“Yuneri! Answer if you can hear me!”
His eyes widened and he stared hard at the river. If there was just one hair or piece of cloth to show that the kobold had been here.
“Ah! …That’s it!”
Fi went down on his stomach, closed his eyes and inhaled through his dragon snout. Normally, he did not use his dragon senses, as they gave him a headache. But he unleashed it now.
“Gah…it smells horrible…”
Still, the burden was not as bad as last time. Perhaps his body was getting used to it.
Also, the information of smell was flowing into him.
The inorganic scent of sun-scorched stone.
The dirt and dust tickled his nostrils.
The moss and water weeds in the river were fresh and the fish smelled raw.
Amongst these various smells, he detected something else. Fur and oil. The smell of a beast.
“Wow…I’m pretty amazing.”
As if looking at a 3D map, the traces of smell told his brain the distance and direction.
“This…I’ve smelled it before. I think…it’s a fox. And this…a pheasant? No, some other mountain bird… Ah, Guto…must have peed here.”
The knowledge given from Sheto the hunter, as well as this dragon body.
The two had given birth to a power he did not think that he had.
Familiar scents. New scents. Animals, plants, rivers, eart.
And then finally, Fi found it.
“This way!”
He opened his eyes and moved in that direction. A short distance away from where he was. In a recess that had been carved out, a footprint with Yuneri’s scent.
“Drank water and…”
The kobold walked in the opposite direction of the campsite.
“…The footprints…are getting farther apart?”
It was as if the kobold were jumping around. Or perhaps it was running.
Fi became more anxious as he continued to follow the clues. He climbed up the slope of the riverbank, entered the forest, and then there was suddenly more information.
The smell of trees and rotten leaves. The various animals. And since there was less wind here, the scents were all combining.
“Gah…my head hurts…”
The pain was so bad his head felt like it was being crushed. It was just like the time when he saw the Demon King’s castle on that mountain. And the real reason for it was…
His human soul. His instincts and abilities were not able to handle the amount of information that flowed into a dragon’s body. The dragon god had told him this.
‘You are like an untrained amateur who has suddenly started to pilot a jet fighter.’
‘That…sounds dangerous?’
‘Mmm. It would be best to not use all of your senses until your soul becomes stable.’
He tapped his nose lightly and then blocked his nostrils with his hand. As long as he didn’t think about it, his senses would not be as sharp. Still, the dull pain remained in his head.
‘Can’t you do something about it now?’
‘Like a computer’s operating system, the shape of a soul is different. We are forcing a patch onto you so that the flesh is compatible. That smartphone is helping to support your soul.’
It was likely that if Fi became a real dragon, he would not be able to return to being a human later. That was how wrong it was for a human soul to be in a dragon’s body.
“Damn it… I don’t care about that right now!”
He tried to ignore the pain in his head as he opened his mouth again and shouted at the top of his lungs.
“Yuneri! Where are you!!”
“…Fi!”
His nerves calmed at the sound of the familiar voice. At the same time, his heightened senses caught another voice.
“Fi! You! You’re alive!”
He turned to look in surprise. Along with Yuneri, a lot of kobolds were running towards him from the forest.
Awe, yes! They made it too.