Soon, with Filo running, Takeru and the others left the small mountain village and entered the forest, which was teeming with monsters.
Balloon monsters, Needleboars, Rabbity, and other monsters encountered along the way turned into experience points for everyone under Raphtalia's and Rifana's attacks.
Besides that, their corpses were also collected, either to become Takeru's materials or slime food.
Perhaps because no humans had come for a while, there were unusually many monsters.
Seeing this, Takeru wasn't in a hurry. He let Raphtalia, Rifana, and Filo hunt them slowly.
Soon, after about two hours, they had collected two large boxes of monster corpses and even leveled up twice.
Seeing no more monsters swarming, Takeru had the three rest briefly before they continued towards the dragon.
About half an hour later, Takeru and the others arrived at a relatively open area. Takeru saw the dragon coiled within the forest.
"Roar!" Seeing Takeru and the others, the dragon roared directly.
"Ah, I hate dragons!" At this moment, as Raphtalia and Rifana watched nervously, Filo did a high jump and leaped directly at the still-roaring dragon, kicking it on the head.
The extremely fast speed and powerful impact directly knocked the dragon's head to the side. Drool spilled from its mouth, and its head was spinning.
Soon, after the dragon regained its senses, it directly gathered its strength and spewed a stream of dragon fire at Filo.
"Basic Hurricane!" Seeing the dragon fire, Filo directly used a hurricane. The powerful hurricane intercepted the dragon fire. However, the surrounding trees suffered, catching fire.
Seeing this, Takeru stepped forward. Mana surged. Soon, with Takeru as the center, the nearby forest quickly became covered in a thick layer of ice. The fire rapidly disappeared.
"Raphtalia and Rifana, go assist Filo. With your current strength, defeating it should be possible." Looking at the two girls, who had wariness in their eyes, Takeru shouted loudly.
"Okay!" Hearing this, the two quickly acted. Raphtalia first dashed, bursting with extremely fast speed to reach above the dragon. Before the dragon could react, she swung her long sword three times, slashing its body consecutively.
Clang, clang!
The sound of metal collision rang out. However, Raphtalia's attack was effective. It pierced the dragon's skin, leaving three cuts several centimeters deep. The dragon roared in pain.
Before the dragon could recover, Rifana's attack followed. While the dragon's attention was entirely on Raphtalia, she circled behind it and made two straight thrusts, leaving two deep holes in the dragon. Blood quickly poured out.
Feeling the continuous pain on its body, the dragon wailed again. Its tail lashed out at Rifana's position.
But Rifana had no intention of facing the dragon head-on. Having already retreated after her successful strike, she was like a mysterious, ever-changing assassin.
As the dragon used its tail to attack Rifana, Filo, who had been waiting, struck again. She used a series of kicks on the dragon. Her powerful claws landed on the dragon's body, each kick forcing it to retreat.
Watching from below, Takeru nodded gently.
Although the three's combat and coordination still needed improvement, currently, there weren't many problems. Taking turns attacking, the dragon could hardly manage. Its death was only a matter of time.
After all, this dragon was definitely not as strong as the immortal Zombie Dragonfrom the original work. So, with Raphtalia at level 62, Rifana at 56, and Filo at 52, there shouldn't be too much trouble.
As Takeru thought, although the dragon could release dragon fire to trouble Raphtalia and the others, Filo blocked it each time with a hurricane.
With the ice Takeru had released nearby, it didn't cause much trouble to the surroundings.
After about ten minutes of continuous fighting, the dragon, covered in dozens of wounds, finally couldn't hold on any longer and collapsed to the ground.
Raphtalia and the three stood beside the dragon, panting heavily. The high-intensity battle had kept them on high alert.
So, now that they had stopped, all their exhaustion came flooding back. However, seeing the dead dragon, the three showed happy smiles.
"Master, was Filo great?" Seeing Takeru approach, Filo transformed back into human form and threw herself onto Takeru.
"If you're so impulsive again next time, I'll knock your head." Hearing Filo's words, Takeru said, not amused.
"I'm sorry." Seeing Takeru angry, Filo looked very aggrieved.
"Filo, promise me you won't be so reckless again, okay?" Looking at Filo's aggrieved expression, Takeru sighed, then gently stroked her head.
"I understand, Master. I won't do it again. Please don't abandon Filo, okay?" Hearing Takeru's sincere, low voice, Filo felt nervous inside, afraid of being abandoned by Takeru.
"Of course. Filo is a very important person to me." Looking at the frightened Filo, Takeru stroked her head to soothe her. Takeru could sense that she had truly learned her lesson this time.
"Hee hee!" Hearing Takeru's words, Filo finally smiled again.
After gently reminding Filo, Takeru went directly to the dragon. Looking at the dead dragon, he sensed carefully and discovered a special purple Dragon God fragment. Then, with a thought from Takeru, the Dragon God fragment was drawn out by a special force, piercing through the dragon's body and flying into Takeru's hand.
After placing the fragment together with the one from the Tyrannosaurus he had killed before, Takeru stored the dragon directly in his item bar.
Seeing the large amount of dragon blood around the corpse, Takeru thought for a moment, then released three Blood Slimes, letting them devour the dragon's blood.
Although this dragon was somewhat weak, it was still a dragon. The mana contained in its blood was not comparable to ordinary monsters.
Moreover, by devouring the blood of high-level monsters, the slimes' products could improve in quality. If the quantity was sufficient, the slimes could even undergo a second evolution.
"How are you feeling? Doing okay?" After handling these matters, Takeru turned to Raphtalia and Rifana, who had mostly recovered.
Neither had suffered any injuries... they were just somewhat exhausted.
"We're fine now." Hearing Takeru's question, Raphtalia quickly answered. Rifana nodded in agreement.
Although tired, they had managed to hunt a dragon, a monster at the top of the world. It was an extremely exciting thing.
Seeing that it was almost noon, Takeru decided to rest here for a while. Although the area was a bit messy after the fight with the dragon, the uneven ground was quickly restored to its original state with Takeru's earth magic.
Then, an outdoor kitchen quickly formed. Rem took out ingredients and began cooking, joined by Ram.
Watching Ram and Rem's actions, Raphtalia and Rifana quickly gathered around to help. They also wanted to learn to cook, so they could make delicious food for Takeru in the future.
While they were cooking, Takeru took Filo for a walk in the forest. Actually, watching them fight had made Takeru a bit eager to join in.
But unfortunately, as his strength increased, he couldn't find any evenly matched opponents.
Not to mention evenly matched... there were very few beings who could withstand even a casual blow from him. Only by massively suppressing his own power might he find one or two opponents.
Of course, despite the lack of opponents, Takeru didn't worry too much. It was just a momentary complaint.
On the contrary, if there really were someone as strong as him, Takeru would be concerned. Because if their strength was similar, Takeru might not fear them, but it would be extremely dangerous for Ram and the others.
To avoid such irreversible incidents, although Takeru's strength had reached a very high level, and he didn't even know what he could achieve at full power, he would never slack off in improving his strength.
Even in the main world, he would occasionally enter the Reincarnation Space to fully unleash his power, open the Eight Gates' Gate of Death, use his time ability to freeze his physical state, and prolong the Gate of Death's duration.
With various fields activated and a large number of shadow clones, even simple movement would cause sonic booms. At that level, Takeru's power was difficult to control. If he wanted to destroy the Earth, it probably wouldn't even take ten seconds.