Longwind Grasslands—overcast skies, heavy clouds.
True to its name, it was a vast wilderness where fierce winds howled year-round.
On this lively stretch of prairie, countless beasts and monsters roamed. From tiny slimes hiding in the cracks between roadside stones, all the way up to trolls several meters tall—everything lived and bred here.
Even beneath the soil, there was a huge world invisible to the naked eye.
Burrowing worms tunneled underground, their massive mandibles able to crunch through rock, carving out a sprawling network like an enormous subterranean web. Kobolds and molefolk, meanwhile, claimed the richer pastures below the surface, hiding away to build layered, three-dimensional nests. Unless they had no choice, avoiding conflict with stronger enemies was the core survival rule of their species.
And where monsters gathered, adventurers and merchants naturally followed.
"Sorry, boss. I messed it up."
Out on the grassland, a group of adventurers on horseback watched a figure streaking away in the distance. One of them turned to the long-haired man leading them and spoke with shame.
Compared to a normal adventurer party, a dozen-plus riders made for a fairly large team—but still not enough to be called a full adventurer company.
"Forget it. We'll pick another target," the long-haired leader shook his head.
"Once that herd's been spooked, catching them gets several times harder."
At this point, what else could he say?
They'd taken a high-paying private commission from a group of merchants—capture centaurs. They'd prepared for nearly a month. The lassos, nets, ropes, and all the sedatives and specialty supplies meant for centaurs alone had cost a fortune.
But if they could successfully capture a few, they could sell them to black-market dealers for a payout worth ten times their investment.
"Boss," the younger one asked, "why do those merchants want centaurs so badly?"
The long-haired man just shook his head.
"Who knows. Maybe some big shot wants a centaur mount."
Normally, centaurs were smarter than most monsters, which made them far harder to tame. Economically speaking, buying a centaur mount was a terrible deal.
But you couldn't use common sense when it came to nobles chasing novelty. Sometimes the more niche something was, the more it let them show off. That alone made it "worth it" to them.
He stared at the herd disappearing into the distance, regret flickering across his face—then reason returned.
He might be a Level 3 ranger, but the centaur chief wasn't simple either. Otherwise it wouldn't have noticed their ambush before it even started.
So… just like the centaurs didn't want to fight them, he was hesitant too.
He'd rather switch targets than let his people suffer heavy losses in a head-on clash with a centaur herd.
As he was thinking—
A savage gust of wind exploded overhead.
It came without warning.
The first to react were the horses. A dozen well-trained warhorses reared up almost simultaneously, shrieking in panic, front hooves flailing.
Two adventurers were thrown from their saddles. They rolled across the ground, too startled to stand, faces pale as they looked up—pupils shrinking to pinpoints.
The long-haired leader pressed one hand down on his terrified mount and followed their gaze.
The gray sky above had been ripped open—thick cottony clouds torn apart into a massive gap.
A crimson figure, wrapped in streamers of cloud like floating fluff, dove from above.
It was still some distance away, but it was moving too fast, and today's air had been unnaturally still—so its passing carved a violent wind straight across the grasslands.
The red dragon dropped to a certain altitude, then skimmed low across the ground in front of them.
The prairie grass flattened into rolling waves, spreading outward from its path.
"Boss, it's a dragon!"
"Stop yelling. I've got eyes," Seth had just finished straightening his clothes when he heard his younger companion babbling again. He sighed.
But as he watched the crimson shape fade toward the horizon, envy flickered through him anyway.
"Gauss…"
These days, a lot of adventurers around Falrim had started to know that name.
If a red dragon flew overhead, it meant Gauss—its master—was nearby.
"So that's a dragon…" Seth looked at how chaotic his team's formation had become, finally understanding what a dragon meant in the most immediate way.
This creature was terrifying.
Just flying nearby—at that distance—was enough to blow their mounted squad into total disorder.
If it had wanted to attack them, they wouldn't even have had time to organize a defense.
And if the mount was that frightening… how strong did its rider have to be, to have conquered it?
…
Gauss had no idea what the small team behind him was thinking.
His eyes were locked on the ground below. As Hephaestus cut through the sky at full speed, the distance to the centaur herd was shrinking fast.
The moment they entered casting range, Gauss fired Magic Missiles.
The herd had sensed the threat from above long ago.
Hephaestus hadn't tried to hide his approach at all—his flight path was straight at them.
But sensing danger was one thing. Escaping it was another.
Their speed didn't even compare to a dragon's. As the pressure from the sky grew heavier, the centaur chief was just about to scream orders—scatter, break formation, let whoever could run survive—
But before the command even left its throat, lethal azure missiles fell like rain.
Boom. Boom. Boom.
Each missile hit like a heavy shell, tracing a brilliant arc down—
Not into the earth, but into centaur bodies.
Blue Magic Missiles rained from the sky with blazing tails, each one striking perfectly true.
If someone had been counting, they would have found not a single missile missed. Every cast landed, even with both sides moving at high speed.
The centaurs screamed.
Hard muscle and bone were like paper before raw magical force. With cracking bones and tearing flesh, they collapsed forward. Their own momentum dragged their bodies across the grass, carving deep furrows. Blood foam spilled from their mouths as all four legs spasmed and kicked helplessly.
Even the herd leader—the chestnut-red male centaur, over two meters at the shoulder—couldn't escape.
Its hooves hammered the ground, its body rising and falling like a red lightning bolt.
But the crushing pressure behind it only grew closer, heavier.
It felt death coming—so it dug in hard, shifted its center of gravity, and snapped into a sharp turn, trying to break the line and shake pursuit.
The red "lightning" bent sharply—
But the threat didn't vanish.
It was still closing.
A missile slammed down like an arrow from heaven, punching through its body and shredding the muscles controlling its forelegs.
At full speed, it instantly lost balance—its body slammed into the ground, plowing a long groove like a cannonball.
Above, the red dragon descended.
Gauss looked over the centaurs—dead or too broken to move—and casually flicked out a dozen lumps of clay. The moment they left his hand, they solidified mid-air, transforming into goblin-shaped constructs that hit the ground like "summoned soldiers."
These clay creatures quickly finished off any centaur still clinging to life.
Once the killing was done, they began field-dressing the bodies on the spot, harvesting the materials Gauss wanted.
Even goblins—the lowest trash of monsters—had parts worth taking. Centaurs, of course, were even better.
After harvesting, the remaining carcasses—especially the centaur chief and a few elite centaurs—were fed to Hephaestus. Nothing went to waste.
Hephaestus burned a lot of energy flying. If you could ignore the toxins in monster flesh, the nutrition and energy were excellent.
As a red drake, Hephaestus had a dragon's body. Digesting monsters was nothing to it.
Truthfully, now that Gauss had the purple talent Feast, he could eat raw monster flesh with minimal side effects too.
But human habit still pushed him toward cooking meat instead of eating it raw.
And he was picky about what he ate. Goblins and kobolds? No chance. Centaur… he thought about it and decided to pass.
Their upper bodies still looked too human.
It bothered him—and if he remembered right, prion disease was a 100% fatal nightmare once it went bad. He didn't know how much "human" was in centaur blood, but he wasn't gambling.
Eating should be a pleasure, not something that disgusted him.
So most of the monsters he chose to eat were ones that could plausibly be food to humans—crabs, cattle, frogs, and the like.
(Though if you counted the one bite he'd taken from Hephaestus during their first meeting… then yes, technically, he'd eaten dragon before. Sadly, he'd been in a limit-burst state then and never got to taste it properly.)
He glanced at Hephaestus, who was already eating.
The dragon didn't seem to mind centaur at all—probably because it was new. It ate with clear enjoyment.
Then, as a cold wind passed, Hephaestus shivered.
Like it had a sixth sense, it turned its head back—Gauss was standing at a distance with his arms folded, watching.
"Rrrr…" Hephaestus lifted its bloody muzzle into a strangely human-like "smile."
It had been around people long enough to imitate expressions.
"Forget it," Gauss shook his head.
Sure, with Hephaestus's size and vitality, carving off a few chunks wouldn't hurt it. But the dragon already "sold its freedom" to him. He wasn't going to start eyeing it like meat. That would be too cruel.
And besides—this world had more dragons than just Hephaestus.
Almost like it understood his shift in thought, Hephaestus quietly relaxed again.
Far away, the adventurer team that had been trying to capture centaurs watched the battle—already over. They'd barely finished reorganizing themselves before it ended.
The speed made them feel ridiculous.
"Boss… should we go over?"
"No." Seth shook his head. "We detour. Stay far away."
Even if reports said Gauss had a decent temperament and wasn't some bloodthirsty brute, Seth wasn't betting his squad's lives on it.
What if Gauss just happened to be in a bad mood today?
Even if Gauss killed them all right here, no one would ever know.
That was how the weak survived in the wild: stay far from anyone who could take your life casually.
As for trying to "make friends" and earn Gauss's favor…
He didn't dare even imagine it.
"Move out!"
…
For the next two days, Seth's group found nothing in the Longwind Grasslands.
"Wasn't there supposed to be centaurs here?"
Someone complained.
"Forget centaurs—there aren't even many other monsters!"
They'd spent two days running around, and the enormous grassland felt unnaturally quiet. Silent. Wrong.
Their frustration grew, and they began suspecting the informant had exaggerated.
"Captain Seth—there's a pile of monster corpses ahead."
"Picked clean."
The scout turned back and led them to the spot.
Seth inspected the area.
Aside from the bodies—already drawing flies—the ground was strangely clean. It didn't look like a long fight. It looked like something that ended instantly.
His eyes caught a massive footprint sunk deep into the earth.
Then he remembered the same kind of "instant battle" he'd witnessed two days earlier.
A thought clicked into place.
If he wasn't mistaken, these corpses—and the prairie's eerie emptiness—had one obvious cause.
That man.
He was sweeping the Longwind Grasslands like a carpet.
It sounded absurd… but with a dragon's mobility and that man's power, it wasn't impossible.
Seth felt envy—and then resignation.
"Boss… what do we do?"
Seth hesitated, then looked at his companions.
"We head back for now. Come again in a couple days. If this keeps up… we'll have to find centaurs somewhere else."
With a dragon's flight height and speed, their entire riding range likely fell under Gauss's hunting radius.
Which meant they had essentially zero chance of finding targets here right now.
The others saw the dragon footprint and understood too.
They sighed together.
Their plan had been wrecked—but faced with that deep, crushing footprint, they didn't even dare feel angry.
They could only blame their luck.
"Back we go."
Might makes right was a rule carved into this land.
They acted meek around the dragon and its rider—but in truth, out in the wild, they had bullied plenty of weaker adventurer parties themselves.
That was exactly why, when they first saw Gauss in the distance—no matter how good his reputation was—they still didn't dare approach him.
~~~
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