Chương 120: Chapter 118: Chasing a dragon

We spot our first dragon the next day, about halfway to the next small town. I see it flying through the air and am able to tell that it is not Balak, mostly by the color. I don't quite understand how I can discern color from that far away, but I can tell that this dragon is blue, not red. I wonder how many different colors of dragons there are. The only problem with spotting this dragon is that we have no way of signaling to it to get it to land. We have no way to engage in conversation.

Basically, all we can do is watch it fly and try to figure out where it's going, where it will land, and try to intercept it. We could try shooting a spell at it, but it's well out of range of any of my magic, and seems to be out of range of Vincent's as well. We do our best to keep an eye on the dragon as we travel. Luckily, it seems to largely be following the road, so we're able to keep it in sight as we move along the road. We try waving at it, but I don't see how that's going to help.

"I'm not sure I understand the point of this," Vincent says. He is floating above the road still, facing whoever he is talking to without changing his trajectory or the direction he is moving. Makes me wonder if he can fly upwards and maybe intercept the dragon that way.

"We don't have any reason to believe that the god slayer talked to this dragon."

"The dragons just seem to know what's going on," I say.

"They must talk to each other or something. They're our best bet for finding her."

"Maybe we should do something that would get her to find us," Ash suggests.

"Can we think of anything that would draw her attention?"

"Maybe killing a dragon," I say.

"But we don't want to do that. That's not the kind of attention we want to get from her. We're not trying to fight her."

"I feel like we should be leveling up, just in case," El says.

"I mean, she's level seventy three, right? We can't stand up against that with what we have. We need to level up so we can meet her on fair footing."

"Do you really think we can gain another thirty levels fast enough to catch up with her?" Ash asks.

"I don't think that's realistic."

"I want to know how she got that level in the first place," I say.

"Level forty one is going to cost me two hundred thousand experience. How is she getting so many millions of experience points in the first place?"

"Maybe she's doing quests that give levels instead of experience," Gigi says.

"Like the crafting quests. A lot of those are rewarded in levels rather than experience. I saw a crafting quest that gave two levels to anyone who completed it."

"What was the quest?" El asks.

"To make a full suit of armor of at legendary quality, at least six pieces in the set." I have no idea how long that would take. Maybe a few days, maybe a few months. I don't know how long it takes to make a full suit of armor. I know that it takes a few hours to make a pair of boots, and I know that you can make a weapon in a little under an hour if you do it right. Though I don't know if that's true for something more complicated and bigger than a dagger.

"Do we want to stop traveling for a while and start working on crafting?" I ask.

"We could probably gain several levels if we do it that way."

"No way," El says.

"I don't want to be an NPC."

"Not all crafters are NPCs," Gigi says.

"It's just a different way of living."

"I like fighting," El says.

"And I like using my stats. I worked hard to get to this level. I don't want to essentially start over just in the hopes of getting a few more levels. Let's just find more monsters to kill." The problem is that there aren't that many monsters in this area. With towns set up roughly every sixty or seventy miles, there just isn't that much space that is still given to the wild. And you need wild areas to house the monsters. Any big monsters between us and the god slayer have probably already been killed.

Likely by the god slayer. And monsters just don't respawn consistently.

"We need treasure," I say, still watching the dragon fly overhead.

"Bribery worked with Balak. It might work here."

"How did you first get in touch with Wrax?" Ash asks me.

"I found him when he was hunting," I say.

"I came across him while he was eating."

"So can we do the same?" Ash asks.

"Can we follow this dragon until they stop to eat?" I shrug.

"I don't know how often dragons eat. I don't really know much about them in general."

"I don't know why we need the dragon," Vincent says.

"Shouldn't we be able to figure out the kind of trail that the god slayer is leaving? I mean, she isn't just passing through the world without interacting with it, right? She has a goal, something she's trying to do."

"But most of that involves dragons," I say.

"Dragons are worth a lot of experience, and they seem to be the only ones who really know what's going on in the world."

"But we have no way to contact them," Vincent says.

"We can't exactly wave a flag to get their attention. The best we can do is hope that they come investigate us if we have a wagon full of treasure."

"Could you fly up there and get his attention?" Gigi asks.

"I could," Vincent says.

"But my guess is that he would attack me. Eat me, burn me, something like that. I don't think a dragon would take my presence as anything other than a threat." We're going in circles here. And, unfortunately, the dragon isn't. But I don't have any better ideas. Because Vincent is right; we have no reason to believe that the dragons can really help us. We've met two dragons who were helpful, but we don't know if that will be true of other dragons.

One of the ones we talked to was sort of connected to us, in that Wrax was supposed to be the god who helped us in the tutorial originally. The other one we bribed with a cart full of treasure. Something we don't have anymore. Should we just keep heading towards the ocean, and just hope that we stumble across something that the god slayer did or somewhere that she went? Should we go off and finish other quests, trying to level up some more so that we have more of a chance if the god slayer decides to attack us?

Love what you're reading? Discover and support the author on the platform they originally published on.

"I don't know what to do," I say. I stop walking. I run my hand through my hair.

"I'm sorry," I say.

"I just don't know what to do." The others stop and look at me.

"It's okay," Ash says.

"We weren't expecting you to have all the answers. It's okay if you don't know what you're supposed to do next."

"We have options," I say.

"I mean, we have lots of options. We could stop chasing her in the first place. She might come back this way after she reaches the ocean. She might have changed her direction already. We're chasing guesswork here. But we don't need to. We could go off and ignore her. Try not to think about her for a while."

"What, just go and level up?" Gigi asks. I nod.

"We should at least leave the road," El says.

"We're not running into anything fun on the road."

"The road lets us move faster," Ash says.

"But you're right; we aren't running into anything fun."

"We could ask people at the next town," Vincent says.

"That might be a better way to get word on where the god slayer was and where she is going. If she has something that makes it impossible for people to remember what she looks like, we should be able to get some information that way. Just ask people if they've seen a traveler they don't remember, or that they can't agree on the way she looked. Something like that might be better than just chasing dragons, hoping that we'll get their attention somehow." I sigh. Chasing dragons is a stupid idea.

It's time I admit that. We can't force them to talk to us, and we can't even force them to encounter us. There's no reason why this big blue dragon would wheel around and come talk to us. There's no reason why it wouldn't just attack us. And if we did fight back, there's no reason why it wouldn't just fly away. Chasing dragons is like throwing a handful of darts all at once, hoping that one of them hits the bullseye. We have no reason to expect it to work, and in fact it's not likely to work at all.

Balak was a fluke. Wrax was an outlier. But I don't know what else to do. I can't just give up. Something in me is screaming that we need to find the god slayer. We need to either help her with what she's doing or we need to stop her. I don't even know which one. I just know that we need to find her. But I don't know if we're getting closer or farther away from her with every step.

"We should ask people at the next town," I say.

"Vincent is right. They might be able to tell us if she passed through. They might be able to tell us where to go. They might provide some kind of forward movement. Because we can't just keep stumbling ahead, hoping that we get to where we want to go. We need information."

"Glad you've come to see it my way," Vincent says.

"This idea of getting the dragons to help is a bit far fetched."

"I wanted to fight a dragon," El says.

"Maybe we'll find something that will help us get her attention. Something that will help us figure out what we're doing."

"I don't like this," Ash says.

"The whole path we're on. We're not acting, we're reacting. We're chasing rumors with no real idea of where we're going or what we're going to do if we find her. We just seem to have it in our heads that finding her is the right thing to do. But what then? What's the point?"

"What's the point of anything?" Gigi asks.

"Seriously. We're in a new world. We have none of the pressures of our old world. There's no one in charge of us. No one can really tell us what to do, or make decisions for us. So what if the god slayer is out there? So what if she wants to become a god? Is that something we want to do too, or is it something we want to stop? We need to figure out what we're doing and why we're doing it. Only then can we figure out what needs to be done without just randomly pissing away our time." They're all right.

I've been having this same debate in my head for a while. They're just giving voices to the various conflicting ideas in my head. Do we need to chase the god slayer? Do we need to care what she's doing?

"So then, what?" I ask.

"What do we want to do?"

"I want to adventure," El says.

"I want to see strange and new places. I want to fight new and incredible monsters. I want to gather treasure, even if just for treasure's sake." I nod at her answer and turn to Gigi, putting the same question to her.

"I want to help people," Gigi says.

"I want to make sure that there is peace in the world and that people can pursue their happiness wherever they want to. I want to serve the world as a whole."

"What about you, Vincent? What do you want?"

"I don't know what I want," he says.

"I like exploring, and I like finding things that were lost to society as a whole. I like going into ruins and clearing dungeons. But all of that feels like temporary answers, like a means to an end. And I don't know what the end is. I don't know what I really want."

"I want power," Ash says.

"Power to shape the world to our desires. I want to be able to make sure that no one else can tell me what to do. I want freedom."

"Sounds like you want conquest," Gigi says.

"Like you want to be a queen or something like that." Ash shrugs.

"I'm not saying I'd be opposed to being a queen. But I don't want to conquer the world. I don't need to control other other people. I just want to make sure that no one can control me."

"What about you?" El asks me.

"What do you want?" I don't have a good answer for that. I'm not sure what I want. I thought I wanted to find the god slayer. But even that was just a temporary thing. What do I want to do when I find her? Do I want to kill her, to prove that I'm the biggest and the baddest? I really don't think so; that doesn't sound appealing to me. So what do I want? Do I want to settle down somewhere? Do I want to stop adventuring? Or do I want to see this world and all that it has to offer?

"I'm not sure," I say.

"I thought I wanted what all of you wanted. But it doesn't seem like that's the case."

"What would make you happy?" El asks. That's a question that I've wrestled with my entire life. What would make me happy? Have I ever been happy? I mean, surely I must have been, right? At some point? I must have been pleased with the way things were going. I must have felt free from responsibility at some point. Is that what happiness is? Do I even know what happiness is? That's the real problem. How can I ever hope to be happy if I don't know what happiness is?

If I don't know what it feels like, how do I know if I'm happy? Maybe I'm happy right now. Traveling with my four friends through a magical world, finding and defeating monsters, saving people, getting more powerful. Maybe what I have is happiness. I could have sex if I want it. I know that Ash and El, at least, are up for that. For all I know, Vincent is willing too. He's certainly willing to be a part of a group. Same with Gigi. Is that what I want? Is sex what happiness is?

There's a lot to be said for the idea of the five of us traveling the world, having sex when we want to, seeing what there is to be seen. No responsibilities. No worries. No pressing concerns. We don't need a destination if we just keep traveling. Do I need something concrete to make me happy, or am I happy right now, with just what we're doing?

"I. I don't know," I say. I think that might be the first time I've ever expressed this out loud.

"I'm not sure what it means to be happy, so I don't know what would make me happy. Maybe nothing. Maybe I'm happy now."

"Happy now, like, happy chasing the god slayer?" El asks. I shrug.

"Maybe. Maybe just happy traveling with you guys. Maybe it's enough to wander through the world. I've got enough to eat, I've got things to keep me occupied. Isn't that what happiness is?"

"This conversation just got a whole lot deeper than I was prepared for," Vincent says, letting out a nervous laugh.

"Do you want to keep chasing her?" El asks, ignoring Vincent's comment.

"Because if that's what you want, I'm willing to do it."

"Yeah," Gigi says.

"We can always ask around at the next town. It's not that far."

"Why don't we do this," Ash says.

"Let's go to the next town and ask around. See if we can find any sign of where the god slayer has been or where she might be going. If we get a clue, we'll follow it up. If we don't, we'll take a break from hunting her and find something more fun for us all to do. We'll find a dungeon or something."

"I like that idea," Vincent says.

"It's what I've been suggesting all along." I feel like we haven't gotten anywhere in this conversation. But I look up at the sky, and the dragon is gone. Somewhere in the middle of our conversation, it flew out of sight. It feels like a metaphor.