Chapter 40: Dragon!

A massive shape flew across the sky above them.

Eren lifted his head. It had been exactly sixteen days since he arrived in the Evon Universe and this was the first time he’d seen a dragon.

Huge wings. A scaled body. Smoke pouring from its mouth.

“Hey, Emily! Get inside!” Eren shouted in panic, yet Emily was already sprinting toward the village square. Eren chased after the pregnant girl and had no choice but to follow her.

Every instinct in his body screamed at him to hide. He still followed because the safety of the woman he loved and their child mattered more than anything.

When they reached the square, they saw every elf around Level 10 dropping to their knees. Many were screaming. Others stared upward and trembled with fear.

A few minutes later the twenty-meter dragon vanished from sight. Eren kept staring north and saw flames moving in that direction.

He climbed the wall of the garden they once used to open the portal. He didn’t care that an old elf was watching him from a window. He pulled himself onto the roof. Emily was already there, staring at the sky, and when she stepped closer he took her hand.

“What’s the situation?” Eren asked. He knew the dragon had come from the denser forest to the south and flown north, yet he didn’t know what to think. “Could something attack from the forest?”

Emily didn’t even pause to consider it. “Creatures are brutal to each other. Nothing in that forest will dare move today.” She kept watching the distant smoke. “It’s bloodlines or instincts or something like that. Seeing a dragon usually cripples them.”

Eren was about to make a dark joke about the flames near the foot of the huge mountain to the north. Emily turned to him and whispered, “If a dragon decides to nest here, we are fu*ked!”

It was the first time this naive elf girl had ever sworn. The way she said it sounded uncomfortably close to how he would. Hoping he hadn’t been a bad influence, Eren wrapped his arms around her from behind.

“The villagers are terrified. I’ll go down and calm everyone.” Eren climbed down, pushed into the crowd gathering in the center, and raised his voice to explain what had happened.

“What, so a dragon flew over us and that’s it..”

“Did what you did in the dungeon piss off the forest gods? Answer me!” A middle-aged elf started marching toward Eren. One of the village elders cracked him on the head with a staff before he could get any closer.

“Forest gods? Don’t be stupid, Mich.” The old elf glared at him. “I trained you a hundred years ago and I don’t remember teaching you anything about forest gods!”

Eren smiled when he saw the elder put the younger elves in their place. Thadric walked up with a leather strap in his hand, looking like he expected a riot. Oldir and his assistant Toris approached while laughing.

“Mich is an idiot. He’s the village treasurer,” Oldir said. He pulled out a leaf cigarette and brought it to his mouth. “He deals with old documents all day, so he ends up believing even the stuff that’s clearly written as a joke. Nobody else here saw a dragon and decided to blame you.”

Oldir snorted smoke and shrugged. “Also what do gods have to do with dragons?”

Eren nodded. “As the village’s most experienced rancher, I propose Thadric goes and captures the dragon.”

“I agree!” an old elf shouted from farther away, shaking his staff. A few tense elves in the square actually laughed.

The way more eyes turned toward Thadric felt strange.

The middle-aged elf made a face and snorted. “You might be joking, yet a few lunatics will actually come ask me what I know about dragons. Thanks.”

Toris still looked half-dead from last night’s drinking, yet he laughed at his grumpy friend. “I saw you when the dragon flew over. You were by the water well, mouth open, staring at the sky.”

“As if you were doing anything different, dumbass.” Thadric flicked the leather strap with a sharp snap. “What do we do about this threat? We can’t move the village while the totem’s here.”

Even the people joking kept glancing north, tense, watching the forest burning at the mountain’s base.

Half an hour later, the flames vanished. The snow-covered peak looked the same as before. The dragon either never noticed the village or didn’t care.

Emily climbed down from the roof, took Eren’s hand, and pulled him toward breakfast. Seeing how calm she was, the others started to believe it had been a temporary scare.

Emily leaned in when nobody was listening and whispered into his ear. “After breakfast, we’re going straight to the dungeon.”

Eren answered in a low voice. “Got it.”

…

This sense of threat was something no one living on Earth could truly understand. It felt like the modern world hid things from you. It tricked you into thinking you were the main character so you’d focus on your own life.

Evon didn’t work like that. Not when you lived in the middle of an elf village and a dragon was flying over the mountain above your head.

Eren had felt it before, yet now it was sharper. He didn’t like the feeling of standing nose to nose with death.

That was why he hesitated when Emily started talking about going early and taking bigger risks. She reminded him the wolves wouldn’t come for hours, yet he still didn’t like it.

“I know this might sound cowardly,” Eren began, “yet for the last half hour you’ve been talking about taking more risks and going down to the second floor. More skills, better defenses for the village… I mean I’m just saying…”

Emily cut in. “You didn’t like the idea of entering the dungeon with me and two elves from the village.” Her expression looked like she’d been insulted.

“Emily, I don’t know how much you’ve thought about this,” Eren said. “You said you’re pregnant and you still don’t hesitate to take risks. What if something happens to our child?” He didn’t want to pressure her or use fear as a tactic. She still needed to face reality.

She was pregnant and she had to act like it.

“So until I learn to fight properly and level up, we always keep the wolves with us. Don’t even suggest anything else.” Eren’s voice turned firm. “We can also bring a few villagers who want to hunt. The dungeon allows up to eight people. You said it yourself. So no dungeon adventure until evening. Not until the wolves come.”

He sounded so forceful that he thought Emily might snap at him. He hugged her right away. He rested his head on her shoulder and kissed her cheek.

He couldn’t have calmed a woman this naturally in his old life.

A few minutes of soft words did the job. Whispering about the family they’d have was enough. Emily agreed like she always did. They would hunt around the village without rushing. When night came, they would enter the dungeon without rushing.

Eren, the wolf cubs, and anyone from the village who wanted to help would repeat the dungeon’s first floor a few times.

A small, cute hand slid from his back to his shorts, then to his butt. “I’ll get my revenge tonight,” Emily said. “I can’t believe I let you fool me.”

“I’m not fooling you. I just convinced you to take a more reasonable route.”

Emily walked off, muttering to herself about a dragon living over the village and a winter invasion closing in around them.

Eren stood a little outside the village, staring up at the sky, when a System notification made him flinch.

[Passive Skill “Love Love Love!” Levelled Up!]

“Great.” At least he understood how passive skills at least the ones he owned improved now. He probably had to influence people, manipulate them, maybe even play with emotions.

He checked what changed with the level up. Only the required distance increased a little. It went from one meter to 1.1 meters.

That probably meant the base form decided what a skill could do. The level ups only gave small improvements. If he wanted real change, he had to reach Level 9 and evolve the skill.

Who knew. Maybe in Evolution League 3 or 4 he wouldn’t need another person at all for charisma stat boosts. Maybe he could conquer whole cities without spilling blood, just with his presence.

After a few minutes of daydreaming, he forced his mind back to hunting. A whole elf village sat here, surrounded by threats on every side.

Eren attacked anything he could find near the village while practicing archery. He would’ve done the same even without seeing a dragon. Today he felt a little more experienced, so he took risks. He hunted ravens, strange birds with ugly beaks, and rabbits.

Some escaped. A few times he got cut on the arm or leg. Even if the elves once had a habit of wearing armor, this generation didn’t know leatherworking or metalcraft.

So whenever he got hurt, he used flower essence. If that wasn’t enough, he relied on the health cream he carried and tried not to act like a coward.

“Hey! Come down!”

Eren had spent too many arrows missing a stubborn crow that refused to leave its tree. He started throwing stones instead. When the beast finally flew off in a direction away from the village, he let out a long breath.

That was why he wanted to be a magician. In situations like this, there weren’t many problems a fireball couldn’t solve.

He looked at the arrow in his hand and sighed.

Hours later, he gathered the animals he’d killed into one place. He didn’t think leaving meat in the forest was a good idea. He didn’t know anything about pelts or cleaning organs, so he tied a few of them to a tree with rope. He tried to hide the rest with stones, brush, and dirt.

It probably wouldn’t work. Who knows, maybe the animals were dumb.

They weren’t.

Two hours later, after more archery practice, he returned and saw every carcass was gone. The ropes were gone too. There was no slime-like crystal conversion. Nothing vanished into light.

Instead, the ground was smeared with blood trails. Tufts of fur were scattered where bodies had been dragged.

[Congratulations! You have reached Level 23]

-All stats are +1

-You acquired 1 Stat Point

Eren skipped lunch and pushed hard to force the level up. The moment he hit Level 23, he dumped every stat point into Mana.

Before the dragon got bored and decided to erase the village, he wanted to reach Level 50. Then he could consider class evolution or class reset options.

“If I run into more things like that dragon,” he muttered, “what am I supposed to do with a Magician of Love class? Blow kisses at them…”

Walking back to the village for dinner, he started daydreaming. He thought about the dungeon’s name, Verdant Hollow. He wondered if controlling a dragon with a charm effect was even possible.

Most of it was theory. Without a phone or internet, even hunting in the forest eventually turned into constant imagining.

More than anything, he wanted to find Emily and wrap his arms around his beautiful pregnant wife.

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep