No other way

Ata held onto his bleeding arm strongly as he ran further away from the dragon, falling to his knees once he reached Maasa who healed him while shielding them as much as possible with his angel wings. At that point all he could do was watch the others did their best to beat him, or at least make it tired.

Everyone was having a hard time with it. When they took that request to beat some forest monsters who were bothering the nearby village they didn’t expect for a freaking dragon to show up. And a super strong one, too.

Taishi had already been restricted to using only his gun, since his dagger had gotten stuck on the dragon when he tried to sneak on it. But a thief could only do so much with limited bullets and almost no weak spots. But they were lucky that he could dodge his attacks so easily.

Things weren’t much better for their fox gunner Nanao either even when his gun was stronger. Taiju was having a hard time with his bow and arrow even while staying in the air with his demon wings.

Ryoma’s fire tomes didn’t seem to be causing that much damage either. It was unfortunate that the dragon had fireproof skin when most of his strong spells were fire based.

Ichiro was behind Ata, taking care of some deep wounds that Maasa didn’t have time to heal properly. Ata could clearly see one of his angel wings was badly injured, so he couldn’t fly.

And finally even Kyotaro was having a bad time. He was even actually using his sword to fight instead of just summoning like he was used to.

At this point it wasn’t even about the reward money anymore. No. This fight was hitting Ata right into his pride. It was exactly because he was tired of being unable to protect those dear to him that he ran away from his castle in the first place.

He wasn’t gonna let his teammates suffer alone, even if they knew nothing about his past. He got up as soon as Maasa finished healing him. He didn’t even turn back when Maasa said that he should rest.

Ata rushed and attacked the dragon with his sword, the large creature letting out a loud cry in return. The dragon stared at him for a second before raising his claws, preparing to attack. But right at that moment Nanao managed to hit him right at a weak spot on his exposed chest. The dragon cried out again, turning his attention to Nanao this time. That gave Taishi the perfect chance to sneak behind him yet again and retrieve his dagger, which only then had he realised how deep it had gone into the dragon’s flesh, so lots of blood poured out once he removed it.

This time the dragon didn’t even have time to cry or see what had happened, for Ryoma had cast a strong fire spell on the wound left by Taishi’s dagger as quickly as he could. The dragon turned out to not be completely fireproof on the inside.

That along with an arrow to the eye, a bite to the leg by a monster Kyotaro had summoned and Ichiro piercing his stomach with his lance, made the dragon feel too weak to even stand. He fell on his wounded stomach, making the ground shake.

Everyone panted from exhaustion. The fight was apparently over. Even Ata could barely stand with how fast his blood was pumping.

“Is it finally over?” Maasa asked as he approached the others to heal their smaller wounds.

“I think we are.” Kyotaro said as he stretched with a loud yawn.

“But we still have to finish him off.” Taiju said, pointing towards the dragon.

“But he’s down already! There’s no need to actually kill him!” Ichiro said before needing to hold onto his lance to stand up. The wound on his leg was still pretty bad. Maasa rushed to try to heal it a little better.

“I’m… Not sure.” Nanao looked at the dragon. Ata could almost see a hint of pity in his eyes. “Ryoma, Taishi, you’re the monster specialists. What do we do now?”

“W-well…” Ryoma looked down at the dragon as well, seeming kinda scared.

“I think killing it would be for the better.” Taishi said as he pushed up his glasses.

“But why!?” Ichiro asked. He tried to go towards them, but Maasa needed for him to stand still.

“Well, this is the nest from where all those other monsters were coming from. And this type of dragon is usually a monster nest leader. Leaving weak monsters alive because they decided to go away is one thing, but these types of dragons are usually very vengeful. He might gather more monsters again and they might do even worse things next time.” Ryoma explained, looking down at his feet for a moment.

“Is there really no other way?” Maasa asked with a worried expression once he was done with healing Ichiro’s leg.

“We can’t take the most peaceful or pleasant path every time.” Taiju explained. Though he sounded normal, he clearly didn’t look very happy about it either.

“Can’t you just hurry up already? I’m getting hungry.” Kyotaro said as he sat down on the floor with another yawn.

Ata took a deep breath before speaking up. “I’ll do it.”

“Are you sure about that?” Nanao asked.

“Yes. If you don’t think you can watch then just turn around.”

He approached the dragon once again as he firmly held his sword into his hand.

He looked down at him and raised his blade. The dragon looked up before slowly closing his eyes, accepting his fate. Ata could hear Maasa mumbling something like a prayer for the dragon’s soul. He closed his eyes before slicing down with all he had, aiming towards his neck.

After reporting back at the village and having dinner at a local restaurant, they went straight to their carriage. Taiju and Nanao took lead of the horses. Kyotaro started taking a nap. Maasa, Taishi, Ryoma and Ichiro sat around in a circle and started chatting. Meanwhile Ata sat down away from them at the back of the carriage, just looking at them.

“Do you… Really think killing was the only way?” Ichiro asked looking down.

“We didn’t have much of a choice.” Taishi said.

“But was it worth it?” Maasa asked.

“The villagers wouldn’t have any other way of getting the special fruits that grow in that forest if the monsters kept attacking them. There was no other way.” Ryoma explained.

Maasa looked down for a while before looking at Ata. “What do you think, Ata?”

Ata took a moment to think about it before speaking up. “Sometimes you just need to make sacrifices for the greater good. Like Taiju said, you won’t always go through a pleasant path even if you want to.”

Everyone stayed in silent after that.

Ata was already sure that he would even sacrifice his own life for the sake of bringing justice to his people. He would have never found out about how much of a bad state they were in if he hadn’t run away from home and thrown away his prince title. Even if he had escaped just to be away from his terrible parents who had gone as far as to kill his pet fox, now he felt much more than just a grudge about a dead pet.

No. Now it was because he actually knew what the people of his kingdom were truly living like. He had now seen the poor villages instead of just the rich cities near the castle that his father would let him visit.

When he ran away the people didn’t even recognise his appearance or his name. It had already been months since he did it and there was still not even a single “wanted” or missing person poster looking for him. If his parents even cared that he had disappeared (which he doubted) they probably kept it just among the guards or people they thrusted very much.

He was knocked out of his thoughts when the yellow otter sat on his lap. Karls, as Ichiro had named him. He smiled at Ata, which he returned with a small one.

He laid his head against the wall. He wondered if, given the reputation of the royal family, his teammates would still smile at him like Karls was if they found out that he wasn’t just a normal traveller. Or would they just abandon him?

Even if they would still accept him, he had already decided that he was gonna hide it from them as much as possible. At least until the day they would take down his parents from the throne.

But until then he just wanted for them to keep on safe and happy.