“Why are you trying to damage a perfectly fine wall, Rukna.”

It was said as if worried the wall might crack.

He was always talented at making even the same words sound unpleasant.

“I was trying to come to my senses, why.”

“You’re not acting strange because of dark magic, are you?”

“Why suddenly bring up dark magic?”

“I sense a faint energy, as if someone used dark magic on the airship.”

“Then are you alright?”

Rukna glanced at Matian’s heart.

Dark magic, said to be similar to demonic power, couldn’t be good for Matian.

In fact, if another student had asked this question, Matian would have shown his displeasure, saying,
‘There’s no reason I wouldn’t be fine. Why don’t you take care of your own condition?’

On the other hand, though he couldn’t explain why, Rukna’s concern didn’t feel unpleasant.
Would it be strange to say it actually felt good?

“I wonder. I’m fine to an unusual degree, without any pain. Why is that?”

As he spoke, Matian habitually licked Rukna’s tears that had smeared on his thumb.
The neatly revealed teeth between slightly parted lips and the red tongue peeking out below caught Rukna’s gaze.

Then, feeling his face grow hot, he lifted his gaze slightly and met the piercing blue eyes staring at him.
More precisely, the gaze that had been fixed on his lips.

For a moment, Rukna’s mind went blank.
As he tried to remember what he was going to say, Matian abruptly spoke.

“Remember when you made the antidote to neutralize the poison the Great Sage drank on the Island of Wisdom?”

At those words, Rukna recalled his father telling him in a dream that body fluid filled with love could neutralize dark magic.

“I wonder if the reason I’m fine now is because of your tears.”

“As if my tears would contain l-love for you!”

Rukna stuttered in his surprise.
Matian was equally startled by the unexpected mention of love.

“Love? Between men?”

“…”

“Rukna?”

“D-don’t get any strange ideas, you.”

Rukna jumped up from his seat like someone caught red-handed.

“Right.”

Matian, who had also stood up, once again gently wiped Rukna’s moist eyes with his thumb.

“As you say, I’ve been having strange thoughts lately, unlike myself. Even though I’m not particularly imaginative.”

“…”

“For instance, wondering if Rukna Golden didn’t lose his memories, but if his soul was switched instead.”

Matian let his imagination run wild, combining the conversation he had just overheard between the High Priest and the Dwarf Elder.
The interesting thing was that if he thought that way, everything fell perfectly into place.

“Of course, such an incredible thing probably didn’t really happen.”

Unaware that Rukna’s complexion had turned pale, Matian brought his finger, wet with tears, to his mouth and sucked it.

“You’re really strange. Even your tears taste sweet.”

“…Huh?”

Rukna belatedly reacted to the following words.
He had been tense, wondering if his identity had been discovered, but was it just a passing joke?

“Why are you so tense?”

“When you said my tears were sweet, I wondered if you might have some disease.”

“I meant you should eat sweets in moderation.”

Ding ding ding!

Just then, the emergency bells installed throughout the airship rang.
The soldiers on guard began to quickly deploy, shouting, “There’s a problem in the engine room.”

“We can’t delay any longer. Let’s go.”

When Matian naturally extended his hand to Rukna, Rukna quietly looked down at that hand.

“Do you usually hold hands with other men?”

“Ah.”

Only then did Matian realize his action was strange and quickly withdrew his hand.
His back, as he silently led the way to the engine room, somehow seemed embarrassed.

As Rukna hurried after him, he forcibly squeezed out the remaining tears in his eyes and quickly tasted them.

They were only salty, so to describe this as sweet, it seemed that fellow with supposedly extremely picky tastes was actually taste blind.

The scene in front of the engine room they arrived at was chaotic.

“You should have properly guarded this area! Where did you sell your mind?”

“If the engine room security hadn’t been shoddy in the first place, things wouldn’t have gotten this messed up!”

Amidst the dwarf soldiers and mechanics gathered in a crowd, passing blame and arguing loudly with each other, the Dwarf Elder was shouting even louder at them to restore the central communication cube if they had time to fight.

Some mechanics were struggling to open the engine room door, locked from the inside, with special equipment fitted with complex gears.

They could have used high-powered special explosive weapons to open it, but they couldn’t even attempt it due to the risk of damaging the engine if something went wrong.

Matian approached the soldier with the most stars on his shoulder epaulettes. It was Shu Shu, the Dwarf Air Force Captain.

“What happened here?”

“It’s because of humans like you. Get off to the ground right now, human!”

Shu Shu angrily pointed his rifle at Matian.
He raised the muzzle quite high, but due to the height difference, it was difficult to aim at Matian’s head, so the wandering muzzle turned towards his heart.

Matian quietly looked down at the muzzle and continued speaking.

“By human, do you mean a cadet from the military academy entered the engine room?”

“That’s right. He said he was the student council president of the military academy and entered the engine room.”

Shu Shu jabbed the side of a sobbing dwarf. It was the engine room manager in charge.

“Sob, we confirmed the appearance of the student council president the Elder had met through the communicator, and he was over 6 feet tall with black hair and wearing a cadet uniform. The characteristics were exactly the same, so I thought it was the same person.”

“Were there no other characteristics?”

“There was also a dwarf next to him to guarantee his identity. We dwarves don’t easily trust other races. But that dwarf said he would vouch for the black-haired human’s identity. So I trusted him and opened the door.”

The manager testified with a devastated expression.
He hadn’t expected to be backstabbed by another dwarf.

“Who was that dwarf?”

“It was the one who entered the military academy as a professor, saying he would teach the uncivilized humans…”

“Professor Todley. Is that correct?”

“Yes, Todley! That’s who it was!”

At those words, Rukna and Matian silently exchanged glances.

‘If Professor Todley was a Red Eagle.’

The professor had been aiming for the Flame of Forging from the beginning and conducted the taming test on the airship.

Matian reached out and grabbed the muzzle pointed at him, then pushed it aside.
Then he approached the engine room entrance and checked the material of the door.

On the door made of thick steel like a submarine hatch, there was a valve-type handle and a locking mechanism with several gears meshed together.

The Air Force Captain, thoroughly ignored, approached Matian and grabbed his wrist, sputtering, “How dare you push away my gun?”

‘Ugh, why isn’t he budging?’

Although he clearly applied enough force to hurt the arm, Matian’s hand only moved slightly, remaining immovable.

Worried that rumors might spread about a dwarf race, particularly developed in arm muscles due to forging and quarrying, failing to subdue one human arm, the Air Force Captain withdrew his hand for now.

“I told you to get lost and not interfere, human!”

As the captain growled, the dwarf soldiers standing in formation all pointed their guns at Matian.

Matian’s dry eyes swept over them briefly before returning to the Air Force Captain.

“I think I can open this. Shall I?”

“Haha, a mere human?”

The Air Force Captain openly disrespected Matian, but he didn’t frown.
He only smiled kindly at the mechanics who were attached to the entrance door.

“Would you mind stepping aside for a moment?”

The mechanics kept their positions with disgruntled expressions, but when Matian drew his sword from his waist, they quickly vacated their spots.
A blue aura enveloped the blue blade.

The Air Force Captain, anticipating what Matian was about to do, tried to stop him.

“What are you doing, foolish human! If you’re not careful, you could punch a hole in the airship!”

“Damn it, this is what happens when you let humans on the airship.”

A dwarf mechanic also openly expressed his dissatisfaction towards Matian.

“I wonder. It seems the original cause of this mess was your fault for handing over the precious engine room to an unidentified human.”

Matian looked down at the dwarves and retorted, still wearing a gentle smile.
His tone was flawless and elegant, but his blue eyes held an imposing gaze looking down on the other party.

That, that arrogant gaze, I’ll gouge it out! As the Dwarf Air Force Captain pointed at Matian, the soldiers all aimed their guns at him.

When Matian’s momentum didn’t die down even then, one hot-tempered dwarf pulled the trigger.

Bang!

With the sound of gunfire, the noisy interior instantly fell silent, and all eyes turned to Matian and Rukna.

Meanwhile, Matian, who had simply dodged the bullet by tilting his head to the side, faithfully continued to grate on the dwarves’ nerves by saying, “It’s less powerful than it looks.”

What if that bastard really becomes a bullet shield acting like that? Sensing the crisis, Rukna intervened in the conversation.

“Captain, what happens to the airship if the Flame of Forging is stolen or extinguished?”

“The great Flame of Forging never goes out!”

The Air Force Captain glared at Rukna with a terrifying gaze as he answered.
No, the one who provoked you was that guy, so why are you glaring at me like that?

“Of course, I know it’s great. But what if, just in case? What if it’s damaged or extinguished by some evil power?”

“The airship would crash. And if that happens… we’d all die.”

“Then shouldn’t we quickly open this and enter the engine room to increase our chances of survival, right?”

Rukna signaled Matian with his eyes. It was a signal to quickly swing his sword and open the door.

Matian stared at Rukna and raised one corner of his mouth.

“What are you doing? Hurry!”

As Rukna urged him, Matian burst into a meaningless laugh and then swung his sword.