“Cozy little set-up you have here,” Hugh said, glancing around at the shattered tower he was meeting Leo at.

Leo grimaced. He’d gotten to the tower they had agreed to meet a bit early. The tower wasn’t just shattered—a dragon had clearly sprayed acid over a ton of the people here, and the melted corpses—and the slime parts of them had turned into—were still around. The air was filled with flies and an indescribably bad smell. Leo had been extremely tempted to wait outside, but didn’t want to take a chance at screwing things up now.

Hell, with his new ability perfected grit he was immune to non-magical disease and pollution now anyway. This place wasn’t a threat to him, no matter how much his stomach wanted to rebel.

And Hugh had too much Toughness to be affected. This was the safest place for both of them to meet, theoretically.

Leo still nodded to his friend. “Yeah, it’s gross. But we need to tough it out. What did you find out?”

Hugh pursed his scale lips to one side, revealing a single fang. “By Merdrek’s glazed eyes, Leo, it was exactly like you said. They ate my theory about secret treasure right up, and after a bit of talking, they all decided to stay and find it.”

“But?” Leo asked, interpreting Hugh’s expression as one of ambivalence.

Hugh lashed his tail back and forth. “But, They’ve got a biggun. Geng Fulung. He’s a ‘Heaven’s Fall Dragon,’ which is apparently as nasty as it sounds. A forking lightning breath, by Merdrek’s overpowered abilities. The damn thing strikes at multiple nearby targets, and is very hard to dodge. Huge, tons of life. And it has Air magic and a few actual levels, making it even more dangerous. The thing is mid-thirties in level, Leo.”

Hugh pushed his head forward. “He’s higher level than Chester, Leo.”

His dragon friend had grown immensely from the coward he had once been, but a hint of the old fear was in his eyes. Leo could understand it—but for an odd trick of Lily’s illusions, they would all have died at Chester’s hands.

Leo hesitated. It was about the same distance between the levels, or maybe a bit less now in his team’s current favor—but they had possessed no chance against Chester, basically. On the other hand, human heroes were known to fight far above level, and the dragons on this world seemed to be a touch simplistic in their ability builds…

And Leo had a trick or two up his own sleeve—well, Andul’s armored limb, anyway. Close enough.

“Anyone else we would need to worry about?” Leo asked. “Some other badass dragon?”

Hugh shook his head. “No, the rest are actually medium weak—by our current standards, at least—and tap out at about twenty-to-twenty-five for the most part. But they’re all ‘basic’ dragons. Breath weapon, claws, huge pile of Health. But we’ve gotten really good at fighting those dragons as a team.”

Leo slowly nodded.

“You’re going to make me do this, aren’t you?” Hugh asked. “Fight Geng, I mean.”

Leo hesitated, but then committed to his decision. “Remember when you talked about overcoming things? Right before we fought Chester, in fact?”

Hugh grimaced and waved a foreclaw at Leo. “Yeah, yeah. Fine. Who wants to live forever, right?”

Leo almost laughed at the unintentional reference, but it was a serious moment, and he would have to explain the joke.

Instead, he put his hand on Hugh’s head. “Well, I think we’ll make it. This isn’t the kind of situation I would die for, or even challenge for if I didn’t think we had a great shot at coming through okay and getting benefits both.”

“What benefits?” Hugh groused. “I mean, we’re not even taking the treasure, right? Just giving it back to the locals?”

“Imagine how many levels we’ll make if we take down a dragon leveled into its mid thirties.”

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Hugh’s eyes widened. “I can’t believe I didn’t think about that… although doing it is the trick. What makes you think you can accomplish it?”

“Well, ya big galoot, I’ve been having ideas again…”

A feral smile, all fangs and smug tiger, blossomed on Hugh’s face.

***

Leo pulled open the wooden door, which was already hanging by a single hinge, and entered the lower level of the ruined tower—the same one that they had defended from the dragon the day before.

Only the lower floor was in any way intact, and for most sky elves, the lower floor was similar to a basement in human homes—not for showing off to strangers. It was a touch dank and quite sparse—but also, unlike most of their structures, made of stone. The rest of the tower was missing an entire wall and half-clawed, half-melted for a lot of the rest of it. Leo was pretty sure that one solid windstorm would bring the multi-story stone-and-wood remnant crashing to the ground, and bury their little project.

He prayed to whatever god was in charge of weather or perhaps Air magic on this kooky world for favorable weather.

Leo entered the lower floor, and then went down a huge ramp into the new lower area. Feng had found a rare sky elf with earth powers, including the stone stretching and earth moving abilities. Leo was in the process of having this new elf—Huang Zhou—create a series of chambers beneath the ground. The few essence potions they had maintained had gone into the project, and fortunately, Zhou was high enough level that he had solid efficiency in his essence use.

Especially good as they were grand chambers with vaulted ceilings. Lily was also decorating them in her own special fashion. Rich but faded tapestries adorned the walls, braziers of brass covered in the black marks of long use were fit into corners, and they had even ‘sprinkled’ a few coins around in odd places.

And a huge number of packing boxes. The only things in the place that wasn’t an illusion created by Lily and maintained at the cost of most of her essence. Only a bit had been left for healing. They needed Zhou to use his essence on physically hollowing it out, and so it fell to Lily to make the illusion convincing.

Leo walked past the huge opening rooms, and into the final room—mocked up to appear as a vault, and with a huge ‘pile of treasure’—really just rags with an illusion covering them—throughout most of the room. Andul was there, his own magic at work as he and a new golem worked on their newest devices.

“How goes everything?” Leo asked Andul, who was working on the outside of the device by hand.

Andul glanced at Leo, and then both stared at the massive metal object, so deceptively simple. Andul patted the device—to Leo, it already appeared completed.

“I have no idea if it’ll work, yer highness. You ken the problem, I’m sure. I can build it to the specifications you gave me—nearly perfectly, in fact, since I’ve cutter here to help me,” Andul said, patting his newest golem, which was basically a giant metal spider with blades for legs.

“But?” Leo asked.

Andul frowned and scratched at his red hair, an unconscious mimicry of his king. “Well, I don’t really understand the project, and even the math is a bit of a challenge for me, yer Highness. To the extent even you remembered it. And this thing’s never been tested. Not even on your world since we used magic to make up for the design problems. So the question of whether it’ll work is an open one. Should, but you understand how well and how often first time projects actually work out.”

Leo grimaced. Even if the project didn’t work, they could probably win. Probably without losing someone. If the project did work, however, he was pretty sure they would get a huge chunk of experience at relatively low cost.

“What do you think? The odds it’ll work right.”

“Well, it’s stone simple, yer highness. Very little to go wrong, and since most of yer concerns were about stress and force and we hardened the metal and made it magical both, I think the odds are very good it’ll work as desired. Call it three chances in four it goes as we want.”

Hmm…. “Alright, that’s decent enough. I’m going to go see to the last thing and then we’ll do this.”

“Whatever happens here, you’ve changed things, yer highness. When we get back, I mean. It’ll change the face of everything.”

“How so? We don’t have the resources.”

Andul laughed, the loud, boisterous laugh that Leo would associate with dwarves, normally, and clapped his liege on his back. “Ah, yer highness. You’ve got an underground duchy, one I grew up in. I might be investing in all the bat caves when we get back. But for sure I’m investing in harvesting the, um, ‘sulfur,’ since there’s only one good location I know for it. I got a share of that treasure too, after all.”

Leo was intrigued, his mind following all the new possibilities that presented.

But Andul was still talking. “My service to you will always come first, yer highness, just like I swore. Never say that Andul doesn’t keep his oaths. But, since ya barely use me for guard duty, I can help the kingdom in other ways. Besides developing magic, I mean. The Steelcore family are gonna be mine owners, I’m thinking. And maybe black powder magnates as well. Not that I’ll do it personally, mind—I plan on creating greater and greater magic items forever—but if some dragon or demon or idiot godling offs ol’ Andul someday, I think I want something fer my kids to be able to work with, ya ken?”

Leo was genuinely glad that Andul was going to presumably have kids and a wife and all that good stuff. But his mind was mostly elsewhere as he absently nodded, going further and further down interesting rabbit holes.

Leo wasn’t worried about offending his dwarven subject. Andul understood in his very soul, and within seconds, his own eyes were glazed over, dwarf and elf staring into the futures they saw in their own heads as they stood in what would, very soon, be a warzone.