Chapter Nine: The Healthy Fairy

The target was right before them.

Yet, the entire squad, Sonia included, fell into an eerie silence. An unsettling atmosphere permeated the air.

Was something wrong?

Melina vaguely recalled her mentors mentioning such situations, but when she tried to focus, it felt like encountering a variation of a math problem she had seen before—she knew how to solve it, but the method escaped her. She was trapped in the awkward transition between theoretical knowledge and practical experience. Seeing that no one else was speaking, she stayed quiet and clung to her senior.

This game of "Red Light, Green Light" dragged on. It reminded Melina of standing at attention during military training in her past life.

Stand like a pine...
Stand like a pine...

...

The eerie stillness held.

After about five or six minutes, with a rustling sound, the surrounding "jungle" shifted.

The air began to "lose its color." Patches resembling flaking paint peeled away, as the manifested, solid magical factors dissipated back into special conceptual particles. A gargantuan creature had been hiding right beside them.

It was undeniably nearly forty meters long and stood nearly ten meters high. Powerful magical factors radiated from its crimson scales in undulating waves of heat, accompanied by a faint scent of mutton and fresh grass.

An adult Red Dragon.

It possessed a skull with a thick, rugged, short-snouted structure, reminiscent of a boxer. Its horns were the standard pair for a wyvern, sweeping back towards the sky. This was a wing-clawed dragon; its folded wings functioned as limbs for moving on the ground. Most striking were the terrifying six-sided hammer-like bone blades at the tip of its heavy tail, and the magnificent, fire-red, feather-like scales covering its wings.

Fire-red arc-shaped bone blades grew on its joints, and its primary structure was encased in segmented red plating.

Melina’s legs went weak almost instantly.

This was far larger than any Swamp Dragon.

It was a powerful Red Dragon-type wyvern.

Fortunately, a wyvern’s static vision was virtually blind, and its sense of smell was not particularly sharp; the scent of mutton suggested its primary diet was sheep, which it would roast before eating. Did that phrase actually come in handy?

That "Dua-Puia-Akir" phrase?

She wondered if old man Don Quixote had taken Joan’s teaching seriously and actually used that as Dragon Tongue.

But regardless...

The damn thing had camouflage—a dragon that big had camouflage! It was completely unreasonable. Melina’s classical theoretical training kicked in: this marsh had been claimed by the wyvern as its treasure, which was why these glowing blue Tarey crystal ores hadn't been coveted by other dragons. The greed dragons felt for glowing minerals was beyond human explanation. Most wyverns were hunted precisely because they "refused to leave their wealth," thus becoming part of the wealth themselves.

Hunting a wyvern of this caliber required the concerted effort of ten squads—over thirty hunters—to confirm its ecology, lair, behavioral patterns, and habits, while preparing custom traps, alchemical tools, consumables, and buying a calf. It was a local custom that before a major hunt, one had to perform a series of ritualistic, superstitious activities, including feeding the hunting party roasted veal.

Success meant the calf was a good omen.

Failure usually meant they weren't coming back anyway, but at least they’d had a good meal, right?

...

But damn it, the girls didn't have a calf to eat. Could they just ask the dragon to adjust its schedule and wait for them to come back later?

Melina was a freak whose nerves became more active the higher the pressure.

Watching the Red Dragon close its eyes, preparing to fall into a deep sleep, an idea sparked in her heart.

They were definitely at a disadvantage playing "Red Light, Green Light" with this dragon; if they stood there too long, someone might go numb or twitch, likely triggering an attack. They had to lure the dragon away.

After serious consideration, Melina decided she had to be the one to do it.

First, she was small and agile—Rei and Joan wouldn't work; the physical capabilities of those two lolis were far inferior to her own.

Second, she had a vast reserve of magical factors, which granted her excellent elemental defense; she might not die if hit by a dragon’s breath.

Finally, she had the least equipment, so losing it wouldn't be a major economic blow... just kidding, it was because she had less gear, making her easier to maneuver, and she was more "dragon-bait." Despite their size, these dragons were essentially bullies.

After weighing these three points, Melina considered the ultimate question: Was it necessary?

They were like students trapped in a classroom after hours, with a teacher declaring, "No one leaves until this problem is solved." A hero needed to step up to solve the problem while absorbing the teacher's unreasonable wrath. Would she do it?

*I will.*

Melina thought.

She had no desire to be a "hero." She enjoyed the thrill of racing against danger, a sense of freedom that made her feel truly alive, and incidentally, watching the ugly face of the unprofessional, overtime-happy old bastard was quite amusing.

So, from the dragon’s blind spot, she tilted her head to look at Sonia.

In that moment, she believed Sonia understood what she was about to do.

"Oh crap, don't—" Before Sonia could get the words out, Melina had already launched herself. With a fierce, unwavering leap, she sprinted past the optimal human starting distance. She launched from the trees like an elf, and while in motion, she pulled at the magical factors like a bloodkin to form an imperceptible field of force, slamming it hard against the Red Dragon’s face.

A sound like a slap echoed through the air.

Simultaneously, an eardrum-shattering roar erupted, accompanied by a thunderous, lunging thud.

As one of the world’s top predators, the Red Dragon naturally possessed a monstrously large ego. They were like the kings of their territory. Someone dared to slap the face of a king? The next act would be the King’s Wrath.

Despite its massive size, the Red Dragon possessed terrifying agility beyond human imagination. While they were "dragon-blind" to static objects, their ability to track movement was microscopic. Their innate agility allowed it to instantly close the gap after Melina, its short snout opening to reveal a brutal biting force.

This terrifying explosive power and Melina’s brush with death unfolded simultaneously.

Sonia almost screamed, but she saw Melina, without looking back, elegantly dodge the dragon’s maw. She moved as nimbly as a sprite in mid-air, a provocative smile on her face as she crossed her fists and swung. A heavy, dense field of magical force slammed into the tip of the dragon’s nose once again.

For a dragon with a short snout, the nose was a sensitive spot.

Attacked again, it became even more violent.

That was reasonable. If a king were slapped and found the opponent formidable, he might say, "I’ll spare you once; I am magnanimous." But if a second slap followed, even Jesus couldn't maintain his temper if he were that king.

*I'll kill you!*

The red giant erupted in thunderous fury, accelerating once more.

Melina, embracing the essence of an undefeated triple-crown racehorse who loved to run, accelerated on the flat ground, dodging the dragon’s pounce. She lured the beast far away in one go. The sprite-like girl enjoyed the danger; being the focus of the dragon’s rage was her already-twisted nature.

...

Melina lured the giant dragon away.

Sonia stared blankly at the trail of dust and shattered trees, finally snapping back to reality. She screamed:

"Quick, mine the ore!"

She pulled noise arrows and flash arrows from her pocket and loaded them into her brass crossbow.

She didn't waste time asking the Echo Squad to help Melina; she let them do what needed to be done.

At the same time, she had an irrational belief that once they finished, firing the crossbow bolts into the sky would signal Melina, and they would eventually rendezvous near Hamlet.

It wasn't unspoken understanding, but a certain knowledge.

She knew she would do that.

"Is she insane?" Rei asked, still shaken.

"Rei!" Joan cut her off, glaring sternly, "Work."

Joan glanced at Sonia. "Sorry, my sister has been through quite a shock today."

If someone was willing to pay the price of being the rearguard and sacrificing themselves, you could never call that person insane.

"That was a great choice," Joan said solemnly.

Don Quixote had already trotted to the edge of the swamp, taking out the mining tools he had prepared, and called out:

"Rei, come give me a hand."

The members of the Echo Squad quickly demonstrated their professionalism. In a few seconds, they cleared the defensive magical factors covering the swamp and began to resolve the issue of dragon toxicity. Sonia could only stand by and stare; she wasn't an expert. Not every reincarnator could solve math problems they didn't know before just because they had been reborn.

These specialized tasks were like math; if you couldn't do them, you couldn't do them even if you were reborn a hundred times.

Naturally, she thought of Melina.

That sprite-like girl dancing in the air.

In the first timeline, there were three top monsters in the world: Full-Power Alice, Peak Tasia, and Healthy Melina. Legend had it that the appearance of these three would end everything—like assembling the Dark Magician in Yu-Gi-Oh or the Angelic Teacher in Shark-by-Shark.

But among the three, only Melina was a true world-top-five explorer, and only her conditions held the most room for imagination...

When she met Melina in the first timeline, the girl was already in terrible physical condition, requiring powerful, wish-like magic every month to alleviate the eternal pain in her body. She couldn't run at all. She was considered an explorer who used light gear but was a representative of heavy-duty equipment. Only occasionally did she show a terrifying burst of power, allowing her to keep up with the unparalleled agility of creatures like the Shadow-Messenger Dragon.

It made one wonder how terrifying a completely healthy Melina would be.

Now, Sonia had seen a glimpse.

Not as an explorer, but she had effortlessly toyed with a speed-type Red-Feathered Dragon using pure speed. You couldn't find such a genius even if you searched the entire Royal Capital.

Thinking of this, Sonia felt a bit of toothache.

The reincarnation cheat allowed her to seize the initiative easily and brought with her the level-10 crossbow mastery she had attained in the future. But her talent hadn't improved even a bit. When hitting a fixed target, she was like Mark from a Hong Kong cop movie—all she had was bullet quantity and fire rate. Never mind accuracy, just look at the speed and the volume!

Her memories were interrupted by the Echo Squad.

The professional team had mined the glowing blue crystals with the utmost speed, strictly following Sonia’s instructions to treat them like radioactive stones, sealing them in individual boxes and handling them only with gloved hands.

Seeing this, Sonia fired two bolts into the sky.

One noise-interference arrow, one flash-burst arrow.