As always, the rogue was the first to die. Something about sneaking up on a slumbering dragon four times your height with a short blade scarcely larger than a butter knife was anathema to living a long and prosperous life. This particular rogue looked young for her level, scarcely older than twenty. Her apparent youth was noticeable in the smooth skin around her void-like eyes, her irises perfectly blended into her inky black sclera. She had actually been adequately stealthy when she crept silently across the uneven floor of Typhoeus’s lair on padded soft-soled boots that were enchanted to muffle nearby sounds. If it wasn’t for her band of heavily breathing compatriots waiting around the corner of his cave's entrance, or the discreetly tripped alarm wards scattered throughout his lair, he might not have been waiting for her. While the rogue approached, he feigned sleep, and when she drew her weapon, the blade dripping with viscous poison, he patiently held his pre-prepared spell firmly in his mind.
As the knife had plunged down through the air, aimed at the finer scales located between his throat and his jaw, Typhoeus released his pent-up magics. Creation conformed to his draconic will as he supplied his working with ample enough mana to evoke his simple yet very effective spell. The rogue's well-oiled leather armour, heavily warded to protect against his claws, fangs, and his fiery breath, was utterly unprepared to withstand a magical assault of any kind. In a flash of golden light, his would-be assassin had been thrown backwards 30 feet when his compressed lance of hardened mana impacted against her chest. His draconic mana had subsequently exploded outwards as it ripped through her protective vestments and pulped her delicate human flesh. Her head had clipped a low hanging stalactite while she flew. Her skull met mana-infused granite and came out the worse causing her body to then ragdoll around the hardened stone protrusion before she fell to the rocky floor below with a wet thump.
Human cries of outrage emerged from the mouth of his cave moments before the remnants of the fallen rogue’s party rushed forwards to meet him. The adventurers’ hurried steps pounded on the cold stone floor while the now-deceased woman's vital energies were released into the air and provided a noticeable bump to the ambient mana within his lair. Typhoeus scanned their classes and levels as they approached and was unsurprised to see the remainder of a relatively typical party of five, all firmly within their fourth tier of power. Although the group was now missing their rogue when the surviving humans tagged as a warrior, mage, healer and ranger all rushed at him with their runic weapons and magic foci drawn.
Adventurers. Oh, how Typhoeus had learned to loathe them.
He was almost a decade into his exile from the lofty peaks of the Dragonspines, and he had spent the majority of it contending with these opportunistic thugs. Night after night, they continued to creep into his home while he slept, hell-bent on killing him and selling his corpse for something as trivial as an enormous bounty of golden coins. This wasn’t to say that he was entirely blameless for his current set of circumstances—he had years ago made infrequent raids on the merchant caravans that travelled along the nearby Old Roads, laying claim to a few choice pieces of loot to add to his then-growing horde. He now profoundly regretted his youthful aggression as he had to contend with retaliatory attacks made by these high-level adventurers on a frighteningly regular basis.
He turned his attention back to the present, his lungs already filling with aspected mana before he unleashed a great gout of Dragonfire at the adventurers storming through the mouth of his cave. His skill [Sovereign's Breath] amplifie his innate ability to breathe fire, imbuing it with a wave of kinetic force and supercharging the heat of the flames that were conveniently funnelled at the charging humans by the reinforced walls of his lair.
The mage raised his staff, a gilded rod with a solid viridium core; runes for power, control and pierce were etched deep enough into its surface to allow for the green metal within to shine through as the human pushed his mana through his focus. Arcane shields of translucent green energy audibly snapped into Creation to block the golden flames from washing over the party, but as usual, the mage underestimated the kinetic force behind Typhoeus’s dragonfire. His [Sovereign's Breath] hammered at the sickly green shields with a force comparable to a rockslide, causing the arcane barrier to emit a high-pitched whine as the mage within was forced to commit much more of his mana into sustaining his protective spell.
When Typhoeus’s dragonfire was spent, the mage’s shields still stood, but the middle-aged man wavered unsteadily on his feet as he leaned heavily on his tall staff. Beads of sweat dripped down from his wan face while he sucked in great gulps of the stiflingly hot air. Typhoeus struck hard, seizing the initiative as he rushed forwards towards the mage. The dragon’s comparatively massive body raced through the tight confines of his cave with a gracefulness that surprised the attacking adventurers.
His powerful jaws snapped shut, clamping down around the failing shields that protected the relatively unarmored mage from his long dagger-like teeth. He squeezed his jaw tighter as he felt the spell start to give, but he was forced to release the adventurer when the party's warrior finally recovered. The high-level human stepped forwards and swung his longsword down in a mighty skill-enhanced strike. Typhoeus tried to deflect the worst of the blow by angling the thick protective scales along the ridges of his neck just right so he’d dissipate the force of the impact, but by the way the sword shone with a pale blue light the moment before the blade's edge hit him, he knew he had made a mistake.
Typhoeus felt the warrior’s offensive skill directly combat his own defensive skill and come out the victor. His higher levelled [Sovereign's Body] skill was trumped by what must have been a very specific anti-dragon ability. The warrior’s sword cleaved through his thick scales like they were made of tissue paper. His crimson blood gushed out from the wound as the sword drew a long line of fiery red pain down the length of his serpentine neck.
He cursed his hubris for his near-fatal mistake. His decision to try and deflect the blow had been made only after checking the warrior’s sword for runes and finding none that gave him pause. If he had attempted to simply tank the attack with his immense HP reserves rather than try to dodge the worst of it, the fight would likely already be over. As it was, he had taken a severe injury, but with his naturally high HP regeneration, he wasn't overly concerned—he could already feel his body stem the blood flow as the wound slowly drew itself back together.
He let out a loud, rumbling roar, only stopping to shield his face with an outstretched wing as a volley of enchanted arrows aimed straight at his eyes was narrowly intercepted. The arrows themselves had very little stopping power, but when they hit, they exploded into fragments of razorlike shrapnel that tore great gouges into the relatively delicate membranes of his wing. He snapped his serpentine neck forwards as he folded up his now-useless limb behind him, ignoring the searing lances of pain that were sent stabbing into his brain. Typhoeus lowered his horns while his neck quickly unfolded and head-butted the warrior with the dragon-slaying skill directly into the path of the ranger before any more glowing arrows could be sent his way.
The dragon let out a low sigh of disappointment as the healer cast a spell that encapsulated the flying warrior in a cocoon of soft white light before he could hit the ranger, turning what should have been a collision that snapped bones into one that was unlikely even to leave a bruise. It seemed, much to his dismay, that this adventuring party actually knew what they were doing, making them significantly more dangerous than the average group that entered his cave. As the adventurers rallied behind their unharmed warrior and launched a new assault, he lunged forwards to meet them, attacking with his claws, teeth, and magic as he traded blows with the adventurers in his increasingly desperate bid to stay alive.
After what felt like hours of fighting, but in reality couldn’t have been much more than a few minutes, Typhoeus was done. The entire adventuring team lay dead or dying before him, but the damage they had dealt was enough to put him out of action for the next couple of days. The wounds inflicted upon him by the adventurer’s dragonslaying skill would be frustratingly slow to heal, despite his draconic regeneration.
"Heh, we got you good, you bastard," the warrior said, pausing abruptly to cough up some more of his precious lifeblood as he lay there haemorrhaging on Typhoeus’s once-clean floor. For a brief moment the dragon considered responding, but he ultimately decided the dying human wasn’t worth the effort.
"One of these days, someone like me is going to finally gut you and turn you into a coat, you overgrown lizard," the man continued, then attempted a laugh. It was a peculiar sound, more of a gurgle than anything. That was actually quite impressive, considering how his lungs were practically full with fluid, but Typhoeus felt no need to humour the dying man any longer. With a lazy swipe of a foreclaw, he messily disembowelled the fallen warrior, plunging his cave back into silence.
While he licked it clean, he checked the System notifications that had been plaguing him since the rogue had first met her unfortunate end on a stalactite. As the words began appearing in his mind's eye, he was as disappointed as ever to see the final predictable message.
*Congratulations on defeating a level 140 Voidstrike Assassin. Experience is awarded.*
*Congratulations on defeating a level 144 Tenebrous Archwizard. Experience is awarded.*
*Congratulations on defeating a level 153 Celestial Healer. Experience is awarded.*
*Congratulations on defeating a level 157 Farseer Ranger. Experience is awarded.*
*Congratulations on defeating a level 162 Dragonblood Huntsman. Experience is awarded.*
*Your class is at its level cap. Rank up to claim further experience.*
Typhoeus groaned in frustration, both at the likely truth behind the warrior’s last words and because of the System's taunting messages. He had been level-capped for a year now, and despite its promising start, this fight had been his closest one yet.
Slowly, he examined his injured wing and winced at the large rents in his skin. The damage would heal in time, but until then, without his ability to fly away from danger, in the likely event that he was attacked by more adventurers, the result was a foregone conclusion.
He had two choices: he could hide in his cave and pray to the System that no one else would come to kill him before he recovered, or he could bite the sword and finally enact the plan he had been working on since his last rank up. Typhoeus pulled up his status page to see if anything had changed, if there was any glimmer of hope, but was disappointed there was nothing new besides how appallingly low his three resource pools were.
Name: Typhoeus
Species: Sovereign Dragon (True)
Age: 54
HP: 164/4780
SP: 108/4780
MP: 365/5040
Strength: 120
Dexterity: 77
Vitality: 80
Intelligence: 120
Willpower: 120
Charisma: 80
Class: Young Adult Sovereign Dragon - Level 199*
Alternate Form - Level 31
Sovereign's Arcana - Level 192
Sovereign's Aura - Level 194
Sovereign's Body - Level 199
Sovereign's Breath - Level 186
Sovereign's Perception - Level 176
Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.
Trait: Runt
Sovereign's Arcana - You may directly expend mana to create magical effects. You may add this skill’s level twice to your effective intelligence and willpower for determining the efficacy of your magical effects, the size of your mana pool, and the rates of regeneration. In addition, your magic is more resistant to dispelling and may more easily use visualised runes as a focus.
Sovereign's Aura - You may project an aura with a maximum radius determined by your charisma score + (this skill level * 2). Within the bounds of your aura, you may expend mana to alter energetic, physical, and psychological properties. In addition, your aura is more potent and better able to overpower others.
Sovereign's Body - You gain flat damage mitigation and hostile magic resistance equal to twice this skill’s level. You may also add twice this skills level to your effective strength and vitality scores. In addition, your health regeneration is increased by one step.
Sovereign's Breath - When spending mana to augment your breath weapon, you may alter the frequency, size, and duration of your flames, increasing the base damage by twice this skill’s level where any additional damage is composed of equal parts kinetic and thermal energy. Damage dealt also reduces the stamina and mana pools of your target.
Sovereign's Perception - In addition to enhancing your senses, you may see in a perfect sphere without the need for line of sight. The maximum radius is determined by your willpower + twice this skill’s level. You may also perceive non-visible magical auras, effects, and system-generated descriptions.
It was times like these he lamented that his life was dominated by the need to level in order to gain the attributes and skills that came with it. From the loftiest of dragons to the lowliest of farm animals, all living creatures on Creation were gifted a species class at birth by the Great System. Admittedly there was one very large exception to that universal truth, but the humans were a special case, and it was their act of supreme self-mutilation that was largely to blame for the mess that plagued Creation to this day.
Young Adult Sovereign Dragon*
One of the rarest true dragon breeds native to the Dragonspine Mountains, Sovereign Dragons are famed for their near physical perfection as well as their innate magical abilities.
As a young adult of your species, you are just coming into the beginnings of your true power.
+3 Str, +1 Dex, +2 Vit, +2 Int, +2 Will, +2 Cha at each interval along with +3 free stats.
*You are prevented from ranking up in this class until you reach the age of 100.
He was eternally grateful for the accident of birth that had resulted in his status as one of the noblest forms of life. Sovereign dragons were the true rulers of the Dragonspines no matter what humans decided to draw on their little maps, ruling over the other lesser dragon species who called the massive mountain range their home. His noble birth made the sting of his exile hurt even more, along with the fact that he could trace every one of his problems to a single line on his status, the trait that simply would not go away.
Trait - Runt
You are the runt of your clutch. You are physically smaller and apply -1 Str, -1 Vit, +1 Int, +1 Will at each interval for your species class.
He hated it with every fibre of his being; it was one thing to be the smallest of his clutch, but for the System itself to declare him so damaged was not only galling but also a convenient excuse for his peers to subject him to every form of abuse and humiliation that they were capable of imagining. In dragon hierarchies, size was everything. He could handle the forced attribute changes, for dragons were as proud of their intellect as they were of their prowess with fang and claw, but to be so much smaller than his peers was a weakness he could never overcome.
As a Sovereign Dragon, his rightful place was up amongst the very peaks of the Dragonspine Mountains. There, he would be protected from any would-be dragon slayers by the altitude, the elements, and a veritable mountain range full of lesser monsters and dragons. But for Typhoeus, that protection had never been his, and now that he had been exiled it never would be; he had been too small to claim territory from peers of his species, and his utter failure to best even lesser chromatic dragons had led to him being cast out all the way to the very foothills of the Dragonspines.
Here at these low heights, he was almost without peer, surrounded for the most part by low-level monsters who quaked in terror at his approach. By evicting a small family of wyverns, he had even been able to lay claim to a lair that was almost suitable for a dragon of his size and distinguished breed. The only problem was, his den was located only a week's hike away from a large human settlement that seemed to send out adventurers to hunt him with alarming regularity.
As a result of his constant battles with the humans, he had levelled extremely quickly, and if it weren’t for his species class being age capped, he would likely be celebrating his rapid growth. What should have taken him the better part of 50 years, he had done in 4, but now he was out of room to grow, yet the adventurers kept on coming, increasing in level, skill and coordination with every passing week.
They were utterly relentless, and he was so very tired of the near-constant fighting. Faded scars crisscrossed across his once-magnificent hide; what should have been a thick coat of iridescent silver and gold scales was now a tarnished yellowed silver where they had been repeatedly slashed, bashed, and cut from him by the varied attacks of his human foes. It was only his skill-enhanced natural regeneration that allowed him to recover from his near-continuous stream of injuries as his scales were regrown and replaced more times than he could count.
He didn't know why they kept coming to kill him. The bounty of golden coins alone couldn’t possibly be enough to persuade so many disparate groups of adventurers into committing suicide by dragon. But right now, their motivations didn’t matter—he wasn’t sure he could survive another 24 hours, let alone another 46 years of regular fighting. If both of his wings were functioning, he could simply fly higher into the mountain range, but now that he was considered an adult of his species, Typhoeus would have to fight his way through whoever's territory he passed through, a fight he was sure to lose, and that wasn’t even taking his siblings into account.
Even now, he could smell adventurers on the wind, [Sovereign's Perception] warning him that more humans wanted to try their hand at killing him. The opportunistic little creatures were clearly hoping to finish him off before he could recover. He had little time to prepare and only one viable choice left to him. He couldn’t fight, not if he hoped to survive, and with his ruined wings even flight was denied to him. So instead, he would have to hide.
He stepped over the bodies of the slain adventurer party, resisting the urge to feast on their rapidly cooling corpses. His willpower was aided in part by the fact that some of them had voided their bowels in death. He stopped short of exiting the cave and, following a long inhalation, he let out a deep, bellowing roar that echoed out across the rolling hills. He usually enjoyed roaring, it was a pure expression of primal draconic dominance, but this time around it just hurt. As his lungs strained to push the compressed air out through his gullet, he could feel every cracked or broken rib scream out in painful protest.
[Sovereign's Arcana] swelled in his chest as he wove a grand illusion, a magical construct of spun light and vibrating air particles that would follow his pattern when released. When he was satisfied with his work, he filled the spell with mana and released it; and an illusory dragon leapt out of the cave, gracefully taking to the air as it unfurled its pristine wings and started to fly away, loudly screaming to the heavens as his distraction rapidly grew ever more distant.
Typhoeus felt the strain of his spell pull against his psyche—it had to be a large working to fool the coming adventurers—but it wasn’t anything that his high mental stats couldn't handle. He tied off the knot of spellwork, knowing all too well that without his sustained concentration, the spell would unravel over the course of several minutes. Hopefully by then the illusion would be too far away for anyone to notice. Still, Typhoeus had other more immediate duties to contend with, so he banished the potential consequences of failure from his mind as he went to work.
He craned his long neck over his shoulder, his eyes refusing to linger on the numerous open wounds still oozing red along his back, and instead he focused in on his modest-sized hoard. It was pitiful, to be sure—a dragon of his stature deserved far more coins piled much higher—but it was his. While it mainly consisted of the arms and armour of slain adventurers, there was still the odd item of artistic merit he had once happily looted from the merchant caravans that regularly travelled the Old Roads within a day’s flight of his lair.
He walked over to his hoard, limping slightly as yet another wound made its presence known, and his eyes soaked in his wealth for what he knew was to be the last time for a long while. Fortunately, while his trove lacked the art and treasures that a dragon of his station naturally deserved, it was composed primarily of the enchanted gear of fallen adventurers. [Sovereign's Perception] was warning him that the humans were getting even closer, so he didn’t have the time to sort through it properly. Instead, he raced over to his hoard on three legs, his back right limb trailing on the ground as he rapidly rummaged through his collected treasures.
With a sense of triumph, he found it: a large iron-bound chest half buried beneath his pile of [Dragonbane Swords]. The lid of the [Traveller’s Chest] popped open with the infusion of a single point of mana, allowing the dragon to begin shovelling the entirety of his treasure into the open mouth of the chest. He felt his stamina pool burning as he worked, but at the end of the day, his pile of accumulated wealth wasn't all that large. Within a couple of minutes, Typhoeus was able to get the entirety of his hoard stashed away inside the magical chest. With another drop of his precious mana, the lid of his chest slammed shut before the trunk began to shrink. It reduced in size down to that of a human head, which he then promptly swallowed whole, carefully directing the magical artefact to his second stomach for storage before moving on with the next stage of his plan.
Alternate Form - Used by dragons since the dawn of Creation to infiltrate, interbreed, and otherwise observe the other enlightened species, this skill allows you to adopt the form of another species indefinitely.
Available Forms:
Human Female.
While active, skills dependent on your dragon physiology are suppressed, physical attributes are capped at Alternate Form's skill level, and your dragon class will be hidden for the duration of this skills use.
He hated the skill—or more accurately, he hated his weakness that made its repeated use so necessary. Dragons of his age were supposed to take things like [Sovereign's Might] or [Sovereign's Fortitude], but from the moment that it was first offered to him by the Great System, he knew that he had to take it. He needed the skill, since [Alternate Form] gave him the option to evade adventurer parties when fighting would otherwise mean his death. Typically, it was a skill reserved for much older dragons, those who were essentially immortal and decided to venture into the realms of man to alleviate their boredom prior to receiving the Call. Typhoeus having it at the youthful age of 54 spoke to his cowardice, and perhaps even an unseemly interest in humans.
Out of time, he fed the skill what little mana he had remaining, the ability ripping through his body as it activated. For a split-second agony seized his body and his form blurred, snapping down from that of a huge 20-foot-tall, 110-foot-long dragon and into that of a mewling teenage human.
Name: Typhoeus
Species: Human
Age: 18
HP: 165/310
SP: 148/310
MP: 3/5040
Strength: 31
Dexterity: 31
Vitality: 31
Intelligence: 120
Willpower: 120
Charisma: 80
He could feel his true status hiding beneath the false one with most of his dragon skills inactive, but for now he presented as an average human female, admittedly one with much higher-than-normal attributes for a member of the ‘unclassed.’. Avoiding a deep status scan was essential to maintaining his disguise, but from what little he had been able to piece together about human society, such things were profoundly taboo and shouldn’t be too hard for him to ultimately avoid.
Typhoeus frowned as he looked down at his new body. It was all soft and flabby; the smooth caramel-coloured skin that covered his form in the place of his golden scales felt overly sensitive and easy to cut by comparison. He couldn’t imagine sleeping on a bed of coins covered in such a thing—he supposed that was one of the many reasons why humans bothered with clothing when they weren’t otherwise encasing themselves in that infuriatingly thick full-plate. From his research, he knew that his human body mirrored the average female form, which was ludicrously top-heavy and went a long way to explain why the vast majority of adventurers he faced were male. Surely with frames like his, human females would struggle to walk, let alone fight, given that they seemed to be all hips and breasts. Why the System had ever seen fit to make a species so abundant in fat and lacking in scales, he would never know, although he supposed that it did do wonders for the flavour and texture of the creature’s meat.
Ideally, Typhoeus would have preferred to remain a male, but he had countless statuettes, portraits, and sketches of nude women scattered amongst his hoard, so it has been infinitely easier for him to craft a pleasing female [Alternate Form] using his many treasures as reference models. The predominantly male adventurer bodies he had access to were always a bit worse for wear by the time that he got around to studying them in detail, and in the much more limited collection of artwork that he had of human males, they were consistently clothed and more often than not clad in the plate armour that he hated so much. Why humans seemed to be so obsessed with naked females of their species, he had no idea, but at least it benefited him—he was convinced his form was extremely average based on the materials he had available to him.
With his hoard safely hidden, Typhoeus allowed himself a moment to relax. His head was spinning from both the abrupt shift in his perspective and the new hormones that were inherent to his chosen [Alternate Form]. The temporary suppression of his [Sovereign's Body] skill wasn’t helping things either, making him feel as weak as a young wyrmling. Humans simply weren't built to handle quite so much pain, and already he was starting to feel woozy from the health and stamina point loss, which had carried over into his new form.
He took hurried steps towards the mouth of the cave, intent on meeting his future 'saviours’ head-on, though his new body jiggled unpleasantly with every step. Having suppressed his [Sovereign's Aura] so as not to blow his disguise, the needy whispers of the nearby Dungeon Cores had already started in his ear. Each one promised him treasure and power if he simply forsook his plan and instead killed the coming adventurers. As ever, the whispered rewards were tempting, but Typhoeus knew Dungeon Cores liked to overpromise and had a bad habit of underdelivering. So, with a small amount of willpower, he shoved their incessant whispers aside and focused instead on his plan.
So caught up was he in savouring his future successes that he slipped on a puddle of blood and viscera, tumbling head over heels across broken rocks and scattered gore as he desperately tried to stop his forward momentum.
Typhoeus groaned as he sat up on his knees, his formerly flawless skin now scraped and bloody. It was then that he was suddenly overcome by the overwhelming urge to cry. The thought of what he was about to do reduced him to tears as he looked back on how far he had already fallen. While he struggled to breathe between great gulping sobs, he was struck by the peculiarity of the involuntary sensation. It was something he had only ever watched the most pathetic of adventurers do in their final moments, and he had always ascribed it to simple human weakness, but as a dragon of his stature was forced to shed salty tears, he had to consider that perhaps there was more to this crying thing than he had initially thought.