“That’s a…”
Lapis gazed at Ange, who was carried high up in the air, and said the name of the thing that did so without a trace of urgency in her voice.
“Dragon zombie…No, it looks like it’s a bone dragon.”
What had popped up from under the ground and s.n.a.t.c.hed Ange, who was running in the back, in its jaws and carried her up into the air was a dragon made of pale white human bones.
Loren and the others now felt the ground rumble and tensed up as they watched the dragon dragged its giant body out of the ground.
“It’s so big!”
“Of course it is, it’s a dragon.”
Lapis leisurely responded to Loren’s cry.
Although it was an undead monster made of bones, it had an appearance that was fit to be called a dragon.
Broas paled at the sight and fled inside the caravan, meanwhile Klaus and his party seemed to have forgotten about Ange for a moment and stared at it.
Ange yelled from above their heads.
“Layla! Don’t worry about me! Take Klaus and go!”
“Ange! There’s no way…I’m coming to save you!”
Layla and Roll held Klaus back as he yelled back and tried to run back with his weapon in hand.
“Let go! I have to save her!”
“That’s absurd! There’s no way we can go up against that monster!”
“Klaus, please value your life!”
“Are you saying we should leave her behind!? There’s no way I can do that!”
“What should we do Loren?”
Loren smiled weakly at Lapis, who asked him looking like she wanted to leave everyone behind.
Ever since he met Klaus in the equipment store, he had been looking down on him, and if Loren thought that leaving him here wasn’t the worst choice ever.
He scratched his head.
“As someone who knows how hard it is to lose something, it’s hard for me to just leave.”
“I don’t dislike that kind of thing you know?”
As Lapis giggled at his words, Loren felt a bit sorry that he was having her help him deal with something dangerous, but made sure to remind her.
“I can’t defeat it, okay? I’m just an ordinary mercenary after all.”
“At the count of three, I’ll use something that will capture its attention. Do something while it’s distracted.”
“I thought the only divine arts you could use is >?”
“I’ll show you one that I just learned, warm and fresh.”
Loren nodded at Lapis, who thumped her chest, then ran towards the bone dragon without hesitation.
At the count of one, he rushed past Klaus, who was still crying out. At the count of two, the dragon noticed Loren and faced its empty eyes towards him, with Ange still in its mouth.
Ange cried in pain as the dragon clamped her a bit stronger than before.
They didn’t eat living things, but they enjoyed negative emotions from them such as resentment, pain, and sorrow.
That was why the dragon didn’t kill her immediately, and instead slowly started to sink its teeth into her.
As he counted three, he saw Ange spit out blood and wondered if he could save her before she died.
“Under the name of G.o.d, shine >!”
As the count hit three, Lapis used her trump card.
The blinding light didn’t only burn away the darkness of the night, but burned away the smell of undead as well and burst in front of the dragon’s nose.
It penetrated its eyes and burned the surface of the bones, but didn’t harm Ange at all.
Lapis told Loren about this beforehand so he had covered his eyes when the light erupted. He ran under the dragon and swung his great sword with all his might.
He heard the annoying sound of metal grinding against bone, and the place where he struck crumbled to pieces, and the dragon lost its balance.
He ran up the side of the dragon, which was falling down on its other side, jumped off, and brought his sword down on the back of its head.
“You don’t deserve to prey on someone like her! Spit her out!”
He wasn’t able to cut the dragon’s head off, but the impact made it open its mouth and drop Ange’s body.
Loren caught Ange as he was dropping and as soon as he landed, he started running away from it.
“Lapis! Start the caravan!”
“Got it! I’m leaving anyone who doesn’t get in!”
As Lapis shouted and whipped the horse, Klaus and his party, who were looking at the chain of events, stunned, hurried into the caravan.
As soon as Loren dove into it, the horse started galloping.
They could see the dragon chasing them with its regenerated leg, roaring with anger.
“Good thing the guy is made up of bones and doesn’t have any wings.”
Loren looked back at the chasing dragon as he put Ange down and muttered.
Ordinary dragons had a film of skin on their wings that caught the wind, but even though the bone dragon had wings, there was nothing covering them.
Lapis, who was driving the caravan, said to Loren, who was thinking that if it could fly they would not be able to outrun it.
“Dragons use magic to fly so their wings don’t matter, you know?”
“Wait, so that thing can fly?”
“Most undead aren’t intelligent enough to use magic. So I’m pretty sure that can’t fly.”
“Then…”
As Loren began to get his hopes up that they could escape it, Lapis pointed out the cold reality.
“But there’s too much of a difference between that and the horse. It’ll catch up to us in no time.”
If it caught up to them, they would have no choice but to fight it.
Loren started thinking if it was possible to defeat it with the people that were there in the caravan.
At his feet, Ange coughed up a bit more blood because of the violent shaking of the caravan.
“Ange isn’t looking good. Can’t you drive softer!?”
Klaus started to talk, his face very pale, but Broas immediately grabbed his collar and yelled at him.
“You idiot! If we slow down even a bit, it’ll catch up to us!”
“But! But at this rate Ange isn’t going to make it!”
From what Loren could see, even though the dragon didn’t kill her so that it could feed off of her negative emotions, the wounds that it inflicted were quite fatal.
Since she was coughing up blood, it was most likely that some of her organs were damaged, and all the shaking wasn’t helping at all.
But compared to the bone dragon chasing them, the speed of the horse wasn’t exactly what he could call fast, and if they slowed down even a little, it would catch up immediately.
“Are you telling Ange to die!?”
“If we get caught by that pile of bones, we’re all going to die!”
Loren sighed as he found out that Broas didn’t think that even with all of them fighting, they wouldn’t be able to defeat the bone dragon.
Dragons were indeed terrifying creatures.
Loren knew for a fact that the only reason he was able to retrieve Ange from the bone dragon’s jaws was because it didn’t think of Loren and the others as a threat and was letting its guard down.
“Hey priestess. Your name is Roll, right?”
Loren called the blue haired girl dressed like a priest, who was clinging onto the caravan trying not to get flung off.
She was in a crawling position on the floor, but managed to nod in Loren’s direction.
“You can use divine arts, right? I don’t care if you use them up to your limit, so go ahead and heal her.”
“Hey, are you sure? If we end up having to fight that dragon, we’d need a priest’s divine arts, or else…”
Loren calmly replied.
“If we end up fighting it we already lost at that point. Using them now or later makes no difference.”
“You…”
Klaus looked at him with a surprised expression.
Even if it was as Loren said, if they end up fighting they would lose for sure, it was normal to think like Broas, having divine arts be available to heal during the fight, so Klaus didn’t expect Loren to say he didn’t care if they used all the charges.
In fact, since Roll was in Klaus’ party, he could have told her to use her divine arts to heal Ange.
But even so, he had no intention of letting Roll use her divine arts because it could be some of their lifelines later on.
“I can’t let my priestess use hers though. If she dies even after the healing, you’ll have to give up.”
After saying that, Loren carefully walked up to the driver’s seat to check up on Lapis.
There was no source of light to help them see except for the moonlight, and even so it was pitch dark.
Even though it was almost impossible to see anything and the road was really bad, Lapis kept the caravan going at full speed in the dark.
Loren felt afraid not being able to see ahead of them moving at this speed, but Lapis didn’t look scared at all, but instead looked ahead with a serious expression.
“Can you see where we’re going?”
Loren asked Lapis as he remembered that her eyes were prosthetics, and Lapis glanced at him.
“Of course. I can see everything clearly.”
“That’s going to be awkward to explain to the others. They haven’t noticed yet, but they’re going to think it’s weird when they do.”
“Just tell them I have really good night vision. If that doesn’t work, tell them it’s all intuition.”
Although no one noticed yet because of they were focused on the dragon chasing them, Lapis being able to drive a caravan in pitch darkness without any hesitation was too unnatural.
It wasn’t something anyone could do, and while Loren was thinking of ways to explain it when they do finally notice, Lapis gave him very halfhearted suggestions.
“I hope they’ll believe it.”
“Rather than that, could you fetch me the red-haired boy from the back?”
Loren faltered at Lapis’ sudden request, not knowing what she was trying to do.
“Red hair…you mean Klaus, right?”
“I don’t know if he’s Klaus or just an idiot, but the red-haired one.”
Loren didn’t understand what she wanted to do, but since she was asking for someone specifically, he decided that it must be something important. He went back inside the caravan and grabbed Klaus, who was watching over Ange as Roll used her divine arts to heal her, by the back of his collar.
“W-what are you doing!?”
“What do I do with this?”
Loren walked back to Lapis with Klaus struggling in his hand and raised him in front of Lapis and asked. Lapis let go of the reins with one of her hands and extended it out to Loren.
“Please hand him over.”
“Sure.”
Loren held Klaus up to Lapis, still holding him by the back of his collar. Lapis then grabbed him by the front of his collar, and suddenly threw him towards the horse that was pulling the caravan.
“Whoa!?”
Klaus yelled in surprise as he flew in the air, landed face down on the horse’s rear half, and held on for his dear life.
If he fell, he would either be trampled by the horse or run over by the caravan, and even if he did dodge those, he would become prey for the bone dragon.
“W-what is wrong with you!?”
“Stay there and use > on the horse!”
Lapis swung the whip as she yelled at him.
It should’ve hit the horse, but instead it hit Klaus, who was hanging on to its rear, and he let out a cry of pain.
“We’re going to get caught at this rate! If we don’t want to get caught you need to use > on the horse and speed it up. Hurry!”
“I’ve never used it on something living before…”
“You were boasting about it so much earlier, so just use it!”
As Lapis swung the whip again, and Klaus let out another cry and a pale light began to emit from his hands.
The light disappeared into the horse, and Loren felt the horse suddenly go faster. The shaking increased as well, so Loren grabbed a rope to keep himself steady.
“See, you can do it if you try! Now do it stronger! You don’t have time to fall asleep! We need to keep this up until morning!”
“Is it going to help when morning comes?”
“Bone dragons are weak to sunlight even amongst other undead monsters. It should stop chasing us once morning comes. Come on! The light is becoming weak again!”
Klaus’ painful cries rang out in the peace of night as Lapis swung the whip over and over.
“Well…He won’t die, I guess.”
Loren thought what a pitiful sight it was, but there was no way he was going to stop Lapis from what she was doing. He urged Shayna, who was about to poke her head outside to see what’s going on, back into the caravan, sat down, and closed his eyes, trying to shut out the image of the bone dragon and Klaus getting whipped out of his mind.