Chương 144: Chapter 142: Calling the dragon

Rather than trying to get the dragon's lair, Ash thinks it best to try to get the dragon to come to us. So we go back up to the top of the pyramid and lay out another cloth. El drops the dragon statue onto the cloth, and we surround the statue with the jewelry worn by the mummy.

"What now?" Gigi asks. I keep an eye to the sky as I answer her.

"Now we wait," I say.

"Odds are, the dragon flies around her domain at least somewhat on the regular. She'll fly around and she'll see that there's something on top of the pyramid. She'll probably see that it's gold, and she'll definitely see that it's people. And maybe she'll come down and investigate."

"Or maybe she'll flambe us from the air," Gigi grumbles.

"Dragons aren't always going to be nice, you know."

"What makes you say that?" Ash asks.

"All of our experience with dragons has shown that they're willing to talk to us. They've never just attacked us."

"I think that's because we tend to have offerings for them," I say.

"And they prefer to get what they want without having to kill anyone."

"But what if she's hungry?" Gigi asks.

"What if she decides it would be easier to eat us and just take the treasure?"

"She should be able to tell how many hit points we all have," Ash points out.

"She's probably higher level than we are. And you have the least, with almost twelve thousand."

"So she'll know we're not ordinary adventurers, or easy pickings," I say. That seems to mollify Gigi at least a little bit, but I notice that she still stands towards the edge of the pyramid, as if she's ready to leap down the stairs to avoid a blast of fire. That makes sense. None of us have set our spawn points on this island. If we die, it's back to Marketplace for us. And that would mean having to find Silk, or someone else, to do this whole journey all over again.

Maybe we should set our spawn points to this island. No, that's a bad idea. All the monsters we've seen on this island have been pretty high level. This is not a good place to be level one, even with our massively increased stats. We'd probably end up dying over and over again, which would undo all the benefits of the death cycle eventually. We can't afford to set our spawn point on this island.

Not until we know there will be a safe place and someone to help us get through those first twenty levels without much danger. So we wait. It's not a terribly long wait. It takes maybe an hour before I spot the dragon slithering through the sky. She has wings, big ones. Three sets of them, in fact. But she still looks like a giant snake slithering through the sky. She's longer than Silk, but Silk was much bulkier. Much wider.

She is lithe and beautiful as she slides through the sky, slicing through the air with her three sets of wings as she soars around us a few times, circling slowly towards us. I'm sure she uses that time to identify us, and I use the time to do the same.??????. Snake Dragon. Mythic elite dragon, level 65. HP: 325, 000/325, 000. I think that makes her the most powerful dragon we've come across so far. That does not bode well for the idea of setting this island as a spawn point.

Unless she decides she wants to run us through the death cycle the way Wrax did. She eventually comes to land, gliding around the top of the pyramid, gliding her scales against the surface to provide enough drag to slow her down. She ends up almost encircling the whole top of the pyramid, and I see that her body is only about eight feet across. I'm pretty sure Silk was at least twenty feet across, maybe more. But Silk wasn't as long as this one.

"Hello!" I say, stepping towards the head. I've gotten used to the momentary surprise on the face of the dragons when I speak their language. Makes me ever more glad that I took the polyglot talent so long ago.

"We would like to contract your services for transportation to the mainland," I say.

"I am not a service animal," she says, her voice regal and rolling.

"You are not an animal at all," I agree.

"But you are uniquely capable of providing us with this transportation. It will get us off your island, and will also get you this treasure from inside the very pyramid we stand on." She huffs through her nostrils.

"You offer me treasure from my own domain? So you are offering to pay me with my own coin?" I was afraid she might see it that way. I hold up my hands in what I hope is a placating manner.

"The treasure was trapped inside the pyramid," I say.

"Could you retrieve it yourself?" She looks to the side, and I know that the next thing she says is going to be a lie.

"Of course," she says.

"I could have retrieved it at any time."

"We have done that work for you," I say.

"I'm sure you are perfectly capable, but we have defeated the enemies within the pyramid and brought the treasure out for you to add to your hoard."

"How did you get on my island in the first place?" she asks, her head moving back and forth as she surveys us all.

"We flew in," I say.

"Then fly out again," she says.

"We're trying to," I point out.

"But we need someone as great as yourself to do the actual flying."

"So who flew you in?"

"A dragon."

"The name?" I sigh.

"Silk." She snarls, baring teeth as long as my sword.

"Silk came to my island? They dared?" She grumbles a bit.

"Lucky I didn't spot them." I nod.

"Yes, they were quite concerned about that. They left as soon as they dropped us off. Rest assured, Silk spent less than ten minutes on your island."

"I'll make them pay for that," she says. Then her eyes flick over to the pile of treasure.

"You say that you have gathered all the treasure from the pyramid?" Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

"There are more statues," I say.

"But none as beautiful as this one. We thought it appropriate to give you the one that looks the most like your magnificence." The dragon curls her lip again, once more exposing the fangs. Maybe she doesn't like the compliments. Maybe I'm laying it on a little bit thick.

"I want more statues," she says.

"There are four of you. I will fly you to the mainland in exchange for four statues." She looks at the one on the top of the pyramid.

"Four more statues, mind you. This one pays for you invading my home and killing my creatures. I take it you are the ones who have been killing beasts on my island?" I sigh.

"We have been," I say.

"Then four more statues," she says. I nod.

"We can do that," I say.

"Where should we bring them?"

"Right here is perfectly fine," she says. She slithers towards the center, wrapping her length around the treasures we have piled there.

"I will take this to my lair while you retrieve them." I don't get to see how she takes off carrying four tons of gold. We're all headed back into the pyramid. There is no battle this time. Just traps to avoid. My detect traps goes up to nine, and we move the statues with the rope the same as we did last time. Not all the statues have the same traps, but they all have traps. Some of them shoot spears out. One of them collapses into a pit that doesn't seem to have a bottom; we almost lose a statue down that pit.

But we manage to set them all off at a distance, pulling the huge statues across the floor. Carrying them back to the top of the pyramid is difficult. Four tons is eight thousand pounds. Even with the spatial bags reducing that weight by 90%, that's still eight hundred pounds. It's still very heavy, heavier than my spatial bag has ever been before. My effective strength is 204, but I still struggle to get the statue all the way up there, and I'm breathing heavily by the time we get back to the top of the pyramid.

We set the statues together in the middle of the pyramid's roof, and take a moment to catch our breaths. El is the only one who doesn't seem to be all that perturbed by carrying the statue, but she still refused to carry two of them. We could have taken more, maybe taken one with us to sell, but no one wants to have that much weight in their bag when we begin traveling again.

"I kept the diamond," Gigi informs me as we set up the statues.

"That should be plenty for us to sell, if there's anywhere to sell it."

"Good thinking," I say, giving her a smile. She shrugs.

"I wanted something to show for our trip," she says. The dragon comes back shortly after we have set up the statues. We're all breathing normally by the time the dragon lands, once again sliding its belly along the top of the pyramid. I'm kind of surprised the pyramid isn't smoother at the top than it is. I guess the dragon doesn't do this often. She looks at the statues for a bit, then nods, deciding that they are acceptable.

"You may climb on my back," she says.

"Space yourselves out. It is not a long journey, but having all of you in one place will be uncomfortable. For me."

"Of course," I say, relaying the instructions to the others.

"We are ready at your leisure."

"Let's get this over with," she says.

"I don't like people on my island."

"Who built the pyramid?" I ask her.

"People," she says, spitting out the word.

"A long and long time ago." I decide not to press, and just climb up one of her feet to settle myself behind her front most set of wings. The others space themselves out. Ash and El both take the other two sets of wings. Gigi actually climbs up in front of me, towards the dragon's head. This way she'll get a better view, I suppose. The dragon slithers around the top of the pyramid a few times, picking up speed, using her feet to propel her onward as her wings begin to flap.

After a few circuits, she lifts off and starts to spiral her way up into the sky. Gigi once again lets out a scream of joy, yelling like she's on a roller coaster. I can't say that I blame her. It is one hell of a ride being on the back of a dragon. Even with my feet wedged between scales to keep me in place, I still feel like I need to hold on for dear life. Like with Silk, the shape of the dragon's head breaks the wind, creating almost a tunnel of relative calm that goes over her whole form.

It allows her to fly with minimal wind resistance, and allows her to move much more quickly than I would have expected. I don't know how fast Silk was able to fly, but this dragon seems to go faster still. Maybe we're going as fast as a hundred and fifty miles an hour. Maybe as fast as two hundred miles an hour. I can't tell. The island is quickly left behind us. I glance over my shoulder to see it in all its glory. It's a big island, a decent sized domain for a dragon such as the one we're riding on.

It was our first experience in a new world, and already we're moving on to another one. The dragon doesn't speak to us as we fly. I'm not sure we'd be able to speak back if she did. All our words would be torn away by the wind. She just flies, kind of moving up and down like a sin wave across a graphing calculator as she cuts through the air, spearing ahead. We fly over the open ocean for a while, but not nearly as long as we did with Silk.

I'd say the whole journey takes us maybe an hour and a half before the coastline comes into view. She could undoubtedly fly us inland, but she doesn't. She circles the coastline for a bit, gradually bleeding off both altitude and speed, and then half lands, half crashes into the sand of the coastal region. She sends up a big gout of sand with the impact of her body, then slides through the cloud of sand on her belly to bleed off the last of the speed.

I don't know if that's how she always lands or if she did that for our benefit. Gigi certainly seems to enjoy it. Once she stops moving, she flexes her scales, releasing our feet. We slide off her back and down onto the sand. The dragon turns her head towards me.

"Do not come to my island again," she says.

"We have no intention of that," I promise her. She seems satisfied with that. She nods, then starts to slither down the beach. After about a hundred feet of this, she once again lifts off, and is soon flying away, back to her island and out of our lives, hopefully forever.

"She was kind of rude," Ash says.

"She didn't like intruders in her territory," I say with a shrug.

"I think she's a bit of a hermit."

"She certainly charged us enough for that trip," Ash says.

"I mean, we paid her thousands of times what we paid Silk, and she barely had to do anything."

"At least we're here," I say.

"Any word from Vincent?"

"They're still going," she tells me.

"It's been about three days since they left, so they're probably about halfway? Maybe a third of the way across?"

"Should we wait for them?" I ask.

"Might as well," she says.

"But we can do a little bit of exploring. Let's get off the beach and set up camp." We set off with the ocean at our backs and walk until the sand gives way to rocky ground. It doesn't take that long. So far, this land is pretty different from the world we came from. It's barren, nowhere near as green. Brown is the predominant color.

"Do you think this land is really all that dangerous?" El asks. She has her axes in her hands already, just in case. We've found a relatively clear patch of land, and we're setting up camp here. We're going to have to rely on driftwood for the fires, which means we have to go back to the beach and walk down the shore.

"Probably," I say.

"I mean, Amanda certainly thinks it will be."

"I hope so," El says.

"But I hope there are people here. I hope that the whole continent isn't just monsters."

"Don't want to fight all the time?" She shrugs.

"Fighting is fun, but it helps if there's a point to it. Somewhere to go afterwards. Someone to fight for. If we can find new equipment, new spells, new abilities. There should be all kinds of new things here, you know? Not just an endless expanse of monsters."

"That's my hope, too."

"Why do you think no one starts in this land?" she asks me.

"What do you mean?"

"None of the players are starting in this land," she says.

"So, like, none of us were able to come here directly from the tutorial. But there has to be someone here. There has to be civilization of some sort, even if it's just nomads and tribal societies. But none of us were able to start as whatever lives here. Why do you think that is?"

"Maybe because the monsters are much more dangerous?" I ask.

"What if the lowest level monster out here is level fifty? Then it wouldn't be fair to start people here."

"We started in the twenties," she points out.

"We could have survived things in the fifties, if we were careful."

"But if we hadn't, we would've ended up at level one, surrounded by level fifty. We wouldn't have been able to level up at all."

"I guess that's why we aren't setting our spawn locations here yet?" she asks. I nod.

"Not until we find civilization."

"Then we better not die." I nod again.

"Yeah, tell me about it."