The dragon girl who had just voiced out her ridiculous offer looked at me with a bright smile on her face.

“I-if you are my pet… what does that mean?”, I asked with a weary voice.

She grinned.

“I will follow you around, let you feed me, you can pet me like you did before and choose my clothes.”, a dirty smile appeared on her lips.

“If you want to, I can also walk around wearing nothing.”

T-this dragon… I really didn’t know what to think at this point.

“What about the case that I am attacked by someone?”

A bloodthirsty smile appeared on her face.

“I cannot let my owner get injured right? I will smash their bones and eat them. But don’t even think about ordering me around to kill people! I know that you heroes like to go around and kill my kin and I won’t be tricked again!”

So, she would defend me…

“Deal. I will give you 10 bags of gold once we return to the capital!”, I agreed as soon as I heard about the defending part. A dragon who was stronger than Sir Mellen and who would act as my bodyguard, not to mention that she was an absolute beauty! This was the best deal I could even dream about!

“Ok, owner!”, the girl suddenly returned to her obedient pet-like attitude and all the wrath and mightiness was gone. Her big, innocent looking eyes were focused at me as she eyed me with the eyes of a small pub waiting for it’s masters orders.

At this point Maira, Sir Mellen and my two other slaves came over and fearfully observed the dragon girl, who by the way was still only wearing her underwear.

“Y-you really did it…”, Maira mumbled with a shocked expression.

“I also cannot quite believe it…”, I said while letting out a relived sigh.

“C-can you please let her clothe herself again?”, Sir Mellen suddenly said with a bright red face.

Oh, mister virgin-kun cannot handle some nude skin.

“Do you want to wear your armor again?”, I asked the girl with a grin.

“Nah. Actually as pet I shouldn’t be wearing clothes at all?”, came the response from the dragon girl who somehow pulled off being innocent and deviant at the same time.

I panicked as blood flowed to a certain region of my body.

“L-let’s give you at least some clothes. We don’t want other people to assume things, do we?”, honestly the dark stares of Maira forced me to say this. I personally wouldn’t have minded having a good look at a beauty’s body.

“Ok!”, she smiled with a carefree expression that didn’t seem to mind any of the insane things that have happened within only a few minutes.

“By the way, I’m Enri. I will be in your care!”, she smiled towards the other girls while completely ignoring the red-faced Sir Mellen.

Suddenly the sound of something cracking was audible. The bright red crystal on the girl’s forehead cracked and then fell to the ground.

“T-this…”, Enri stared in shock.

“M-my crystal.”, tears welled up in the corner of her adorable eyes. Then something amazing happened. The dragon girl who had originally looked about 22 years old and had large, firm breasts, suddenly began to shrink. Especially the chest area rapidly reduced itself until it had about the same size as the one of Riina and Ilea. At the same time, she also became a good head smaller, suddenly being even smaller than Riina. Now she looked like she was a very tiny 16 years old.

“This… She has suddenly dropped in level!”, said Sir Mellen as he realized that the dangerous energy, he had felt from the dragon girl had lessened.

“Wu~…”, Enri began to cry as she stared down on the broken crystal.

“I had payed a lot of money for this one….”, she looked heartbroken.

There was one big problem for me:

Due to her sudden change in size her underwear had become to big for her and slid down, partly uncoving area’s that shouldn’t be visible to the public eye. Thinking that she was surely underaged I quickly averted my eyes.

I didn’t want the FBI to jump through time and space just to arrest me!

“H-how old are you?”, I asked fearfully.

“hm?”, she looked at me with teary eyes.

“I’m a hundred and four years old.”, oh ok it’s fine to look. I immediately took a few sneak peaks and was happy that I had come to this world with legal dragon lolis.

“Well, what’s up with that crystal?”, I finally asked after a letting her cry for some time.

“It’s a magical item that forcefully increases the level and physical strength of it’s wearer. I must have overstrained it while fighting against all of you…”, she answered dejectedly.

“Then what is your normal level?”, I hoped that it had not dropped too low.

She looked at me and sighed.

“About the same as his. Level 45.”, she pointed at Sir Mellen who was still refusing to look into her direction out of fear of sullying his pure, virgin image.

I breathed out in relieve. So, she hadn’t become useless.

“Well then, Girls, do you have some spare clothes for Enri?”, I asked the girls who were traveling with me.

After a moment, the still sluggish women nodded and looked through their luggage, offering Enri various different items of cloth.

The dragon girl just picked a white shirt with nice fiery red seams from the things Maira offered her, throwing away her oversized underwear and putting on the shirt, which due to the difference in size looked like a short skirt on her. She then accepted a pair of panties from Riina and proceeded to rip apart the collar of her shirt until it was shoulder free on one side.

A few minutes later we were ready to go on. After all I still had to finally raise my level and even the appearance of my new powerful body guard did not change anything about that.

Then we began to finally advanced into the forest.

It did not take too long to find the first goblins in this lush and flourishing forest. After about half an hour the first smallish, about a meter-tall creature appeared in front of me. It did look like a truly ugly human making me think of that stupid princess back in the capital. Maybe the king had accidentally interbred with a female goblin and created that hateful girl?

Truthfully these stupid thoughts were just my way to distract myself from the nervousness I felt. I wasn’t afraid of dying to some stupid goblin, the skills I had acquired from Sir Mellen should be more than enough to deal with some low-level mob monster.

My nervousness came from the task that laid before me. The task of killing beings that closely resembled humans. Back when I had been in my original world and read some isekai novels I always laughed about the main characters who were afraid of killing.

But later, when I finally began to execute my plan and prepared to survive in another world the first thing I did was go to a butcher and ask to help out with the killing. It sounds mental and honestly it felt that way. Killing hundreds of chickens within just a few days and dismembering them into food for customers was one of the most terrifying things I had ever done in my life.

Still, it had somewhat prepared me for this moment.

I lifted my sword as the goblin, who had been surrounded by the rest of my party at that point, tried to take me on surprise and came towards me with his wooden club raised above his head.

Mana flowed through my body as I used a martial skill.

My sword began to glow, and my feet were strengthened with an invisible stream of mana, then I suddenly dashed forward. The next moment my sword had pieced through the goblins head and blood scattered all around me, tainting the forest ground in red.

Feeling nauseous I pulled the sword out of the dead goblins head and let his limb body fall to the ground.

“Statae”, I said, and the status window appeared in front of my eyes. Beneath my Level another number had appeared.

It was a 3.

This was the experience I had gained from killing a goblin. According to Sir Mellen 10 experience points were enough to lift me into level two. From there on the next level would need 20 points, then 30 and 40. It was a very straight forward system.

Feeling satisfied I swallowed the unease I felt at having killed my first goblin and turned around to face my party members.

“Let’s continue. We should try to hunt bigger groups of goblins to be more effective.”, my expression was completely calm, but the slight quiver in my voice must have betrayed the unease I felt.

Sir Mellen gave me a sympathetic look.

“You will get used to it.”, he promised.

“I have no other choice, have I?”

This was the life I had chosen myself. I all of people had no right to complain!

We continued further into the forest and encountered more and more goblins that foraged the forest for eatable fruits and small animals they could hunt. Just as in most fantasy stories this world’s goblins were primitive beings that resembled humans but were incapable of proper speech or civilization. They survived in small tribes of a few dozen and lived as hunters and gatherers that sometimes came to harass the local villages.

About an hour later I used a wind blade to cut down the last goblin of a three-man strong group that we had encountered. Blood once again scattered, and the mortally injured goblin cried out in pain before collapsing on the ground.

Then I heard a ringing sound in my ears.

My divine eyes activated, and a line of text appeared before my eyes.

“Congratulations for reaching level two.”

“Statae”, I immediately said and checked out the status window.

Sure enough, my level had risen to level two while only 2 points of experience were left. More importantly my stats had taken a small leap.

Level: 2

Experience: 2

Strength: 18

Endurance: 13

Mana: 15

From the three stats I currently had, my strength had experienced the biggest boost rising by 4 points. My endurance on the other hand had only risen by 2 points while the amount of mana had increased by 3 points. It seemed that the distribution of stats had to do with the natural talent of a person and could differ with each level.

“Finally.”, I said with relieve. Seeing that my level truly rose like a normal person made me feel very relieved. After all there are enough isekai stories that have their hero enduring a stupid amount of difficulty when trying to raise their levels.

I remembered one novel that made him to thrice the work that other people had to do! Yeah it was a shitty story and I dropped it after a while.

Either way, the fact that I could level normally was a good sign. The only problem was that it took to long for us to find goblins.

After all we had two party members that had to urgently raise their level, that being me and Maira. Yet we had only discovered two bands of goblins in the time that we had been here. One had been taken care of by Maira, while the other one was killed by me.

Having the entire party around was the safest way to level, but also the most inefficient.

“Let’s split up and level independently!”, I proposed after some thought.

“I will take Enri and Ilea while Maira goes with Sir Mellen and Riina. This way we can hunt more goblins and raise our levels faster.”

The others agreed. In the first place there wasn’t much danger in a beginner level forest like this one. One individual on the level of Sir Mellen and Enri was more than enough to make sure that nothing too bad would happen.

At least that it what we thought.