Although the soldiers chasing after us worked quite hard, they were obviously destined to receive nothing for their efforts. Meanwhile, I was mainly focusing on how to calm down a certain dragon"s anger rather than on how to find a path of escape. Otherwise, I"d be cleaning up piles of ashes.Little Red"s black hair was beginning to turn red, and her black eyes were turning red as well. It was quite evident that she was furious. If I didn"t do a good job here, perhaps she"d be breathing dragon breath the very next second.
"Hey—hey—hey—Little Red, when we were adventuring together back in the day, I never knew you had such a bad temper. Weren"t we all used to being chased like this?"
"Ridiculous! Back in the day, that was because we weren"t strong enough to win. If we didn"t run, were we supposed to wait around and let them kill us? It"s all your fault for being a professional at shooting yourself in the foot, always antagonizing those stronger than us. Besides, did you really have such a good temper in the past? You would always get angry at being chased and you would never care about who you antagonized regardless of their strength. But have we ever had a similar experience like now where we"re being chased around by those much weaker than us? They"re even insulting us so viciously!"
I tried recalling to the best of my memory. For the sake of my reputation, of course I should shout "How could we possibly have such a humiliating experience? For glory and honor, we should turn around and fight to our fullest!" but when I thought of how a certain silly cat always peeped on my thoughts and made a career out of going against me, I could only honestly shake my head.
"Actually, there were quite a lot of times that we ran from those weaker than us, usually when we were the ones lacking logic and reason. For example, whenever you dine-and-dashed or drank-and-dashed, whenever Adam did something stupid or owed a debt or had something to do with women, and Lisa was basically an expert at stealing things—we were all equally skilled in attracting aggro—glurgh!"[1]1
Alright then. Before I could finish my sentence, Little Red covered my mouth. Her fiery eyes transformed back into black eyes once more, and she had the rare expression of panic on her face. It would seem that when faced with her dark history, she was unable to get angry anymore.
"Hahaha! You forgot about how Margaret was scamming magical knowledge from other mages and getting into trouble with her experimental magic. Actually, everyone was roughly the same. After all these years, why talk about such matters anymore? Let"s just forget about the past."
"…I would have forgotten about it if you didn"t mention it. I think that you were all novices back then, which made me suffer so pitifully. I was basically both the nanny and the daddy for all of you, on top of you all having such strong personalities. None of you ever listened to me. Things weren"t easy for me!"
Everyone was looking at us in astonishment and disbelief with expressions that said "so even the great ones had days such as these." This actually caused Little Red"s face to redden in embarra.s.sment. It would appear that even a huge ancient dragon like her could only surrender to her own dark history.
"…Don"t mention it. Now I"m beginning to remember as well. There were so many problems with where we went adventuring. A casual adventure where you said we"d just go wherever the road took us would on average cause us to meet three Legends and one Saint per month, and we would always somehow arrive in every species" forbidden grounds and secret hideouts. Do you dare to say that there weren"t problems with your leaders.h.i.+p for our adventuring team?"
Of course there were problems. Where else was I supposed to find teammates that were so strong and so easy to fool? Naturally, I took my strong teammates to chase after any clue I could for revenge.
Forbidden grounds? Secret hideouts? Royal palaces? In front of the famous detective Rolo Charname[2]2and his strong companions, that was nothing!
"Hmph! If it wasn"t for me carefully picking our adventuring paths, how could you all possibly become so strong? If it wasn"t for those difficult battles back then, how could you grow so powerful? It would probably take you an extra five hundred years to reach Molly"s level."
When Little Red heard this and recalled those "youthful days" of hers that were filled with blood and sweat, Little Red, who wasn"t afraid of anything, actually broke out into a cold sweat. It took her quite a while to speak up again.
"…If I could choose, I"d rather wait an extra five hundred years! You b.a.s.t.a.r.d, this basically means you"re finally admitting that you chose all those difficult adventuring paths for us on purpose! Before, you wouldn"t admit it no matter how much you were beaten up!"
"Tsk. You don"t understand that it was for your own good. I had to guarantee that you all could grow through life-and-death battles but also not make the battles so difficult that we"d definitely die. Did you really think it was that easy for me?"
"You ******! You"re even making it sound reasonable that you made others suffer!"
"Girls should pay more attention to their words and not use words that are censored so often… fine then, tomboys need to pay attention as well. You ******! Don"t hit my face!"
Alright then, I wasn"t making things up. Actually, it was largely with the a.s.sistance of my System that I was able to do so many ridiculous things in the past, things that had also helped Adam and the others to grow in power so quickly.
[Main Character"s Adventuring Squad Mode: You are the main character from legends. You and your adventuring team will continuously attract endless amounts of trouble, and experiencing all this trouble will lead to plenty of opportunities for growth. As long as you"re able to survive, your party"s rate of growth will be cheat-like! System Reminder: Although you"re the main character, you don"t have the plot armor to never die like most main characters.]
"System, can I exchange for another one of those?"
[The basic rules are that anything you"ve already exchanged for before can"t be exchanged for again. System Reminder: All our products are unique and custom-made by hand. And once they"re sold, no refunds. We even deliver! Remember to give us a 5-star review.]
"Sigh, such a pity. It would have been so convenient to have another one of these to train the novices. We"d just have to go out for a little trip, and if they didn"t die, they"d each immediately be powerful enough to go out on their own. Well, even if I could obtain such a mode again, it wouldn"t be all that meaningful. After all, I have too many enemies, and strengthening just a few of my allies won"t amount to much. I"m just going to have to patiently wait for the Elemental Tide. I can"t exactly improve the overall combat strength of the entire mortal plane… Wait a moment, even without the System"s cheats helping me, it"s not impossible for me to do some things to improve their power levels."
I faintly noticed something, but now obviously wasn"t a convenient time to be thinking about such things. There were still soldiers chasing after us… Hmm? Where were the soldiers? Where"d they go? Couldn"t they work a little harder? I was still running!
"The soldiers chasing after us? The last soldier chasing after us ran out of breath three hills ago. He"s probably still panting, collapsed on the ground. Tsk! Tsk! Tsk! How pitiful. An Iron-ranked novice ran more than thirty kilometers after you in one go; he"s probably coughing out his lungs right now. Right, you probably ran an extra ten or so kilometers without needing to."
At the very beginning of us making our escape, the silly cat was shouting about how her legs were short and she wasn"t fast as running, so she turned herself into her cat form and took a nap on my head. But now, she had come out again to laugh at my misfortune.
I widened my mouth in surprise. I had accidentally had too much fun while running and forgot about the soldiers chasing after me. It would seem that there was now yet another new piece of dark history for me.
"Why didn"t you tell me earlier?"
"Who would dare to stop if you didn"t stop? As for interrupting you, seeing how you and Lady Little Red were having so much fun chatting about the past…"
Alright, why don"t you just directly say that you wanted to listen in on some gossip? Hmph! Talking in such a roundabout fas.h.i.+on.
"Cough, our next target is to meet up with Sindy"s merchant group again. They actually instantly all ran off. d.a.m.n it, they dared to make me suffer like this."
"Tsk, he"s changing the topic."
"Yep, he"s changing the topic."
"Little Cohen, make sure that you don"t grow up to be an adult like Roland."
The ranger job cla.s.s would typically be the best at tracking others. After all, they had both the tracking abilities of hunters as well as the knowledge of how to cast some nature magic. However, the pity was that our ranger, Little Red, was obviously unreliable. If I wanted her to track something, the result would probably be that she would transform into her dragon form and search from the sky above.
If Little Red had been a gold or silver dragon, this wouldn"t have been a big problem. It would only be at the extent of some headline news, but Little Red just happened to be a red dragon…
"As an exiled evil dragon, it"s understandable to have an absolutely terrible reputation. Fire-type huge dragons love to destroy cities as well as kill humans and set fires; that"s very normal. But this isn"t the Underground World. If an ancient red dragon appeared on the surface, probably even the Dragon City on the surface would take notice."
The Underground World practically consisted of various species exiled from the surface. And I probably don"t need to go into how deep the grudges between the exiled and those that exiled them would be. The beastmen exiled the Underground beastmen, but since both groups ended up in such a pitiful state, they barely decided to forget about things in the end. The elves exiled the dark elves, and as for their relations.h.i.+p… fine then, the dark elves had been wanting to kill the elves for countless years. The moment they returned to the surface, the first thing they did was to attack the elves. After all, for the long-lived to remember a grudge, it shouldn"t be called petty—it should be called an excellent memory.
[Ding! Please accept your new t.i.tle: Roland, the One With Such an Excellent Memory.]
Cough, I decided to directly ignore my system"s comment. Who cared if I simply had a good memory? Actually, although people said elves were petty, dragons were even more so. They would often take revenge about some incident from several hundred years ago on their target"s descendants, and the worst part was that they typically didn"t treat any other species as equal to them. Otherwise, there wouldn"t be so many "dragonslaying" incidents, either.
The current generation belonged to the humans. The dragons of the surface weren"t as strong as in the past, and some Dragon Cities were basically empty sh.e.l.ls. But if a large-scale number of Underground dragons appeared on the surface, who knew how the surface dragons and Dragon Cities would react? And it would still be alright if she was some other red dragon, but Little Red just happened to be the Dragon Queen of the Underground. Her ident.i.ty was quite sensitive. If her ident.i.ty was exposed… I really didn"t want to see a huge war between dragons break out.
"Wait for the other Underground species to come to the surface first and see how the surface dragons react. Right now, having the young black and red dragons serve the East Mist Communal Country is also a way of seeing what will happen."
That was why I had Little Red make a promise to me before we left that she wouldn"t transform into her dragon form unless it was absolutely required. Of course, this also limited Little Red"s power level.
But I wasn"t at all worried that we wouldn"t be able to find Sindy"s merchant group even if she couldn"t help us find them…
"They"re in a small forest that"s forty kilometers southwest of here." This was a magical marking that I had Harloys leave on them. No matter how good we got along, it would always be necessary take certain actions in secret.
"…Southwest, you say?"
Eaglestorm lifted his wooden staff and cast a spell that caused a bright green magical light to gather in his eyes. The next moment, his eyes returned to normal.
"Yep, I found them. The forest told me that there"s roughly sixty of them. They"re densely packed, but the life forces coming from them are quite strong. None of them are injured. Eh? Their cargo and carriages are with them as well. It seems they were prepared beforehand after all."
In the forest, druids" forest magic would help them to have countless allies. As long as a druid was able to determine the approximate location beforehand, any archdruid would have countless ways of seeing anything that happened in a forest.
Of course, even if they weren"t hiding in a forest, we still had another professional tracker with us. Judging by how Beifeng was looking southwest to begin with, he had been prepared already as well.
"Relax, we can"t possibly lose them. Amir and Daisy have been informing me of their movements."
"…Who are Amir and Daisy?"
I got a little curious at hearing these names I"d never heard before.
"Daisy is that Sindy"s horse, while Amir is the leader of the other cargo horses. They"re husband and wife and have a pretty good relations.h.i.+p with me." Alright then, there was far too much information for me to digest here. I really shouldn"t have asked.
Judging from the merchant group"s complete preparations, the Veji Merchant a.s.sociation must have been prepared to take such measures long ago. They immediately left the moment they received a signal from Sindy. Although I could understand why they would leave without telling us a single word since we had known each other for too short a time, nor were we true allies, but being sold out like this still made me rather dissatisfied.
And judging by how they all escaped so quickly, perhaps they had all been waiting for such a scenario just in case while Sindy and I were at the party, prepared to escape at a moment"s notice. We were probably the only ones that weren"t notified, as we had only joined midway.
"Should I say that it"s to be expected of a merchant who only cares about benefits? Although I completely understand, it"s still a little rude of him."
And a little more than an hour later, when we appeared in front of Sindy and his merchant group, they were both quite astonished and feeling somewhat awkward.
"Um, things were too sudden…"
However, I immediately interrupted his explanation.
"Relax, we"re not here to look for trouble. I have a little plan that might be of a.s.sistance in this current situation."
Note:
1. For those who don"t know, "aggro" is a game term that means you instantly attract hostility from all sorts of NPCs and monsters when you go out. Basically, attracting "aggro" means you"re well-hated!
2. Charname is a Baldur"s Gate reference!For those who don"t know, "agro" is a game term that means you instantly attract hostility from all sorts of NPCs and monsters when you go out. Basically, attracting "aggro" means you"re well-hated!Charname is a Baldur"s Gate reference!