Chapter 10: [The World.]
"So what'cha sayin is that you stoped time, killed Hizen, wich by killing hizen you accidentally hurted me in the process, then rewinded time to save me?" Dawn asked in a voice of disbelief, after all that is something hard to believe.
"..Im sorry." Emilia said with her head down.
Dawn sighed, she never thought that a dragon would lower their head, besides destructive they are extremely prideful after all, so as unbelievable as it is it might be ture. "It's fine, Chrono. Im fine right now, right? So there is no need to overthink that." Dawn pet Emilia head, at this point she already guessed that Emilia liked receiving headpats. Afterall who knows, maybe all dragons like headpats.
Emilia slowly raised her head, ".. Can you tell me about what that elf was talking about?" Dawn sighed once more when she heard that question and sat down on the ground, trying to recall what happened.
"Alright." Dawn said in a low tone, Emilia laid down on the grass close to Dawn. Dawn grabbed the drawing book from her spatial bag and flipped the pages until she found one that had a kobold, two dwarfes an elf and three Shroomnies. The Shroomnies had pickaxes, the elf had a long bow and a look filled with confidence, the two dwarfes seemed to be carriyng an ancient like shotgun that used rocks as bullets and finally a kobold with a gentle expression carrying a shortsword that was smaller than the dwarfes. There was also some description at the other page.
Dawn started to read the description, "Celestial Year 37193, an exploration group was formed to explore a new found giant cave, i listed in since i was one of the 10 Full Aura at the time, we headed first to the Shroomnies to get some Escape Stones in case something went wild and to aswell get some miners if we find some goodies."
Dawn flipped the page, now there was a picture of a luminous forest, "We went to the Elemental Forest to find some elementals, Hizen insisted to go there, saying that the elementals could help us in our path so we decided to follow him, a 2 day trip. We got to meet a super cool Earth Elemental! He gaves me an artifact that could enhance my physical endurance. After that we set of to the cave, though i am a little worriedly, an elite team of explorators have disappeard down there, all of them were at the Aura Strengthening afterall." There was another picture that showed an floating elemental, it had two rings on the places on it's legs, the rings seemingly made him keep floating, there was a a bright shining sphere on the torax, it was the elementals core.
The page flipped once again, there was now a huge hole on the ground that went down, but not so far that the sun couldnt light it, there were some rope to climb down. "We synchronized our Escape Stones with the Return Monument and went in, besides some Fire lizards, it doesnt seem to have any overly dangerous monster, as i was the only Full Aura on the team i took the lead and walked forward, The dwarfes covered our backs while the shroomnies stayed at the center, a basic formation. Though it worry's me that the connection with the Return Monument is bad from down here, i hope this doesnt take more than a day or two."
Dawn flipped the page once more, "It has been a week, this place seems endless and there are thousands of passages like a labyrinth. There is also a lot of rare minerals according to Din and Min, the dwarfes brothers. We still have not found signal of the other exploration group and there seems to be less and less monsters. Wich means either there is a huge predator ahead or the place ahead is unhabitable. Either way we will check, we can take on almost anything unless it is an mythical grade beast, but it is highly unlikely."
And finally, Dawn flipped the page for a last time, there was four words written with blood and no images this time, "It was a mistake." with that, she closed the book.
"Huh? What was a mistake?" Emilia questioned this odd ending.
"We found a devil. Someone that surpassed the Full Aura stage by killing others and draining their life force. I only survived because of the artifact the earth elemental gave to me."
"What about those Escape Stones?" Emilia didnt understand, why would Dawn leave them behind if they had an Escape Stone to use?
"The connection cut.." Dawn started to recall what happened on that day..
...
Bang!
Bang!
Din and Min shot at the Devil, but it just ignored the bullets, they couldnt penetrate his skin. "Yes, yes, yes.. Why wouldnt we need more, why wouldnt we?" The devil was someone from the Cat Clan. Dont be fooled, they dont look like humans with cat years and tail, they are an humanoid cat, their size averages is between 60-70 centimeters when adult.
The Devil was repeating itself multiple times, it was clear that it had gone insane. "Din, use the explosive charge!" Min shouted,
"Dawn, how many time until you can strenghten the connection?" Din asked as he quickly reloaded his shotgun with special explosive rounds.
"2 Minutes!" Dawn answered hurriedly, her aura brighted the entire cave.
The devil rushed forward, but it was met by a volley of arrows from Hizen, "You wont be able to take a step forward Foul Devil!" The arrows each seemed to have their own mind, Hizen was controlling them with telekinesis to keep on hitting the devil more and more..
It wasnt until that the body of the devil exploded into a shadow that they noticed in what type of trouple they where in.
CRACK!
Slash!
Before Min could react, his skull was crushed with an earth pillar falling from the sky and Din head got instantly sliced in half by the Devil of the Cat Tribe.
The shroomnies got desperate and screamed, but nothing came out. Their heads fell of their body's and rolled on the ground.
In the next instant, a boulder was suddenly created above Hizen, he couldnt manage to dodge it completely and the boulder fell down and crushed Hizen leg, "Gah!"
He looked at Dawn with tears in his eyes, "Help me-"
Dawn had already estabilished a connection with the outside return monument, but it was enought for only her to escape.
Even so, her aura retracted and she tried to help Hizen, but was meet with a earth spear, it was aiming at her head, but an Aura Barrier coming from the artifact repelled the attack and protected her, but it did not protect her from the second spear.
*Cought*
Dawn was coughing up blood nonstop, her stomach was pierced by the spear.
Dawn at that moment had made her choice, she took one final look at Hizen. She knew that abandoning him was wrong, but she did not want to die. Not here.
The escape stone shone from her bag, Dawn willed her aura to pierce her bag and activate the Escape stone.
She disappeard from there and in the next instant she was outside.
...
"That sounds horrible." Emilia replied, Dawn had been telling her this story until now and a couple hours have passed, the sun slowly rose, brightnening the dark lands of the Aura Forest. Both of them looked tired, they didnt have enought sleep though Dawn was used to it but Emilia wasnt.
"I needed a whole year to recover from that wound! Worse time of my life." Dawn replied, just recalling the bad things that happened on that year made her mood worse, "I had to stay with the Dragonfolks to recover."
"Are they that bad?" Emilia tilted her head as she asked.
"There is a blood feud between them and kobolds, they only give me some respect because i am a Full Aura." Dawn put her notebook back in her bag and looked at the now rising sun in the distance.
"Are people at Full Aura rare?" Emilia got up and stretched her limbs like a cat. Dawn stared at her with a blank expression, 'I never knew dragons could stretched like that..'
".. Well yes, they are usually the commander of military in country's, rarely you find someone at Full Aura that isnt near death's door."
Emilia was shocked, she started to imagine Dawn holding her sword and fighting a demon lord like those rpg games that she once played, 'Doesnt that mean that Dawn is super strong?' Of course, she still didnt understand the powerscales of this world yet and was overestimating Dawn, Full Aura werent that strong in the grand scheme of things.
"Don't you like get more life span be getting into higher stages?" And of course, Emilia was comparing stages as cultivation realms, though this world absolutely has no young masters, not yet atleast.
"No, it slows down aging though. If i recall correctly, after the Full Aura stage, people stop aging completely."
Emilia nodded and asked one more question as they walked.
"..So Hizen could also speak draconic since i could understand it?"
"Knowing Draconic lenguage is a must have as an Aura Warrior, as you know Mortals can only use Aura but if one knows how to speak Draconic, they can use Mana, though it would be only 1/10 of the actual capacity. A good example would be shamans, they can peek the future due to their knowledge of the Draconic lenguage."
Dawn looked ahead and all she could see was trees, it would take them 4 hours to reach the Tainzer Planices.
"Anyway, enought questions. We wont be able to get to the Tainzer Planices at this rate." And with that, Emilia continued to follow Dawn and adventure continues!
CREATORS' THOUGHTS 
Egg_Lover
Egg_Lover I tried to make this one a little shorter since i hate long chapters.
Ahem
[New Quest! Reach Tainzer Planices(Lvl50)!]
[Reward: Meet the Wolf Tribe!]
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