Chapter 1: The Appearance of a Dragon (1)

Nothing is impossible.

―An old adage

“I hereby command you to subjugate the dragon.”

‘Fuck!’ Ethan Nys screamed internally the moment the king, a man not particularly burdened by dignity, spoke those words.

To understand the full extent of Ethan’s outrage, however, one must first learn why he had been summoned to the capital in the first place.

It had all started about three months prior. A dragon appeared near Mount Wizandraca, in the northwestern reaches of the Kingdom of Friond. According to the kingdom’s founding myths, Friond was a nation blessed by a dragon, and with so much of the populace devout in their worship of the dragon god, the creature’s arrival was initially hailed as an auspicious omen. Well, for about three days, anyway.

Unfortunately, the dragon couldn’t care less about the humans who revered it as a deity. The soulless monsters it brought in its wake laid the Wizandraca region to waste, slaughtering sheep and goats in the pastures, turning wheat fields to barren dust, and driving wild beasts in every which direction. People had no choice but to abandon their homes and flee wherever refuge could be found.

The panic that began in Wizandraca spread like wildfire. Prices swung violently, unemployment soared, and public order crumbled in its wake. For three months, grievances echoed across the entire nation.

Having ascended the throne during an era of unbroken peace, with no wars to speak of, the king had no idea how to handle this sudden national crisis. Feeling compelled to act regardless, he cobbled together a half-baked solution: the formation of a subjugation force.

Traditionally, subjugation forces were comprised of honourable knights and valiant soldiers, led by a noble of royal blood. However, it was this last detail that had everyone’s attention. Which member of the royal family would the King task with this honourable death?

Realistically speaking, slaying the dragon was impossible. How could mere humans possibly fell such a beast? A flick of its tail could level a village, and a breath of its arcane magic could bury a city under ash. They’d likely be slaughtered by the trailing monsters long before they ever laid eyes on the dragon itself.

In other words, the position of commander was a guaranteed death sentence.

‘It’d actually be more of a headache if the commander didn’t die.’

Returning unscathed from a failed subjugation would do little to prove that the royal family had fulfilled its obligations. The subjugation force was nothing more than a convenient excuse, a way of saying, “We tried our best, but alas.” For that excuse to carry any weight, the commander had no choice but to die.

As a result, anyone with even a drop of royal blood trembled in fear at the thought of being chosen. Nobles who had once bent over backward to tie themselves to the royal line suddenly fell silent.

Until then, Ethan hadn’t had a single worry. The Nys family estate of Ethne sat far to the south of the capital and even further from the cursed Mount Wizandraca, where the dragon made its rounds. Refugees, subjugation forces—none of it concerned him.

Until it suddenly did.

‘Our family, a collateral branch of the royals?’

A brazen leap, to be sure, but what recourse did they have when the king himself had declared it so? And truth be told, it wasn’t entirely without basis, either.

Some five hundred years past, the Nys family had been recognised as a collateral branch of the royal line, commanding immense influence not only across the Ethne territory but well beyond its borders. Everyone in the capital knew their name.

But at some point, the Nys family’s standing in the capital began to shrink, and their influence beyond Ethne waned. The root of their decline lay, of all things, in their own historical records—specifically, the documents that would have established exactly when the House of Nys had branched off from the royal line. Those records were missing. They could proclaim royal descent all they want, but without proof of when the split had occurred, the claim rang hollow.

As time wore on and the matter remained unresolved, doubts crept in. Were the Nys truly of royal blood at all? And once tarnished, a reputation was not easily restored. It even reached the point where the Nys family themselves began to wonder whether their ancestors had simply been con artists. The house gradually fell into decline.

Faced with the family’s impending ruin, the House of Nys chose to forge a new path. With neither pride nor honour left to defend, there were no roads they were unwilling to tread.

The Nys family turned to commerce. Not the idle investment favoured by most nobles, but rather, the Nys took to merchant ships themselves. It was a radical move, and had they not amassed an extraordinary fortune through trade, history would have remembered them as little more than a laughingstock.

From that point on, it was money, not honour, that kept the House of Nys standing. Kings rose and fell, and the noble families that once dominated the capital faded in and out of favour. Through it all, the Nys family quietly endured in the background.

And now, back to the present. The people of the capital had long since forgotten that a family named Nys had ever existed, yet here was the king, suddenly vouching for their royal lineage and demanding they produce a commander for the subjugation force.

‘Despicable bastard!’

And that was precisely why Ethan had left his home and travelled all the way here, to the audience chamber at the heart of the royal palace, a place he had never once imagined setting foot in. Far from feeling honoured, he was seething with indignation.

Every prominent noble in the capital had gathered in the audience chamber. People who, until very recently, couldn’t have pointed to the Nys holdings on a map, all of them here to gawk at the pitiful country bumpkin who’d been chosen as the sacrificial lamb.

“Ethan Nys, why do you not answer?”

“I humbly accept your command,” Ethan replied, masking his inner thoughts. The king smiled, then glanced to his side. An attendant held out a handkerchief. The king snatched it and dabbed at his gleaming forehead. It wasn’t even the height of summer yet, but the king seemed particularly susceptible to the heat.

‘Stranger if he weren’t, buried under all those layers.’

Ethan gritted his teeth, tearing the King apart in his mind.

The balding, pot-bellied old man hardly cut a majestic figure. Honestly, there was nothing distinguished about him. Whatever the current fashion in the capital, the layers upon layers of cloth made him seem more tacky than stylish. And with gemstone rings glittering on every finger, he looked less like a king and more like a greedy loan shark.

‘And he’s no better than one, too.’

At least a loan shark lends you money. The king didn’t even understand the most basic principle of a transaction: give and take. He had dragged Ethan into the royal family without his consent, and now he expected Ethan to hand over his life in return. Even the pirates who preyed on merchant ships would have better business ethics than this.

Strictly speaking, the king hadn’t even chosen Ethan. He had summoned the head of the Nys family, unaware, apparently, that the count had been dead for years and that his widow had been leading the house in his stead. The king hadn’t even troubled himself to find out whose life he was signing away with his own hands.

Ethan wasn’t bitter about risking his life on behalf of his family. He was merely furious that this risk wasn’t for his mother and younger siblings’ safety, but purely to save the king’s face.

As Ethan seethed inside, the king smoothly added, “I shall not punish you should the subjugation fail. How could it possibly be easy for a human to slay a dragon?”

There was not a shred of conscience behind any of those words.

“Still, there is no need to grieve. Everyone will remember your devotion to the kingdom and its people.”

Ethan forced the corners of his mouth up into a smile.

‘Obviously you can’t punish me if I die during the subjugation, you son of a bitch.’

The king droned on. Glory blablabla, honour blablabla, duty blablabla. He used every flowery word in the repertoire to gild Ethan’s path to the grave. At certain points, the king even appeared to move himself to tears. Ethan was so stupefied he nearly reached for his sword. Though, he’d probably need to stab him seventy times before he could pierce through the king’s thick layers of clothes with his dull, ceremonial blade.

Only after Ethan had murdered the king about a dozen times in his head did the frivolous pep talk finally come to an end.

“The subjugation force will depart in one month’s time. Until then, Sir Yvette Fradraca will assist with your training.”

A ripple of murmurs moved through the assembled nobles, and understandably so. Even Ethan was a little caught off guard.

The Fradraca family were founding pillars of the kingdom, a prestigious house renowned by all the nation. The genuine article, unlike the House of Nys. And Yvette Fradraca was the youngest son of its current head, a knight whose fame was currently at its peak. A genius swordsman, or so they said.

‘Someone like that is being assigned to train me?’

In which case, wouldn’t it be better for him to lead the subjugation himself? The Fradraca name was far better suited to dragon-slaying than his own, anyway.

As Ethan stood there, stewing in his twisted thoughts, someone approached. Their footsteps were incredibly light and rhythmic. It must’ve been Yvette Fradraca, stepping forward to receive his orders. Perhaps the moniker of genius swordsman wasn’t entirely unearned, as even the sound of the man’s stride was something else.

Ethan was curious to see what the owner of such a reputation looked like, but he didn’t turn to look. He’d be seeing the man for an entire month, anyway. He only caught a fleeting glimpse of a hand beneath a sleeve. It was pale and smooth, not at all like those of a man who wields a sword.

“Sir Yvette, your duty is of grave importance.”

“I accept your command.”

The king had gone quiet. Strange, given that he’d surely heard Yvette Fradraca’s reply. Ethan glanced up and found the king’s eyes already on him. Sensing that the king was waiting for him to say something, Ethan quickly chimed in, “I am deeply grateful for Your Majesty’s boundless grace.”

If he had it his way, he would have loved to deliver a sarcastic reply, but he was still, for the moment, a living man, and so he bowed politely instead. The king smiled, looking quite satisfied.

Truthfully, even if Ethan had said something unforgivable, the King wouldn’t have punished him here and now. Ethan wasn’t the desperate one in this situation. If Ethan were to secretly flee into the night, the king would have to exhaust himself finding another suitable neck to place on the block.

Even so, the reason Ethan maintained his manners was because the future remained uncertain. There were many others in this room besides the king. Most were probably fat swine who regarded the subjugation, and everything that came with it, as someone else’s problem, but perhaps one or two might feel a sliver of human compassion for him. When your life is a candle guttering in the wind, even the smallest bit of help from such people could mean the difference between survival and ruin.

‘It’s the first rule of being a merchant.’

Who knew when yesterday’s nightmare customer might turn into tomorrow’s biggest spender? Hiding his plots behind a friendly smile had long since become second nature to Ethan.

Soon, the king’s pudgy hand came down on his shoulder.

“I pray for your good fortune in battle.”

And with that, Ethan Nys officially became the commander of the dragon-slaying expedition.

‘Fuck!’