Somehow I felt pretty bad today, so the quality may or may not be bad…
Chapter 16: My arms went back to their form in their glory days, but…
Early morning, I woke up to a strange sensation.
My arms are— hot.
Like the blood in my body is boiling.
"What the heck, is this?"
I didn"t eat anything especially weird.
I also didn"t do anything weird.
I tried thinking in my half-asleep state for around 2 minutes.
Now that I think about it… this feels like the time when I transformed into human form.
It can"t be that it"s the pattern where I turn back into a dragon?
Although I guessed it was like that, but no matter how much I waited the transformation never started happening.
To try things out, I tried whispering in a way that wouldn"t wake up Irene.
"Return."
My arms turned into dragon hands with claws.
Are you serious!?
It was covered in super hard skin, it was the nostalgic silver arms!
It would be impossible not to be moved.
Although saying that, the only parts that transformed were my forearms.
If it"s like this, isn"t this just like a certain h.e.l.l teacher"s ogre arms? [TLnote: h.e.l.l teacher nube reference.]
Isn"t this too unbalanced?
Wouldn"t this make living in human society hard and embarra.s.sing?
I can"t even shake hands.
"Return, return, return, ah, into human hands that is."
Ooo…….. It turned back into human hands.
Since it"s like this, I"ll try doing it a few more times.
In conclusion, I don"t really need to say it out loud, just thinking it allows me to transform.
"This is quite convenient."
My dragon nails simply have high firepower.
In addition it has a delayed neurotoxic effect.
It should be useful in battle.
By the way, I can control the poison, and can make it weak to the point that it"s harmless.
Ah, but what should I do about my battle style?
Should I use them to scratch and stuff?
Or should I grip a sword… that would be pointless, if it"s for gripping stuff, human hands would be more suitable.
I"ll hold a sword with my right hand, and transform only when necessary.
Anyways, I can transform it in an instant.
I should just be careful, so it won"t be seen by other people.
Also, since it"s still early, I should go back to sleep.
Although we gathered money yesterday, the money I have on me right now, is still far from enough, so we went to monster hunting again today.
I decided to defeat more goblins today compared to yesterday.
A goblin immediately appeared.
This time there"s a lot of them, there were tens of them grouping up together.
Is there a large group of them somewhere nearby?
"Doing all this from a distance is tiring. I"ll cut them down, so I"m counting on you for support."
"Yes!"
I grasped the sacred sword in my right hand, raised my running speed, and thrust into the group of goblins.
While flying in, I kneed the leading goblin"s face, crushing it, at the same time as I landed, I mowed them down with my sword.
Two goblin heads flew off together.
Immediately one of the ones close to me raised a strange voice, so I spit on his eyes to blind him, and with the gap created from flinching, I sliced him in half from head to toe.
His body separated into two halves vertically, and with the gap created I immediately stabbed through the heart of the other one standing behind him.
"Gieee!!"
A goblin who snuck up behind me, made a full swing with his club.
I changed my arm into a dragon"s and did a backhand chop.
The wooden club and the back of my hand collided.
My arm"s power won overwhelmingly with room to spare.
Seeing his weapon destroyed, the goblin"s eyes started trembling, and I stabbed my index finger into it.
It easily pierced through the eyeball until even the brain.
With this we"ve defeated the six.
Although it has been easy until now, it"s not like the goblin"s grouped together just for show.
In an instant using eye-signals, they surrounded me from all four directions.
All the ones I"ve defeated had been holding wooden weapons, these four were holding rusty sword-like things.
It"s either something they picked up or pillaged.
Either one, doesn"t really matter to me.
The four of them matched their pace, and all came attacking at me at once.
Taking a stance of thrusting, it seems they have pretty high intelligence.
At one glance there was no path of escape, it was a situation even a sword master would have a hard time with.
I judged the timing and did a somersault in that place.
With this body, I can easily jump over a 130cm midget"s head with room to spare.
The goblins, with their initial target suddenly disappearing, with their sudden break not working, collided with their comrades.
Although they avoided stabbing each other, they struggled from the pain of the collision on the ground.
This isn"t on the level of having gaps.
Rather there"s nothing but gaps.
I quickly cut them all down.
I directed my line of sight towards Irene.
Two of them were quickly dispatched by Irene.[TLnote: this was originally three, but I think the author made a typo.]
Just now, a goblin got it"s head pierced by an arrow flying at high speed.
With this there"s only two left.
But because the distance has shortened so much, Irene had no choice but to use her kicking arts.
The goblins were split into the left and right, so that they won"t get cornered.
This is, kinda bad?
I took a club from one of the dead bodies, and raised my voice.
"You take the left side."
Irene acknowledge with her chin, and I threw the club with all my power towards the goblin to the right.
The club spun at high speeds while flying, and pierced through the goblin"s head, letting out a dull sound.
Irene used her boot"s knife to cut through the throat of the remaining goblin.
With the both of us not getting specially injured, we were able to defeat our own opponents in a clean sweep.
"Good job."
"Good work."
"I"ve been wondering this for a while now, but do bows have some sort of trick to them?"
"They don"t? Ah, but I can use bow magic so…"
"You could use magic?"
"Yes, although it"s limited to bow magic. Raising the speed using magic power, the arrow of wind, raising the penetrating power, the arrow of earth. I can also use the arrow of fire and snow."
I see, so she"s been using the arrow of wind since yesterday.
Since it seems like I also have magic power, I feel like learning magic in the future as well.
Around these parts, the standard land magic beast is only the goblins, so with a good mood I gathered the goblin nails.
Since it"s the goblin"s mating season right now, it seems we won"t be finding any trouble looking for prey.
At a point when we could take a rest, Irene said.
"Master, I have something I want to ask about."
"Go ahead."
"Does master know of the magic beast called cyclops?"
"Ah, the one with only one eye? I hate that guy."
"Why is that?"
"It"s violent, and without caring about who it is they attack them. Why so suddenly?"
"Nothing, it doesn"t really have any special meaning…."
Irene hanged her head down.
For some reason her condition seems weird.
"Ah, I see. The one who attacked your home town was a cyclops?"
"….."
Did she remember something from that time?
"You know, you, you"re being too hard on yourself. During times when you suffer, it"s better to say it out loud. 14 year old girls are creatures who should be all fluffy and have dreams, and fall in love. At the very least in my country it was like that. Just remember to leave some leeway for yourself."
"Master…."
I slowly pat Irene"s head.
The rejection I felt during the first time was gone without traces.
It seems that it felt good, so she received it.
For a while I just kept rustling her head.
It was smooth and looked like golden threads.
This sensations feels really good.
I was supposed to be comforting her, but it ended up with my hand being healed.
"Is my hair weird?"
"Not at all. I think it is very good. It think the weird one is."
Between the hair, jutting out, I touched the tips of her ears.
"Haa, auu……"
Irene reacted in an exaggerated way.
Was she surprised or are her ears sensitive?
Thinking that it was a research on elves, I poked the tips of her ears.
"Kufun-, ya-, wa-, ma-, master!?"
"………"
I tried gently fondling them.
"Uuu-, auu-"
Irene"s cheeks became slightly pink.
It seems she"s troubled.
Since it can"t be helped, I"ll stop.
"Ah, you"re… stopping….."
For some reason she"s making a face like it"s a pity.
If it"s like that, I"ll continue teasing you.
"Aun-, hau-!"