Fafnir's pov

I was playing around with, I mean training my magic in my room, well it is not really my room but since I can't leave this room without destroying a big part of the cave I kind of claimed it for myself, when suddenly my shadow detached itself from me and formed a genderless humanoid figure without any real features.

The figure looked up at let out a small sigh and with a ghastly voice said, "I am here to bring you the artifact."

A smile formed on my lips and I said, "Perfect that means I can finally leave this room."

The figure looked around real quick and then asked, "Wait did Chaos really put you in a room that you could not leave?"

I just nodded and the figure started laughing, "I really should have expected that stupid sister of mine to mess something up."

"You said sister does that mean.....?", I asked

"Yes, I am talking about Chaos. You have the great honor of being in the presence of one of the puppets personally piloted by the Goddess of Shadow."

The corners of my lips curled upwards as I said, "Perfect do you want to answer a few questions of mine?"

"That was already a question and I would rather not waste more of my time. Chaos is going to visit you soon anyway and explaining things is her job.", answered Shadow whose body was starting to dissipate.

When half of her puppet had sunk into the shadows she suddenly said, "Oh right I forgot to tell you how to use it."

I let out a small sigh and commented, "Seems like Chaos is not the only one who messing this up."

The shadow lets out an angry puff and threatened, "I might let Chaos explain how you need to use the artifact. I mean you have already waited for a month what is two more weeks right?"

I raised my paws in defeat and said, "You win. Oh, great Goddess of Shadows will you please tell me how to use this artifact that you have so generously bestowed upon me."

The shadow chuckled, "Was that so hard? You just need to pour in some of the energy that you normally use for casting racial magic and then a few options will appear in your mind. After that, you only need to focus on the one you want and let the artifact do the rest. While it was fun talking to you, I still have some business to take care of. I will see you another time dragon, try to not commit suicide like Chaos her other pets."

After saying that she was completely gone and I muttered, "Not sure if I should fear for my life or if I should be offended by her calling me a pet?

Now let's use this artifact and leave this stupid cave together with Jay and Lisabeth. The last month was a real challenge to overcome. I had nothing to keep me busy with expect playing, I mean training my magic and making a few plans The magic training is going a bit slow since I can't try fight with anything here and for some reason, I have a real issue with control. Not that it really is a problem. Well, it is not a problem as long as I don't care about collateral damage, but I still should not allow a weakness like that to exist.

As for the plans I made, they are rather simple. I heard from Jay that it is not actually that dangerous to cross these mountains as long as one stays on the roads. The only reason why they found this place is because they decided to leave the roads in order to scare away their pursuers. He also told me that other than the nightmares the real thing that makes these mountains so dangerous is that there are a lot of bandits who raid the merchant's caverns of the alliance that trade with the free city.

You would expect that almost no merchant would go through these bandit infested mountains, but the whole fact that these mountains are infested with bandits actually attracts merchants. If they succeed they will be rich and if they fail they will most likely end up dead. When a merchant screws up and becomes really desperate they try to cross these mountains as a sort of an ultimate gamble to win back their fortune.

My plan is to first destroy a border village or two first since I still need to supply Chaos her life force and then beat the bandits into submission and become the ruler of this mountain range. Then I will strike up a shady deal with a few merchants and with the money that I will get from that, I will be able to start or buy a few crime organizations in the human countries. These organizations will allow me to sow a bit of discord between the members of the alliance. If everything goes according to plan, which it never does, then I will have the alliance disbanded in a year or two. And the moment that they are divided I will pick them off one by one.

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This is the best case scenario for my plan. To be totally honest I expect that I will need to brute force myself through a lot of obstacles and then there is the fact that my plans do not include the heroes and that my understanding of this world is severely limited.

But to set all these plans in motion I first need to learn how to use this artifact. I grab the artifacts and pour in some energy into it just like the Goddess of Shadow told me to and two images appear in my mind. One of the images looks perfectly like my old self. A well builds male human in his mid-twenties with black hair and brown eyes. The other figure is a pale but rather good looking young man with long untamed red hair that reaches his waist. This figure also has two big black horns sticking out of the sides of his head. The horns have the same position and appearance as the ones of a bull but are quite a bit thicker and look a lot more threatening. This form also has red glowing eyes, black and red dragons wings poking out from his back and red and black scales covering its forearms, lower legs and most of its vital organs. His figners are adorned with small but sharp looking claws and the same red glow in the place where my heart is supposed to be is also present in this form.

Looking at these forms remind me of something I once read in a book on my old world. It was a book where giant creatures also had some sort of battle form to concentrate all their power into a smaller body. The biggest advantage to this was that in these forms they could use armor and weapons, further increasing their power.

It seems like this is something like that. The first form is more of a disguise and it would not surprise me if my battle power was greatly weakened. While the second form is more like the battle form.

Well, there is only one way to test it out this theory. By using the artifact. I first concentrate on the weaker looking human form. My body changes into shadows and reforms to look perfectly like the man in the image. The first thing that I notice in this form is the feeling of weakness. The boundless energy that I normally feel inside of me has been suppressed and reduced to merely a tenth of its original power. My body itself also feels so feeble. I got a feeling that if I try to cast destruction magic in this form it won't end well for me.

I use the artifact again and this time the two forms that spring up in my mind are my dragon form and my battle form. This is actually the first time that I could see my dragon form from a different angle so I'm really going to compliment myself for a bit. First of all my body is absolutely massive. I guess that it is around thirty meters long and fifteen meters high, head included. Secondly, my fangs are god damn massive, I think I need to respect Lis and Jay a bit more for not pissing their pants when they stand close to me. Thirdly, my scales look amazing, the red and black really mixes well and further improves the whole evil dragon vibe. And then lastly, the red glow in my eyes and in my chest just look amazing. I think that I am falling for myself. Is this considered bestiality?

All jokes aside let now try out this presumed battle form. My body once again changes into shadows and forms into the chosen form. After a few moments of standing there, I let out a hearty laugh. This is definitely a battle form, I can still feel all of my energy, ready to run rampant. It also feels like my raw strength has stayed the same.

After thinking for a few moments I decide to use this form as my standard form for as long as I stay in these mountains. I stretch out the sore limbs of my recently acquired body and call Jay, Lis and the kobold chief.

After they entered the room Jay and the chief just look at me in disbelief while Lis just waved happily at me. I walked closer to the group and then said, "Jay, Lis we are leaving. Well unless you want to stay here with the kobolds all alone and chief.

I turned my now human sized head towards him and said, "I sincerely hope that you are a smart enough man who knows that it would a stupid move to share any information on me. I would just hate to have to come back to this cave and kill everyone."

The kobold chief hurriedly bowed and said, "We would not dare to tell other about a dragon like yourself.

I flashed him a smirk and said, "Good to know. "

As we walked towards the exit of the door Lisabeth suddenly shouted, "Wait did you not tell us that you are an undead?"

I scratched my head and replied, "Basically."

"Won't this mean that you are weakened while the sun is out?", asked Lisabeth.

I simply shrugged and said, "Only one way to know" and took the final step. After standing in the sunlight I shout,"Seems like I can function perfectly under sunlight." The reason that I don't have the same weaknesses as an undead is most likely since my body is dead and not undead. You could consider my body to be a suit that my soul pilots. But talking about sunlight I am really happy to finally leave that cave and see a bit of the world that I am supposed to turn upside down.

While we leave the cave we can see the kobold chief simply waving us off. If I had not seen any use for these lizards, like being able to talk to other dragons on my behalf then I would have most likely killed them all in order to make sure that my little secret stays safe.

Lisabeth walked up to me and asked, "So Faf how did you suddenly turn into whatever you are now?"

"Ah, you could say that I had some outside help.", I replied

I tapped on Jay's shoulder and asked,"So do you know where the nearest settlement is?"

Jay nodded and said, "The closest city is the outpost."

The outpost?" I inquired.

"The outpost was originally a fortress that served as a ward between the nightmares that once infested these mountains and the civilized races." answered Jay.

I inquired, "You said once infested, what happened?"

"Well with the defeat of the demon race, the alliance used the remains of their armies to purge these mountains. There are still nightmares here but all of them are young and weaker or ridiculously old and powerful.", answered Jay.

Well, it seems like I have a target for now. A former fortress seems a lot more fun to destroy than a normal town or city. I got to admit that I love a challenge.