The Wilderness Beneath the Wings

Come to think of it… what happened to Katie after that?

On the first day of their journey, in the bustling streets of an unnamed human town, Daisy followed Viola—who could casually create magic crystals for money—and enjoyed her first truly extravagant meal at a high-class restaurant in the outside world.

After eating an amount of food nearly larger than her own body, along with a specially ordered dessert afterward—a giant vanilla cake—Daisy left behind stacks upon stacks of empty plates across the table.

Under the strange stares of the restaurant’s guests and waiters, she rested for a while before following Viola out of the restaurant and back into the noisy streams of people on the streets.

At this point, Daisy had not only changed into the brand-new clothes Viola bought for her from head to toe, but also carried a lightweight travel bag that barely contained anything.

Inside it were only the recovered Scorpion-Tailed Fox fur Viola had given her and the tattered modified clothes Katie had once prepared for her.

Now that her stomach was full, Daisy carried this travel bag filled with memories from her last trip into the outside world and suddenly found herself worrying about Katie after they parted ways at the hidden s*ave market warehouse near Gran City’s slums.

There had seemed to be quite a lot of gold coins scattered across the ground back then.

She wondered if Katie had picked them up and gone to save her family…

Dragons naturally possessed an instinctive fondness for glittering precious metals.

Though Daisy wasn’t overly influenced by it, she still couldn’t help noticing those scattered gold coins at the time.

Those coins had originally come from Katie selling Daisy to the green-hatted s*ave trader Peter.

Later, consumed by regret, Katie had rushed into the warehouse carrying the sack of gold herself, only for her unscrupulous teammate Gert to slash open the bag with a sword, scattering coins everywhere.

Afterward, Daisy had also heard a rough explanation from Viola about what happened on Katie’s side.

Although she still felt a little sad over being betrayed by Katie, she had mostly forgiven her by now, understanding that Katie had her reasons.

At the time, nearly all the guards and nobles inside the s*ave warehouse had already fled.

After Viola left with those cold final words while carrying Daisy away, the only person left alive in the warehouse had been Katie herself.

Of course, since the incident involved an influential s*ave trader, the local lord who colluded with him would soon send guards to investigate and arrest people.

But before that happened, Katie had more than enough time to pick up roughly five hundred gold coins and escape far away…

The only question was whether a heartbroken Katie still had the courage to take those coins earned by betraying her friend.

Katie… my very first human friend…

I hope she and her family can both be saved…

As Daisy followed Viola down the street, she drifted into a slight daze, gazing up at the blue sky while silently offering a pure-hearted wish for someone else’s happiness.

“Daisy.”

At that moment, Viola—walking ahead in her black dress that resembled the robes of a grim reaper—suddenly stopped and turned around seriously.

“There’s still something I didn’t fully explain about earlier.”

“Hmm? About our journey?”

Pulled out of her thoughts by the sudden remark, Daisy immediately remembered what Viola said during lunch—that there was another issue they needed to resolve before truly beginning their travels.

“That’s right.”

Over there, Viola still maintained her slightly cold demeanor, though her tone now carried a trace of helplessness.

“To be honest… perhaps even I failed to think things through properly.”

“For thousands of years, I believed I already understood humans thoroughly.”

“But now that I think about it… I’m actually not very good at pretending to be human and blending in among them…”

For thousands of years, Viola had always disdained associating with humans.

Aside from traveling and adventuring together with Daisy back when Daisy was still human—a person uniquely special to her beyond all others—every time Viola entered human territories to observe humanity’s beautiful and ugly sides alike, she did so exactly as she had when secretly following Daisy and Katie before.

She hid silently in the shadows.

And if necessary, she could even use her body’s mimicry abilities to become effectively invisible.

In short, she had never needed to actually behave like a human or genuinely mingle among them as equals.

However, the place Daisy and Viola planned to travel to this time—the land where they first met, the dragon territory of Helvia at the continent’s edge—lay beyond the borders of several human nations.

Those borders were filled with high-level large-scale detection barriers.

If a massive magical threat like Viola forcibly crossed those barriers and was detected, it would inevitably provoke a relentless united crusade from the human kingdoms, creating endless future trouble.

Therefore, Viola could no longer secretly smuggle Daisy through unnoticed.

Their only option was to disguise themselves as humans, infiltrate the Kingdom of Mirandel, gradually establish identities that allowed them to travel freely across borders, and then quietly pass through one nation after another until reaching their destination.

The current problem, however, was that some unknown force within Mirandel already seemed aware of Viola’s existence through mysterious means.

Dragon slayers had likely already been dispatched to search for her everywhere.

Right now, the thing Viola and Daisy feared most was attracting attention, leaving clues, causing disturbances, or drawing dragon slayers toward them.

Yet ever since entering this human town, the two of them had stood out conspicuously.

Neither of them truly understood how ordinary humans behaved.

Every action they took and every word they spoke drew attention.

At this rate, it was only a matter of time before dragon slayers tracked them down.

“!”

Daisy spent a long moment thinking with her little dragon brain before finally vaguely understanding Viola’s meaning.

Instinctively, she raised both hands to clutch the large hat hiding her dragon horns while nervously glancing around to see whether any pedestrians were paying attention to them.

“Do you understand now, my Daisy?”

“For this journey to proceed smoothly, we need a transition period.”

“We need time to learn social interaction and adapt ourselves to human society…”

Viola spoke seriously while raising a hand to gently rub Daisy’s small head through the large hat.

“Next, we should find somewhere to stay hidden for a while.”

“And if possible, learn more about normal ways humans interact with one another.”

After deciding to first find a temporary place to settle down, Daisy and Viola immediately left the human town where they had eaten lunch.

They returned to the deserted wilderness, deliberately taking remote paths that would not attract attention while wandering through sparsely populated countryside areas without any clear direction.

Although Viola was an ancient dragon who had traveled across the continent and still remembered the general geography of human nations, several centuries had passed since her last journey.

Times had changed.

Even if mountains and rivers remained the same, the people and places certainly had not.

As for where they could safely stay without attracting pursuers while also learning how to interact with humans, even Viola had little idea.

And so Daisy followed Viola from afternoon into dusk, then from dusk into evening.

In order to avoid drawing attention as carefully as possible, they did not even dare enter another town for dinner despite having money.

Instead, Viola hunted fish, beasts, and birds along the way, putting together a grand feast of roasted meat.

Night gradually descended.

The afterglow of sunset slowly withdrew beyond the horizon.

Before they realized it, darkness had risen alongside the light of stars and moon, dimly blanketing the wilderness.

The place Viola mentioned… a place to stay… just what kind of place is it…?

Daisy had followed Viola for most of the day and had no idea how far they had traveled.

Though her dragon stamina kept her from feeling tired, she still struggled to imagine what sort of place Viola considered suitable for hiding their identities while learning how humans lived.

“It’s already getting dark.”

“Let’s rest here for tonight.”

Out in the nighttime wilderness, Viola casually spoke in her cool voice and stopped walking entirely as if fully intending to camp outdoors.

“Eh? Here?”

Daisy looked around uneasily.

Thanks to her dragon night vision, she could clearly see through the darkness all the way to the distant horizon.

The surrounding wilderness was mostly flat open land with slight rises and dips in terrain.

Patches of lifeless weeds grew sporadically across the ground while the night wind stirred clouds of dust into the air.

There was absolutely nowhere to shelter from rain or wind.

If wild dogs, wolves, bears, boars, or even bloodthirsty demons wandering the wilderness suddenly attacked in the middle of the night, it wouldn’t feel surprising at all.

“This place is perfect.”

“It’s far from civilization, quiet, and nobody will disturb us…”

Beside her, Viola spoke softly and mysteriously before suddenly pulling Daisy’s small body into her embrace.

Immediately afterward, a pair of massive dragon wings seven to eight meters long unfurled behind Viola like enormous bat wings.

Then, through mimicry, the wings transformed and sprouted huge white feathers thick enough to provide warmth.

Finally, the wings folded inward together, forming a tightly sealed feathered tent that touched the ground below while remaining fully enclosed above.

Camping outdoors instantly stopped being a problem.

“For us, places crowded with humans are far more dangerous.”

“Oh…”

Held in Viola’s embrace and surrounded by the warm feathered tent shielding her from wind and cold, Daisy immediately felt both warmth and security.

She softly sighed in contentment.

Though dragons would not become sick from sleeping in the cold wilderness, this felt far more like having a home.

“Then let’s sleep here together?”

“I want to sleep with Viola!”

Beneath the night sky, inside the feather-wing tent in the wilderness, Daisy was just beginning to drift drowsily against Viola’s soft embrace when Viola suddenly revealed a vigilant expression.

“Daisy… Daisy… wake up.”

“Something seems to be approaching…”

“Mmn… what is it?”

“It only entered within around three kilometers just now.”

“I can’t sense any magic.”

“It seems to be an ordinary human without combat ability… and injured?”

“Someone’s hurt? Should we go look?”

This feather-wing tent of Viola’s was not merely for warmth and shelter.

It also possessed powerful ground-contact vibration sensing and large-scale magical detection abilities.

Even while sleeping, Viola could instantly detect and awaken if danger approached within dozens of kilometers.

Regardless of the situation, Viola first picked Daisy up and used the cover of darkness to unleash the dragon race’s terrifying physical speed.

Her black dress whipped violently in the night wind as she became a dark afterimage blending into the wilderness while racing forward at incredible speed.

They crossed more than three kilometers in barely over ten seconds.

When Viola and Daisy finally arrived, they saw only a staggering figure struggling across the wilderness while reeking of blood.

After taking only a few more steps, the figure collapsed face-first onto the ground.

“A-Are you alright?! Mister over there!”

Daisy anxiously jumped from Viola’s arms and hurried toward the fallen person.

“…”

Behind her, Viola naturally remained completely alert as she followed closely behind, prepared for any sudden danger.

Once Daisy approached, she saw an elderly man wearing ragged coarse linen clothing.

His hair and beard were overgrown and untrimmed, his face covered in weathered wrinkles.

Judging from his appearance, he looked like a rural shepherd.

Across the old shepherd’s back stretched a long wound that bled relentlessly, soaking much of his clothing crimson.

It was shocking that he had managed to walk this far while carrying such a severe injury through sheer force of will alone.

The problem was…

That clearly was not a wound caused by demons.

It was a merciless slash wound.

A wound left behind by the blades humans forged specifically to slaughter fellow humans.

“S-Save…”

In front of the flustered Daisy, the dying old shepherd collapsed upon the ground seemed to notice someone nearby.

Using the last of his strength, he forced out words in a hoarse elderly voice.

“Please… save…”

“Quickly… go save… our lord…”

“He’s one of the rare good lords…”

“He shouldn’t die such an unjust death…”