"How to care for an egg? It's far easier than caring for a babe, or being pregnant to say the least. Most you got to do is to keep it warm at the right temperature as often as you can, and naturally, not dropping it. Otherwise caring for an egg is a pretty fuss-free experience, all considered. I feel sorry for those races who carried live infants in their wombs to be honest. That's got to be hell to live through!" - Taisha Walks-In-The-Skies, Falcon Therian from the western isles.

A quick display of the drake's severed head - taken whole to show as proof, to be harvested for materials later - satisfied the rancher, and he signed the girls' request slips with his approval of its success. That way the girls could just turn it in on the next guildhouse they ran across for the reporting.

As for the rewards itself, the rancher paid them in full, on the spot. Since it was still very early in the morning, Cal decided to rest first, as they all slept until it was close to noon. When she woke up, Cal was amused to see Leila curled up protectively over the drake egg she found as she slept.

After the girls had a bath together, the ranch owner insisted that they stay for lunch at least so he could show them his gratitude. They did so, and were treated to a feast of Cùy, most similar to what they had before, but the ranch owner reserved a specialty of his ranch for them to taste.

As the whole party feasted on the roasted meats, potatoes, and stuff peppers set before them, they saw some ranch hands set up a large metal pot - easily as large as a human torso and nearly as tall - over a fire, from which they heard the noise of sizzling hot oil.

The ranch owner himself came out with a particularly plump Cùy in his hand, already butchered and cleaned, and dropped the whole carcass into the pot of oil before swiftly closing the top with a lid, while the loud sound of oil splattering as the Cùy fries was heard from within the pot.

Around ten minutes later, the ranch owner opened the pot and checked its contents, turned the carcass inside around with a long fork, then let it simmer in the hot oil for another five minutes before he lifted the perfectly golden-brown Cùy and drained it off excess oil.

The whole carcass was served on a large plate to the table, where the ranch owner himself deftly carved the meat into more reasonable pieces for his guests, and he bid them to partake of the meal.

Cal was the first to reach out and took a slice of Cùy that contained one of the ribs, all the meat on it, straight to the crisp golden brown skin. When the bit into the flesh, the skin shattered like glass beneath her teeth, practically merged with the layer of subcutaneous fat to offer a savory, rich flavor, while the meat underneath was far juicier than the roasted version, as well as far richer. Those who prefer lighter foods might not be able to handle much of such rich food, but for her part, Cal definitely approved of it.

They departed with the ranch owner offering them his gratitude over and over again, and since Cal couldn't find it in her heart to refuse the sincere offer, she accepted the prepared and butchered flesh of some ten Cùy as additions to their rations.

Headed northwards, it was another three days of travel before they saw another border post, this one belonging to the Kesheri Sultanate, one of the smaller provinces in the caliphate that nonetheless was wealthy due to its gemstone mines.

The guards working the post just looked bored out of their minds, and waved them through after a very cursory check. Apparently traffic into and out of the sultanate was low at the current time since the merchants had just departed earlier in the summer.

It was another day past the border before they saw the town where the sultan lived. The landscape of the sultanate itself was more hilly, with open mine shafts visible in many locations through their walk, each guarded well by more serious looking guards of the sultanate.

Every night when they slept in the wild, Cal found that Leila never parted from the drake egg, other than the times she bathed. Even on those times, she kept the egg warm on a pedestal of solidified lava, not that easy for her to do as she was fire major instead of earth, but her control was apparently good enough for just that. At nights she would sleep curled around the egg, clutching it tight to her chest and warming it with her own body heat.

When they arrived in town, the first thing they did was to head for the guildhouse, where Cal had the girls report on their successful request. Considering the grade of the request taken, and the subsequent information that the beast turned out to be a drake instead of a wyvern, Leila was promoted straight to gold rank, and Ying Xiao jumped all the way to silver from copper.

Since the Kesheri sultanate was more peaceful and prosperous, they decided not to stay in the guildhouse and sought out a better inn instead. Cal allowed the girls to splurge some on booking rooms in one of the more expensive inns at the place, which was renowned for its grand bathhouse.

Said bathhouse was a large indoors structure that reminded Cal a lot of the baths back in Al-Shan, pools tiled with marbles set in a large room meant for a crowd. There was only one noticeable difference, in that unlike baths in Al-Shan, the baths here were segregated by gender, so Dan was left to bathe alone in the men's bath.

As for everyone else, they happily soaked in the hot water of the baths. This time Leila brought the drake egg with her, apparently not trusting the security of their room at the inn that much, which to Cal seems understandable given how much such an egg could fetch in the markets.

She mostly kept the egg bobbing on the water with her hands as support, though given the way the egg floated easily enough. Left on its own, the egg floated low in the water, and seemed to roll around on its own, so Leila opted to hold onto it to keep it stable. A few of the other female guests at the inn gave her odd looks, but she did not care one whit about them.