A Dragon's Curiosity

While the exhausted students sat on the ground or leaned against the walls, elated that the never ending stream of [Yellow Banded Loam Monsters] coming at them finally ceased, the burden on the leaders of their respective groups had not ended quite yet.

Nisha herself went around and poked the bodies on the ground with her [Taurith Short Sword].

A hard lesson that many fresh adventurers learn during their first few fights was that the ingenuity and cunning of a monster was not as low as they would like to believe.

Playing dead and counter attacking while the hunter was distracted and relaxed his guard had allowed the cornered prey to turn the situation around more than once.

While Veilia Sternbloom and Jehu Blacktalon checked on their team members and tabulated their gains and losses, the other smaller group was simply happy to survive the monster surge and huddled together, treating each other’s wounds.

The dragon ignored them for the most part and continued with her job, making sure that no monster was only playing dead.

She herself had a good chance to survive the ambush of a pretending [Yellow Banded Loam Monster], her team members or other students might suffer additional injuries if they were ambushed in their current tired state.

Jehu already knew some rumors about Veilia and her band of followers.

Since girls were already scarce in the warrior classes, they stood out even more with an all female team that wielded similar weapons.

He approached her and glanced at Nisha’s companions and the other small team from time to time, pointing with his hands and insistently explaining something to the girl.

Veilia frowned and did not reply right away, but neither did she turn away and leave the conversation.

Nisha was not bored enough to eavesdrop on them and walked the stone path in its entirety, finding two monsters that played dead and were subsequently finished off by her.

[Spirit Sight] was not very suitable to pick them out, according to her experiments, the elf saw life force and energy with her ability, the bodies on the ground had almost all perished already but it would take some time for the leftover life force to dissipate.

And injured and weakened monsters playing dead would not show up as the brightest energies for the elf, so she had to check them one by one.

During her walk, Nisha roughly counted the monsters they had slain.

There were two distinct types of [Yellow Banded Loam Monsters] strewn about on the ground.

Normal frog-like monsters made up the bulk of the attackers in this small scale monster surge.

At the early second aura rank, these creatures were a pain to deal with, but not especially dangerous.

Between Nisha’s group of three, the ten young men including Jihu and the eight girls following Veilia, as well as the five friends, managed to slay a total of about one hundred fifty monsters, perhaps ten more or less, the dragon did not count them individually.

The second type of monster were the leader type creatures of [Yellow Banded Loam Monsters].

Stronger than their average kind, they were tougher and faster, each having reached the middle of the second rank at least.

They directed the other monsters and led them into the fight, representing tough adversaries for the students.

Luckily, the stone path was defended by Nisha, who dealt with them in the same way as the weaker variants, her superhuman strength made it easy to deal with them all the same.

Since these monsters competed internally for resources and opportunities, there were not many of these leader variants.

Exactly two dozen middle second rank [Yellow Banded Loam Monsters] were attracted by the lure potion.

A few of them were close to the late second rank, just short of becoming a king class entity with unparalleled authority in their group.

They all met their end here and their blood painted the ground red, giving the originally tranquil forest clearing and the boulder formation an eerie air.

“I see, so it was an accident that brought all these monsters here.

To think that there was such a useful potion. If you acquire more of it in the future, make sure to secure some for us as well.

My team would be more than happy to pay you in contribution or silver for it.”

When Nisha returned to the temporary camp in the middle of the path, it was no longer just Veilia and Jihu talking, they pulled Unico to join their circle while one of the boys from the last team of friends stood to the side awkwardly, finding it hard to participate in their talk.

It was Jihu talking to Unico, who had found his polite small smile again despite the injury on his chest.

“I myself am not clear on the details. I will keep your words in mind and see if the opportunity comes up.

Our group also messed up with the dose, the effect is not supposed to be as strong as this.”

Seeing the polite small talk, Nisha had no intention to go up and join them and went over to Lisa, who was still resting from the extreme exertion they went through.

Nevertheless, the elf perked up and closely listened when the conversation took a different direction.

“Since the fighting is already over, we have to discuss the distribution of the spoils.

My friends and I have no objections to helping a group in need, but we cannot suffer a loss either, right?

After discussing it earlier, my party thinks we should distribute the monsters according to each person, that’s the fairest method to reward everyone, correct?”

Flashing a wide smile, Jihu Blacktalon managed to make a friendly gesture threatening just by nature of his giant frame and muscular build.

Staring at the representative of the group with the most powerful member, the elf Nisha, he dared the young man from the twin kingdoms to reject his proposal after he already mentioned that it was for the benefit of those that came to their rescue.

Each monster carcass was able to be exchanged for merit points at the end of the trip, and the amount depended on the condition and cultivation of the remains.

A complete body of a [Yellow Banded Loam Monster] yielded up to ten merit points in perfect condition, although it was almost impossible to make a perfect kill with their current level of experience.

The leader types of the same species did not entirely leave the range of second level cultivation, but their value still exceeded that of normal exemplars.

With a value of fifty to seventy merit points, depending on the conditions of the remains, they were far more valuable.

During the battle, all three groups that joined Unico, Lisa and Nisha were far too busy to care about the value of their gains, yet they were astounded to notice that the monstrous elf had slain eighteen out of the two dozen leader type creatures.

Now that they safely made it through this crisis, they desired the points for themselves.

The one hundred fifty regular monsters, many with mangled skin and ruined materials, yielded an average of seven hundred and fifty merit points, while the two dozen leaders had an astonishing profit of at least one thousand and two hundred points.

Giving each person the same amount of bodies, and thus merit points, would allow each person to gain thirty points from the regular monsters and fifty from the leaders.

The downside of that was that the larger teams had more people and profited way more than the small teams.

With three people, Nisha and her friends would only gain about four hundred merit points despite investing the [Lesser Lure Potion] and the most work to slay the monsters in the small scale surge.

Veilia and Jihu had large teams, making their gain much higher, especially since they would commandeer more of the points to distribute for their team instead of splitting evenly.

The other band of friends had five members, and joined the fight last, hence they did not butt into the conversation.

Furthermore, they did not have the courage to go against the big teams too.

Lisa frowned when she heard the suggestion, thinking about the lopsided distribution that was proposed.

She did not guess the deeper considerations, and only kept her eyes on Unico, who currently represented their team.

“That does not sound quite appropriate, does it?

I agree that everyone provided valuable assistance and definitely needs to enjoy the reward along with everybody else, but it’s not quite suitable to decide based on the number of participants.

Would you agree to an equal split based on parties instead? Everyone can enjoy one fourth of the points.”

Maintaining his trademark polite smile, the youth with the purple hued skin deftly deflected the unfavorable proposal and gave a diplomatic response.

Purely from a contribution point of view it was not fair to Nisha, Lisa and himself, because they did indeed kill and defend against more monsters than anyone else.

But Unico trusted that his team would agree to cede some of their gains in exchange for a favorable conclusion and making connections with other teams.

Splitting the total gains in four parts, giving each team the same payout, they would gain five hundred points each, which was not a bad haul at all since the academy prepared the remuneration for weapon maintenance and a small bonus instead of the main goal being earning points.

Nevertheless, things did not always go as planned.

“That’s a harsh thing to suggest. Aren’t you profiting too much from having a smaller team to split your points with?

You’re not repaying the good intentions of those who wanted to help you this way.”

Revealing his true intentions, Jihu moved closer and brought his intimidating physique into play.

Unico, on the other hand, retained his polite smile, although the ends of his mouth barely raised above the center of his lips and the genuine and friendly aura vanished instantly.

“I beg your pardon, perhaps my common sense is different from yours since I’m an exchange student from a different place.

What exactly do you think is unfair here? Can you point it out for me so we can work out a solution?”

From behind, Lisa watched as the air around the two men rapidly cooled, while Veilia looked away uncomfortably, yet still remained standing there to support Jihu’s stance to distribute their gains.

Nisha observed all parties involved.

The trio never decided on a leader or thought about having a formal structure when going on the warrior class excursion.

She was quite satisfied to let Unico handle the distribution, the elf did not lack merit points in the first place thanks to holding the King’s Seat in her magician class.

Even if her friends were in a need for points somehow, she was ready to pitch in and simply give some to them.

But the way that Jihu tried to strongarm them into distributing the [Yellow Banded Loam Monsters] struck a wrong chord within her.

This was no longer a discussion, but coercion.

“That’s not how we are going to do it.”

While no one expected it, Nisha returned to the scene and backed Unico up by standing next to him and looking at the muscular and tall youth opposite to him with a deadpan expression.

As a rather young and petite elf, she was about two heads shorter than Jihu Blacktalon.

Nevertheless, no one dared to laugh at the discrepancy, as Nisha was covered in blood from her hands to her elbow, a result from striking down any monsters that came at her with absolute violence.

In reality, her skin did not allow the blood to stain her complexion, it was mainly the leather combat vest that took on a rusted maroon colour.

With sword in hand and a determined expression, Nisha fully revealed the bearing of a leader.