Chapter 49

The Scorched Lands

A man stood above the corpse of a dragon.

Aura was a little dissatisfied with his kill, he was of the belief that tricking someone into drinking poison was rather cowardly, but he wasn't really capable of killing an ancient dragon on his own, even if it was a really weak ancient dragon.

The liquor was posioned, and also not endless, just like the secret knowledge or whatever he had touted the book as was just a blank book with a fancy cover.

The whole thing was an act, designed to make Hurin think that Aura was an extremely polite individual, who would never think of lying.

The only reason it worked is due to the dragon's arrogance.

The dragon had been living in this area for thousands of years and had never been challenged by anything strong, thus it had probably gotten the impression that it was the strongest being in the realm.

It was sorely mistaken.

And its arrogance had cost it severely.

Aura already figured that the fire core was in the dragon's hoard, but a dragon would never give up something so powerful and pretty.

So the only solution was to exterminate it.

This also gave Aura the Dragonslayer achievement, which gave him a title of the same name.

The title had the effect of increasing damage done to dragons by a fixed multiplier.

It was one of the more coveted titles you could gain, but its effects were nothing special.

Despite the fancy description, it just made dragons seem like butter to your blades.

Useful, but not as great as some might think.

'A package has arrived!'

And it seems that the corpse you've all been waiting for has finally shown itself.

The false god of music.

He was going to make wonderful materials.

But looting the dragon and its hoard came first.

The dragon had dragon materials, duh, which are useful, but not all that needed at the moment.

The hoard however, was mountains of gold, jewels, and all sorts of pretty and dangerous objects, the most valuable of which, were the occasional book you could see laying in a pile of wealth.

These books were scavenged from across the realm, and contained the lives and knowledge of some of Ascendance's greatest historical figures.

Aura might be able to find something useful in a few of those books.

The second most valuable thing in the hoard were the catalyst crystals scattered about.

There were dozens of them, and given what they could be used for, it was rather surprising Hurin hadn't used them for himself.

Though it was possible that the arrogant lizard had never learned what those crystals could be used for.

Aura found all sorts of useful attributes, but none he planned on using immediately.

The third most valuable thing in the dragon's cave was ten adamantium ingots, stacked in a corner.

The fourth most valuable thing was a lantern.

The lantern was an extremely well known but maddeningly rare magical tool, that would guide its holder through the Room of Cards.

It was one of the few items that could reliably guide an individual to their domain card.

Because of this incredibly powerful effect, the lantern was very difficult to make, and even Aura with his mastery of crafting was nowhere near capable of replicating it.

Perhaps in a few more decades, once Aura had properly studied it.

But Aura wasn't patient enough to bother with the little details, he had big things to do and not a lot of time before people forgot about the attack in Firen.

He needed to prepare for a blood replacement operation as soon as possible, as well as giving Laura her second eye.

He didn't have the time to waste now that the corpse he needed had finally arrived.

Aura was in an undeniable rush to begin throwing the world to shit using the power of rumours.

Because levelling would feel so sweet, and he wanted to head to the Outlands whenever possible.

A high level would go leaps and bounds towards that goal.

So massacreing a kingdom would make his life so much easier.

Thus, there was no time to waste.

Onwards towards war!