“Well…y’know. I’m really smart and stuff, so… Not like I ran away from my place ’cause I don’t like studying or anything!”
…Aha. Frey must’ve been researching the state of Milim’s domain and teaching her about it. That must’ve bored her so badly that she fled her own country.
“Wait, no!” she blurted out before I could even answer. “Don’t say it! I’m staying here and helping you, and that’s that!”
Sharp as a tack, that girl. I should really contact Carillon or Frey about this, but…ah, who cares? Not like they’ll get angry at me. I’ll just pretend I didn’t know any better.
But back to what she said earlier…
“All right! That’s your mess to clean up, as far as I’m concerned. You’re the one who’s gonna get yelled at, not me,” I said to her. “But what about those dragons you mentioned? You said you could bring them over and tame them? Is that really possible?”
“Huh?! Y-you really think they’ll be angry at me? Um… Eh, whatever. It’s not an adventure without a little danger, as they always say!”
She was acting like a child willing to do anything to avoid doing their homework. But that was the path she’d decided to take, and I suppose it was my job to watch over her. She may’ve been conflicted over it, but she elected to goof off anyway.
“But dragons, huh? Sure, you can tame ’em. I can do it for ya, if you want!”
Now her mind was entirely on our project, talking about taming dragons like it was catching butterflies with a net. I couldn’t ask for anything better.
“You’ll do that for me? So what types of dragons are there? Will they be anything like Veldora, or…?”
Hey, if she’s offering, then I’m happy to take her up on it. I kept my questions pretty casual as a result, but Milim and Veldora were quick to respond almost in unison.
“Um, Rimuru, those are two completely different things.”
“Very different,” Veldora intoned. “I will not allow you to bunch me in with those lizards the way Luminus does!”
They both had strong objections that then segued into an equally intense explanation of the nitty-gritty of dragonkind.
“The draconic species of this world is nothing more than monsters created from broken-down elements in the body of Veldanava—my elder brother, the Star-King Dragon, and the most powerful of our kind,” Veldora began.
Basically, the difference between regular dragons and Veldora’s kind involved the difference between a material life-form and a spiritual one. Regular dragons, as monsters, have a physical presence in the world. They were called dragons since they resembled the ones of myth and legend, but in essence, they were closer to dinosaurs—big, mean lizards.
There were only four True Dragons in the history of the world, three of which currently existed. The Star-King Dragon Veldanava—Veldora’s older brother and Milim’s father—perished following certain unspecified events, and he hadn’t shown any signs of reviving ever since. Dragons had eternal life, so something really serious must’ve gone down with that guy…but that was outside the scope of this conversation.
Veldanava was the origin of the monsters known as dragons—or to be exact, the Spirit Dragon that he gave Milim as a pet. With what I heard from Elen before, I suppose this Spirit Dragon died and subsequently became a Chaos Dragon, and then the essence of its body spread far and wide. The remnants of this essence were still birthing Lesser Dragons to this day in areas with high magicule concentrations; if you had enough bits from the Spirit Dragon to work with, they could even create Arch Dragons.
The most powerful among these Arch Dragons were called Dragon Lords, which came in four types depending on the element it was affiliated with. These Dragon Lords, who boasted human-level wisdom, had spent several centuries as Arch Dragons before making the evolution, and with their strength, they could tap into some of the powers of the original Spirit Dragon. With their extended life spans, Dragon Lords were a step closer to spiritual life-forms, although they couldn’t resurrect themselves from death the way Veldora and his ilk could.
The Sky Dragon I defeated a while back was one of these Arch Dragons, classified as a Calamity-level threat. A Dragon Lord would be even stronger than that, maybe up to a demon lord’s powers—about as strong as Clayman or a high-level spirit. That level of magicule energy should be more than enough to wrangle the floor effects I wanted for this labyrinth of mine.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Milim interjected. “I may be incredible, but not even I can tame a Dragon Lord!”
Getting an intelligent being like a Dragon Lord to cooperate with us would be pretty fruitless, now that she mentioned it. Maybe we could get one to agree to the job if we asked them nicely, but it wasn’t that worth it to try, I thought.
“Guess not, huh? So what’d you mean when you said you could catch one?”
“Well, there are some Arch Dragons with elemental attributes to ’em, even if they aren’t quite Dragon Lords. If we catch some and let them run free in this dungeon, they’ll eat up the magicules and change the landscape around them, I think.”
I see. Dragons were in the habit of creating nests for themselves, so wherever they decided to set up shop, they’d transform the local environment for us. We had tons of magicules for them to chow down on, so no issues there. Let’s go with Milim’s offer.
“All right. Can you do that for me?”
“You got it! I’ll grab you one from each type, right on the cusp of becoming a Dragon Lord.”
As she explained, dragons derived from that original Spirit Dragon came in just four types. At the top of the pyramid, you had your earth, water, fire, and wind Dragon Lords, with the element-infused dragons below them. They also came in four types, known as Earth Dragons, Frost Dragons, Fire Dragons, and Wind Dragons, respectively.
