Continuing to fly away from the city without any clear goal in mind, Scaly found herself flying over several smaller villages inhabited by mostly humans and a few other races. However, in her current state, she didn’t dare slow down and investigate these villages, as she feared any delay could potentially result in that terrifying adventurer catching up with her. After all, she had no idea if that person was chasing after her and she didn’t intend to find out.
Before she ran out of mana and reached a point where she wouldn’t be able to continue flying forward any longer, she didn’t have any plans of stopping no matter what she encountered along the way.
Because of this, as a little more than an hour flew by since she had escaped from the chaotic battlefield, Scaly found herself still full of strength even as her mana had already reached critical levels. Although it was possible for her to continue flying for another few hours relying on her own strength alone, she had already managed to calm down and realized that the terrifying adventurer likely wasn’t chasing after her.
Not just because the other party hadn’t appeared behind her, but also because she realized that he would most likely be busy dealing with the monster that continued to appear around the entrance to the Howling Caverns Dungeon or those that had managed to escape from the city before his arrival.
With that in mind, Scaly understood that it was unlikely for him to have chased after her for so long. Even more so because she hadn’t felt anyone chasing her or trying to attack her from behind so far.
In the end, to test whether she was being chased or not, while still having the ability to escape, Scaly decided to slowly decrease her speed by a bit. Allowing anyone that might have been chasing her to catch up.
But, after half an hour of slowly decreasing her speed and at the same time also using the time to recover some of her strength by just gliding through the air, Scaly didn’t see anyone appearing behind her. Making her certain once and for all that she wasn’t being chased- or at the very least, she had managed to shake off anyone who might have been chasing after her.
This realization made her feel a great sense of relief, while at the same time also making the exhaustion that had slowly been building since, she rushed out through the dungeon entrance and joined the chaotic battlefield, rush to the forefront.
Although not enough to force down from the sky and onto the ground, it made her feel like she was running on nothing more than fumes, as she understood that she had to find somewhere to safely sleep and recover her strength.
As for the hunger she was feeling from not having eaten anything for some time now... That would have to wait until after she woke up.
At the very least, looking down below her, she realized that she had left the somewhat populated area she had been flying over before and now found herself above a seemingly endless forest that formed a sea of green filled with monsters for her to hunt down for food when she woke up.
The main problem that she faced wasn’t a lack of food when she woke up, but instead finding somewhere she would be able to sleep safely without potentially being ambushed while sleeping and ending up like a certain mole lord had after being ambushed while sleeping.
However, as she looked out over the sea of green that stretched as far as she could see, there wasn’t exactly anywhere for her to hide away and enjoy a good sleep without potentially being found by the local monsters in the process. After all, as much as she liked how much larger and more intimidating, she had become after her fifth evolution, she also understood that the much larger size made her far easier to notice. Even more so considering how her appearance didn’t exactly blend in with the forest...
Huh? Mountains!
But just as she was about to give up hope of finding somewhere suitable to fall asleep and just descend into the forest and trying her best at digging out somewhere for herself to hide while sleeping, she spotted several towering mountains suddenly appearing at the edge of her vision. Forming a majestic mountain range that undoubtedly had several far more suitable locations for her to sleep without being discovered compared to the forest below.
Whoosh~!
Showing not the slightest bit of hesitation upon this realization, Scaly used what little strength was still left in her body to flap her wings. Accelerating herself towards the mountain range in the distance filled with anticipation thinking about finding somewhere to safely sleep without having to worry about being ambushed by any monsters in the process.
Rooar-!?
Ssss~?
R-Roooar...?
But, while she utilized what little mana, she had recovered during her little gliding session to further accelerate her own speed, she hadn’t realized that the wind generated by the single flap of her wings caused the trees beneath her to shake violently. Earning the surprised exclamations of the monsters and animals below, as they all looked up in horror at what looked to them like nothing more than a blur in the sky above.
"W-What was that?!"
"A flying monster! And such powerful wind... How strong is it?"
"I don’t know... Thomas, you are the one knowledgeable about monsters. Do you know what kind of flying monster that was?"
Outside of just the monsters that were startled by the violent wind, a group of adventurers around ten strong were similarly taken aback, as they all slowly turned their attention towards the one called Thomas, a scholarly looking young man in a simple mage robe.
"I’m not sure, I didn’t manage to get a good look at that monster, but from what I can tell, it should be a powerful monster. At least A Rank, as for the wind, it should be due to that flying monster using wind magic to accelerate itself forward.
Hah... A flying monster capable of using wind magic. Even an S Rank Monster is easier to deal with than a flying monster like that..."
"Flying monster using wind magic? Indeed... Catching something like that is difficult even for S Rank Adventurers, let alone us."
"Haha, don’t worry about it, it didn’t attack us and just passed by."
"Don’t worry about it? Didn’t you see the direction that monster was flying? It was heading towards the Thousand Spire Mountain Range! And where are we heading...?"
"That... I didn’t think about that... Looks like we will have to prepare in case we end up running into it in the future..."
As the group of adventurers chatted amongst each other following Thomas’s brief and somewhat hesitant explanation of the monster that had flown past above them, Thomas himself couldn’t help frowning slightly as he tried to sense the lingering mana in the air to get a better clue about what kind of monster had just flown past.
Although he didn’t show it to the rest, he had clearly sensed that the strength of that monster was far from ordinary. Not to mention, he was familiar with the mana of most flying monsters in this region and didn’t recognize the one that had just flown by.
Maybe it was just a higher evolution of another monster he was already familiar with, but the chances of that was low, as he was well aware of the different flying monsters who were proficient in wind magic in the region and none of them seemed to be anywhere close to as terrifying as the presence he had just felt.
A single evolution was far from enough to allow a monster to grow so powerful. Not to mention, he should still have been able to pick up some familiar presence in the mana itself.
The fact that he couldn’t meant that this flying monster might be a new one he hadn’t encountered before... And given his familiarity with the region and monsters that inhabited the Thousand Spire Mountain Range, he could almost say with absolute certainty that the monster that had just flown past them was one that wasn’t originally from the Thousand Spire Mountain Range.
But... For such a powerful monster to suddenly appear, there had to be a reason and most of the time, the reason for such a powerful monster migrating to a new region was because it had been pushed out of its old territory.
And given the strength of that monster, a monster strong enough to push what he assumed to be a top ranking A Rank Monster out, would at least have to be an S Rank Monster.
An S Rank Monster emerging now... The only thing he could think that might have been able to cause such a powerful monster to emerge would be the recent chaos that had struck the Great Sky Kingdom...