Chasing Ryouko in a mad dash, I came onto her.
“Vile witch! On a quest or something!?”
While it hadn’t gone far enough to lay a hand on her, if I didn’t put the stick back, I’d never be able to move on. It became a violent scramble.
“Gnnnnnnn!” “Ngaaaah!”
It developed into a truly small-scale close combat of grabbing each other’s’ hair and cheeks. On brand new road piercing through a tranquil vacant lot, our street fight remained too petty to require anything like a 10-something shiki: yamibarai special move.
Really, I’m sorry, I can’t provide a cool light novel battle scene.
Vrm, rm, rm, rmrm, from a sports car letting off motor noises as it passed by, a flashy couple pointed at us and laughed.
The man yelled out his encouragement.
“Go get her, Otaku!”
Go get in an accident.
When I’m with Ryouko, it seems even I’m seen as an otaku. My high school debut was meaningless.
Eventually out of breath, the battle ended with no real end. Leaning against one of the stakes surrounding the lot, I became a lifeform that existed only to ingest oxygen. I couldn’t regain the stick.
“God, what’s with you. You’re really irritating. What even is that rod?”
“Dragon Terminal.”
“Say what?”
That stick? That? You’re saying that’s the item we were desperately searching for?
“Let me see it a second.”
“…… You’ll take it so no.”
“I won’t take it, I’ll give it back, just let me see. We’re comrades, right?”
Perhaps the comrades worked; Ryouko held it out to me.
Dragon Terminal. Now that she mentioned it, it did seem to have the shape of a dragon. Rather than a western dragon, it was closer to the eastern serpent-like beast. It could also look like a worm or something of the sort. It didn’t seem to have wings.
“Alright, have it back.”
She carefully tucked it into a storage space in her staff.
How baffling. Even if the dragon corpse part was a lie, I was surprised to find it actually existed. Why were there multiple of them? How many were there in total? The key had to be in the infirmary.