Journey Period VII: Local Dragon God Destroys a Dungeon

[ ~ Chapter • Start ~ ]

Hans stood on the regrown Buddy's head, staring at the horde of dragons older than the both of them. Their sheer numbers of 65 alone intimidated Buddy, yet Hans merely comforted him.

"Buddy, if you keep your tail between your legs then we'll die without honor!" Hans yelled as he jumped backwards and before landing on the dragon's back, he created a saddle to land his butt on and a rein that would allow him to lead his dragon out of danger. "Now, let's end out obstacles and get our rewards!"

With a new vigor and determination burning deep into the dragon's heart, it narrowed it's eyes and expanded it's wings, before using wind magic to fly upwards and towards the wild red dragons that want nothing but their annihilation.

A reason was that there are rewards awaiting them. Another reason was that they really want to survive this place. And the last reason was that Buddy believed Hans was strong enough but still needed it's help.

They're why they were charging straight towards their possible doom, or the dragons that were becoming closer and closer to them in this massive dome that is around 4.75 km wide, for some reason Hans knows that it was naturally made because this was a dungeon that was densely packed with natural mana.

The wild dragons began to move in a fan formation, before their chests began to noticably expand and they realized that a massive volley of fire would soon consume the both of them.

"Buddy, do not fear. Keep moving forward!" Hans reassured his dragon, as he let go of the reins and began to channel mana to his open palms.

Several stacks of magic circles appeared right above said palms as he put his hands in front of him, moving said circles to seemingly protect both him and his companion.

While he had done exactly that, the sixty dragons breathed out streams of flame out of their open maws. Those flames converged into one, brighter and stronger stream of draconic wrath equal to a King-ranked fire spell that swiftly approached Hans and Buddy at speeds breaking the speed of sound.

When the stream of flames almost reached our protagonist and his companion, Hans smirked.

"[Dragon Gate]!" He yelled, as a western dragon that bit its own tail to form a ring, like the ouroboros, appeared in front of the both of them.

It began to absorb the flames through the middle of the ring, while both Hans and Buddy slowly began to feel energized through the entire process.

"Good grief, if I didn't make the barrier earlier, we'd have been burnt to near death!" Hans commented after the flames vanished.

To be honest, he didn't fully know how to use the complete Dragon Gate spell until now. His understanding of it was quite shallow, until after his mother imparted her gifts to him.

"O' Guardian of mine, awaken!" With that command, the dragon that materialized in front of him opened its maw to reveal its tail, before awakening into a silver-scaled, gold-eyed, four-winged dragon longer than the average human.

The dragon wasn't as big as Buddy, but the red scaled dragon already felt like he found a rival.

Hans, with full confidence, grabbed onto the reins when Buddy flew forward to fight the wild dragons

Aside from that.... the four winged silver dragon felt like a part of him, and he is capable of manipulating it through will alone. Which is good enough.

The moment they were close enough, Buddy began to engulf it's claws, fangs and tail with touki, just as it always did after continuous instructions, and using its experience through their adventures, it maneuvered around an enemy dragon's claw and swiped at the neck of its enemy.

One strike was enough to deeply make a large gash that cut off an enemy dragon's breathing. Buddy retreated immediately to evade a desperate maw which was about to bite him, and the silver dragon finished off another dragon.

Their combined efforts were not without reward, though as despite being outnumbered, it seemed like skill and smarts alone was enough.

Yet, it actually began to tire and slow down Buddy, plus the unintended side effect of manipulating the silver dragon was that it was heavily consuming on Hans's mana and stamina.

The moment he realized this, was when he did find out he was kind of reckless this time.

Cursing under his breath, he dispelled the silver dragon before absorbing the remaining particles of light after it was dispelled, giving him back a large digit of his mana.

He stared up the sky, and noticed the dungeon crystal pulsating with energy, as if it was a beating heart.

"I'll have to break that to pieces, then...." He muttered, raising his hands toward the pulsating crystal. "I'll have to.... plagiarize..... fuck."

Well, he had no choice, though.

"Buddy, keep us in a safe distance!"

The dragon understood, and immediately fled from the enemy dragon as Hans stood on his saddle.

"Ka.... me..."

Hans pulled his hands to his hip, as a ball of pure mana began to form between his cupped hands.

"Ha..... me....."

The ball of pure mana began to compress, as its density grew stronger. Knowing this was enough, he threw his hands forward and released the compressed mana towards the crystal.

"Haaaaa!!!!!!!"

The released mana turned into a very powerful beam of blue light that eradicated whatever had been touched by it. It slammed onto the crystal, which, eventually, broke and allowed the beam to pierce through the sky.

After it vanished, Hans reflexively sat back down to the saddle, breathing and sweating heavily.

"Buddy! Let's get out of here through that hole I made!" He yelled, just before the entire dungeon began to shake.

And knowing this, Buddy immediately began flying with all he has left, by being faster than how he was supposed to fly.

Luckily enough, Hans shot mana strings from his fingers and collected several glowing shards that were previously from the dungeon's core.

And then, they successfully fled, not before Buddy gained several injuries from falling rocks, but they were healed through Hans's learned spells.

They both laid down on a mountainside to rest while watching a small mountain collapse on itself.

Buddy lightly growled towards the direction of a small carriage from far away, but Hans turned his back on that group, surprising his companion.

"What about the Fleeting Feathers, huh? They believed that I had died and probably wouldn't return to then, somehow."

A small, unnoticeable smile was present on his face.

"But.... It ain't my time to return yet. We still have somebody to retrieve."

After that, they began to head east, continuing their journey to Millis Continent by flying through the sea, not minding if a masked familiar had stopped following them....

.... except an entire flying fortress began to literally follow them on the spot.

[ ~ Chapter • End ~ ]

Upcoming Chapters:

Journey Period Epilogue: Elfrieda B̶o̶r̶e̶a̶s̶ ̶G̶r̶e̶y̶r̶a̶t̶ Silverflame

And....

Dragon God's Road I: The Remote Island of Hans Orsted

[ OMAKE ]

In the meanwhile, Almanfi had returned to the Chaos Breaker under Perugius's command.

By far, he knew that this mission of his was the longest. Reporting through hours, with breaks and pauses somewhere between to allowing Perugius to absorb several important parts of his reports was becoming quite tiring.

One of them was receiving letters from a human noble child from the west every single month. It was a month ago when that child stoped sending letters, but that really wasn't important to them at all.

Perugius did not really believe that the child; Hans, as he was called, could still be safe alone, understandably because he was possibly the only kin Perugius has right now.

Therefore, he focused on moving the fortress to observe Hans, and later show themselves personally.