Epilogue: Towards the First Trip Abroad(1)

1st day, 4th month, 1,547th year, Continental Calendar

It was the day after the Lunarian Orthodoxy's Spring Announcement Festival was

held.

The Spring Announcement Festival yesterday had been pretty lively, so the castle

town would be busily cleaning up after it today. I was spending the day in the

governmental affairs office, staring down a single piece of paper.

Liscia, who had just come into the room, looked suspiciously at me and asked, "Is

something the matter, Souma?"

"Hmm? Oh, I was looking at this." I showed Liscia the piece of paper I had been

staring at.

The piece of paper had three characters, or symbols, something that I couldn't

make sense of, lined up on it. Starting from the left there was "an arrow-like triangle

pointing to the left, combined with a square;" "two vertical lines and something

made with a vertical line with five horizontal lines crossing it;" and "an umbrellashaped symbol."

Liscia looked sideways at the piece of paper I'd given her. "What's this?"

"It's apparently a portion of the Lunalith oracle that Merula saw."

Merula Merlin had come along with Souji Lester, the bishop we'd invited as a

countermeasure against the Lunarian Orthodoxy. Her research primarily focused on

spirits and magic, and her long years of research had produced an incredible wealth

of knowledge, so I had welcomed her with open arms.

Now Merula was at Genia the overscientist's laboratory where there was all sorts

of equipment available.

It seemed curse ore, which absorbed magic, was a very interesting subject of

research for Merula. She and Genia were spending day after day together, engrossed

in their research.

What sort of chemical reaction would the meeting of overscientist and magic

researcher have on this country? I was kind of looking forward to it, and kind of

worried...

Something had happened the first time I'd met Merula.

The oracle she'd said had appeared on the Lunalith came up in conversation, and

when I asked her for details, Merula shook her head in disappointment.

"They call it an oracle, so I think what appeared was text; but it wasn't in a writing

system from any country in this world, so I couldn't figure out what it said. If I'd had a

little more time, I might have at least been able to figure out if they were phonographs

or ideographs, but..."

It seemed she hadn't had the time to properly commit it to memory. Her life had

been in danger, so I could hardly blame her for that.

When I asked her if there was anything she remembered, no matter how minor,

she'd said, "It really is just a small fraction, but I recall... it went like this..."

And then she'd written these three incomprehensible characters or symbols onto

a piece of paper. Merula's memories were vague, so these probably were exactly as

she'd seen them.

In the end, the only thing we knew was that these sorts of incomprehensible

characters or symbols had appeared as an oracle.

Liscia seemed to realize something and said, "Ah...! If the writing isn't from this

world, could it be from yours?"

"Yeah," I said. "That was something I suspected, too, but I've got absolutely no

idea what they are..."

I couldn't claim familiarity with every writing system on Earth, obviously, but I

could at least say that in more than a decade of living in Japan, I had no recollection

of seeing this kind of writing (?) before. The one in the middle might look a bit like

the kanji for "pray" or "samurai" if you looked at it the right way, but as for what the

arrow-like one that came before it, and the umbrella-like one that came after it

were... I had no idea.

I gave up and put the piece of paper away inside the governmental affairs office's

desk. "Well, even if I could read just three characters of it, it wouldn't do me any

good. I can't neglect my duties just because I'm curious about it, after all. Let's forget

about it for now."

And so, Liscia and I got started on my paperwork for the day, but... I had one of

the consciousnesses I had split off thinking about it.

Events sometimes took place outside the Kingdom of Friedonia. If something

bothered me, when it was a domestic matter, I could bring on new people, assign

personnel to the issue, and assign a budget to get it investigated. I had my position

as king, after all.

However, when it was in another country, I couldn't investigate.

If it was something the relevant country had already investigated, it was possible

I might acquire the information through diplomacy or espionage. However, if they

hadn't investigated it yet, I had no means of acquiring information about that matter.

Because it was another country, I couldn't dispatch a team to investigate, either.

What if, included in that information this country couldn't get its hands on, there

was something that could decide the fate of our own nation? What if we found out

about it too late? Whenever I thought about that, I felt unable to sit still.

The world was not complete with just one country. Especially if I was staying

inside the castle, it was only natural that there would be things I couldn't find out

that way. I still... had so much to learn about this world.

I need to learn more. Much more, about many different countries...

While swamped with government work, that was what I thought about.

◇ ◇ ◇

It was a mysterious space.

It was as if I were in an abyss where no light seemed to reach; or perhaps I had

been thrown out into deep space, in a place where I was unable to tell up from down.

I was floating in the middle of that space.

I could breathe properly. But my thinking felt hazy somehow.

Oh... This is probably a dream. I'm in a dream world.

Sometimes while dreaming, I would realize it was a dream.

When I was sleeping at something like a kotatsu, where it was hard to fall fully

asleep, I would realize it was a dream and think that I needed to wake up quickly,

see a dream of waking up, realize I was dreaming again, dream of waking up... and it

went on like that. That was close to how I felt right now.

While I was drifting along in that dozing state, a light suddenly appeared before

me.

The light gradually grew larger, eventually reaching many tens of times my own

size. The light that grew to a massive size eventually began to form into something.

As it took form, the once strong light gradually weakened. And then...

What appeared before my eyes was one massive silver dragon.

Its sense of presence was overwhelming. It had curled horns like a goat. Claws

and fangs that looked like they could rend steel. Powerful wings spread wide. Its

body was covered with a smooth silver fur, and its blue eyes seemed gentle

somehow. It was a dragon that was masculine, and yet felt motherly.

I had been told that wyverns and dragons were completely different before, but...

now I could understand. This creature was so dazzlingly divine that it felt absurd to

compare it to a wyvern.

"Could it be that you're... Mother Dragon?" I asked.

It was a hunch. I had heard of this before. They said there were sentient dragons

living in the Star Dragon Mountain Range, and they were ruled by a beautifully

massive white dragon. The dragon before my eyes was so beautiful I would have

described her as a silver dragon, not a white one, but she fit the image of Mother

Dragon perfectly.

Mother Dragon neither confirmed nor denied, but her unswerving eyes that

stared into mine told me the answer was "yes."

Then Mother Dragon stretched that long neck of hers. Even just her head on its

own was incredibly big, and if she had felt like it, she could easily have swallowed

me whole right there. I panicked a little, but my body didn't move, as if it was sewn

in place.

Fortunately, Mother Dragon's head didn't open its mouth as it approached, and

her large nose just came up close to my chase. Then she gently inhaled through her

nostrils. We stayed like that for a short while, and then Mother Dragon slowly pulled

her head away from me.

"You who have a familiar smell," she spoke.

Huh?! I thought, shocked.

I heard a voice. It had the tone of a gentle elderly woman. Was this Mother

Dragon's voice, maybe? I thought that it might be, but she hadn't opened her mouth.

"You who have a familiar smell."

I'd heard it again. Yes, I definitely felt like it was coming from Mother Dragon's

direction.

"This... voice that seems to be speaking directly to my brain, is it yours?" I asked.

Mother Dragon looked as if she had nodded. "This is the only way we can talk

when in dragon form."

"That's interesting..."

What a mysterious ability it was. I didn't know if it was communication magic or

perhaps telepathy, but, well, this was a dream, so anything worked, I guess. But still...

having a conversation with Mother Dragon in my dream was like something out of

an old fantasy movie.

"...Could it be that you're showing me this dream?" I asked.

"No," she spoke. "This is a dream, yet it is not a dream. By synchronizing our

consciousnesses, I gave birth to a pseudo-dream, and thus was able to create a space

for us to talk like this."

Mother Dragon explained all that as if this were all very natural.

Synchronization of consciousness, pseudo-dreams... The scenery was like

something out of a fantasy movie, but the vocabulary coming up was awfully

systematic. It was almost like she was familiar with science fiction.

I had heard there were intelligent dragons in the Star Dragon Mountain Range,

and I had assumed that intelligence was just enough that they could speak like

humans, but maybe their intelligence far transcended that of the races of mankind. If

that was the case, what an unfathomable country they were.

"...So, Madam Mother Dragon, why is it that you've arranged for us to meet this

way?" I addressed her as I would a queen, doing my best to feign composure.

Even though I'd asked just to see what she'd say... I had some idea why she had

contacted me.

It had to be the Mechadra, the thing which Genia had gone and made out of the

bones we'd excavated. If the Star Dragon Mountain Range got angry at us, saying,

Don't play with the remains of our kind, our country would have no choice but to

offer an earnest apology. Meeting a real dragon for the first time, I was able to

reaffirm one thing for myself: We had to be sure we never made enemies of them.

It was said that the monster that a dragon's remains could turn into, a skull

dragon, was able to destroy an entire country, wasn't it? That probably meant that

dragons had that much potential to begin with. It helped me to understand why even

at the height of their power, the Empire hadn't been able to lay a hand or a foot on

the Star Dragon Mountain Range. Or rather, it was reckless that they'd ever decided

to pick a fight with beings like this in the first place.