emerged. I was too rattled by the failed tackle to tell her that it was a terrible idea to throw out blind attacks like these… but that was assuming that she did it on purpose.

Hisui had ‘tapped’ into her magic, apparently. Had I? Yes, right? It would’ve been physically impossible to move that fast otherwise, but… I couldn’t feel that random burst of energy anymore.

Something crackled outside, and there were sparkling sound effects. I assumed that the dragon was breathing fire at the shield. “It’s futile,” Hisui said. “Your attacks can’t—”

And then the mushrooms began to writhe.

With the shield opening and closing, we had to leave lest the flames slip through and cook us alive. Before I could take Hisui and run, she clapped her hands again. A mushroom spawned right below us, shooting us straight into the sky, where…

…wait, the castle.

There it was.

The fire. The victims.

By the time I squinted, however, it was gone; there was nothing left but an eerily uniform, cloudy sky.

Right as the dragon opened her mouth to greet us with her teeth, Hisui pointed a finger gun at her, after which thorny vines burst from the air in front of her finger, encircling the dragon’s jaw and snapping it shut.

We landed on a mushroom top. We didn’t die, nor did I wake up.

Blood had soaked through my sleeve at this point. It hurt. I just kind of stared at the wound while Hisui stood and the dragon shook her head. “Now, tell us what happened to the rest of our party,” Hisui said, “I might be nice, but Ishida here once bit a kid’s ear off during a fight.” (No I hadn’t.) “You lost. It’s over.”

The dragon clawed at her face, then slammed her tail against the ground hard enough for puffs of glitter to explode from the mushrooms around us. Frantically, she batted her wings. Visibly purple swirls evolved into gusts.

I still held onto the makeshift spear, so I eloquently said, “Sakura. Could you, um. Could you please um.” I pointed at a mushroom, then at the dragon, then at me, then made a launching motion with my good arm.

Hisui nodded, but her expression was blank.

“T-to the dragon.”

“Okay.”

“Throw.”

“Okay—oh!” She returned the thumbs-up, then aimed a finger gun at the dragon. A mushroom burst diagonally beneath me, propelling me towards the thrashing beast.

What I did not expect was the dragon snapping free of the vines and swallowing me. Well then. I supposed we were both reckless. It was too dark to see where and how and what, so I just jammed the spear as deep as I could into whatever was below me.

To say she screeched was an understatement. That, at last, sounded like the roar of a beast her size. She spat me out, then thrashed, coughing out blood.

Hisui ran over to me. This place was a disaster—purple flames and glitter everywhere. “Ishida, holy shit!”

Yeah, holy shit. I hadn’t thought about how hard it’d be to breathe inside the mouth of a monster. No oxygen and stuff. Made sense. I was so dizzy.

I was about to confess my love before dying when something loomed above: a smaller, darker dragon. Oh, great…

As Hisui noticed it and shriveled, something—someone—jumped off of it.

Yukimura landed beside us. “Gross,” he said.

Aoko followed, covering her face with her hand so that she wouldn’t see the wounded animal. “Yeah… you shouldn’t have hurt it that much.”

And she was right—I shouldn’t have.

I’d completely forgotten that this was meant to be a tutorial.