Pov Rafe

For the first time in quite a while, I was able to reach up and take a breath of air. The underwater world was amazing, but the sunlight on my face as I continued to walk up the beach—and more importantly, the fresh air—was so good.

I might be able to turn myself into any creature and make myself completely comfortable under the sea, but I was still a creature of the land, and it just felt right being able to breathe air.

As I got out of the water, I simply laid on my back on the hot sand and just enjoyed being on land. It had been a long journey, and so fruitful. Not only did I see sights that were so breathtaking, but I also managed to collect quite a lot of patterns and even gain some minor rank-ups. There was a lot of fighting down there, and the thought of it made me smile.

While I think I could get some more patterns down there that would make me even stronger, I don’t think I would actually need them, mainly because of my last target. One more proper hunt, and then it's time to go back home and accept my destiny. Being away from him has left me feeling homesick, and it would be nice to feel my full strength once again.

Nevertheless, I just continued to lay on the beach for about an hour, soaking in the sunlight, before I pushed myself up and started walking along the beach. It was a small island in the north, past the western continent, and quite close to the black ocean. In fact, I could see it from here—the ocean was welcoming and blue up until it wasn’t, turning dark and foreboding like someone had drawn a line in the sand.

The last of the dragons lived there, constantly being hunted so none of them reached platinum rank. If they wanted, they could have wiped the dragons out, but no their bodies were simply too valuable for that.

I think those who know see it as a punishment to the dragon race for what they did in ages past. Personally, I think it’s a truly devious punishment, and I think any dragon from back then who learned of the fate of their race would truly suffer.

This island wasn’t big and should have been empty, but when I left for the underwater world, I needed to leave my airship behind. I organized one of my father’s agents to take the airship to this island, and I was glad to find it under shelter, properly stored. It had still gotten some weather damage as I looked over it, but nothing I couldn’t fix in a few days.

Altogether, it took me four days to fix the ship up and get back in the air. My next destination was an island called the Dragon's Feast. It was a relatively large island, with a portion of it inside the dark ocean. It was the staging ground for any expedition to hunt dragons close to the platinum rank.

It might be a few years before I’m able to get a chance to join one of these expeditions, and I would probably need to do some hunting of more regular monsters with others to build up my reputation, but I will have, in the end, collected the last pattern I want to hunt for myself.

My journey was relatively quick, and it was interesting to see how traffic picked up the closer I got to my destination. When I could see the island, I could also see the hundreds of different airships and regular ships around it, most likely bringing fighters and taking away valuable and expensive ingredients gotten from the monsters hunted here. There were also quite a few ships obviously patrolling and ready to defend against any threat.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

The docking procedure was easy, and I just had to pay a monthly fee to leave my ship in the dry dock for a long period of time. Hopefully, I get to start hunting soon, as I’m starting to run low on funds again.

The city was quite busy, and from what I was sensing, there should be about 100,000 people living here. It was time to find the adventurers' guild and sign in.

My walk through the city was quite pleasant, as this city wasn’t what I expected it to be. I was expecting it to be badly maintained, with dirt around every corner, and people eyeing you as you walked by.

Instead, every building and street was meticulously kept. The buildings were beautiful but not ostentatious—every first floor was made out of stone and then built upon with wood, and I kind of liked that aesthetic.

Most of the people also seemed like just regular citizens, although they were on average quite a lot stronger than others. Of course, I quite often saw people in adventuring gear that were quite strong, even some who were platinum ranks that were just walking around like everyone else.

It took a bit of time as the city was quite large, but I eventually neared the adventurer guild, and the traffic picked up once again. There were so many people walking around that it was crowded, and I hadn’t felt that in quite a while.

I saw the large adventurer guild office, but my attention was fully focused on a smaller building, at least small compared to the guild's office. There were fewer people there, but all who were there seemed quite strong.

‘Every Meal Restaurant’ was written in large letters advertising the restaurant. There was a smaller list of the most popular and expensive dishes, and to my surprise, Dragon steak was on the list.

I can’t get patterns if the creature had died a long time ago, but that was relative, as even I had a bag on me that could store and keep fresh anything I put in it, and I have tested it out—it does work for getting new patterns as well. There’s no way a restaurant serving Dragon steaks of all things would not use such devices to keep food as fresh as possible, so they could serve everything at the best quality possible.

I would still need samples of other parts of the dragon, but I suspect they would be treated the same way as the meat, with the possible exception of bones and scales. I would need to test them out, but I might actually have scales and bones that are stronger than dragon’s from the goliaths I fought and consumed in the deep ocean. I might be done sooner than I thought.

There was an outside area with quite a few tables, so I picked a table meant for two people, as there weren’t tables meant for only one, and sat down. Almost immediately, a waiter appeared next to me.

“Good day to you, sir, would you like to see a menu or do you already know what you would like to order?” He had that service smile; it wasn't forced, which was unusual.

"Yes, I would like to ask about the dragon steak. How fresh is it, and could I get it as rare as possible?"

"Of course. We only use the freshest ingredients. The current dragon steaks we offer are stored right after they’re harvested, and we guarantee they’re kept in our purpose-built storage devices within a maximum of 30 minutes after the kill. They’re the freshest steaks you could get."

I smiled at that. It was even better than I expected. The price was a bit steep, but I could still pay it. I might need to get some extra coin for the other part, but I guess if I’m going back so soon, it shouldn’t be a problem getting some coin from Father’s agents.

"Yes, that sounds excellent. I don’t require anything else."

I could see that he already wanted to push more items for me to enjoy and purchase, but I didn’t want to go over my current coin count. I also paid right away, which he seemed quite pleased about, as I gave him a bit of a tip as well.

The wait was about 40 minutes, which surprised me. I had tried cooking meat from strong monsters before, and it usually took quite a while. When the steak came, I was a bit disappointed, as it had the proper char on it. I needed it to be as fresh as possible. However, they had cut off one end of the steak, and when I saw how rare it was inside, I was happy.

It tasted so good, but more importantly, I could feel the pattern inside, and those muscles were amazing. They were so much better than anything else I had tried that I needed to reevaluate the strength a dragon could exert. How did civilization even defeat them? I’d like to learn that one day.

There were a few bites left of the meat. I had long ago gotten the pattern I wanted, but it just tasted so good that I continued to eat it. To my surprise, someone sat across from me. “Could you be, adventurer Rafe? I have a proposition for you,” I heard her say, but I also noticed another language—the language of Father’s agent.

It was a hard language to learn, made for secrecy. It used regular language as cover, but you had to say some vowels differently. You also needed to understand body language—even how you breathe needed to be accounted for, with many other factors included. It was so tough to learn, and I was a novice at it at best, but it seems like the agent across from me understood that.

She introduced herself as Enn. She wanted a private meeting where we could talk more openly, but they wanted me to help them catch a live dragon for Father. At this, things just got so much more interesting. I communicated my agreement and quickly finished the steak.