Shiona grabs me by my shoulders and we fly back towards the city, nothing noteworthy happens (though we did see a few pretty birds) and we soon arrived back at Vartan, we then entered through the gates and headed straight to the guild.

“Hello.” I say to the receptionist.

“You are… the adventurers the guild master hired yes?”

“Yup.”

“I… *sigh* I’ll go tell the guild master we’ll need to find someone else to subjugate the dragon...”

“What? No! We already killed them!” I respond frantically, worried that she’ll chalk up the quest as a failure.

The receptionist gives me the stink eye before starting a lecture about how if we wanted to feed her a lie we should’ve chosen a better one, however she stops just as soon as she started when I take out the centre fang of the sandy dragon from the inventory and show it to her.

“Ri-... Right this way sir!” She says as she personally starts walking towards the guild master’s office.

“Wait!!” Says Shiona. “We have other quests too, and we already know where the guild master’s room is.”

“Ah, yes.”

She then sheepishly goes back to the other side of the bar table and soon recovers her professionalism.

“What other quests do you have then?”

“Ginseng gathering quests, there’s a lot so is there another room we could go to?”

“Yes.” Responds the receptionist as she rings a bell that she picked up from underneath the table, soon the staff member who had a penchant for cleaning mugs appeared and led us to a separate room.

After we entered the staff member left while telling us he’d soon be back with someone who could inspect the ginseng, when the staff member came back he was met with a table covered by more ginseng than either of us should’ve been able to carry, and we then leave the room to let the inspector inspect all the ginseng while we instead go and knock on the guild master’s office’s door.

“Yes? I’m sort of busy so make it quick, who is it?”

“It’s us.”

“Who?” Responds the guild master, now more annoyed than before.

“The people you sent out to kill the dragon.”

We’re met by silence, then a sigh, and then the guild master tells us to enter, so we do., and there we see the guild master sitting at his desk while three adventurers sit on chairs around the same desk.

The three very adventurers who we “ran” into yesterday when we first came to Vartan, however they seem to all be deep in thought as none of them (including the rude elf) turn around or even acknowledge us being here.

“What is it? I thought I sent you to subjugate the dragon five hours ago?”

“We di-” Begins Shiona, however I interrupt her by nudging her with my shoulder as I realized I could mess a little with both the elf and the guild master.

“We got halfway-”

“You!”

As I began to weave my web of lies for the sake of entertainment I was ever so rudely interrupted by the elf as the three adventurers seemed to recognise my voice now that there wasn’t a door between us.

“Ye feckers! Guild master, dees two are de cunts who attacked us an’ tried ter kill us!”

“What!? First of all you tried to shoot us with arrows without any provocation! And we never tried to kill any of you!”

The elf simply harrumphed in response to Shiona and turned back to the guild master while trying to look as defiant as possible.

*cough* “As I was trying to say, we got halfway there but had to turn around-”

“Ha! Feckin’ cowards! An' liers tah boot, no way could you 'ave gott'n there an' back in five hours!”

I look at the elf, the elf smiles back, seemingly satisfied she got to interrupt us and the guild master doing nothing to correct her conduct despite how awkward the two other adventurers seemed to feel about it, so I just continued where I was interrupted.

“Oh we got there alright, keep in mind we can fly, but the reason we had to turn around saw that there were actually two dragons rather than one.”

“What!?” x4

Finally it seemed that the elf was shutting up so that I could talk to the guild master.

”Is that true!? And then what did the other one look like!?” Asked the guild master.

“Well we don’t know which one of them was the one you knew about, but one was coloured like sand while the other was purple.”

*sigh* “The sand coloured one is the one e knew about, it’s known as a beach dragon due to having the colour of sand as well as using water magic. As for the purple on you will have to be more specific, there are a lot of different purple dragons.”

“Well it didn’t seem to be able to use magic, instead it tried to bite me, stomp me, or swipe at me with claws. It had two wings and four legs like the beach dragon. Is that enough?”

“Was it also the same body shape as the beach dragon, or was it more snake like, or maybe it had feathers? What about horns, did it have any? Like I said, there’s a lot of purple dragons.” Responded the guild master, sounding more and more annoyed with every word he said, which in turn made the elf's mischievous smile eve more gloatful , this caused me to also get more and more annoyed back at the both of them, making me look forward to what was going to happen more and more with every passing moment.

"Ha! Ya prolly turned tail so fast yu couldn't grasp anything but its color!"

“No." I said, ignoring most of what the elf said at this point. "In fact it looked just like the beach dragon had taken a bath in purple paint... Oh, but now that I think about it I think the purple one did have a single horn going backwards along its head, and when it tried to bite me I saw that it didn’t have a centre tooth like the other one.”

“Okay, I know which one you’re talking about now at least. It’s…” He sighs and starts rubbing his eyes with his fingers. “It’s actually a fairly newly discovered kind of dragon, it hasn’t been given a name yet since no one know what it actually does other than just be a giant lizard with wings.”

“Well… Let’s say we did go back and fight them, what would be the proof of subjugation for the purple one then?”

Behind me Shiona seems to realize what I’m about to do and has to cover her face with her wings to keep her smile from showing, however she still shakes every now and then from keeping her laughter back..

*sigh* “That would be its horn, but I can see you’re just trying to hide your injuries.” He says, seemingly having misinterpreted Shiona’s shaking as full of pain rather than laughter, this only causes Shiona to starts shaking even more. “I’ll be honest, I've been trying to be extra kind to you since you arived due to the Eastern lake city's guild master's high praises of the both of you, but now I can see that he must've grown old and senile, damn that fool for making me waste my time with you incompetents! If you ran away yet still suffered this much damage there's no way you're fit for the job!”

At this time I was pretty furious at both the guild master and the elf who was smiling like she was having the time of her life hearing us being lectured by the guild master.

“You. You’re the leader of your party right?” Asked the guild master of the elf.

“Yeah?”

“Well I heard you had been looking for a challenge as of late, think you can handle two dragons?”

“Ha! Unlike dees two useless as a chocolate taypot adventurer wannabes we can carry our own weight!”

“Good, then with that done you three are given the quest which those two failed, as or you two, please vacate my office immediately.”

We start walking back out of the office of the guild master who only ever did the opposite of showing why he was given his job, I walk first into the doorway however before I actually leave I turn around and say:

“Oh, one last thing.”

“What!? I won’t ask for any remunerations for the quest since it was clearly my fault for entrusting it to you to begin with, now get out!”

“Not that, this.”

After I had said that I put my hand into the books pouch and asked it to give me both the beach dragon’s centre tooth and the unnamed dragon’s horn, and I then tossed them both onto the guild master’s desk.

The guild master’s and elf’s jaws dropped as they stared at the two objects and realized they'd both been played for fools for a good few minutes without realizing a thing.

Laughter.

From the room we were in laughter sprang forth.

Not just from Shiona either, although she was the one who started but from Lizz inside the book and the two party members of the elf as well, and we all looked at the flabbergasted duo while we were laughing their lungs out before Shiona and I left and closed the door behind us.

As soon as we had closed the door and turned around we saw the female receptionist from earlier standing there and trying her hardest to hold back her laughter.

“...”

“...”

“...”

We waited for a while however there was still no change from her.

“Hello?”

“Eep!”

‘Well at least she responded…’ I thought.

The receptionist then gathered herself with a *cough* and told us that the ginseng inspection had finished.

“Here’s you rewards,-” She handed us a leather bag filled with coins. “-and if you give back the bag after you put the money somewhere you get another fifty silver, and you can expect both of your gather request ranks to go up to Silver A rank by tomorrow.”

She crouched down and gestured for the both of us to get close so she could whisper something.

"No one here really likes that stuck up jerk, so as thanks for the show we all threw in a little bonus."

“Thanks.”

We then left the guild to get away from the annoying elf and guild master before they decided to rush after us for whatever reason, and even if he decided not to actually confirm our request as fulfilled due to personal feeling we already had both the dragons corpses, which as he said was actually the reward for the quest, and we were already Silver A ranked adventurers so we didn’t really need to complete it for any other reason either, so instead we went back to the inn and started discussing what to do next.

“Well, something that I think we both realized is that we need another person in our little group, I mean, sure, Lizz can use magic, however like today what if they're busy for whatever reason?”

“I agree, and although Cy could probably help with most anything with her machines they can take too much time to build.”

“Right now we basically have a rogue/summoner hybrid and a wizard, we definitely need someone more bulky, wonder if Litly would fit the role once she grows up?”

We both look down on our pet chimera who was currently eating out of a bowl, she looks back at us and tilts her head to the side before continuing to eat.

“Also I don’t think it’s a very good idea to stay in this city much longer, honestly I think we should just get a new map tomorrow morning and leave for another town as fast as possible.”

“I agree with that too, even Hugh’s a better guild master than that guy, there’s no way we’d be able to continue adventuring like normal here with Vartan’s guild master personally having it out for us, then again I guess we can’t really know for sure how he’s going to act but with the way he was letting that elf act I wouldn’t be surprised if she has him around her finger.”

“Yeah, and if she does then he’d definitely come after us. So we wake up tomorrow and leave town after getting a map then?”

“Yup.”

Having finished making our plans I go back inside the book and start cooking up a little evening meal for us both before we go to sleep after I finish my Trickster’s sleight training.

* * *

We wake up early the next morning and pack what little things we have, go downstairs and say goodbye to the innkeeper while asking where we can buy a map.

“The local library should have them, heard they’re real cheap there too since they have some elven machine that makes more of them real easy. The library is...”

After the innkeeper tells us the directions to the guild we say our goodbyes and start following her instructions, and after some ten, twenty minutes we come across a large building with a sign above its entrance which read “Library”.

“Hello?” I ask a librarian who we saw sitting at a desk once we’d entered.

“Yes?” She responded.

“We’d like to buy a map please, preferably one that can handle some rain. And do you have any books on dragon? Specifically what you can do with parts of their bodies.”

“Well if you look at the wall behind me you’ll see the different sizes of maps we have, lamination will cost thirty silver extra. Ah, lamination is what the procedure of waterproofing the map is called if you didn’t know, as for the books on dragons as materials there’s a book in the crafts and works section in the back titled, well, “Dragons as materials”. They’re all in alphabetical order so it should be easy to find.”

“Thanks, and is it possible to purchase the book rather than just borrow it?”

“Yeah, on each book there’s a note which says how much it is to borrow, if you want to buy the book it’s ten times as much.”

“Thanks, we’ll come back with the book once we find it.”

“We then walk into the back of the library and start searching for the book, on our way there we also saw an area for pet keepers and decided to get a better book about greater chimeras since the one we had wasn’t very good, and once we’d gotten them both we returned to the librarian and got four maps, two of the country we were in while the other two were large maps of the entire continent, one of each for me and one of each for Shiona.

After we were done in the library we went on our way, hoping to leave the city without bumping into the elf or the guild master, and as luck would have it we managed to exit the gates without any incidents and we take off again towards a new city.

Lizz was as normal flying with me in the talons while I was looking at the map.

“It says that the swamp town Krull should only be two or three day's flight away from here that way.” I say and point in the direction we’re already going.

After that I hold up the map next to Shiona’s bag where Litly sticks out her and grabs the map with her beak before going back inside, I already had the other map of the country in the inventory so this one was Shiona’s, and instead I take out the book called “Dragons as materials” and start reading up while comparing the parts which the book said didn’t exist in all different species of dragons to the inventory’s list of what parts we’d gotten from the two dragons.

* * *

After I finished reading the book it turns out that most of a dragoon’s body could be used for at least something. The meat could be used as, well, food, and the book even had some recipes. The bones could either be sharpened into durable weapons or ground to dust for use in alchemy. As for all of the organs they could also be used for both alchemy and various rituals, but one thing all of these had in common was that they were excellent materials for use in magic wands or other magical creations, apparently strengthening some aspect of whatever the magical item would be able to do as well as becoming incredibly durable, this last reason was the biggest reason why all of these parts could be sold for as much money as it could, since apparently good wands were hard to come by.

And then there was one thing, the thing which the both of us would get the most use out of, the magic gem which allowed each of the dragons to use magic.

The beach dragon was pretty obvious, it used magic to shoot an incredible strong beam of water, however the unnamed dragon wasn’t as easy to know what magic it used.

Or at least it wouldn’t have been if I didn’t have the skills I did, but since I do have the skills I do I had been able to easily find out that the unnamed purple dragon had used some kind of magic which allowed it to touch ghosts, though what good that did for a dragon that lived in a place that Hugh said didn’t have any undead was uncertain.

As for what these gems could be used for? Well they could actually be used for the same thing as the slime cores, that thing being magic wands or trinkets, specifically it said in the book that a dragon’s crystal could create either a wand which let us use whatever the dragon the crystal belonged to had used, or a trinket which increased the strength of any skills or magic we used which was of the same attribute, meaning if we made wands out of these we would have a wand which allowed us to touch ghosts and a wand which allowed us to shoot a powerful water beam, but since we could already do that we decided we will have them made into trinkets instead, one which Shiona can use to increase her strength when using the water attribute and one I could use to strengthen my ghost related skills

For me this meant a lot of my skills, Phasing, Revenant Reconnaissance, Risen apparition, and probably Trickster’s Sleight as well since technically that ability just made it easier to use two other skills in conjunction, one of which was a ghost skill while the other was already he combination of a ghost skill and a normal skill, so hopefully seventy-five percent was still enough to count.

I then put the dragon material book back in the inventory and headed inside the book of knowledge to try cooking some dragon steak while Shiona finished today’s leg of the journey with Lizz so I could have something ready for her once we set up camp for the night.

Three days later of repeating the pattern of flying, eating, sleeping, eating and then flying again we finally reached the swamp city Krull.