"Thank you," I said to the healer who had just finished fixing my right arm. "No need for thanks, this is my job. For the amount of damage you have received, you are healing remarkably well. Just take one healing potion a day for the next two weeks and you should be back in top condition," explained the healer.
It had been a painful three days, but now the pain was just a dull throbbing. I still couldn’t use my right hand, but at least everything was now back and not just bone. Heading back to my command tent, I finally saw that Roger and his delegation seemed to have arrived.
It would soon be time to start distributing the materials obtained from the dragon, and I suspected it would be a long discussion. So, two days ago when I regained consciousness, I ordered some of my men to write a letter back home so Roger could come here and deal with it himself. "Good to see you, Roger, and I’m glad you’re here," I said when I got close enough, and he greeted me back, quite worried about my condition.
"It's good to see you as well, Rich, and I hope you’re doing well. I heard you were quite hurt, but I never imagined something like this," he said while pointing at me. I did look quite bad, having bandages all over.
Both healing potions and healing spells are true miracles, but there is a limit to how much a body can accept this kind of help, and I reached that limit long ago. That’s why I can only take one healing potion a day, otherwise I might get sick and my wounds would start to get worse instead of getting better.
"Let's head inside, we have a lot to discuss and you will have a hard job ahead of you," I said. To that, Roger raised his eyebrow and started to follow me. When we were inside the tent and a bit more secure, I started to explain. "The political situation here is a bit difficult, and I certainly haven’t made it better. I will give you the details later on, but the Queen’s forces are definitely against us, so you need to watch out for that. But let's begin with why you are here."
"Despite how I look, the fight against the dragon went really well for us and we actually earned 62% contribution, meaning we will get 62% of the value of the materials harvested." It was amusing to see how Roger's eyes seemingly doubled in size from that news, and it was hard not to smile.
"I believe I do not have to tell you how valuable everything we just got is. I will leave most of it to your discretion, but there are some materials I would want for myself. I believe because I finished the dragon off, I will get the dragon core myself, but I also want the strongest bone, claw and teeth from the dragon."
"I also need as much blood as you can get that won't cost too much. If I understand it correctly, most everyone wants a vial or two of the blood for some potions, but I need the rest of it. Is that understood?" Roger agreed to everything, however, he was a bit confused as to why I would want the blood, but he didn’t question me, which I appreciated. We continued to talk more about politics, then it was time to go to sleep. Having to sleep every day once again was an odd experience, but my body needed extra sleep so it would heal itself faster.
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I couldn’t get to sleep immediately, so once again I started to think about the current plan that I had and if I had gone mad. This plan came to me when I learned more about the Queen’s right-hand man and his fighting style. That also led me to discover an unpleasant truth about the second rank and the current meta within the melee fighters circle.
Apparently, about a century ago, a new enchantment became really popular for swords and other weapons. It was named "shatter" and it did exactly what the name suggests. It would shatter other weapons when they came into contact.
Now, the effectiveness of that varied. But if you had a weak weapon, you were basically guaranteed a loss. If you were stronger and you could boost your weapon, you could mitigate that, but only to an extent. It basically made fighting in the second rank a contest of who could afford the best weapon.
Unfortunately, this has been going on for a long time. Now, they've started to roll out all kinds of different shatter enchantments, and apparently, cold is one of the best amplifiers of that, which the Queen’s right-hand man excels at. Apparently, he is a famous tournament fighter and one of the best in his stat class.
The knowledge of how second-rank fights are usually determined by who has the best weapon makes me cringe every time. Fortunately for the tournament participants, many tournaments now ban this type of enchantment, but that doesn't change real fights.
I can honestly see the value of destroying your opponent's weapon, it would make everything so much easier, but from the brief explanation I received, the weapons with that enhancement isn’t the best for energy-based abilities. It means that this weapon would limit my power by quite a lot, that’s why I decided to be crazy and test out an idea I have from Earth’s literature.
I wasn’t completely mad or crazy, I did test the blood of the dragon and it did have a little bit of metal in it like every other blood does. In Game of Thrones, there was a type of metal called Valyrian steel and no one knew how it was made. Thinking about that TV show made me want to watch it again, but I knew that I would never be able to do so again.
It was so good, an absolute masterpiece of 12 seasons. When it was announced that it would be remade, everyone was skeptical, but every problem from the first series was fixed, even the cities now looked as they should have been. But even then, no one knew how Valyrian steel was made.
My personal idea back then was that it was made from the very blood of the dragons, so why not go crazy and try it here as well. I could feel how my eyes were shining from excitement. Honestly, I had no idea if this would work or not, but the nerdy side of me wouldn’t let go of the idea and I needed to follow through, otherwise, I would probably regret this for the rest of my life. Finally, I was able to go to sleep, dreaming of dragon metal that would make me a legendary sword.
The few following days, I stayed inside my tent, not wanting to speak with anyone. In my head I was already planning on how I could turn the blood into metal and then hopefully forge a new sword for myself. When we were finally preparing to leave, we had many wagons with us, all had been specially enhanced so they would be able to carry more.
Roger was able to get me 1780 kilograms of dragon blood, but I had no idea if that would be enough. The rest of the contribution he mainly focused on the scales, as they are incredibly good for armor and will sell for an enormous profit in larger markets.
I had been successfully able to dodge the Queen’s right-hand man, as I was quite certain that he wanted to challenge me to a duel, and even now we had been able to exchange portal times with another petty king to dodge him.
When the portal was opened I was able to see how he was running towards us from the Queen's camp. He was so mad, but I just waved to him with a big smile on my face and stepped through the portal. Was it a good idea to antagonize them so much? Probably not, but they wanted me to sign basically a slave deal for my nation, so fuck them.