The records show that Dragons are an existence beyond the strength of our meager world. A single Dragon was able to challenge the might of our entire pantheon. While many of the ancient texts claim that this individual was a rarity among their species, the strength of their lessers, the Wyrms, leads me to believe otherwise.
From the limited exchanges with both Wyrms and Dragons we know that there are seven (7) flights of Dragons, however we have only identified five of them. All draconic sources refused to ever divulge any information about the unknown flights, simply confirming that they exist and nothing else. The five flights we know about are the Purple, Gold, Green, Silver, and Red. Each flight has different specialities as well as a unique breath weapon.
The most dangerous breath weapon being that of the Green flights, their Annihilation Breath is capable of completely destroying anything it comes in contact with. It was this breath weapon that left the worst scars on our planet after the fall of the gods.
* An excerpt from ‘Dragons: God Slayers’ by High Scholar Jez’fa’rin of the Wyrmrest Empire
Ava’s Own POV
Ava began quickly scanning the new form of the Wyrm as it took flight. The monster flew in a loop around her party while carefully watching their movements. The Wyrm was showing far more caution than it did before and Ava wasn’t sure if it was due to the fact that they killed it or some other reason.
“Get back in double formation, Z distance yourself and try to slip into a blindspot.” Ava started ordering her party.
“Might want to rethink that Ava, it has no spikes!” Z called out to her with a slight panic in his voice.
“Shit! Everyone, look for one of the tells! We can’t plan around its inherited trait if we don’t know it!” Ava ordered with urgency.
There were three traits a Wyrm could inherit from draconic blood: True Scale, whose tell was a double row of spikes along the entire back of the Wyrm. Dragon Eyes, whose tell was a second slitted pupil perpendicular to the first. Finally there was the Breath Weapon, whose tell was a double line of inverted scales on the Wyrms throat of the same color of the flight whose breath attack they inherited.
Unfortunately for Ava’s Own the Wyrm was flying with its back towards them, using its left eye to watch them. Z was straining his perception to its maximum trying to see the boss’s pupil past the eyelid that protected its eyes from the wind.
“We can’t afford to do nothing! A Wyrm will recover mana faster than us, the longer we wait the more strength it has!” Lia called out after being unable to spot any of the draconic features with her perception.
“Damnit fine! Gather up, I’m going to use Enhanced Lifeform on everyone at 50%. Hopefully we can kill it before it can respond.” Ava said, deciding on a course of action.
She knew that she risked the Wyrm stealing her Enhanced Lifeform spell if it did have the Dragon Eyes, but it was a risk worth taking. If they did nothing but sit around then the Wyrm could just start wearing them down from a distance. It was especially dangerous since its new scale color and aura implied that it was an Aether Wyrm. Aether was a particularly nasty affinity to deal with. At lower levels it had no direct attack spells, but its mobility was unmatched and its utility was solid as well.
As Ava’s party members all got close enough to be within the range of her spell the Wyrm finally made its move. It changed its flight angle and started charging directly towards them. Once it reached the halfway point it leaned its head back as it deeply inhaled, revealing a double row of inverted purple scales.
“BREATH ATTACK!” Ava shouted as she forced her mana into different pathways to cast a different spell.
Her mana veins burned as she received a backlash from forcing the mana meant for her previous spell into her new one. Ava beared with the pain and ignored the sizzling sound of her arms and chest burning as she cast a basic Vine Toss. Several vines shot out from the ground throwing her and her teammates in different directions away from each other.
The toss wasn’t a moment too soon as the Wyrm brought its head down and exhaled.
The breath of the Purple flight is a beam of pure mana that draws in all surrounding mana from the world around it and releases it at the point of impact. As any good mage knows, magic is simply the result of clashing mana. The beam of pure mana not only forces all the mana around it to clash, but it also enhances the resulting effects by adding pure mana into the mix. The end result is a beam that would rapidly cast randomized spell effects while draining anything it touched of mana to fuel its destruction.
The colors of the world seemed to invert as the beam of pure mana shot out of the Wyrm’s mouth. It was perfectly silent at first, the world seemingly still for a single moment. Until the beam hit the ground and suddenly chaos reigned. All the air mana was sucked into the beam causing it to fuse into sound mana which then clashed with every other type of mana producing a unique sound for each one. A chorus of roars when it clashed with Wyld mana, sonic booms when clashing with fire, and screams of the dying when clashing with scourge were just a few examples.
The effects on the ground were even worse. The pure mana and raging spell effects caused miniaturized mana zones to form anywhere that the beam passed. One section of the floor could be molten lava while the next would be close to absolute zero. The clashing of the mana also caused random magical effects to shoot off and hit anything nearby causing the area of effect to be even greater than someone thin mana beam would suggest.
Fortunately for Ava’s Own a Wyrm was not a Dragon, especially a wyrm that wasn’t even past its first ascension. The beam lasted barely a second and the effects bordered on low one star strength, yet the devastation caused was still significant. Ava’s quick thinking had saved her and her party from the worst of the effects, but many of them still got hit by one or two of the random spells.
Jay was missing three fingers from his right hand and had a nasty gash wound across his face from a stray stone shard that was propelled by an explosion. Hal’s left leg now ended in a stump, his entire foot obliterated by a jet of fire. He also bled from dozens of small wounds on his legs and arms created by splinters of scourge infused bone that had been created when scourge and earth mana clashed. Lia was missing all the hair on her head, eyebrows included, but an expert use of a hard-light construct had saved her from any further damage. Ava herself was missing the entire lower half of her body as the Wyrm had chosen her as its main target and tried to track her with the deadly beam. She was preserving her life solely through the use of her magic. If she wasn’t healed before running out of mana, she would die.
Z was the only person unscathed by the attack. Not only was he the furthest away from the initial impact point, but he also had the highest agility and perception which allowed him to react faster. Z had managed to activate one of his cooldowns which would turn him incorporeal by merging with the shadows. He had to time activating and deactivating his skill so that he could negate any damaging effects while also avoiding feeding his own shadow mana into the chaos.
The Wyrm himself was drained after releasing the breath weapon. The breath attack of a Dragon was incredibly powerful, but it was something that a measly zero star Wyrm could only use once a day without harming itself. The fact that all the humans were able to dodge the worst of the effects made the Wyrm especially annoyed. He resolved himself to make him and his partner practice more after this fight was over.
A quick check of the party status allowed Z to quickly realize that he was the only one uninjured. He rapidly accessed the situation before shouting orders at his team to break them out of their dazed state.
“Lia, heal Ava. Hal, keep them safe. Jay, support me, I’m going for it while it's still recovering!” Z ordered out before initiating his stealth and movement skills and rushing towards the low-flying wyrm.
Lia rushed towards Ava while starting her best healing spell. Hal did his best to hobble towards them so that he could cover for them. Jay shakily stood up, he quick casted a spell that froze his head wound shut and then conjured three new fingers for himself out of ice. He leaned heavily on his staff to stand, he already knew he was concussed but pushed on anyways. Jay began to slowly channel his mana and cast one of his more reliable spells, unwilling to risk his condition making something go wrong.
A hazy magic circle of light blue mana materialized around Jay. Jay began carefully and slowly enunciating the words of a chant causing the circle to slowly become more defined. Normally he would just cast with raw mana manipulation, but he had no metal power left to do so. As he continued his cast the magic circle slowly began to spin and compress, becoming smaller and smaller until it was barely large enough to encase the head of his staff. Between the increased spinning speed and the greatly lowered diameter, the magic circle was now spinning so fast that its runes blurred together making it appear as a glowing disk.
As Jay was casting his spell Z was charging the Wyrm. The boss was currently hovering maybe 12 or so feet above the ground, channeling mana through its body to recover from the exertion that the breath weapon placed on it. Z’s stealth skill rendered him invisible to the Wyrm’s senses and his movement skill allowed him to rapidly close the distance between them.
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As he approached the Wyrm he readied his dual blades and activated his opening skills. Target Weakness was an ability that would allow him to hone in on the perfect place to strike. While Shadow Sheathe, Shadow Pierce’s Superior Evolution, covered his blades in liquid shadow that would strike directly at the mind of his target. Z’s stealth skill Shadow Stalk would further enhance his first strike so long as his target didn’t see through the skill.
Z’s legs moved him with terrifying speed, accelerating him to the limits of his endurance. He used a wall to gain height until he was higher than the Wyrm. Then, he jumped. His jump propelled him towards the Wyrm’s blindspot, right where neck and body met. Z twisted in the air to position his blades in the perfect spot to strike. He allowed his ability to guide his hands towards the Wyrm’s weak point.
Z plunged his blades into each side of the Wyrm’s neck. Slipping their edges in a slight gap where the normal and inverted scales met. Z used one of his feet to perform a second jump off of the Wyrm’s body, causing his blades to cut even deeper and leaving two massive gashes in the monster's throat.
As Z backflipped off of the beasts back the Wyrm brought its tail up. In a single lightning fast strike it swatted Z into the ground, twisting the bone spike at the end of its tail just for good measure. The attack left Z with a massive hole in his chest, he had barely managed to move just enough to avoid it hitting anything vital. Unfortunately he was still bleeding out and was forced to use one of his arms in an attempt to keep the wound closed.
Jay’s spell finished the moment that Z struck, but he was forced to hold its casting until Z was far enough away. He gritted his teeth in anger when he watched the boss strike Z with its tail, knowing that he could do nothing to stop his friend from crashing into the ground. Jay didn’t allow Z’s attack to go to waste, the moment the Wyrm hit him away he cast his spell.
The rapidly spinning magic circle was shot out of the end of his staff and started spinning on an axis perpendicular to the first causing the circle to go from looking like a disc to a sphere. The shimmering orb of light blue mana covered the distance between Jay and the Wyrm in a blink of an eye, colliding with the Wyrm in a flash of mana.
The orb exploded and tendrils of blizzard mana sought out any openings on the Wyrms body. The Wyrm fought back against the foreign mana, stopping it from entering into any of his orifices. Yet the Wyrm could do nothing to stop the mana from entering the two massive wounds on its neck. The mana seeped in, sending a cold chill through the boss’s body and slowing its movements and thoughts. Lines of frost started spreading from the wounds, damaging the surrounding flesh and stopping them from healing.
With his spell cast, Jay barely managed to stumble behind a pile of random suits of armor for cover before collapsing. He took a stabilizer potion out of his inventory and downed it, knowing that the healing tonic would take him out of the rest of the fight. He had faith that his team could win without him.
The Wyrm thrashed around in the air in agony. The two wounds on his throat hurt worse than any injury he had ever received before. Z’s blades had struck at not only one of its main arteries but also the mana veins for its breath weapon. Normally mana veins exist only partially in physical reality, making it impossible to affect them without specialized attacks. However the mana veins for its inherited breath weapon were different.
In order to channel the massive quantities of mana needed to activate the breath weapon of the Purple flight, the mana veins needed a more robust presence. This makes them vulnerable to physical attacks from outside sources. A weakness that is normally blocked by the double row of inverted scales which have the same strength, if not greater, than True Scale. Z’s blades managed to ignore this protection by targeting the very tiny gap where the inherited scales met the Wyrm's own, much weaker, scales.
The Wyrm was unable to sustain the mana flow to allow itself to hover and dropped to the ground, barely managing to break its fall with a flare of its wings. Once on the ground the Wyrm channeled his aether mana internally using its strong connection with aether mana to transfer its pain into its wings. Flight would do it no good if it was unable to use its breath weapon, it was better to isolate its pain and deal with adventurers in melee.
The boss and Z were now face to face. Staring each other down as they readied themselves to do combat despite their terrible conditions. Z couldn’t help but feel a slight bit of fear, he knew that of the two of them he was in a worse position to fight. Even if the Wyrm’s injuries were worse than his own it still had full control of its limbs and tail, which had already proven to be dangerous.
A flare of mana was all the warning Z got before being brutally slammed backwards. The Wyrm had used a portal to attack Z with its tail while it was hidden behind its back, taking the human by surprise.
Z recovered quickly using a skill to ignore pain and a second one to ignore his injuries. He accepted the fact that he was on a timer and used both his arms to wield his blades. His decision proved to be the right one as half a dozen opaque purple portals appeared around him and the Wyrm used them to attack from all angles. By making the portal opaque the Wyrm was the only one who knew which portals led where, making it almost impossible for Z to counterattack. Especially since the Wyrm could change which portals were linked as well as move the entrances/exits around.
Z used both his blades to defend himself, yet he was slowly taking injuries. If nothing changed he would die.
Ava coughed up mouthfuls of blood as Lia’s spell finally took effect, the healing forcing her to expel any dead tissue trapped inside her. She knew that her team needed her, that Z needed her. She began to cast, ignoring Lia’s pleas for her to stop and rest. She used her mana core like a battering ram to force open her mana veins. She gritted her teeth and ignored the pain that she was causing herself. Damage to one's mana system was the second worst pain you could experience and Ava bore the pain in order to help her friend.
She twisted her spell together and used her skills to alter its variables. Extend Spell and Quick Cast were used to give the spell enough range to reach Z from across the room and for the spell to activate fast enough to make a difference. The spell materialized as a green glow that surrounded Z’s form for a moment. The second she saw the spell activate Ava lost consciousness, barely registering the sound of a system notification.
Z felt the effects of Enhanced Lifeform wash over him causing all of his stats to increase by 50%. His wounds stopped bleeding and his arms sped up. Attacks that he could barely keep up with before could now be easily parried to the side. Z grinned a vicious smile as he now had enough concentration to spare to counter attack.
He used Shadow Manipulation in conjunction with his still active Shadow Sheathe to create dozens of blades out of liquid darkness. He sent a wave of mist-like shadow constructs through every portal around him, using the small parts of his aura that they carried to map out which ones led back to the Wyrm. The moment he found the monster, he struck.
Every single blade flew through the Wyrm’s own portals cutting into its tail and limbs. The Wyrm recoiled in pain and cut off the mana flow to the portals before Z could send even more attacks though. Z ignored the portals and simply charged straight towards the Wyrm. With the increased stats from Unleashed Potential he was able to stand up to the Wyrm physically. His strength managed to match its own and his control allowed him to outpace it.
Z forced the Wyrm to engage with him in face-to-face melee combat. Without the ability to exploit its magic or its breath attack, the boss was placed on the back foot. Yet the Wyrm was still a level 40 boss monster and had been trained heavily by Bellator on how to fight. While it lacked practical experience it made up for it with theoretical knowledge and lots of stats. The Wyrm managed to match Z’s pace by utilizing its tail, forelimbs, and head to give him twice as many limbs to attack with as Z had.
Z and the Wyrm exchanged dozens of blows. Z used martial skill and perfect control of his body to minimize wasted movement and exploit any opening he spotted. The Wyrm used its monstrous body and powerful statline to defend while slowly probing Z for a weakness. Both fighters started to gain wounds as they got used to each other's fighting style. Neither of them would accept a stalemate which meant taking wounds in order to create openings of attack and change the pace of the fight.
The Wyrm could see the mana of whatever spell was aiding his opponent slowly waning, he knew that the moment that spell ended his superior power would overwhelm the human. Yet that moment never came as their fight was interrupted by a blade of light slicing off the end of the Wyrm’s tail.
Lia had stayed out of the fight up until this point because she had better things to do as the only other person with healing spells. She had used her best healing skills to stabilize Ava and had used what little mana she had left after that to fully heal Hal. She had seen Jay take a stabilizer potion and knew that he would be fine so long as Z kept the Wyrm distracted. After she had used up all her mana healing she was going to send Hal in, but he had other plans. Hal had used the horribly inefficient mana transfer skill to turn 100 of his mana into barely 20 of hers.
“I don’t have any good attacking skills. Go, I’ll keep Ava safe.” He had said to her.
Lia had waited for the perfect moment to strike. All of its focus was on Z so it hadn’t noticed her close the distance and sneak up behind it. Once the Wyrm’s tail was rearing back for another attack she made her move. She cast Sword of Light on her weapon, as it was the only spell she had enough mana for, and then sliced off the end of the Wyrm’s tail.
Now two vs one and missing its favorite attack method, the Wyrm knew that his fate was sealed. However he was still a boss of the Eternal Dungeon and refused to die a quiet death. He channeled every remaining ounce of mana into his body and fought to the bitter end. He became a whirling typhoon of claws and teeth striking out against both Z and Lia dozens of times. He ignored any attack they made that wouldn’t be instantly lethal, choosing to allow himself to be injured in exchange for also landing a hit on his opponents.
Lia and Z fought just as hard. Once they realized that the Wyrm no longer cared about their attacks, they changed to a more defensive style. They only attacked when they could be sure no counter attack could be launched and focused solely on minimizing the damage it dealt to them. So long as the Wyrm stayed in combat with them and ignored Ava and Jay, they had no reason to risk themselves.
In the end the Wyrm died from a combination of its injuries and overtaxing its core. A Wyrm’s biology was impossible and without any mana to keep reality at bay, it died. As it felt its consciousness returning to its shared spawning room with its partner the Aether Wyrm swore to himself to accept Bellator's offers of training. While they had killed every group before this one, the fact that they failed to get a single kill irked them to no end.