The flat, circular lump on top of the trial tower was mundane in appearance. From afar, it would hardly register, seeming to be a simple mistake in the architecture. Without completing the tower, it would have been nothing more. Had the tower’s challenge proven too much for the trialists within, the wondrous treasure within would have remained sealed.

However, the tower had been bested. The Hurricane Heart was laid bare and its call drew me like a moth to the flame. I half-jogged, half-stumbled the distance remaining between me and the vault. As I approached, like the walls of the tower, a portion of the round wall disappeared like it was never there. I should have known it was all too simple.

A rocket exploded in the sky above me. I flinched, looking left to right. A skyscraper crashed into a battleship. “What the hell is that?” My shout might as well have been silent. A fleet of jets were colliding somewhere. Naea fell to the floor, the vibrations in the air stronger than her wings. Thunder echoed around the dungeon, growing louder with each moment instead of quieter. I huddled over the fallen fairy, cupping her head in my hands. A volcano erupted. I finally turned my eyes upwards.

It took me a few addled moments to realise all of these sounds had come from a singular source. The same thing which was currently splitting the clouds. Lightning arced through the air for hundreds of miles. A primal, human survival instinct screamed at me to run, throw myself from the tower and hope for the best. From this height, it was almost certain death, but better to have a small chance than none at all.

I wasn’t a slave to my old instincts though. There was something else nesting in my soul and it hatched with a muted roar in opposition to the incoming threat. Defiant power flooded into muscles which had a moment ago run cold. I shared some of that strength with Naea, gifting her a packet of specific mana. She looked at me, her eyes taking on the telltale slit, her skin starting to look scaled.

The entire climb had been nothing but a slog, hoping and frankly expecting a reward at the end. When the final battle had been no more challenging than the last, I had expected some final twist. I was prepared for it, even. Of course, I hadn’t expected this but so what? I would claim my prize from this trial tower.

I just needed to kill a dragon first.

Dungeon Quest Received - Trial Of The Storm Dragon

By climbing the tower of the Storm Dragon, you have proven yourself worthy to attempt its trial.

Reward: The Storm Dragon’s Boon

The Storm Dragon’s roar continued to pressure us. Naea rose into the air and nodded at me before turning her eyes skywards. I stoked my pride in her before following her gaze. I gave the Yo Staff a spin with my right hand and smashed it into the floor to make some noise of our own. I couldn’t let the Storm Dragon make such a racket without replying. I stood ready. The Aspect of the Dragon purred at my actions.

Currently bearing down on us with all the ferocity of a thousand hurricanes was the largest creature Earth had ever seen. If a spectacle of this size had been matched outside the dungeon, I’d eat the Sorehammer whole. A head as wide as a cruise liner was coming straight for me. Entire thunderclouds billowed from its swimming-pool-sized nostrils, crackling with lightning. My eardrums had burst, the blood already drying in my ears but I could literally see the sound shaking the air at its approach.

My brain gave up trying to understand its scale and set to work thinking about how to even survive. Surely the goal of this trial wasn’t to kill any and all challengers. It was hard to grasp onto the hope of logic while something impossible happened, but I held on all the same. I set my jaw. If I’m going to die, I’m going to get the first hit in.

I knew I couldn’t match the Storm Dragon… yet.

I was still going to try. It was a thousand years too early for me to fight something like this, yet here I was. The nightmarish lizard finally came close enough for my analysis to activate but it told me nothing. The entire screen was a garbled mess, so I shook it from my sight. I had all the information I needed. It was close enough to start.

I dove into my core and ripped out fistfuls of mana. Infusion went into overdrive, all my techniques and understanding used in tandem to overload my body. My bones groaned and my muscles bulged unevenly but I continued emptying my mana pool. Calling what I was doing a skill would be disrespectful to my actual system-given skills. Taking principles from Infusion and Kirin Strikes together, my body became the vessel for every ounce of power I could muster.

To my right, Naea was doing similar. I could follow the flow of her energy due to our connection. She was moulding the mana I had given her. Naea was condensing it further and further, more intricate than anything I could do. There were principles to her control which I didn’t understand, so I couldn’t anticipate the result of her magic. The clear scent of healing mana was prevalent, which felt sensible.

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My own mana had no such smell. I boiled with power, the acrid stink of smoke accompanying my own burning lifeforce. Everything would go into this blow. It didn’t matter at all that I wouldn’t survive the backlash, so long as I left a scar on the azure snout snarling at me. Jagged teeth the size of oak trees split and a blue whale of a tongue flicked outwards. It could wrap that tongue around the tower three times, I mused.

With a flick of mana, the weight of the Yo Staff fluctuated perfectly. I took a single step, knowing it was necessary. I couldn’t help but grimace as the bones snapped from the movement. I sacrificed my left leg and the leverage launched me forward. At its size, the dragon should have hardly noticed me, but I was both surprised and pleased to see an expression of shock appear on the leviathan’s face.

Like my legs, the bones of my arms shattered from the force I pushed through them. They were already little more than meat whips, clutching the impossibly heavy Yo Staff. With the weight of the staff, I was little more than a passenger for its flight than anything else. For a final good measure, I activated Kirin Strikes. My skin was being seared by proximity to the lightning bolts, so I wanted to jolt the Storm Dragon right back.

I rose high, spinning like a roman candle. I dropped like a cannonball onto the very tip of the dragon’s snout. The Yo Staff connected perfectly, the ultimate expression of my Weapon Mastery. I grunted with pride as the power in the collision blasted me into the distance. The tower shot into the sky quickly before I immediately stopped. I punched hard into the sand surrounding the Storm Dragon’s tower.

If I wasn’t shattered to pieces, I would have punched a fist into the air. I managed to make you flinch, motherfucker.

———————————————————

Naea had died at some point. Either that or gone completely mad. She had been preparing the strongest healing burst she could. To her side, Grant should have been bolstering his defences in every way he could. When he fired off like a bullet, Naea had frozen and not known what to do next.

Obviously, she had been expecting to die and made her peace with it. When death didn’t immediately follow Grant’s explosive vault, Naea simply continued empowering the healing charge within her mana. She briefly considered adding her strength to Grant’s, but it would be like throwing a bucket next to a tidal wave. With no other humans to gauge his own progress on, Grant had no idea the potential he was carrying.

A tremor of excitement tickled Naea’s heart at the sight of Grant facing down the most impossible of odds. It was pure idiocy, and would likely only serve to see them put through more pain than if they were ignored, but Naea found herself cheering anyway. If there was one thing guaranteed to make the young fairy angry, it was to be ignored.

Proving Naea had gone insane, Grant didn’t bounce off the dragon like a flea. The exchange was not completely one-sided, however, as the Storm Dragon’s incredibly large face was pushed down. He did bounce off, careening into the ground and causing a wall of sand to rise high in the air. As Grant’s familiar, Naea knew he was still alive, but the bundle of rejuvenating mana became necessary for his survival. Her new instincts, written onto her soul by the contract, demanded she go and help her Patron immediately.

Except she couldn’t move. The oppressive aura of the Storm Dragon had intensified with Grant’s strike. Before, the dragon had been content with washing over them like the storm in its name. A cyclone doesn’t consider the land it destroys, after all. Most cyclones don’t get a punch to the face, either, so clearly this was a day of firsts.

Its advance had ceased. So had Naea’s breathing. The dragon growled, tearing the world apart like the ripping of a million chainsaws. The sound was terrifying, but Naea’s proud connection to Grant allowed her to keep eye contact. Wait, Naea realised, that’s not a growl. Heaving up and down slowly, a lilting rise and fall to the noise, the dragon swayed as it hung the air.

“Rrrrr… Hrrrr… Rhhhrrrrh… Hhhuuhhh… Haww… haww… haww.” All at once, faster than her eyes could hope to follow, the dragon’s mouth opened wide. “Ha ha ha ha!” With a shockwave and snap, the toothy maw closed as quickly as it opened. An army could have fit within the primordial creature’s laughing jaws.

Naea snorted, and her eyes widened. Try as she might, there was no stifling herself and she joined the dragon in its laughter. Naea had never been to a funeral, but she would have been terrible at keeping a straight face there, too. Impossibly, and to her great display, the dragon seemed to hear her and put its focus on the tiny fairy in full for the first time.

The joviality was punched out of Naea in an instant, along with an air in her lungs. The gaze of the Storm Dragon bore down her fledgling soul and stripped it bare. An iron grip tightened around her. All of Naea’s movement froze, her wings, her mana, her terrified expression. She did not drop, the dragon’s mana holding her in place.

Naea was still very young. The System bridged a lot of gaps. It created the idea of memories, the baseline of a personality and shoved them into a walking encyclopaedia - her. She didn’t need to learn how to use her mana, like a newly integrated human would, just like she was a natural at using her wings. Some things had to be experienced firsthand to see how she would react.

The System handed Naea false recollections of how she had handled danger in the past. She might run, she might hide, she could even beg for mercy. Those were the only survival instincts she received from the System. They might work, Naea might even have tried them, if not for her Patron. He hadn’t done any of those things, had he? What would Grant do?

Naea spat out the thickest glob of phlegm she could manage. It didn’t come close to hitting but the message was sent. The Storm Dragon saw. Naea hoped Grant would be proud of her last stand. Not that he would ever know. “Go on, then?” She challenged the dragon. “You got something to say?”

For a long time, far too long for the health of Naea’s psyche, there was silence. The dragon did not react, though Naea could feel its scrutiny. The seconds stretched on like eternity and Naea’s agitation only increased. Grant was dying. She could feel the darkness encroaching upon him with every heartbeat. Continuing the day’s impossibilities, Naea broke the silence herself with a yell before turning her back on the Storm Dragon and making to approach Grant. He needed healing. Now.

Curious, the dragon had released its hold on Naea but that vice tightened more than ever as she was forcefully stopped and turned back to face the dragon. Slowly, the dragon spoke. Its words sounded like glaciers shattering, the howling of a tornado in every breath. “Talk with me, fledgling.”

Like a leaf in a gale, Naea shook, gathering her strength. “He need help,” she asserted. Naea would have preferred to ignore the giant lizard and rush straight to Grant but that train of thought might as well have been suicide.

Quieter, like the dragon had shrunk down to an appropriate size, it spoke again. “Grant Kaeron is beyond your assistance for the moment. Whether he survives or not is up to him. Either he steps onto the path too early, or he falls to the way side. Talk with me. I insist.” The final word was spoken from the dragon’s true mouth. Naea decided not to argue anymore.

“Okay,” she replied, trying to be chipper. “Let’s chat.”