Gon kept flying for about an hour before he finally touched down. I climbed off his back to find myself in a desolate, rugged stretch of arid land full of big rocks and not much else.
I paused and looked around.
“So...where are we?” I asked. A harsh, cold gust of wind blew, almost as if nature itself was punctuating my question. It hadn’t felt cold at all in the capital, but it was so frigid here, I could feel myself breaking out in goose bumps. “Brr!” I said with a shiver before quickly pulling the sweater I’d bought from my Online Supermarket out of my Item Box and slipping it on.
“It irks me to ask the same question as him, but yes—where is this place, Gon?” Fel said.
“You might call it something of a well-kept secret, as far as hunting grounds go,” Gon replied.
《A secret hunting ground?》 Dora-chan repeated. 《What could possibly be worth hunting in a place like this?》
“Oh, very worthwhile prey indeed! Long, long ago, I went through a phase where the thought of creatures that weren’t dragons having ‘dragon’ in their names irked me terribly. I decided to hunt them all to extinction, but over the course of that quest, I happened across a kind with meat that was quite delicious indeed,” Gon explained, his eyes narrowing as he reminisced about the supposedly delectable flavor. “And so I abandoned my plan and left the rest of them to their own devices. I’m certain there should still be some around.”
You gave up on hunting a species to extinction because they tasted good? Where do I even start...?
“It was even more delicious after I fine-tuned my dragon’s breath to grill it more carefully,” Gon added, a stream of drool dribbling out of the corner of his mouth.
“Gon! Drool! Drool!”
“Oh! Pardon me.”
Fel, who’d seemed to be deep in thought as he listened to Gon’s explanation, jerked his head up. He seemed to have remembered something. “Beasts with ‘dragon’ in their name that are not dragons themselves, with unexpectedly delicious meat? Of course! They could only be dragon turtles!”
《Dragon turtles?》 Dora-chan and Sui repeated in unison.
“Assuming nothing really weird’s going on here, I’m guessing those are a type of turtle monster?” I said.
“Correct,” Fel replied with a nod.
“And although ‘dragon’ is in their name, they’re of an entirely different set of creatures than true dragons such as Dora and I,” Gon said before launching into a more detailed explanation. According to him, “Their fangs are sharp and their jaws are powerful like a dragon’s, yes, but they are still mere turtles incapable of breathing so much as a spark, let alone a flame.”
At that point, Fel chimed in to mention that “They are pathetically slow, and hold not even a fraction of a true dragon’s power.” He also explained that “Their hide, however, is rather tough, and their shells more formidable still. Breaking through them can be a nuisance.”
“Indeed,” Gon said, nodding in agreement.
“Not even I could pierce one of their shells in a single blow,” Fel added.
“They’re troublesome when they hide within their shells, yes,” Gon continued. “And to make matters worse, their shells boast remarkable resistance to magic as well! Defeating them through nonmagical means would take many an attack, even from the likes of us.”
Wait, really? Considering how tough those two are, doesn’t that mean that these turtles are really hard to hurt? I’ve never heard of anything that could take more than a couple hits from those two and stay standing!
《Oh, really? These turtles are tough enough to make you two admit it? Sounds like taking one of ’em down is gonna be worth the effort!》 Dora-chan said.
《Sui’ll pew-pew the big turtles and melt them away!》 Sui said as well. The two of them seemed downright fired up by the idea that the turtles’ shells were tough enough to impress Fel and Gon.
《Magic resistance sounds like a pain, though,》 Dora-chan continued. 《Magic’s my whole thing, so they might be a bad matchup for me.》
Oh, yeah, that’s true. A magic specialist like Dora-chan would probably have a hard time with a monster like that.
《Oh, duh!》 Dora-chan exclaimed a second later. 《Hey, Sui, let’s work together on this one! We can take a dragon turtle down if we tag-team it!》
Not a bad plan! If the two of them took on one of those turtles together, I bet they could deal with it no problem.
《How ’bout it?》 Dora-chan asked.
For a moment, Sui just bounced in place.
Hm? What’s going on?
《Umm, well... What’s ‘tag-team’ mean?》 Sui asked completely nonchalantly. I almost cracked up on the spot, and Fel, Gon, and Dora-chan all smirked as well.
Oh, I get it! Guess nobody’s taught that phrase to Sui yet, huh?
《Tag-teaming something means you fight it together!》 Dora-chan explained. 《I’m saying that the two of us should fight a single dragon turtle at the same time, and bring it down as a team. How’s that sound?》
《Oh, okay! Sui thinks that sounds fun!》
《Hell yeah! In that case, let’s get out there and find ourselves a dragon turtle already!》 Dora-chan excitedly shouted.
“Indeed. And I have already determined where one may be found, broadly,” Fel said. “We should start by moving closer to its location. Ride upon my back with Sui,” he added, glancing at me.
“Okay, okay,” I replied. Sui and I climbed onto Fel’s back.
“We’ll take to the skies, Dora!” Gon said.
《Arright!》
A few minutes after we set off, Fel arrived near the foot of a massive hill.
“That is a dragon turtle.”
I...didn’t know what to say. As it turned out, the turtle had been in plain sight for quite some time. I’d just assumed it was a geological feature, not a monster! Looking closer, though, its rough, craggy slopes did have a tortoiseshell-like pattern to them.
Welp. Only one thing I can think to say about this...
“Holy crap, that’s huge!”
It’s tall as hell, for one thing, and it must be thirty meters from one end to the other—maybe forty, actually?
“Yes, that is a reasonably large one,” Gon casually observed.
“It would seem it sensed our approach, and has already withdrawn into its shell,” Fel noted.
Nooope, nope nope nope! You’re making this sound nice and easy, but you’re telling me you’re planning on fighting something that big, with a stupidly tough shell on top of it? How in the world are you planning on fighting that? I wondered, as I gazed up at the massive, thickly armored mound that was apparently the dragon turtle’s shell.