Three days passed since the weird dream, and Vesuvius was currently hunting in the forest for dinner. He spent the past three days hunting and sleeping. His level increased halfway through level four, and he obtained one point for each physical stat from his body growth. His size was almost a quarter bigger than when he hatched.
Vesuvius quietly walked through the forest, sniffing for a trace of potential prey. It was a part of the forest that he had never before visited, so he took extra care to remember his surroundings.
“Are you sure that we are on the correct path?”
“Yes, I watched the guide.”
Human voices came from a great distance in the forest, but the dragon’s sensitive hearing caught them anyway, somehow filling Vesuvius with disdain.
‘Stupid poachers… How dare they trespass on my territory!’ his dragon instincts blazed up in the rage before he calmed down, ‘I should avoid them. There is nothing to gain from them except for a few XP. But that is not worth it… From how they talk, I can say that they are likely players, so even if I killed them without letting anyone get away, information about me would still get out. Also, I don’t know how strong they are.’
The small dragon suppressed his instinctual dislike toward intruders in his territory and turned back, wanting to hide in his cave until the left.
However, his stomach groaned again, ‘Well, I am still hungry. I should find something to hunt while avoiding the humans.’
So Vesuvius returned to tracing the trail of smell made by a deer. He was quickly following it while often stopping to listen for humans. After fifteen or so minutes, he finally noticed the deer he was tracing. It was majestic deer with majestic horns decorating its head, nibbling on a nearby shrub.
The small dragon launched himself from the grounds with his powerful hind legs while using his wings to propel himself even faster. The deer froze for a split second in surprise before it prepared to run. It was too late as the small dragon’s body hit the deer like an arrow throwing the deer to the ground while breaking some of the deer’s bones. Vesuvius immediately dug his teeth into the still-breathing deer, savouring its fresh and warm meat.
[+20XP]
He finished the last bit of the dear and looked around. There was a thin visible path made by the humans leading through the forest. In the air was an odour of cooked meat coming from the direction where the path went.
‘What are they doing here? Maybe I should check to gather some information. If it was just that one group of players, I would consider it coincidence, but with more of them here, something must be going on.’ Vesuvius’s interest was piqued, so he carefully started to follow the path in the direction from where came the smell while not directly walking through the path but staying in the shrubs and trees on both sides of it.
Finally, he spotted a hastily made wooden palisade with tents peeking through crevices in it. Vesuvius sprung his nonexistent ears as much as he could and started to listen to the conversation of humans inside.
“Hey boss, are you sure that we shouldn’t leave this area? We already robbed a few caravans on the northern highway. They probably already dispatched some adventurers and guards…”
“Shut up, you imbecile! We are making lots of gold here, and if some adventurers come, they will probably be just low ranks at first. We will kill them, steal their equipment and vanish before they send some higher ranks!”
Vesuvius grinned, showing his massive canines as he spotted no name tags above humans head through a crevice in their palisade, ‘These damnd intruders, I will tear them apart for defiling my forest with their dirty feet!’.
Vesuvius was shocked as he had no idea from where such weird and aggressive thoughts came, ‘No, I should just leave… No, this is a good opportunity to earn a bunch of XP with low effort. They are evidently just NPC bandits. No one will care if they vanish!’.
Gaining XP was a slow and tedious process for Vesuvius as he had to spend almost an hour just to find and hunt one animal, so a bunch of humans was like walking piles of XP to him.
Still, his thoughts scared him a little bit, ‘They are humans. Why can’t I care about killing them… I don’t feel anything positive towards them… Gahh! I need to put such thoughts away. I am a dragon now. I will have to kill humans sooner or later to survive!’
Vesuvius wanted to avoid using his flames at first, not to create too much smoke that could alert other humans and also to not damage potential possession of the bandits.
The small dragon spread his wings, using them to fly himself on top of the tall ancient oak that was big enough to support his weight, getting an overview of the camp.
Three bandits were sitting around the fire pit in the centre of the camp while drinking strongly reeking liquor out of a bottle that they kept passing between them. Their weapons, two swords and mace, were lying on the ground next to them. Two of them wore gambesons, with the last one wearing a chainmail shirt without sleeves. Two more bandits were standing in the space between palisades that worked as an entrance to the camp. They were holding spears in their hand and wearing old dirty gambesons. Finally, from the sounds of snoring coming from the tents, there were probably sleeping at least three more bandits.
Small dragon’s confidence and enthusiasm grew after seeing the poor equipment of the bandits and especially a full pouch hanging on the waist of the bandit wearing chainmail.
Finally, to be sure, he analyzed the two bandits with spears that were in his range.
Ding!
//
Analyze result:
Name: Johan Fisherman
Species: Human
Occupation: NPC/Bandit
Level: 8
Danger level: slightly dangerous
//
//
Analyze result:
Name: Bob Buckley
Species: Human
Occupation: NPC/Bandit
Level: 9
Danger level: slightly dangerous
//
Vesuvius felt assured, ‘I have a moment of surprise, so I should be able to kill these two before the rest can react… and if something goes wrong, I still can burn them to the cinders. On top of that, they are probably drunk…’