1 year
Daniel had been wrong. Not entirely wrong, but wrong all the same. Dieva had returned from the collapsed cave, but not nearly as fast as he had feared.
In the weeks following the raid on her lair, two of his fellow mercs had recovered fully from their wounds. The other two had been inset with magical rot or infection. None of the remaining survivors could heal it, and neither of the victims had skills to overcome it.
The first succumbed to his wounds and died in frothing agony. The second chose to slit her own throat before facing the same pain. They’d shared the same funeral pyre.
When Dieva strode into camp casually some weeks later, wearing the same dress she’d so casually discarded in all of Daniel’s recent dreams, fear ran through him like ice. She was furious, and demanding, but never overtly hostile. She would insult them, and chastise them like children, but not once did she attack. The dragon was goading them on.
Eventually, it worked. Daniel’s last two comrades inevitably challenged the dragon to Honor duels, much like Akke had. Pointing to their foe’s crumbled scales or lingering scratches as signs of building fatigue and weakness. Each one was sure they would be the victor. Each one died in glory. Glory is of little consolation to those it leaves behind.
Daniel built the first pyre on his own. When Dieva offered to assist with the second, he thought her joking. A cruel play to have a soldier’s funeral ushered by his own killer.
“Leave me in peace!” he had snapped at her, lost in his own emotions. The second surprise came when she did just that. Daniel said goodbye to the last of his comrades and went hunting for the first time in weeks. The food stores they had built up together were all but depleted. He’d not die from starvation as long as he had the will.
His new spear was frighteningly effective the more he used it. Cinder Shard as he’d taken to calling it, could burn as easily as it pierced, stronger and lighter than anything he’d ever used. The more Daniel practiced with the new weapon, the less it felt like a weapon at all, more of an extension of his arm.
Dieva moved into camp with him some weeks later. She did not ask but made it clear he had no choice. She would vanish some time after he fell asleep each night, and arrive early in the morning just after he awoke. Always in her human form, never once attacking the defeated man.
Not to say that Daniel was broken by any means, he slept in a different tree each night to avoid the beasts of the jungle, and he hunted plenty to keep himself fed. He’d just convinced himself he no longer had any hope of defeating the dragon. He’d resigned himself to being her ‘pet’. The dreams he kept having made him suspect she thought the same of him.
Several months in, Daniel’s class [Junior Mercenary] reached its maximum level of 50. For some time he dared not even attempt a class up, fearing the vulnerable time he spent evolving his class would make him boring to the dragon and spell his inevitable doom.
In this way, he fell into a routine of sorts. Every morning he would be greeted by the dragon, who would watch him with sadistic glee as he scratched out a meager survival in the wilds. Every night he would be tormented by dreams he did not fully understand.
His clothes became haggard and unrepaired, even the replacements for his replacements, taken from fallen comrades. All worn threadbare and discarded in favor of pelts taken from fallen beasts. The knife he’d formerly used to shave was now used solely for butchering the meat of his daily hunt, his gaunt face slowly fading into a scraggly beard. All the while, as more and more of his civilized humanity was stripped from him, Daniel focused on the burning coals in his gut. Spite and anger fuel him day after day.
Until his pattern broke.
Late in the evening one-night Dieva approached Daniel’s tree and gestured for him to join her. Recalling what happened the last time he told her no, Daniel lept from his perch to hear his latest torment.
“As stimulating as your company has been these past few months my dear, I grow bored with each passing day. I’m afraid I have other things that will need my attention for some time, and so I leave a trinket with you and take a small taste to remember you while I’m gone” Dieva explained in a strangely melodic voice.
She produced from the folds of her dress a small leather necklace, threaded with a deep red scale as a pendant. Daniel dared not protest as she looped it over his head. When Dieva drew back, a sharp cut stung daniels face, and the dragon licked his blood from a taloned hand now at odds with her otherwise human form. It shifted back just as quickly, and the remaining sanguine drops were placed in a small vial.
“Don’t die while I’m gone. That would be horrifically anticlimactic” she called over her shoulder, disappearing into the jungle unceremoniously.
Daniel didn’t know how long she would be gone, and at first, he didn’t dare hope it was real. After a week on his own, he started roaming the territory even further.
After a month, he hunted close to the edges of her territory.
After three months he classed up.
The class-up ritual was different for each person, but without fail, it included an introspective meditation and a prayer. The prayer need not always be to a god, but it was useful to speak intention into words and help shape the choices given.
None of the choices Daniel was prepared for were available anymore. He couldn’t take [Mercenary] variants anymore, his company was gone. [Spearman] would have been fine, or even [Survivalist], but the last choice in his list was the only one that gave him any hope of the future.
[Army of One]
He took it without hesitation and felt a surge of new power run through him. New available skills chimed out in his ears, new ways to fight, new boons. All of it screaming in hunger for xp, for levels.
Daniel made sure to keep them well fed.
1 mercenary remains
2 years
Daniel survived in the wilderness on his own for 9 months, 2 weeks, and several days. He lost track of the days at some point and had to restart his count.
Nearly a year Dieva left him on his own in her territory. Nearly a year he spent grinding levels and hunting monsters. At some point, he hunted her territory dry and began stringing up the entrails of his defeated foes as bait to draw in desperate and hungry beasts from the surrounding jungle.
When those ran out he started ranging away from the dragon territory entirely. He knew by that point Dieva couldn’t stop him from escaping, but he’d long since come to realize he didn’t want to. He no longer wanted to survive, his new class had reignited the desire he had to win.
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During one trip to the south of Dieva’s lands he convinced himself he might have a chance.
He wandered several hundred kilometers until he found a noxious swamp. The only things making a home there were oozes and slimes. Poor experience altogether, until he found an [Elder Ooze]. An S-rank monster with some of the highest defense and regeneration numbers ever registered. He didn’t recall their stats off the top of his head, but Daniel knew they had deceptively high attack damage.
Their fight lasted for three straight days. Daniel began to rely on his Vitality stat alone to keep him awake and cognizant enough to keep moving. When he eventually located the creature’s core and burned it away, he collapsed into the mud beside it and slept. Daniel had no idea exactly how long, it was more than a day judging by the sun, but that could have been two days or more just as easily.
Satisfied he picked himself up, and walked back to Dieva’s territory, repeating his recent outing in every direction, systematically stripping a massive swath of wilderness of any living monsters. When he made his way back to his original camp after what felt like an eternity, he scowled to see Dieva sitting on a rock waiting for him.
“I told you not to leave my lands,” she stated calmly.
“Yeah, well you also told me not to die while you were gone, and I ran out of food a few weeks later. Had to go hunting somewhere” Daniel brushed her off, knowing full well if she wanted to attack him she’d have done it long ago.
“I am pleased to see you alive” Dieva offered after an uncomfortable silence started to grow between them.
“Well, at least that makes one of us” Daniel grunted, taking a seat in the dirt and pulling out his last sharpening stone to perform maintenance on Cinder Shard.
“I suppose you’ll be challenging me to a duel like others soon” Dieva pondered out loud, her gaze cast to the overcast sky.
“Aye.”
“And there’s definitely no chance of me talking you out of it.”
“Aye.”
“So I’ll see you in the morning then.”
“Aye.”
And without any further ado, the dragon lifted herself up, cast off her human form, and took to the skies. Each fighter making their final preparations for the end of nearly two years of torment.
Deiva did not meet Daniel in his camp the next morning. Rather he had to search her out, finding the red behemoth in a large clearing of jungle near her old lair. A circle, nearly a kilometer across, had been leveled and burned into a perfectly flat arena. Dieva sat in the middle, her left foreleg resting on a large chest. She called out as soon as she spotted him.
“Daniel of clan Stesk. I recognize your strength in being the last of your kind to have invaded my territory. Upon my honor as the lady of Cinders, I meet you in fair combat. Should you emerge victorious I have prepared a small boon as your right of conquest. Should you perish I swear to honor you in the burial rights of your people. What say you?”
“You should have just let us go.”
“Perhaps. It is far too late for that now” Dieva seemed to sigh, and with a roar, took to the skies to start their fight.
Daniel activated three of his new skills simultaneously. [Strength of an Army], [Forced March], and [Battalion’s Resilience], boosting his combat-relevant stats as high as he could with his current build, and fell into a familiar rhythm of battle.
“Akke.” Daniel mumbled under his breath, breaking into a full sprint toward the center of the circle. “Corkas.” He closed the distance in the blink of an eye. “Feznan” he struck the chest with his lead foot and lept with all the strength he had.
Dieva looked down to watch the human hurtle towards her like an arrow, tucking her wings, she tried to roll out of the way, but her hesitation got the best of her.
“Emma.” Daniel drove the tip of Cinder Shard into the dragon’s shoulder, doing minimal damage but anchoring himself on her back. “Gordon.” with a fifth name spoken, Daniel met the requirements for his most powerful skill. [Requiem].
Requiem.
Speak the name of five fallen comrades you have witnessed die. Gain a raw increase to all stats for each name spoken, and a further increase for each subsequent name.
Upon deactivation of the skill, user experiences exhaustion proportional to the former increase. User also experiences vivid memories of every death they invoked.
He would be out of commission for some time after this fight, but that did not matter. One by one, name by name, all 89 members of his company would be recounted. His class was [Army of One], but he would not defeat the dragon alone.
Dieva roared in pain, tucking her wings as fully as she could and halting her flight. The entangled enemies stalled in mid-air for a moment, before plummeting back to the earth. With a crash, Daniel was pinned to the ground, his left leg shattered but [Battalion’s Resilience] kept him fighting on.
He drew Akke’s sword from his back letting go of Cinder Shard with his main hand and wrenching it free as he stood. the faint bend in his new blade from the impact caused a shallow cut on his back as it drug from the makeshift scabbard. He gouged several scales out as Dieva lifted herself to her feet, just in time to scramble into his own stance. Spouting off names of his fallen comrades between each ragged breath.
For a moment Daniel regretted leaving Gordon’s shield at the camp but gripped Akke’s sword with two hands instead, leaving Cinder Shard behind for later. He charged the dragon just as she recovered, leaping into her face to dodge a gout of burning dragonfire.
His dodge was off step just slightly, the heat burning through his makeshift hide armor and charring a large section of his right abdomen. He grit his teeth for a moment, the next set of requiem names screams of pain more so than words.
Daniel landed on Dieva’s long spiked jaw, gripping a scale and hoisting himself up to embed Akke’s sword in his enemy's right eye. Incoherent roaring from both sides followed, and Dieva flung Daniel off her to create distance. Daniel drew his spear from the dirt as his foe started Channeling several deep orange spells.
Daniel had run out of names. [Requiem] was as strong as it was going to get. He activated a final skill. [Heartseeker], and hurled his spear with every ounce of strength he could muster in his body. It seemed to stand still in the air, the world moving around it rather than the weapon actually flying.
It struck true, silence fell in the jungle, the only sound a few ragged breaths from Dieva as she lost control of her final spell forms. Daniel could have sworn she almost looked happy as she died, the characteristic smirk of the dragon only returning in her final moments.
He blacked out just as several messages rang out through his system.
Congratulations!
You have slain a [Cinder Clan Exile - Lvl 349]
Congratulations!
[Army of One] has leveled up to 59
[Army of One] has leveled up to 60
…
[Army of One] has leveled up to 75
Class evolution Available!
Total Casualties: 9 S rank monsters, 917 wilderness monsters ranks A-C, 258 merchants, 89 mercenaries, 28 horses, 20 yaks, 18 donkeys, 5 farriers, 4 chefs, 3 blacksmiths, and 1 dragon.
Survivors: Daniel Stesk. Unknown Dragon’s egg.
When Daniel awoke, he found Dieva’s body curled around the golden chest she had promised him, her hands almost folded defensively in front of them. The size difference lets him climb over her quite easily to get to the container.
He opened it to find a small mountain of coins, a folded parchment letter he has never revealed the contents of, and what he assumed to be a precious gemstone. A deep black ovular egg, like polished Onyx and harder than anything he’d ever known.
Daniel has said repeatedly that he knows it’s a dragon egg and not a gemstone. He remains unwilling to elaborate how he knows this.
It would take Daniel some time to make his return to human civilization, but that is a tale for another time.