Rune was sitting on a mat next to a semi-calm Elisa. Her helmet was placed beside her and her sword, Excalibur, was resting on her lap. She was trying to stay calm in a situation that wouldn’t allow it unless you accepted the strange.
She was trying to cope with how Rune had won in a fight against a green dragon that was more powerful than an ancient dragon. In fact, the dragon said that it was a dragon whose age surpassed 5 centuries and became a Guardian Dragon.
They were like the Demon Kings of dragons because their strength was squared just like his. Guardian Dragons were supposed to protect their kin from those who would want to hurt them.
On the other side of the mat was that same Guardian Dragon that Rune had beaten in a fight. Elisa was ready if the dragon attacked for she would counter with her Excalibur she had in her lap.
“So, Guardian Dragon, tell me. First, what is your name. I can’t just address you with “Guardian Dragon”.”
“Ok, Rouna, please tell me where to find and kill these worshippers.”
There are five leaders of Tiamat’s Heads. One for each of her heads. Each is a dragon so powerful that they can kill me in one swipe of the claw. Each dragon is categorized in five castes. One is the regulars, the lowest caste where the dragons range from wyrmlings to ancients. The second lowest are the Guardian Dragons. We are much stronger than the regulars, but we are still weak. Even one caste above another means that the higher caste is exponentially stronger than the last. The third weakest caste are the Noglavirs who have enough strength to annihilate an entire cities, but they are usually neutral. Tiamat’s Heads usually consist of the two strongest castes. The second strongest are known as the Hierarchs. They are the foot soldiers to the strongest who carry out orders until death and are as powerful as one hundred Noglavirs. The strongest caste consists of only ten dragons. Only three of which are good, two are neutral, and the other five are the heads of Tiamat’s Heads.> Elisa was still confused on some parts of it and Rune understood the main gist of it. “So… Why haven’t they shown themselves so much?” The terms are to not get in each other’s way, to remain secret, and to work together to bring Tiamat to Arborea. They decide things in secrecy, but I know of it due to my unique skill, [Envision]. It is the ability to see all that I wish, be it past or present.> “Why can you not see the future?” “Elisa!! It’s pretty obvious that the future always changes due to decisions. One can see the past for it is set in stone and the present is nothing but the past being set in stone. The future is yet to be seen, an unknown force that none control.” “Why are you being so poetic?” Elisa sighed as she was lectured by both dragon and Demon King. She just wanted to get back to the castle and get a nice, refreshing cup of mead. She didn’t want to go on an adventure where she could die as easily as an ant being squished by a shoe. “Any locations regarding where they are?” “The Majin continent?” There are no forests, mountains, or even a grassy plains. There is only the barren wastelands of sand. I have seen villages there, but they seemed to be only filled with beings that have monster traits within them. There are plants to harvest and crops to eat, but only in the villages.> “Why hasn’t anyone found it yet?” “This is good information. Thank you. I will be dropping by sometime later.” “Why would you come here again?!” “I think that it is already dinner time and I really want to go home. Don’t worry. I’ll create a protection barrier and a small fort outside.” “True, but I want to know what happens and when something does in case of an emergency. I don’t want my source of information dying so soon.” “Anyways, Elisa, do you need to get to the palace now?” “Ah, yes.” “Ok, one sec.” Rune grabbed her shoulder in his left hand and helmet in his right. Elisa started to grab her sword when they both teleported to the front gates of the palace. Elisa was starting to get up when that happened and she fell on her face. The only witnesses were the two guards and Rune as she fell. Teleportation messed with people’s balance and they tended to flop over or try and brace themselves against something soon after they teleport. Rune did not lose his balance at all because, as a Cursed Armor, he did not lose his balance and, when he became human, he had already become used to teleporting. “Ok. Tell the king what happened. Bye.” Rune had realized that the sun was already setting when he teleported back to the cave. Waiting at the cave was a small girl who had a grown-up aura around her. When she noticed Rune, she jumped back, lost her balance, and fell on her rear. Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon. “I didn’t think you would be coming back so quickly!!” “Who? Nevermind. I thought I went to Pytium Caves.” “Um, but you did. I am Rouna.” The small girl announced with pride. She had already stood up and her hands were on her waist. She was tilting her head upwards to try and look down on Rune who was 6 feet and 4 inches while she was about 4 feet and 2 inches. She frowned and crossed her arms. “Do you not remember me?” She had green hair long enough to touch the ground and light green eyes with pupils that changed shape like a cat’s. She had a green tail that seemed to grow from her back and two small dark green horns protruding from her forehead. “I am Rouna.” “Well. I can tell now. You have a tail and horns. Plus, it’s not like I’m extremely surprised. I can do that too.” “You can turn into a different animal? Ohhh. I have only seen four other dragon shapeshifters, but I have heard tales of many who can change into different animals.” She looked in awe as she expected Rune to change into some small animal, but he decided to do the opposite of what Rouna did. He became his Ancient White Dragon form. His arms grew muscles as they elongated and his torso grew in width and length. His head changed into that of a reptiles and he grew a tail and wings from his back. His dragon appearance had changed from before because, this time, he was changing from a human. He turned into a dragon that had scales instead of metal and a head that looked natural for white dragons. “Oh!! I thought you would change into a white fox or something, but you completely destroyed my expectations. Tell me, is that not your natural form?” When he spoke his line, Rune’s head became more like an upside trapezoid and grew four eyes. His lower legs became tentacles and his wings receded. He still kept the same white color scheme as he turned into a leviathan. “Ahhh!!!! I don’t like that!!!! Turn back!!!” He did so and calmly stretched his arms. “Yeah, it is natural for people to either dislike Leviathan’s form or tentacles or both.” Rune figured out that the creatures that he turned into had similar features to the humanoids that he shapeshifted from. If he changed directly from Cursed Armor to a Dragon, then the dragon would look like it was made of armor, but if he went from a Human to a Dragon, the Dragon would look like a regular dragon. However, the color scheme of the creatures never changed. If he went from Cursed Armor to a Human or humanoid, it would not affect the humanoid form what so ever. It also worked the other way around as well. Rouna shuddered as he turned back and moved towards a chair made of rocks and sat down. She started playing with her fingers when Rune realized that he should say something. “About the fort… Eight of my pupils will be coming so please welcome them. They are three Majins, one Aasimar, one Half-Elf, one Dragonborn, one Human, and one Cat Man. They are to build a fort to the left of the cave. Thanks and goodbye.” Rune teleported back to his coliseum where he came from. He noticed that there was only the helping staff there still trying to remove the dragon. He walked up to them and waved them off. The bowed and left the arena. Rune did have plans for the corpse, but now he needed to get stronger with whatever possible. He absorbed the corpse as it wasn’t living anymore, and gained the ability to shapeshift into an ancient version of the adult blue dragon. He teleported to the lab and sat down in a chair. Out of all the chairs in his home, this was his favorite chair. It had a cushion with fur on it, an armrest, and even a back to it. He opened up his status and looked through it. He noticed that his [Heal] and [Cure] had turned into [Heal Greater] and [Cure Greater] due to his Cleric job that he had gotten. He hadn’t noticed it before because they kept the same first word in it and he had been rushing through it. Although, when he looked closer at his status, he couldn’t see anything new except his [Shapeshift] now contained Blue Dragon now. If the monsters in this unknown continent are truly as strong as she said, then I can level up quickly there. It has been way too hard to do so with all the easy pests. I wonder what kind of things I could turn into! Ah, but first we need to advance our technology. I assume that Kelly and Jared are in the basement with… His thoughts were interrupted when Rune heard Sophia’s voice and three footsteps. “And here is the lab. It is set so that one second out here is two hours in here. Oh!! Rune!” Sophia was showing the house to Jared and Kelly. They had already gone through the dining area, kitchen, bathrooms, and the the guest room. Since they had no other place to stay, Rune let them stay in one of the guest rooms. Ms. Flustern had gone to gather the Bastets and everyone else had gone back to their respective places. “I was wondering… Would it be ok if Kelly and Jared worked in this lab?” Ryune thought about this for a moment before answering. “As long as you two don’t touch my stuff or go in the freezer. Especially not the freezer. I am serious. You will see some very messed up things in there.” Rune pointed to a large door on the far side of the lab. There were about fifty signs telling people not to go in unless they were mentally prepared. “A-and why is that?” Kelly was the one who asked. She was holding onto Jared’s arm tightly as they walked towards Rune. “Oh, you know. Just corpses, bodies, and organic materials. Things people shouldn’t see unless they had psychic damage immunity. Oh! I wanted to ask you two. Is it possible to create a device like a radio, but using magic to make it stronger?” “Well, if we had the magic from a magic user, then we could, yes.” “Great. I’ll send a list down to you guys of students with specific magic spells. I want you two to start creating a radio whose range surpasses everything else built so far.” “Understood” The two of them replied and Rune continued looking for ways to make himself stronger. ---------------------------------------- In the meantime, Rena had finished eating dinner. It was a great pork cutlet with a side of cauliflower. It seemed like food royalty would have and it was delicious to the poor students. Rena started from very humble beginnings when Rune found her because both her parents died when she was young and the only one to support her was her grandfather who begged people for things and, surprisingly, got a lot of nuggets made of strange metals. She basically had nothing and thought that she was going to die by a disease until Rune cured her. She was eternally grateful for saving her as well as giving her a place to stay. Her now dead grandfather had watched her in happiness before he departed to Bytopia, the paradies for the dead. After putting her plate on a table, she walked to the library where she and her other Honor’s fighting classmates would design weapons. She found that the couple, Yula the Aasimar and Mynn the Half-Elf, sitting at the table, They were talking to each other with smiles on their faces. Hika was in the corner muttering about how normies should die. She didn’t have a boyfriend yet and neither did anyone else in the fighting class. She was in a bad mood just from watching the interaction between the couple. Erin and Hyht came in after Rena and sat down at a table. Rena had already sat down, but was patting Hika on the head to console her. She was shaking and silently crying as she hugged Rena. Then Akta and Nija entered the library and everybody sat down at a large table together. Rena handed out two pieces of paper to each person and they started drawing their designs. Rune had actually taught his students how to draw blueprints for buildings as an extra on top of weapon blueprints. Everyone started to work on their weapon designs. Erin worked on a design for dual greatswords with a chain connecting them with a wind attribute. Hyht was designing a knife that could extend or shorten with a lightning attribute. Akta worked on a serrated scythe that used the ice attribute to freeze enemies. Nija was working on designing a gauntlet with a buckler attached and a long sword which both used the light attribute. Hika was designing an aerodynamic blade that used the wind attribute to make it faster. The couple worked on a bow for Mynn with the dark attribute and two gauntlets for Yula with the dark attribute. Rena was thinking about creating a chain or rope to connect her two kamas and it used the wind attribute to control how it moved. The class was really pumped for their new weapons, So much so that Erin voiced a loud cheer and the librarian came over to tell them to be quiet. Rune had hired a librarian to watch over the couple thousand books related to the students’ classes, monsters, weapons, what certain jobs did what, and some daily living books, He wanted the students to be independent when they left and he provided things for them. So, if a student was in poverty or bad at their job, it wasn’t Rune’s fault. After an hour of decisions and re-editing, they took their designs to Rune who was in the lab. He looked them over, gave his opinions, and asked if this was what they really wanted. He acted like a parent making sure his child wanted something before he got it. Then he went into a back room. There was a small window in the door that was not very see through and light shined through it. One minute later, he came out. “Here are your weapons. I have even put the self-repair enchantment on them. Also, I need you eight to go to a specific place. Don’t worry. I think it should be fine…”