Chapter 7

"...To put it simply, it just means magic."

"Th-that's amazing."

Kedrick answered with a soulless voice, unable to find appropriate words. Hah. Nain chuckled at that false agreement. Though it wasn't praise for himself, hearing that a transcendent being who was like a friend was amazing was also good for Nain.

"Are there dragons here too?"

At Nain's question, Kedrick tilted his head and asked back.

"What? What did you say?"

"Dragons. Transcendent beings."

"...?"

Dragons... those legendary animals?

Kedrick rolled his eyes to gauge Nain's reaction. Nain wasn't laughing at all. Without any hint of amusement, he was just staring at him with clear eyes, which felt strange.

He must be mistaken about being looked at with pity... Kedrick thought to himself. He felt like he had become an idiot. The phantom of his cousin who used to treat him like a blockhead overlapped with this young man he was meeting for the first time today.

'Come on. He must be joking...'

It didn't make sense for dragons to actually exist. Unless this man had popped out of a fairy tale... Kedrick thought even the setting of those things flying around in the sky was physically ridiculous. It wasn't underwater where they'd be less affected by gravity, so how could such massive bodies... It would be more plausible to say this man had delusional disorder.

"Dragons... don't exist in reality, but I know what they are."

Kedrick decided to stop thinking and respond lightly. From experience, if you took such conversations seriously, the atmosphere only became stranger.

"They appear in games and comics."

"...?"

"Like adventure stories of heroes who rescue princesses kidnapped and imprisoned in castles by dragons."

At that moment, Nain's expression hardened as he listened silently. He interrupted Kedrick, who was reciting titles of works featuring dragons, and sighed.

"That's a misunderstanding... Why would dragons kidnap humans? As far as I know, that incident was the Blue Dragon of the Western Continent fulfilling a princess's request."

"..."

What 'incident'? Flustered Kedrick stopped talking and looked at Nain. Nain began pouring out strange words with an utterly calm expression.

"Of course, you could think that if you don't know. Everyone says that because they don't know well. Actually, that princess and the Western Continent's dragon were close friends. When she came of age, the princess suffered quite a headache from marriage proposals flying in like a swarm of bees. She was a born scholar and had no interest in romance or marriage."

Huh?

"The appearance of the handsome men in portraits didn't seem like attractive elements to her. Rather than waste her life marrying low-level, empty-headed men, she asked the dragon to let her research somewhere with no one around until she died."

Huh huh?

Kedrick was greatly flustered with the expression of a child learning the behind-the-scenes story of a fairy tale. Nain, who had maintained an indifferent tone throughout, suddenly made his blue eyes sparkle and turned sharply toward Kedrick.

"And there she developed the mana compression formula. Isn't that amazing?"

"...What?"

"All existing magical formulas have been simplified by the compression formula that person developed. That compression formula is incorporated into the currently widespread magic circles too. If the princess had been pushed into an unwanted marriage back then, her great achievement would have been delayed further."

"...I, I see."

Nain's eyes sparkled.

"Statues of the Great Sage Hellista are erected on all continents. Though the behind-the-scenes details aren't widely known, she's the idol of all mages. Her portrait is even engraved on the 100-rigel currency."

...What on earth was he talking about? Kedrick decided to just stop talking and keep his mouth shut. He just let Nain's grumbling from behind flow in one ear and out the other.

So dragons didn't kidnap princesses with malicious intent, and most dragons rarely stepped forward to harm humans first. Stories depicting dragons as flat villains were mostly fictional and shouldn't all be believed...

'What is he saying? Did he really pop out of a fairy tale?'

Kedrick thought to himself while silently guiding the way. He couldn't understand why that man, who wasn't even a dragon himself, was desperately trying to advocate for the position of cartoon dragons. He had thought him to be calm-natured, but seeing him pour out stories like a bursting dam when his field of interest came up was a bit surprising.

"But where are we going now?"

"You fell from a gate yesterday. A dimension wanderer response meeting was held, so I'm guiding you there."

"Ah, that's right."

Whether he was thoughtless or easygoing, Nain seemed quite calm for a dimension wanderer. No, should he say he seemed rather easygoing? Or should he say he accepted things quickly... It was refreshing how he showed no sense of crisis and had an attitude of "so be it" no matter what happened.

Still, it was fortunate that communication went better than expected. The previous dimension wanderer had even caused a situation where they threatened people by pointing some weapon of unknown origin at them. Even if he talked nonsense frequently, a quiet dimension wanderer was much better from a management perspective.

Kedrick looked back at the man slowly following behind and guided him to the building where the meeting was being held.

Nain marveled at every little thing that was nothing to the people here. When the sensor lights automatically turned on upon detecting a person, he looked up and jumped with a start, and when he boarded the elevator to go to the 8th-floor meeting room, he froze with his eyes wide at the engine sound.

It was the cultural differences that dimension wanderers commonly experienced. Though very surprised, he pretended not to be flustered and even held his breath while tensing up at the elevator's movement.

'He'd be in his early to mid-twenties at most.'

Kedrick, who had awakened quite late compared to other Espers, recalled himself at twenty. Though it had been over ten years, the memory was as vivid as yesterday's.

Kedrick at that time hadn't awakened as an Esper yet. He was busy riding motorcycles with neighborhood friends and going out to play here and there. At the time, he felt like a full-grown adult, but looking back now, he thought he had been quite immature and young.

He sighed wistfully, overlapping that period of his life with Nain.

'Poor guy.'

He thought it must be hard, falling into a strange place at such a young age when he was just starting to enjoy the world.

* * *

Everyone except the dimension wanderer had already gathered in the meeting room.

The center director, crisis detection response team, and even Espers prepared for any possible situation—though they were actually just idle. Despite being a hastily convened response meeting, it was properly organized.

Nain walked confidently to the seat prepared for him without being intimidated at all by the gazes pouring toward him.

Perhaps they hadn't heard yesterday's story, as people seemed a bit surprised by Nain's natural language use that made the interpreter Esper's presence unnecessary. Nain explained it as the authority of transcendent beings, just as he had told Kedrick on the way, but was ignored as if it were a joke. Perhaps because of that, he looked a bit dejected.

"I'm Nain Elrowin."

He began introducing himself in a clear voice without anyone asking.

"I don't know what you call the place I was from here, but I'm from the Blanche Empire of the Eastern Continent, the 3rd Prince of the Elrowin Royal Family."

Nain deliberately put more strength in his voice than usual. Since he knew first impressions determined everything, he spoke to sound as formal as possible while not appearing easy to deal with.

"...Prince?"

Someone muttered in a puzzled voice. When Nain revealed his status, people's expressions hardened. Seeing those who clearly looked uncomfortable, Nain hurriedly added:

"Please treat me comfortably. I understand that this place is a different dimension from my world."

Nain expressed that he had never intended to receive royal treatment in a place that wasn't even an allied nation. Thanks to that, the tense expressions of the people relaxed a bit. Nain's lips curled up proudly, but the reason for their relaxed expressions was a bit different from what Nain thought.

'What? He's fine?'

They were relieved. For a dimension wanderer discovered yesterday, his mental state didn't seem too bad, and unlike some others, he showed no signs of causing a disturbance.

Above all, the man was very quick at assessing situations. Rather than optimistic... he seemed to have a realistic personality.

"Please call me Nain."

Nain said with a bright smile. Normally, he would have been called Your Highness rather than by name, but as mentioned earlier, Nain knew his situation well. As a foreigner who had fallen into a strange place, it was fortunate enough that his life was intact.

At the Academy too, he was more often called by name, so it wasn't unfamiliar.

"Mr. Nain. I don't know if you understand, but you were caught up in a gate accident."

The gate detection team leader defined the current situation in a grave voice.

"A gate?"

At the unfamiliar term, Nain raised his eyebrows and asked back. Though it was a word he'd seen in yesterday's book, there had been no explanation about it.