“Zaleria, can we fly toward Selena’s village quickly?” Cain asked as the others were entering the arcane gate.
Zaleria turned toward him with a strange look, “Won’t it be faster if you flew there with magic? I believe you can use teleportation to move great distances.” He can use teleportation to move to a point he can and repeat that process to move quickly.
“I don’t have Mana to do that, I want to get it done with quickly as well,” Cain said. He Mana has almost dried up after the fight with the earth dragon.
Zaleria sighed as she cracked her neck, Alice did heal her wounds, which means she can fly now. “Fine, hop on.” She said as her body transformed into her draconic form and sent terror into the Fenrir villagers.
Cain quickly teleported to the back of her long neck. “See you can teleport.” She complained.
“I can only do it for life another five or six times,” Cain replied with an exhausted face.
The Fenrir villagers stared at the titanic red dragon standing by their village side. The gaps between her scales were emitting faint flames, as she got nervous about Cain riding her.
The others have already headed back to Ourals to keep through the maze. “Let’s hurry and get this done within two hours if possible,” Cain said as he grabbed the back of Zaleria’s massive head.
Zaleria didn’t want to flap her wings by the village side as she will blast them all up. For that, she hopped into the forest like a majestic lion.
Even though her body was bumping up and down her head stayed stationary to keep Cain from falling off. After she was a bit away from the village she leaped once and then a second time, where she opened her wings and soared into the sky.
“ROAAAAAAAAAAAAR!” Her roar shock the whole mountain area.
“My ears, why did you roar?” Cain asked as he didn’t see a need for such a roar. To him, it was like a human that screamed just as he started running.
“We dragons are heavy, to soar to the sky we need to put a lot of energy into our wings. I’ve seen one of your maids open a stuck jar before. She held her breath and exhaled when the jar was open. You can say that it’s something similar.” Zaleria started to speed up by flapping her wings harder. She didn’t accelerate quickly as she feared for Cain on her neck.
The trip toward Selena’s village should take them about an hour, more if they stopped at a dungeon before to grab its core for the maze. Cain took this time to chat with Zaleria.
“I did want to ask you about something. You dragons, can hunt, and fight without necessarily tapping into your full draconic power, right? How do you do that?” Cain asked.
Zaleria slightly shifted her head, “Are you by any chance talking about the traditional hunting?”
“Traditional? What’s that?” Cain asked. As he didn’t recognize what she was meaning.
“We start the fight by stalking our prey from a large distance and use our sharp sight to determine the perfect timing to attack. Like when they are sleeping or injured.” Zaleria said.
“And then…” Cain was interested so she kept explaining directly.
“When we see the perfect timing, we use our camouflage and fly up to the sky. We usually take the same color as the sky.” Zaleria’s scales turn grey like the clouds.
“After we get high enough, we glide down silently toward our target and pounce on it directly with our front claws. If it survives or managed to dodge we go for another claw strike.” Zaleria flexed her stocky front shoulders to show how strong they are.
“If there are multiple people we split them up by using our breath. Breathing fire in the middle of them will usually cause them to dodge to the sides.” She then released a small fire breath. Cain noted that the breath that she just showed him was far weaker than what she was using before.
“Killing monsters is easy, but if they were intelligent creatures like adventurers we then prefer to kill the healer first. We dragons have a great sense of magic so we can tell even if they are disguised. After the healer, we go for the mages and lastly the melee fighters.” Zaleria swung her flaws as if she was trying to grab something.
“After we grab the healer, for example, we fly with them into the sky and drop them down to die. And then we repeat the process until they are all dead. If we by any chance received a wound then we stop playing and kill them immediately.”
Cain laughed with a pained smile, most of the heroes and humans who boasted of surviving a dragon fight had described their fight like how Zaleria described them. They didn’t survive, the dragon let them live since they were a bit of fun.
“This…” Cain sensed something and pointed down.
When Zaleria looked she saw a bunch of raccoon-demi humans gathering in front of a dungeon gate. “Are they organizing a clear party? The equipment looks a bit rusty.”
“You can tell from this distance?” Cain was surprised since they were out of her range as far as he knew. When they got a bit close Cain managed to see their stats.
“They average between level 5 and 11, the dungeon is an A-rank so they won’t be able to clear without large causalities,” Cain said.
“You sure? You wanted a dungeon core so can we just take that?” Zaleria asked.
“I bet they are just risking it since they fear a dungeon break, they won’t mind us getting rid of the dungeon. Let’s get down.” Cain told Zaleria and she flew downward.
The raccoon-demi humans panicked when they saw the massive red dragon flying toward them. They rushed and hit behind the trees, in pre-dug holes, and covered themselves in bushes.
Zaleria landed gently beside the dungeon gate and looked where the raccoon-demi humans were hiding. Cain quickly jumped from the top of her head and she transformed into her human form.
“Let them be, let’s clear the dungeon quickly,” Cain said as he entered the dungeon followed by Zaleria.
The dungeon had a lot of Treants. Living trees as they were known. Cain absorbed Mana from them to regenerate his own while Zaleria burned the rest into coal. Cain sucked all the burned wood into the maze for later use.
They were lucky as they were both proficient in fire magic so clearing the dungeon wasn’t a problem.
After an hour, Cain and Zaleria exited the dungeon unscathed. At that moment the raccoon-demi humans were standing outside discussing what they needed to do.
“They are out!” One of them screamed.
The dungeon gate shattered after Cain and Zaleria made it out, Cain was holding the dungeon core in his hand. [Arcane gate] he then threw it directly into the maze’s core.
“Let’s go,” Cain said and Zaleria transformed back to her dragon form and he flew to the back of her neck.
Zaleria immediately ran away and flew to the sky.
“What was that?” One of the raccoon-demi humans gasped.
“A dragon rider, a person who tamed a dragon. From his look, he seemed human.” One of their elders said.
“Is that even possible?” The raccoon-demi human found it hard to believe.
“A vigilante, white-haired dragon rider. Today he saved us tens of lives without even saying a word or asking for thanks. We better remember that.” The elder turned around to head back home.
After about a half-hour of flight, Cain and Zaleria finally saw Selena’s village in the distance.