Chương 135: Chapter 133: The next morning

Amanda and Vincent wish us luck.

"Wait for me," Vincent says as he shakes my hand.

"I know we'll be slow going across. But wait for me, would you?"

"I'll try," I say.

"I don't know if the girls will exactly let us just wait around for a whole week. We can do a lot in a week." He laughs and shakes his head.

"I'll let you know when I arrive," he says.

"We'll find each other from there?"

"Will do," I say. Amanda doesn't make plans to meet up with us. I don't think she's planning to travel with us anymore. She's a lone wolf, as she said. She likes her own company and doesn't want to be a part of a party. Which is really too bad, because she fits with us well.

"We'll meet again," I promise her. I give her a smile.

"Whether you like it or not." She smiles back at me.

"We'll see," she says.

"I really don't have that many more answers for you."

"I think you know more than you think you do," I say. She just shrugs.

"Be careful out there," I say. She looks at me with those gorgeous jade eyes. The fire is still there, deep inside her.

"Always am," she says. There's a brief moment where I almost lean in for a kiss. I see her tense like she's expecting it, but not entirely sure how to react to it. I stop myself, and she blushes.

"See you," she says. She and Vincent walk out into the water, and just keep walking. The water never seems to get any deeper, largely because they are floating above it. Once they are away from shore, they both kind of lean forward and start moving faster, flying at a good ten miles an hour out into the ocean. I watch them both for as long as I can, but they're soon lost in the waves.

"I guess we'll find out if the journey is deadly when Vincent tells us he has respawned," Ash says. I lead everyone out to the X that I drew last night, and we start making a pile to try to draw the attention of a dragon. Looking around at the sky, I don't see one flying by, but I'm hoping that will change sooner rather than later. We set down a tarp first, something that Gigi has been carrying around in her spatial bag since we took out one of the bandit encampments.

Then we start laying out everything we have on the tarp. We put all the money down first, trying to make a big pile of coins.

"My thought is that we might be able to convince the dragon with just a big ass pile of coins," Ash says.

"Even if we don't have that much real value, just having a lot of coins there could help." So I decide to keep my one platinum for myself, just so that I have something kept behind. But I put all two hundred and sixty gold, all three hundred and sixty two silver, and all two hundred and fifty three copper into the pile. As the girls each add their own coins to the pile, I realize that we had a lot of money between us.

There has to be more than a thousand gold in the pile, and at least twice that in silver and in copper. We form a nice big pile of treasure right there on the X. Hopefully, that will draw attention. After that, all we can do is wait.

"I hate waiting," El says.

"We don't even know if it's going to come in time."

"Have faith," Ash says.

"I have a feeling we're going to see the dragon any second now." I look up at the sky. It's a pretty clear morning, with a few clouds towards the horizon being burned away by the sunlight. The sky is a pleasant blue, and it seems wide and empty. I don't know what I was really expecting. It's just empty sky. I look first towards the east, away from the ocean, where the sun is still rising.

Then I systematically move away from the brightest part of the sky and work my way across towards the ocean, towards where the sky is still a little bit darker. And after a few minutes, I see it. It could be a bird, but I would imagine that birds would be flying in groups, not just one bird by itself. And the longer I watch it, the more I see that it doesn't move quite like a bird. There's an extra joint in the wings, it seems.

Or maybe I'm just seeing it a bit more clearly, but I can see the creature getting closer.

"See?" Ash says.

"I told you." It gets bigger as it gets closer. Right now, there's no way to really tell how big the creature flying towards us is. I'm assuming it's a dragon, but it might not be. It might be something else. All I can see is that it's big, it has a large wing span, and it's moving towards us. It's kind of soaring back and forth, casually flying through the air, just getting closer and closer as time goes by. Then, suddenly, I think it sees the treasure. Or it senses it, at least.

Because the meandering soars go away, and it starts to fly towards us. It starts making a bee line right at us. To think that it can see the pile of treasure from this distance must mean that it has amazing eye sight. Either that or it's much smaller and much closer than it seems. It keeps getting bigger as it gets closer, but it doesn't give the feeling of actually getting closer. It's still way out of range of anything I could do. I couldn't shoot an arrow that far if I wanted to.

It's far enough away that I can still see the horizon under it. And it just keeps getting bigger. I watch it for a full minute as it speeds ever closer. Soon enough, I can actually make out its movement towards us. It stops looking like it's just getting bigger and starts actually looking closer. It's still too far away to make out its color, but I doubt that will be a problem for long. Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit. It occurs to me that it might think this is a trap.

I mean, it's a huge discolored piece of ground with a huge X drawn on it, and then a big pile of treasure right in the middle of it. If the dragon doesn't think that this might be a trap, then I worry for its intelligence. This looks like the most clumsy pit trap ever built. The dragon gets closer, and I can see that it's silver in color. Well, it looks blue and gold at first, but I realize that's just the reflection of the light around it.

Its scales are like a mirror almost, reflecting the sunlight and the blue of the ocean underneath it. It is massive. Bigger than Wrax, bigger than Balak. It soars over our heads, maybe two hundred feet up, and I feel like I'm at an airport while planes are landing. This thing is easily the size of a 747, with an even longer wingspan. It has six claws underneath its very long torso, and at this distance I can see the talons are just waiting to rend anything that it cares to tear apart.????. Silver Dragon.

Legendary rare elite dragon, level 60. HP: 300, 000/300, 000. It soars past us, then circles around. It flies around us a few times, trying to get the lay of the land or something like that. Then it begins to slow down, bleeding off speed as it wheels in gentle circles around us, tightening in and coming closer and closer. It doesn't land on the discolored ground, but rather right outside of it. The dragon flaps its wings, sending up a huge cloud of sand and debris that makes us close our eyes.

I feel it land rather than actually see it, the whole ground shaking just a little bit when it settles its weight down on the sand. We wait a few seconds for the dust to settle, then carefully open our eyes. The dragon is staring at us. Now that I've seen three dragons, I'm starting to get an idea of their facial expressions. Despite being covered in scales, they're very expressive facially. This one has an eyebrow raised and is staring at us quizzically. I wave my hand at it.

Now it's my time to shine, with my high charisma.

"Hello!" I shout, moving slowly towards it. I make sure my hands are empty, my weapons all sheathed. I don't want the dragon to think that we mean them any harm.

"My name is Caleb. What is your name?" The dragon's voice is booming, and almost makes me take a step back from the sheer impact of the wall of sound it sends out towards me.

"I am Silk," they say.

"Tell me, Caleb, what I am I looking at here?"

"Ah, yes." I say, looking over my shoulder at the others and at the pile of treasure.

"What you're looking at is a combination of a brag and a bribe." The dragon's lips pull back a little bit in what I really hope is a smile.

"Do tell," Silk says.

"The discolored area is the corpse of a beach guardian," I say.

"Do you know about beach guardians?"

"I do," Silk says.

"They are in place to prevent people like you from crossing the ocean."

"That's where the bribe comes in," I say.

"We wanted to see if you would be willing to fly us across the ocean in exchange for the pile of treasure we have here." The dragon lifts their head a little bit, looking over my shoulder at the pile.

"A paltry sum," they say.

"But a good start for negotiation. You want me to fly the four of you across the ocean. Why?"

"Because we want to get to the other side," I say. Silk rolls their eyes a little bit.

"Obviously," they say.

"But to what end? Why are you trying to cross the ocean?"

"It's all about the will of the world, I guess," I say. The dragon looks intrigued, so I continue.

"We're all outworlders, and we've been through the death cycle. We're actually chasing the god slayer, sort of. She left this morning, and is flying herself across the ocean."

"Yes," Silk says.

"I saw her. She has a companion."

"That's Vincent," I say.

"He's our friend, too. Anyway, they have the magic to get them across the ocean, but we don't. So we were hoping we could persuade you to bring us across."

"It is within my power to do so," Silk agrees.

"You say that you have been through the death cycle. I have not heard of this. What is the death cycle?"

"When outworlders die, we are resurrected," I say.

"Our level is reduced to one, and our stats are all reduced by a number depending on our level before death. But the number of that reduction isn't quite as high as the stat bonuses we get for leveling back up. So we've all died multiple times, and have regained our levels, surpassing our old stats by a wide margin."

"So you are powerful outworlders," Silk says.

"Powerful even for your kind."

"That's right," I say.

"Powerful enough to have slain a beach guardian."

"That should mean that you are powerful enough to slay me, then," Silk says.

"Is that your intention?" I shake my head.

"We have no desire to fight you, mighty one. We only want to convince you to fly us to the other continent. To transport us across the ocean. And we want to pay you for your time and your effort in doing so." Silk taps a claw against the ground. The movement draws my eye away from their face, and I see that the claw is bigger than I am. Strange that Silk so casually said that we should be able to slay them.

"So then you are offering that gold, silver, and copper in exchange for me just flying you across the ocean? That's all I have to do?" I nod.

"That's all you have to do," I say.

"You just have to let us ride on your back while you fly from one end of the ocean to the other."

"That will take some time," Silk says.

"That's why we want to pay you," I say.

"Sweeten the deal," Silk commands.

"Coins are not enough. Give me something more." I reach into my spatial bag and carefully pull out my Slayer's Blade, holding it by anything but the handle. I lay it across my hands and hold it up for Silk to see.

"I can offer you a weapon or two, but I really don't have much else," I say.

"Unless you are interested in magic crystals?" Silk raises the ridges over one eye again.

"Magic crystals you say? How many do you have?"

"Fifteen," I say.

"Do your companions have any?" I actually don't know the answer to that. I call over my shoulder to see if they do. Turns out they have another fifty between them.

"So sixty five magic crystals, all that coin, and your sword," Silk says. They dig their claw deeper into the sand.

"I will take you as far as I can. There is an island in the ocean. It is not quite the continent, but it is close. Within a few hundred miles. But I cannot go further than that. It is not my territory." Great. So we'll need another dragon to take us the rest of the way. And we'll have nothing to bribe them with.

"How big is this island?" I ask.

"It is large. Several dozen miles across. You could live there comfortably for a very long time. Even bringing you that close is dangerous for me."

"Why is that?"

"My cousin lives on the island," Silk says.

"It is her territory that I will be invading to bring you there. I will likely have to pay her a portion of your tribute to me just to appease her and prevent any kind of skirmish betwixt us." At least we won't have to do something to signal a dragon from far away. If she lives on the island, that means we can find her lair. That means we can convince her, somehow, to take us the rest of the way. It shouldn't be that hard, if it isn't that far. I sigh.

"Fine," I say.

"Take us to this island, then."

"In exchange, you will give me all of your magical crystals, all the coins, and your sword?" I sigh again.

"Half the magical crystals," I say.

"Call it thirty five of them. We need something to pay the way across the last bit of ocean." There's a pause, and the world feels heavy for just a second. Then the tension clears and the dragon nods.

"Deal," Silk says.