Swoosh!
The dragon's charge roared past me, a wave of hot, musky air. He crashed into the trees behind me with a sound like a small landslide. Progress: 674/1000. Just 326 more to go. My muscles vibrated, humming with the energy of the near miss. This was the rhythm. Provoke, dodge, repeat.
But the usual frustrated roar and immediate re-engagement didn't come. Instead, there was silence, broken only by the creaking of stressed timber and the heavy, uneven heaving of the dragon's chest.
"Human," the deep voice rumbled again, and I could hear the weariness in it, the sheer annoyance. "What... what is it you want?"
I lowered my shield slightly, though my stance remained ready. "Want? I want you to keep attacking. You stopped. Bad form, Draco. Gotta be persistent if you want to catch the elusive, slightly-tired Shield Hero."
"Persistent?" The dragon scoffed, a sound like grinding stone. "I attack, you dodge. I charge, you dodge. I breathe fire, you dodge. I move, you dodge. Then you say stupid things and teleport away before I can squash you. Everyday. For three days. It feels... it feels like I'm your puppet."
He sounded genuinely bewildered, like a force of nature discovering it was just a cog in someone else's bizarre machine.
"My puppet?" I raised an eyebrow, though he probably couldn't see it in the dim light. "Come on, Draco, don't be dramatic. Your main concern right now should be figuring out how to finally land a hit on me. How to turn me into a particularly flat, shield-shaped stain on the jungle floor. Why are you thinking about... puppets?"
I expected another bellow of outrage, another charge fueled by wounded pride. That was the script. That was what kept the attacks coming, what kept the number counting up towards 1000.
But the roar didn't come. Instead, the silence stretched, and when the dragon finally spoke, his voice was different. Lower. Softer. Stripped of its fury, leaving behind... something fragile. Something hollow.
"Yes," the voice said, and the single word hung in the air, thick with unspoken burdens. "Yes, I suppose I am."
I blinked. Okay. Not in the script. Not at all. A furious dragon was a known variable. A philosophical, defeated-sounding dragon? That was a new one.
"Are... are you sad, Draco?" I asked, the question feeling incredibly awkward coming out of my mouth. Sad? A creature this powerful, this destructive? It seemed absurd.
The dragon didn't answer. The silence returned, heavier this time, punctuated only by the sounds of the jungle night, oblivious to the emotional crisis of its resident apex predator. I could feel the weight of his gaze on me, even though I couldn't see him clearly through the trees. A powerful, terrifying creature... radiating hopelessness.
It was weirdly... attractive. Not physically, obviously. But the sheer, unexpected vulnerability of it. Like finding a crack in a mountain that reveals a hidden, weeping spring.
"Did you ever think about that?" I asked, pushing the conversation, surprising even myself. This wasn't helping the dodge count. This wasn't getting me the Cursed Series. But something about his unexpected shift had snagged my attention. "About how they felt? The people you hurt? The villages you trampled? Did you ever think about them?"
A low growl started in the dragon's chest, but it wasn't a sound of anger. It was a sound of deep, festering pain. "Remorse?" he scoffed, and now the hollow fragility was layered with bitter resentment. "Why would I feel remorse? For humans? For them?"
His voice rose, gaining strength, though the anger was still mixed with profound sorrow. "It was humans who started it! They came... years ago. Raiding party. Adventurers, knights... Brave heroes, they called themselves!" The word was spat out like venom. "They didn't come to fight monsters. They came to kill us! To slaughter my whole family!"
The air crackled with a sudden surge of heat that wasn't dragonfire. It was raw emotion, radiating outwards.
"Just to make equipment," the dragon's voice cracked, a sound that shouldn't come from a creature of scale and claw. "Just to make armor and weapons from our hide and bone. They... they killed my mate... my hatchlings... ripped them apart while they were still alive... just for parts."
The story poured out of him, a torrent of ancient pain and unhealed wounds. A monstrous rage had been born not of inherent evil, but of unimaginable grief and violation. His rampage, his attacks on human settlements... they weren't senseless destruction. They were vengeance. A desperate, unending cry of pain for everything he had lost.
And in the dim light filtering through the leaves, I saw something glistening near the dragon's massive, scaled eye. A single, impossible tear tracing a path down his cheek.
A monster. Crying. Over its dead family. Blaming the humans who took them. Claiming no remorse for the pain it had inflicted, because it was just balancing the scales.
My own past flashed in my mind. Myne. Motoyasu. Ren. Itsuki. The King. The entire damn kingdom. The betrayal. The false accusations. The way they ripped apart my life, not for hide or bone, but for convenience, for entertainment, for the sheer joy of tearing down the unwanted hero. My own rage, simmering just beneath the surface, felt... familiar.
I didn't cry. Not anymore. Crying was for when you were weak. For when you were broken. My rage had hardened into something cold, something useful. But I understood. I understood the depth of that pain. The all-consuming need for payback.
Here I was, standing in the jungle, dodging the attacks of a creature who was the living embodiment of pure, unfiltered vengeance, all while trying to acquire my own weapon of vengeance, the Cursed Series, which was born from his rage. The irony was thick enough to choke on. It was a cycle. Humans hurt dragons. Dragons hurt humans. Heroes fought dragons. Heroes got power from dragons' rage, sometimes using it to hurt other humans. And somewhere, a God was watching, finding it all immensely entertaining.
"So," the dragon's voice was low again, the raw pain receding slightly, leaving behind a weary bitterness. "Now you know. Are you going to kill me?"
I looked at the massive, sad figure in the gloom. Kill him? He was the source. The source of the rage, the source of the Cursed Series. I needed him angry. I needed him attacking. I needed to absorb whatever twisted essence he possessed. I needed him... alive and furious. Not sad and resigned.
"Kill you?" I scoffed, finding my voice again, pushing down the unexpected weight of his confession. Back to the script. Back to the task. "Draco, come on. You're getting all mopey. That's not like you. You're supposed to be the big, scary dragon who wants to turn me into a shield pancake."
The dragon stared at me, unmoving.
"Look," I continued, stepping slightly closer, trying to prod the beast back into its required emotional state. "Your family... yeah, sucks that happened. Humans can be real bastards. Believe me, I know." A short, sharp memory of Myne's face flashed. "But that doesn't change the fact that I'm here, you're here, and I still need you to try and kill me a few hundred more times. So, are you gonna stand there crying, or are you gonna get angry again and maybe finally land a hit?"
The sheer audacity of my words, the deliberate dismissal of his profound grief in favor of resuming our ridiculous combat ritual, hung in the air. I watched him, waiting. Waiting for the sadness to recede. Waiting for the rage to take over.