[DanMachi/Percy Jackson] Prytaneum

Chapter 24: Two Weeks' Notice Part 2

Without so much as a look back, I began to advance on the Infant Dragon, eyeing it warily. The creature growled, froth flying from its lips as I approaching, but it merely tensed, waiting as I drew nearer and nearer. I kept myself relaxed as I moved, already pretty sure I knew how this was going to go—and found myself utterly unsurprised when it abruptly pounced towards me like a massively overgrown and scaly cat.

But the moment I saw the first spasms of its muscles, I was already moving. I took four quick steps to the side, turned, and swung my sword in an arc that coincided perfectly with its landing, scoring a long wound on its side. The moment Riptide parted flesh, the creature bellowed, its roar a massive deafening sound from this close, even with the helmet Welf had crafted for me. At the same time, it swings its tail at me like a whip, the limb sweeping towards me with enough force to snap an Orc in half. As it came towards me, however, I turned and leapt, jumping clear over the tail and landing in a roll with the help of my shield.

As I came back to my feet, I swung again, seeking to hamstring the beast's back leg and cut off any chance of it potentially reaching Welf or Lili. It just barely escaped my reach, already in the midst of turning about-face and barring its teeth my way even as it swept its tail back around.

Except this time, instead of dodging, I stood my ground, bracing myself and lifting my left arm high. Its tail slammed into my side hard enough to send flashes of pain through my thoughts and make the metal of my armor groan, but though it was a near thing, I didn't stumble. Instead, I brought my arm back down, trapping its tail between it and my side, and then looped it under and over, wrapping it tightly around my arm to make sure I had a good grip. As I did, I noticed something distantly—that its skin felt hot, as in like a stove, except in my case that just seemed to be an odd warmth that couldn't penetrate my skin. I knew it was there and nothing more.

I stepped aside as its teeth came down, dodging its attempt to bite me and pulling its tail along for the ride. I moved in a quick half circle around the Infant Dragon to avoid its teeth and then pulled, dragging it backwards even as it dug its claws into the floor. It turned its head back, snarling and trying to snap at me, but I was too far for it to reach and whenever it tried to curl it's body enough to get at me, I just pulled it roughly around by its tail again, dragging it around by the tail.

Each time I pulled it off balanced and forced it around, however, the Infant Dragon released a wild growl, all but frothing at the mouth in rage. Its eyes glared at me every time it snapped its head my way, a fury building in them until it finally boiled over and I saw fire gathering in its open maw, shedding a harsh light on the dim room. I could feel heat growing beneath my fingers, the beat of its heart pounding against my grip as it focused its greatest weapon on me.

Perfect.

I slowed, no longer jerking it roughly around, choosing instead to wait until the last minute and then let go of its tail, darting towards the gathering light. The old saying was that if you play with fire, you're going to get burned, but as a son of Poseidon? I'll take my chances.

After all, I don't burn easily.

Frankly, the plan was pretty simple in both idea and execution. Force it to try and breathe fire at me and attack it while it was still open. I knew from unfortunate experience that I could withstand fairly prolonged exposure to lava, even without Undine Cloth to help, so I'd power through the blast and take it by surprise. There were other ways to take it down, but just to be on the safe side, I wanted to end this fast. There was no telling what the Dungeon had planned for me now, after all.

But just as I was bracing myself for the slight sting of the flames, it proved unnecessary.

"Burn out, illegal work!" Welf abruptly shouted and fire leapt from his hands, flashing through the air to collide with the Infant Dragon's open mouth. The moment it did, it was like a bomb went off in its jaws, light and smoke bursting from its maw. The Infant Dragon seemed to stagger, head snapping back as if someone had punched it in the face, and even through the trail of smoke that followed it, I could see the burns around its mouth. They were mild, relatively speaking—but that it had been enough to burn a dragon said a great deal about the eruption.

And it was more than opening enough for me.

I swept in, not missing a beat even at Welf's unexpected assistance, and then planted my feet right in front of the beast before swinging for the fences—and as Riptide completed its arc, the Infant Dragon's head hit the floor. After a moment of seemingly confused spasming, its body followed suit and the fight came to an end.

Flicking Riptide once to shake a bit of blood from its length, I lifted it to rest against my shoulder and walked towards Welf and Lili.

"See?" I asked them. "What did I say? No problem."

"Looks like even a Level 2 monster's no match for you, Percy," Welf said, shoulders lowering slightly in relief. "You didn't even have to use magic."

Glancing around, I saw that Welf had thrown the sea shells I'd given him to the floor, but as he'd said, I hadn't needed to call upon them yet. Yet being the operative word, which was why I chose to leave them be for the time being.

"Speaking of magic," I said. "That's what yours does?"

He gestured vaguely with a hand.

"It's called Will-o-Wisp," He told me. "It's sort of like...anti-magic fire. If I time it right, I can cause stuff like that, an Ignis Fatuus—basically making the magic blow up right in the casters hands. But if I don't time it right...it's entirely possible it won't do anything."

"Still, it looks handy," I replied, too which he gave me a bleak smile.

"Not as much as you might think," He replied. "A member of my Familia once asked me to use it as part of an experiment that ended...badly and so I don't really have much desire or chance to use it on humans. But for monsters, this is the first time I'd ever encountered one that does something like magic—I wasn't sure it would even work on something like this."

"Ah," I mused, blinking. "I suppose none of the monsters on the first ten floors did anything like that."

"Without someone like you to help me, I wouldn't even have been able to get far enough to meet a creature like this," Welf said ruefully. "And even if I had, I wouldn't have been able to do anything on my own. I still have a long way to go as both an adventurer and a smith."

"Well, that's why we're here, right?" I replied, trying to sound reassuring. "Today should be another big step for the both of us, right?"

Welf smiled slightly at me at that and shrugged.

"Mr. Percy," Lili said, having remained silent until now. She'd paced over to the Infant Dragon quickly, looked over the corpse, and came right back.

"Is something wrong, LilI?" I asked, turning to look down at her.

"Lili's too weak to make a hole in the Infant Dragon's hide," She said, hood covering her eyes—but she sounded ashamed of the fact and seemed to hunch in on herself. "Lili's very sorry, but could Mr. Percy...?"

"Sure," I said, feeling awkward as I saw her demeanor. It was almost as if she expected to be yelled at or worse for her inability to penetrate dragon hide. "Welf, could you guard the door? Just make sure nothing else is coming and shout if there's trouble."

"Got it," He said seriously, turning to watch the doors.

I shook Riptide again and then drew her cap from my pocket, pressing it to the tip and then putting the pen back in its place. I pondered the dragon's corpse for a minute before grabbing one of its legs and flipping it over onto it's back. Since this was my first time seeing an Infant Dragon, I actually wasn't certain where its magic stone was.

"About here, do you think?" I asked Lili, patting its belly.

"Yes, Mr. Percy," She replied. "Be careful, though—the body of an Infant Dragon is very hot."

"Don't worry about it," I said, drawing Annabeth's Dagger from my side and driving it through the Dragon's scales. It was a bit harder to penetrate its skin than it was with Riptide, but it was also less likely that I'd accidentally hit the magic stone. I wasn't sure what Infant Dragons were worth, exactly, but as Level 2 monsters, it should be at least twenty thousand valis. Alone, they should have been worth what most groups of Level 1 adventurers made in an entire day. Not a bad bit or work.

Once I'd opened a wide enough wound, I touched it and frowned. I wasn't very good at gauging heat with a touch, but it should have been a bit too hot for Lili, like touching a hot stove. I wasn't sure what the rules were for an adventurer to harvest magic stones while a supporter was around, but I promptly decided not to ask. Easier to beg forgiveness than ask permission and all that.

As such, I didn't bother asking Lili before taking a moment to aim and driving my left arm into the Infant Dragon's chest, blindly searching for the magic stone. It was a bit awkward, frankly; it was on its back, so I couldn't reach it very well standing upright, but at the same time it was so big that I couldn't really crouch, either. In the end, I wound up bent over it, shoulder to its scales as I reached around inside.

And then I got a weird feeling, a shiver going up my spine. I look back to see Lili standing there and Welf keeping watch, but...

"Is something wrong Mr. Percy?" Lili asked, shadowed eyes blinking at me from underneath my hood.

"...No," I murmured, realizing I'd stopped in the middle of my work. "One sec. I think I've got it."

I gripped the magic stone tightly and braced my free hand on the dragon's chest before tearing it free. Immediately, the Infant Dragon began to collapse into dust; there didn't seem to be any drops which was a little sad, but I guess that was a bit too much to ask. Even with the quantities I ended up with every day, they were still relatively rare, and I'd only killed one so far.

"Thank you, Mr. Percy," Lili said, reaching out to take it. "You didn't need to do that, though."

"I didn't want you to burn yourself," I replied, wiping my hand on my armor.

"Lili wears supporter's gloves," She told me as she gestured with her gloved hands. "Lili wouldn't have gotten burned."

"What are those?" I asked, blinking.

Lili seemed to hold back a sigh.

"They're gloves meant for supporters," She told me. "They're meant to protect the hands while handling dead monsters, even if it's from strong acids and such. Simply putting one's hands inside of a monster can be dangerous, Mr. Percy."

"Oh," I said, blinking again. Well, it's true that sometimes my hands would start to sting, but I'd just wash them off in water and that'd usually handle it. Gloves might be convenient, though. I wonder if they came in blue.

Lili added the Infant Dragon's stone to her pouch and smiled up at me.

"Shall we call it a day then, Mr. Percy?" She asked. "It's a little bit early still, but in truth...Lili's starting to get a bad feeling about this, too."

I couldn't really argue with her there. We'd killed the Infant Dragon, harvested it, chatted a bit, and still nothing had happened? Life wasn't this kind to me and neither was the Dungeon.

"Anything, Welf?" I asked.

"Nothing," He said. "Something's definitely up."

"Lili suggested we call it quits," I said. "I'm starting to agree with her, but what do you think?"

"A part of me is sad to go back after just one fight on the eleventh," He admitted. "It took so long to get this far and now it's like we barely got here. On the other hand...this is wrong and irregularities in the Dungeon default to bad. Yeah, let's get out of here."

"Lili knows all the fastest ways back to the surface," She boasted. "If you follow Lili, we can get back without even fighting monsters."

I sincerely doubted that, but I was glad to see her enthusiastic about something so I nodded at her with a smile. As she turned away, I couldn't help but furrow my eyebrows and frown, though. That weird feeling I'd gotten...what was it? For a moment I'd thought something might have happened...

Looking down, I patted myself subtly, checking to see if anything was missing—but no, everything was still where it was supposed to be. My armor was fine, Annabeth's Dagger was in its holster, and Riptide was in my pocket, right where I'd left it. Then, had it just been my imagination or...

"—Stop," I said, halting my party.

"Mr. Percy...?" Lili asked, turning my way.

I looked at her with a frown for a moment and then tilted my head to the side.

"Do you guys hear something?" I asked.

"Hear something?" Welf repeated as I reached up to remove my helmet. He'd done a good job making it able to deal with the bats, but it was a harder to hear in as a result. When I removed it, I heard something distant, almost like galloping horses.

"Something's coming," I said. "A lot of somethings."

"That's ominous," He noted, shoulders tensing. "Let's run, maybe?"

As if in response, there was a sudden multitude of cracking sounds. The entire room seemed to shatter around us, every wall abruptly coming apart in a shower of falling rubble so expansive that it was impossible to tell one monster's birth apart from another. Silverbacks, Hard Armored, Orcs, Imps, and Batpats all emerged around us in a sudden riot of opposition—and three creatures stood out sharply from the rest. To the left of us, an Infant Dragon. To the right of us, an Infant Dragon. And blocking the way back, an Infant Dragon.

I knew it was too easy.

"Three?" Welf said, a drop of sweat trailing down the side of his face as he saw the same thing. "I've never heard of them attacking in groups like this. There's never more than five at a time and they only appear on the eleventh and twelfth. Three at once is..."

"I get a feeling that's not the problem here, Welf," I replied.

"Not the problem!?" Lili replied, voice rising sharply in fear. And as if to answer her, there was another loud sound, this one echoing through what seemed like the entire eleventh floor. Lili seemed to jump at the sound, some part of her perhaps understanding what it implied. "W-what was that?"

I reached into my pocket and drew Riptide, flicking the cap off carelessly. If anything, Lili's eyes grew even wider at the sight of my magical sword—but that was far from being important right now.

"A Minotaur," I said before pursing my lips as it was followed by a chorus of other voices. "Make that Minotaurs. Plural."