Serdea Polanticia, wearing a dazed expression, recalled a memory from long ago.
Back when she had been very young.
Back when her father was still alive and the Empire still shone in glory.
...Back before the siblings had started slaughtering one another, when she had encountered the guardian dragon.
The meeting itself had not lasted long.
At most, not even five minutes.
And yet that short memory had lodged itself very deeply in her mind.
That was how much the meeting with her had been, for Serdea—
no, for her other siblings as well—
a shock.
For those burdened with the duty of carrying the Empire forward, it was rare to feel the sheer powerlessness of their own existence merely by standing before a single living being.
As she retraced the past, she soon thought of Alon.
Certainly, Alon Palatio was a rather extraordinary existence, whether by rumor or in person.
He was extraordinary, yes, but...
'...Alon being the guardian dragon’s father is a bit...'
No matter how she thought about it, it was strange.
Tilting her head, Serdea looked ahead.
There stood the loyal retainer who had delivered the report, tilting his head in the exact same way as if he too could not believe the information.
"...Are you certain of this information?"
"To be honest, I found it hard to believe as well, so I had it checked again and again. But for now... it seems Contanias described him that way."
"Isn’t it possible that idiot just got it wrong?"
Serdea asked again.
Her loyal retainer thought for a moment before answering.
"That is possible, but I do not believe it is likely."
"Why not?"
"...To begin with, if someone as prideful as Contanias bowed his head in front of all his retainers, then that means—"
"...He heard it from the guardian dragon?"
"Yes. For all his confidence, isn’t he really just a coward? For someone with that temperament to rush all the way to the border that recklessly means..."
At the retainer’s explanation, Serdea finally nodded.
He was right.
Contanias’s behavior was too strange to dismiss as him merely hearing something somewhere and acting on it.
There had been too many actions that were utterly unlike him.
In other words, putting all the circumstances together—
"The claim that Alon is the guardian dragon’s father... is true?"
"For now, that is the conclusion we’ve reached, but..."
Since that ultimately meant the report was true, Serdea grew even more confused than before.
She pictured the two of them.
'No, do they... look alike?'
The guardian dragon and Alon Palatio.
Naturally, they resembled each other in absolutely nothing, starting with their overall presence.
And on top of that, Alon did not have a dragon’s distinctive aura at all.
'But if Alon really is the guardian dragon’s father...'
Then conversely, all the rumors he had built up in that tiny Allied Kingdom suddenly gained credibility.
Serdea kept thinking for a while with a troubled look on her face, then—
"...It seems I’ll have to meet him one more time."
—came to a decision.
"After I finish what I need to do, how long would it take to reach the Allied Kingdoms?"
"It would likely take about four months."
"Four months..."
Murmuring at her retainer’s answer, Serdea soon gave a firm nod.
"I understand."
A week passed after Alon crossed through the Northern Empire’s border and continued on his way.
"Teacher, I think I need to stay here."
"...Stay here?"
Yutia suddenly said her goodbyes.
"Yes. There’s a temple here in the Northern Empire that worships Goddess Sironia."
"If it won’t take long, we can wait and leave together."
But Yutia smiled and gave a small shake of her head.
"No, I think it will take some time."
"...Will it?"
"Yes. I heard there’s a bit of business I need to handle here. It will probably take a while to resolve, so there’s no need to worry about me. You can go on ahead."
At her words, Alon thought it over.
If this had been the Allied Kingdoms, he would not have been too concerned, but this was the Empire.
Still, it would have been strange to insist on staying by her side when Yutia herself said it was unnecessary.
"...All right."
"Then I’ll be off, Teacher."
"Very well."
Yutia quickly disappeared into the crowd in the plaza.
A little while later, once they had left the city and passed out through the gates once more—
[Puhah-!]
[Kyuu-!]
Basiliora and Blackie burst out as if they had been waiting to death for this moment.
[I thought I was going to die in there because we stayed so long!]
[Kyuu! Kyuu-!]
Basiliora and Blackie chattered away, panting as if they had been stifled.
The moment the two of them started yelling and playing around, the carriage, which had been quiet before, became noisy in an instant.
"...It really is very different when Yutia is here and when she isn’t."
"Well—that can’t be helped."
Penia gave a bitter smile at Alon’s remark, then soon seemed to remember something and asked,
"More importantly, Lord Alon. Didn’t Cardinal Yutia seem a little strange?"
"Yutia?"
"Yes! Um—it’s hard to point to one exact thing, but overall, it kind of felt like she couldn’t remember things very /N_o_v_e_l_i_g_h_t/ well...?"
Only then did Alon let out a quiet sound of realization at Penia’s words.
"She definitely did have moments like that."
"Right?"
Alon recalled Yutia’s face.
'...She didn’t look like something was wrong.'
During this trip, Yutia had not seemed all that different from usual.
And yet Alon agreed with Penia because, from time to time, Yutia had shown signs of not remembering the past very well.
'...Though she always answered smoothly enough and moved past it.'
Those little pauses of hers had looked, to anyone, like someone forcing a nod over something they clearly did not remember.
"Well—it’s not that strange for anyone to forget things now and then."
"I think so too. It’s just that it stands out more because it’s Cardinal Yutia."
Alon agreed with that as well.
Forgetting things here and there was not a serious problem in itself, but the fact that it was Yutia did make it more noticeable.
So he was only lost in thought for a moment before—
"Ah, so are we completely done with our schedule now?"
At Evan’s question, Alon quickly set the matter aside and answered.
"More or less. There is one place I need to stop by on the way."
"Oh, really?"
"It’s along the route anyway, so it won’t cost us any extra time."
'I should meet the golden dragon before I go back.'
Before he knew it, Blackie had climbed up onto Alon’s lap.
As he silently stroked it, Penia asked another question.
"So how is the 'law' now?"
"I’ve learned how to use it, but it still isn’t easy to control."
"Mm—that makes sense. It’s both easy and difficult to handle. There’s a lot to think about in all sorts of ways."
Penia quickly sank into thought, tilting her head.
"Still, looking at the result, I think you made the right choice. It’s definitely an ability that could become a variable one way or another."
"That’s true. The restrictions mean I’ll have to think carefully about it in many ways."
When Alon agreed, Penia twitched her brows and brought up the real point.
"Actually, there’s something I’ve been a little curious about."
"What is it?"
"It’s about the True Mages’ 'laws' and the Divine bloods’ 'laws' we talked about before."
"Ah."
They really had talked about that before crossing the border.
"What we thought at the time was that the laws possessed by the Divine blood come with restrictions as the price for using a 'law,' while the laws created by the True Mages seem to use magic power as the price... right?"
"That’s right."
"Of course, there are other differences too, like how strong the laws are, and how the True Mages’ laws have clearly defined attributes unlike the Divine blood’s."
"And?"
When Alon asked, Penia continued her explanation.
"The 'Reverse Heavens' you use is a True Mage’s law, right? And a True Mage’s law offers up 'magic power' as the price."
"Yes."
"Then doesn’t the price of that law that produces infinite magic power feel a little strange?"
"That’s... to begin with... uh...?"
Alon was about to refute Penia’s logic on reflex, but soon his eyes widened.
He had never paid much attention to it before, but the more he thought about it, the stranger it seemed.
Silence fell inside the carriage for a moment.
"...So it is strange, right?"
"I never gave it enough thought before, so it didn’t occur to me, but it definitely..."
"Yes. No matter how I think about it, Reverse Heavens is... contradictory, assuming our prediction about how the True Mages’ laws and the Divine bloods’ laws work is correct. It’s as if—"
Only Penia’s voice rang clearly through the carriage.
"—it were a law made by the Divine blood."
A month had passed since they parted ways with Yutia for a while.
Alon reached the border faster than expected, and thanks to Contanias’s consideration, he was able to slip out toward the wasteland without much trouble.
"This one really did take quite a while. It’s basically the same as having been away for nearly half a year."
At Evan’s remark, Alon nodded.
"It has been a long time."
"Right? To be honest, it’s not even that we did all that much—it just took a lot of time to travel. Anyway, where are we headed now? You said there was somewhere you wanted to stop by first, didn’t you?"
Alon quickly sorted out his thoughts and said,
"We’ll head south."
Without another word, Alon’s group turned toward the southern wasteland.
And after several more days passed,
as Alon continued traveling endlessly through the empty wasteland—
—he sensed a bizarre disturbance.
Magic power had begun to wrap around the entire carriage.
But Alon quickly realized what it was, and stopped Penia, who had likewise sensed the ominous sign and was about to use magic power.
Then—
a flash burst before their eyes, and all of them realized they had been moved somewhere.
"...Lord Alon?"
"This can’t be—"
Evan’s deeply startled voice came from outside, and Penia’s eyes widened as if she had guessed the situation.
Alon rose and headed outside the carriage.
And there—
[...It has been a long time, True Mage.]
"Indeed."
He came face to face with Reinysius.
Reinysius, who was still looking down at him just as before, with an expression so blank that it carried no emotion whatsoever.
[.......] A quiet silence flowed between them.
Then—
A sudden look of confusion appeared on Reinysius’s face.
Reinysius tilted its head again and again, as if confronted with something it simply could not understand.
"...Why are you acting like that all of a sudden?"
In the end, Alon asked first, though on one hand, he could understand the behavior.
'Well, a lot has changed since the last time I came here a few years ago.'
A long time had passed since then.
But Alon’s growth now was also far beyond something that could be accomplished in just a few years.
No doubt Reinysius was surprised by that.
Alon found himself secretly puffing up a little.
Because it felt as if he were being acknowledged by a dragon, a being that could be called magic itself.
However—
[...True Mage, let me ask you something.]
"What is it?"
[Is there perhaps a dragon outside? No—or are you—]
Unfortunately, the dragon’s question went far beyond what Alon had expected.
[...Did you marry a dragon?]
Very, very far.

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