The air was pregnant with magic—and bugs.
Leo stared at the ‘Eighth Vale’ ahead of him. According to what El had told him before he left, it was a localized region of intensely higher magical energy than normal for this world, closer to a full rank two magic world. But it was also a massive swamp, hundreds of miles wide—and filled with dragons, wyrms, and drakes that were far stronger than could normally be sustained on this world. But the entrance, which they were at, was only a couple miles wide, with the cliffs that went higher than Leo could see on either side.
He was briefly reminded of Cliff Pass from before the Crone had vacated it, but this was far wetter than that had been. There were also subtle differences, beyond the giant bugs. The trees grew oddly, and sometimes in ways that ought to be impossible, like sideways before curving up, or a trunk splitting into five new trunks shaped like a hand and only becoming tree like again at the top, where branches inexplicably reconnected the trunks.
Even the water was off. Most of it was normal, but patches of glittering water also floated around the swamp, and that part never had any detritus.
“Here there be dragons,” Leo whispered, softly.
Hugh gave a sniff and somehow wrinkled his scaled snout. “Doesn’t really look like it. I do see more bugs, though.”
Leo nodded, anticipation running through his veins. He had Leveled again, to eighteen, on the way here. Hugh was nineteen. This was the easiest he had made levels since his first days on Toth, and he was loving it. He wanted to see what Twenty offered him. Dungeons were amazing for his people, and would almost certainly beat the leveling opportunities on this world for low-level people—but the highest dungeon was barely Level Thirteen right now. Leo wanted more—and this world was offering up a platter of easy to defeat—for their level—magical beasts.
I don’t think this lust for levels will drive me to darkness… but I can understand it. If I was Level Eighty it would solve so very many things.
Although it would take a world-sized river of blood to get there.
Leo had a brief pang of yearning for Lily—she was always the one worried that he might fall to darkness.
Leo shook himself from his musings. “Let’s look around, shall we?”
Hugh snorted. “By Merdrek’s Teeth, do you even listen to me? I said I see more of the bugs.”
He pointed with his right foreclaw toward one huge, over-sized tree, covered in vines, that was growing from the swamp on numerous roots. At the top was what appeared to be a massive dragonfly—a good twenty feet in length. A second one was lounging just behind the first.
Leo grimaced. “I’m not sure we should fight a fast moving, flying insect, no matter how badly it’s optimized magically. Let’s avoid that and look for more of the ground-based ones. Inertial armor won’t stop those things from grabbing me and carrying me away. I’d rather not split the party.”
“Any more than it already has been,” Hugh muttered darkly.
“Yeah.”
Leo picked his way through the swamp, away from the giant dragonflies, wondering how the heck they intended to find a dragon to raid. The water varied in depth, and non-magical insects ranging in size from what Leo considered ‘normal’ up to hippo were constantly bothering them. Soon, Leo was soaked, covered in gunk, and itching everywhere.
As they progressed, the trees became thicker and thicker. Leo also saw two trees get up on roots and move, like ents, but when he analyzed them they came back as non-sentient, along with a snarky comment about wasting essence. It was slow going through the swamp.
Partway through the day, however, he did manage to find another one of the centipede bugs and executed it. He needed nine total bug kills to make Level nineteen, unfortunately, and hoped he would find a stronger version of the bug soon. Marginally stronger, not wildly stronger.
After a few hours, they broke through the ‘pass’ and into the ‘Eighth Vale’ proper—without seeing any dragon the whole time. The giant mountain edges curved away in both directions. The Vale, from where Leo was positioned, was still a massive, tree-filled swamp, however.
Although the magic had to be intensifying. One of the trees melded its leaves together and took flight like a demented hot-air balloon before landing in a slightly less densely occupied part of the swamp.
Leo stared around at the magical, waterlogged forest. “How do we find dragons in all this? I mean, I thought we would see a bunch more, but so far… nothing.”
Hugh glanced around. “Well… dragons do like their caves. Maybe hug a wall, or even climb up onto it? I mean, By Merdrek’s soggy butt, what dragon would want to lair in this swamp?”
Leo thought about it. “So… all the dragon’s that could, would lair in the mountains?”
“Probably,” Hugh said. “Why? You’re getting that ideas look again.”
“Well, not really a cool idea, just a thought—I think we do this the counter-intuitive way. The swamp is still tens of thousands of square miles large, and the prime real-estate is only hundreds, I think. So only the very strongest dragons would lair in the mountains, right?”
Hugh nodded. “I get it. You’re saying we should stay where the strongest dragons aren’t?”
“Yeah… I think it’s squelch-through-disgusting-mud-o-clock again.”
Before they could do anything else, A colossal red dragon, hundreds, plural, of feet long, blasted from the swamp. Trees were ripped out and thrown aside like legos as it blasted off, although two managed to turn into balloons and settle safely back into the swamp.
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“Hide!” Leo screamed, and the two of them ran to one of the huge trees and pushed themselves against it.
The dragon never even faced in their direction.
“That dragon… how big was it?” Leo asked, stunned.
“Larger than dad I think,” Hugh said, awe in his voice. Awe… and hunger.
Leo glanced at him, to find his friend staring with undisguised longing at the dragon. “What if there isn’t a limit, Leo?”
“What?” Leo asked, surprised. Normally, if he didn’t know what Hugh was talking about, his dragon friend was drunk.
“What if you can always get stronger? I mean, it’s hard to tell because of the distance, but that dragon really did look larger than Dad. What if I can simply become more powerful forever? Just gain levels and grow until I’m a god?”
“Well… you can grow until you’re as strong as a progenitor, certainly. Level Eighty equivalent. No reason to think you can’t become even more powerful and keep leveling. Although killing things at that point would be… insane.”
Hugh was silent for a moment. “Can I really? I mean, I’m restricted to Level Seventy, according to my status chart.”
Leo motioned at the swamps. “Until you ascend to a higher magic world. I guess you can’t do it and stay in Dragon Beach. But you can do it. I don’t know what this world would allow you to achieve… but it would be more, I assume.”
“If I wanted to spend my life trapped in a swamp,” Hugh said, shaking his leg and tossing some muck to the side. Then his eyes turned to the speck of the dragon in the distance. “Although, to be that strong…”
“Well, I’ll likely be able to open another dimension with high magic levels soon. Maybe it’ll be something different. Although where did this lust for power come from? It’s never seemed that important to you.”
Hugh sighed. “I don’t want to sound like all the terrible dragons, Leo… but when I was weak, no one glanced at me. Now I’m strong… and I have two dragonesses to sleep with, Polly is still in talks to maybe join us… I have nine children, a hoard… none of that wouldn’t have happened without levels.”
Leo laughed internally at the ‘still in talks’ comment, like it was a business contract from his old world, but he shook it off to focus on the main conversation. “Well, I’m all for self-improvement, including, maybe even especially, leveling. But don’t forget you’re happy now because of the things levels earned you, not the levels themselves. Don’t put ‘gaining levels’ ahead of ‘the reason I gained levels.’ It’s just a tool.”
Hugh nodded. “Yeah, put that way, it makes total sense. Sorry. Shall we go see about getting another tool?”
Leo nodded and the two of them continued through the swamp.
Suddenly, the water erupted around them. A wyrm about twelve feet long erupted from beneath the water—and the ground beneath that. It was green and covered in scales that appeared to be moss and debris. As it reared from the water, mouth open, Leo dropped beneath the surface, flat on his face.
A vicious green liquid splattered all across the water above him. Leo grabbed a log with his mind, his eyes stinging from the water he was in, and swept the gunk away before leaping out of the water and using telekinesis to leap from the melting log toward the wyrm. He took in the scene as he hit the apogee of his arc, Heartseeker in his hand but his shield still on his back.
Hugh was grappling the wyrm. Leo’s bronze buddy was slightly smaller but obviously far stronger. His entire right side was burned with acid, but Hugh was ignoring it.
But Leo and Hugh really had been fighting together closely for two years now, and had their patterns worked out to a T. Hugh caught sight of Leo and switched his hold, letting the enemy get a massive bite to his shoulder but immobilizing his enemy’s head for a moment.
Leo came down with an overhead strike, slashing the wyrm’s exposed juggler open. Blood fountained through the air and the wyrm keened, letting go of Hugh and trying to escape before collapsing to the ground. Hugh jumped on the wyrm and pinned it half beneath the swamp water.
Leo saw the fear in the wyrm’s eyes that he now, unfortunately, recognized—the fear of a creature that knew it was dying.
Normally, Leo would have let a creature that ambushed them and tried to end their life die, but he needed answers. Although he couldn’t help but be a touch happy to have an excuse to not let it die.
He touched the wyrm and willed his magic into it as regenerate. The creature’s wound closed enough that it wasn’t gushing blood.
Hugh grumbled. “Can I get some of that? This shit on my side hurts a mite, you know.”
Leo hit his best friend with a regenerate as well.
“Why… why?” the green wyrm croaked out, Leo’s tongues ring translating the unfamiliar speech.
Leo stood over it’s half-submerged head. “What’s your name?”
“I’m Shun-Ri Xiashou, master.”
Master?
“What kind of wyrm are you?” Hugh asked.
“I’m a Glorious Moss Spirit Dragon,” the thing said, no hint of pride in its voice.
Leo used analyze.
Shun-Ri Xiashou, Glorious Moss Spirit Wyrm
Level 1(11)
Mind, Wyld, Soul
Health: ~6/75
Stamina: 10
Essence: 30
Physical Attacks:
Bite: Damage 1–12
Crush: Damage 10–20
Magical Attacks: Acid Breath: 30’ cone 30 feet long for 3-18 acid damage.
Defenses:
Armor: 4
Special Abilities: None.
Yup, all three words of “Glorious Moss Spirit” are part of this thing’s official species name, even though only the middle part seems to apply.
Shun-Ri Xiashou has spent at least twenty-five years never making a level through fighting before picking on you two, who look weaker than you are. Good job ruining his run.
Leo sighed. Nothing interesting their at all. “I have some questions, so I’ll trade ‘forgiving you attacking me and my friend’ for ‘knowledge of where a stronger dragon is.’ That sound fair?”
The wyrm nodded frantically, stirring the water around him.
Leo noticed that a few vines and roots were creeping across the ground beneath the swamp water toward the pool of blood. This whole swamp seems sinister.
“I’m going to put a Mind tracking power on you. If you don’t give me accurate and useful information, I’m going to hunt you down and kill you,” Leo said, then used analyze on the wyrm again, dismissing it rapidly. Hopefully it just senses Mind magic.
The wyrm’s eyes went even larger. “I’ll tell you true.”
“I need to find a dragon, hopefully total Level Twenty or below, with at least a thousand gold worth of treasure. That will be easy to kill or steal from.”
“Well… um… will a wyrm do?”
“Yeah.”
“My… my cousin, he’s a weirdo. He just studies magic and stuff in this weird lair he built himself in the swamp. I think his stuff is worth more than that. I thought about killing him and taking it, but he has a few levels under his belt, so I didn’t want to risk it.”
Real hero, here.
“Where is he?”
“About ten miles, due north of here.”
“hmm… alright, get out of here. And head south. If I think you’re contacting this guy, I’ll hunt you down as well.”
The wyrm nodded and Hugh let him up. It hualed itself to its feet and then ran off through the swamp.
"So... murder the researching wyrm?” Hugh asked with a frown.
Leo was starting to feel like the bad guy. “Well… we can always just steal from him. I mean, this whole society does kill millions of elves ever couple hundred years.”
“Hmm… wonder if this guy has ever done that.”
Leo grimaced. “Let’s just go see what he’s up to, alright?”
Hugh nodded. “That’s fair.”