NOVEL NEXT 212: F25, Boss Stage, [Gohm Trahl]
So, to summarize, he tried his breath on me a total of six times before we both realized that it wasn’t going to work. My heat protection evolved into heat immunity, my fire protection rose to level 9, and my divinity protection reached level 8. As a matter of fact, in the time it took for us to collectively figure out that he couldn’t kill me that way, I healed my arm and thus returned to being nigh-unkillable.
Following that, we tried a few other strategies. He dropped me from up high, he tried crushing my spine, and he actually succeeded in breaking my neck, but in doing so I bit my tongue off, which healed my neck and allowed me to once again escape death.
And at this point, you might be wondering why I’d let a juvenile tween dragon try his hand at killing me for the better part of an hour. Had I been a coward, I might have pointed to how my protections rose nicely, even gaining one more immunity, but that wasn’t it. See, where he tried using my face as a punching back, I got a message from Moleman. And then another one. And another, and another, and another, and… Yeah.
In short, if I threw in the towel, that meant I had to face Moleman.
I’m basically in the situation where I left a suicide note on the kitchen table, went to take a bath with my toaster, and only then realized that my house had breakers, making the self-toastification impossible. Like, what do you even do at that point, assuming the person had already come home and was banging at the door? Do you open it and smile sheepishly, all ‘Oh, sorry, I goofed up! Whoopsie!’ and face the incredible awkwardness of such a situation?
Or do you avoid that awkwardness at any cost, because there’s no way in hell I’m telling someone to their face that I was too dumb to check if we had earth fault breakers ahead of time and that’s why I failed?
So, yeah. That’s the situation. He’s trying to kill me, and I’m trying to get killed because I can’t kill him. Funnily enough, we haven’t tried beheading yet. When I asked him about it, though, he wouldn’t give me any straight answer.
…I guess, in the end, we’re more alike than I originally thought.
“So, what are we up to now?” Goss asks, holding my liver between two of his claws.
“That would be…” I look down at the tally marks written in the earth. I add another one. “Number fifty-six.”
Goss frowns at the liver before handing it back to me. I eat it in a record-breaking four bites. Even as I make a small pose at the success, his frown persists. “...Don’t you think it’s about time?”
“Time for what?” I ask him. Struck by inspiration, I pull my spleen from my abdomen. “Time for dessert?”
He shakes his head, frown twitching at the sight. “No, I mean… It’s been almost an hour. I don’t think there’s any way left to kill you, Kitty. We tried everything!” For some reason, I can’t muster the strength to say the obvious. Goss sits down in front of me, lowering his face enough to put his eyes at my level. “Shouldn’t we try something else?”
“...Like what?”
He shrugs his wings. “I mean, what do you need to win? You said you couldn’t just leave, but what can you do, then?”
“Well, the clear condition says that I need to ‘defeat the despicable dragon,’ and that I have to save your priest guy.”
“Despicable dragon?” Goss parrots, a smile dawning on his face. “They called me that? Despicable?” After a moment of grinning to himself, Goss shakes his head, regaining his serious expression. “It doesn’t say, like, ‘two-winged dragon Goss Fletchling’? Just dragon?”
“Yeah, but I don’t see any other priest-kidnapping dragons around, so I can’t imagine that it would be anyone but you.”
“Sure, sure, but…” His brows fall into a contemplative furrow. “Hang on a moment.” He turns around briefly, unhooking the simple clasp holding the priest’s cage shut. Father Moonlight steps out after a second and Goss turns back to me, saying, “Well? Did it change?”
<[Clear Condition]
Defeat the despicable dragon.>
I look up from the status message. “Yeah, now it just says that you need to die.”
“Me, or some nondescript dragon of uncertain wing-amount?”
“...Nondescript one.”
“Well, in that case,” Goss says, trotting back up to me, eyes glinting, “I think I might know how to solve it.” He clears his throat before speaking again. “You see, we have a killing rite coming up in a month or so, and—”
<[Clear Condition]
Defeat Goss Fletchling,
the two-winged dragon
formerly known as
Gohm Trahl.>
“Ah, no, wait,” I say, cutting Goss short. “It changed. Now it wants me to kill you, specifically.”
Goss—or maybe Gohm—freezes mid-step. His eyes inch over to face me. “...Seriously? Like, me-me?”
“Yeah, you-you.” I squint at the text. “Gohm… Trahl? The hell kind of name is—”
Goss flashes across the space between us, delicately putting a finger to my lips. “Don’t—” He bites his own tongue. “—Don’t say that name. That’s my old, skinny name.” After a few moments of staring at a range closer than one meter, he removes his claw from my lips. His wings fold up behind his back. “Still, that would mean that it really means me specifically, huh…”
“Yeah. Goss Fletchling, the two-winged dragon,” I read straight from the clear condition. “I just need to beat you, and—”
“Two-winged dragon?” Goss repeats, his voice bearing a striking hint of epiphany. “So, not just me as an individual, but me as a dragon? A two-winged one?”
I cross my arms and try to radiate only half as much suspicion as I feel. “...Yeah?”
“So…” He grins at me. A real toothy one, like only a dragon can do. “Not a four-winged one.”
I don’t know what that is. I purse my lips at him. “I don’t know what that is.”
“You don’t know what a—” Exasperated, he turns to Fr. Moonlight, who had taken his sweet time walking up to join us. “Father, he doesn’t even know what a four-winged dragon is!”
Fr. Moonlight shrugs. “He’s a human; I’ve heard they know nothing.”
Ah, finally a sensible stereotype! As I’m nodding and smiling at some true words for once, the priest continues. “How he knows forked tongue is beyond me, though.” Suddenly, his brows furrow as he looks at my hair and then my neck. “You are a he, right?”
“I am!” I say with absolutely no defensiveness. “I am a man. A manly human man who just so happens to speak and understand all languages. Don’t ask me why or how, it’s a long and weird story.” I pause a moment to let them ask about my cool and dramatic backstory. Neither of them say a thing.”—Let’s just say that the gods and I have a few hatchets left unburied.”
Goss frowns. “I don’t know what that means, but…” He takes a deep breath, sitting down. Following suit, I sit down as well, the priest carefully folding his massive wings to let him sit on his feathers before joining us in our little circle. “I’m a dragon, right? A two-winged one. See, because I have, you know, two wings. But!” He raises a finger for dramatic effect. “If I were to offend the gods and thereby fulfil the criteria inherent to a type seven such as myself, I’ll ascend and become a four-winged dragon, forfeiting my arms to a life of eternal freedom and—”
“That’s dogspit and you know it,” Fr. Moonlight scoffs. “Types? Criteria?” He shakes his head. “Reach rock bottom and you’ll find a pair of wings waiting for you. Can’t be in pain if pain is all you feel.”
“You were a type five,” Goss says dismissively, rolling his eyes. “You wouldn’t get it.”
“Type seven, type five… There’s only one type, and that’s—”
“Suicidalist, yeah, I know. Well, if you’re the only type, how come the only member of the suicidalist party is old Ymir? On that note, what’s going to come of the party once he gets his turn in the killing rite next month? Are you going to step in to keep it from dissolving?”
“The less parties the better. This whole political ordeal is ridiculous and should be—”
“Okay, hang on,” I say, butting in. “What the heck are you even talking about anymore? Can we please stay on track?”
Goss sits up a little straighter, his ruffled feathers falling back into place. “Oh, y—yeah, of course. Er-herm…” He coughs into his hand. “What I’m trying to say is that if I become a four-winged dragon, then…” He looks at me expectantly, waving his hand a little. I feel a tension irritatingly similar to a headache pass across my skull.
“...Then you’ll no longer be Goss the two-winged dragon.” And I’ll no longer have to defeat him.
Goss tries and fails to snap a finger. “Exactly! That way, I get my wish, you get to ‘beat the floor’ or whatever you called it, and—”
“And Purgatory is plagued by another heartless disaster.” Fr. Moonlight’s words are like a balloon popping at a Vietnam veterans’ get-together.
Ignoring him fully, I turn back to Goss. “And how do you turn into a four-winged dragon?”
“I don’t know!” he freely admits, like a lunatic. Plucking the signed wanted poster from Fr. Moonlight’s hands, he unfurls it, comparing the portrait to my face. “But I have a feeling that you could help.”
“Help how?”
He smiles at me. “I think you’ll be able to tell me that better yourself.” His smile shifts into a feline grin. “How about we continue this conversation at Loathe Summit?”