Every Morning, My Mirror Saves the World - Chapter 18

Chapter 18

“How did this happen?!” Lars and Galahad stared at the wall in front of them, dumbfounded, and cried out in disbelief.

“Shh, keep it down, idiots!” Ruiyin hissed, reaching out to pull the cloaks on their clothes over their heads. After glancing around warily, the three of them squeezed their way out of the crowd.

“This is trouble. We have to leave immediately,” Ruiyin said, walking quickly.

“But… but how did we become fugitives?” Lars said anxiously. “We’re not traitors. We never colluded with the Orcs. How did we become the traitors who caused the fall of Kandel Castle?!”

“I’m even more innocent here…” Galahad was on the verge of tears. “I clearly had nothing to do with you people. How did I become an accomplice to traitors…”

Ruiyin shot him a cold sidelong look, and Galahad immediately changed his tune. “Ah, we’re companions! Even if we’re traitors, we definitely betrayed everyone together!”

“There isn’t any real reason,” Ruiyin said as the three of them hurried through the crowd. “Those people just need a scapegoat for their failure to hold back the Orcs. Since we happened to escape from prison alive, we became the target.”

Galahad let out a wail. “How can they do this?! I-I-I… I finally got this much money, and now I can’t even buy a ship!”

“It’s fine. At least you’re still the first legend to become a Dragon Knight while only at the rank of Silver Knight,” Ruiyin said as she pushed open the door to their inn room.

What greeted them was a sight that made a person want to stab their own eyes out. This little inn, whose front door opened into a back alley and existed specifically for thieves, exiles, and escaped prisoners, had had a filthy, greasy floor when they left. Now that floor was completely covered. Dazzling piles of gold coins, gemstones, scepters, and crowns lay heaped across it, and a pink, spherical figure was rolling shamelessly all over the treasure.

“Gold!” It flung the treasures on the floor with its stubby forelimbs, its face wearing a dreamy expression. “Gems! Beauties! They’re all mine! Every treasure in this world belongs to Lord Vigia!”

Ruiyin backed out of the room. “Galahad, make your idiot dragon put the money away. We’re leaving right now.”

The Silver Knight dawdled reluctantly at the doorway for a long time before slowly stepping into the room covered in gold coins and jewels. Before he could even speak, the pink ball had already flopped flat on all fours over the pile of coins. Its round belly pressed against the floor as it spread its limbs, trying its hardest to hoard everything under its stomach, while lifting its head to glare furiously. “All of this is mine!”

Galahad looked up at the ceiling and silently shed tears of bitterness. As possibly the first person on the Magic Continent to form a contract with a flying dragon while only ranked as a Silver Knight, he felt no pride at all. He felt heartbroken, frantic, and ready to collapse in tears.

The Demon Queen Ruiyin gave Vigia two options while holding up a mirror and threatening it with the seal: if it refused to choose, she would turn it from a dragon into an egg on the spot. Lars could not help leaning close to Ruiyin’s ear and asking uneasily, “Ruiyin, are you a believer of Seres? How do you know how to use the seal?”

“I don’t.”

“Huh?”

Ruiyin’s expression was incomparably calm. “It’s fine. Judging by the way that stupid dragon acts, it definitely doesn’t know anything either. If I say I can turn it from a dragon into an egg, it’ll believe me. Ha. If you don’t trick someone like that, who are you supposed to trick?”

“…” The soul of the exceedingly upright Apprentice Knight suffered another blow.

Vigia threw a tantrum, rolled around, and sprayed Dragon Flame no stronger than the flame of a lighter, but in the end, it still could not escape the fate of choosing. It placed its two stubby front claws pitifully on its round belly, tears filling its round golden eyes as it pouted in unwillingness. “I choose the first one.”

There were, after all, dragons who had signed contracts with humans. Compared to becoming the first dragon ever packaged up by a human, it was more willing to challenge a dignity that had already been challenged before.

Vigia’s disdainful gaze swept over the three of them, and then it dragged its feet as it stretched out a claw and pointed. “Him, then.”

“Eh?!” The Silver Knight with a head of green cowlicks pointed at his own nose in utter shock.

“Yes, you! Stop making that stupid face!” Vigia spat out a contemptuous breath. “Listen carefully. To be my master, you must have an appearance of incomparable nobility and dignity. From now on, I will train you properly.”

The Dragon Clan naturally worshipped powerful, glittering things. They revered strength and plunder. They were among the Creator God’s finest works. So as a Dragon Knight, Galahad… hated with every fiber of his being that, on that day, he had been wearing the shining armor Ruiyin had kept using as a reflective surface.

Galahad’s manly soul and knightly soul waged an agonizing battle inside him. No one had ever told him whether respecting ladies included female dragons. After half a day of coaxing failed to produce results, Ruiyin walked into the room, raised the mirror high, and whacked Vigia on the back of the head. The female dragon immediately put away the gold coins, rolled into a corner, and started sobbing.

“If we can’t buy a ship, don’t we still have a flying dragon?” Lars looked toward Vigia, who had curled into a ball and was crying. “M-Miss Vigia, could we trouble you to return to your original form and carry us across the sea?”

Vigia flicked its tail and said haughtily, “Absolutely not! I will never restore my original form while I am in this sealed body. For a flying dragon without sufficient power to appear in its adult form is an absolute humiliation!”
“Then… can you carry us across the sea in your current form?” Lars ignored all the embellishments and went straight to the point.

Vigia glared at him. “Shameless! As a knight, you actually want to ride on the back of a cute young girl! I will never let a man ride me… and women are even more out of the question!”

Ruiyin gave it a sidelong look and lightly kicked the round little dragon in the butt with the tip of her shoe.

“Waaah, that hurts… Fine, you can ride me! Ride me already!”

Their test-flight site was on the edge of White Rose Coast. Wearing astonishingly similar expressions of reluctance, Galahad and Vigia stood in a row, glaring at each other for a long while before Vigia finally lowered its noble dragon neck before the knight. Galahad straddled the dragon’s back in the standard posture of an adult riding a child’s bicycle, his knees bent at forty-five degrees as he squatted on the ground. For some inexplicable reason, he had the absurd feeling that he was sitting on a dragon-shaped toilet.

Vigia let out a clear cry toward the sky. The two dragon wings on its back began to flap slowly. Since it was only in its juvenile form, Vigia’s body was not covered in hard dragon scales, and Galahad even felt that riding a dragon was softer and more comfortable than riding a horse.

Its face turned red from exertion as the roasted-chicken wings on its back flapped with all their might! And yet, neither human nor dragon rose into the air.

A trace of astonishment flashed through Vigia’s eyes. It stopped, moved its short, thick hind legs, huffed and puffed through two running steps, then beat its wings at an even faster pace!

Vigia’s face flushed scarlet with rage. “Damn it! I was sealed away for so long that human men have become this heavy? Hmph. To think you could actually make things difficult for Lord Vigia. Silver Knight, you truly have made me see you in a new light!”

Lars stared blankly at the human-and-dragon duo in front of him. Then he suddenly raised his head and looked at Ruiyin with eyes full of sincerity and guilt. “Ruiyin, thank you!”

“What?”

“Thank you for stopping me when I volunteered to become the Dragon Knight!” he said in a tiny voice, his face red. “I’m sorry. I thought you didn’t trust my abilities back then, but it turns out you really were doing everything for my own good. I was far too immature. So there really are many people in this world greater than a Dragon Knight. I… I’ll definitely train myself in some other way and work hard to grow stronger!”

Ruiyin said, “…You don’t need to thank me at all.”

Was it her imagination? Ever since this guy started hanging around with her, his worldview had not changed much, but his skill in “insulting people with sincere eyes” seemed to be growing at an exponential rate.

There probably were not that many professions in this world greater than Dragon Knight, but professions greater than “Vigia’s knight” did not seem particularly hard to find. Galahad felt that his original internal debate over whether a female dragon counted as a lady had been completely unnecessary, because even though he had clearly done nothing just now, he had in fact inflicted a severe double blow, both mental and physical, on a lady and a child. Until the overly heartbroken Vigia reverted to the original form of a huge black dragon, this pointless attempt continued again and again.

“If only we knew a mage,” Lars said with a melancholy sigh. “We have so many precious materials. We could absolutely hire a mage to draw a teleportation circle and send us over.”

Ruiyin paused, then turned her head as if she had not heard him.

As for mages, Galahad was already a Silver Knight blessed by the God of War, so there was little chance of him changing classes. Lars did have the cheat-like potential to cultivate both magic and martial arts, but how could she possibly let him come into contact with those magic textbooks that were obviously tailor-made for him? As for herself…

Dear reader, have you ever seen a “normal” modern young woman who was neither a harem protagonist nor an overpowered heroine, and who had no cheat ability, somehow test positive for magical fluctuations in her body?

“Forget it.” Ruiyin sighed and gave up on watching the little dragon-and-rider team still struggling through their test flight. “Let’s search nearby and see if we can cut down some trees and build a boat ourselves.”

She had only just turned around when an extremely furious roar came from behind her head. It was a sound utterly different from the immature shrieks of the little-girl dragon and the miserable cries of the idiot knight. Ruiyin quickly turned back, just in time to see a figure spread enormous black wings above the pale blue sea.

A race blessed by the Creator God. The enormous black flying dragon spread its wings above the Sea of Roses, its golden-orange vertical pupils burning like molten lava as they faced the sky. Its hard-scaled body lifted its head and let out a long cry over the surface of the sea. It was no longer that pink round ball. Even with most of its power still sealed, its magically resistant scales and formidable physical strength were already enough to make it an unquestioned overlord. And so, even its rider had no choice but to bow his head under such pressure…

“Let me down, aaaaaah, waaaah!!! I don’t want to be a Dragon Knight anymore! Riding a horse suits the status of a Silver Knight much better!”

Lars quickly grabbed Ruiyin’s hand. “Hurry! We don’t need to cut down trees anymore. Ruiyin, step onto my back and get up there!”

His eyes burned with a blazing light. “A dragon… That’s a dragon! At last… I can become a Dragon Knight too!”

“…” Who was that kind child earlier who kept thinking Dragon Knights were too embarrassing?