After everything was ready, we headed towards the dragon's nest, the mages in the party must have had enough time to get the digging done. With Gloria in a steady state, dig the last part of the nest to find any treasure the dragon kept in its nest.
Speaking of the dragon, the well-packaged corpse doesn't even emit a smell or shed blood which already prevents it from attracting magical beasts anymore, the double layer of wrapping is strengthened by a runic arrangement that completely seals the package, the only problem is the trail that it is left by the corpse, the grass and dirt that is crumpled when the dragon is pulled by the horses is an unsolved problem.
There's nothing to do about it, the corpse is quite heavy and when pulling it at a good speed the route our team is taking is easily traceable. I don't think even a skilled earth mage could stop that from happening.
This can make things very complicated.
Upon arriving at the dragon's nest, I am shot by the angry look of two mages because Zephyr was digging the hole when we arrived. They only got dirty by digging and you can see the sweat that runs down Nótt and Rays' faces when the moonlight that illuminates them, they only tried hard.
The hole is quite deep and large, impressive for work done by mages.
"Hi, the dragon is already resolved. Want some help finishing digging the tunnel?"
The answer was a shovel being thrown and its target was my face, I think Nótt didn't like my question.
"Okay, no need to be so aggressive, Gloria are you okay with helping with the dig? If you are not, no problem."
"I can dig with my earth element, but I can't use my arms. My right arm is still too bruised to move."
"Okay, not much to dig into anymore."
With the shovel in my hand, Raziel and I started digging the hole with Gloria behind us using her earth element to move some of the earth, we had to dig a few more meters to get to the part where the dragon's nest should start.
Using my eyes, I looked for anything that stood out in my mana and ground elemental energy, it wasn't that difficult because there isn't as much earth and it flows in a different way than the mana of a smaller object.
We spent two more hours playing in the dirt to retrieve all the objects that I could track, unfortunately they were spread a lot because of the landslide. We found some pieces of shiny miner, scales that must have fallen from the dragon and to finish we found what was left of three corpses.
One of them was from a poor bear that seems to have been the dragon's last meal, only a few bones left of it, the rest of his body must have been eaten by the dragon, the other human corpses were in better condition.
Some parts of their skeletons such as arms and torso were missing, but their armor and clothes that were well torn still served to inform us of the victims' identities. A mage and a warrior were possibly members of the adventuring party that the dragon attacked.
This is quite surprising; it must have been quite troublesome for the dragon to carry them here for them to serve as snacks. A fully ripped armor and torn mage's tunic rags were rubbish, too damaged to sell as material for recycling.
The warrior's most complete equipment was his sword and pair of daggers that he must have been carrying before he died, his helmet is more or less intact, but he was well dented.
From the mage we recovered the crystal of her staff it is a necklace that was a magical tool, the rest that was with her skeleton were just torn rags, even if they are level three materials they are still in a high state of degradation, the dragon fire has touched in those clothes.
It wasn't a direct attack because if it had been just ashes instead of pieces of fabric, the dragon must have burned something near those clothes.
There aren't many items here, but I don't think it was a waste of time and energy.
"That was a big waste of time! There was only garbage, we wasted a lot of time here."
I think some people have a different conclusion than mine.
"It's not that bad, Nott."
"No, she's right, Ulric. The miners they had in the cave are nothing special and the equipment is badly damaged, shouldn't dragons accumulate huge treasures in their nest?"
"It was a baby dragon; it hadn't even matured yet. Dragons take a long time to accumulate valuable treasures in large quantities."
"Alice is right, Hilda. But we still got a necklace that is a level three magic tool, even without knowing it use it must be worth a lot, it is barely scratched so it shouldn't have its functioning harmed. Big profit."
"Give me that necklace. Let's see what he can do, when he doesn't do shit, I'm going to throw you in the mud so you feel as clean as I do now."
Looks like someone really doesn't like to get dirty and holds grudges easily, I hope this necklace works.
With the power of the necklace Nótt channels her mana into it and nothing happens, I'm screwed, but before Nótt's sinister grin got too big as she looked at me, the necklace started to glow.
A faint blue light began to be released from the necklace and when everyone focused on it a mana shield was projected in front of Nótt. Is this necklace really a defensive tool?
This type of tool is quite expensive, I think that digging in the earth ended up being worth a good profit. A small black arrow hit the blue shield and ended up being ripped to shreds. Next, we tested defense against aura, but to our surprise my punch went through the shield without even an obstacle.
It almost made Nótt's mood even worse, it seems that this shield is not that good. We did some more tests to find out the limit and properties of the necklace. At the end of the tests, we found it really useless against physical attacks, the aura passes through the barrier, my fist without aura passes through the barrier and a pebble passes through it and hits Nótt.
But when he faces mana and elemental energy, he has a great defense functional is efficient, the more mana and put into him the more defensive power he has, he easily blocked a level two spell with such a small amount of mana than a black core mage could block more than a dozen level two magic,
"Well, do you still want to push me through the mud?"
"Yea! But I admit that this necklace is valuable. Do you want to choose the mud I should push you?"
How funny, a comedian wizard.
"Very funny, but we better get out of here. Even if we managed to kill the dragon, we have to take him to the city preferably without finding anyone, any suggestions?"
"We're going to have to take a good turn, Ulric, but do we have to go right or left on the way back?"
"Is there a difference?"
"I think to the left there is less coverage, less hills and trees. Basically, plain covered by green grass."
"Less chance of finding another team unless some team is stupid enough to think a dragon would make its nest on a plain. If he has a team like that, he will easily find us on the plain."
"Let's go left, the first break and seven hours from now. It's best not to force the horses too much."
Our trip turned out to be pretty smooth, nine days of travel back to the northern border town was pretty boring. Not that I wanted it to be any different, traveling across the plain was the perfect plan to avoid any group of students who came to hunt the dragon.
The only event that happened was that we were chased by a pack of really big wolves for about fifteen minutes, Ryas and Nótt took care of the wolves, a corrosive rain of the shadow elements and water joined a shadow that contained the curse of pain.
I was impressed that the two are actually able to unite their spells into a large-scale spell with three different elements, it's normal to see mages combining their mana, but combining elements is way more difficult and this cursed corrosive rain is even a level above one. common elemental spell combination.
A spell like this proves because the two are on the same team, the rain that hit freed us from the wolves in a short time. The pain of their skin being corroded was too much for them to handle, even the level two ice wolves came out crying after getting wet for a while in the black rain.
The nine days of travel ended without us meeting a single human, but when we entered the city the first thing, we found was a team of students. What a shitty end to the trip.