As part of my ongoing effort to keep myself alive, I stopped ignoring a glaring piece of information on my character page. I had, of course, noticed my glaringly named title but accepting its presence was to accept the truth. Mrs Naebol had been a dragon. The tiny doddering old woman I had passed a hundred times in the street, waved at and mostly ignored was a System confirmed dragon.

Title - Dragon Slayer

Some lives weigh more than others, and few existences rival the dragon.

You’re one of the exceptions.

Effect - Increased resistance against draconic attacks.

Improved effectiveness against draconic enemies.

While the wordage was fairly impressive, the effect wasn’t too helpful. I’d probably think different if I ran into another dragon, but I doubted some small increases would help me survive that situation. I sighed. I was overflowing with power right now, so it wasn’t like I needed more advantages.

A rumble from my core reminded me that I did, actually. I needed every advantage I could grasp with my grubby hands to survive the dungeon, let alone the world beyond it. As dangerous and frightening as my situation may be, I could also see it for the opportunity it was.

It had been just over a day and a half since I awoke in the dungeon, so two days trying to understand the System at most for the world at large. In such a short time, I had become a completely different person, and I was only just scratching the surface of what was possible. Even without further levels, there were three Aspect slots for me to fill.

So, we were hunting.

Well, I was hunting and Naea was doing her best impression of a bull in a china shop. “What’s this thing?” She called, causing me to roll my eyes, drop my character page and wander over. We had found all sorts of things in the sand as we walked further into the dungeon. For the most part we were keeping to a perimeter, but the shiny things had brought up deeper and deeper.

“That appears to be a glasses case,” I patiently explained. “Humans without perfect eyesight can get special glass made for them, so keeping them safe is important.” Naea frowned, but I anticipated her question. “No magic before the Shift, remember?”

“Ah, that’s right.” Immediately losing interest, Naea flitted away to scan for more oddities. She hadn’t found anything useful or valuable, but it had passed the time while looking for another scorepion dune. The actual sand dunes were everywhere, but the enemies were less common. Out of the ten or so we had passed, only two of the sandy structures contained the weird insects.

I’d inspected one of the bodies before letting Naea dispose of them, and was fairly sure they couldn’t survive in the old world. I saw no mouth on them at all. It seemed instead of a stinger, or pincers, the scorepions instead had a tail which ended in a funnel and a pair of short hooks which could bury into the sand. The labrador-sized scorpions were bulbous, but as I suspected from afar, their physiology didn’t make sense when it came to firing the balls. The attack was magical in nature, and so was their feeding cycle probably.

The battles had been nearly identical to the first, with even less inefficiencies. I practised on the final group, deflecting the high-speed projectiles from three level six scorepions for five minutes. By the end, I was able to accurately hit the ball straight back at the shooter, which was how the last three had perished. I was happy with my progress, but not as happy as Naea.

“Level ten!” Amidst her happy groaning over the dead scorepion bodies, I heard her glee and turned to see her shimmer with a silver light for a moment before it faded. I was edging closer to level twenty myself but I could tell the scorepions were giving less with each kill. They just weren’t strong enough for me. Not true for the fairy. Naea hit the earlier benchmark with glee. “I’m the first!”

“The first?” I asked. She zipped through the air with more speed than I’d seen her exhibit before. Definitely upgraded. Before I could stop her, the miniature wasp-woman kissed the bridge of my nose. She smelled of scorepion, and I swiped her away with an exasperated chuckle. “First what?”

“The first fairy to reach level ten! Ooh ye’re a good one, you are. Can’t ye see how strong my wings are?” To prove her point, Naea shot off in a single direction until she was just a pinprick to even my impressive vision. Another few seconds later and she cannonned past me, flicking my ear. I swore loud and reached up, finding blood. She tried again, but I was ready.

A mana-charged puff of breath knocked her out of the air and into the sand. “Aspect of the Dragon, remember?” The exhale was hardly an attack, definitely not dragon breath, but it amused me to imagine them the same. Maybe one day, they would be. Naea wasn’t upset, jumping back into the air with a frontflip.

“Fair,” she begrudged with a nod.

“What happens if you’re the first to level ten? Is it a Dungeon Fairy thing?”

“Yes and no,” Naea answered, a desperate fire in here eyes. “If I’m the first level ten fairy, then you could get some achievements, too!” Well, I knew that word, but I didn’t want to get too carried away.

“What achievements are there?” Did other people already know about them? Were they actively going for prizes that were meant to be mine? A surprising burst of anger flared within me at the idea and I smiled as I let it dissipate. I didn’t own the changes to the world.

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

“Tonnes, I bet! I don’t really know, I only found out about them when I got one.” Ah, so Naea received information from the System just like I did? That was interesting, if nothing else. Naea was happy to discuss more, but ultimately the conversation was unhelpful. I felt a pressure hang above my head which wasn’t there before, even as I told myself it didn’t matter.

The System’s changes to my body, along with the various bouts of unconsciousness I had suffered in the last 48 hours had kept me mostly fueled, but I was started to feel tired. The idea of resting while there were potentially permanent, one-time gains for the taking was torture, however.

“Let’s go find some more scorepions,” I told Naea. The nest I had found was different from the dunes I had destroyed earlier. Six sandy spires rose into the air, higher than any tree I had ever seen. Redwoods in America were meant to be something like this, I thought. I hoped they were still there. I pushed down my anger at the damage to the world I hadn’t gotten to explore yet and approached the closest tower of sand.

Once I was in range, a blanket of footballs rained down on me at once. Taking more than a fancy spin of my staff, I judged the flight of the incoming shots well enough to slip through the onslaught and close in on the first huge dune. Dozens of names appeared as I got closer, scorepions from levels one to nine. The other huge dunes would hold the same amount, no doubt, but the thought was worrying.

Of course this fight wasn’t the simple ranged back-and-forth I had been used to with the scorepions thus far. It was my fault for assuming. Of course I would accidentally find the boss, and of course it would have a stupid name. I should have been mad at the System for yet another joke at the expense of my ruined world, but this time I felt I should have expected it.

Everything started well. The staggering amount of attacks from within the tall pile of sand was manageable, to the point that I began hitting back at the scorepions. Amongst my dodging and deflections, a few of the projectiles found their way back into the sand. My precision was increasing with each return. Right as I was beginning to feel confident, the ground beneath me literally shifted. At once, the huge sand dune tumbled, all structure lost.

I was nearly trapped in the sandfall before I was lifted from below. I was hit with the full force of a bus as a massive leg hauled itself from the ground. Any pretence of control I thought I had went out the window and I was thrown helplessly through the air. Naea caught up with me, but as she couldn’t help, it almost felt like a taunt. The ground was coming fast and the only thoughts running through my head were how much this was going to hurt and how much I wished I had wings.

It was during my unplanned and failed journey to the stars that I saw the name of the huge beast hidden under the sand. Even screaming for my life, I couldn’t stop the roll of my eyes.

Boss Monster - Manager Scorepion - Level 40

That doesn’t even make sense. How is it a manager? Distracted by the name, I plummeted into the sand like a stone. Immediately, I knew the damage was too great. My legs spasmed in the sand but I couldn’t feel them, nor could I control them. Nor my bladder. Pain threatened to send me unconscious but embarrassment and fury kept me going. Agonising sparks jumped through my back as I opened my character page and added a point to Fortitude. The sparks turned into lightning bolts as my spine knitted itself back together in seconds.

The surge of healing energies which rushed through me faded quickly. The recovery speed was honestly jarring, but it wasn’t my only issue. Shaking off the effects of pain itself also wasn’t simple. My body was hesitant to move, even though it was technically fine, physically.

My mana reserves were at half and dropping, without even an attack thrown. As disorientating as being launched into the air had been, it was impossible to lose sight of the gigantic scorepion still shaking sand from itself. I was in awe of the size, another prime example of something which could only exist due to the magic now flowing right across the world.

“Run!” An arrow shot past me, shouting a warning, but the sound was so shifted by the speed it took me a few seconds to understand what had happened. I realised the arrow was Naea at the same time I felt the ground rumble, which was in turn a second before the shadow appeared.

I planted my staff in the ground and threw myself after Naea. The rumbling increased and the shadow loomed larger. Death from above and below. I chanced a spin as I bounded forward, not slowing down with a look over my shoulder. The absolute mess of scorepion name cards which was closing in on me was terrifying, but only the third scariest thing in my line of sight.

Second was the colossal orb burning through the air towards me. Like an artillery cannon, the gargantuan scorepion had positioned itself to fire an actual boat-sized ball of poisonous death right at me.

The most horrifying, of course, was the boss monster. I couldn’t stop myself from marvelling at it, despite the overwhelming danger. The six pillars I had seen stretching high like ancient trees, were actually its impossibly long legs. Now, those legs were planted to give the scorepion stability. It had become a fortress. To help set it apart, the boss variant scorepion also waved a pair of huge pincers at me menacingly.

Wonderful, I thought while fleeing for my life, just in case the army it controls and the meteor it shoots wasn’t enough. With the pace I managed, I quickly began to outrace the stampede of impending insects. With maybe five seconds before the ball landed, I frowned. The allure of achievements rang in my ear.

Am I really just going to run away?

Hesitation was quickly becoming an alien concept to my increasingly fast mind. Working out whether my insane gambit would work was a different matter, but I decided to take the risk. There might be a reward for being the first person to run away from a dungeon boss but I was loath to find out.

I didn’t have the mana for a drawn out fight, but that was okay. I just wanted to land one good hit. “Thank you,” I bellowed, my voice amplified by the amount of mana running through my body, “for the target.”

Every wisp of mana I had went into the swing of a lifetime. The staff had worked perfectly to vault me into the air, and with the distance I had gained from my initial sprint, I reached the apex of my jump at the perfect height. I started the downward arc just before I began pouring energy into the Yo Staff. The momentum of its fall doubled with every inch it moved.

The staff collided with the ball. My skin burned as boiling hot poison splashed onto me and I found myself once again returning to the ground with a less than graceful landing awaiting me. It didn’t matter, because for all the damage I had just taken, I had retaliated a hundred times over. Before I crashed into the sand, I saw the ball racing straight towards the boss scorepion.

Although invisible through the cloud of sand I had kicked up in my landing, I knew my return serve was a thing of perfection. I couldn’t tell exactly how many of the smaller scorepions had been killed by my attack, but it was a lot. A pressure built up inside me again and again, each time released a second later. Four, five… six times. An earth shattering screech told me it was time to leave regardless of my gains and I heeded the message.

I quickly put a single point from my level up into Fortitude, gasping with pleasure as most of the burning poison fell away from my body and my broken bones yet again repaired themselves.

I didn’t look back towards the scorepion nest once as I escaped. My arms hurt so badly, I returned the Yo Staff to my inventory for the first time in days. Not having the staff in hand felt strange, like I had just lost a limb, but there was nothing for it. I placed points into each of my attributes, almost haphazard, but nothing returned my stamina to me. I ran for hours, all the same.

Everything hurt, down to my soul. Somehow, I found my way to the grass of the parkland. The tiniest sense of safety found its way into my heart at the sight. Too tired to form a single thought or fight back against the encroaching darkness, I fell into the dirt. One by one, my senses died to nothing until the only thing left was the sputtering embers of my mana.