POV Salazar Dragontooth

I was back in my tent/office where I could gather more information without being overheard. The more information I got, the more surprised I was. Rich seemed to be in charge of the forces here simply because of his competency.

He was able to get guild members to give him information about everyone here, which is fair enough, and it seems that he had been scouting the area quite thoroughly for the fight ahead. It also seems that he was sharing that information openly after that others started to follow. The Queen’s forces didn’t seem to like that, but currently, it wasn't the time to settle scores. The fighting would come afterward. Currently, everyone was focused on the battle ahead.

When I heard what the Queen’s forces tried to do, I snapped the quill that I was writing with. Trying to force people into contracts is something frowned upon or completely illegal. They will need to be some punishment, and perhaps the best way would be to lower their contribution. I will also need to thank Rich as he stopped a big headache down the line.

Speaking of him, he has requested an information meeting about the dragon and their capabilities. I wanted to wait a little bit longer so more would join us, but some of the scouts are reporting that the dragon is already moving more during its sleep, which means that it might start to wake up soon. That’s unfortunate as I had hoped that it had only recently landed.

I was not used to looking up when speaking to people, but at the beginning of the meeting, I needed to do so when I shook Rich’s hand. Whatever choices he had made with his achievement page, they were certainly paying dividends. He looked strong and while his equipment would need an upgrade in the near future, it wasn't by any means bad. It was time to get started, and unfortunately, I was the best qualified to give the information required.

The tent was quite large so everyone was able to bring at least a few attendants. Rich had brought his own chair which was reasonable. He also seemed to command the second highest respect after me. Many of the petty kings had envy in their eyes, only the Queen’s right-hand man showed any disagreement towards Rich. He seemed to be an impressive man and perhaps we can sit down after the fight as I would like to learn more about him and tell him that he needs to check in with the Court of the Young. But that was all for later, now it was time to start.

"Dragons are rare species for the area. They live beyond the shallow sea in the oceans beyond our reach. When storms happen, there's a chance that a dragon might be forced to keep flying towards here or otherwise risk the dangerous ocean. The range of dragons that make it here is quite small as a dragon too weak will not survive the trip here and a dragon strong enough will be able to fight the storm and stay close to wherever they live."

"There are many different types of dragons and probably more than we have seen. There are people who go to hunt them with their airships but it's an incredibly dangerous occupation to try to claim the riches a dragon's body has. A dragon is born with the strength of an iron rank and if they don’t do anything, they'll easily achieve the first rank by just growing normally. Their scales are incredibly tough, especially to slashing damage. They are also resistant to mana, making mana type spells less useful."

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"This dragon is a fire type, one of the most common ones. They have a fire breath that they can use by consuming energy to fuel it. Dragon fire is incredibly destructive and you should avoid it with everything you have. Unfortunately, blunt damage while doing damage to the muscles won't break any bones simply because they are too strong. The best way to kill a dragon is to get a projectile into their mouth before they breathe fire or you must continue to chip through the scales at the same spot so you could start damaging the weaker insides."

"They are quite intelligent and if threatened too much will try to run away. For that, they of course have their wings which we have to focus on as they cannot fly if they are shredded. After that, our main goal should be the neck and underside of their chest. Dragons have incredible stamina so they can keep fighting for a long time and they’re incredibly tough which means that they can take damage for a long time. This will be a tough fight but hopefully, we will get the numbers to make killing it possible."

"Now the biggest thing I need to warn you about is how fast they are. They are incredibly large and this one is larger than most buildings but they can easily run faster than a speeding horse. Our first goal is to wound it with the first strike so we would have the upper hand and then focus on the wings so it can’t fly away and then all that’s left is to whittle it down. Now, that might seem easy, I assure you it is not. If you have any questions before we start to do more tactical planning, please go ahead."

The first few questions were truly relevant and answering them was no problem but as time went by, everything started to become more political. Then they were all competitors here who will fight to get as much material from the dragon as possible. Battle plans were constantly being brought up and disregarded by others. The obvious schemes to try to get others killed were quickly dismissed and reprimands were made by me to make things go smoother.

The people who missed this meeting will definitely regret it. Most of the fighters here were close range but no one wanted to be the main tank, which was understandable, even I didn’t want to do that against a dragon. Eventually, Rich was put into that position but he fought quite hard against it which made others give him a lot of concessions, like having his fighters in the best positions for long-range fighting and even got a few more percentages of contribution score for taking the main tank role. It was some good negotiations on his part, yet I expected he would have wanted to be the main tank anyway.

The plan was slowly worked out. There was to be an alpha strike. Everyone will prepare their strongest attacks for the beginning of the fight hopefully before the dragon can wake up. Then Rich will get its attention and will have to fight close up solo until the wings are destroyed enough that it can't fly away. Then the rest of the close combat fighters will join and the long fight to kill the dragon will truly begin. It was hard to make them understand how long of a fight this would actually be but hopefully, they will believe me.

Everyone still tried to play political games but I tried to keep it at a minimum. Three different camps quickly emerged. It was the Queen's camp, the United Kings' camp, and the United Freeholds' camp. The different camps eventually started to work together especially after our latest break which helped us make the decisions faster and now all that was left to do was wait until others can join us and hopefully there will be enough because if there isn’t, I will cancel this attack.

After a day and a half, everyone who was going to come had come. Eleven out of the twelve nations from the fallen Kingdom had joined but the nation from the other former Kingdom hadn’t joined and so didn’t the northern petty Kingdom from here.

I needed to send some adventurers there as we had too little information currently about what was going on there. Hopefully, there won't be anything bad but my gut was telling me that something was wrong. I was impressed by how many showed up. There were even some independent forces not part of any nation that showed up, with quite strong fighters.

The end result was over 200 first-rank fighters and 3 second-rank fighters. It was in the afternoon on a quiet and peaceful day with a beautiful yellow sun against the blue sky when the fight was about to start.

Everyone was doing last preparations to unleash their strongest attacks and everyone who could observe from a long distance focused on the three second-rank fighters who were all gathering massive amounts of energy to unleash their most devastating attacks.