„Halt!”

Irena was stopped In Her tracks by a few well camouflaged figures.

“Release your hostage or we will skewer you with arrows!”

She had to clear up the misunderstanding.

“It’s not a hostage, dumbasses, I’m rescuing an injured person. If you have a problem with that, then carry him yourself.”

One of the figures became better visible.

“Lay him on the ground then!”

“Where is my guarantee that you won’t shoot me if I do?”

To Irena, Elven arrows looked just like large toothpicks, but that was no reason to abandon caution. Her eyes were just as vulnerable to stab wounds as ever, even if they could probably grow back.

“We will not shoot you if you hand over the hostage!”

“I fucking told you he isn’t a hostage! Hey, dude? Wake up, we have reached your village. I think.”

The little elf in her hand opened its eyes.

“Hey, stop! It’s me, Alvin! Don’t shoot, this giant promised to deal with the dragon!”

Irene didn’t exactly promise anything, but she planned to kill the ‘lesser water dragon’ anyway, so she just kept quiet. As quiet as she could, anyway. Her stomach rumbled a little.

“Alright, lay Alvin on the ground and wait, we’ll fetch someone smarter! An elder, I mean!”

Irena complied. She was reluctant to part ways with such a funny creature, especially since she was getting kind of lonely without anyone to talk to, but Alvin was injured, and needed better help than she could provide. Clinging to him would be selfish.

“Could you sit on the ground?”

One of the elves asked in a slight German accent. She used [Identify]

[Ranger LV. 23] ‘Oh, fellow ranger, huh?’

“Sure? Should I lay on the ground so we could speak face to face?”

“That won’t be necessary. Is what Alvin told us correct?”

“That I intend to eat a dragon?”

“Please use ‘Lesser’ when referring to lesser dragons, we don’t want any actual dragons to take offense and kill us all. But yes, Are you here to eat our enemy instead of us?”

“Why the ‘Instead’? You people don’t look like something I would be willing to eat, even if I was really, really hungry. And yes, I heard about a big, edible something, that will level me up when I kill it.”

“Alright, come forward. We can’t let you into the village itself, not yet anyway, but we can talk better if you come closer.”

‘I hope this isn’t a trap. I don’t want to massacre anyone, and getting heavily injured would be a hassle too.’

Irena didn’t even entertain the possibility of elves swiftly killing her. Alvis the elf was completely convinced she would succumb to his poison, but she didn’t even feel it kicking in. Even so, he was still scared of leading her to his village.

In other words, she was stronger than he thought when he deemed her a danger, which obviously made her even more dangerous in case she decided to fight them. At worst, she could just run away.

The elf led her forward through brush. She suspected there was a path beneath her feet, but it was obscured to her vision thanks to the perspective.

“Alright, that’s it. There will be an elder here in a minute.”

Irena nodded, and waited, counting seconds. She counted to 57 when she was greeted in a heavy german accent.

“I welcome you to our village. I heard that you intend to help us with our problem?”

“If that ‘problem’ is a big, scary, but edible monster, then sure.”

“State your terms then.”

“I need cooking ingredients, utensils, spices, and so on. Also, information could be nice. I don’t really know what’s beyond this forest.”

“Spices are expensive, utensils would have to be custom made, and I bet you need a lot of ingredients. But I can provide information where to get them, and some gold.”

Crap. Irena was pretty confident in her ability to barter, but she had no idea about the value of money or precious metals here.

“So? How much would you pay me for the subjugation?”

“Does a thousand sound alright?”

Irena had no idea if he tried to con her or not. He probably did, but there was no way to know for sure.

“Well, I’d have to know how big the target is, and what’s its level, among other things.”

“It was in late nineties last time it was sighted.”

“So it possibly broke through to the three digits?”

The elder avoided her gaze.

“Ekhem, I guess that’s possible, if it hunted the crabs in the meantime?’

“How about two thousands?” Irena decided to call for double the number, just to be sure.

“We received heavy casualties, and collateral damage wasn’t small either. We have to rebuild it all somehow, how about eleven hundred fifty nine silver?” The elder smirked. Irena had a hunch he was trying to somehow take advantage of her low intelligence.

But she wasn’t stupid. Confusing her with a long sounding number was a useless move.

“Two thousand. Gold.”

The elder made a face like he had a living crab shoved up his ass.

“Twelve hundred fifty? You can’t rob us like that, think of the long term, we have to rebuild somehow.”

‘Sorry, guilt tripping won’t work if you already tried to low ball me.’

“Sure, but only if your people help me take the entire thing. And sell it somewhere else.”

“Alright, aright. Two thousand in gold, but the leather and bones are ours, how does that sound?”

Well, it’s not like she could lug around something like that, no matter how valuable it could be. Or rather, the more valuable it was, the harder it would be to carry it without people gathering to kill and rob her.

Irena kind of regretted not having some kind of inventory, like in video games. Maybe there would be a skill like that, later down the line? Probably not. Life isn’t that convenient.

“Very well. But you will help me with making a backpack.”

“But you said nothing about a backpack previously?”

“Do you know what inflation is? And besides, I probably won’t even eat the entire thing. Feeding your people with lesser dragon meat sounds valuable enough, no?”

The elder looked sort of like he swallowed an entire, living fish and it tried to reclaim its freedom by flapping its way down.

“Very well, deal.”

He squeezed Irena’s finger in a handshake.

“Now then, can you tell me more about the creature?”

“What’s there to tell? Violent, animalistic, always hungry, and it’s maw would chomp even your legs off.”

“Draw it with a stick.”

The elder drawn a creature from a birds point of view.

“It’s at least twice as long as you.”

‘My, that’s a big ass croc. Or would it be an alligator?’

“Why the heck do I even need to tell you how a lesser water dragon looks like? Come to think of it, I hope you aren’t just talk? Your level is sort of low?”

The elder started to get suspicious, but if there is just one thing modern society teaches people, It’s how to appear perfectly confident without any reason.

“I never bothered to count the amount of beasts vastly above me in level that ended up eaten by me, instead of the other way around. Just tell me when the creature gets near the village again, I want to take a nap”

The elder nodded, and walked off. Irena curled up, leaned against a particularly big tree, and started pretending to be asleep, quiet snoring and all.

The elves watched her, but didn’t approach. It seemed they had no intentions of killing her in her sleep, so she invoked her ability of careful slumber, meticulously trained by falling asleep first on school field trips, and cautiously dozed off.