Dragon slayer

"Alright, I've got everything together already, I probably have a good 5 hours of light left and the Dragon quest is no more than an hour away, let's see just how giant this thing is, I can always abort and go on the flower quest if it's something I can't handle"

With this thought he got in to his now habitual sprinters start and set off, the slowly increasing Endurance stat along with his nicely buffed up Strength and Agility stats were making him see his surround areas differently, it all seemed so much smaller, this was one of the reasons he kept prioritising his speed, he wanted to know the whole area properly before Melissa came over.

He was fairly confident in his speed now, he was sure he could outrun the wolf riding goblins, everything else he'd met so far was slower, except maybe the Skebbles. He was passing the area he'd destroyed that nest in now, though from the look of the birds and small beasts he saw occasionally it didn't seem like there were any more around.

He saw what he thought might be some kind of gazelle, hopping along in some drier grass further west, as he watched it looked like little sparks would occasionally jump between their horns. With so many of them and the idea of the electricity he didn't want to find out if they were as passive as their Earth cousins.

Not long before he arrived at the marker the landscape abruptly changed. The grasses had started to be interspersed with dry earth before now, a fine orange dust infiltrating the area behind the relatively lush area he considered the boar forest. It seemed these trees and the river's proximity were all that was preventing the encroachment of this much more barren landscape before him, the few plants around shrivelled and thorny.

The mountains to the east curled back from here and now he was at this angle he could see this dry area stretched some distance east, bunched up to the mountains, cracking the rock into indistinct and unpredictable formations, he could see grouped up pillars or rock abandoned by the mountains in the dry dust, it was in one of these shaded areas the map marker was directing him.

The very sight made him thirsty and he drank deeply before heading too close. At 100 metres he started to walk forward, watching the area the marker indicated closely. As he got nearer he saw the marker was shifting occasionally, his quarry marked so accurately it had no hope of a fair hunt.

Advancing he saw movement to his right, it was an actual komodo dragon, just as he'd seen before on Earth, it scuttled itself forward grabbing some kind of insect from the air. After catching its prey it turned to look at Daniel almost quizzically before slowly walking back into the shade, its tongue tasting the air as it went.

"Guess they know I'm coming then, but that didn't look much bigger than normal"

He moved forward and saw another watching him from within the shade, standing as though ready to dart out at a moment's notice.

"A group of them, each taking a different area to catch any bugs that come close maybe? I don't really know how they act on Earth"

Moving forward he found himself just taking his first step into the shade when a much larger form darted forward directly towards him, the fast moving legs and raised head showed exactly how the 3 metre long monster saw Daniel.

"Same tactic as the little guys? I'm not a damn fly!"

He'd already darted to the side and drawn his spear as the beast moved forward, it was clearly faster in a straight line than trying to curve around the rock after him.

Its shiny red claws propelled it forwards as its set open mouth revealed dirty red teeth. At first it seemed perfectly normal, the mind seeing a meat eater's red teeth and thinking of a fresh kill, the gathering wisps of flame coalescing in its open mouth soon woke him up to reality however.

"It is a bloody dragon!"

He dived sideways as the fireball that was at least the same size as he could produce shot past him, he then noticed the beasts little friends closing in, he'd practically been circling the rock and as he dived from the fireball one of the normal dragons darted forward to bite his off balance leg. He rolled and shot a fireball of his own at the small dragon while raising his spear to fend off the larger threat.

It turned out it could do more than just shoot fire though, quickly slashing at him with its front legs, its shiny red claws shone brighter and glowed red hot, slashing his spear shaft to pieces, the broken shards smouldering.

He immediately dropped the broken shaft and summoned another, stabbing right into the creature's undefended chest but to little effect, the iron spear tip getting caught by a scale and little else.

The colossal weight of the beast pushed down on the spear which, pushed by the fair strength of Daniel and pinned down by the weight of the dragon, snapped with a resounding crack.

Time bought at the cost of 2 silvers worth of spears Daniel managed to scramble backwards to his feet, the small specimens were loosely trying to circle him but didn't seem to dare to get too near while he was upright.

He'd withdrawn his last spear but quickly changed his mind and withdrew the mace, the dragon advanced clearly wanting to keep him wrong footed and wisps of flame again started to coalesce within its maw. Running to the side and trying to get around the beasts reach he managed to vault onto it from the side, bringing his mace down on its raised leg with enough force to clearly damage it and, more importantly, tilt it slightly further damn allowing him to get his empty hand on the back of its head where he steadied himself.

As soon as his hand made contact with its skin he activated Grim touch and held on tight, another swing of his mace in to the back of the monsters head as it got weaker and weaker from the dark magic and it's face crashed against the ground, one more mace hit and he received the notification he was waiting for.

[160 exp]

[Quest objective complete: Defeat the Dragon]

"Yes! Alright, you guys going to be cool? "

The smaller Komodo dragons were backing off back into the shade mostly, with just a few still watching him trying to figure out if there was going to be another opportunity.

Absorbing the corpse into his storage space he was surprised to find an item underneath.

"I thought only the particle ones dropped stuff?"

A shiny iron shield lay face down in the dirt, the strap seemingly made from Komodo dragon leather, a faint depiction of flames etched around the rim. A gem slot was in the inside centre against where his arm would be.

"Does it have flames because of the dragon or is the loot drop random? I'm still unclear on the rules."

After a thought he moved into the shade where the rest of the dragons were, shooting off a couple of small bursts of flame to keep them away as he explored. He'd hoped to find a treasure horde to fit in with the dragon narrative but all he could find were a few small nests, one with 2 eggs much larger than the rest.

"Be glad you're not birds, I don't know if you guys cook the same."

He left them, after some distance he had a drink and looked at his map.

"The flower quest is actually still an hour's run from here, I think it would still be light by the time I get back if it's a quick one, Okay, I want to level up again when I get back to base, quest it is."

One final drink and he shot off west again, glad to be leaving this dust behind him.