Two dragons flew above Novia Deros, the capital city of the Demon Kingdom. One of them had golden scales and was much smaller compared to the huge black dragon beside it, which had a terrifying aura surrounding it. It was Padinyss and Inhe.

Both of them landed in Jotun’s yard and reverted to their humanoid forms and went straight to his office. Padinyss pushed open his door and slammed his hands on Jotun’s table. “Where are they?!”

“Out in the city,” Jotun replied with a calm voice and continued writing.

Padinyss broke the table into two halves and threw them towards the walls. He grabbed Jotun by the throat and raised him into the air. “I’m not kidding! This is very important!” he shouted and threw Jotun to the floor.

“*Cough* What the hell? What is it?”

“Those two are a type of legendary creatures I never wanted to see. They’re devourers!”

“What is that? I haven’t even heard of it!”

“Ah, stupid monkeys everywhere!”

“I’m sorry for not having inborn memories like you!” Jotun refuted.

Sighing loudly, Padinyss told him about the devourer race, surprising Jotun. She said Padinyss would hunt them, so it must be true. But then why would she leave without causing havoc? She has the Ring of Fire… she could have killed so many of the demons in the city and if she didn’t revive me with necromancy, she could have caused even more trouble.

“Padinyss, I know that this is of grave importance, but don’t you think you’re wrong about them? If she really wanted to destroy the world, why did she not use the Ring of Fire? Imagine how much chaos she could have caused,” Jotun reasoned with Padinyss.

“Then there is Dred, if he changed the Mana density of the planet, he could have screwed up our current peace. Both of them have a hell lot of power in their hands yet they haven’t used it.”

“Don’t be so naive, Jotun. They know that they can’t fight against people like me, so they naturally keep a low profile. Just you wait until they grow strong enough to fight me head on..” Padinyss furrowed his brows, worried.

“Do you plan to ignore the rings and keep up the seal then?” Jotun raised his brows.

“Obviously not. I want to get the ring of wind quickly and catch those two. Then as soon as the seal is broken, I’ll kill the both of them!”

What now? Who should I help? Damn it, I’ll just get the last ring and then do some half-assed search for those two. He won’t be able to call me out on that. If only I could get the last ring, I could make sure nobody was going to kill me. I curse all these fucking legendary creatures, why do they have to be so powerful?

“That’s a good idea. Luckily for you, I’ve been notified of the location of the last ring not long ago. Shall we head over to the location? It’ll take a few days and I believe you don’t have time to waste,” Jotun said.

“Oh? That’s indeed good news. But you still haven’t told me where they are.”

“Ehm… they left to walk around in the city and since I can’t seem to be able to sense them anymore, they probably… ran away.”

Padinyss rubbed his forehead and sighed, “If they’ve got good enough instincts to leave before I arrived, that just makes their true origin all the more obvious. Whatever! Let’s go then!”

---

It was daytime.

Elena and Dred were out of the most dangerous zone, but they knew they still couldn’t ease up.

What area level is this? Is it nine or eight? Dred pondered.

“Eighth. We left the ninth while you were sleeping,” Elena replied.

Oh, okay. Will Jotun be fine? I hope that Padinyss won’t find out about his new race.

Well, since I’m the one keeping him alive, I’ll notice if he dies. But I don’t think he’d notice since Jotun can act and behave like before. His stats and race are also hidden from everyone, so we have nothing to worry about, I think, Elena answered.

After a short bit of silence, Dred asked, do you want to go on a date while we’re still alone? Maybe shopping some random stuff, eating, and similar things…

“Eh? Well, I can generate accessories too on my body and unless we buy weapons, it’s quite pointless.”

So you don’t.

“Wait, I didn’t say that. I just said shopping was pointless, but we can hang out and have some fun anytime you want!”

Dred raised his brows as he said aloud this time, “You little… you made it sound as if you wanted to refuse it.”

Elena turned around and stuck out her tongue before laughing at him. “I would never do something like that.”

“Can you feel it?” Dred turned serious all of a sudden.

“Mhm, my instincts are screaming to run away, let’s lower our altitude and try to hid-“ Elena couldn’t finish her sentence since a huge bird-like monster flew their way from above. She transformed to Dred’s bear form and fell towards the ground, while Dred jumped off her back and used Shadow Step to get behind the bird and swipe its back. His claws bore into the bird’s flesh and cut a shallow wound in it.

Thanks to the size difference, his claws didn’t amount to much and the amount of poison he released was negligible. Since they were high up in the air, the bird’s shadow was cast far away. Thankfully, that was none of Elena’s concern since her shadow was able to connect to the bird’s body as well.

“How is it?” Dred asked when he fell back to the ground and stopped beside Elena.

“It’s got too much magical resistance!” Elena raised her voice and rolled to the side since the bird dived straight towards the ground and crashed into it.

“That was close…” Dred remarked, seeing the bird’s huge beak only about a meter away from him. While the bird pulled out its beak, he swiped its face, leaving a long gash on it.

*Screech*

The bird showed its rage and spun its wings in a circle. “Damn this bird, what the hell is it?”

Race: Lightning Trink

Rarity: Rare

Level: 532

Threat Level: 8

This creature is suffering from: Two negative effects you caused:

Bleeding (10 HP/second) for 10 more seconds.

Poison (246 HP/second) for 2 minutes and 31 seconds.

Outside negative effect:

Devouring Curse (500 HP/second) for an indefinite amount of time.

“Well, there it is…” Dred shared with Elena the table.

“Shit. But at least, your attacks were effective!” she laughed until the bird charged at her.

“Why does it want me so bad?!” she cursed and started running. Although their attacks were effective, even they had a few millions of hit points, not to mention a beast of this level.

“Do you have anything in mind?!” Elena shouted and then ducked down to evade the bird’s snapping beak.

“Yeah! Run!”

“Thanks!”

Dred jumped onto the bird’s back and transformed into his bear form. He cut into the bird’s flesh and held himself on its back, while he started swiping its back continuously. The wound turned larger and larger and more poison entered its body, raising the damage of the bleeding effect to eight hundred hit points per second and the poison to two thousand and five hundred hit points per second. Even if the bird wanted to catch Elena at first, it knew it couldn’t ignore Dred anymore. All of a sudden, the bird threw itself onto the ground, trying to smash Dred under its back. Dred reacted quick enough to create a smaller hole under the back of the bird where he could jump and get out only with a few bruises.

“Are you alright?!” Elena’s worried voice resounded in his mind.

I’m fine. Run, it’s going for you, Dred replied and latched onto the bird once again, but this time he started using Devouring. The moment he did it, the bird stopped for a moment and looked both towards Dred and Elena, probably rethinking who to kill at first. Feeling the aching spot on its back, it decided to get rid of the annoying mosquito and turned around to kill Dred.

Elena turned on her heels on the spot and focused all her attention on using Devour. “If the others were here, we maybe we could kill this thing,” Elena remarked. The problem was that a single direct hit was able to crush either of them and if not necessary, they preferred to use their Shadow Forms as a trump card.

The bird flew into the air and made a circle. Noticing that the devouring effect didn’t disappear, it dived towards Dred once again, but this time its body got surrounded by lightning. Dred pointed towards the ground and created a flickering spear of lightning in front of the tip of his fingers. When the bird released the lightning, it joined Dred’s and entered the ground.

The only problem was the gaping mouth of the bird. But he knew he could rely on Elena and felt as a vine pulled him to the side. The bird’s beak again stuck into the ground. By the time it pulled its beak out, it couldn’t see Dred and Elena anywhere and even their Devour curse disappeared. It used its sense to try and find them, but it couldn’t sense anything other than the lush forest.

The bird screeched and shot a bolt of lightning towards the sky, enraged. Having no other way, it flew into the air, towards the way Elena and Dred went, hoping it would find them again.

A few minutes after the bird’s leave, they came out from the shadow of a tree and sat down at its roots. “Haah- we got away. Thanks for helping me,” Dred sighed.

“What are you talking about? It’s natural,” Elena turned over and knelt down above Dred.

“Wait, we shouldn’t do-“

Elena sealed his lips with hers and after separating, she simply hugged him. “Silly, we aren’t doing anything,” she chuckled, seeing his face.

Feeling her breasts pressing against his chest, he didn’t know if he should feel happy, curse, or just accept everything. “You should think about my feelings,” he complained. “You’re playing with me all the time!”

“Aww, but you’re always so much fun.”

“…”

“I love you,” Elena gave a kiss on his face and then stood up.

“Let’s go. This place isn’t safe,” Dred said with a composed face, which only made Elena laugh.

Dred transformed into his panther form and walked closer to her. Seeing her attention drift away, he bit her left butt for the second time. Elena held in her shout and turned to look at Dred with gritted teeth.

“You bit me again!”

“You’ve been too cheeky with me, so it’s a given.”

Rubbing her hurting left buttock, she changed her nerve system and disabled her sense of pain. “You bastard… That surprised me! I wasn’t prepared!”

“Of course, I was looking for the moment,” Dred replied, proud of himself.

“Muu, you bully. Let’s go the other way, I don’t want to meet up with that bird again,” Elena grumbled.

This time Dred reverted to his demon form and gave a kiss on her cheek. Looking into her loving eyes, he threw her into the air and transformed into his Wyvern form. She landed straight on her back and they continued their travel towards the Alof Kingdom, though they had to make a small detour.