Volume 1 Chapter 26: The End of the Ground Dragons
Translator: The Light
Near the river at the centre of the Unnamed forest, Bella found the high-leveled monsters that she had been looking for, drinking water and lazing around. After a while, Bella noticed something strange, why did all these monsters look like dinosaurs? She suspected that they had Jura.s.sic Park by accident?
“Bella, that one with the long neck is a [Long Dragon], an A+ cla.s.s monster; that one with the three horns on its head is a [Horned Dragon], also an A+ cla.s.s; and that one over there, with the rows of spikes down its back, is a [Sword-Back Dragon], A+ cla.s.s as well. All these monsters aren’t very aggressive, they mainly feed on gra.s.s and magic fruit, there are fairly detailed records of them in the adventurers’ guild.”
Seeing Kriss struggling to stifle her laughter, Bella was sure that Kriss had also noticed something. Weren’t these monsters brachiosaurus, triceratops, and stegosaurus? Even though Bella may not be the most knowledgeable on dinosaurs, but you can’t just change the names and tell Bella that they’re not dinosaurs and expect her to believe it when they look exactly alike!
“Bella...nee, Kriss...nee, even though these monsters are just pseudo-dragons, there are just too many of them for me to fight, maybe if there were less of them...” Hadias had lost all confidence after seeing all the dinosaur-type monsters that had surrounded the river, although she was able to kill lower-tiered dragon-knights with ease and would have no problem with some weaker true-dragons, she didn’t think that she would be able to take on all these pseudo-dragon monsters.
“What a dumb little sister, nee-san isn’t cruel enough to make you fight all of these, all we need is that one!” Bella pointed to a tall figure in the distance that was slowly walking in their direction. This ‘dragon’ was 5 meters in height and 12 meters in length, it was something that Bella had very commonly seen in the movies on Earth.
Bella hadn’t expected to be able to see the long extinct tyrannosaurus-rex in another world, it didn’t look much different from in the movies, Bella just didn’t know how strong it was, but seeing as how all the other dinosaur..dragons had fled as soon as it entered sight, it probably was at least stronger than A+ cla.s.s.
“Bella, that is a tyran- uh, a [Fierce Dragon], its power is at least an SS+ cla.s.s. Are you sure you want to anger this one?” The smile on Kriss’ face disappeared, even she wasn’t sure if she would be able to take on this monster, even SS cla.s.s monsters were already not something that most human heroes could take on. This SS+ [Fierce Dragon] would need at least a platoon of dragon knights with their mounts to have only a fair chance of fighting, killing it would be almost impossible for the dragon knights
“Bella-nee, this dragon is very dangerous, I don’t have confidence that I can beat it, let’s find another one...” Hadias had never seen dragons that looked like dinosaurs before, she still had some confidence in being able to beat the herbivore ones from before, but as soon as this [Fierce Dragon] had appeared, the surrounding was flooded with an intense aura of rampant destruction and fear had gotten the best of her.
“We don’t need to fight it, all we need to do is draw it somewhere else, there’s something else for this [Fierce Dragon] to fight. Hadias, can you fly?”
“Yes, all the high-tiered demons on the surface world can fly, did you think that I, as the demon world’s princess, was inferior to the demons of the surface?”
“That’s good, let’s go and find some rocks first, then just follow my command.”
___
While Bella’s group was still making plans to ‘attract’ the [Fierce Dragon], at the Laerte defensive line outside the forest, a battle had already broken out. The gates held by the demon expeditionary force had been opened from inside by several strange shadows and a large horde of evil beings had entered quickly after, engaging in battle with the demons guarding the Laerte line.
This was a battle without good, as both sides technically were aligned with evil, there wasn’t really a ‘righteous’ side. The demon expeditionary force numbered about 30,000, under the command of the Mephyr Empire’s 1st princess Margaret Aknes, but she wasn’t present currently as she had taken the majority of her elites elsewhere.
The few remaining commanders of the expeditionary force had been a.s.sa.s.sinated by the mysterious shadows earlier and the demons defending the defence line had no proper command and had been thrown into chaos by the unexpected attack, it would only be a matter of time before they were completely driven out of their current positions.
On top of the walls, a shadow stood beside the table which the demon commanders had been around previously, studying the casually placed map. When Tanpur looked up, he saw a giant skeleton king coming his way.
“Fred, you’ve arrived! How is the situation?”
“The demons won’t last long, the entire Laerte line will be under our control soon enough. What have you discovered?”
“Here, look at this. This is their map, they seem to be from one of the 4 great demon empires, the Mephyr Empire. They aren’t the ones that we’re looking for, we seem to have attacked the wrong people.”
“I thought that it was strange too, according to that newbie zombie commander, the hidden force within the Unnamed forest that we were looking for was supposed to be made of human heretics, not the demons that we’re fighting now. In fact, they would probably have fought if they ran into each other too.”
“Oh well, what can the Mephyr Empire do, send their entire army overseas into hostile territory? After we’re done evicting all the demons, I can work some stuff here to make it look like the Laerte line was felled by the demons at a cost high enough that they no longer had enough numbers to guard it. I’ll make sure that no one will ever know that we were here, the humans will put all the blame on the demons.”
Seeing ã??Master of Facesã?? Clement who had suddenly appeared, ã??Shadowless Demonã?? Tanpur and ã??Skeleton Emperorã?? Fred didn’t think much before agreeing to his proposition, Clement was the most knowledgeable on the tricks and thoughts of humans and it would be best to listen to him.
“Where is Adrian? Why isn’t he here?”
“He’s at the sea line with his army, the main force of the Mephyr Expeditionary force 10,000 strong is crossing the sea. We don’t need to worry about him being unable to hold them off, he brought with him the cannons that demon G.o.d Mia-sama and demon king Bella-sama designed. Those demons probably won’t even reach the sh.o.r.e.”
“Suzerain-samas, after our interrogation of the captives, it seems that they were under the command of the Mephyr Empire’s 1st princess, Margaret Aknes. However, it seems that she had taken troops elsewhere.”
“You’re dismissed. Wait, are there any females among the captives?”
“We didn’t discover any females, Clement-sama, the female demons seemed to all have left with princess Aknes.”
“Alright, we have no use for these prisoners, kill them all with human weapons, stick a bunch of demons’ weapons on the human corpses left behind from earlier too.”
“What’s our next course of action, Clement?”
“After we finish mopping up the demons here, we retreat, for now, the humans should catch up soon, quite a few of them escaped from the demons earlier. Then we regroup and further discuss plans.”
___
Back where the herd of [Ground Dragons] were resting, the party of beauty adventurers were still awaiting news from Bella. While Ivy and Susan were still a bit tense and nervous, the other beauties were quite relaxed, as if they had confidence in Bella’s abilities.
Suddenly they heard heavy footsteps in the distance that shook the earth like an earthquake, whatever was making those footsteps must be something quite big.
The [Ground Dragons] who had been quietly resting now raised their heads in unrest. These 3 meters tall, 8 meter long monsters were all looking restlessly in the direction of the footsteps. If it wasn’t for the fact that they were a herd and this was their last piece of territory, they would have run for it.
A bloodcurdling roar traveled from the direction before a 5 meter tall [Fierce Dragon] showed itself, in the air in front of it was a red shadow quickly flying, it seemed to be three people; with one flying, and the other two holding on to her feet for dear life.
The ones flying were Bella, Kriss, and the demon world’s princess, Hadias. Hadias was rather dispirited at being used as a vehicle, it would be a huge blow to her reputation if news of it ever got back to the demon world. She would probably have a different problem if she knew that Kriss who also clutched one of her feet, was, in fact, a hero.
Bella had bribed her with several sets of beautiful clothes, as well as promising to take her fun places, and that was all it had taken for the demon world’s princess to sell her dignity and transport Bella and Kriss. Even though Bella wasn’t particularly into feet, it was quite an experience to be able to feel the delicate feet of a loli.
The [Fierce Dragon] that was chasing them was furious, it didn’t care that these three shorties had come and threw rocks at its head and bolted away as it didn’t want to chase anyways, but they had flown back after seeing that it didn’t want to chase and continued throwing rocks, it had seen this as a challenge to its authority and could no longer leave ignore the three pests.
Right as it was about to close its jaws around the three of them, Bella and the others disappeared with help from Noesha and the [Fierce Dragon] was unable to stop its momentum and ran headfirst into a [Ground Dragon]. After a large collision, the [Ground Dragon] was straight up killed by the impact, the difference between A+ and SS+ monsters was like heaven and earth. The [Fierce Dragon] wasn’t wounded at all, it shook its body a bit and stood back up.
“This is the legendary monster [Fierce Dragon], how did an SS+ monster appear here!” After seeing that the newcomer was a [Fierce Dragon] Ivy and Susan’s faces paled, not even a mounted dragon knight would be guaranteed to survive an encounter with this legendary beast, this was probably the end of their adventuring party.
Even though the party had already slew several strong and renowned monsters, including an [Earth Bear], this [Fierce Dragon] was 4 cla.s.ses higher than that of the [Earth Bear]. Even [Ground Dragon Kings] were only S+ cla.s.s and wouldn’t be able to escape the fate of being killed if it met this [Fierce Dragon].
“I’m back, the monster I brought back might be a bit strong though!” Bella and Kriss appeared in the shrubbery where Ivy and the others were hiding. Hadias had listened to Bella and hid further away, because as the demon world’s princess, she had a strong aura of death and blood, if it wasn’t for the [Fierce Dragon]’s stronger aura masking her’s, the holy maiden Susan would have discovered her long ago.
The [Fierce Dragon] was currently rampaging through the [Ground Dragon] herd as it couldn’t find the ‘perpetrators’ and could only take out its anger on the ‘scapegoats’. It was quite a b.l.o.o.d.y scene as the [Ground Dragons]’ attacks didn’t damage the [Fierce Dragon] at all while it just ripped through them like a hot knife through b.u.t.ter.
“Here Ivy, take this, these are the magic cores of [Ground Dragons] that you were looking for, Noesha snuck it out using s.p.a.ce magic. The monster we brought this time is pretty strong, we don’t even need to do anything.”
After receiving the several large magic cores that were still warm from Bella, Ivy didn’t know how she would thank Bella, it was a dangerous task to have lured this [Fierce Dragon] if Bella wasn’t careful, she could have met her end.
“What do we do now, Bella? The [Ground Dragons] are almost all dead, the [Fierce Dragon] might come for us next.”
“Ok here’s the plan, Susan, Ivy, you leave first! Use Noesha’s magic formation, Roland and Annie will come with you, they’ll be responsible for bringing you back to the Church. The rest of us will follow shortly after.”
Susan and Ivy still wanted to try and talk Bella into coming with them but were dragged by Roland and Annie into Noesha’s transportation formation. At this time, the several dozen [Earth Dragons] had been completely slaughtered, while the [Fierce Dragon] who had still not yet sated its anger continued to look for the ‘perpetrators’.
Bella planned to end this SS+ cla.s.s monster here, everyone who remained here was those she could trust, Hadias as the demon world’s princess was also included. After talking and conversing with Kriss for so long, Kriss also had a general idea of the ident.i.ties of Bella’s party members so she was fine too.
On Bella’s side, there were currently 3 demon kings, a cheating hero, a demon world princess, and 3 demon G.o.d level lolis. Bella wouldn’t be comfortable not fighting a BOSS battle with such a luxurious team. Even if they really couldn’t beat the [Fierce Dragon], Bella still had several hundred dark suzerains that she could call for backup at any time, she could always summon them to just mob the [Fierce Dragon] to death.