[*Ding* Reached level 18]
Happily continuing her slaughter of the mountain crusher worms that seemed to be streaming out of the debris left behind by the mountain that had just crumbled to the ground, Scaly found her level once again increasing within a relatively short period of time. Feeling for the first time since escaping into the swirling sands dungeon what it was like to rapidly progress her strength.
The only problem she foresaw was the adventurers who had been chasing her showing up to interrupt this wonderful situation she found herself in…
"Look! The dragon is over there!"
"Not just the dragon… So many of worms as well…"
"Don't worry about those worms, they are mountain crusher worms, even inside a dungeon, they are practically harmless. The only thing they target, be it inside or outside a dungeon, is mountains."
And indeed, just as part of her mind drifted towards the problem that was adventurers, the problem in question reared its ugly head at the edge of the mountain range she found herself in.
Although this was to be expected given the fact that she hadn't been flying for long since she had run into the last group of adventurers, it was still immensely annoying to run into these adventurers just as she found a perfect spot to rapidly increase her own strength.
Ptsh~ Splat!
[Gained 6524 Exp]
Maybe because of that, even with a group of adventurers showing up, Scaly continued to cut her way through the mountain crusher worms. Not because she wasn't worried about those adventurers ambushing her while she was looking the other way, but instead because a single glance in the direction of those adventurers revealed that they weren't anywhere near strong enough to threaten her even if they combined their strength together.
In other words, they were most likely a scouting unit that had broken off from a larger group of adventurers to search for her.
As for why she didn't rush over to kill off this group of scouting adventurers nowhere near strong enough to threaten her? That was because she had already tried doing something like that in the past. Only to end up in failure as they pulled out some kind of strange crystal that created a barrier around them and prevented her attacks from reaching them.
Even if she was more than strong enough to destroy this barrier that appeared around them at the time, it would still take time to get through… And by the time she did almost get through the barrier back then, the larger group of adventurers behind this scouting group showed up and saved them. Forcing her to escape in the process.
Just thinking about this was infuriating, causing her to throw an even more annoyed glance in the direction of the group of adventurers observing her from afar. Feeling no small degree of frustration that she couldn't kill off these annoying adventurers.
Still… Even if she did have the ability to kill, she doubted she would even bother to do so.
After all, to deal with these adventurers, she would be forced to shift her attention away from the mountain crusher worms, something that would undoubtedly cost her far more than what little experience she would get from killing those weak adventurers only barely around level 80.
The slight lapse in attention from their appearance alone already being enough for more than a dozen mountain crusher worms that would originally have been cut down by her to slip through and burrow into the mountain behind her.
"Huh? The dragon isn't trying to fly away this time around?" Observing Scaly from a distance as she resumed her hunt of the mountain crusher worms after glancing towards them, one of the adventurers could not help murmuring to himself with a surprised look on his face. Not expecting Scaly to still linger around even after she discovered them.
After all, this wasn't exactly their first time running into Scaly and during those past encounters, she would always throw a few water based magic blades towards them in annoyance at their presence before flying away.
"Don't be too surprised, these mountain crusher worms are immensely beneficial to hunt down not just for adventurers like us, but also other monsters and even more so the dragon in front of us." Rolling his eyes at murmur of his companion, one of the other adventurers decided to give a quick lecture about the usefulness of the mountain crusher worms. Knowing that they didn't have much to do other than watch the battle playing out from afar before the larger group behind them showed up.
"Indeed, if I'm not wrong, the dragon should be unwilling to give up on those mountain crusher worms. Reluctant to leave behind such a good source of experience." Nodding his head from the side, a third adventurer chimed in. Soon enough causing the rest of the group to join in on the conversation as everyone threw out their own ideas about the situation.
For Scaly, who was forced to listen to this noisy crowd from afar, this only made her more annoyed with these adventurers chasing after her.
Wishing that she could just exterminate all of them and be done with.
Still, their babbling did give her some more insights into the mountain crusher worms that she was cutting down. Learning that the worms were a well known easy to kill monster found not only on the fourth floor of the swirling sands dungeon, but also outside of it and within other dungeons.
In fact, according to these adventurers, mountain crusher worms could be found inside almost every single dungeon out there.
The only problem was, getting to them was far from simple, as they tended to live inside a mountain their entire lives. Consuming it from the inside until it collapsed.
Only when the mountain they called home collapsed would they emerge for a short time as they rushed towards the closest mountain.
Because of this, along with them having a special skill that made them close to impossible to sense with magic, it was almost impossible to hunt them down by simply destroying the mountain they resided inside of, as even though they were common, there might be thousands of mountains within a dungeon floor with only one of them having mountain crusher worms inside of it.
Destroying all the mountains to find them would simply not be worth the effort. Not to mention, there was always a chance that there were no mountain crusher worms on a floor filled with mountains like the fourth floor of the swirling sands dungeon.
Encountering them like she had ended up doing could be considered a miracle in and of itself because of how rare it was.
Learning about this, Scaly felt even more like she couldn't just leave these mountain crusher worms and run away. Ignoring the chatter from the adventurers completely as she focused entirely on killing as many of the mountain crusher worms as possible before the strong adventurers behind this group of scouting adventurers showed up.
Hoping that she would be able to go all the way to level 20 before that happened.
Unrealistic as this might be considering the fact that she guessed the adventures behind this group of scouting adventurers had to be the same as the ones that had ended up chasing her off not too long ago, she could always hope that this group of adventurers were unlucky and ran into a group of powerful monsters along the way. Slowing down their speed and hampering their ability to interfere with her as she happily cut down one mountain crusher worm after the other.
After all, compared to her who could fly through the sky of the fourth floor and whose majestic presence alone was more than enough to intimidate any flying monsters on the fourth floor from attacking her so far, the adventurers had to move along the ground and would end up having to clear the monsters that blocked their path along the way.
Even if these large groups of adventurers chasing after her were more than powerful to ensure their own safety on the fourth floor, S Rank Monsters were still more than capable of delaying them and slowing them down. Even more so if there was more than a single S Rank Monster attacking them.
At the end of the day, the fourth floor of the swirling sands dungeon was still a deadly place that had claimed the lives of S Rank Adventurers in the past, so there were certain monsters that even someone like she had to be careful of- or at least that was what she guessed after listening to the description of some of the more powerful monsters that could be found on the fourth floor of the dungeon from the adventurers chasing after her.
For now, she had yet to encounter one of these powerful monsters strong enough to challenge her… And part of her doubted that they existed, as she felt like she should have encountered one of them by now given how much of the fourth floor she had already explored during her escape from the adventurers chasing after her...