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“I can’t do this.”

Though I was the only one watching, those words escaped my lips a mere day after I started making clothes, all to maintain a modicum of dignity as a social being.

In reality, over 60% of this place was Gal Dragon’s territory, but here, in what was known as the giants’ domain, everything was enormous.

That meant the plants suitable for making fabric were, too.

Splitting and twisting the coarse hemp fibers to create cloth by hand was an incredibly tedious process.

While I could weave neat fabric like a loom, using the same delicate touch I used to stitch torn flesh with my hair, the resulting area of cloth barely covered my upper body after thousands upon thousands of repetitions. I gave up cleanly.

‘Saraswati would have made anything I wanted in the forest, if I just gave her some inspiration.’

Here, all I had was a kidnapper dragon staring at me with strange eyes.

He seemed fascinated by my ability to create something from the plants he brought me from outside, watching me closely with an unnerving gaze.

‘…Unnerving.’

His head alone was about half the size of Golb or Silb, making his eyes nearly as big as my entire body.

Being constantly watched by those eyes, while naked, was something I couldn’t get used to, no matter how much time passed.

And since he didn’t say anything, just kept watching, I had no idea what he was thinking, which made it even worse.

「Giving up?」

Gal Dragon, who had been watching me twist fibers into thread and then weave that thread into cloth, broke his silence and spoke when I threw the fabric down.

“The efficiency is just too low.”

Gal Dragon perked up.

「So, you won’t wear clothes?」

“…I don’t know why you’re so happy about it, but as a civilized being, I can’t do that. I’ll have to find another way.”

「I see…」

His voice sounded dejected.

Seeing Gal Dragon like that, I couldn’t help but chuckle inwardly.

He looked like a little acolyte or crusader at the temple who hadn’t received his snack as a punishment.

It was impossible to imagine that this was the same dragon who had slaughtered giants, effortlessly defeated me, who had never known defeat since birth, and taken me as a spoil of war like a tyrant.

He had made the worst first impression possible, attacking us, endangering my disciples, and destroying all the gifts my family had given me, but seeing him like this, he seemed rather cute.

‘…What am I thinking?’

Was he just weakened because it was his first defeat? Or maybe it was because nothing much had happened in the two weeks since he woke up, contrary to what he had imagined.

I was still in a desperate situation, my life hanging by a thread depending on the dragon’s whims.

But the dragon’s lenient attitude was making it hard to remember that.

‘Elder Loa… Maybe it’s because he’s a transcendent being, but his values are just not normal.’

Even though we had fought fiercely, Gal Dragon didn’t seem to care much about the battle, as if he had forgotten it.

I didn’t know if it was because he was naturally magnanimous, or if the fight just wasn’t worth his time, but if it was the latter, it would sting a little.

And he didn’t sleep, and his sense of time was different from that of ordinary creatures.

All his actions seemed leisurely, relaxed, lazy, and bored.

Though maybe he was just arrogant.

‘If I lived for a long time, would I become like that too?’

Right now, I was trying to do everything I could to make up for my past life, but if I lived long enough, I might eventually get tired of everything.

It was hard for a short-lived human to imagine the feeling of being weighed down by a life lived for so long.

But that wasn’t something to think about now.

“I guess I’ll have to cover myself with this for now…”

It had been a long time since I had struggled to find clothes to cover my body, not since the early days of exploring the forest.

“…Back then, I just used leaves and stuff to cover myself.”

It was troublesome when the cold wind blew in underneath, since they didn’t block the wind.

This was only slightly better than that, but not by much…

「…Are you planning to wear that as it is?」

“? Yes, why?”

「I don’t like it. It’s not beautiful.」

“…What nonsense are you talking about?”

As I divided the cloth I had made from plant fibers into two pieces and tied them around my upper and lower body, the dragon replied in a dissatisfied voice.

It was true that it wasn’t beautiful, but I hadn’t been trying to make something beautiful in the first place.

「The clothes you originally wore, I didn’t like the color, but the shape was beautiful. Clothes are just tools for inferior beings, but their aesthetic form was commendable.」

“Are you really the one to talk, considering you’re the one who ruined those clothes? …Well, I guess so. They were made by the best artisan among the Elves, after all.”

No Elf would deny that Atira’s skill was the best among the Elves.

Since Atira had put her heart and soul into making those clothes with the precious Telaian silk, there was no way they wouldn’t be beautiful.

The style of my clothes that Atira made had even influenced the style of clothes worn by nobles among the humans in recent times.

「That’s not beautiful. Take it off.」

“What are you talking about now!”

「You must always be beautiful!」

Words demanding beauty from a woman.

Looking at only a part of it, it was quite a romantic thing to say to a lover.

But if you broke it down, it was just the words of a pervert, a lecher, trying to force a woman to take off her clothes.

It was vulgar and impure to the extreme.

Besides, even though I had never been involved with a woman in my past life, and I had never really been aware of my male gender, I was still a man in that life, wasn’t I?

Someday, with the perspective of time, it might just remain as a distant memory, but there was no way I could accept being told to be beautiful in my current state.

The excited lizard extended a huge forepaw.

“Are you out of your mind!”

I shouted in surprise.

Each of his claws was bigger than my entire body.

Even though Living Spirit Armor was constantly deployed, there was no guarantee that it would be safe against the dragon’s claws, which could tear even giants apart like paper, especially with my injured body.

I recoiled in horror as that huge claw reached out to remove the rough hemp cloth.

「Take it off!」

“I absolutely refuse, for the sake of my dignity!”

Was it trust in me, or was he just out of his mind?

Gal Dragon continued to thrust his claws in the direction the tiny Elf was running, tiny compared to him.

“Gal! Get a grip! You’re a dragon, aren’t you! What kind of dragon is so obsessed with a virgin’s naked body that he’s brandishing his fearsome claws!”

「That’s right. I am Gal. A perfect being.」

He replied with nonsense to my scolding, and then forcefully pushed in.

「I don’t know what a dragon is, but you are mine. I won’t allow anything ugly to touch what is mine.」

“I am not yours!”

I ran around for a long time in the dragon’s nest, which was wide for me, but narrow for Gal Dragon.

Gal Dragon was certainly an Elder Loa, nearly omnipotent like a mother, but since he could only move his body according to instinct, it wasn’t difficult to avoid him in the narrow space.

But after dodging and dodging like that, and not being able to reach me, Gal Dragon finally got angry and moved his Adam’s apple.

『Tear.』

“…Ah.”

I let out a hollow groan as I watched the cloth being torn apart by an irresistible force, not just into threads, but into dust.

“…You’re casting a spell just for this?”

I looked up at the triumphant Gal Dragon with a very dumbfounded expression.

‘If only I had the True silver sword.’

I would have sent a Huyeosail flying into the neck under that smug snout.

I sighed as I looked at Gal Dragon.

‘What is this, how can such a hopeless guy be an Elder Loa, a transcendent being, a dragon?’

Compared to Mother El-Prigion or Bwon Krshakan and Ul Kanadiel, who once fought for the hegemony of species and domination in the Eastern Continent… he lacked so much dignity.

Besides, even though it was a legend from my past life, dragons were auspicious animals that symbolized the authority of a monarch or emperor, weren’t they?

I couldn’t feel even a shred of that majesty and authority in his current state, tearing apart a woman’s clothes.

“…This is unbelievable.”

「I don’t understand it either. You are not as good as me, but you are an excellent being, so why do you need to gain mental stability from something made by weaving together some common weeds?」

“You made my hard work for today meaningless, and you have the nerve to be so brazen…”

I sighed at his confident expression, as if he hadn’t done anything wrong.

“I’ve already told you about this. It’s not just about practicality. You, a dragon, might not understand.”

「Hmm. I don’t understand. Perhaps that’s true.」

Gal Dragon moved his huge face and nodded in agreement, as if he had realized something.

「I haven’t paid attention to insignificant creatures until now, so I haven’t thought about such things. There was no need for this body to understand the lives of insignificant creatures. …Good.」

At the same time as those words, light swirled around Gal Dragon’s huge body.

And Gal Dragon’s body, which had become a shining object, slowly shrank.

The shrinking body gradually became a human form, slightly larger than me.

“…What is this?”

There were martial arts called “shrinking bone techniques” in the Murim world.

It was a method of changing one’s appearance by twisting the position of the bones and muscles.

But that was only a slightly advanced form of disguise, and it didn’t change the absolute mass or volume of the body.

Martial arts and spells only used the laws of nature, they weren’t miracles that deviated from the laws of nature.

But for a dragon as huge as a castle to shrink to human size was clearly a deviation from the laws of nature.

When the light disappeared, there stood a naked, golden-haired Elf, a handsome man who reminded me of Demis or Pallas.

“…Gal Dragon?”

“Hmm. I’ve taken this form before, but only briefly… It’s truly a lowly form. No strong scales, no sharp claws. And since there’s no fur, I can feel the flow of the air directly on my fragile skin. Indeed, in the face of extreme cold or heat, I would need tools to protect this fragility.”

It wasn’t the voice that seemed to echo in my head, but I could see a glimpse of Gal Dragon in his arrogant tone.

“…You can even do that?”

“There is nothing I cannot do. This is only the second time I’ve taken this form.”

“The second time?”

“When I moved you.”

The Elf, or Gal Dragon transformed into an Elf, said with a blank face.

“…Don’t tell me you were in that form?”

“? Is there a problem?”

For a moment, I imagined a naked man picking up and carrying a naked me.

‘%^#$%’

An indescribable revulsion welled up inside me, as much as when I had heard a description of pederasty.

Goosebumps rose all over my body.

‘A man, a naked man, touching my body…! …Huh?’

My gaze, which had been wandering in shock, stopped at one place.

Something that existed in my past life, but not now.

The Elf that Gal Dragon had transformed into didn’t have it.

“…Were you female?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. Didn’t I say? I am a perfect being. I have not been divided into imperfect forms like male and female. If I wanted to, I could choose one, but why would I do something so foolish as to make myself imperfect?”

Gal Dragon frowned as he spoke.

Fortunately, I hadn’t been fondled by a man’s hand in my sleep.

I learned that the dragon who kidnapped me was neither male nor female, but genderless.