Prologue

KWA-BOOM!

The ground beneath our feet flipped over with a thunderous crash as a gigantic reptile’s forepaw struck it.

I shuddered, imagining myself flattened into a strip of dried squid if I’d been even a moment slower.

"Are you okay?"

Nod.

I nodded at my friend, who’d been raiding with me, and looked at the monster panting in front of us.

It was so huge that even after we dodged its attack and put plenty of distance between us, we could still hear its labored breathing clearly.

In most RPGs, the image that comes to mind when you hear “dragon” is a winged lizard that either wields powerful magic or uses its massive body to unleash terrifying attacks

and is greedy, usually tormenting dwarves, stealing all sorts of treasures and artifacts, and piling them up in its lair

while setting up various barriers and creating guardians to protect its lair from those who come after it.

Dragons like these existed in Palia Online as well, reigning as final bosses and driving countless players to despair.

Their raids were so difficult that players once crashed the game’s official website with hate comments, asking if the developers had seriously made these things to be killed.

They were so ridiculously hard to kill that, after repeated attempts, large guilds began succeeding in hunting them one after another.

So, while killing a dragon was no longer impossible, there was one that no one had ever managed to hunt.

'Wind Dragon Astes'

Astes, much weaker than the other dragons, had never been raided because it was such a slippery creature.

While other dragons could be found near their respective lairs, Astes, perhaps because of its wind attribute, had a habit of wandering without one.

And unlike its prideful kin, it would run away at the slightest disadvantage, so there wasn’t a single story of anyone successfully hunting it.

We were facing that very Astes.

The membranes of its beautiful, enormous wings were riddled with holes, both large and small, and half of its right wing had been torn off.

Despite its immense size, its body, which had looked so nimble, was pierced by countless arrows and marked with large and small sword wounds.

Astes hurled its battered body forward and swung a foreleg at Chris.

Seeing Astes charge in to attack, Chris threw themself into a dive—not away from it, but straight toward it—and dodged the attack.

KWAANG!

"Kyaaaao!"

Chris darted under Astes and swept their sword in a wide arc, carving a huge gash into its massive body.

At first, it had reacted sharply to even the slightest movement and was surprisingly nimble for its size, but after the prolonged battle, it could no longer react as it had before.

Perhaps from the pain, it curled in on itself and slammed its head into the ground, exposing its crown. I nocked the special arrow I’d been saving and drew the bowstring, aiming at that defenseless head.

A blue light enveloped the arrow. It left the bowstring and pierced the crown, sinking deep inside without even leaving its shaft behind.

KWAANG

The arrow, imbued with the Explosion spell, detonated with a roar inside Astes’s head. Its huge head jerked violently, and its body suddenly tipped over to one side.

KWA-AANG!

The winged lizard crashed to the ground with a tremendous roar.

As we stayed on edge, unsure whether it was dead, a message announcing the end of the battle appeared before my eyes

[You are the first to defeat Wind Dragon Astes.

This battle will go down in history, becoming a fairy tale and a song of the bards, and spread across the entire continent.]

[Your fame has increased by 5000.]

[You have acquired the title Dragon Slayer.]

[Dragon Slayer]

[Dragon-type monsters feel great fear just from facing you.

When facing Dragon-type monsters,

all stats + 10%]

I didn’t even have the strength to check the rewards. The moment Astes’s death was confirmed, I collapsed to the ground, completely spent.

After a little while, once I’d recovered some stamina, I dragged my heavy body upright and went over to Chris, who was lying beside Astes’s corpse. Then I lay down beside them in the same position.

"Wow... We really did it."

"Yeah, and just the two of us."

After a brief rest, we grinned at each other and exchanged a playful fist bump.

Astes might’ve been weaker than the other dragons,

but a dragon was still a dragon. You couldn’t ignore the physical power of a body over ten meters long.

A typical dragon raid required four parties of six—twenty-four people in total—to even consider taking one down.

And we killed one with just the two of us.

"We ended up killing a dragon too, huh?"

As I drawled on with a smug grin, Chris let out a satisfied laugh.

"Yeah. Thanks to your weird hobby, we got to have an experience like this."

The hobby Chris was talking about was exploring remote regions.

I hated getting involved with other people, so I had no friends—not in the game or in real life.

Chris was my one and only childhood friend, someone who understood me and hung out with me.

Chris had coaxed me into starting Palia Online, and we always went hunting just the two of us.

Unlike me, who was clumsy with the controls, Chris had incredible skills, so I leveled up smoothly thanks to them.

Once we’d reached max level and become fairly skilled, we no longer needed to hunt to level up,

and we weren’t about to form parties and go on raids like everyone else, so I took up this hobby because I had nothing else to do.

This time, after hearing there was still unexplored territory to the east, I coaxed Chris into coming here, where we ran into Astes,

and after using up all our potions, we barely managed to kill it.

If Astes had held out just a little longer, we’d probably be the ones who died, but fortunately, it fell to our final blow, and we successfully completed our first raid.

"Come to think of it... why didn’t it run away? Why did it attack us?"

It bothered me a little.

Given Astes’s personality, it had plenty of chances to escape before its wings were wrecked, but instead of running, it hadn’t even flown during the fight.

Why hadn’t it run away?

I muttered, remembering a post on the forums where players, furious that the sly thing would flee without a second thought from a losing fight, said the so-called dragon was craftier than a goblin.

I wasn’t particularly interested in raids, but I hated forming parties, so I’d looked up all sorts of things and learned about it.

When I voiced my question, Chris thought for a moment, then pushed themself up and pointed in one direction.

"Now that I think about it, it seemed to be guarding that place."

There was the cave entrance I’d glimpsed during the fight.

"Let’s check it out."

At Chris’s suggestion, I looked at Astes’s corpse.

"Aren’t we going to get the items?"

"There’s no one else around here anyway."

Watching Chris get to their feet, I had no choice but to get up and follow.

After confirming there was nothing else around us, we stood in front of the cave entrance.

"I was too distracted during the fight to notice, but whenever I got close to this side, it seemed to lure me off in another direction."

"Oh? Maybe it was making a lair?"

Since there didn’t seem to be any barriers, even if it was a lair, it looked like Astes had only just started making one.

Still, in case there were traps, we slowly entered the cave with our lanterns.

Fortunately, there were no traps, but the cave was much deeper than expected, so it took a long time to get through.

How long had we been walking?

A huge cavern came into view.

In the center was something like an altar, roughly made, like a mound of dirt kids had piled up while playing, and atop it sat a single yellow orb.

Since there wasn’t any treasure or the like, it didn’t seem to be a dragon’s lair.

Disappointed, I approached the altar, picked up the only orb there, and checked the item.

[???? ??? ????]

[???? ???? ??? ?? ? ?? ?????.]

The item I’d carefully picked up and examined had nothing but question marks for its description, and its name was full of question marks too.

My brow furrowed at how strange it was.

"Huh? What’s this?"

"What is it?"

I handed the orb to Chris. They examined it, frowned too, and handed it back to me.

I got the orb back and turned it around and around for a long time, just in case, until I spotted something like a hairline crack in the middle.

For some reason, I felt like it would split in half, so I positioned my hands as if splitting an apple and applied pressure.

"What are you doing?"

Chris looked at me as though I were pathetic for trying to split an item with my hands, and that made me stubborn, so I pushed even harder.

"Nngh!"

"Do you think it’ll break if you do that? I mean, obviously..."

Crack.

"... ..."

Chris was at a loss for words, looking at me as if they’d never seen such a ridiculous person before. I shrugged at their reaction.

"What was that about 'obviously'?"

I handed one of the pieces, split exactly in half, to Chris. They’d been giving me a narrow-eyed look, but sighed and took it.

"What made you split this thing?"

"I just had a feeling it’d split. And now that I think about it, could this be an elixir?"

Every now and then, players claimed to have found items like elixirs in dragon lairs.

Those elixirs had the crazy effect of permanently raising your stats, so apparently, they sold for whatever price the seller named.

There’d even been a case recently where one sold for the astronomical price of over 100 million won.

"Let’s say this is an elixir. Then you split something that valuable without even thinking?"

Ah... here comes the lecture again.

Seeing Chris put their hands on their hips and close their eyes to lecture me, I felt my eyes narrow and the corners of my mouth droop.

"Sheesh, even if you had that feeling, you should’ve figured out what it was before doing anything. And... Ugh!"

Once Chris got going, the nagging would go on endlessly, like a parent lecturing a kid over a test. I ignored them and popped the egg-sized item into my mouth in one bite,

then snatched the one Chris was holding and shoved it into the mouth of the person who’d been busy teasing me,

and since I was a full head taller than Chris, their jaw was right there, so I pressed my palm against it and forced their mouth shut.

I rolled the orb around in my mouth with my tongue for a moment, and then it melted like water and seemed to slide down inside me.

I shrugged at Chris, who was staring at me with wide, astonished eyes.

[A new ?? has been created using ???? ??? ????.]

Judging by the system notification, it definitely seemed to be an item you could eat, at the very least.

"See? I was righ—"

Suddenly, my vision flashed white, and the pain in my heart made my mouth clamp shut.

Unable to see and on the verge of losing consciousness from the pain, I heard someone’s voice.

[####. ### #####]

I thought I heard a beautiful, melodious voice, and even in the midst of the pain, I thought it sounded lovely.

I couldn’t understand what it said, but

As I writhed in the blinding light and pain, I felt my vision turn pitch-black and lost consciousness.