Rune and Rouna flew out of the Frozen Tunnels in dragon form and came to the surface. They found that the others had already set up a camp and it was nighttime when they came out.

The camp consisted of three tents and the unused baggage was kept in the hovering wagons. Eight people were sitting on barrels around a cooling device shaped like a dome that Rune had made. It allowed for people to cool down in hot weather.

While the two of them flew down towards the camp, Rouna asked Rune a question. She seemed rather curious about something that had happened in the caves.

“Why did you drink the blood of that Hierarch Dragon back there? Was it a trait of the Demon King?”

Rune thought for a moment while stroking his non-existent beard. Then he answered.

“When I was in its stomach, some of its blood went in my mouth and I swallowed it. It actually tasted pretty good and, after I killed it, I ate a chunk of meat while inside it and, to be honest, it tasted great.”

Rouna eyes squinted a bit and her mouth was open as if she wanted to say something, but, in the end, she just turned her head at a 30 degree angle. She just stared at him in confusion and disgust as what he said was processed through her mind.

Elisa pointed towards the two of them in the sky and shouted something. Then Hyht notched an arrow on his bow and aimed at them. Rune quickly turned back into a human and fell slowly as he controlled his gravity on the descent.

Rouna was still in the air and saw that, after Rune transformed, Hyht sighed and put his arrow back in the quiver. Rune walked up to him and he was scolded for trying to shoot him down.

“Didn’t you see me transform earlier? Rouna as well!”

“I’m sorry teach. It’s just a little nerve racking waiting next to a Dragons’ Nest.”

“Well, now there’s only five dragons. They likely won’t bother us anymore as they’ve seen what I could do if they went against me…”

Several students shuddered as they remembered the Cerberus that Rune turned into mince meat after the first day of school. They were acutely aware of how strong he was and they did not know how much he had grown, but they knew for a fact that he was not to be messed with.

Rouna landed on the ground and turned back into the small figure of a girl with green hair, horns, wings, and a tail. She bounded up to the group and promptly hopped onto Elisa’s Lap.

Startled, Elisa jumped a little bit before relaxing as the barrel had almost lost its balance when she was on it. Currently, she was eating a sandwich that was made of cheese, hard bread, and turkey. There was a refrigerator in one of the carriages and, despite how small it looked, it could fit much more than what it seemed.

The rest of the group had finished up their sandwiches and were listening to Elisa’s tales of monsters that she had fought and quest she had been sent on. She talked more than she ate and, by the time she told the first story, everyone else finished their food. When Rune had come back, she was in the middle of telling her fifth story.

Rouna leapt with tremendous precision at Elisa’s lap and she took part of her meat slice. Then she hopped off of her and went to the fridge to get her own sandwich. Elisa was too slow to react and, by the time Rouna was a the fridge, all she could do was hold out her outstretched arm towards her as if reaching for her stolen meat.

After eating, the group decided to stay at the area for the night as it was now much more safe than before due to the death of a couple hundred dragons. Rouna, Riika, and Elisa stayed in one tent, Rena, Hika, and Yula stayed in another, and, in the last tent, Erin, Mynn, and Hyht stayed in it.

Rune had become Cursed Armor again and stayed as the lookout. He noticed that, whenever he transformed from Cursed Armor into a human, he felt refreshed and ready to go. This was due to Rune being Cursed Armor at a time when humans would sleep and his Cursed Armor form was giving his human form stamina and energy.

In other words, it was like he was sleeping while awake in Cursed Armor.

Rune sat on his hovering platform above the camp. He could see everything around him. The camp below him, the stars above him, even the occasional wandering monster that moved about the desert. He tilted his head upwards at the two moons above.

Nothing happened during the night and Rune had turned back into a human. The others complained that it was really cold during the night and that they should have brought a heater.

Rouna was slightly affected by the cold, but not as much as Erin who practically froze. They were both cold-blooded creatures, but Rouna’s scales helped to regulate the heat in her body.

Incidentally, Elisa came out of her tent with her face as red as a tomato. When several people asked her what was wrong, she shook her head and walked away. Rouna had found another source of heat in the tent and clung onto Elisa during the entire night.

Breakfast was eggs and bacon that seemed to scramble and cook themselves when the sun started to rise. Everyone ate while asking Rune and Rouna for the details of what happened in the caves and they replied quickly.

Then, as a precaution, Rune handed out fully automatic rifles to everyone and five rounds each with a different enchantment. The five enchantments that were given to the magic crystal bullets were sharpness, homing, explosive, blood shedding, and paralyzing.

Each person gladly took one as it was a powerful weapon even with regular bullets. When all of the weapons Rune handed out were owned, the group of ten started to deconstruct camp and head to their second destination.

It was Menigure village which was a bit south west from where they were currently. There was quite a bit of distance between them and Menigure, over three times the distance it took them to get from Nerys to the Frozen Tunnels.

The two wagons were quite large and they placed the cooling device in the middle of them. Rena, Elisa, Riika, Rouna, Hika, and Yula stayed in the wagon in the front with the weaponry and the massive communication radio that Riika operated. Erin, Hyht, and Mynn stayed in the back wagon with the food and tent supplies.

Rune was operating the wagon and was sitting at the front with the lever. He wasn’t with the girls as there were two separate areas in the front wagon. He moved the lever according to Rouna who checking in on him from time to time.

Some of the girls talked about their lives before they went to ALF. They started with Elisa.

“Ahem. I was born 18 years ago in the New Calender of Regis in the year 3272 as it is currently year 3290. I was born to the Rinh noble family who were all made up of extremely powerful knights. My family was sworn to protect the king at all costs and now my older brother, the black knight, is his majesty’s personal guard.

I was raised to use magic in combat and know how to cancel magic as I am now a Mage Killer. I can dispel magic of those weaker than I and I am level 14. I am a bit stronger than an A class adventurer. What about you, Rouna?”

“It all started a very long time ago, 5467 years ago to be exact. I was born in the Calendar of Zekar in the year 4823 and it changed when the Human king’s family changed. I was 2,177 years old when it happened.

I grew up to a family who only used violence when it was necessary. We hunted to eat food and lived in a clan made of Green Dragons. One day, a “messenger” arrived saying that he brought salvation to us. He wanted us to all help him bring Tiamat to Arborea.

Of course, me and my entire clan refused almost immediately and it started to kill us all, one by one. It was the Green Irregular Dragon who deemed it necessary to gather information via us Regular Dragons. I wasn’t a Guardian Dragon at the time. It killed almost everyone, but my parents found a way for me and another child to survive. We were put into the forgotten tunnel system of the village and we crawled through it to survive.

Our clan was one of the most strange and peculiar as everyone in it developed the power and ability to change into a human. We often stayed in those forms unless we hunted or were attacked by intruders. This was the only reason why the Irregular Dragon didn’t follow us. That and the fact that we were only children at the time.

Both of us had no place to go and we decided to split our own separate ways. He is now one of the best blacksmiths in the Human Capital while I was busy protecting other Green Dragons that I went out and found.

I was there for a long time and busied myself with looking at the outer world. So many things happened over the course of 5,447 years and it was all new to me. I was interested at all the marvels and everything, but that interest soon fell apart and I decided to train some people to take my place and guard the others.

That was when I met Rune and Elisa. It seems like I can’t try anything on Rune, but I can mess around with Elisa.”

Elisa voiced a small cry as she heard the last thing that Rouna said. She looked at her as Rouna licked her lips and scanned her entire body. Suddenly, Elisa tried to cover herself and Rouna pounced.

Rune could hear a small kerfuffle in the back, but decided to ignore it. He was more focused on the large shadows he saw a minute earlier.

Rune looked up at the sky to see three enormous white dragons like the Hierarch he saw earlier. He was actually extremely concerned as he had eight easy to kill targets sitting behind him. He quickly pulled out a sniper rifle and used [Physical Enhancement] to aim the rifle at their eyes.

He fired five consecutive shots and reloaded quickly. The three dragon were similar in a way, but also different. Their backs either had no spikes or a large amount, their horns twisted in different direction, and their pupils were different shapes, a square, oval, and a star.

They quickly reacted and only two bullets hit home and one other lodged itself in a wing after being deflected. Rune fired off five more shots and put the gun away. When two dragons descended and another fell out of the sky, one was completely blinded and the other two were half blind. Two of the bullets was in one’s hand and the other had a wounded tail.

The one that fell was the one that was blind and had been shot in the wing. He was getting up off of the ground and roaring. Rune quickly ran over to him and popped something down his throat. Then he ran to the next two and tried to stab them.

It seemed that their scales were too hard and durable and he tried to electrocute them. They felt the sizzling as they swiped at him with all that they had. The blind one was trying to figure out what was going on.

When each of the half blind dragon tried to bite him, he quickly shoved several things down each of their throats. Then he backed away as the others started to come out of the wagons. Some of them were quite frightened at the three dragons in front of them and Rune fished out a button.

Several people looked at that button as he pressed it and the dragons exploded in a fiery gore that spread intestines and internal organs everywhere. It seemed that these dragons were weaker than the first Hierarch Dragon he encountered. Not just because he grew stronger and faster, but also because they seemed to be slower.

Rune examined the remains and saw that only the underbellies of the beasts were opened up as the rest of the scales stayed together. He absorbed two of them and stored one of them. Then he scoured the area and absorbed the remnants of meat and scales around the wagons.

They quickly moved on and everyone got back into the wagon. They traversed the sands and occasionally set up camp along the way.

Many people were extremely bored and tried to stretch as much as they could when they rested. About two days passed before they caught sight of a village in the distance. They neared the village and they saw the village in more detail.

There were no walls and a huge arch at the start of a road. There were multiple buildings that were only one floor high. There was only one building taller than the rest that had two floors. It looked like all of them were made of sandstone, but were more crude than Nerys’s buildings.