The Small-Town Girl Becomes the Demon King (EP 42): The Heroes slay a Dragon

A dragon attacked the party of Heroes.

It was covered in black scales, spewing flames from its mouth as the Heroes raised their weapons at it.

Dorothy jumped up and swung her blade down but it only bounced off its hard scales with showers of sparks.

“Dorothy! There’s no chance we can fight with all this smoke!” Eliza shouted as they dodged the flames.

In a frenzy, Dorothy ignored Eliza, kicked off the ground, launched herself at it, then started swinging at the dragon’s neck once more.

“That fool is rushing in,” Eliza said.

Since meeting the King, Dorothy’s mood has been unstable and concerning.

She said she didn’t have the strength to defeat the Demon King if she continued being as weak as she was. After hearing Hawkins could make a strong weapon out of a dragon’s corpse, she started looking for one, ignoring Eliza and Maria’s protests.

Worried about Dorothy, Eliza and the rest of their party infiltrated a dragon’s nest but were detected too early and forced into this fight.

Dorothy dodged the flames, dodged the claws, and just kept swinging her sword.

“I have to be strong. Because I’m a Hero. I have to save the world from the Demon King.”

Her thoughts were distorted. The belief that Demons were Evil and she, the Hero, was for Justice has changed to a radical idea.

“Only I can do this.”

The Heroic Ideal she’d believed for so many years. A fantasy that should be just like reality.

Dorothy made that decision as she forcibly put her reality back together from the brink of shattering to pieces.

“Defeat the Demon King with your own hands. I will make sure I’ll do it. Because I was beaten once already because I am a Hero’s Descendant who will save the world.”

They were her reasons but it wasn’t all of them.

Dorothy was praying she could have a worthy legacy for herself.

Hawkins lets out a battle cry. His ax slams into the dragon’s stretched out neck.

Its body collapses while smoke and dirt fly up. It blows one last flame before it weakens and collapses to the ground, dead.

“Hawkins!” Dorothy cried as she climbed onto the corpse. “What parts can be used to forge a weapon?!”

“The scales,” Hawkins replied. “After that, I’ll use all the thick segments of its spine and its nails.”

“Understood,” Dorothy said before she thrust her sword into the corpse and started butchering it.

Eliza and Maria catch a glimpse of Dorothy’s madness as she’s bathed in warm blood and desperately slicing into the corpse.

Too desperately.

A Hero wouldn’t butcher a dragon with no emotions on their face, almost as if they were possessed.

“Are you okay, Dorothy…?” Eliza calls out.

Dorothy’s face remained blank. “If you have time to talk, help me, Eliza,” she said flatly. “I’ll make a weapon with these.”

She couldn’t go on like this. Dorothy looked like a tyrant without a sense of morals, just desiring power to do whatever they pleased.

She’s not a “Hero” nor a human. Two words she should have never considered rush to the front of Eliza’s mind:

“Demon King”.

Despite being a Hero’s Descendant, Dorothy looks like a Demon King. Not the easy-going Demon King as Merle was but a monster who wants to conquer the world and plunge it into chaos.