Early Afternoon - Late Spring : Kingdom of Kaelallan

-Man I miss this..- I was laying on my back in the middle of the field, enjoying the warmth of the sun.

-I had a productive morning so I shall reward myself with a nap!- Tricking myself into thinking I deserved a nap, I slowly closed my eyes to rest.

Earlier in the morning, I ended up only eating a small amount of the bison and giving the rest to Father before going and catching another.

When I got back, I cleaned it, being sure to not let it bleed too much this time, and froze it.

I slapped a temperature control rune on it as well so I wouldn't have to watch over it to keep it cold.

Once I finished preparing it, I placed it just inside the hall so whenever mother woke up she could eat it.

Now I was just sunbathing while waiting for Mother to wake up.

-Hm? What's that?- I felt an unusual aura and looked over to see a small black cat with a small blue ball on its head just inside the tree line.

The instant I met eyes with it though, it darted off and disappeared into the forest.

It wasn't too unusual for animals in the forest to come check us out by walking to the edge of the clearing, but that cat was special.

-That amount of aura doesn’t belong to a dinky little cat..- Although not a monumental amount of aura, it was far more than what you'd expect from even a B or A rank monster.

I thought about following it for a second but figured it was already too far gone by now and would take too long to find.

"Haah.." -Its probably nothing anyways..-

Easing my mind once more, I closed my eyes and enjoyed the sun.

- Captain Abbie Lassaar ~

"Captain! It's too deep here, we can't stay here for long!"

"I know, I know. We will get moving again soon." -Once she gets back, we can start to plan ahead a little..-

I turned back and walked into my cabin to continue waiting.

Just inside the door, I looked over into a mirror.

A tall and mature woman with messy brown hair wearing a torn and dirty red captain's uniform stared back at me.

-Hey.. I look pretty good today.-

-Haah.. what am I thinking about..- I quickly shook my head and continued to my desk.

We were a group of pirates hired by Toria, a Nation extremely far north and situated on a remote island in the middle of nowhere.

Toria's King tasked us with finding a location to start an adventurer's town on the back side of this mountain.

On paper, it would allow for a huge amount of expansion, giving Toria a perfectly placed military city and increasing Toria's revenue and natural resources several fold, but there was something the higher ups neglected to realize.

-Those noble bast*rds don't know how dangerous this damn forest is.. if the pay wasn't so crazy I would’ve ignored them..-

I knew first hand how horrifying the creatures in the forest were. There were field bison bigger than you could imagine and S rank monsters around every corner. It was a place where only a few adventurers that wandered in, managed to wander out of.

I looked down at my stomach and looked at the massive scar across it.

The scar was a constant reminder of a bad memory and my mood worsened. -Rich bast*rds..- I threw myself into the chair at my desk, setting my captains hat on my desk.

I looked over onto my desk where I had a map laid out.

"Ugh.." It was a map of the known parts of the peninsula and the forest, the issue was that the only known parts were the shorelines.

Pretty much the entire area bordering the sea were tall cliffs so when we mapped it, we could only map the cliffs.

If we wanted to actually go in there, we were left with no choice but to land on the mountain side and climb over or around it, or go a few thousand kilometers north and go in up there.

Since the long way would take too long and was way too dangerous, we were forced to take the mountain side.

-But I'm not going to get myself killed the moment I walk over that mountain..- I sent my 'cat' up the cliff by the mountain to scout the area and make sure there wasn't some mythical beast on the back side of the mountain.

*Tap-tap-tap-tap*

-Speak of the devil..- I turned around and saw a black cat walking through the doorway.

I quickly hopped up from my chair and ran to close the door.

*Slam*

I turned back to the cat with a childish smile. "Come here Muffin!"

I opened up my arms and Muffin came and jumped into them, curling around my head and meowing.

"Meow!" His appearance managed to bring my awful mood back to a happy one as always.

"Did you find something interesting?" I reached up and pulled off a small blue artifact on her head.

I quickly brought it back to my desk and set it in a special contraption that looked like a regular box without a lid.

Light appeared in the little box-like artifact and started showing tons of images in sequence. (A video)

-What a truly marvelous artifact..-

The small blue artifact was one that would record whatever it looked at for a short period of time and when paired with this other, box-like artifact, you could actually view them.

It was truly a feat of technology.

I managed to get my hands on it at an old era artifact auction after dropping 3 platinum on it. -I paid a ton for this so let's see how good it is..-

Looking into the box, I saw that the artifact started displaying images from when I first attached it to Muffin but it only took a moment to start displaying the inside of the forest since Muffin scaled the cliff so quickly.

Above the cliff, the ground foliage was fairly thick, so visibility was awful, but occasionally Muffin came into these big clearings where you could see various monsters out and about.

Most of it was as expected. -We will die if we go in there..- There were simply too many strong monsters.

But the artifact continued to display images.

-Another clearing? This should be right on the backside of the mountain..- I shifted in my chair to get a close look, being sure I wouldn't miss a detail.

As the light dimmed, it showed a huge field leading up to the back side of the mountain, but there was a serious problem.

In the middle of the field, there was a gigantic black monster.

-A.. dragon..- I was instantly entranced.

It was a creature with a surreal beauty to it. Even though I was just looking at it through an artifact, it was as if I could feel its suffocating presence.

I was staring at it in a trance when its eyes opened, revealing its purple irises with void like black pupils.

It looked right at the artifact and felt like it was directly into my very being.

A fear unlike any other filled my body, my legs went weak and I lost my breath as I disconnected the artifact from the display in a panic.

*Gasp* "Haah.. haah.." I clenched my chest as I tried to catch my breath.

-We aren't going up there.. if those royal bast*rds want to die so bad, they can go confront that thing themselves..-

I quickly got up from my desk and shakily ran and opened the door.

"We!.. Are leaving.. RIGHT NOW!"

All of the crew stared at me in shock as they saw my pale face and shaking legs.

"Did you not hear me?! MOVE YOUR LAZY AS*ES AND GET US OUT OF HERE!"