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~Rowan~

"It's not a matter of their fear being too much for them or anything like that, Blake. When I meet a dragon, it is the same as me or your meeting the woman that killed me to them. That is the only proper analogy to use." He informed the young woman, not sure how best to describe it. "There's just some battles that you can't avoid, especially when you're mortal enemies. It's just like I was telling you earlier when you were scared of the snakes. It's not about whether you're scared or not at that point. What's important is that your enemy is in front of you, and to stop them you need to do everything you can to stop them from hurting those you care about. They want to defend their race, and I want to destroy them. That is the simplest way to put it. We have to fight, regardless of whether they are aware what is going to happen or not." Rowan informed Blake, trying his best to explain how a battle between two mortal enemies worked... why the dragons never seemed to run away and continued to fight despite the inevitable outcome they would face.

"Anyway, if it's a potion for mana then I guess it is pretty useless. You're actually pretty decent when it comes to the mana department." Rowan stated, hiding a slight compliment in his words. "Maybe it will sell for at least a little bit though. If it does.... then I guess we didn't waste too much time on this place." Rowan stated to Blake, walking towards the exit of the underground area. They did not need to waste any more time in the underground area, and he was sure that Blake would grab the potion on her way out. It did not take them long to leave the place, and by the end of their little adventure it was an hour later. One hour wasted walking around with ghosts and only a potion to show for it. Just the thought of it probably would have been depressing if it was not for the fact that they could probably make quite a bit of money off of the potion. "I'm not sure it's worth it to go into those things to be honest. I've only found one good thing in all of them." Rowan commented, remembering the boots that he had managed to find in the desert. That was one of the few times that exploring one of them had actually paid off for him.

It was about that time that his ears twitched slightly, catching the sound of flapping wings in the distance. Curious, he turned just in time to see a large dragon circling the two of them, ready to devour the meal that it was so lucky to find. "Watch, this is a perfect chance to show you what I mean." Rowan stated, referring to the conversation that the two of them were having earlier about dragons fighting him despite being afraid. As the creature landed, its demeanor immediately changed from a fierce, hungry being to one that was cowering in fear, unsure of whether it had made the correct decision to fight the two of them. Nevertheless, it was committed to the act and fiercely attacked Rowan. What it hit, however, was the ground, as Rowan went into the ethereal plane and jumped through the air, gripping his sword with Gram. "Let's see how you deal with Balmung!" Rowan stated to the beast, coming down on it with the blade full-force. It struck the beast twice, carving into its flesh but not doing enough damage to really knock it off its feet or anything of the sort.

Stepping back, Rowan dodged a strike from the creature with its tail and landed nearby on a stump. "Looks like I get to push myself for once. Let's see if you can keep up with me." Rowan stated, his eyes flashing with a dangerous look as he launched forward, reaching an incredible speed that he had not used before. Surpass.... surpass.... surpass.... surpass... He repeated in his mind as he moved faster, quicker, his agility becoming better and better as he dodged around the battlefield, propelling himself from various different trees. Every attack the beast threw at him was dodged and avoided with little-to-no effort... but something seemed to be happening to Rowan as well. All his muscles were tearing and pain was flooding his body. Yes... this was the price to grow stronger... to be strong in a battle that was impossible for any normal person. To fight beasts well beyond your means, one simply needed to exceed their limits and destroy themselves in the process. With Blake's healing magic, however, he should be able to destroy his body at least once a day.

Suddenly, Rowan turned his attention towards attacking the creature, striking it multiple times in a matter of seconds, which only doubled into a tremendous amount of strikes as he cut through the beast and tore it to shreds. The dragon merely howled in pain at this, slashing and thrashing about in an attempt to get rid of its attacker. It did not want to fight him at this point, realizing that it may lose its life in this fight. Before it could even lift off the ground, however, Rowan had cleaved both of its wings off and prevented the creature from flying away. "I'm going to finish this, now!" He shouted towards the creature, rushing forward and sliding under its attacks as he moved in closer for the kill. His body was blurring at this point, he was moving so fast. When he finally reached the creature, it was like his body entered a time frame of its own, the young man unleashing an attack he had been avoiding using until this moment in time. It would destroy his body if he used it... and by doing so he would be able to grow even stronger to fight the woman that had killed him.

"Dragon-SLAYER!!!" Was all that resounded through the forest as a flaming flurry of strikes... no... a wall of death struck into the creature, it getting cut to ribbons by over a hundred strikes in the span of a second. Not only was it struck with so many blows, but they were all concentrated on its underbelly, the weakest part of the dragon. Within seconds the creature was swooning and falling to the ground, unable to even keep its balance because of the massive damage that the attack had done to the creature. "That's.... the end." He stated to the dragon, falling to the ground with a rather broken body. Rowan would need to be healed quite a bit.... and that was where Blake's healing spell would come in handy. After this little display of absolute destruction, he would undoubtedly gain quite a bit of strength. It may be incredibly painful..... but that's something that I'm willing to put up with... if it means that I'll be able to beat that woman... He thought to himself while laying on the ground, unable to move due to the destruction of all of his muscles.

Oh no! A Max Level Encounter! Prepare yourselves FOR:
A DRAGON ATTACK!

As your Party continues on, something you hear catches your attention: a swooping sound of massive flapping wings before a high-pitched roar echoes across the land. Looking up, you can see a dragon, huge, scarred, and old. This is a green dragon, capable of spitting breath attacks of air and causing massive gusts of wind with its wings. It circles your party a couple times before landing before you, happy to have found such targets...

Well, it was at first.

Good luck!

~Rowan~

Rowan merely watched as his Mage rushed to his side and began to heal him with some sort of golden light, scolding him for being reckless before admitting that that was supposed to be the point. "If I don't overexert myself then I'll never be able to get strong enough to fight that woman." Rowan stated to the young elf woman, wondering just what she had expected him to do when he actually found a fight worth over-exerting himself for. He had warned her that this would be the case... so was she just shocked that it had so violently ripped his muscles apart like it did. Either way, he was soon healed and in pretty good condition. Blake, however, made it a point to compliment him on the skill that he had used to kill the dragon, something that made him look away slightly. "Crazy, huh? I think that being able to eradicate a ghost... or whatever you were doing... is a bit more impressive than that is. After all, ghosts aren't physical beings and they're impossible to kill. So it's a bit more... impressive in my opinion." He stated to the young woman, showing that he had been paying attention to her while she was fighting the ghosts in the dungeon.

Quickly, however, he got up and dusted himself off. "I'm going to get as much material as I can from this thing. It's going to make us rich for sure. Just... don't cause anything else to attack us while I do this." He instructed his Mage, the young man walking over to the carcass and getting as much material as he could from the beast. It took him a little over an hour to finish carving everything, and an extra twenty minutes to collect all the materials from the wings that he had cut off. This thing's a lot bigger than all those other monsters. I didn't think it'd take so long just to get some materials from it. Rowan thought to himself as he put the last of the material in one of the bags that were strapped to the polar bear. "Alright, Blake, let's get going. It's getting late and we need to cover a bit more ground before turning in for the night." He stated to the young woman, walking past her and leading the way through the forest. The two of them were reaching the end of the first day, and the most adventurous thing they had done was fight a very high-level dragon.

After about thirty minutes of walking, however, they were quickly stopped by some soldiers from Carmillion. Groaning, he was expecting the worst from their encounter... yet the soldiers merely escorted them back quite a ways to prevent them from interfering with their investigation. It was... rather curious. "I think... they were looking for us. Maybe the coat made them think that we were different people... and Gram wasn't too obvious with it on." Rowan stated, surprised the soldiers had not recognized either of them. That was especially so considering they had just finished fighting a group of soldiers earlier that had, by chance, recognized the two of them. Either way, they were spared a fight... at the expense of having to spend a few extra hours exploring to cover the ground they had lost. "I almost feel like we should have fought them... it would have been a lot easier than losing all that ground we covered." Rowan stated to his Mage, discontent with the way things had gone. He did not like the idea of losing ground like that... or being told where he could and could not go by weak soldiers.

~Rowan~

Still feeling rather upset about the situation involving the soldiers from earlier, Rowan was moving through the forest at a rather quick pace to make up for their lost ground. Whatever plant-life was in their way he simply cut down without any sort of mercy. I should have just fought them... dealt with them swiftly and moved on without a second though. If I did that Blake would have probably gotten pretty upset though. She doesn't seem like the type to handle unnecessary violence too well. Rowan thought to himself, contemplating whether it was the right choice to avoid fighting the soldiers. I supposed that I can't help it now. Fighting them could have been an option... but that option's not on the table anymore. Now all I can do is just deal with the mess they created for the two of us... even if I can't stand how horrible it i to walk all that distance again. Rowan thought to himself, his face twisting slightly into a rather irritated expression... not happy about this situation at all. Right now he could have been sleeping, yet here he was in the middle of the forest still exploring.

After about an hour, Rowan realized that they had not found a single thing, not even animals or the soldiers that had escorted them back. They had really covered some distance when they took them back through the forest if that was the case. No, this is way too frustrating. I should have ended them. Rowan thought to himself, quickly regretting the choices that he had made up to this point. "Next time we see soldiers, I'm going to take them out and keep walking. I don't care about their investigation... and I'm already an outlaw. It's not like I can get into any more trouble than being hunted down by our kingdom for kidnapping someone." Rowan stated to Blake, justifying his actions the next time they would see soldiers before ever meeting another group. Setting up precautions like this was probably a necessity if he wanted to keep Blake from freaking out later at his actions. Still, he was pretty sure that she would not react too kindly when he started attacking Carmillion soldiers the next time that he saw them. Rubbing the back of his neck, he tried to make the best of the situation by simply trying to ignore how painful it was to walk around for an hour.

~Rowan~

This is just a post for the rolling. Blake will find the item.

~Rowan~

Rowan was rather frustrated with the soldiers at this point, having walked several miles without finding a single thing the entire time. The point of exploring was to discover things, yet all those soldiers managed to do was waste three hours of their lives. If I ever see those people again, I'm going to pay them back double for what they did to us. This has literally been nothing but exhausting. That's the only way to describe it. Rowan thought to himself, his eyes narrowing slightly as he stared ahead of him. Just what was he supposed to be looking for in the middle of the night anyway? Were they even capable of finding anything in this absolute darkness that they were surrounded by. Well, the answer to that was answered when Blake suddenly called out to him to wait on her, the young man simply stopping without turning around at all. He had expected that she needed some sort of break from walking... but before he could turn around she had already returned, telling him that she had found some sort of necklace. "Huh... I guess you got two now then. Make sure you don't lose it." He stated to her, turning slightly to look at what she had found. It was so difficult to see due to the lack of light.

"Well, at least something good came from this." Rowan stated, merely continuing to walk now that he was done waiting on Blake. "Just don't get lost, alright. It's starting to get dark... and it can get pretty difficult to see with all of these trees around. They block off most of the light." Rowan stated to Blake, although he may not need to with the girl's eagle-like vision and proficiency with finding random objects. It almost made him kind of jealous how quick the woman was to catch up to him in the number of intricate items she could find. In a few more days of adventuring, she was sure to outnumber him by at least ten items. The thought of it was amusing. What was not amusing, however, was the dilapidated shack that they came across that looked like it had nothing to offer. Just the sight of it made Rowan want to just throw some fire on it and burn it to the ground. "I'm getting rather frustrated with these run-down places that I keep finding. This is the third one already." He commented, remembering the unstable ice caves that he had found across the snowy mountains when he was traveling with Alistair.

Unwilling and tired, Rowan simply turned his back on the shack and continued walking for quite a ways. "I don't feel up to messing with this. It's too late and it doesn't even look like it's worth the effort to try." He stated to Blake, walking until he came across a small clearing in the trees. The patch of grass would be a great place to set up camp for the night. Rubbing his neck the young man walked into the center of the small field and began to set up camp, grabbing two bedrolls from the bear and laying them around a small campfire that he set up. "Maybe we can at least get a decent night's sleep if we try. Those soldiers really messed us up though when they sent us back." Rowan stated, using his flint and steel to start a fire for the two of them. They still had some cooked meat from earlier, so he simply decided to start eating some of that instead of cooking anything else on the fire. Blake, however, was welcome to make anything that she wanted for herself. "You must be pretty pleased with yourself though. And here I was thinking about giving you a gift too." Rowan stated, reaching for a bag on the bear and pulling out a very nice-looking bow.

~Rowan~

Just rolling for what Blake will find.