My Wife and I Became Sages in Another World-Chapter 54: Black Dragon Serpent (Part 1)

The same day that Ivy told me that a black dragon serpent was potentially residing in the forest, I went to the adventurer’s guild to report it.

Lately, adventurers had been hunting many monsters in the forest, although they had yet to manage to reach as far as my treehouse. But I knew there were a few parties of experienced individuals, so I thought that if the guild posted a request for the monster, someone would eventually hunt it down.

Right after, I went to the knight’s barracks to check on them and their training. When I arrived, I saw the knights sparring against their commander, one by one, while Harvey watched from the sidelines.

I noticed the knights had improved their techniques significantly since we started the training. The individuals with the lowest amount of MP were taught how to cast spells that would enhance their physical abilities in close combat, while the knights with the highest MP pools were taught more intricate spells to attack from the backlines.

It seemed strange to me that all these knights had this potential in them, but the kingdom never took advantage of it and just left them as the weakest knights.

"Hey Harvey, how did you guys end up as the weakest?" I asked without moving my gaze from the sparring knights.

Harvey smiled softly and explained to me that everyone in the 4th Knight’s Order, except for the commander, used to be commoners, including himself.

He told me that there was a "Supreme Commander" of the knights who was in charge of overseeing all of the orders, delegating the commanders for each group, and only answered to the king and queen’s mandates.

It was the supreme commander’s idea to fill the 4th order with the ex-commoners, saying that nobles shouldn’t mingle with the likes of them. Luckily, Thomas stepped up and said that he would take care of the 4th order, and being the only noble in the group, the supreme commander accepted his proposal.

However, even having a noble as the leader didn’t convince the supreme commander, and the 4th knight’s order was deprived of training on purpose since he didn’t want ex-commoners to become more powerful than full-blooded nobles.

Every two years, a knights’ tournament was held in the capital, where all seven orders competed in sparring matches to see which knight’s order was the strongest in the kingdom. Every time, the 4th order was last place, thus gaining the nickname of the "weakest knights."

The last tournament occurred a few months ago, and the 4th order didn’t even compete as they knew they had no chance of beating anyone from the other knight groups. However, hearing the whole story made me giggle a little. freewёbn૦νeɭ.com

Harvey looked at me with an arching eyebrow, asking me if I truly found that funny.

"The whole thing just sounds like a challenge to me!" I exclaimed with a smile on my face.

The supreme commander was so scared of ex-commoners becoming more powerful than him that he deprived them of training and growth to prove his stupid point. But now, these knights were going through a training regime that I was sure was much better than what they received at the capital.

("It might be petty of me, but now I wanna see these guys win that tournament...") I thought with a mischievous smile before joining the knights in their training.

__________

It had been a few days since I told the guild about the black dragon serpent when a group of adventurers arrived in town, saying they had spotted the monster deep in the forest.

Jackson was the one that gave me the information and told me that we needed to find a way to deal with the monster quickly before it could attack the town. However, the monster was S-ranked, which meant that only a few people would be up for the fight.

In the worst-case scenario, the less experienced adventurers that helped protect merchants and farmers from weaker monsters would leave the town due to the danger of being there.

Since I hadn’t seen the scouts myself, I didn’t have the chance to ask them how far in the forest it was located. So, we needed to hunt it down quickly before it could become a real problem.

I reunited with my group, consisting of the princess, Reinar, Vespera, Yoru, and both maids, and I told them about the monster and the danger it posed to the town. The princess seemed quite excited to go out into the forest to look for it, while Reinar seemed a bit more reserved.

I understood how he felt, though. Ever since he started training, he had managed to take down a few monsters by himself in the forest while we gathered materials, but a black dragon serpent would definitely be the most dangerous one he had ever seen.

As we walked to the gate leading to the forest, we passed the barracks, and I noticed that the knights were preparing for battle. They said that they knew about the monster and were simply preparing in case they needed to protect the town.

Outside the gates, a large group of adventurers were gathered and talking amongst themselves about a plan to defeat the monster. They seemed pretty experienced, so they were probably the group that took the request from the guild.

There were around 15 of them, all with different weapons and body builds, which made me think that maybe they didn’t really need our help. But either way, I couldn’t help the feeling that we should stick to our plan and look for the serpent before anyone died.

As they kept planning their approach, my group and I made our way into the forest and began our search for the monster, but after hours of scouting, all we found were low-ranked critters that didn’t pose a threat.

The sun started to set, and we wondered if we should return to town when suddenly Vespera grasped my arm. "My spiders found it..." she muttered, but the location was quite far from us.

It was at least one hour if we walked there, but Vespera’s expression wasn’t as carefree as usual as she mentioned that the adventurers were fighting it right at that moment.

If we wanted to get there fast, we needed to use magic to boost our movement significantly. I gave everyone an MP potion(+) and told them to drink it once we got to the location.

That way, we could use tons of energy to get there without worrying about not having any MP left to fight.

I had been practicing the "speed boost" spell that the princess liked using so much, and while I still didn’t control it as gracefully as her, I was able to not crash into any trees while doing it. Even Reinar had more control of it than me, making me wonder if I had a terrible balance.

Luckily my physical strength and endurance allowed me not to fall behind. In fact, I was still going a bit faster than the others, even when my "boost" was quite shaky.

As we arrived at the destination, a shockwave flew towards us at an incredible speed, making us react swiftly as everyone avoided a direct hit by using air magic to propel upwards.

In the short time that I was suspended in the air, I saw the massive black dragon serpent towering above the trees of the forest and looking down as it was about to attack the adventurers on the ground.

<Black Dragon Serpent

Rank S

Cannibal monster capable of evolving by eating its kin.

Can use poison, earth, and air magic.

Extremely tough skin and scales.

Materials can be used for alchemy.

Meat is considered a delicacy.>

I quickly inspected it before landing back on the ground, realizing that this monster could be the strongest we had ever fought at that point. However, so many of us were fighting it that it was hard to get discouraged.

The serpent waved its tail, pushing back all the adventurers surrounding it. As I finally caught up with them, I pulled out from my void pocket some potions for them to share, noticing some of them were already pretty wounded.

The serpent opened its mouth, and I could see magical purple orbs forming under its fangs. I sensed it was about to shoot a powerful spell at us, so I quickly waved my bo and made an airwave that flew straight toward its neck.

However, the attack only managed to move its face to the side when I expected to cut it.

Shooting the poisonous spell to the side, thanks to my attack, we managed to avoid getting hit by it, but now I knew how strong the monster’s body was.

As I yelled at everyone to try their best not to get poisoned, the adventures that were advancing toward the serpent were running back to us with mortified expressions.

"Ananta! They are here!" one of them exclaimed.

("What the hell is an ananta?") I wondered in the middle of the chaos, promptly using my search spell, which made me realize that the black dragon serpent was getting help from dozens of these "ananta" monsters.

Humanoid snake-looking creatures slithering their way toward us with weapons in their hands, ready to protect the black dragon serpent against our small army.

("This is bad, we are completely outnumbered...") I thought as the hunt for the black dragon serpent turned into a war against the ananta.