The Simulacrum - Chapter 96 - Part 3 (Patreon)

Okay, let's take a step back and look at the big picture…

"Raaaagh!"

Just as I thought that, the place where I was standing got hit by the dragon's tail, forcing me to get out of the way.

"I didn't mean that literally!" I exclaimed, mostly out of surprise.

"{What are you talking about? Wait, don't answer. I have to focus on Amelia's group.}"

To be fair, I wasn't in a position where I could answer my dear assistant's question, as I was pushed even further back by the dragon letting out another roar, followed by a short blast of red dragon fire. The beam kicked up a cloud of white sand as it gouged a long ditch into the arena's floor, destroying one of the walls and scattering everyone left in realspace.

Since my danger sense warned me ahead of time, it didn't even come close to hitting me, but since Raven Boy was standing near me at the time, he was blown back by the shockwave the attack left in its wake. Seeing that she missed, dragon-Xiao let out another bass-heavy roar and flew at me, pressing her assault.

Glancing around, I realized that fighting here would've put the others at risk of further collateral damage, as while the Chinese dragon in front of me wasn't as huge as, say, the one that came out of the six Dragon Cubes in the show named after them, she was still pretty damn big. On the flip-side, since we were technically indoors, at least she wasn't able to just fly up and carpet-bomb the whole place, like any even remotely intelligent magical-beam-breathing flying reptile would.

While Phasing a couple of meters to the right, I finally collected my wits and took a step back to look at the situation as a whole. Dragon-Xiao was seemingly pinpoint-focused on me and me alone. Normally a mythical flying creature would've fallen under the category of 'bad news', but in this situation, it was pretty convenient for me. If she decided to go after Morgana and co., it would've made things much harder, as unlike me, they couldn't just teleport out of harm's way, so in a way, her coming after me was a blessing in disguise.

Speaking of them, though, things were already getting a little hectic on their side, as while I was kiting Xiao, a full-on battle broke out between the two knightly groups. On one hand, Duncan and Penny were keeping Raven Boy busy, and with her anti-Purple-Zone artifact interfering with his special ability, they had him on the ropes.

"Stand down, Agrawain! We don't want to hurt you!" my sister called out between two strikes of her sword that looked like she definitely wanted to hurt him.

"An' gie back mah sword!" the big guy added, and I only just noticed that Raven Boy was using the executioner's blade I put into the inventory artifact a while back.

"I told you, I can't!" Agrawain barked back as he deflected the strikes coming at him. "I don't have a choice! How hard is that to understand?"

While he was definitely on the defensive, the guy was still holding up pretty well, which, considering the performance difference between the original armors and the uniformers, probably wasn't that big of a surprise.

On the other hand, Morgana was soloing the remaining Uniformered Knights, and by the looks of it, she was winning.

"Snap out of it, Sister Morgana! Please come to your senses!" Arnwald pleaded, and I could be wrong, but I had a feeling that despite constantly aiming at her, he hadn't shot a single arrow since the battle began.

Miss Gorgon didn't respond and instead pushed her advantage, almost sending Roland flying with a strike of her flamberge.

"For god's sake, Arnwald! Shoot at her already!" he cried out, confirming my previous hunch right away.

"I can't! It's Sister Morgana!" Mr. Eagle objected with a pained expression, drawing an aggravated growl from his colleague.

"You don't have to shoot her in the head! Just keep her under pressure so that I can subdue her! We have to do it before Bel of the Abyss leaves the arena and the dragon focuses its attention on us!"

I couldn't see how that exchange ended, as I had to once again dodge a short dragon fire blast, blowing up one of the giant floodlights in the corner of the amphitheatre. Unlike Draconians, who had to charge it up, full-fledged dragons could apparently fire them up whenever they wanted to.

Oh, and since we're in the topic, I couldn't help but ask: What the bloody hell gives, Narrative!? Why is there a freaking dragon chasing me right now? How is there even a dragon in the first place, let alone a young one like Xiao? Wasn't the whole point that they are extinct, with only old ones like Sebastian hanging around while hiding in plain sight? Was Xiao another old dragon in disguise? If so, where was the foreshadowing? If not, where was the foreshadowing? Scratch that, where was any foreshadowing for any of this?

"{Chief? Can you talk?}"

"Oh, sure. I'm only being chased by a ten meters long phantasmal creature of legends with a wave-motion-cannon mounted in her throat. I have plenty of attention to spare." Hearing the distinctly disapproving-sounding silence on the other side of the line, I Phased a bit further away and amended, "Sorry, I'm a little stressed out at the moment. Do you have something to report?"

"{Grand elder Xinji is currently giving the backstory of Xiao to Joshua's group. I thought you would be curious about the details.}"

"I am, but this really isn't the time." With another Phase-jump, I avoided a tail-whip coming my way, and then added, "Can you give me a TL;DR summary?"

"{It's a fairly long story about him finding a sealed underground room in a hidden Tibetan temple high in the Himalayas and—}"

"A moment."

Realizing that her repeatedly rushing at me was ineffective, dragon-Xiao roared in frustration, shaking the whole amphitheatre. Then, all the debris around her started floating in the air, carried by what looked like semi-transparent strips of Chinese characters coiled around them, and after a beat, all of them flew at me at once. Of course, with my sixth sense, it wasn't hard to dodge them, but it still required my full attention. Once the barrage ended, she followed it up with a wide beam of dragon fire, which I observed from the audience seats after I Phased away.

"{I'll give you a written report later,}" Judy stated, and I couldn't help but agree.

"Yeah, that's probably for the best. I don't think I can dedicate my attention to a whole bedtime story with her being this adamant about vaporizing me.

"{What did you do to her?}"

"Weren't you paying attention?"

"{I was talking with Amelia at the time.}"

"I only threatened to stab the grand elder with Ascalon."

"{… You 'only' did that?}" Judy inquired, sarcasm all but dripping from her deadpan voice.

It was around this time that dragon-Xiao found me again, and without a pause, she lunged at me again, her scaled body easily breaking apart the stone benches where I was standing a second before.

"I did it to goad Roland into making a move. How was I supposed to know Xiao would turn into a bloody dragon in response?" The moment I said that, all my previous grievances came to the forefront again, and I couldn't help but curse under my breath. "This is bullshit! There wasn't even a hint that she was not just the grand elder's granddaughter, but an actual dragon! At least with Sebastian, there were clues!"

"{… Chief? Did you seriously not notice how odd Xiao Feilong's background was?}"

Dodging a series of blasts and Phasing out of the way of a series of claw attacks, I distanced myself from her again and seriously considered Judy's question.

"No, I didn't. What are you even talking about?"

My dear assistant remained silent for a while, as if flabbergasted, then exhaled a shallow groan.

"{Chief. Grand elder Xinji doesn't have any children, and he adopted Xiao fifteen years ago, yet she still looks like a young child. She's also treated as highly as the members of the main family despite technically not being one of them, and she was poised to be the grand elder's hidden card during the tournament, meaning she had to be strong enough to compete with the likes of Elly and Zihao despite her apparent age. Did you really not notice any of these signs?}"

"Hold on, back up for a moment! I get the last part, but what was that about being adopted?"

"{You didn't know?}"

"No, I didn't! Since when did youknow?"

"{I've heard it during the banquet. It's common knowledge in Draconian society.}"

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"{As I said, I thought you already knew. Didn't we split up back then to gather information separately? The grand elder taking Xiao along with him to the island was one of the juicier pieces of gossip at the party, so I was certain you would've heard about it.}"

While I listened to her response, dragon-Xiao's whole body shone with golden light, and two additional illusory dragons appeared next to her. The three rushed at me at once, weaving around each other, probably to confuse me, but since two of them were semi-transparent and glowing with magical light, it was easy to avoid the real one, and then I dispersed the other two with my phantom limbs. It was only once she turned around and went back to firing beams at me that I responded.

"… No offense, Dormouse, but at this point you should've realized that I'm an idiot when it comes to small talk and gossip. This is exactly the kind of blind spot I hired you for."

"{Let's discuss this later. The others are calling me.}"

"Hey! Don't just abandon the conversation when—"

In the end, I didn't finish that sentence, as I could already hear the faint static the communication artifact gave me when it was unconnected. More importantly, after all the dodging and Phasing, I was finally back on the arena floor. The whole place was in considerably worse shape than when we began, which was saying something, considering the building was already in a sorry state after a bunch of Draconians duked it out between each other all over the place.

Glancing behind me, I found the Knights still entangled in a fight, though at some point, Arnwald and Duncan switched places. The battle between those six still looked fairly even, but the skirmish between Morgana's Squires and our own ex-Squires (Penny renamed them to Constables, I think) already concluded, with the numerically superior side naturally subduing the other side with relative ease. On the other hand, they didn't seem to be in a hurry to intervene in the battle between the Entitled Knights, and I couldn't exactly blame them. They were well-trained and well-equipped, but going into that melee blender was still way out of their pay grade. Not that I paid them. Yet, I mean. I was planning to in the future, but never got around to it.

More importantly though, I was alarmed by the lack of alarms my sixth sense was giving me, so I focused my attention on the dragon floating a good ten-or-so meters away from me, apparently unsure about what to do next. It was hard to tell, being a giant flying serpent-lion-lizard-thing, but she looked more frustrated than anything. Then, as our gazes met, dragon-Xiao spoke up for the first time since she transformed, and her question threw me on a loop.

"Why don't you fight back?"

Her voice was deep and rumbling, yet at the same time, I could hear something resembling her human voice, that of a little girl, echoing behind it.

"{That's a good question,}" Judy agreed, choosing this moment to return. {Are your gloves out of charge already? What about the spear?}"

As much as I wanted to answer her, with Xiao's full attention on me, I didn't have the opportunity to respond to my dear assistant. As for what I would've said if I could… Probably an emphatic 'No'.

Even though I was looking at a big, scary dragon, it was actually still Xiao, and I absolutely didn't want to hurt her. Not only because Naoren was really overprotective of her, and I didn't want to fight with him, but because she was such a cinnamon bun that I couldn't bring myself to raise a hand against her.

More alarmingly, her question made me realize something else: if I didn't want to hurt her, and I couldn't just leave, lest she would turn her attention to Morgana and co., just how was I supposed to deal with her? The safest way would've been to just keep avoiding her until the battle behind us got resolved, and then we could—

"{Chief, I have an update: Josh and Elly, are planning to come out of the Restricted Space to support the Ordo Draconis members.}"

Oh, that was good news. While I wasn't a big fan of Elly jumping into danger again, she was a tough girl, and considering how thoroughly I warned Morgana and Raven Boy about what I was going to do to them if she suffered as much as a single scratch from them, I was sure getting the battle finished sooner would be a net positive.

"{Sahi is also trying to go with them.}"

I let out an approving hum. Good. With her around, things would get resolved even faster, so I would only have to keep Xiao occupied for—

"{She says she always wanted to fight a dragon. Are you okay with that?}"

"Wait, what?" I whispered, too shocked to hold back my reaction. "Tell her she can't."

"{I can't talk to her, remember? She also already convinced Elly and Pascal, with only Josh arguing with her.}"

"Then tell him to keep up the good work. I'll try to wrap things up over—"

"Answer me!" Xiao roared, cutting me off. Apparently, she didn't hear my previous exchange with Judy. Maybe dragons had bad hearing? I mean, she didn't have any visible ears, so who knew? But putting my inquiries into mythical creature sensory anatomy aside, now I had a new dilemma on my hands.

If Sahi ultimately managed to come over and pick a fight with dragon-Xiao, things would get even more chaotic, and at least one of them would get hurt, potentially both of them, and if I came between the two of them, it would only increase the confusion and collateral damage.

In other words, I had to somehow resolve this whole situation as soon as humanly possible, because yeah, when in a chaotic situation while facing off against a freaking dragon of all things, we absolutely needed a strict yet inexact time limit too, because otherwise things would be just too bloody easy! Bah!

Anyhow, Xiao was still growling at me, expecting an answer, and after running a couple of potential scenarios in my head, I decided to stop overthinking things and simply do what I always did in situations like this. With that, I straightened my back, took a deep breath, and flashed a daring grin, which she naturally couldn't see, but it still got me in the right mindset. Initiating Refuge in Audactiy in three, two, one…

"Excuse me? Since when were we fighting?" I asked, making sure I sounded suitably puzzled. I waited for a beat, then abruptly Phased right next to her, at least as much as that applied to an enormous, floating serpent coiling in the air. "I was under the impression we were playing."

Xiao's whole body tensed up for a second, and a blink of an eye later, her tail struck down when I was standing, as if by reflex. This time I didn't Phase away, but instead I just took a last-moment step to the side, and once the ground stopped trembling under my feet, I casually placed my free hand onto her tail.

"You're it!" I declared with a happy-go-lucky voice, and she let out a comically discordant yelp before she hastily pulled away from me, stopping right around the spot where I stood just a few seconds ago. With our positions switched, I could also see that the battle in the background came to, if not to a halt, at least to a temporary lull, as all eyes were following our every move. Great. Now I even had an audience to worry about. Perfect.

"You! How dare you make a fool of me!" dragon-Xiao shouted at me, so I tilted my head to the side.

"Making a fool of you? Me?" Shaking my head, I let out a low chuckle, which only infuriated her even further. However, a moment later I switched to my serious voice and sternly told her, "Don't kid yourself, child. You're barely more than an infant; a newborn lamb unable to recognize the wolf even as she stares down its throat. This cannot be called a fight, merely a childish tantrum I entertained for my own amusement."

Xiao remained silent, only glaring at me, so I eased up my act and shook my head.

"Aw, come on! Don't give me those hurt puppy eyes! It makes me feel like I'm the bad guy!" After a long sigh, I suddenly snapped my fingers and pointed at her, putting her on guard again. "Ah, wait! I have a great idea! Here's the deal: I don't really want to kill you, because killing kids is all kinds of icky and brings you seven years of bad luck… or was it a broken mirror? Anyhow, let's do this: you hit me with your full power. All of it. I won't dodge out of the way or anything and just take it head-on. When I come out of it without a scratch, you'll stop throwing a tantrum. Deal?"

Instead of answering, dragon-Xiao's eyes lit up and she opened her huge mouth wide.

"I take that as I yes!" I answered with boundless enthusiasm, though, to be honest, I was feeling a bit pressured, as my danger-sense was giving me a rising sense of dread the longer I stared at the incoming attack. I had my reasons for asking her to do this, trying to kill two birds with one stone, but now it suddenly didn't seem like such a good idea.

I mean, sure, so far I had only seen her use the weaker, red dragon fire beams, but that didn't mean she didn't have the multi-colored 'true' one. After all, she was a freaking dragon; if anyone would have that, it should be her. I never had an opportunity to test if I could stop true dragon fire with my phantom limbs, and I really hoped I wouldn't have to find it out right here and now.

"Well, crap…" I blurted out as the red light coming from the dragon's throat changed to a bright golden one, and my sixth sense kicked up its warnings by a notch, but before I could even decide if I should Phase out of the way and play it off as Bel being a chaotic troll, my vision was painted entirely yellow.

I had no idea what was going on, as I had never encountered this kind of breath attack before, but my phantom limbs were already on the ready and I could immediately feel a kind of pressure as they dispelled and pushed aside the incoming torrent of raw magical power coming my way. Nevertheless, my danger sense kept yelling at me, which was odd, considering it didn't freak out nearly this much when the grand elder hit me with his breath attack.

Still, while the discordant sound and the blinding light surrounding me were annoying, I already made my choice, so I stood my ground and waited for Xiao to run out of breath, no pun intended. Ten or so seconds later, the incoming stream finally started to abate, and the very end of it was even turning red as the beam lost its power.

It took a second or two for my eyes to readjust themselves, and once they did, I found the previously fierce dragon haplessly staring at me, like I was some kind of monster or something. However, before I would talk to her, I had one more thing to take care of, so I raised the spear in my hand to eye level. Or rather, what remained of it.

"Well, I'll be damned. This really was a fake!" I exclaimed while staring at the burning stump where the spearhead used to be. It, along with a fourth of the shaft, got completely disintegrated by the golden dragon fire she beamed at me, and after a shrug, I casually threw the remains of the weapon over my shoulder with a disinterested, "Oh well."

"What… are you?" the big dragon leveled the dramatic question at me, though at the moment it sounded decidedly funny, considering how her squeaky tone didn't fit her appearance at all.

More importantly, the battle in the background came to a full stop this time, and at least Penny and Duncan looked like they would have to pick their jaws off the floor later. Good. One of the more important goals of today's excursion was to establish Bel as a credible powerhouse, and while I originally had a different method it mind, this one probably worked even better. Too bad only the Knights and Xiao saw it, but then again, word of mouth would spread it either way.

However, this wasn't the end. I still had to deliver the coup de grâce. Metaphorically speaking, of course, as I definitely wasn't going to hurt Xiao.

"Ah, that was surprisingly potent," I noted absent-mindedly and, without bothering to Phase, I took a step towards my opponent. To my surprise, she outright shrank back, which was pretty hilarious, considering the sheer size difference between the two of us. That said, my goal here was to assert dominance, so as I walked, I added, "I was hoping for true dragon fire, but I understand you are still too young to use it. A pity. It's been a long time since I last stopped one with my bare hands, and I was ready to relive the moment. Alas, the past must remain in the past, it seems."

By this point, I was only a few steps away from Xiao, and to my deepest surprise, her whole body flashed with a bright golden light. For a moment I thought she was going to attack me again, but instead the enormous dragon quickly condensed into a small shape on the ground. Then, just as the light was about to subside, the legs under the still glowing humanoid body wobbled and Xiao fell onto her knees, just as her original shape came into full view. Or, on second thought, was the dragon her original shape? Semantics.

Much more importantly, unlike when Ichiko transformed, Xiao returned to her human figure with all of her clothes still on her. On one hand, I was happy that we avoided another awkward situation, but on the other, the fact that the world apparently couldn't make up its mind about how transformations operated aggravated me to no end.

It was a headache for later though, as right now, I had to continue the act.

"Are you… an elder dragon?" the little girl on the ground, deadly pale, asked me without managing to look me in the eye, and after a moment of consideration, I let out a derisive chuckle.

"Oh, no-no-no. I'm certainly not one of your kin, though you may consider me… let's say, a very, very distant cousin." Saying so, I finally reached her side and crouched down to her eye level, yet she still didn't look at me. In fact, almost seemed like she was outright unable to raise her head, so I decided to just pat her on the head and say, "Heh. You're a cute kid. Let's have a rematch after you grew up a little. How does sixty years sound to you?"

She didn't respond, so I just absent-mindedly rubbed her head and stood back up before turning to the group in the back, still staring slack-jawed at our interaction, with the question of 'Now what?' hanging over everyone's head.

Then, without warning, a small crack opened mid-air, which I immediately recognized as the kind of portal Ammy used to move between a Purple Zone and real space, and then a short brown girl shot out of it like she was launched through by a catapult, closely followed by Josh and Elly.

"All right! I'm, like, totally ready!" Sahi declared and stuck a pose, only to blink and look around in mild confusion. "Like, wasn't there supposed to be a dragon around here?"

Normally this would've been the point where I did a face palm, but I had to stay in character, so I just stood up and straightened my collar.

"I guess this is where the Queen moves to f7."

"{Wouldn't that be a checkmate already?}"

I let out an annoyed grunt, ignoring how my classy chess analogy went the way of the dodo, and instead I turned to our incognito arch-mage in preparation for the next act.

…

"{Were we white or black? Are we the ones being checkmated? Is that a good thing? Chief? Can you please explain yourself? Chief?}"

Note to self: before all of this is over, come up with a good excuse explaining how the whole chess thing was allegorical or something, before Judybot's logic circuits get fried…