Leviathan:Volume 8 Chapter 3
Chapter 3 - The Start of a Gamble
Part 1
Hal was standing in the middle of the space.
The abyss of the macrocosm lay in all directions around him. Entering Hal's view was not complete darkness but an ever-changing canopy of night, decorated by the glow of countless celestial objects.
"The secret archives of Ruruk Soun... The grimoire passed down generations of dragonkind."
He called out to the endless seas of stars.
...Actually, this was not the real cosmos. At this moment, Hal's body was meditating in a certain tower in the moon ruins.
This was an imagined world that he had entered through meditation.
Through a vision, Hal was reading the secret archives of Ruruk Soun—a grimoire that recorded dragonkind's mystic wisdom—which had become part of his consciousness.
In the past, his formidable rival Pavel Galad had also activated the secret archives of Ruruk Soun during battle.
The silver dragon had used it to practice back when he had yet to grow accustomed to the dragonslaying sword. Hence, this cosmos could be manipulated according to Haruga Haruomi's thoughts...
"Show me a more complete view, which will make it easier for me to find the treasure I want. Zooming out is fine."
The macrocosm suddenly shrank.
Countless stars gathered around Hal in succession. Ten-odd seconds later, a huge number of spiral galaxies appeared in front of Hal. This also included the solar system where Earthlings lived.
An intricate miniature model of the universe containing countless galaxies.
If one had to use mundane objects for an analogy, this magnificent entity was roughly the size of a classroom blackboard.
Hal focused his eyes. In the secret archives of Ruruk Soun, doing so would allow him to see fine details on a microscopic level.
He was trying to find the seventy-two celestial bodies that Hinokagutsuchi had told him about.
They included stars, planets and satellites.
Some had been discovered by humans while others remained unknown to this day.
After finding seventy-two celestial bodies scattered all over the universe and summoning them all at once...
"O stars constituting mystic power and knowledge, gather in my hand."
Dozens of stars, scattered all over the place, traversed tens of thousands of light years to gather in Hal's right hand, lining up neatly to form a circle. There were exactly seventy-two of them.
"This is a bit too many..."
Hal released magical power and compressed them.
The seventy-two stars were reduced to forty-two, which then turned into runes completely.
This was the moment when forty-two runes of Ruruk Soun—magical symbols very familiar to Hal nowadays—were born. By summoning this arrangement, he should be able to invoke a certain spell.
"Assuming Hinokagutsuchi didn't trick me." Hal sighed.
This secret technique was apparently invented by the self-styled devil, which meant that he would not know how to use it if he left it to the magic gun as usual.
The only way to learn this spell was for her to instruct him on the arrangement of runes.
"Anyway, this is my last lifeline..."
Hal muttered to himself and blinked.
The moment he opened his eyes, the cosmic abyss and mini-galaxies vanished. He was sitting cross-legged on the floor inside a room in the moon ruins used as a bedroom.
Phew. Just as Hal exhaled deeply and stood up...
Kyuaaaa—ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!
"Rushalka?"
He heard a familiar voice.
Asya's partner, Blue Rushalka was flying towards him.
With her head extended towards Hal's window on the top floor, she kept flapping her wings, hovering midair like a hummingbird.
Rushalka was a wyvern with a body length of ten-odd meters.
Apart from the fact that she lacked forelimbs, she was quite similar to elite dragons in form and appearance.
The flapping of her wings alone was noisy enough. With every flap of her wing, Rushalka blew strong wind against Hal's face.
"What a racket..."
"I called her."
"What, so you're here too, Asya?"
Hearing his childhood friend's voice, Hal turned to face the source.
This window was over ten meters above ground. Nevertheless, Asya was outside the window.
She was hovering in the air—no, flying in the air.
Next to the gigantic face of the blue wyvern hovering in the air, Asya was flying in the sky.
"This is the Flight spell you learned yesterday, right? You've already mastered it completely."
"That's not all. Watch."
"A magic wand!?"
Unfazed by the sight of his childhood friend flying, Hal reacted with surprise this time.
A silver chain was wrapped around Asya's slender body with an arrowhead on one end serving as a counterweight.
The silver chain was like a living snake, clanging as it moved.
The counterweight on the chain's tip rubbed itself affectionately against Asya's face, like a snake playing with a snake charmer.
"You mastered the magic wand in just one day. You made that chain, right?"
"Yes. After all, I heard you explain what you did before."
"Amazing. You are very smart, or should I say, a genius."
It was only after Asya ended up in the same situation as him that Hal finally got a poignant sense of her natural talent.
However, the genius master-class witch, who used to be Europe's most powerful Shootdown Ace, frowned and said the following extremely coldly, "Learning synthesis magic on this level sooner isn't going to help much in tomorrow's battle."
"No no no. Just having a wand makes controlling magical power much easier."
"What's important is whether it has practical use in combat. I wouldn't be worried if it's just an ordinary elite dragon, but our opponent is Princess Yukikaze. Oh well, to me it's just consolation at this point."
"What are you so pessimistic?"
"Not really. Even though it's consolation, something is better than nothing. Because fighting dragons without any consolation would be way too difficult."
"Hahahaha."
Words of a brave and seasoned warrior, impressive as ever.
Before acquiring a dragonslaying rune, his childhood friend had fought armies of Raptors all over the world, as well as the occasional elite dragon. Precisely because of that, she was able to say this kind of thing so calmly.
"Putting that aside, Haruomi, Rushalka and I will go there again."
"Again? Didn't Juujouji just finish investigating the Rune of the Mother Dragon?"
"Yes, but that rune is a more important trump card than a magic wand. I want perfect preparations, and that includes checking one last time."
Asya not only had natural talent but also devoted herself to training and effort, never succumbing to pride and complacency.
The prudence exhibited by someone like her, fully worthy of the genius label, deeply impressed Hal.
Just then...
Clang clang clang!
Asya picked up her silver chain and swung it swiftly.
This small movement summoned the runes of Teleport on top of Rushalka's head. The blue wyvern and her partner instantly vanished.
Apparently, she had gone to look at the Plato crater, just as she had said she would.
"So she even learned that spell, huh...?"
He definitely could not match Asya in talent for magic. Hal was reminded of this fact again.
His childhood friend the genius witch, the Rune of the Mother Dragon, Juujouji and Akuro-Ou who had awakened the power of the Sun—and that particular arrangement as well.
Perhaps there really was a way to deal with Princess Yukikaze...?
"I hope so."
Hal hoped sincerely. There was less than twenty-four hours remaining until the duel with the princess was set to begin.
"Anyway, I have to continue with my preparations."
He was pretty much done with all the preparing that could be done indoors. Hal exited the stone tower through the window.
Part 2
"Haruga-kun, where did you go?"
"Outside. I went outside the ruins to use runes to send messages to Luna and SAURU on Earth."
When he returned to the stone tower that served as their base of operations on the moon, Hal found Orihime inside, waiting for him.
Using the Ruruk Soun runes of "transmit my voice yonder," Hal had conducted interplanetary communications.
His original intention was just to test it out, but it succeeded even better than he had imagined. However, Hal did not tell them about a certain arrangement he had learned earlier.
He wanted to keep it a secret as much as possible. The girls would definitely stop him if word got out...
"By the way, Haruga-kun, could you please... undress?"
"Huh!?"
When Orihime timidly made a request, Hal stepped back in surprise.
Could it possible that saintly compassion had suddenly surged in Orihime's heart, making her willing to cross the final line with Haruga Haruomi who could very well lose his life in the duel tomorrow? No no no, but a considerate move of this sort would be very unlike a well-bred young lady such as Orihime—
"D-Do not get the wrong idea. This is a regular check up!" Orihime declared, blushing to her ears.
"Doesn't your body harden to become dragon-like when you use too much of your powers? I must check regularly."
"O-Oh, now I see."
Hearing Orihime's explanation, Hal understood. The guilt of his weird delusion made him reluctant to refuse Orihime. He hastily removed his shirt, leaving his upper body naked.
He found a random pedestal to serve as a seat.
Orihime circled around to his back, then started a "tactile examination" of Haruga Haruomi's not very muscular back.
"You don't need to examine so closely."
"I will be the one to decide that."
Orihime's right hand gently slid from left to right, checking how Hal's back felt to the touch.
"You girls helped cure me last time. I'm totally fine now."
Part of his skin hardened with a glass-like shine.
This symptom had appeared recently, a warning sign that acquisition of dragonslying power led to dragonification.
Hal muttered, "I'll be a good boy and report any that that comes up. Trust me."
"That rests on the assumption that you won't deceive."
"Uh, well—"
Orihime took a shot at Hal then continued her examination.
First the shoulder then below, then even lower down. Finally after gently checking the texture at his waist, Orihime nodded.
"It looks like you are definitely fine. Nothing hardened."
"See? I haven't used much power after coming to the moon either."
"Since the back is fine, I suppose there isn't a need to check the front? Your body really seems to be fine."
"Huh? Don't tell me... You were planning on touching the front side too?"
Even caressing his chest and abdomen gently with her right hand.
Hal could not help but wonder what he could do to make Orihime change her mind about ending the examination here. His facial nerves tensed up, a reflexive action whenever he did not want others to notice his dirty thoughts.
However, this was enough for Orihime to discern Hal's thoughts.
"You seem to be thinking about something inappropriate..."
"No, of course not. My mind is filled with nothing but gratitude for the gentle you."
"Goodness gracious. What a pervert you are!"
Though Orihime was a bit angry, she sighed in the next instant.
"I don't want you to turn into a dragon, but—Sure enough, I have to take this situation into consideration after all..."
"Hahahaha."
Orihime's face was shrouded in gloom out of worry for Haruga Haruomi.
Hal laughed out loud, a warm feeling flowing through his heart. Perhaps this was what people called happiness.
He had never experienced this before when he was always alone.
Precisely because of that—
He was afraid of loss. Logically speaking, Hal was going to lose everything, even his meager life, in the duel tomorrow. 99% certain.
Princess Yukikaze had mentioned "If I defeat you and you're fortunate enough to survive..."
But he knew that the probability of such a future approached zero. This charity condition of "surviving an all-out attack from the dragon king Princess Yukikaze" was as fragile as a thread of spider's silk.
Hal's stomach began to hurt.
He even broke out in cold sweat. This was a stomachache caused by stress. In fact, Hal had been experiencing these stomach pains every now and then ever since arriving on this asteroid.
Extremely uncomfortable. He had difficulty sleeping at night, unable to achieve unbroken sleep till dawn.
"Because the previous battles always happened right away... There was no time for me to feel stressed. This time, with so much time, it's quite an ordeal, almost like 'having an execution scheduled a few days later'..."
He muttered, his eyes gloomy.
Ignoring the physical body, Hal's mind was still too human to be viewing things with detached perspective.
Stress was building up the longer he spent time at the moon ruins.
If only his opponent was a mere elite or Tyrannos.
But this time he had to confront dragon king-class, the strongest of dragonkind, and definitely stronger than him.
So far, Hal had twice fought dragon kings and survived, but that was because he had gambled his life on strategies that succeeded by chance. It was also thanks to him possessing trump cards unexpected by the two dragon kings—Princess Yukikaze and Hannibal.
"It will be fine. Asya-san is helping with research on how to use that Rune of the Mother Dragon, and didn't Kagutsuchi-san say 'it appears that prior preparations are sufficient' after listening?"
"More precisely, she said 'You could consider it sufficient, but possible not enough too'."
Translated into plain English, it was "I don't know!"
In addition, there was the trump card that Hal had secretly prepared, but there was not telling whether any of his cards would actually end up useful. There was nothing he could do about that.
"The previous battles" against Princess Yukikaze and Hannibal.
Now that he thought back to them—Neither of them were battles to the death. Both sides had reached a ceasefire before that point. But this time, it was going to be a duel to the death...
"Haruga-kun."
Orihime secretly walked up to Hal's side.
She drew very close, so the two of them were pressed intimately together. How unbelievable. Simply the touch of her body warmth was enough to calm his thoughts a bit.
"Did you forget? Akuro-Ou and I are very strong in critical moments."
"Now that you mention it, yeah, that's true. How should I put it...? Perhaps you two are like goddesses of fortune. It was the same in the first battle against Pavel Galad."
Thinking back to past experiences, Hal looked up.
"Probably thanks to your naked body, my luck has surged—"
"H-Haruga-kun! You still remember that!?"
"Of course! How could I possibly forget that wonderful image!?"
"And you snapped aback indignantly!"
"Anyway, basically it boils down to this... Sure enough, you're the only one who can be my mental support. It's the same in love matters too, you have to be my guardian goddess of luck—"
"W-Wait a second, Haruga-kun. What... What did you just say?"
When the panicking Hal slightly calmed down, it was Orihime's turn to be flustered.
She stared nervously at Hal, like she was hoping for something.
So cute. Hal immediately replied.
"Uh... Goddess of love and protection."
"In other words, you mean—love for me? For me and Haruga Haruomi to nurture human love, romantic feelings, and man-woman affection between the two of us..."
"Yes. All of them."
"Fufufufu."
"Juujouji!"
"Haruga-kun!"
In a state of heightened emotion, the two hugged tightly together.
Then they kissed passionately.
...This could be considered "a dialog in preparation for the decisive battle tomorrow." But in fact, this was also a tryst for them at the same time.
"Tonight again, I will come over to find you after Asya-san falls asleep."
"Yeah."
"Even if you suffer from insomnia, I will still stay by your side."
"Yeah."
"Although you probably won't sleep better simply because I am next to you, I still want to do something for you no matter how small."
"Not at all. I'll feel at peace just from having you by my side."
"Fufufufu—Ah, here you go again exaggerating. I haven't finished talking, you know?"
"Sorry, I accidentally—"
Orihime's love and affection made Hal kiss her again.
Gazing gently at this good-for-nothing of a man, Orihime kissed Hal back.
"By the way, I actually thought of something. Probably because I'm just a step from leveling up to becoming a dragon, a new idea occurred to me."
"Specifically?"
"Lend me your ear. I'll explain to you."
"We are the only ones here. Is there any need to whisper?"
"Who cares? Whispering is more intimate."
"Here you go again, honest at a time like this... Go ahead, tell me."
"Yeah, thanks. Specifically, it's—"
Orihime swept her long hair behind her ear, exposing it.
Hal brought his lips close to whisper in her ear. There was something problematic with what he said, and even the Japanese girl with the sunny open-minded disposition glared at him with a "Haruga-kun—" in protest.
Even so, Hal still continued apprehensively and said, "So that's the long and short of it. Will you stay with me to do some mental training?"
"If this is definitely necessary for the duel against Princess Yukikaze—I won't refuse. However, is that really true?"
"Of course! Trust me!"
"Of course I trust you. But can you promise that you are sincerely doing this without ulterior motives?"
"......"
"How very honest of you. You cannot promise, can you?"
"Well..."
"Seriously... You must not say such things to any girl other than me, okay? If you promise me that, umm, then it's not like I can't make an exception and practice with you..."
"Juujouji..."
"Haruga-kun—Ah... I-Is this part of training too?"
"There's more to it. Well, sure enough, I really love doing this with you..."
"Sheesh. You are too honest... Ahhh!"
"S-Sorry. Was I too rough?"
"Don't worry—This is fine... Umm, I think I enjoy doing this with you—mmmmm!"
"Me too!"
Unlike previous occasions, the main reason for doing this was no longer for the sake of transferring magical power to a vassal sharing the same dragonslaying power.
Driven by emotions and impulse beyond that, the two of them embraced each other.
Clenching his right hand where the Rune of the Bow had surfaced, he tightly squeezed the left breast—the body part closest to the heart—of the girl he loved most in the whole world. In return, Orihime passionately allowed him to do as he pleased, in a state of ecstasy, accepting Hal's caress.
This was a world that belonged to just the two of them.
However, exhaling hot breath, Orihime suddenly spoke, "By the way... Asya was suspicious of our relationship earlier."
"Asya?"
"Yes. I was originally hoping you be there to help, but I managed to explain on my own and barely pulled the wool over her eyes."
"I see..."
Juujouji Orihime was not only inexperienced in love but also a little airheaded.
Her personality was also extremely straightforward. It was hard to imagine her female friends getting fooled, but right now, Asya had lost her feminine skills that she had acquired previously.
Thinking "well, it should be fine," Hal refocused his mind on the training.
"Juujouji—"
"Mmmm! Haruga-kun... Remember clearly how I feel, okay?"
"Yeah. I surely... won't forget."
"Mmmmmmmm...!"
Once again, they entered a world of their own, but...
Just as Orihime's slender body swooned and leaned back...
'Ufufufufufu...'
An adorable but sinister giggle was heard from outside the room.
It was the suggestive giggling from someone they knew well—his childhood friend and witch companion. Orihime froze in her posture, still with Hal holding her breast.
"Asya-san!?"
"Indeed... It is I. Feeling a bit worried, I quickly finished what I needed to do, but to think I would see such as scene on my return. Although your stammering was quite suspicious, Orihime-san, I did have a faint feeling before that...!"
Hal's childhood friend Asya walked into the room.
She was smiling but did not look happy at all. This was merely a smile used to control the anger that had nowhere to go.
Oh right, even with her feminine skills diminished, Asya's bestial instincts were still intact.
Only now did Hal think of that. Then he said to Asya, "Yeah, to be honest, this is actually the kind of relationship we have."
"What the hell!?"
"I love Juujouji more seriously than anyone else, and Juujouji, you feel the same way towards me, right?"
"Y-Yes. I love Haruga-kun very much."
"H-Haruomi—"
Probably because Hal made his declaration too naturally.
Orihime immediately followed up after a brief pause. On the other hand, Asya was so shocked that she could not close her mouth.
For Hal, Asya was neither an older nor a younger sister, instead, she was a childhood friend known for many years.
Perhaps it was fate that she became the first one he told. And it was right before the day when his fate was going to hang between life and death...
In any case, Hal released his hand from Orihime's breast as though nothing had happened.
He made the call to admit everything and started to explain.
Part 3
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Part 4
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Part 5
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