There were a few people on the beach, wearing swimsuits and taking it easy, just what we wanted once everything was over. A bit annoyed by the fact that they could laze around while we had another battle coming, I told Elena to take out Padinyss’s corpse here. The sudden appearance of a mighty-looking dragon startled many.

They started whispering behind our backs and what I heard pleased my ears. While I was listening in on their whispers, Audrey and Elena took out Ekrok’s and Inhe’s corpse. The former didn’t even know he died, but we had no reason to tell him that, ‘hey, we’ll take your life now’.

“Why are we here?” one of the dark scars couldn’t help but ask.

“Well, we’re going to eat Padinyss’s meat and devour the harder parts of his body. The same goes for Inhe and Ekrok since they all happened to die in their dragon forms. The basis of our ability is our parasites and a special type of bacteria, so we can inherit a part of his powers even if eaten. I believe we should savour the meat of our dear enemy,” I explained myself.

“A grill on the beach?” Audrey raised her brows.

“Call it what you want.”

“But then shouldn’t we leave some for after dealing with the giant? I imagine it’d taste much better. Ah, wait, I know, we can’t. I almost forgot the time limit is six hours and it’d be a waste to not eat them while we can still inherit their powers,” she rubbed her temples upon realisation.

“Indeed, if not for the time limit, I’d wait until we killed the giant. But once a body started rotting, we can’t gain anything from it,” I nodded my head and made a few trees and bushes grow with nature magic. After preparing the necessary wood and some other stuff, there was a barbecue fireplace made of rock.

“Devour the scales, claws, bones, organs… everything. We need only their meat,” I instructed.

“Ah, wait!” Elena shouted as she stood up. “I need his claws, they’ll make good weapons.” She squatted down next to the corpse and picked up two of them from the ground. Since it fell out in our battle, we didn’t have to bother with trying to tear it out.

After storing those claws, everyone used devour to remove the unnecessary parts, leaving nothing but their meat behind. Just from a smaller part of his skeleton and scales, I’ve levelled up to five hundred and eighty-seven. Once we ate his meat, we’d get very close to reaching the next realm, but there was a problem with that.

There’d be many changes coming with the six hundredth level and it’d take a while to actually level up which is also the reason why Padinyss didn’t just dump us and did it. Of course, levels were related to our own abilities, but we would have to learn a few things to reach the six hundredth level and that didn’t come easy.

We’ve got all kinds of spices and combined with the grilled meat of a legendary creature, it gave off a heavenly fragrance. Even from further away on the beach, many humans stood up and came a bit closer to take a look at what we were doing.

Elena made a small wooden chair and sat down, her face radiating a sense of peace. But my dear’s peace was short-lived when a daring guy walked up to her and asked, “Beautiful Miss, what is it that your group is preparing? Is it for sale, by any chance?”

I looked at the scene with amusement. We cleaned this place and the guy had no malice in his actions. He was so polite, Elena had no way to refute him like she’d been doing with other aggressive men.

She turned to look at me and then said, “Please, go and bother him. I just want to rest for now and enjoy the fragrance.”

“You… very well,” I shook my head, trying to hold back my laughter.

“Sorry, but this is something we can’t share with outsiders. But I also understand that it pains the people present, so I’ll do you a favour and seal this wonderful smell, so you won’t have to feel hunger,” I replied.

“Ah, that’s sad, but I understand,” he nodded his head and then left peacefully.

“You’ve had your revenge, don’t be envious of these people. Now make that barrier and stop tormenting them,” Elena waved her hand and bossed me around.

The dark scars looked at me, waiting for something. I used wind magic to seal the fragrance of the meat and heard their whispers in the next moment, “It’s Master Elena who is the boss after all.”

“Yeah, we should listen to her commands over Master Dred’s.”

“I think so.”

She turned around once again and stuck out her tongue while looking me in the eyes.

“Very well, if you want to play, I’ll join you,” I smiled back at her. Her body froze for a moment before she turned back in her chair and continued to gaze into the sun and the ocean.

I took a quick taste of the meat, thinking that it was done. A shudder ran through my whole body as it came in contact with my tasting buds and went down my throat. “Okay. We really shouldn’t get used to this kind of taste or we’ll hunt legendary creatures…” I warned everyone in advance. “Now bring your plates!”

Everyone took their share and left to eat in their own little teams. Some grouped up with other teams and enjoyed their meal together. It was nice to see them smile and enjoy their current lives. Sure, their fates were bound to ours, but we let them have their free-time unless our circumstances were really dire.

“Hello,” Khax stuck out his head from the ground all of a sudden.

“Can’t you come here normally?” I rubbed my temples. He almost startled me.

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“What? You should be happy to see me here. The undead king is here personally, he comes from so far away yet this is how you welcome him?”

“Don’t talk about him as if he wasn’t you… Cor! Come here,” I shouted in the end.

“What is it?” he came over, his mouth stuffed to the brim.

“My, you can eat, how good for you. I turned into a Wraith King like you yet I don’t have my flesh left on me,” Khax voiced his thoughts with a tint of envy.

“It’s probably thanks to their blood,” he pointed at us.

“That’d make sense. Anyway, where is this Shin? I came to help as per our agreement,” Khax looked around and his dot eyes soon stopped on the eagle sitting on Cor’s shoulder. He crawled out of the ground and hit the sand in front of him, “Lay down here.”

“What’s going on?”

“This oldie knows one or two things about the soul and even has a soul-related spell. He’s going to teach us as well once the war is over, but for now, he’s going to help you two connect again,” I replied.

Shin turned back into his true form and grabbed my shoulders in excitement as if he was some kid. Clenching my fist, I raised my hand and punched him in the face, “This is for what you’ve done. If not for being a crucial part of Cor, I’d have killed you,” I said.

“I’m sorry about this, Master,” this time Cor bowed down and spoke seriously.

“You don’t need to. It wasn’t you.”

“Well, technically it was all my doing,” he sighed.

“I’m sorry! I really am!” Shin sat up and hugged Cor’s legs.

“Enough, you all. We can’t kill Shin anyway or Cor would die as well and he’s going to disappear soon enough. It’s pointless to argue with him,” Elena turned around in her chair and shouted.

Raising my hands, I left them alone and took our share of the meat on a big plate and sat down next to Elena. The wooden chair moved back into the ground while she slipped off and sat down in my lap. As I embraced her body with my left arm and rested my chin on the top of her head, I thrust my fork into a slab of meat and held it in front of her lips with my other hand. If not for knowing that it didn’t matter to us at our levels, I’d have warned her to be careful because it was hot.

Pulling her hair to the side, she leaned forward and took the first piece into her mouth. I felt her body twitch in my arms when she came to understand how amazing of a flavour dragon meat had. After giving one slab to myself, I gave her another. Our super big plate of meat slowly disappeared and turned into nothing but data for our parasites to copy and our bodies to comprehend. We were like a mass of cells, each with a brain of its own, but all connected.

As I finished digesting a few notifications appeared.

You have levelled up to Lv. 599!

You can unlock a new form for your Shapeshifter ability: Dragon God!

This is the body of a legendary creature. Once you transform into this form, your strength and defense will be on par with theirs.

“Hehe, look at what I’ve got,” seeing my notifications, Elena showed me hers.

New Skill Acquired: Dragon’s Paws; Dragon’s Breath; Dragon’s Wings; Dragon’s Tail.

These are innate abilities of another legendary creature.

“Now, that’s some hardcore description,” I laughed as I finished reading it.

“Well, it’s fine. I know how they work, so it’s alright. I’m more curious as to why I couldn’t copy that skill that made even space crumble,” she bit her lower lip while thinking hard about it.

“Maybe Dragon’s Breath is what you’re looking for,” I replied.

“No. All of these skills are based on Dragon Qi which is a very compressed form of mana. It makes dragons way much stronger than other creatures. The only difference between these skills is their effect. For example, Breath is much more destructive in a wide area but it’s not so good for a focused attack. Wings and Paws have great slicing properties while Dragon’s Tail could be used both as a penetrative or crushing skill,” she waved her hand.

“Ah, so they’re basically copying the movements of dragons. Well, that’s obvious from their names as well,” I nodded.

“Mhm. I don’t know what was that skill, but I probably won’t be able to get my hands on it. Maybe it’s something that my parasites can’t comprehend and steal, how sad.”

“Are you sure? I don’t think it’s so sad. You’ve just got four powerful abilities,” I rolled my eyes.

“I know, I was just kidding. Anyway, I’ll remove these from my list of skills. It feels pointless to keep so many skills listed, even least so when I know of their existence anyway.”

“Have you mastered them?”

“Hmm- they’re close to it.”

“Then just group them up and name them Dragon Skills…” I advised.

“That’s good as well,” she did as told. Shifting her position, she muttered, “Hey, can we come back here once we’re done? I want to take it easy for once. All this chase for power and murder, I want a break from it every now and then.”

“Mhm, we should take it easy more often. It’s good for the dark scars as well. Look at how happy they are,” I replied as I turned towards them. Even Audrey and Jake were chatting with the others with smiles on their faces.

“I want to cherish our time together because one day we might lose one of them. It’s no good if all we do is destroy.”

“Well, we do build as well,” I remarked.

“I know, you know what I meant. I thought about it and I think we should try doing that.”

“Are you sure? You’ll have no secrets from that point onwards. I’ll know each time you want to pee, poop, fart, anything.”

“Ugh- why do you have to bring up those things now?” she laughed.

“What? It’s part of bonding!”

“Haha, I know. Well, I know what you think most of the time even without bonding. There shouldn’t be too much new to know about you, but I wouldn’t want to live on alone if anything were to happen to you. That’s why I think that we should bond our souls.”

“Do you want to do it now?” I asked.

Her face turned beet red as she replied, “No, I thought we should do it during…”

“Hahaha, okay. If that’s your wish,” I gave a kiss on the back of her head.

“Thanks.”

“What is there to thank?”

“Let’s go to sleep for now and then return to the kobolds. I wonder how the leading kingdoms are faring against that creature and that army. We haven’t cleaned up any kingdoms nearby either, so we don’t have to fear our work going to waste either,” I said and couldn’t stop a grin forming on my face.

“Yeah, but there are good people as well, though probably fewer than at weaker places. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but the stronger we got, the more trash we had to kill. I’m afraid if this goes on, we’ll have to destroy planets in the future, not just one or two kingdoms…” she sighed.

“So what? This is what you wanted, didn’t you?” I frowned.

“Mhm, and that’s why I’ll go through with this,” she replied.

“Well, that’s good to hear. But remember that even if you change your mind in the future, I’ll still follow you and stay by your side.”

“Heh, it’s not like you have many choices” - she spread her arms and made a smug face.

“Oh?”

“I mean, what sort of girl would accept a mass-murderer beast like you other than me? The heavens were kind to you to have me by your side!” she stuck out her chest and boasted.

“Haha, that might be true, not that I’m interested in anyone else,” I replied seriously.

She turned away, her face a bit flushed. “Hold onto your words until we finish unless you want me to assault you?” she raised her brows.

“I certainly wouldn’t mind, but let’s wait for now,” I smiled back.

We made a few tents on the beach and spent the rest of the day having fun. After taking a good rest, we were ready to return to the battlefield once again.