Ch21 - Unexpected trouble

A moment after the alarm rang, two dragons can be seen flying high up in the sky. Both of them are blue, one lighter blue and one darker blue, both of them have orange highlights. Judging by their colour, they are the twin sky dragons, Dawn and Dusk! Super annoying high ranking dragons, they are always together, never apart. When DHO was still a game, it's natural to expect both of them even if the quest is to hunt only one of them. Looks like it's also the same when DHO became reality. 

The two dragons can be seen circling high above Yokke village like they are searching for something. Meanwhile, the villagers are evacuating to an underground shelter directed by the soldiers and both hunters and soldiers alike prepared their arms to fight. However, the two dragons are flying so high that no weapon can reach them.

A little while after all the non-combatants finished evacuating, the two dragons finally started diving down towards the village. They are swirling around each other like they are doing an air show. It will be a beautiful sight if they are not diving down to attack a village. The hunters and soldiers are bracing themselves for a life and death battle. While everyone is bracing themselves, I noticed something, the direction the two dragons are diving towards is… US?!

When the two dragons got close enough, the hunters and soldiers started shooting projectiles at them using bows, hunting guns, cannons and ballistas. Knowing the direction the dragons are headed, I readied my weapon and got into a stance where I can easily dodge and attack when the dragons come at us.

To my surprise, unlike the game where the monsters just take every hit we lashed out, the two dragons are dodging the projectiles beautifully in the air. They are dodging just by adjusting the distance they swirl around each other with minimal movements. They really lived up to their name as the twin sky dragons. I really had too much common sense from the game and forgot that they are actual intelligent and living creatures. Of course they will not want to get hurt too. The axectors that ran away previously was already enough proof that they are not stupid. Isn't there like… a huge increase in difficulty because of this?!

Well… Gaining intelligence doesn't mean that their attacks will become stronger, it just meant that they became smart enough to dodge and dodging is no easy feat, I can tell from my experiences. Anyways, the two dragons are heading towards us so I got no choice but to brace myself for a fight.

Just before the two dragons touch ground, Dusk, the dragon with darker blue colour went straight at us while Dawn, the dragon with lighter blue colour spreads its wings and flapped them a few times, hovering in the air not far from ground. The power Dawn used to flap its wings caused a burst of wind, making the dust around it to be blown away. It remained at a distance whereby the hunters and soldiers are unable to touch it with their swords and spears.

[Kalia! Start running! Its target is clearly you!]

Taki shouted to me as he pushed me behind him. Before Dusk can reach us, Taki threw something to the ground with a swing of his hand. *Poof* Red smoke started to ooze out from the place where Taki threw the thing, it must have been a smoke bomb, but why red? Before I can ask him, he pulled me with him by my arm and we started running with Lily following us from behind. When I look back, I can see Dusk still chasing us but when it hit the red smoke, something weird happened. It crashed to the ground and started shaking its head and scratching its face like it's in extreme discomfort. Without wasting any opportunity, the hunters and soldiers started charging at it.

[That is a pepper bomb, a great way to use pepper right?]

Taki looks back at me with a smirk. Taki's way of hunting is indeed unique. Since DHO was a game, Taki has not been using his main weapons much. He relies more on items and tools, making the best use out of them. When we hunted dragons in our party, Taki always directs the battles and made us bait the dragons to his traps and set-ups. We had many successful hunts thanks to his leadership and unique ideas. But to find such a way to fight dragons when DHO became real, exactly how long had he been here? The first batch from two years ago the same as Milguard? What he just used is not an item from DHO which made me wonder what else does he have?

[Since their target is probably you, let's bait them out of the village.]

Both Lily and I nodded to Taki's suggestion. 

[Onee-chan, don't worry. I will protect you no matter what.]

Lily said, trying to reassure me. My face must be showing how worried and scared I am for her to try and comfort me. Of course I will be scared, anyone will be scared after seeing how much difference is there between game and real life. If you get killed, it will be an instant game over! The worst part is that I, I am clearly their target. Seriously! What did I ever do to them?!

Seeing its partner in danger, Dawn dived down in between Dusk and the incoming attackers. With a swing of its wing, it blew the attackers away and gave a roar intimidating them afterwards. After a while when Dusk finally recovered, both of them soared into the skies again with a single flap of their wings. The power used was so great that they made the hunters and soldiers fall just by the wind pressure of that flap.

While the dragons are busy we are already on our horses heading towards the village gate. I am riding on Kuro with Lily while Taki rides on Lily's horse, of course, Lily is the one steering the horse as I am still not that good at it.

When dusk noticed us running away, it gave a seemingly ferocious roar and shot an air blast at the hunters and soldiers before coming our way. After that, Dawn also shot an air blast at another group of hunters and soldiers before following Dusk. The seemingly useless group of hunters were more easily wiped out than I thought. Just with that two shots of air blast, many of them got heavily injured. Some got blown and fell from a great height, some got blown and crashed into buildings while some got hit by falling debris. 

Before any more of them get injured, I hurried to exit the village with the dragons following behind us. The dragons are clearly aiming for me so I will feel bad if anyone got injured because of me. We will run as far away from the village as possible and have our standoff somewhere in the forest. That's the plan for now.

Author's note:

HI GUYS~ i have setup a patreon  acc with a few tiers n perks. so please support me!! an xtra chapter is alr posted in patreon for package rank B n above~

n sorry for all de black n white illustrations... im jus bad at coloring...

next chapter will be posted in about 4 days too, once im done with de next chapter of de adv chapter XD

n 1 more ting, are yall interested in a discord channel to chat about DHO n other novels?