Xera bolted for the slightly smaller and sleeker thunder dragon, Aki and Mark both covered in heavy magical effects that resembled armor and beating the shit out of the thing that seemed to not care one bit about the amount of times it's head was caved in, their battle sending shockwaves and energy that reached the ground from all the way to the height they'd propelled their enemy towards.
However high they were, the humans were dots in the sky to her augmented vision, the dragon barely palm sized.
Her own oponent, however, was still quite giant sized, it's maw rapidly reaching for her body. At the last moment, she jumped upwards, her spear pointed at the majestic beast's neck as she reverted the direction of the force aplied to her for a moment before jumping again on a telekinetic platform, her landing pretty much gouging twice as much neck meat as she had in her own body.
She'd still needed to roll to the side as a scale filled paw smashed where she'd been moments ago, the wound she'd just caused incinerated and healing slowly. 'Nicking' said pawn with her now monster spear, she ussed magic to make her next jump countain even more force, quickly reaching to cut further in the same wound as the dragon tried to bite her torso off. Xera then suddenly appeared on the oposite side of the neck, almost completly imobile and with some frost over her leather armor and hair before slashing with all her strenght at the dragons spine.
Even if she'd expected it thanks to Aki's teachings, it was still frustating when her spear just ricocheted agaisnt a second layer of scales that came out of nowhere. The now much more menacing matriarch was about to incinerate her out of existence, a glowing ball of what she could only call plasma appearing on the expossed reptilian troath.
Ussing several enchantments one after the other, Xera accelareted by alot, suddenly already with her spear's shaft hitting the dragon's neck like it was a hammer, the force being transfered to it's muzzle instead through yet another enchantment.
Being mere meters away, she was also sent flying away from the explosion of the dragon shooting a breath attack inside it's own mouth, breaking it's jaw and leaving it unable to bite with the destroyed muscle. She didn't relent, appearing exactly where she'd been before the explosion happened and jumping on the air again to launch herself into the dragon's head, a crater forming bellow it as it's fragilized mouth was broken yet again.
Her spear could barely penetrate it's skull, but that was enough for her. She opened a hand sized flask she had in a belt, linked the dragon's blood and starting robbing it's warmth to turn the maximum amount of liters of nitrogen into gas in the short while she had.
While another creature might just suffer from frostbite and die, a dragon's blood was always warm enough to melt iron. Meaning that when it's body tried to produce more heat to produce the sudden cold, it was an almost instantaneous affair.
By the time the matron had regained enough of her bearings to fight the strange headache after the stun she'd taken, Xera had extracted a bit more than a thousand degrees.
So the moment she so graciously gave it all back, the searing heat proved that indeed, dragons were not as fire proof in the inside as they were on the outside.
While one might point out that it was a dragon, so it'd not die even with such temperature imbalance, there still remained the fact that the sudden temperature change made the pressure inside it's highly resistant cranium reach a point where it had to literally bleed from every orifice it's reptilian face had so it's brain would not turn to mush, stunning the extremely pained dragon yet again.
The dragonic ophidian did not have the mana to just play with it and do the same trick yet again, but she did have several high grade mana potions that Aki had obtained and refined.
Turns out, you only need mana to make a potion better, so he could very well just concoct a high grade mana potion out of several lesser ones. It was actually common knowlegde to alchemists too, it just wasn't very efficient since the amount was ridiculous for anyone who'd not possesed an advanced mana regeneration skill to keep doing it. Luckily they'd not needed potions with Aki around.
Her quick drink over, she begun shoving sharpnel explosives inside the dragon's eye, it still being too distracted by the pain to understand what she was doing. Seeing a paw starting to look into taking her out, she shot her spear at it, a lot of force multipliers into it, nailing the arm to the ground. There wasn't much time left, so she shoved one more sack into it's ruined eye, clamped the eyelid shut and did her best punch to detonate the things.
By the small explosions she heard and the dragon shouting in pain again, she considered her task fullfiled. Oppening the eyelid yet again, she poured two healing potions on the regrowing organ, stopping the metal shards from being expelled by it's natural regeneration. It also hurt like all nine hells according to her cute husband, so the fact the thing started to trash it's snake like neck all around like she'd just drugged it made a lot of sense at the moment.
It was going to be a pain to deal with the crazy beast, but killing it would be easier than dealing with a proper adult dragon.
*****
As the metal spear penetrated deeper inside his prey, Aki grunted and mentally pressed the command that activated the rotatory spikes, the thunderstorm dragon great patriarch screamed a new record breaking roar as it's diggestive system was destroyed from the inside, which actually made it stop flying and just fall off from high up on the sky.
{I'll take off the neck, you penetrate it's chest and get to the heart!} Aki said, Mark not needing to respond in any way but diving and preparing for impact against the dragonic mass of flesh. They'd destroyed the fucker at least five times already, once it just buffed it's defence and nullified their attacks while regenerating normally, thrice did it just straight out regenerate entirely out of nowhere just to receive another attack and fall into their combo again, and most recently, it'd turned itself immobile while summoning the spectral form of an even bigger dragon while becoming intangible.
The man did not want to find out how the fuck that giant steel spike had actually hit the thing, nor how Aki knew where it's ass was, but overall, he was very happy to have befriended the mage instead of trying to push him around.
As both humans ussed a multitude of spells, skills and martial arts, both turned out to be completly safe as they fell over the softening cushion of dragon meat. They weren't without injure, no, skidiving is dangerous for everyone, but they were both alive, the dragon wasn't, so it was a win.
Aki started to feed on the giant soul of the lightning dragon, quickly feeding all the energy to an overcharged healing spell, turning his spine into something that'd be able to sustain his weight again and putting his legs back into shape, slowly getting up while stumbling towards the guild master.
Turns out, the man was much better than the man who'd literally splatered his legs and broke almost every bone in his body, but he still didn't look like he'd be able to move naturally for a while yet, so he fed more of the dragon's soul into another healing spell, halving whatever it'd previously had.
"Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck...." Groaned the mage hunter.
"Yeah, it sucks, and you don't get ussed to it." Unless you modify your brain to do exactly that or pass through similar circunstances hundreds of times, he mentally complemented, already starting to steal the soul's energy till it barely retained sentience before releasing it and starting to bombard the shit out of the crowd of dragons the rest of the expedition was holding back. "Did you at least cap your job with this?" Aki asked, the question one of the few not really affected by the faux pas that was asking about someone's status.
"Nope, level 98. You?" He answered, already getting up and directing himself to the dragons surviving the barrage.
"87, though i was only on ten before all this." The other one grumbled, equally bothered by the circunstances.
"You get ussed to doing several of these expeditions before leveling a big job." The man finished stretching and jumped off, already punching a dragon trying to release it's breath into the ground.
*****
"Loses?" Mark questioned.
"Three adventurers, seven knights." Somberly said one attendant/knight.
"Then it's a total win. The amount of XP that thing gave was enough to mark it as a rank 11, nevermind that the matriarch was much weaker and actually at rank 9, that rage had clearly been recently taken over, otherwise their ranks would've soared and we'd be going home with only a handful of the original fifty we came with. Killing that one off was the right decision. Though i would've liked to come here only with A and B-rank people, there was no way to know what we now know, so there's no one we can blame but ourselves and our lack of high level man-power." Mark explained, everyone able to hear his speech thanks to his skills. "I will be reporting to the guild headquarter that we will need another A rank around and recomend Aki of the Alastor party for a rank up test." He announced, turning to the count and giving him a 'look'.
"I will, of course, also give my recomendation. After seeing what i've seen, there is no doubt in my heart." He said with a serious face over his full graying beard as he narrowed his eyes.
"I imagine that means I need to travel there and try to get my third vote so I can then do the test." Aki pointed out. "I'm at least going to need to get to one hundred on my current job if I want to do well. Any good dungeons or notable bandit group on the way?" He asked.
"Some bandits, plenty even slavers, though I don't think there's any worth a B rank's time. Unless your job has something to do with bandits hunting, of course. The capital itself has plenty of dungeons in it's vicinity though, so no problem there." Shrugged Mark.
"Or just sapient hunting." Shrugged Aki. "But yeah, it's about dealing with criminal scum. Plenty of modifiers, so it should be doable by the time I get there." He said, finally signing the third draft of the contract on material ownership, which gave him the ownership of one matriarch, one and a half patriarchs and several adult dragon bodies.
*****
"Yeah, Aki did the right call on this one. No way we can move any of these materials in any higher quantity, and we do really need the ten small platinum coins promised. Even if this idiot can do basically anything, he is still shit at dismantling, nevermind producing shit out of dragon bone and horn. The way to make it into powder is already super secret, no way it'd be good to just mold the bones themselves." Explained Mari as she flipped through the copy given to her after they returned. "Somewhat surprising we were able to get so much meat and blood though." She mumbled.
"See, I told you girls it'd not get much better. Also, it's because the big boss regenerated a lot of meat. Like, seriously, I'm pretty sure I carved out twice it's body mass myself, nevermind the amount I burned away." The husband said, shoving more of said material into the grill.
The dragon blood was pretty all purpose as long as an alchemists or enchanters were concerned, but dragon meat...
"There's no way my husband's cooking is so good. Turn off whatever spell you're using!" Said Xera, waving a fist while shoving more chewy meaty goodness in her mouth. Then she suddenly stopped. "Actually, maybe don't turn it off?" She slowly said, putting more meat on Clair's plate. Aki just laughed hard, while Kora chuckled.
"Did you get your first attribute boost?" Asked the human girl while cutting the steak in smaller pieces for the little vampire. "I imagine you get some kind of bonus since your species is related to dragons, but yes, as long as it is a strong enough creature, anyone can get part of their attributes." She explained, having long maxed out whatever she'd ever be able to with dragon meat.
"You're still eating it young lady! I'm making those taste buds work again no matter what!" Aki bellowed, demonically echoing the voice of three out of the four ghosts he'd summoned from hell in an attempt to make a better barbecue. Even materializing another pair of arms to better handle the hellwood grill, the thing burning everything around it to an unreasonable degree as he prepared a whole dragon leg, even enchanting an appron for the occasion.