“It’s the Earth Dragon! It’s coming right towards us!”

“No way! It’s here!? …But, what about the dragon by the entrance? Is it still there?”

“Yeah. It will be hard to get pa.s.sed it without being noticed. …Uh, are Earth Dragons very strong?”

Tina heard my words and gave me an exasperated look.

But she answered quickly.

“Earth Dragons are some of the strongest in the B-Rank. That usually makes them the strongest monsters that appear in these forests. Otherwise, we wouldn’t have been sent to investigate!”

…I see.

I still didn’t quite grasp this whole ranking business. But I suppose that was how it was.

That being said, it seemed like the Earth Dragon would still be manageable compared to the dragon that was guarding the entrance to the valley.

As for the dragon I killed when first coming to this world…I honestly did not remember it much.

But I still felt I had a chance here.

“Alright, as a test, I will use the slimes to attack the Earth Dragon.”

“Are you crazy!? Not even a group of C-Ranking Adventurers could take on an Earth Dragon! Just pray that it doesn’t come here!”

“Yes, I don’t think we can defeat it. We should just avoid provoking it and hope it turns around…”

Like that, Tina and Lisa tried to stop me from launching an attack on the Earth Dragon.

However…there did not seem to be much time left.

As they discussed the matter, the Earth Dragon was just getting closer and closer.

It was clearly very fast on its feet.

Thirty seconds pa.s.sed…and then we could hear the pounding of its feet on the ground.

It was not less than 500 meters away from us, and we could see it with our own eyes.

“This is…not going to work… We must press against the wall and pray that it ignores us!”

“Running away will only delay its attack by a few seconds… We will just have to pray that we are lucky!”

Tina and Lisa had now given up on trying to do anything.

They went into a dent in the cliffside and prepared to wait for the dragon to run pa.s.sed them.

However, I had not given up on killing the Earth Dragon.

We didn’t even have to kill it to win, just drive it back.

‘Magic Transfer—h.e.l.lfire of Obliteration!’

I transferred magic to the slime that was closest to the Earth Dragon.

I felt the sensation of sudden MP depletion just as the area around the Earth Dragon erupted into flames.

I watched until the fires died down and I could see inside.

There it was…the Earth Dragon corpse.

The limbs and tails had all been carbonized and were shapeless, but it was the Earth Dragon without a doubt.

What? But that was just one hit.

“I got it!”

Once I was sure it was safe, I called to Tina and Lisa.

However, they stayed by the cliff without moving a muscle. Of course, they did not reply either.

As their HP had not gone down, nor were they afflicted by any statuses, they were probably just holding their breath so the Earth Dragon wouldn’t notice them.

…It wasn’t until the area had been quiet for a whole minute that the two turned to me.

And…they saw the burned Earth Dragon and raised their voices in alarm.

“No way! You were actually able to kill it!?”

“I thought that I was having some wild fancy after the utter despair had caused me to lose my mind…”

..Hmm, that was kind of rude.

“You really, really killed an Earth Dragon with a slime’s magic!? If you can kill an Earth Dragon by yourself, that means you have power that is close to an A-Ranker…”

“I wasn’t alone. The slime and I did it together.”

Well, I could use h.e.l.lfire of Obliteration without tamed monsters, but it would be harder to fight than it was now.

“The fighting power of a tamed monster is the same as the Tamer. …You are ridiculously overpowered…”

“I’m starting to think that Yuji could finish most quests by himself.”

“But the magic I used to kill the Earth Dragon uses a lot of MP, so I can’t use it too many times in succession.”

Tina heard this and looked at me with exasperation.

“When you say it like that, it sounds like you are saying that you could still kill an Earth Dragon a few times over…”

“Yeah, I could do it a few times. But using too much MP gives me a headache, so I’d rather not.”

“Uh, if anything, merely getting a ‘headache’ after using so much powerful magic is like cheating…”

As we talked about this, we realized one important thing.

It was about the current quest.

“Now that I think about it, what happens now that the thing we were supposed to investigate is dead? Did we fail?”

The quest had been to investigate the Earth Dragon.

It was treated as completed it you found more powerful monsters, but what about if you killed it?

And so I asked them…

“It should still be considered a success. Besides, I think this investigation request was sent because someone wanted it dead but couldn’t do it. If anything, we might get an extra reward.”

Tina said happily… Then she looked at me apologetically.

“…Now that I think about it, we haven’t even done anyone. I’m not sure we should be accepting anything extra…”

“Now that you mention it, Yuji has been doing everything. And we would never have been able to kill an Earth Dragon.”

Apparently, they were bothered by the degree of their contribution during the quest.

I didn’t really mind… Actually, Tina and Lisa had a lot of experience as Adventurers, and it made things easy for me that they made all of the decisions.

While I had done most of the monster killing, I didn’t think that things would have gone very smoothly had I been alone.

“We can share the reward equally. I don’t have as much experience as you two, and wouldn’t have known what to do if I was alone.”

“You have little experience and yet…you really are abnormal…”

“If you mean it, then I’ll accept it very gladly. I was hoping to upgrade my weapon soon. It’s been hard having to use this one.”

“It will definitely be of help to us. But I still feel bad about it…”

It seemed that these two were not exactly rich.

Well, even if they did reject it, I intended on forcing them to accept the money.

We had formed a party with those conditions in the first place.

“In exchange, you have to help me make the report. I won’t be able to explain the state of the forest or the features of the monsters.”

“Got it!!”