Chapter 20

“Um… is it really all right to leave it like this?”

One of the trainers asked cautiously, and Bruce narrowed his eyes.

“What — worried about that trainer who came up from the capital?”

“Well, of course I am. The senior trainers always said feeding the dragons was the one thing you could never neglect, and…”

He didn’t bring up whether Litia could actually manage feeding thirty dragons’ worth on her own — if he said that out loud, he’d surely rub Bruce, who played leader among the apprentice trainers, the wrong way.

Bruce gave a short click of his tongue. Honestly, he’d been wondering the same thing himself — whether it was really all right to leave the feeding to that trainer.

No — the seniors left the feeding to us plenty of times too.

He shook his head. If he said he had no complaints at all, that would be a lie.

We’re the ones who looked after these dragons!

In the brutal succession struggle within the ducal house, every one of the senior trainers had lost their lives. Yulis Albarant had slaughtered them all without distinction — the trainers who’d wanted to follow him and the ones who hadn’t alike.

It was the result of a selfish, self-serving resolve: to leave nothing behind that could possibly benefit the current Duke Albarant.

Bruce was the most senior of all the apprentice trainers — but it was precisely because he was still only an apprentice that he’d survived.

I’m the one who knows House Albarant’s dragons best.

He said it like a verbal habit, over and over, while doing everything he could to manage the dragons well — and none of the other trainers could argue the point.

Though he’d failed to earn his dragon trainer’s license for close to ten years now, he’d worked at House Albarant longer than any other apprentice trainer who’d survived.

“Some trainer who just dropped in out of nowhere from the capital, teaching and leading us? Don’t make me laugh.”

Even without a license, wasn’t loving dragons the one thing that mattered most for a trainer?

Believing that, Bruce clenched his fist tight.

“She’ll give up before long, mark my words. After everything we’ve devoted to House Albarant, don’t we at least deserve treatment that matches it?”

To make sure of that, he needed to break the spirit of this green trainer who’d come to the duchy knowing nothing, simply because she’d caught the Duke’s eye.

A woman, with less strength than a man — she’d obviously start whining before long.

Thinking that, Bruce agonized over just what he’d say to crush Litia’s spirit once that day came.

…That had been his thinking, a week ago.

“Uh, um… are — are you all right?”

“Of course I’m fine. All I have to do is feed them, isn’t it?”

Litia waved off the apprentice trainers’ concern with a bright smile. Her face had grown just a little thinner than before.

“Um, well…”

“If you’re worried, there’s no need. Thanks to this, I’m getting a very useful chance to learn all sorts of things about the dragons.”

As if she already guessed what they were about to say, Litia cut them off, firm.

“Well then, keep up the good work.”

“Ah, yes…”

Having said only what she meant to say, she turned and walked off toward the enclosures, swallowing down a potion while rolling a bale of pressed hay along ahead of her.

“…She’s tough as nails.”

Bruce hadn’t expected her to handle feeding every single dragon alone for a whole week without letting out a single complaint, and it threw him off. But he shook his head quickly — it had been his own idea to suggest it, so asking now whether she was all right would only be absurd.

“Still, why hasn’t he been listening to me lately.”

Thinking he’d need to bring extra treats, Bruce sighed. The dragon under his charge had been strangely disobedient these days, and his nerves were worn thin for it.

“Whoa! Stop!”

Just then, another trainer lost his grip on a dragon steed’s reins. The steed, brought out for training, let out a long cry and bolted off into the distance, ignoring every command.

“W-wait, wait, waaait—!!”

“What are you all standing around for! Anyone with a free hand, help!”

At that, a few people who hadn’t yet brought their own dragons out started running too, after the fleeing steed. Watching it, Bruce tightened his grip on his own dragon’s lead and sighed.

It wasn’t only his own dragon that had stopped listening lately, it seemed. Surely it was just his imagination that all sorts of accidents kept happening one after another.

Bruce tried hard to think the best of it, telling himself without a doubt that the dragon he’d cared for all this time wouldn’t suddenly change its feelings just because someone else was handling its feed.

But that faith wouldn’t survive much longer.

“Grrrrrrrrrrk!”

“Hey, now. It’s me, it’s me. Calm down…”

Bruce gritted his teeth as the dragon raked its forelegs roughly across the ground, radiating open refusal. Forcing anything on a dragon that was rejecting you outright was practically suicide.

Bruce wasn’t the only trainer going through this. The other apprentice trainers were all breaking into a cold sweat in front of their own dragons’ pens too.

“Wh-why’s he acting like this?”

“Whoa, it’s me, it’s me! Why all of a sudden—!”

A dragon clawing at the floor of its pen. A dragon rearing its head up and backing away. A dragon lashing its tail so hard against the walls it looked ready to break them.

Each expressed it differently, but every single dragon was rejecting its apprentice trainer.

“Mr. Bruce, what are we supposed to do when this happens?”

“Th-that, I don’t really…”

Bruce had no idea what was going on either. Above all, his own dragon was acting up too, so he wasn’t in any position to be giving anyone advice.

“What’s going on? It looks like it’s past time for training.”

Litia asked, arms full of odds and ends as she walked up. At her appearance, Bruce shut his mouth. There was no way he could admit, in front of the very trainer he’d tried to humiliate, that his dragon wouldn’t listen to him — it was too mortifying.

“Um, well, it’s—!”

“You, shut up!”

Bruce snapped at the apprentice trainer who’d hastily opened his mouth, and shook his head.

“It’s nothing.”

“…Is that so?”

Litia smiled. Bruce flinched at that smile.

It was the smile of someone who already knew something. It nearly made him forget his own position and demand, voice raised, just what she knew.

“Well, that’s a relief, then. Would you excuse me for a moment? I need to get the next feeding ready ahead of time.”

Litia strolled right past Bruce. There was nothing he could do but let her go.

“…?”

Then he realized, strangely, how quiet everything around him had gone. Not sure where that sense of wrongness came from, Bruce looked around — and felt a chill run down his spine.

The dragons in their pens had, at some point, all stopped their thrashing. Realizing that every one of the now-quiet dragons’ gazes was fixed on Litia, he hurriedly looked to his own dragon.

Bruce’s dragon, too, had its eyes locked on Litia. As if it had never thrown a single tantrum, it had gone perfectly docile, its tail tip swaying gently as it watched her — and seeing that, Bruce realized something had gone very, very wrong.

“…Trainer Litia!”

She stopped mid-stride and turned back to look at him.

“Yes? What is it?”

“I just need a moment, to say—!!”

“I’m sorry, but I’m busy.”

Litia cut him off coldly and quickened her pace. Bruce ran after her.

“Please, don’t be like this—!!”

“I have to feed thirty dragons and the Agrix dragon besides, and handle training on top of it — I genuinely don’t have time to talk.”

Then Litia smiled. For all how thin her face had grown, the fierce, glittering light in her eyes was enough to make Bruce’s resolve wither.

“Even this much talk is more time than I can spare. I’ll be going, then.”

“Trainer Litia, ma’am!”

“Now that the dragons won’t listen to you, suddenly it’s ‘Trainer,’ with all the courtesy, is it?”

Litia smiled, bright and sunny.

“You’re House Albarant’s own apprentice trainers, aren’t you? You must know so much more than some country bumpkin who just came up from the capital. Why are you holding me up?”

“…I’m sorry.”

“I don’t know what you’re apologizing for. Thanks to you all, I’m learning a great deal while I handle the other dragons’ feed.”

“Trainer, please—!”

“You dumped feeding thirty dragons onto one person all at once, and now that you’re desperate, suddenly you feel like showing a little respect?”

At the ice in Litia’s voice, every apprentice trainer nearby, Bruce included, flinched and drew back.

“You all know your dragons well enough that you don’t even need to handle the feed yourselves, so I’m sure you’ll manage.”

“I-I’ll help you, Trainer!”

“M-me too!”

“All of you, get lost. Deal with it yourselves.”

Litia turned a cold shoulder on the few trainers clinging after her, and smiled a frosty smile.

“You caused the mess, and now you want help cleaning it up? Have a little shame. You made your own bed — whether you get bitten or trampled for it is none of my business.”

With that — telling them to get their disobedient dragons back in line on their own — Litia strode off without a backward glance.

“They pick a fight for dominance, and the second they’re desperate, they come crawling back. Lunatics, the whole lot of them.”

If they were going to try to embarrass me by handing me feeding duty, they should’ve expected a result like this. There’s hardly a creature more sensitive about who feeds it than a dragon.

That apprentice trainer probably based his demand on something the senior trainers used to do — but there’s one thing he didn’t know.

When you assign an apprentice to handle the feeding, the amount you give them to handle is normally only about half of what the dragon actually eats.

The remaining half usually gets given during training, or whenever the dragon’s own handler is busy with something else. Leaving half the feeding to an apprentice is meant to get the dragon used to taking orders from them too.

If you go charging in not knowing a thing, of course you’re going to bleed for it.

“Calling themselves trainers, and they don’t even know what matters and what doesn’t.”

No wonder the dragons were all in such a foul mood. And that’s on top of the sheer nerve of it.

Grumbling, I popped the cap off a stamina-recovery potion and drained it in one go. Ah, if it weren’t for these, I’d have collapsed ages ago.

“Ugh, I’m exhausted.”

“That’s a problem. Did something happen?”

…Had my ears gone bad? Why was I hearing the Duke’s voice?