Riyala could feel hundreds of eyes on her as she moved around the nests, and she could almost taste Fenrir’s intensity from how much he was growling at the dragons around them! The mother dragons and wyverns were curled up in their nests with their tails wrapped around their children to keep them safe, and there were various male dragons and wyverns standing around and watching over the females. They were all looking at Riyala with distrust in their eyes, and Riyala knew that a single mistake here would mean the end of her life.
Another memory from when she was younger suddenly resurfaced in Riyala’s thoughts. It was a memory of her mother before the day she was meant to go into the forest to select her wyvern. She had asked her mother if the dragons in the forest were going to have lots of treasure, just like the dragons she had read about in stories. But her mother had shaken her head at that question and answered with a smile.
"No, no, little one, you can’t generalize dragons like that. The dragons are a very old race that exist in many different worlds, and they don’t all have the desire for glitter and gold. The only dragons I have heard of with the desire to hoard treasures are the Silversnout dragons that exist in the world known as Indar. They love gold so much that they started eating any gold they find, so no one could steal it from them, and this made their entire body shine with a golden light like the sun!"
"Wow! That’s amazing, mama! I want to get a Silversnout dragon! They sound so cool!"
"Haha, sorry, baby, but you can’t get a Silversnout. Indar is more than a hundred Dimensional Leaps away. You’ll have to leave all of us behind if you want to go there! But you know, just because the dragons here do not want to hoard gold, that doesn’t mean they don’t have anything that they love. In the case of our dragons and wyvern, their one true love is the Ashnvalley Forest itself. That forest has been in existence long before our race was born, and every dragon in Radagan has dedicated their lives to protecting that forest till the day they die."
This conversation stayed with Riyala all this time, and now that Riyala was this deep inside the forest, she could finally understand her mother’s words from before. There was no gold or silver around the dragons here, but each one of them was intertwined with the forest in ways that Riyala couldn’t begin to understand. Riyala knew that these were true Nature Dragons.
"You. Come closer~"
Riyala suddenly jolted when she heard a voice echo from somewhere in front of her! She turned forward to try to see who had spoken, but she wasn’t able to see anything. The large red dragon continued to walk forward, and it passed a few more trees before Riyala finally saw something right in the center of the forest. It was a large, monumental rock that towered over them like a mountain. The rock was sitting directly in the middle of all the dragon nests that circled it, and Riyala realized that she was looking at the centerpiece of the forest. There was a large cavity on one side of the rock that led into a dark inner chamber, and Riyala watched as the large red dragon sat down outside the rock and curled in on itself disinterestedly. Was it telling them to go inside that cavity? What in the world was in there!?
Riyala could sense Fenrir’s hesitation as well, since it also didn’t know what was in the cavity, but Riyala had already come too far for her to stop now. Someone had called her here because they were willing to hear her out, so she wasn’t going to leave until she got the help she wanted! Riyala took a deep breath and released it in a huff as she steeled her nerve, and then she urged Fenrir forward! The wolf only hesitated for a few more seconds before it finally followed her command and slowly walked into the darkness.
...
[The Eastern Town of Hulmund.]
[With Gina]
"Don’t let them surround us!"
Gina let out a loud yell towards the rest of Jason’s Legion as she commanded the Skyking to fly towards the horde of dragons that were heading their way. Things had gotten very serious in the past few minutes since the battle started, and Gina knew that this was the moment that would make or break this battle. The first few waves of enemies had been easy to deal with. Those dragon riders had been nothing but rogues. They didn’t have any formal training or formations, and Gina knew that any regular A or S Rank on Earth would have been able to take them on! But things had changed once the Imperial Guards started arriving at the town! There was an Imperial Guard outpost close to every town for their protection, and the Imperial Guards hadn’t come at first because they didn’t think that Gina and the Legion were that serious of an issue. But once the Imperial Guards saw the fires burning and releasing smoke across the sky and heard the reports of how easily the enemies were killing the rogues, they didn’t have any choice but to come out!
There were more than fifty Imperial Guards with their dragons that arrived at the town, and Gina was putting up her best fight against them! The Imperial Guards weren’t like the Royal Army, that were all S Rank. The Guards themselves were only A Rank in strength, while their dragons were around S Rank, so Gina decided that the best way to handle them was to focus on killing the riders and then dealing with the dragons after! Gina swerved the Skyking out of the way of a powerful dragon breath, and she sent a massive arrow towards the dragon rider who had attacked her! The arrow slammed into the dragon instead, and Gina could see the dragon getting angrier as it chased after her! At the side, one of the Rook Rank Falcons that Gina was controlling died, and she could see how all the pawns that had been under that rook suddenly got stronger as they received power through the [Pawn’s Gambit] skill and started to fight back harder! Gina didn’t think that it would make much of a difference since the Radagan soldiers were mainly Rooks, but at least, they got better as distractions!
Woosh!
Gina held on tight as the Skyking went into a dive and then began to unleash its iron feathers on any enemy that dared to come closer! Gina created fifty more wind arrows and fired them off all around her, but she frowned when she saw that the arrows weren’t enough to take out the dragon riders!
Anytime an arrow hit one of the dragon riders, it would push them back or disorient them for a few seconds, but it wasn’t enough to kill them! Since Gina was only a Rook Rank I, she was around the same level as the A Rank Imperial Guards, so it was impossible for her to use her arrows to wound them!
’I need something more dangerous. The arrows aren’t enough!’
Gina watched as a dragon from Jason’s Legion managed to take out the Imperial Guard that she had disoriented, and the Skyking quickly did an insane barrel roll that allowed them to get out of the way of the dragon that had been chasing them all along! The dragon slammed into the ground hard since it wasn’t able to stop quickly enough, and the Skyking quickly began to unleash its feathers on the dragon and its rider! The Skyking was a Rook Rank II with extremely powerful feathers, so it wasn’t difficult for it to kill the rider and cause serious damage to the dragon before it took off again!