Everything is Better with Friends!
When I finally reached my cave, I quickly checked if my spoils of war were still there. Seeing that they were, I was extremely relieved that I could continue to torment- I mean practice my magic with Ray. Wondering what he has been doing, I tried to set up a trap with my newly acquired plant magic, then I lay down at the back of my cave, created an illusion, and waited for the hero to arrive.
• • •
A short while later, I sensed the familiar presence of Ray, along with two other presences I had not felt before. 'No matter, this just means more practicing partners' I thought, and I readied myself to receive my guests.
When the trio appeared at the mouth of my cave, I quickly used Inspect on the two newcomers.
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Eleanor Durgwat
Race: Human
Occupation: Sage
HP: 436
MP: 1786 (+300)
Magic: Fire magic, Water magic, Light magic, Earth magic
Compound Magic: Lightning magic
STR: 176
END: 223
AGI: 315
INT: 1365
DEX: 257
---
---
Alexandra Flutia
Race: Human
Occupation: Preistess
HP: 621
MP: 1563 (+100)
Magic: Light magic(+), Water magic
Compound Magic: Healing magic
STR: 168
END: 257
AGI: 290
INT: 1078
DEX: 303
---
Looking at their status', I realized I knew little about the so-called 'occupations'. However, I couldn't ask them about them, so I had to figure out another way to find information about them. Considering none of them had seen me yet, I had a great opportunity to see if Inspect worked on sections inside of their status.
To my benefit, it worked perfectly.
---
Sage
Magic-type class
High growth speed and potential, can achieve all elemental affinities
---
---
Priestess
Magic-type class
Medium growth speed, high potential. Favoured by a god, increased affinity for light magic.
---
I also sensed something new from the Sage's staff, so I tried Inspect on that as well.
---
Staff of Crashing Skies
Grade A magic staff
Bestows lightning affinity to the wielder.
---
They didn't seem too dangerous, so I can proceed as planned. If I'm going to take more spoils of war, I would like to take that fancy lightning staff, I might be able to learn lightning magic from it. That's enough digressing, time to play- I mean, fight.
When they stepped far enough into the cave for me to see them clearly, I felt a deep sense of unease, as both of the women behind Ray were unreasonably beautiful. 'Is getting stronger equivalent to getting prettier for humans?' I wondered. I didn't pay attention to this for long though, and instead listened to their conversation. "Calm down, the dragon you see is actually an illusion, the real one is somewhere behind it," Ray ensured his companions.
"A-are you sure th-that's not the r-real dragon?" Alexandra stuttered.
"It doesn't matter if it's real or not, we'll destroy it anyway!" Eleanor retorted, apparently annoyed with Alex's fearful attitude.
"Its j-just that that scale pattern is only seen on the h-highest tier throughout history..." Alex said in a small voice. Finally! Someone had noticed! I had a corona of silver spikes around my head, which might have even started the tradition of rulers wearing crowns in human kingdoms. I was afraid for some time that humans had simply forgotten about our existance considering Ray's attitude, but it seems he just doesn't believe I am a King tier.
"Calm down you two, and watch this," Ray mediated. It seems this was Ray's original party, and he had just tried to kill me on his own to challenge himself. I got a bit worried when Alex talked about me being high tier, luckily there is also a muscle brained person in the party to keep them all motivated. Seeing them 'rally' together, I really wanted to show my power to intimidate them all greatly, and the best way for a dragon to do that is to roar at them. But then I realized that I haven't ever actually tried to roar intimidatingly before, so I might end up sounding really stupid. And that would be much too embarrising for me. I guess learning how to roar is another thing to put on the list of things I want to do, along with slowly stealing Ray's armour, piece by piece. I thought through all of this before Ray even started moving, it was something I had recently discovered: when focusing, my perception speed and reaction time increases by a ridiculous amount, so enemies like these humans seemed to move incredibly slowly. But now, Ray is finally getting near my illusion. My illusion scratched at him like the last time we fought, and he responded with the same movement- a pivot to the side, before swinging downward at the wrist. Knowing that it was an illusion, he only swung lightly, and the party watched as his sword cut through the illusions wrist, leaving nothing but a ripple. "See? Just an illusi-UCK" Ray suddenly made this vile sound as I had hit him I the side with a small bit of compressed air. This would keep up the act of me being a dangerous master-illusionist dragon, and also motivate his other party members into action. "So it is cloaked! How devious!" for some reason, Ellie had an excited expression on her face, whereas Alex reacted more how I expected. "RAY!!" She yelled, before running towards him at the side of the cave, where my hit flung him. To me, this was obviously a stupid move as she was running closer to the only danger in this cave. My illusion immediately rushed to intercept Alex, and it arrived between Alex and Ray just as Ellie had prepared a spell. "Get out the way you love-struck idiot!" oh, maybe Alex did such a rash thing because of love? I have never experienced love like that, so I strongly sided with Ellie on this, leave relationships out of battle. But my thoughts mattered little, as Alex only managed to turn to face Ellie - whilst also exposing her defenseless back to the ONLY DANGER in this cave - before Ellie cast her spell, "Lightning spear!" oooh, that sounded quite dangerous! Luckily for me, my illusion had no reason to stay still, so it immediately sidestepped, avoiding the spell, then leaping towards the unprepared Alex. While my illusion was in mid-air, Ellie's lightning spell hit the wall just above Ray, covering him in small rocks and dust. "Why haven't you moved!?" she yelled. Did this woman ever stop yelling?
As they would be wiped out right now if I still let my illusion do damage, I ordered it to only distract the two women, while I moved slowly towards Ray, while leaking a bit of killing intent so that he should be able to detect me, even though I was using illusion magic to hide. "*cough* the real body's *cough* near me!" that was fast, well done mr. hero! I still feel sorry for him having a teammate like that muscle headed magician, who blames the injured person for not moving out the way of their spell. Much to my surprise, Ray got up relatively quickly and turned to directly face me. Maybe he really did deserve that criticism. However, I still wanted him to think he had a chance of winning, so I didn't hide my killing intent. Ray had seemingly locked on to me, and he was edging toward Ellie, while keeping a constant distance between us. If he had the chance to grow stronger, he might be a brilliant warrior. Not letting him get complacent, I swung my claws at him, forcing him to move. Much to my surprise, instead of dodging, he jumped and blocked with his sword, using my attack's momentum to propel over to his teammates. He rolled as he landed arriving next to the horrified Alex, who hadn't moved since a while ago. Grabbing her by the arm, Ray dragged her towards Ellie, while Ellie was rapid firing weak spells behind Ray to mark my position. I decided to move to my illusion again, so that I could keep the act up for while more. However, before I reached my illusion, the hero party had regrouped, and Ellie was gathering quite alot of mana, so I rushed towards them, thinking to disrupt her spell casting. Before I could, she finished chanting her spell. "Flame prison!" Ellie shouted, summoning a dome of crimson flames around them, about 3m tall. Wondering how strong it was, I moved my illusion so its hand went throw the barrier, then come out again, only to see the area below the wrist completely disappear, and it did not even reform. I would assume that is quite high-teir for a human, but then again, I have never tried my illusion against anything except relatively weak attack magics, so maybe this was to be expected.
Meanwhile, inside the Flame prison, Alex was rantically healing Ray's side, as it had received two of my attacks, "You should be more careful Ray! What if you get killed?"
"Then I'd have been too weak to be of any use, so I'd rather die. Even so, for some reason this dragon hasn't killed me even though it knocked me out 3 separate times."
"I still dont believe you on that part," rebuked a pale-faced Ellie. She had put a lot of effort into this spell, and she was proud to say it was probably her best spell ever. She always knew risk was her greatest motivator. Ellie downed a mana restoration potion to get back most of her magic, before the group tried to plan thier next move.
'Finally' I thought, when the Flame prison finally started to fade. It had only been 5 minutes at most, but it felt considerably longer to Rontu, who was closely watching the spell every second. 'I wonder what their plan will be' he knew that the party inside the barrier would not have been idling inside it, and he was right. First, Alex cast Flash, a simple spell that utilized a sudden bright light to disorientation the enemy. As it was dark in the cave, it would have been very effective if Rontu wasn't a dragon, as his eyes quickly adapted to the light returning his vision to normal before the party had even moved. "Lightning barrage!" Ellie held her staff in the air, and created lots of small lightning attacks, which promptly flew at my illusion. When they hit my illusion, they disrupted quite a large part of it - probably because it was made of water. Some lightning bolts even made it through to hit me, but they just slid down my scales to the floor. Ray then jumped towards my illusion, I realized he had been healed inside the Flame prison. If I wasn't way stronger than them, this probably would have been a difficult fight. Unluckily for them, they were attacking the highest rank dragon. Actually, I feel like I'm forgetting something, what did I do before the fight? That's right, I created a trap with plant magic. I want to activate it soon, to see how powerful it is. Oh, Ray has finally reached my illusion. He charged through it before concentrating deeply, trying to locate me. I don't think that I can knock them all out without them realizing the power difference between us... if they found out, they probably would come back with an army of knights, which would leave me with two options: kill them all (which is very easy, but would massively impact the human's fighting power, and I'm fairly sure that there will be godly repercussions for that), or fly away with an army at my back. Actually, if they are going to drive me out anyway, why not show more of my true power? If I'm going to leave here, might as well do it in style. Well then, time to get to work.
'This dragon is strong, I wonder what rank it is?' I, Alexandra flutia, thought. I had been trying to find the real body all throughout the fight, yet I had only caught a few glimpses. We organized our attacks like this to hopefully dispel that illusion, and find our real target. Suddenly, Ray shouted "Its over there!" before pointing to a completely blank area of the cave. Ellie then cast her prepared spell, "Lightning spear!". It was only one attack, but extremely powerful. Amazingly, as it was flying through empty space, the magical spear suddenly collided with something, causing a shattering sound to ring out across the cavern. The dragon was still disoriented by my light, and stunned by the Lightning barrage, so it could not dodge. Ready to see our true foe, I readied myself to fight. The illusion spell which had kept it hidden this entire battle was breaking. From where Ellie's attack hit it, its unblemished scales appeared one after another. It was gleaming white, like snow, with ivory coloured claws and golden eyes. Then I realized that it still had its crown, and the bored expression on its face. It was a high tier dragon. It was just playing with us. Then, I felt a large fluctuation in the mana of the cave, then tree roots grew out of the floor around us, and trapped us. "What's happening?!" Ellie yelled. I tried to move but I couldn't. I then realized something much worse; my mana was being drained. "Its the dragon's spell!" Ray replied. If it was already this strong, why weren't we dead already? And with more mana drained, the roots became even stronger. Finally, that dragon started moving with slow steps, like a herald of death. When it arrived before Ray, I held my breath and wished for him to somehow survive. Without any flourishes, the dragon lifted its clawed foot and hit Ray on the head. I fervently wished he was still alive, but now was not the time to worry about him as the dragon walked towards me. I couldn't even cast a spell, I could only wait for what was to come. When it was finally in front of me, I stared it straight in the eye. I actually thought I saw a bit of surprise in its expression, but I knew that was impossible. All dragons are evil, especially this one. It raised its hand once again, and the next moment, I was knocked out.
I then proceeded to Ellie, and noticed the tree roots were even thicker than they were on Alex. I never would have guessed plant magic can drain mana. This could be very useful in the future, especially if I actually trained in its usage. And finally, a whack for you too. I now had three unconscious people in my cave, so I stopped the roots from growing anymore, and broke them out. I took Ellie's staff and Ray's left thigh guard. I would leave these items in this cave when I left so they would find them if they looked, but I needed to have fun somehow, right? As I carried the three people to that forest clearing, I was strangely saddened by the fact that I would not get to see Ray any more. Well, I could probably just get him to come to me if I showed myself near a town. Actually, that's something I could put on my list of things I want to do; go to a human town and see what it's like, preferably without scaring all of the inhabitants half to death. I always have wondered how humans are so successful when most of them are so squishy. That aside, I needed to do what I wanted to do here, then fly away before an army of humans come after me.
First, I held the Staff of Crashing Skies and tried to feel the mana in it. 'Wow' I thought 'This staff has just as much mana in it as the mana-infused tree I recently visited. I wonder if it's also made of mana-infused wood?' well, that's not important right now. I just have try and learn lightning magic.
After a few hours thinking about storms and lightning, I somehow acquired the lightning affinity. It actually resonated with me quite well, so it was probably a compound of Air magic and something else.
Next, I gathered all of my spoils of war at the back of the cave, then I picked up one of Ray's pieces of armour and carried it to my magic testing zone on the other side of the mountain, before burying it. Chuckling under my breath, I flew back to my cave to decide where I should go next.