The wyvern bearing down upon them was large, sixty or seventy feet from snout to the tip of its tail. Its two massive bat-like wings stretched well over a hundred feet, and its two huge claws were each big enough to carry off a full-grown bull with ease.

And it wasn’t even fully grown. It radiated the magic power of roughly sixth-tier, but wyverns could grow much bigger and stronger. Still, that power wasn’t anything to disregard. More dangerous, however, was the wyvern’s sheer size and physical power, for such a large creature, despite their power difference, could likely crush Leon to death.

“EVERYBODY UP!” Leon roared, waking his sleeping family and retinue. “WYVERN INCOMING!” He didn’t try to remain quiet, for the wyvern’s bright orange eyes were turned in their direction, a predatory look on its face as it flew above the fields, the light of the rising sun causing its deep red scales to sparkle like rubies. If Leon had to guess, this was probably a female looking for food for her hatchlings, as her head was fairly smooth and lacked many of the brutal ridges that characterized male wyverns.

Leon’s people were on their feet in a matter of seconds, everyone wearing their armor. Talal and Elise were the only ones who weren’t going to participate, so Leon had them go with Anzu and fly into the branches of the closest tree.

He barely had time to see them off before the wyvern was almost upon them. Already, Leon could sense her magic rising to the surface and fire leaking from her lips as she prepared to dive over them, showering them with fire.

A quick bolt of lightning fell from the sky, courtesy of Leon’s magic, and interrupted the beast’s fly-by. The wyvern had to dodge to prevent herself from being hit—not an easy feat in the air and with such mass and momentum. The wyvern had to call upon wind magic instead to save herself from pain, and her fire dissipated as a result.

“Range!” Leon shouted, though his retainers already had their ranged solutions in hand. Gaius, Alcander, Anshu, and Helen all wielded crossbows that Leon had personally enchanted. Alix and Marcus wielded longbows, likewise enchanted by both Leon and Valeria. Valeria, Maia, and Anna all called upon their magic instead, with icy javelins forming around Valeria and Anna’s hands glowing with her light magic, but it was Maia’s magic that was far more eye-catching. Her aura spilled forth, inundating the surroundings in her power. All the water magic in the air was soon seized by the river nymph and began to coalesce in the air above the wyvern as she flew back in a loose circle, eyeing them warily.

“Get ready!” Leon shouted as he stared at the wyvern, the monster seemingly weighing whether it was worth trying to make another pass.

Wyverns weren’t stupid, but they weren’t particularly bright, even when they were stronger. They tended to fight instead of run, and from his experience in the last wyvern hunt, Leon knew that they also tended to bite off more than they could typically chew. Case in point, he didn’t think this wyvern had a chance in any hell of taking on his group, but it seemed like she wasn’t as sure.

“Give her something more to think about!” Leon shouted as the wyvern continued to circle them at a fair distance, but not out of range of their magic, bows, and crossbows.

Arrows, crossbow bolts, and magic were unleashed from his retinue, a great amount of power fired off in the wyvern’s direction. Leon briefly thought about joining his power with theirs, but he decided to watch over them, instead. He felt like his lightning could make short work of the beast, but his retinue needed the practical experience of taking one down, in his mind.

Anna’s power, being a ray of light, impacted practically immediately, but the bright white light ray seemed to almost reflect right off the wyvern’s sparkling scales. Valeria’s ice javelins hit with greater physical force, but as far as Leon could tell, of the four that hit, none more than scratch the wyvern’s scales.

The arrows and crossbow bolts were a little more dramatic in their impact, all of them exploding as they hit the wyvern’s red scales, but the monster was a creature of fire, and the flames that resulted from the detonations did little to stop her.

The most consequential attack was from Maia. Her magic that suffused the air finally solidified all around the wyvern, with three small water dragons appearing in the air in an instant and wrapping themselves around the wyvern’s limbs like snakes. The wyvern roared in surprise and tried to shake herself free, but Maia’s water dragons were resilient, and sank their icy teeth into the wyvern, using their leverage to snap and tear away at her scales.

But then fire erupted from the wyvern’s maw, and one of Maia’s water dragons began to boil. Despite this, it remained intact, and continued to twist and wrap itself around the wyvern, trying to force its way through her scales.

All of this extra water weight which the wyvern couldn’t get rid of soon brought her crashing down to the grassy fields.

“Let’s go!” Leon shouted, leading his retainers in a charge against the downed creature. “Be ready for her fire!”

Alcander, being a fire mage, and Maia, being eighth-tier equivalent, didn’t do anything, but the rest of Leon’s retainers pulled small, sealed vials from their soul realms, the vials each containing a mouthful of glowing red liquid cooked up by Helen in her workshop. It wasn’t much to down them, and Leon could feel the subtle change in their magic auras as the magic in the potions settled into their stomachs, providing something like a natural shield against fire magic. The potion would eventually be digested, but so long as it remained in their stomachs and interacting with their mana directly, his retainers who weren’t already were now fairly resistant to fire magic.

Such potions could only be taken one at a time, as any mixing of potions in the stomach could ruin their effects, but Leon didn’t anticipate needing any more than one or two every day. Each wyvern could wield different magic powers, but even with less Imperial competition for heads, he couldn’t imagine they’d run into any more than one or two per day—at least, until they reached the aeries.

They moved quickly, the wyvern only going down several hundred feet away. Up close, she was an intimidating beast, but the effect was diminished as she struggled to pry Maia’s water dragons off her body. Her roars were interspersed with cries of pain as the water dragons started to rip off scales and rend flesh, but even then, the wyvern continued to breath fire from her toothy, reptilian maw, so Leon didn’t let his guard down.

About a hundred feet away, Leon shouted, “Halt! Open up from here!”

His retinue obliged, firing off magic and missile alike. This time, the explosion spells were swapped out for some of Leon’s old Thunderblast spells, and the wyvern was inundated in lightning explosions, Valeria’s ice, and Anna’s white light.

She didn’t last long under such a barrage. The wyvern did an admirable job struggling, though, and Leon could fully understand why the Pegasi States organized these hunts every five years. If they didn’t, the wyverns would completely overrun everything southwest of the Empires, with only the Indra Raj potentially standing in their way. As it was, the sixth-tier wyvern had such a powerful body and such strong, effective scales that it took more than ten seconds of sustained bombardment for her to finally fall still.

“Enough!” Leon called out, halting the barrage when he realized the wyvern was no longer struggling. Despite all that had just hit her, her body was still largely intact. The explosions had done little more than to tear apart her outer flesh and strip her of some of her scales. Otherwise, she seemed almost unharmed.

Leon and his retinue stood there, staring at the wyvern corpse for several long seconds, waiting for any movement that might indicate she was still alive.

[Maia,] Leon whispered to his river nymph lover.

[Leon,] was her response.

[Use your dragons to jostle her a bit, flip her over. Make sure she’s dead.]

Maia acquiesced, and her water dragons went to work pushing the massive body over onto her back, exposing her belly to the sky.

Leon had seen many plays and read many stories while in the Ilian Empire that featured wyverns, and in nearly all of them, they had relatively soft underbellies. It was as if the wyverns were treated like normal lizards that couldn’t fly.

In truth, Leon knew that a wyvern’s underbelly was its toughest feature, where its strongest defenses lay. Huge bands of muscle covered the large chests that the beasts needed to flap their wings, and extraordinarily thick hide covered in scales so tough that they were almost magic-resistant coated their entire bodies. Given that wyverns were apex predators, had no natural predators of their own, and their primary threats were from below, it surprised Leon not at all that the toughest part of a wyvern was their underside.

But that wasn’t why Leon turned the wyvern over. They’d grounded the beast and opened up on it with powerful magics and equipment. That meant that most of the wyvern’s injuries were to her back. Turning the beast over would plug at least some of those wounds using the wyvern’s own enormous weight, giving them more time to harvest wyvern blood and mana.

Once he was sure the wyvern was dead, Leon shouted, “Let’s get to work!”

“All right!” Marcus roared in jubilation.

“That’s how it’s done!” Alcander agreed.

“A good start to the hunt!” Alix added.

Leon’s retinue charged toward the wyvern, intent on getting to work.

There honestly wasn’t much work that specifically needed to be done, though. Dismantling the creature completely could be done later, but the collection of blood and loose scales was of paramount importance. To that end, Leon summoned the two labor golems. They weren’t at all suited to combat, but for something like this, they’d excel.

He ordered them to lift the wyvern corpse, and as they did, Helen, Anna, Anshu, and himself ducked beneath the corpse, all of them pulling various buckets from their soul realms as the corpse was steadily lifted. These containers were left beneath the wyvern’s various wounds, filling with its blood and mana. However, for as strong as the golems were, the wyvern was very big, and even their strength could only partially lift her, with much of her bulk still unavoidably remaining on the ground.

If this were the hunt five years ago, that would’ve been all they could’ve done. But this wasn’t the hunt five years ago, and Leon had more tools at his disposal. With the aid of the labor golems taking up much of the wyvern’s weight, Leon reached out with his magic power, wrapping it around the wyvern’s body like his magic was his own fingers, and then began to lift the beast into the air.

She was a heavy beast, but Leon was an eighth-tier mage, and his magic reserves were practically endless after ten years of relative peace. He lifted the wyvern off the ground quite handily, though not without some mental strain, letting much of her weight rest on the labor golems while he and his people went to work. While his group used their containers to catch the blood leaking from the corpse, the rest of Leon’s retinue collected the wyvern scales that they had torn from their hapless attacker. As they worked, Elise and Talal came flying back in on Anzu.

“That was quite something,” Elise said, sounding a little shaken.

When he heard her anxious tones, Leon immediately left his retinue to the rest of their business and went to her.

“Are you doing all right?” he asked, despite knowing that she was fine, physically speaking. None of his family or retainers had sustained any damage during the short fight.

“Yes…” Elise said, sounding a little unsure. She explained, “I’m not usually this close to violence… I don’t think all of this excitement agrees with me.”

Leon pulled her into his arms and said nothing more, just letting Elise shiver in his arms as her adrenaline coursed through her system. After a few minutes, she started coming back down from the panic-high, and her composure returned.

“Get back to work, husband,” she mock-ordered as she pulled herself out of his arms and gave him a glowing look of gratitude.

Knowing that she was mostly just playing around and not being serious, Leon just smiled at her, nodded his head, and replied, “As my Lady commands…”

Once all was said and done, his party, over the course of about an hour of clean-up, managed to collect several million silvers worth of wyvern blood—more than enough to keep Helen experimenting for a long time—and enough scales for a few dozen suits of armor. Unfortunately, the scales, while more than hard enough to act as armor, lost much of their magic-resistant properties once removed from their owner, but they were still valuable armor-making material, so Leon happily pulled all of the scales into his soul realm.

Then came the harder part. It took some work given the creature’s massive bulk, but Leon was just barely able to squeeze the thing into his soul realm.

“Ughhh,” Leon groaned as he sank to his knees once the process was done, feeling like he’d just tried to stuff an entire chicken down his throat.

“Damn,” Alcander muttered as the rest of his retinue closed ranks around him. “I wasn’t sure you were going to be able to do that. I have a hard enough time just fitting my ax into my soul realm, I can hardly imagine pulling an Ancestors damned wyvern in there…”

“Thanks for the confidence, I appreciate it,” Leon sarcastically mumbled as he straightened himself out.

“Maybe try chopping them up next time?” Marcus suggested.

“Next time, for sure,” Leon replied, still a little winded. “Let’s get back to the villa and wrap things up. I’ll give everyone two hours’ rest, and then we’ve got to be off again.”

Speaking for the others, Valeria said, “Got it!” and started shepherding the rest of the retinue back toward their camp and the modular villa.

Walking at a slightly laxer pace, Leon waved Talal over. “Did you send a message back to Vyrias? Let them know what happened?” Leon already knew the answer, having seen Talal with the comm stone while everyone else was busy with their collection duties.

“Of course,” Talal replied, not looking at all upset that Leon felt the need to ask. “The Guild has to know of our actions if we’re to get the proper credit.”

“And what of Penelope and Cassandra?” Leon asked with a sly smile. Both women were in regions of the Scorched Fields so far away from him and his retinue that he wasn’t able to keep an eye on them with his magic senses.

“Lady Penelope managed to bring down two wyverns yesterday,” Talal grimly informed.

“Ancestors damnit,” Leon cursed, his eyes flitting in the direction of the sun as it inched ever upward. “I’m sure they’re working on their third already, if they haven’t already bagged it… And the Princess? Do we know how she’s doing?”

“The Imperial delegations don’t typically deign to inform the Guild of their progress,” Talal responded. “Princess Cassandra, however, went out of her way to make sure that a message was passed along to both you and Lady Penelope the next time we checked in…”

Leon felt his heart start to sink for a moment, not thinking that this could be anything good for his prospects of winning the bet. “What is it?” he asked when it seemed like Talal was hesitating.

“There was some… provocative language used,” Talal explained. “But the gist is that she wanted both you and Lady Penelope to know that she’d managed to bag four wyvern heads yesterday…”

“Four?!” Leon shouted incredulously. “She brought down fucking four of them yesterday?!”

“So she claims,” Talal replied with a resigned look. “We won’t be able to verify that until everyone returns with their heads…”

“Damnit,” Leon repeated, muttering with a little more self-control after his previous outburst. “I wonder how she did that. I suppose we’ll have to see if she manages to keep that pace up for the rest of the hunt…”

Leon thought about that Princess with her purple hair, glittering red eyes, and powerful, commanding presence. He thought back to her demand that she be included in his and Penelope’s bet, and the way she’d looked at him—it was as if she considered herself the winner from the moment she forced her way in.

‘I can’t lose to her,’ Leon thought to himself, feeling competitiveness fill his heart. This was bigger now than just a private wager between himself and the conceited daughter of the Director, this was now a public competition between himself, Penelope, and a Princess of the Sacred Golden Empire. He didn’t consider himself a proud person, but he didn’t think he’d be able to hold his head high if he didn’t at least put in a good showing.

Leon barely managed to relax during the two hours he’d given his retinue. He still wanted his people fully rested given where they were planning on going, so he didn’t cut back on the allotted time, but that he was deeply aware of every second that passed while his party was resting. When exactly two hours had passed, he was on his feet motivating his people to get moving again. With little fanfare and much hurry, Leon pulled his modular house back into his soul realm, it sliding into his soul realm with comparative ease after the wyvern.

And then he took back to the skies, a new certainty in his heart. He needed to get a little more involved, now. He needed to do more than simply watch his retinue do the work.

And for that, he needed to use all of his tools.

For the past ten years, Leon had largely only transformed into his avian form on rare occasions. He could fly with his magic power alone, and he didn’t want the wrong kind of attention, so while he didn’t much like it, he tried to make sure that he never transformed where other people could see.

But other people couldn’t see him here. So, as his retinue donned their flight belts—and Elise chose to ride Anzu instead—Leon started to pull off his clothes behind a modest barrier of ice that he’d conjured for himself.

A moment later, he took to the skies on feathered wings once more, with his retinue flying at his side. It was time for them to get serious.