Chapter 227: Horns

“DAD WAKE UP.”

The lump under the blanket did not move.

Nina stood at the edge of the bed in her oversized sleep shirt, her golden hair were a disaster and she pressed both her hands flat against the top of her head.

She stared at the lump with a dubious expression of someone watching a building slowly catch fire while the fire department slept.

“Dad I have horns.”

The lump shifted. One hand emerged out and waved vaguely in the air, then disappeared back under the blanket.

“Mmf,” said the lump. “Go back to sleep.”

“I HAVE HORNS ON MY HEAD.”

“Horns are good.”

“HOW ARE HORNS GOOD—”

“Everything’s good when you sleep enough.”

Nina’s left eye twitched. She stood at the edge of the bed for three more seconds. Then she walked around to the side table, picked up the cloak and held it in front of the single eye visible above the blanket’s edge.

“Dad, its nine in the morning, you said you will be up by seven!”

One deep blue eye opened and focused on the cloak and blinked a couple of times.

“It’s six,” Ishiki said.

“It’s nine.”

“Huh…. look. The little hand is on the six.”

Nina looked at the clock and then looked at him. She turned the clock right-side up and paused.

“…the little hand,” she said carefully, “is on the nine.”

“The nine and the six look the same.” Ishiki grumbled, half asleep.

“They really do not. Anyways… that doesn’t matter, I HAVE HORNS. Do you hear me, Horns…”

Ishiki chuckled and replied in a muffled tone. “Maybe you should not watch so many horror movies.”

She hit him with the clock.

Not hardly… she wasn’t trying to damage him. She was making a point with physical emphasis, which was a communication style she had developed because verbal communication with Ishiki had roughly the same effectiveness as talking to the wall.

The clock caught him on the shoulder and he pulled the blanket tighter.

Nina threw the clock on the side table and stepped back.

She got a running start from two steps back and launched herself headfirst into the general stomach region of the lump.

The impact was immediate. The random two sharp points connecting with his midsection was something Ishiki had not thought would be happening.

His eyes shot wide open and all his laziness evaporated in an instant.

He sat up.

Nina bounced back onto the mattress and looked at him with wide purple eyes, both hands flying back to the top of her head.

They stared at each other.

“You,” Ishiki said, breathing, “have horns.”

“That’s what I was saying…”

Ishiki jumped off the bed, picked up Nina and carried her to the bathroom mirror within a few seconds.

Standing on the bathroom tiles in the morning light, Nina watched him part her golden hair with careful focus. She watched his face in the mirror. He was doing the thing he always did when something surprised him — the thing where no reaction appeared on his face and then a very small one appeared at the corners of his mouth that he immediately tried to get rid of.

The corners of his mouth twitched.

“Old man,” Nina said.

“I’m twenty-one.”

“Where did these Horns come from?”

“…”

He looked at the two small points on Nina’s head… they were dark at the base, lighter toward the tip and were pulsing with purple veins inwards.

They pushed up clean from her scalp between the strands of gold hair, three centimeters each and growing with the cheerful indifference.

He looked at them for a long moment and thing covered his face with a palm.

’Right, this is happening already.’ He thought.

He had known, academically, that this was going to happen eventually. He had just not prepared a speech. He had been meaning to prepare a speech for, roughly, the last two years, and had not done it for the same reason he had not done several things that required him to sit down with the specific fact of what Nina was and think about it directly.

It was uncomfortable to think about directly.

Because what Nina was, was a dragon.

She had come from the egg the system had rewarded him at the end of the Aethelburg Scenario as a ’Mythical Relic’, which was already the most absurd sentence he had ever assembled in his head, and then she had hatched looking entirely human except for the Golden hair and Purple eyes, which were to the most part… alright.

But seems like the, almost alight part was over now. He thought abut the Dragon emperor he fought in Aethelburg… he thought about the details, unhappily.

He had large horns, two wings and they were enormous. Well at least he didn’t had a tail in his human form.

He looked at Nina’s two small horns and smiled awkwardly.

’Okay, let’s see. Its just one step of what is potentially a very Long Process. After all they only popped up after three years…’ He let his mind adrift as he thought of excuses that he should present to the little girl.

“Are you staring at them because they’re bad,” Nina asked looking in mirror, her face was a little gloomy and worried.

“No,” he said immediately.

“You made a face.”

“I didn’t make a face.”

“You were making worried face just now!” She squeaked.

“It was a thinking face.” He sighed and met her eyes in the mirror.

Then he summoned the Divine Blood, secretly and ordered it to move over his head to form two horns.

The black liquid moved through his body and rose from his head, shaping itself in two clean points above his hairline without being asked twice. The horns, dark and solid, emerged out… larger than Nina’s by a significant margin.

He watched her face in the mirror.

Her purple eyes went wide.

Not from fear, it would appropriate to say that they… Lit up with Excitement.

“So COOL,” she breathed.

“Its because I am player…” Ishiki said, with the complete confidence of a person delivering an explanation they had assembled in real time thirty seconds ago… actually he didn’t plan to tell her that he was a player but his Corruption made it impossible to hide.

Nina reached up and touched one of her horns with a single careful fingertip.

Ishiki let the Divine Blood recede.

Then he put his hand on top of her head gently and ruffled up her golden hair ignoring the horns scratching at his palm.

“Don’t tell anyone at school,” he said. “Keep them covered until… uh, until I tell you to, Okay?”

“Okay,” she nodded.

Then, without any transition she suddenly asked… “Can I be a Player?”

<Here is a picture of our cute adorable Nina>

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