Not long after we sat down, Aisha was leaning against a tree and beginning to nod off. She probably couldn’t keep up with the complicated subject matter. I had to question whether it was okay for someone who was supposed to be my bodyguard to be doing that, but, well, knowing Aisha, she could probably protect me in her sleep. I kept talking.
“I couldn’t let raw sewage drain into the river. Domestic sewage often has pathogenic bacteria and parasites in it, you see. In order to protect against those, we need to let the water sit in a place where it can filter through sand and pebbles… in other words, a sedimentation pond.”
“P-Pathogenic bacteria?” Liscia cocked her head to the side. It seemed those were unfamiliar words for people in this world.
Well, there was probably no need to get too sensitive about it just yet. The people of this country had no concept of pollution. That was because, with this country’s standards of living and level of technology, even if they dumped untreated sewage into the river, it wouldn’t make much of a difference.
However, as the country grew and its technology advanced, there were sure to be problems with pollution. The sooner I tackled that problem, the better. The Japanese people had learned about pollution by experiencing Minamata Disease, Itai-itai Disease, and Yokkaichi Asthma. There was no need for the people of this country to experience anything like that.
“So, did something happen with these sedimentation ponds?” she asked.
“Right, so I used the Forbidden Army to dig holes for the sedimentation ponds…”
“What are you making Sir Ludwin and his men do?” she exclaimed.
Well, if I’d hired workers, that would have been expensive, and I’d wanted to teach the soldiers of the Forbidden Army “combat engineering” skills. Digging holes, filling them up, reinforcing them. It was the perfect practice for digging trenches. It seemed battles in this world were still fought on the open field, so a group that could use trench warfare tactics like in World War I would stand head and shoulders above the rest.
Anyway, I digress.
“While I was having them dig, we came across a large pile of monster bones.”
“Bones?” she asked.
“Yeah, bones. Dragon bones, giant bones, all kinds of bones.”
It’s like a monster graveyard, one of the soldiers doing the digging had said.
Dragons, giants, gargoyles, and more. There had been a large quantity of clearly non-human bones just scattered around haphazardly.
By the way, of the creatures I just listed, dragons were the only ones that weren’t monsters.
Dragons had a degree of magical power that was incomparably higher than what wyverns had, they were intelligent, and apparently they could even take on human form. They had a pact of mutual non-aggression with the human race, and had built their own country in the Star Dragon Mountain Range. The chief of the Star Dragon Mountain Range, Mother Dragon, was strong even by dragon standards. She was said to be an incredibly beautiful specimen, and was even worshiped by some people. Basically, dragons were terrifying god-beasts, but they were also another race, just like humans and dragonewts were.
Anyway, let’s get back to the story.
According to the scholars who investigated those bones, they were in a geological stratum from thousands of years ago.
“So, there was a dungeon there?” Liscia tilted her head quizzically, but I shook my head.
“I said they were in a certain geological stratum, didn’t I? Thousands of years ago, that place would have been the surface.”
“The surface…? No, you can’t mean… Sometimes monsters do come out from a dungeon, but never on so large a scale. Outside of the Demon Lord’s Domain, monsters never swarm over the surface like… Ah!” Liscia gasped, shaking her head as if trying to clear it of the thought that just occurred to her. “Hold on! The Demon World only appeared for the first time ten years ago!”
“In other words, this means, even before that, there was an era when monsters roamed the surface,” I said. “If you think about it, there are dungeons all over this continent with monsters living inside them. For some reason, the monsters that lived on this continent thousands of years ago vanished, and some small portion of them survived by secluding themselves in dungeons. That’s the idea that the scholars came up with.”
This was like discovering that there were dinosaurs still living in some unexplored region of the world. Or like seeing a pandemic of a virus thought to be eradicated. Though, whether that hypothesis was right or not remained to be seen.
“Well, what then?! The monsters and demons that destroyed the Northern Countries didn’t ‘come here,’ they ‘returned,’ is that it?!”
“That, I don’t know,” I said. “It’s dangerous to jump to that conclusion at this stage.”
What were we trying to fight against? What were our enemies? It was a question where choosing an easy answer wasn’t going to cut it.
“Also, there’s one more thing bothering me…” I went on.
“There’s more?!”
“Even setting aside the issue of the bones, I needed to get that sedimentation pool made. So, I had the scholars keep archaeological records of the bones that were dug up. The thing is, a full skeleton’s worth of the largest and best preserved dragon bones has gone missing. Even though I know it was disassembled for display and sent to be stored at the Royal Parnam Museum…”
“So, it was stolen, then?” Liscia asked.
“That would be good news… Well, no, not good news, but still. With a full, 20-meter-tall dragon skeleton, even if you disassemble it, it’s not going to be easy to transport. Despite that, there’s no sign that it was taken out of Parnam. And yet, the bones are still missing now. It’s as if the full set suddenly started to move, took wing, and flew away.”
“Ah! No, it couldn’t be! A skull dragon?!” she cried.
“That’s what the scholars suspect.”
A skull dragon. Apparently, there were monsters like that.
They say a raging dragon can level a kingdom. Dragons have vast stores of magical powers within their bodies, and those reserves remain in their bodies after death. Normally, the magic power gradually drains out, but when a dragon dies with regrets (or, rather, when its body is left in a bad environment for too long), on rare occasions, it may turn into a skull dragon.
These skull dragons are designated by the country as Special A-Class harmful creatures. Winged ones can fly, even though they have no membranes between their wings, and they spread a miasma that brings death to all living things. They can also use the dragon’s Dragon Breath technique from when it was alive, so when one appears, it is a living (unliving?) disaster that requires the full mobilization of a country’s military to defeat. That alone was reason for smaller countries to go to the Star Dragon Mountain Range, where the dragons live, to seek assistance.
However, this time, things were different.
“If that were it, Parnam would already be enveloped in miasma,” I said. “The scholars performed a magical test to make sure there was no risk of that happening, after all. There shouldn’t have been any magic left in that fossil.”
“I see… That’s good.”
“Still, that’s why I don’t get it. Where did those dragon bones vanish to?”
It had already been close to a month since the dragon bones vanished. Despite that, there was still no sign of them, so did that mean they had been carried outside the walls somehow, after all? If so, what was the purpose? There was apparently little use for the bones once the magic left them. They had lost their value as a magic catalyst. The best that could be done with them was to put them in a museum (of course, I would need permission from the Star Dragon Mountain Range for that) and use them as a tourist attraction.