Tales of The Mighty Dragonair

"Do you know anything about this saber?" Arthur couldn't help but ask, "it looked quite… special."

"It's indeed special," John firmly nodded, "I only saw one of these inscriptions before… and that was on the blade of a royal."

"Royal?" Arthur suddenly recalled what John said about these, "are there any royals nearby here?"

"They live far, far away from here," John seemed to be in better state while he played with the saber, "yet that saber, these horses… they all point out one clear fact."

He suddenly paused as if he was lost in thought. "Damn! No, I was mistaken…" he suddenly turned to Arthur, "where did you find them? Hurry tell me!"

"H- Here," Arthur was startled by this sudden shift in his friend's nature.

"No way," John firmly shook his head, "they must have run here… have you scanned the place? Have you found anything?"

Arthur turned around. Everything was literally made entirely out of rock. "I just glanced around," he honestly said.

"Wrong move boy," John used the saber to stand while his body faintly trembled, "we need to search."

"For what?" Arthur didn't delay to stand with him.

"This saber you said caused a deep wound inside that horse, right?" 

"Indeed."

"Then it's not a saber," John firmly said, "it's one of the lethal weapons famous for the holy guardians of the royals."

Arthur was feeling more puzzlement at the moment. 

And without asking anything, John hurriedly volunteered to explain:

"I initially thought this was something belonging to one of those reckless royals, but I was wrong! These horses belonged to royals, that's for sure. They were running away and were hunted down by a holy guardian!"

Up to here Arthur started to understand the meaning of his friend. "The riders?" he muttered in question and John nodded. 

"Whoever were riding these horses must not be far away, and…" he paused before helplessly adding, "we have to assume their hunter is still around."

"Damn!" this time it was Arthur's turn to curse.

"Now we need to gain answers," John said before urging, "and we need to gain these fast before that hunter can sniff our location."

Arthur didn't ask anymore questions as he turned to one side while John turned to another. Arthur gave the couple of horses a deep glance before starting his search.

The place was really large, even for the two of them it took roughly one hour and half to completely search it through.

"Found anything?" Arthur hurriedly asked.

"Nothing," yet John shrugged, "and you?"

Arthur simply shook his head before asking the question that made him quite puzzled during the past hour, "why would a royal hunt another? Are there wars between royals?"

"There are many wars along the history of our world between them," John nodded before adding, "but this isn't a war. It's one royal trying to hunt down others using the holy guardians."

"And that means?" Arthur was still alien to this world and so he lacked any knowledge about what it even meant.

"It means whoever were running were either ambushed on surprise, or they were already on the run," John paused for few minutes while the two returned to sit close to the couple of horses, "but from what I know, no royal would move without being protected with a small group of holy guardians."

"Then the hunter must have killed the entire protective group."

"That's… quite unlikely," John had to shake his head, "if you saw one you'll understand. Imagine someone as big as a small hill, armed with all kinds of weapons and controlled by more than ten elite fighters with deadly offensive systems. No one can kill a holy guardian that easily, not to mention a group of them… unless…"

John's eyes suddenly shone brighter as he paused, and Arthur urged him. "Unless what?" he asked.

"Unless the ones hunting them down weren't just royals… but they have cursed mages as well."

"This…" Arthur had deep hatred towards any dark mage, "can this be possible?"

"In theory? No, but in real life anything can happen," John sighed, "this world… real life is simply too complicated to be judged by mere rules."

Arthur couldn't help but nod in agreement. Life was so complicated and he got that. "So what should we do now?" he said before adding, "I planned to take these horses and use them to run away faster."

"We have a bigger threat around," John firmly said, "we can't take them or else we would be inviting those death reapers to us."

Arthur didn't argue with him as he knew he was telling the truth. He glanced over the giant horses and sighed. "We should leave then," he muttered, "we can't stay here anymore. They… have to deal with their fate on their own."

"That's the right thing to do, but…" John pointed to himself, "I still need a day or two to recover. If I had my former power then I would have healed much faster."

"Can't you gather up your energy still?" 

"I'm very weak right now, and trying to gather any energy would end up causing more trouble than benefit."

John patted on his shoulder, "I'll leave you to train, but try not to be so loyal to your old ways. After all, our main method of training here is through fighting."

"Fighting?"

"We can absorb energy from the world around us, but we need to condense it and make it ours," John explained and Arthur found it strangely similar to when he breaks through any cultivation base.

"What about the systems then?" Arthur asked, "won't they guide us?"

"Guide?" John glanced at him like he was hearing a funny joke, "systems don't speak with us here buddy or befriend us. They act like our superiors, only giving us quests and rewards for them."

"Then why should we train our energies? I believe it's more convenient to follow the system quests," Arthur didn't say anything about his system. After all, his system was so friendly to him and always talked to him.

"Any system runs on energy, our energy," John tried to explain things that seemed so simple to be hard to explain, "the higher the energy is, the stronger our systems would be.. Eventually that means more options and quests for us."