They quickly packed up their camp with everyone in the group just wanting to go home at that point, Vazmarx had been quick to hide his tails again before the other two noticed.
Together the group started travelling deeper into the forest in silence. Only stopping for short conversation when necessary.
Srilla found a few more plants that she quickly harvested along the way. They also found traces of other groups travelling through where they were pressing on.
Many hours of nothingness passed, but everyone was watching Srilla with suspicion now in case she would try anything, while she remained mostly oblivious to it, having fallen back into her search for plants.
She was truly an alchemist to watch out for since she could make such good potions. But at that point no one wanted to admit it.
Zalbas and Vuldara kept looking in eachothers direction but none of them wanted to make direct eyecontact, 'it must be rough to be childhood friends and being in love with eachother all this time.' Samuel thought to himself.
Night had once again just laughed through the entire situation. Thinking everything was extremely hilarious.
Vazmarx was leading the way when he suddenly turned around a rocky corner and held up a hand for everyone to stop. He looked around and everyone slowly followed his approach.
Samuel saw it, several trees had been broken and falled over in a straight path from a cavern. "Help!" They heard someone scream from the path of broken trees.
Samuel was quick to rush forward while keeping an eye out for anything that resembled an ambush. Vuldara held the others back a bit to be on the safe side.
Samuel found under one of the trees a man in alchemist clothing, he was trapped by it's weight. "Are you alright? What happened here?" Samuel quickly asked.
"Tree!" The human man spoke and pointed at it.
Samuel sighed and placed his hand on the fallen tree, thankfully it had broken off from it's roots so he cast 'Weightless Zero' on the tree and then he took it with both hands and lifted it off the man with ease.
"Woah that was amazing, how could you lift that huge tree so easily?" The alchemist quickly stood up. "Anyway there is no time for that! Quick we must alert the instructors... there is a rampaging earth dragon!"
"Woah slow down!" Samuel waved to his team that it was safe to come over and they quickly did. The man explained again, "There is an earth dragon rampaging, the students that were escorting it decided to act as bait and draw it away from me. We must have encroached on it's nest on accident." The man said and pointed towards the cave.
"There they are!" Srilla exclaimed and ran close to the cave opening and Samuel was quick to follow her and he saw several small shining eyes in the dark from the cave.
Srilla quickly bent down and picked several flowers, while Samuel grabbed her arm and spun her around. "What are you doi....ng?" She paused when she realized there were many yellow shining eyes watching her from the darkness.
They slowly started backing off. "We got what we came for so we should just leave!" Zalbas quickly exclaimed. "Yes let's leave quickly, there is a bloody dragons nest here!" The alchemist agreed.
Samuel turned towards the direction most trees were felled in, "You guys start heading back, you should use magic! I need to go see if I can help the ones that led the dragon away!"
"Woah are you sure thats a good idea?" Vazmarx asked quite clearly concerned.
Samuel nodded, "Oh yeah! I think I have a pretty good idea of what is going on! Just make sure to get back, I promise I will be safe...!" Samuel casted his flight and weight spell and quickly started hovering.
"You better be safe!" Vuldara exclaimed as Samuel started flying away. Not waiting for him to get out of sight she quickly started leading the way to get away from the area.
As expected of someone who was a trained leader.
Samuel followed the path of broken down trees for quite some time before a small canyon entered his view. It was clear the scuffle had led down there.
He quickly flew down, passing by many rocky cliffs and edges, and a great deal of trees that seemed to grow solid no matter where it was.
Soon he found or rather, he heard what he was looking for, a big roar that led him in the right direction, he quickly found an earth dragon trying to open up a small crack in the canyon wall.
Well, small for a dragon but large enough to squeeze into for a humanoid to get in with ease. "Think you can get into my cave and steal my children! Pesky little rats, I'll show you!" The dragon roared in anger.
Samuel quickly charged up power which the dragon seemed to instantly sense as it turned in his direction. "Ah more rodents!" It roared and took a deep breath.
Samuel knew exactly what that meant as he unsheathed one of his blades and transferred magic to it, the earth dragon reared it's head back slightly before spewing out a vortex of fire.
"Let Fire Rend, Let it be consumed as pure energy!" Alsian spoke his incantation loud as he swung his sword. The spell formed and shot out as he swung it, a torrent of fire at the same level met with the dragons fire breath and the two attacks cancelled eachother out in the middle.
"Are you sure it's such a good idea to leave your nest unguarded, when there are more of us around?" Samuel quickly yelled at the dragon, whose eyes quickly widened before it snarled. "You monster!"
It almost completely ignored him and quickly dashed in the direction of it's nest, unfurling it's wings and taking flight. Samuel turned his attention to the cracks in the wall.
"If you intend to leave, now would be the time. Before that dragon returns!" Samuel saw four people quickly exit the crack and he almost regret saving them when he saw Amanda Switchtrix, but only almost.
She looked at him in utter disbelief, he had just gone head to head with an adult earth dragon without so much as a scratch, Samuel scoffed to himself and quickly flew back in the direction of the cave.
Deciding to speed up he increased his speed leaving only three or four shockwaves in the air as his speed increased, he became a living projectile and quickly caught up with the dragon.
But the dragon wasn't slow despite it's size, it simply dove down out of the way and continued it's path until it reached the cave entrance.
It fired a few more fire breaths at Samuel who simply hovered out of the way, but when it arrived at the cave it quickly crawled inside. Leaving everything dead quiet for a long while.
Samuel let a few minutes pass by before he hovered down to the cave entrance and entered it. With his magic and eyes he could easily see in the dark and found many empty chambers until he arrived at the one furthest in, funnily enough it had what looked like a regular door, just dragon sized. It was slightly ajar which allowed Samuel to walk inside.
What he found inside surprised him quite a bit, a large open cave built like an indoor home. There were tables and different rooms. "Huh that is not what I expected!"
"COME LOOKING FOR MORE DEATH!!!" The dragon suddenly roared as it sensed his presence and quickly flew out and landed on the main floor in front of him.
"I will gladly give you the death you seek! But first I do have a question for you human!" The dragon bared all it's teeth at him.
Samuel sheated his blade and raised his arms. "Ask away!"
"Why did you trick me into returning here when all my children were safe? Was it to simply save those other pesky rodent friends of yours?"
Samuel remained quiet for a while and the dragon waited patiently, but he couldn't stop himself from starting to laugh. "Haahaha, no they were no friends of mine... more like enemies!"
The dragon seemed quite taken a back by his words but still remained silent.
"As for making you return here... well it's quite simple! Right now there are many parties out in the forest looking for alchemical supplies, I just didn't want anyone stumbling into your cavern while you were out and about chasing idiots."
"I also didn't want anyone having to step in and you dying, that would leave your children without a mother!"
The dragon opened it's mouth as if to breathe fire, but it remained open for quite some time. "You humans sure are weird..." The dragon spoke after some time.
But after a while the dragon brought it's head down to see eye to eye with Samuel, it stared at him with it's large big green eyes, filled with anger and hatred.
But Samuel didn't hesitate as he brought his hand forward and placed it below her eye, gently caressing the scales. "I didn't think it would be so soft and beautiful up close." He blurted out and all anger in the dragons eye dissipated.
She looked on in newfound interest at this human. Dragons were said to be as old as the world itself, which means that they had to have been around as long as children of mana.
Samuel had never had the chance to actually talk to a dragon that didn't want to kill or eat him right away, although he had only ever met two. "My name is Samuel it's a pleasure to meet you!"
The dragon raised it's head and spoke now calm, "I am Terrestia, one of the oldest earth dragons around, and these are my children." She spoke and Samuel saw her children still sitting in the distance.
They all seemed to look on in great interest. One of them seemed a bit more curious than the others and had crawled almost all the way forward. Even if just a dragon whelp it was larger than Samuel.
"That is the first time I have been complimented by a human, rather than just being called a scaled hideous monster I think." Terrestia spoke with a sigh.
"Anyway, you should go home now little human, before I get other ideas!" The dragoness sighed. Samuel nodded, "I will leave if you allow me come back to visit!"
Samuel saw that she instantly grew annoyed and started looking at him again, "I will bring you food and stories! Doesn't it get boring down here sometimes? I promise to bring something that will make my visits worth it!"
Terrestia looked a little bit interested again and let out a big 'hmm' "Very well, but if any one of these gifts are not up to my standard I will just have you for dinner instead! How does that sound?"
Samuel awkwardly scratched his head but nodded there were just too many things he could learn from her to pass on this opportunity! "Alright we have a deal!"
Samuel walked forward and put a hand on her claw as if to shake her hand. "Well until next time I guess!" Samuel said and awkwardly excused himself from the cavern.
When he got outside in the fresh air he finally took some big deep breaths, "Oooh boy that was hectic and scary!" He spoke out loud as he could finally relax a little bit.