Alpy376

  “Two more to the left!”

  “Got it! Lord of Wind, grant me your strength to cleave my enemy in two! Ssh!”

  “Nice job. Should we stop here for the night?”

  “Yeah. I'll sit down for a minute then I'll help you set up camp.”

  “Take as long as you need.”

  I swung my sword one more time to fling the blood off, then I put it in its sheath. We've been walking all day now, and we've only stopped once for lunch and another time in the afternoon. Needless to say, we're quite tired now. Well, at least Luci is. I feel like I could keep going all night…

  In any case, we had just fought a pack of six frenzy wolves, which are rge wolves with red eyes, bck fangs, and bck cws. Their most notable feature, however, is the bck mist spilling from their mouths. Supposedly, if it gets in a wound, it makes the wolves’ victim go insane and start attacking anything that moves.

  According to Luci, the closer you get to the ocean, the more mana is in the air, and with more mana, there are more, stronger monsters. This was made apparent in our travels today, as we had many encounters with not just the C-rank frenzy wolves, but also acid tarantus and many other types of creatures making this forest their home.

  Luckily, almost all monsters hate fire, so I made one before setting up our tent. With that done, I built the campfire up a little more and added some simple chairs using Earth Shape. Of course, Luci instantly got up so she could sit down in one.

  And… Yeah. That should be everything. Now I can sit back and re- Wait, nevermind. I still have to deal with the bodies of the wolves.

  “Hey, Luci.”

  “What's up?”

  “You ever eat one of these before?”

  “One of… oh. No?”

  “You want to?” Might as well save our supplies when I can.

  “Uh… Sure…”

  Hearing her confirmation, albeit a reluctant one, I got to work. First, I selected the only one that somehow wasn't either a pile of ash or dismembered beyond recognition, then I took out my dagger and began skinning it. We're only two people, so I decided to just expose one side and cut out a rack of ribs. I then used Metal Mold to make a miniature grill over the fire to pce the frenzy wolf ribs on.

  Once I burned the other corpses, I could finally sit down, rex, and enjoy my date with a beautiful Elven princess.

  “So, where'd you come up with the idea for this metal thing? It seems pretty useful after all.”

  “Oh? That's just a grill. You haven't seen one before?”

  “I have not. Could it be another one of those strange things from your memories?”

  “I don't think so? I mean, I think I saw one or two back in the foxkin vilge.” I guess she – being a princess and all – has probably never spent much time in a kitchen.

  “I see. How long should cooking those… wolf ribs take?”

  “I haven't done this before, but… it shouldn't be too long.”

  Of course, they didn't take ‘too long’, only needing another two hours and keeping us out in the dark. And once they were finally finished, I learned why neither of us have eaten a frenzy wolf before.

  “Blech!” I instantly spit out my first bite, gagging and sticking my tongue out to hit with a Water Ball in the hopes of erasing the taste. “Why did I ever think that'd be good!”

  “Goddess! That's horrible!” It seemed Luci had a simir reaction to me. I decided to grant mercy to her filing tongue with another Water Ball. “...Thanks, but… I'm not having more of this.”

  “Figures. I'm not either.” Note to self: never eat monster meat again.

  I decided to toss mine into the fire, and Luci did the same as I took a loaf of bread from our supplies. I broke half of it off to give her before sitting down and eating in an awkward silence. Luci addressed me when she was done.

  “I think I'm going to go to sleep now.”

  “I'll be out here then. Goodnight.”

  “Goodnight. Wake me up when you get tired.”

  She gave me a brief wave as she crawled into the tent, and now I was alone. I'm luckily not any tired right now, and that's probably going to stay the same for the rest of the night, so… I guess I'm on night-watch duty until tomorrow.

  Before any of that though, I do need to pee… It'll probably be fine if I leave for a minute, so I walked a little ways away from the campsite until I found a good bush. Just need to squat down and - half a minute ter - I'm all good.

  Then I pull my pants up and start walking back towards where I came from. And… then the ground shakes and dirt is kicked into the air around me as I hear a loud explosion behind me… Great.

  When I turn back around, I'm staring straight into the green, vertically-slitted eyes of the very same creature I came here to hunt: A dragon. Going by the brief rundown Luci gave me during our travels, along with the color of the scales filling my vision, this is a green dragon. Creative name, I know. All dragons can control at least one type of magic, and this one's strength is in Wind.

  As dragons are generally considered hostile creatures that will always attack anything - other than another dragon - on sight, I drew my sword to fight the S-rank creature in front of me. And, of course, the dragon… didn't attack. It just stood there, staring at me as if trying to gauge my strength.

  Close to a minute passed like this, until I heard rapid footsteps behind me.

  “Mira! What's- A dragon?!”

  As if in response to Luci's arrival, the dragon let loose a deafening roar and jumped over my head to get to her. Then it roared again, as Luci managed to shoot an arrow into its eye before using Burst to get out of the way.

  I ran between the two and entered another standoff with the beast, this one much more deadly than the st. I wouldn't let it have the first move this time, however, as I used Strength and Speed and ran forward. It swung a cw to intercept me, but I managed to slice it off in one quick swing.

  In response, the dragon quickly took off into the air while uching numerous Ssh spells to cover its ascent. At this point, neither Luci's arrows nor spells were able to pierce its hard scales, and it looked to be escaping.

  What it didn't account for, was my extra physical boost that came from this sword; the very same one that I completely forgot about until now. Using this, I jumped onto a tree, and used that extra height to jump onto the dragon's back. I managed to keep myself steady as it shook to throw me off, and I climbed towards its head. When I made it, I plunged my sword deep into its skull, and its corpse fell back to the ground.

  I quickly drew my sword, accidentally spshing myself in the face. Some of the blood even got in my mouth. Yuck.

  While I was taking in the fact that I had just killed a dragon like it was nothing, Luci ran up to me with a big smile on her face.

  “Ooh. You kind of look a little scary like this.”

  “How so?” Scary? Me? Nah, I could never.

  “Heh. I mean, anyone would be if they were standing on the mangled corpse of a dragon, holding a bloody sword, even complete with a face covered in gore and glowing yellow eyes.”

  “Huh?” Glowing yellow eyes? Since when?

  Luci blinked a couple times before replying again.

  “Ah, nevermind on the eye thing. I must've imagined it. Anyway, while this is exciting and all, I'm going back to sleep. As long as no more dragons wake me up, we can fight another one tomorrow, right?”

  “Yeah. I'll… deal with this.”

  “Okay. Goodnight again.”

  She left before I could respond to that with more than a nod, and now I was left to deal with cleanup: both of myself and the dragon. Hah… This is going to be a long night.