The guild had told them what Alex looked like before they left so no one attacked him by mistake. The guild was entirely unaware of the major transformation he would undergo during the fifth fleets trip across the sea however. So now that the fifth fleet finally witnessed Alex they didn't recognize him since his shape and size were all wrong. Thanks to the fact that each and every fleet consisted of the best and brightest in their fields it was no surprise the managed to quickly figure of Alex's identity and ceased hostilities.
Alex was too focused on getting him a slice of zorah to care about this however as he circled zorah's head to position himself to latch onto one of the dangly flesh beards. Alex had no problem doing this since zorah simply couldn't be bothered to stop him thanks to him being an insignificant creature in the elders eyes. This quickly changed however as Alex began to use hi front claws and tail to dig into the flesh beard rapidly. While these dangling flesh parts weren't filled with that many nerves it didn't mean there weren't any at all.
Alex quickly went from a slight irritation to something physically harming zorah and it showed as zorah raised its own claw to swipe at Alex. This careless swipe to get rid of it's irritant proved to be a bad idea for zorah however as Alex cleverly moved the flesh beard directly into the path of zorah's claws before free falling out of the way. Zorah roared in agony as it's claws caught the flesh hole Alex made and ripped the entire flesh beard off from there. A thick piece of zorah's flesh roughly the same size as Alex himself had been freed from zorah's body and Alex wasted no time snatching it up as it fell towards the sea below.
The fifth fleet in it's entirety was left speechless as Alex booked it away from the now very angry zorah with his prize shamelessly. How did they know it was angry? Because zorah started to spit huge globs of lava at the rapidly flying black dragon while roaring. 'This may have been a bad idea.' Alex thought as he dodged yet another glob of lava the size of a car that zorah spat at him with surprising accuracy. It was only when Alex eventually left zorah's range that the elder snorted and slammed it's body into the nearby shore causing a localized earthquake.
'Yeah note to self , improve drastically before even thinking of touching an elder dragon' he thought looking at the large pools of lava and sheer devastation zorah had left behind from the mild irritation he caused it. It was at this point that Alex truly understood that the in-game description of elder dragons as forces of nature was not exaggerated. Though he was certain that some of those listed as elder dragons didn't truly deserve that title if this was true.
The fact was a few of those listed as elder dragons simply didn't reach a level of power that Alex could agree with as "force of nature" level. Keep in mind this was based entirely off of his knowledge from the game were the player character regularly hunts some of these species without any issue. As far as Alex knew the real world counterparts might be far more powerful than was shown since a game were you constantly get wrecked wouldn't be very fun (coughdarksoulscough). Until he saw that for himself however like in the case with zorah here he will remain skeptical.
When Alex eventually landed outside astera he was met by a horde of small goblin-like wyverian scholars who were eyeing his prize greedily. Alex covered huge piece of flesh defensively while eyeing the small people warily as they tried to sneak closer to it. "Sid maybe you could share some of your catch with us for a while , it is rather important after all." The fleet commander said with a heavily implied tone suggesting this was nonnegotiable. Alex could only sigh and move away from the flesh and let the little piranha's pull samples off of it while he glared hatefully at them.
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