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I pulled the big door open, and stepped out into the cool night air. Our rescuers hadn't made it to us yet so we still had a little time.

"Hey Savannah," I looked around slowly at the destroyed camp around us, "Whatever that podium had said about me freaked that Shaun guy out. Do you wanna find out what it said?"

"Even if it couldn't identify you," Savannah seemed to think it over as she spoke, "It should be able to tell us what planet you came from."

I took one step then froze. I looked up onto the roof of the bunker, and there was a massive griffin just laying there. It's head was up as it looked down at the two of us. On her back was a smaller griffin which I had freed yesterday. I leaned it's head down slowly as it examined us.

Then it focused on me.

"Wyatt?" Savannah's mana was building.

"Relax," I held my hand out her direction slowly, and deliberately, "If she wanted to kill us I'm pretty sure she would have already."

The massive griffin standing before us leaned down her head slowly, and dropped her kill in front of me. Then raised her head back up slowly. That was when I realized that there was a much smaller griffin perched on her back. One that I had freed yesterday. I approached the kill slowly, and picked it up throwing it over my shoulder.

Then I backed away slowly. The griffin nodded slowly. I nodded back. She spread her massive wings slowly, and flew away. Savannah was knocked down by the massive gusts of wind that were left in the griffin's wake.

I managed to keep my footing, but I dropped the kill in the process.

"What was that?" Savannah got up dusting her rear off.

"She paid me for freeing her baby," I looked down at the kill she'd offered.

It was a reptilian version of a horse. Heavily armored. Only it's general shape resembled that of a horse. Even the shape of it's head was about right for a horse. I formed my ice sword with one hand, and slide it through the creature's hide smoothly.

I melted my sword quickly, and reached in to pull out the creature's crystal. I looked at the crystal carefully. It was smaller than the Basilisk's crystal, but it still had some impressive power to it.

"Is it okay if I?" I rolled the crystal around in my hands.

"No," Savannah snapped, "We still don't know what the Basilisk crystal did to you?"

"I do," I started absorbing the crystal, "Besides this one is way weaker. I just get a little boost from the weak ones."

Shora crystal absorbed 150 xp awarded. 335/3200 xp until level 13.

I wanted to see how it tasted, but my instincts told me to suck my mana in so I did that instead. Less than an hour later a pretty powerful mage walked into the clearing. It didn't matter how much he was suppressing his mana I could tell at a glance he had at least double the amount of mana I did.

"Dad!" Savannah spotted him almost a minute after I did.

She got up, and ran to her father. He scooped her up in his grip. He wasn't a particularly big man, but that didn't seem to matter as he locked eyes with me. He just had that look in his eyes that shouted I can kill you anytime. I dropped my eyes.

"This is Wyatt," Savannah who was completely oblivious to my internal turmoil due to the joy of her father coming to get her directly, "He's stronger than he looks. He saved my life."

***

Meanwhile in a broken down tent a genetic readout is still displaying it's results.

UNKNOWN ARCHAIC SPECIES SCANNED

MANA LEVEL 10

PLANET OF ORIGIN Earth

AGE 2 months

To be continued in volume two. The Archaic Dragon Mage Volume 2 Storm Dragon's Path.

I will be cleaning up what I've written so far, and putting it together as a completed novel. I will not be continuing the story for the time being as I work on edits. I may work on other story ideas in the mean time, but for now this one is paused.

I will be releasing a salable copy through amazon in a few weeks for anyone that loves the feel of real paper or doesn't want to dink around with a slow app.