153 4.15 The Earth Dragon - Part 2

"Flare, let's go up there. I know it's foolish to fight the dragon up in the air, but we are dealing with the Earth Dragon, so fighting him on the ground will prove to be much more challenging."

"Yes, master!"

The two of us raised ourselves in the air. Naturally, I was using Flare's magic to enhance my control of the surrounding mana. It would be foolish not to do so because, in this battle, control was essential.

Because of Flare's cloth, it would be even easier to catch his attention. For now, my goal was to take this fight towards the western plain, which was just barren land. That way, I would be able to avoid burning the forest on the east.

From up there, I could see the small forest and the village right next to it. My eyes weren't sharp enough, and it was still too dark to see the people there, but I could see the houses.

The only odd looking topographical feature in this region was the hill below us. Other than that, it was just plain land as far as my eyes could see.

The dragon started flying towards us as we started moving towards the western plains. I was turning around frequently as we moved to see the distance between us, and from what I had seen, it was going to catch up to us soon.

After a while, we crossed the hill and arrived in the western plain. There, we stopped and waited for the dragon to approach. Beyond this point was the serpent river and past the Serpent River was the Forest of the endless trees, so it wasn't wise to go that far.

When I turned around, I realized it was closer than expected. Its large brown wings were at least five to six times longer than its body, and the body itself was bigger than a small house. If I were to compare it to something from my previous world, I would say as big as a public bus.

His head was massive with a long pointed mouth with two large horns. His face was showing no signs of emotions, not that I knew how to read a dragon's facial expressions. But since he didn't look pleased, it was apparent that he didn't like what we just did.

Except for the lower region of his body, which was made up of white dragon scales, the rest of his body had brown scales. There were dark patterns throughout his body that were blending well with the brown scales.

The muscles on his chest looked somewhat manly, and the sharp claws on both of his arms made him look fierce. His legs, too, had claws, but they are less sharper than his hands and were designed to help him stand instead. His tail was huge, almost as long as his whole body. There were spikes on his body from the top of his head to the tip of his tail.

"So, you are the kid that black was talking about. You look small and… weak."

His voice was loud and mature, a sort of voice that one would expect from a living, breathing dragon. He was calm, but for some reason, he was giving me chills. It was probably the survival instinct of a lesser being kicking in in the presence of a higher being.

I was having a hard time speaking in front of such a massive presence. My mouth was already dry, but I had to find a way to convince him and get out of this situation.

"I am not here to fight. I would like to request an opportunity to explain."

The dragon shook his head. "Grrrrr… Before that, show me that you are worthy of my time."

"Flare!"

As the dragon came charging towards me with his fang, Flare caught my arms and threw me towards her right. Then she took the small blue bird form and escaped the grip.

The dragon was giant, which made its movement somewhat easy to predict. Even though it was hard, we were able to avoid it in time.

Turning around was hard, even for him. That gave me some time to distance myself a bit. I could fuse with Flare during this time, but in this battle, that could be counter-productive. The two of us could distract the enemy from two sides and draw the fight longer.

However, there was a slight problem with our strategy. I had no idea about the dragon's stamina. If he could fight longer than the two of us combined, then we wouldn't be able to last. And even though the assumption was demotivating, that had a higher chance of being the case.

There were tales where it was mentioned that the true dragon kings could fight for centuries without rest. Hopefully, that's just a tale and not the reality.

He ignored Flare and came charging towards me, but I was prepared. I fused fire magic with darkness magic using both of my hands and tried freezing his claws with magic ice as he attacked.

His left claw was left frozen, while I just let gravity help me with the dodging. As I fell, Flare came towards me, and the two of us started preparing ourselves for the next attack.

The dragon tried taking the ice off of his frozen claws, but as he was not using holy magic, it didn't work.

Even though it didn't work, I was sure that he would find a way out of it soon enough. I had already seen olive do that once, so I would count on nothing less from another Dragon king.

"Grrrr…"

Contrary to how I was hoping, he found a way out of it sooner than expected. He used his right claw to sever his left arm along with the ice.