7 Dragon-chan subjugates a family of Krakens

Dragon-chan subjugates a family of Krakens

After I had been an adventurer for a year, I had reached A rank, and I had, on my own, subjugated several Krakens, Wyverns, and Giant Worms (Not to be confused with Giant Wyrms, which I had only subjugated one of), as well as taking down what the humans would call an Ancient Dragon (in other words, a Dragon with Gold-bordered scales, the one I took down was Gold-bordered White... I should probably talk about the ranking system of Dragons, actually...) who went on a rampage due to having gone senile in his old age. I had snuck out of the castle so many times that I wondered if my family would start to notice, but until they commented on it, I wasn't going to care if they had or hadn't, and I was showing off to my teacher that I, just like the adventurer with the same name, could use and combine S rank magic of all of the nine known elements: Water, Wind, Fire, Earth, Ice, Lightning, Light, Dark, and Spatial. Time is an element not known about, as I was the only user of it I knew of who didn't always integrate it into spells of other elements, namely Light (in the form of some rare and mostly useless healing magic), Dark (for some rarely used curses), and/or Spatial (often in the form of time-stopping pocket spaces, like Dragon's Hoard, or in delayed teleportation... which is nearly useless in most cases besides dramatic entrances)

It was pure luck that I was able to sneak out on the day that a family of five Krakens appeared off the coast right behind the palace, and so, when I went to the guild, I was asked to join a massive group tasked with killing them.

"I'd rather not join a group to kill them, it seems like a massive pain..." (Nene)

"What? Without you, it will take loads more people to bring them down, please reconsider -" (Guildmaster)

"I never said I wouldn't kill them, I just said I wouldn't join the group. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go make some Kraken sashimi" (Nene)

I left the guild as the guildmaster and most of the adventurers in it followed me, so I kept myself to a speed they could follow at as I made my way to the beach, where almost a hundred other adventurers, ranging from D to A rank, were awaiting the last few adventurers that the guild would be sending. When I got there, guildmaster in tow, the crowd of adventurers parted before us like the sea before Moses.

I stepped out onto the water, ice forming under my feet as I walked, waves hitting a barrier of wind around me. I reached the area where the Krakens were last seen, used wind and water magic to create sounds like those a whale would make, and waited for them to come to me. When they all had their heads poking out of the water, I made the ocean freeze several meters thick in an area that fully encompassed the five of them, and began one-sidedly blasting them with lightning magic. After a few minutes, the five were dead, I walked to each one and put them into my hoard, and when I finished with all of them, I walked back to the shore, ice melting away once I passed it. I reached the adventurers, smiled, and took out the Krakens, as I noticed the guildmaster waving me over.

"Can I leave it to the lot of you to dismantle these guys? I think the guildmaster wants to talk to me, and besides, I dislike dismantling slimy things... Like, I really, really hate doing so. Besides, can you imagine a little girl like me reaching into it up to the armpit, and still not being able to reach the damned thing's teeth? I can imagine it very clearly..." (Nene)

When I got to the guildmaster, he brought me over to an area with nobody within earshot, before dropping a bombshell

"I think it's safe to say, you deserve to be rank S, and so I just finished making my recommendation to the Emperor and Empress. Do you think you can meet with them and the princess the day after tomorrow at noon? They could also do it a bit later, or earlier" (Guildmaster)

"I can't get out of it this time, can I?" (Nene)

"No, you can't. If it doesn't work out for that day, we can delay it for about a week, but that's as far as I think it'd be safe to push it" (Guildmaster)

"The day after tomorrow at noon will work, I guess. I'll have to think about what to wear... Actually, now that I think about it, can you make it be such that, outside of the Imperial Family and a few close aids, nobody will be there? I think that would make me feel much more comfortable, as I wouldn't have much of an audience... I have quite a bit of anxiety when it comes to nobility and such, as I think I have mentioned a few times" (Nene)

"I will do my best. I have a decent amount of pull when it comes to adventurers, and you can relax somewhat, as I'll be there, so if you freeze up, I'll try to help you out... Just, please, make sure to be there..." (Guildmaster)

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This is the ranking system of Dragons, which is based on scale coloration... though, adult size is also affected by rank:

Sub-Dragons, such as Wyverns, Hydras, Wyrms, and so on, come in at the bottom of the rankings, and they have their own ranks (lesser, regular, and greater), after which come Dragons with scales colored White, Brown, Green, Orange, Red, Blue, Purple, Black, Silver, Gold, and then it repeats, but with a Gold border on their scales.

Note that a Dragon's rank can and often will increase as they mature, and it can decrease somewhat as a punishment from their superiors, if there is a two-rank difference or higher. This means that a Purple Dragon can demote Reds and below, however, Dragons can't become Sub-Dragons, and Sub-Dragons can't become Dragons. Gold-bordered Dragons can make their subordinates rise in the rankings, but they can't do so for any that are Gold or Gold-bordered, unless there is a three-rank difference between the superior and the rank the Dragon would end up as. I, as a Gold-bordered Purple, can make my subordinates grow to Gold-bordered Orange... If I had any. There are, however, other limitations, namely that a Dragon can't be made to gain rankings that way before they finish maturing, a process that takes between 70 and 200 years, and they can't reach a ranking more than two higher than they had as an adult. Therefore, even if I was to somehow be just a Purple Dragon without a Gold border, my mother still couldn't make me gain ranks due to my still not having finished maturing. In addition, a Dragon that finished maturing as a Black Dragon or below can never reach any Gold-bordered rankings due to the two-rank restriction.

Humans, Elves, Dwarves, and so on, tend to group them into Sub-Dragons, Young Dragons (White through Orange), Dragons (Red through Purple), Elder Dragons (Black through Gold), and Ancient Dragons (Gold-bordered White through Gold-bordered Orange). The highest that has been confirmed by any government or adventurer's guild outside of the Drachen Empire was Gold-bordered Orange, and it is believed that any that are higher than that (Gold-bordered Red through Gold-bordered Silver) would be called God Dragons.

However, the Gods of the Dragons are often depicted (by Dragons) as ones with a double border of Gold and Silver, with rankings such as Dual-bordered White being subordinate gods, Brown being bottom-class gods, lower-class being Green, lower-middle-class being Orange, middle-class is Red, upper-middle-class is Blue, upper-class is Purple, and the highest class is Dual-bordered Black, reserved for the king and queen of the Dragon Gods.

For rankings, an A-rank adventurer in most countries can handle a Sub-Dragon alone, and a party of 4-6 A ranks, or a single S rank, can deal with a Young Dragon. Dealing with Dragons requires a party of A ranks backed up by an S rank, or several parties of A ranks. Elder Dragons are ones that cause an entire nation to gather its S and A rank adventurers to defeat it, and Ancient Dragons cause all of the nations nearby, even ones at war with one another, to gather their troops and high-ranked adventurers to deal with the threat. If any nation didn't put aside their differences, they could face having the Dragon turn to them with nobody around to back them up.

In the Empire, Ancient Dragons can be dealt with by an S rank backed up by a party of A ranks, and God Dragons (the human's version, Gold-bordered Red through Gold-bordered Silver) only would need a few S ranks... though there hasn't been more than a single S rank in the Empire at any one point in time since the Empire let its other territories split off several centuries ago. Fortunately, the Emperor or Empress would always have enough strength to deal with them when they went berserk. Oh yeah, all of the dragons in the Empire would bow down to the Imperial Family, as the weakest of them would be Gold-bordered Blue, the strongest being Gold-bordered Silver seven generations back, thus, the only ones who would make trouble would be Sub-Dragons, Dragons who were too young to know better, or ones who went berserk due to illness, old age, or a particularly nasty and powerful curse.

My mother's scales are Gold-bordered Black, and though I don't know what my coloration will end up as, I was born as Gold-bordered Purple. As most Dragons tend to gain at least one rank after birth, I will probably reach Gold-bordered Black or maybe even Gold-bordered Silver. If you are wondering why I, in humanoid form, am still "wearing" my dragonscale "armor" and keeping it as Gold-bordered Purple, it's because there is a trend among wealthy human adventurers and soldiers, even in the Empire, of taking armor made from monochromatic scales and adding gold to the edges of each scale to pass it off as of a much higher rank. Thus, most people assume that, if a set of dragonscale armor is Gold-bordered, it is probably faked. The only exceptions are adventurers that are known to have defeated Gold-bordered Dragons, or soldiers that are in a positions that might cause them to get it from the ruler of their country, such as the royal head warrior or king's champion.

There's a neat trick to figuring out what color a Dragon's scales will end up at. They generally won't change on their own after about 200 years old, first of all, and every Dragon is different in when they first have their scales change color. Whatever age their scales change is the base, and then they will change again after twice that long, then three times the base, then four times as long. In other words, if a Dragon's scales first change at 20 years old, they will then change again at 60, and again at 120, then 200 years old. However, the earliest recorded change was at 27 years old, meaning that they could only go up three times. Most only have one or two natural rank (color) changes, meaning the earliest is often not until around 40 years old. My family tends to keep changing until 350 or so years old, but we tend not to go up a rank until we reach at least 60, so we max out at two or, at most, three ranks above what we were born as. Therefore, I'll probably end up as Gold-bordered Silver.