Like everything related to the dragon, it wasn't exactly smooth or straightforward. He told me that originally, dragons only laid eggs when transferring their souls to a new body, and in a way, I could feel the egg trying to force that exact thing to happen, tugging at me, though too weak to move me even a little if I resisted. Our hearts beat as one, and the manna circuits in our bodies almost began to intertwine until the intense magic stopped rushing into me and simply began circulating between the two of us.

As my guild approached, I slowly set down the egg and walked right into Rune, giving her a hug and shuddering at the sudden warmth I felt coming from her. 'Is this what she always felt like next to me? No wonder she clung to me so much…'

"S-S-Siya?"

I cleared my throat, letting go and picking up the egg again. "Rune… This is your… Little brother…"

She flinched back at first like a dog treading lightly when seeing something new and more strange than dangerous. But after a moment, she wrapped around it and practically melted. "It's even warmer than you…" She mumbled, nearly falling asleep again.

'I should have seen that coming… It seems when she talks about heat, what she really means is the heat there's a bit more to it.' "This guy is a real dragon, so that makes sense." 'I was right to call them here, being around them is already starting to make me feel a little bit more at ease…'

I took another deep breath as Mo appeared next, scratching at her messily tied-up hair and still wearing her pajamas. "Yo."

'Her personality…' "What happened?"

She sighed, putting her hands in her pockets. "What are we talking about?"

"You seem… Different…"

She looked around. " Ah, I feel the same though…"

'Maybe I'm missing something?'

"I assume we're waiting on Izy again?" Bear said sharply. At the sound of his deep voice, I shuddered and reflectively hid behind Mo, suddenly feeling small enough to disappear completely from sight.

He froze in place and slowly lowered his hands to his side. After pausing for a moment, he crossed his arms. "Ah, so it's like that. Well, I'll leave you girls to it then." He said softly before turning right around and walking away.

'Like that? What is that?' I wanted to call out to him and have him at least explain what he meant… But the strange, nonsensical relief I felt as he left made it too hard to do so. 'Not having a handle on my emotions is pissing me off just as much as before… Even more so since these are actually fully mine… I can't even blame the dragon!'

Mo slowly shifted away from me and began staring into my eyes, making me look away and stop the underlying growling I hadn't even noticed I was doing in frustration. "I seem different…" She mumbled sarcastically. "Do you want to marry him?"

'Well… At least she's as out of pocket as ever… That hasn't changed…' I sighed. "No… I'm just really sensitive about being near… Guys? Big people? I don't know… Honestly, I thought Bear would be fine, but I guess not… Is it because I would have become a baby again according to normal circumstances? Anyway, I need to go to town and organize things properly, but I'm not sure I can do it in this condition…"

"Did someone hurt you?"

'She's as blunt as ever, too… Maybe she didn't change?' "No. It's something related to me finding this egg, and it reacting to my dragon's blood."

"You're getting better at lying."

Before I could consciously react, I was already covering my ears, eyes plastered closed, and heat rushing to my face as everyone else became too confused to understand. "W-wait, HEY, I wasn't even lying!"

Mo suddenly grinned, her mouth only moving slightly, making it even more scary as the tired look on her face vanished. "We could go ask Kal. He seemed to know quite a bit about dragons."

Letting out a nervous chuckle, I sat down and placed the egg in my lap. "No…"

Rune poked at my knee, softly wagging her tail and staring at the egg. 'Does she want to hold it again?' I lifted it up and she crawled between us, sitting on my lap and grabbing my hands, squishing herself between us and rubbing against me like a blanket, her heart slowing with every beat as she seemed almost desperately to be trying to stay awake for some reason.

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I slowly looked back up at Mo, my head finally starting to clear. 'If I had to guess, most of these instincts are synonymous with being a newly hatched dragon, since I was technically supposed to be the one being born out of the egg as a reincarnation mechanism… If that's the case, my instincts likely just consider men to be more dangerous for some reason… Although it's more likely that, regardless of gender, size is what matters.' I slowly rested my chin on top of Rune's head as I leaned forward and squished her. 'Considering I lied about it, that's probably the case that I'm also a bit embarrassed about how I actually obtained this egg...' Rune Shuddered and fell asleep, her whole body relaxing like a baby that just couldn't resist the temptation to close her eyes. 'The scary thing is that I'm pretty sure every time she does this her manna becomes even more pure…' Patting her head one more time, I leaned over onto my knee and yawned. "What do you think is taking Isy and Vive so long?"

"Hm… Well… To put it simply… I'm not sure we should let those two stay in the same tint anymore…"

"Uh…" 'What?'

I followed her finger as she slowly pointed to the two of them trudging towards us, wearing each other's clothes. Which… As you might imagine, didn't look quite right considering Vive was a goblin. One with an admittedly larger figure… For a goblin, but still much smaller than Isy. "Do I want to know…" I asked as they got closer.

Vive seemed not to care, which I suppose was fitting. She had worn much worse clothes, and despite being oversized, they still fully covered her. Isy, on the other hand, was a bit red.

"I… Didn't notice till we were halfway here already… And I didn't want to be late… So… Yeah…"

I sighed. "Vive didn't say anything?"

She tilted her head, her long ears drooping to the side as she raised a finger to her chin. "I just thought she got bigger, like you do sometimes? But I guess not. Does it really matter anyway?"

"What about your clothes then…"

"I… shrank…" Her words trailed as she visibly finished waking up, her eyes almost sparkling as any drearyness vanished, and her care for the situation remaining non-existent.

"So if she got bigger… And you got smaller… Vive… Can you look at her for a moment?"

She stopped her dramatic movements that matched her oversized clothes and slowly turned to Isy. "Ok."

"So if she got bigger… And you got smaller…" A dead pause hung in the air. "Keep in mind that you didn't both get bigger."

Her eyes slowly widened a bit before her face relaxed again, realising that they were still the same size relative to each other. "I'm sorry, I'm stupid…"

"Don't say that…" I groaned, holding my head in one of my hands. 'It's always the weirdest things that remind me they are still children…'

"I don't get it…" Isy said slowly.

I couldn't help but laugh. "Just forget about it, you two can go and change in my tint sense you're here already."

Once they came back out, I explained everything again and we set out for Nayamere, me and my four adorable bodyguards, who were anything but threatening in appearance… Although I did force Mo to change first… I also adopted my dragon form, but not being used to controlling the transformation myself, I was only able to do it partially; in other words, my body's shape changed, but as far as my toughness and strength… The barley increased, and my mental state also stayed the same... Although at the very least, not being so small, my instincts were not as reactive, and I was able to stop myself from hiding, so long as I had a few friends nearby. 'I finally got strong enough to take out a general… And just like that, I'm like this again… Well… What matters most right now is how strong people THINK I am… So this will be fine for now. I wasn't planning on fighting directly for a while anyway…'

After arriving, we went straight to the city hall, which had been reorganized into a war room. The map was simple. There were only three locations left that they could attack, and only one way to attack each. Either a direct march through the mountain pass, or a naval battle in front of Nayana, or Nayamere. There were a few other regions that hadn't fallen, but none that recognized me directly as the acting king… So they weren't under the influence of my powers.

The long and short of it was as follows.

[Allied territory.]

Nayamere:

Personal 3,000

Nayana:

Personal 500

Mountain pass

Personal 500

Collective naval strength:

2 flagships, 4 small ships, one anti-personnel destroyer, one castle siege frigate.

The collective personnel of the navy. 1,000

Known enemy troops.

Fourth star legion [Routed]

3rd star legion [estimated 8,000]

Auxiliary legion [10,000]

Naval capacity in the area. 1 fleet.

2 command ships.

20 warships

15 mount transports.

10 supply vessels

30 troop transports.

3 scout ships.

'The numbers say 8 ships against 75 ships… And yet we might actually outweigh them as far as tonnage on the water is concerned… Why did we make our boats so freaking huge… I already know the answer to that…'

I pulled out documents we had from past wars detailing their ships' structure. 'It looks like one fleet is about 5,000 men strong, but all the ships they use are sailing ships… They have practically no mobility in a bay like this compared to ours, which has an unholy number of ores. Then again, they could probably rely on magic; they outnumber us so much they might try and brute force it… No, more like they will definitely try and at least feel out our navy.'

Grabbing other documents, I began spreading them out over the maps as I began charting courses for our naval vessels. 'Should we end up in a naval battle, we would be able to devastate them in all likelihood… But in the event we do get overwhelmed, we are probably screwed… Although if we raise the chain gate after only letting in maybe half their attack force… And utilize the demon caracas to force the remaining monsters towards their boats, they would find it difficult to maneuver, even more so, regardless of our general size difference, they wouldn't be able to board us, and if we can cause them to sink in the water, it's an easy win.'

After I finished drawing out the positions I piled all the related documents onto one side of the war table, moving on to the next likely battle that would take place. 'The mountain pass is incredibly well guarded, so much so that I don't think I even have to worry about it. They would have to slaughter thousands of monsters to get there, and retreat through just as many if they lost. Knowing that, I doubt they would take the risk of advancing. If they do, it's a simple siege defense, but if I fly a few wyverns along this route with a few demon parts, the monsters would be even more inclined to collapse on the enemy… 'Honestly… As crazy as this sounds… I think we're in a winning position right now… The wall grandma built was pretty sturdy on its own, made out of solid steel and covered in an outer layer of cement. And after the dwarves reinforce it with runes, it might as well be wizard-proof.

Piling everything up again on the other end of the table, I pulled out newer maps. 'The real question is where we go from here after our successful defense… Retaking Elianara wouldn't be bad… But it wouldn't be good since we burned it down… It's not exactly a strategic position with nothing left. Going back to the riverhold would be ideal, and then working north west to join up with any forces we have that are still holding on, I think that would be the best… No matter how I look at this, at the very least I don't see us having to retreat again.'

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