I decided that while Cobaltio was admittedly a little uncreative as a name but it had a nice ring to it. Plus, the class I was about to give it, [dragonborn], was supposedly very proud, and would gladly show off its heritage as a [cobalt drake] so boldly.

{Name: Cobaltio, Class: [dragonborn]}

Understood! Class applied!

Class

.

.

.

The noise for gaining a new class rang out from its menu. It was an oddly satisfying noise to hear, but the little drake couldn’t hear it.

Class-up!!

Level-up!

Gained new skills!

Gained new magic!

Changed alignment to: Neutral Good

Gained [dragonborn]

Gained [mutant]

[infernal resistance]

[noble presence]

[language]

Cha growth rate increaced by 5%!

Cobaltio: Age: 1 month

Neutral Good

Patron: Drakonis, Maophas

Class: [dragonborn] [mutant]

Race: [cobalt drake]

Level: 1

Exp: 0

Base Stats: Str: 11 Dex: 12 Con: 12 Wis: 7 Int: 20 Cha: 13

Stat Growths: Str: 35% Dex: 15% Con: 30% Wis: 20% Int: 120% Cha: 50%

Inherent skills: [blessed of maophas] [minevore] [draconic leniage] [drake lineage] [draconis’s fate] [deaf] [infernal resistance]

Trained skills: [noble presence] [language]

Equipment:[natural armor tier 2] [death wing]

Magics: [fire breath tier 1] [draconic embuement tier 1]

[draconic imbuement]: upon casting this spell this creature gains two wings for (one minute)

[noble presence]: this creature naturally appears to be of nobility. increased charisma when communicating with nobles.

[infernal resistance]: resistance to fire damage

[language]: this creature otherwise incapable of doing so can speak.

Instantly, the effects of its class-up were obvious. [noble presence] made it look cute and refined while sleeping in my cushion, It grew significantly larger, and its scales looked more sturdy then began glowing a pale blue. Its intelligence stat was ridiculous as a side effect of “sentience” I suppose. Even though it had 20 Int, 2x the intelligence of a baby reptile brain was pretty pathetic, all things considered. It would need to learn a language to speak, though.

I walked over to the water that fell from the top of the alcove, then began catching the water with my palm to drink it.

“You got him to level up, good job Saya!” Maladrain said.

“Did you get to choose a class?”

I nodded absently.

“Now I really want to know whatcha’ chose!” Maladrain sounded pretty enthused.

I couldn’t disclose the information at the current moment, so awkward silence ensued from the comment as I drank.

Before I got the chance to write about all the cool stuff that had happened, however, a [wyvern] suddenly landed in front of me.

It was about my size, but its leathery wings that doubled as arms would be the size of three joes when folded out. Its head was fairly narrow and small, had predatorial eyes, and had a giant red mohawk of hair atop its head. Unlike any other dragonoid, a [wyvern] was a mammal.

In the span of a half-second, Joe had sat up, ran to me, and lifted me like a princess, then in the next half-second gently laid me ten feet away, next to Cobaltio. Then he pulled out his sword, alongside Maladrain.

The [wyvern] turned its head to look at the five dead [cobold]s that we’d moved further down the hill before we got ready to properly dispose of them. It smelled the air, then confident that they were indeed dead, squawked. It then moved its head to peer into the cove, seemingly unthreatened by the armed men watching it carefully. After confirming something with great purpose, it flew off. We simply decided to talk about what had happened later, with 0 leads as to its strange behavior.

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“I don’t get what’s up with this whole thing. Most of what I’ve seen here has shredded the adventurer training manual ten times over. I’ve never even heard of a [cobold] becoming a master class, they are supposedly always too reckless as hunters to let an area keep a sustainable balance between hunting and letting the surroundings regrow and populate.”

{but they were here for 10 years.}

“Exactly! And all of them were not just high level, but well experienced in warfare!”

{Isn’t that normal?}

“No! They usually just set traps and hope they work. If it doesn’t they let people run freely. Why would they have a [cobalt drake] in their hoard anyway? What are the chances they would just so happen to come across an incredibly strange [cobalt drake] egg, and not a gold or sapphire drake? How did they get an egg anyway, did they pillage it from a nest?! This doesn’t add up...”

{It has the [mutant] class.}

Maladrain would have said ‘what’, but you can’t exactly ‘mishear’ text, so he just silently read and reconfirmed what he’d read, “Wha...?”

What that implied was quite menacing. Neither of us knew exactly what the [mutant] class was. In fact, none of us had heard of the [dragonborn] class either. The [pet] class gave some sentience, but I had a sneaking suspicion that [dragonborn] was a little different...

“I don’t know your exact plans after this, but aren’t you two going to your capital? Why don’t you all use some ‘adventurer’ connections or something to learn about this later?” Joe was already ready to leave. He had no intention to take any of the treasure, having lost the ability to care for such low-level gear, not that we would have let him take it anyway, and not that we could beat him in a 2v1 without some serious luck.

Maladrain sighed, “Yeah, we can do that. It’s just so intriguing! Let’s make our way to the capital then hire some gigamule drivers to take this cobalt to the capitol. How does that sound, kid?”

{gigamule drivers?}

“Yeah, gigamules are massive animals. I think three of them is all we need to drag all the loot to the capital.”

I shrugged. I’d need what I could to feed Cobaltio.

Joe didn’t leave quite yet, though. We found that the [cobolt]s had a store of iron tools, yet another piece to the puzzle, and used shovels to dig a mass grave for the [cobold]s and a more reasonable one for Zufphield, who Maladrain actually recognized from history. We tried our best to immortalize the grave with a cobalt tombstone and even carved his name into it, though any rare passerby would suspect it to be a joke or just a similarly named person.

After burying Joe’s reluctantly named ‘friend’, he decided it was about time he left and walked away with his one of a kind bag built of cobwebs upon his shoulder.

I and Joe decided it would be best if we spent the rest of the day and the next sorting the treasure we had found. The [cobold]s had a large bedroom that had a layer of cobalt covering the floors. Apparently, they found the metallic floor ‘comfortable’. Their armory was filled with iron and stone weapons, as previously noted, but also had training weapons.

I waited for joe to turn around, holding up my slate {Wanna have a duel?}

He turned around eventually, “...why?”

{They have training weapons, plus I haven’t gotten the opportunity to} wipe, write, {see you fight.} I had my back turned for most of the last fight.

“You’re going to be dumpstered, ‘champ’” He had started to call me ’champ’ in addition to ‘kid’ but it really didn’t fit the current context.

I shrugged.

Outside, in front of the bridge, the two of us raised our practice swords, ready. The sun slowly set in the distance, and darkness was almost upon us. Cobaltio looked on in curiosity, now about four times smarter.

I took a deep breath. We were fifteen feet apart. I knew his relevant abilities: [swordsmanship tier 4] [fast steps] [balanced footwork] (wisdom makes you better at remembering things)

He outmatched me, but I had an ace up my sleeve and was, of course...

“You’re a prodigy, kid, I’ll give you that, but you’re not gonna win. You sure you want to put Exp as a betting chip?” Maladrain had a fairly casual stance, but I was revving up to fight.

I had 11 Exp in total, and apparently, Maladrain had 30, which he would gladly offer me all of if I actually managed to beat him. Helping the youth grow was important after all.

I responded with a challenging glare. My battle plan was simple, feign weakness while he used [fast steps], then surprise him with [dead as nightfall] to win the fight.

[fast steps]: three times a day this creature may move at twice its normal speed for 3s.

[dead as nightfall]: You gain 50% more strength once per dusk(lasts one minute)

“Ok, one, two, three, EN GUARDE!” To my surprise, he didn’t lead off with [fast steps], but instead and swung with a simple strike to my sword.

I assumed that defeating [cobold]s would be harder than fighting a single adventurer, but I was quite wrong on that front. A single blow from him sent me reeling backward two steps as I tried to keep a grip on my sword. He could have tried to end the duel there but backed off.

“I’m gonna teach you a lesson on swordplay, Saya. The first thing you should do is get a grip on your foe’s abilities.”

I already knew his ability, of course. A simple rule!

“Men have higher strength growth than women, and women have higher wisdom growth than men, of course. But it’s beyond stats. A man with a 10 in Strength will always be stronger than a woman with a 10 in strength.”

He came in for another swipe, and I deflected it with slightly more proficiency. He didn’t give me time to rest before his second strike, though, which I dodged and lightly deflected out of my way.

“See? I didn’t have a clue what you planned on doing when so heavily outmatched, but you managed to predict my attack with ease. Your wisdom and battle sense are so ridiculously high for someone of your age and experience it’s frightening. I know that, and I also know you don’t have the stats to back that mental prowess up.”

He ran towards me again and started hitting my sword repetitively. It was a brutal show of force, and he quickly drove me backward, purposefully driving me in the direction of The Mudmule’s path. With a decisive blow, he sent me stumbling down the slope, but grabbed my arm and yanked me back onto level ground.

He made an infuriating joke of me, and gave no chance for me to retaliate, even with [dead as nightfall]

“You can’t beat me with strength alone, I would figure. In which case, I can figure you have something up your sleeve. You’re way too smart to think you could beat me with nothing but your wits.” Clearly, he didn’t remember my skills from when he saw my menu.

He performed a flurry of jabs at me, which I barely managed to block awkwardly in combination with evasive jumps backward. My lack of a [life wing] was really hurting in this scenario.

“And-you-don’t have the-knowledge-of how-to beat this tactic!” he finished his flurry, barely missing me on numerous occasions.

Were he serious, he would have simply used [fast steps] to hit me with unfair speed, and I would have been lucky if my [dead as nightfall] were able to deflect an attack like that.

“You don’t have much sword-fighting experience, as I can easily tell from that. You clearly knew how to block a jab, but you couldn’t properly apply that knowledge due to having little real experience with a sword. Why don’t you try jabbing at me?”

Oh, he asked for it! I ran towards him with a feint to jab at his shoulder, then as he raised his sword, I moved to stab down at his knee, activating [dead as nightfall] to increase the speed of my-he easily predicted my attack and hit my attack away.

My expression of bloodlust turned to one of realizing how thoroughly I’d just been predicted. I only had one minute to abuse [dead as nightfall] though, so I had to act quick. I took a step back and deflected a lazy swing from the top from Maladrain, then retaliated with a ridiculously quick jab to his stomach, apparently he hadn’t noticed [dead by nightfall]-He was able to easily use the slack in his previous swing to swat my attack out of its path with the full force of his sword. I took another step back, realizing he knew what was going on.

“And there’s your trump card! I don’t know how, but you got real fierce, kid. It’s so easy to tell when you’re about to thoroughly jape me, though. That bloodthirsty expression gives your game plan away real easily.”

It did? Well, I should probably account for that next time. I took a deep breath, then struck forth again. I’d spend so many hours observing the techniques of the guards-in-training, that I could accurately mimic them. Now, I just needed to learn how to put those to practice.

Now on almost even ground with Maladrain’s speed and power, I started applying what he wanted me to. I dashed forward, trying my best to keep a poker face, then jabbed straight towards him a little lazily. He deflected it with ease, of course, but my strike came back with a vengeance, easily turning into a strike towards his face. I saw a smile flicker on his face, as he activated [fast steps] and dodged my strike with ridiculous speed, and looped his arm around my own strike to tap me in the face with the wooden sword, sealing the duel’s end.

“Not bad, champ. You’re already learning from me, even without me saying a word.”

You gained 1 Exp for putting your all into a training session(reproducible).

I’d lost...