Published: March 21, 2026
Sorry, I'm late.
As the name "Dragon 1" suggests, it continues.
Amelia and I finally stepped into the boss room on the eightieth floor. It was about twenty-four hours after we found the boss room — in other words, a day later. There was a reason we rested for a day.
One reason is the drawback of Amelia's "magic creation": once she uses it, she can't use it for a full two days. For an ordinary person another downside would be the high consumption of magical power, but Amelia possesses magical power that is nearly infinite, so that wasn't an issue. Of course, we could have tried to kill the boss without using "magic creation," but it's better to challenge a boss room with everything in order.
The other reason was my training. I wanted to seal my skills as long as possible and train with the sword.
"Amelia, ready?"
"Yeah. You can open it anytime."
I asked while warming up. Amelia, who had been meditating and doing visualization training, opened her eyes and nodded. I opened and closed my hand to check the motion.
"Alright, let's go."
"If it's just the two of us, Akira, it's an instant kill."
"Hope it's the sort of opponent we can do that to."
I drew "night blade god" and put my hand on the door. Like before, the massive door opened as if it had no weight. As soon as we entered, the door closed behind us.
"...! Akira!!!"
When I tilted my head because nothing was there, Amelia, who had been sensing for presence, let out a more desperate cry than I had ever heard from her. Immediately after, I sensed something and leapt backward from where I had been standing a moment ago. The spot where I had just stood was burned black in an instant.
"What was that just now?"
The feeling of my whole body prickling still remained.
Amelia once again searched the presence carefully.
"...It's coming again!!"
At Amelia's shout I dove to the side. This time I couldn't fully avoid it and my right thigh was singed a little.
"Ugh!!"
"Akira, could you see it just now?"
"Yeah, a little. It's a monster I've never fought before."
When I said that, Amelia turned pale and looked up.
"I've seen it and fought it before. ...Long ago, it tried to burn the Sacred Tree, and Kirika — my sister — defeated it. A demonic beast, a dragon."
"A dragon!?"
I looked up, half expecting it not to be true.
'Grrrrraaaaaa!!!'
High on the ceiling that looked almost like a pinpoint, I could make out a huge silhouette that messed with your sense of distance. Even in this world, they are said to be almost extinct, and among demonic beasts they rank high in strength.
"So this is the flag from back then..."
A black dragon looked down at us with golden eyes gleaming. I had assumed a dragon-like final boss would appear around a nice round hundredth floor, but my prediction was wrong.
"Amelia, can you cast gravity magic on that dragon and slam it into the ground?"
"I can probably do it. But I don't know its size, so it might hit us when it falls. Dangerous."
Amelia spoke while looking at her right leg, which had been grazed by the dragon's attack.
Even as we talked, the dragon's attacks kept raining down without stopping.
"Don't worry about me. A wound like this won't kill me. But at this rate I'm just an easy target. It'll hit eventually."
"…Got it."
Amelia pursed her lips and reluctantly nodded. She raised her hand and muttered the trigger word.
"Gravity magic! Fall, dragon!"
'Gwaaaaaaa!?'
A tremendous gravity pressed upon the black-scaled dragon, making its massive body creak. The claws it had hooked into the ceiling to cling on cracked one by one, and fissures appeared in the ceiling. The dragon poured all its energy into resisting the gravity magic and stopped attacking us, trying to spread the wings on its back. Amelia immediately manipulated the magic to prevent that. A few seconds later, the dragon began to fall toward the ground.
I prepared to greet the dragon with "night blade god." The dragon plummeted with incredible force, twisting its body in midair as it glared at me.
"Sorry about this."
I thrust the blade straight at its neck. "Night blade god" shattered the dragon's hard black scales and tore open its throat.