“We have detected an anomaly, Sir!” Corporeal Jensen stated from the bridge of the Widehammer.
“What kind of Anomaly?” Captain Peater asked as he looked over the planning table in the center of the bridge.
“It seems that the eradication of the dragons successfully was reported in error.”
“In error, how so?”
We are receiving reports through our assets that an eruption at Feynalis Park from the massive magma chamber there has finally occurred.
“Did the volcano explode?”
“No, Sir. The dragon exploded from a vent which the lava shot out of.
“Where is the dragon now?” The Captain asked.
“Our assets in the area lost track of it. It flew straight up stayed above the lava geyser for a bit and then started doing a circular pattern around the lava geyser in an increasingly widening pattern,” Corporeal Jensen said.
“It has wings, right? How did it fly straight up, there’s no air past a certain altitude,” Captain Jensen said.
“Unknown, Sir. Am I to alter our course and head that way?”
Captain Peater reviewed the map and checked their positions against the location of the sighting before he said, “Yes, set course. It’s over 500 miles away but if there really is a dragon we are one of the only ships that can deal with it.”
“Yes, Sir, changing course.
The Widehammer looked like a cross between a 16th-century Galleon sailing vessel and a 20th-century Nimitz Class Aircraft Carrier. Primarily used against monster surges, The Widehammer had weapons mounted in all directions. She could also launch smaller fighters, scout vessels, and mounted cavalry. While his forces didn’t utilize dragons there was a Griffen squadron on board. Also, unlike a Galleon class or Nimitz class carrier the Widehammer was not an ocean vessel. Utilizing Magic and Technology it was a vessel that could navigate the oceans, the Atmosphere, and even space for a limited time as It currently flew a mile above the ground. Captain Peater felt the deck shift as their course altered and then level out again.
The Captain looked over his bridge and called out, Recover all scouts and patrols, I want to increase our speed in less than half an hour. Also, send a message to Command. As the closest ship to the sighting let them know we are moving to investigate. At over 500 miles from any major settlement, they should be able to see what was going on and make a report before word reached the news agencies. At maximum speed, he’d get there in just over an hour and a half.
“Sir, yes Sir his second Command responded as he turned and started relaying orders while he worked directly with the communication tech to draft the message for Command. Captain Peater looked around the bridge and walked into his office off the main bridge as he thought about the sighting. A Dragon sighting now, after such a long time. The last sighting had been in that area over 100 years earlier. In fact, it had been the last known dragon on the planet.
Captain Peater seemed to remember that a report had stated that the dragon had taken its clutch of eggs and itself into one of the deeper fissures that led to the large cavern that contained the magma pool. After it had gone into the cavern it had never been seen again. Also, no one had been stupid enough to go looking for the eggs that were close to a magma pool. Well, no one with an ounce of intelligence. Some hot heads, pun intended, had gone in looking for the eggs or treasure, but none had ever been seen again.
Captain Peater reviewed their course against the recent reports. It looked like they had smooth sailing. At just about 300 miles per hour, it would be just a little under two hours before the Widehammer made it to its target location and the search for the Dragon could begin in earnest.
***
Adam had noted that his primary attributes stated they were sitting at 7.46E+46 when he’d taken the time to look at it right after he roared. It had been kind of loud. It was also at that moment that his greater perception noticed lights in familiar patterns in all directions. There were towns and cities off in the distance.
Adam flapped his dragon wings and rose another half mile and looked down to see what the lava was doing. Luckily the lava had fallen into an area devoid of artificial lights and seemed to be heading downslope toward a large river off to the east. Fires had started here and there but they weren’t spreading yet. If this was anything like Yellowstone National Park he might be over a large park that whoever was in charge of this planet placed there. There would be a lot of natural resources in the area and they would have to be really careful about mining if they didn’t want to accidentally set off a cataclysm.
Adam looked around, noted that there was one moon that he could see, even if it was the middle of the day, and decided to test his adaption and flight capabilities. He flapped his wings harder while also willing himself to go faster and was soon rising up out of the Atmosphere. As he did so, his high perception allowed him to easily notice that there were thousands of satellites in orbit. Adam paid them no mind, oriented on the Sun of his planet, and then continued making his way higher.
His ability list was quite small now but he had a feeling that it didn’t matter. He still had Mold Chaos, even if the write-up was slightly different than before. Also, he had a feeling that the amount of Chaos he had coursing through his system had some unintended benefits. First things first though, he needed to find someplace relatively safe because right now he had no idea where he was or who was in charge. He’d been born as an Adamantium Dragon. He wasn’t too worried about the lava flow. As long as no one was stupid enough to get close the hole he’d created should allow the pressure below ground to exit without having the whole chamber erupt. Then again, yeah, he should probably make sure.
Adam increased his altitude until he was almost out of the atmosphere and then started heading toward the Sun on the horizon. Very soon he realized he was chasing the Sun and it felt like he was heading west. Unless the rotation was backward? If it was backward, then he’d be heading east. Of course, he had no way of knowing at this point. Once he was pretty sure of where he was, he concentrated for a moment and willed a heads-up display into his vision, much like what a fighter pilot would have, added a company and mapping function, and then turned around and flew back until he was over the lava geyser and set that as his zero point. From there he started flying out in a circular pattern at just under the speed of sound.
Adam considered whether the wind resistance was getting to him or not, but realized he felt quite comfortable. He also tried to make himself invisible and was pleasantly surprised when he received a prompt.
Mold Chaos has successfully bent light around you.
Stealth Skill Learned. Chance to be detected equals skill level plus an average of Agility, Dexterity, and Luck modifier. While you may not be visible, interactions with your environment can give away your position. For instance, the displacement of air when moving quickly or stepping over a creaky floor.
Chance of detection while Stealth is Active: >>>ERROR<<<
Adam thought, Display Error, just to see if he could see it, and was happily surprised when he received a response.
The original value of chance of Detection while Stealth is Active has a base chance that utilizes a lot of factors; ambient darkness, movement, skills of the stealth specialist, perception bonus skills, and perception of the individual or creature trying to see the stealth specialist. This is all weighed against a base value modified that starts with the Stealth Skill and adds +1 per two points above 10 in the attributes, Agility, Dexterity, and Luck on average. Without adding environmental factors which play a big part in stealth, if you had a Stealth Skill of 1 and an Agility, Dexterity, and Luck of 14 your base chance to successfully remain unseen would be 1 +[{((14-10)/2) + ((14-10)/2) + ((14-10)/2)}/3] or 1 + ((2 + 2 + 2)/3) which would be 1 + 2 or a 3% chance. The normal range for such calculations utilizes numbers between 1 and 1,000. Numbers utilizing scientific notation are neither wanted nor are they necessary. You received the “>>>ERROR<<<” because there isn’t a mortal or creature anywhere in the vicinity of you that can overcome a Base Stealth check that starts in scientific notation with 46 zeros behind the number 3. Especially when that skill is boosted by your chaos attribute which makes your skill work more like invisibility instead of active camouflage. This answer was given some thought and spelled out for you to explain why you will be noticing errors as you attain skills and try to utilize them with such high attributes.
The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.
Well, Shit, Adam thought, whatever was passing for the system here had a serious level of snark, but it was helpful. With that little bit of information percolating in his mind, Adam started paying attention to his surroundings as he continued to circle further and further. Once he’d reached a 200-mile radius he started to see towns and cities and started to map them out in his mind. Adam kept the same radius at right around 200 miles from the lava geyser as he slowed down to about 300 miles per hour at about 100,000 feet above the ground. He shouldn’t run into any air traffic at that altitude. He parsed part of his mentality to keep track of his flight and to adjust if he was going to hit something and then dropped his primary mentality into his Mind Space. Adam immediately noticed that it was much easier to enter his Mindspace.
Once there he concentrated on going deeper and was soon looking at his Soul Core. Every once in a while he’d check in on his sensory inputs from his body as it continued to fly around the Lava Geyser but he was moving within his mind at an accelerated rate so only a few seconds had passed as he tried to take his internal exploration one step further and take a look at the structure that was his Complex Animae Core.
It ended up not being that hard. The Animae Core was located at the center of his Soul Core. His two Primary Abilities still had nodes and those nodes for Perfect Memory and Chaos Incarnate still orbited that core. However, there was now a connection point that led into the center of the Animae Core. Adam willed his point of view closer to the nodes that made up the Animae Core and felt the resonance from each. His Animae was in the very center of the structure. As he moved between the connection points of the Heptadecagon he was able to differentiate the resonances. The easiest to find were Adaline and his Mom and Dad. Abi, Amanda, and Desirae were also very easy to identify because he knew them so well.
Adam identified the rest by pulling up the memories of each until he felt a resonance between the memories and an Animae. Of course, this left four Animae that he couldn’t find resonance for but that was fine. They had settled into the structure of his Animae Core without issue. As he worked through his inner self he noticed that the two Primary Abilities had placeholders orbiting the Animae Core but the quintessence of the abilities was within the structure of his Animae Core.
Was that because…
Just as he had that thought Adam felt his mentality dive into the heptadecagon and enter the focal point of his Chaos Incarnate Node As he was about to cross the threshold, Adam willed himself to stop and looked through a portal of sorts into a universe of instances of memories he had. Not unlike the scene from the movie Interstellar when Cooper falls into the singularity and the 5th-dimensional beings create a tesseract for him to interact with. Except this time as he thought about it, he saw the memories of everyone that he had ever absorbed, including the twelve peoples whose Animae now made up the structure he was peering into.
Adam thought about reattaching the animae to one of these points within this universe of moments contained within his Animae and froze when one of the Animae started to shift from its location. With a force of will he willed it to stop and reversed the process. He would try this for sure, but now while he was flying around at 300 miles per hour was not the time to see if he could bring them back.
Still, he was excited. He might be able to bring Adaline and the others back as soon as he found a safe place to do so. Could he use the Chaos in his body to create the bodies they needed? He’d already proven that the Chaos could boost attributes so why couldn’t he use it to create the bodies from scratch and even give them a boost from the get-go so what happened with Thora would never happen again? Or could it? Adam had a feeling he was no longer anywhere the System he was in before could reach. It was just a feeling but the explanation he’d received concerning Stealth didn’t feel like any entity or System that he’d interacted with to date.
That was all moot if he couldn’t find a place to hold up. Adam chose a forested area he was flying over and made his way toward it. He was a couple of miles up so it took him a few minutes to make his way down. He came in for a landing in a clearing that his dragon body could handle. At almost 400 feet long now, that wasn’t very easy to do. Still, he took control of his body, glided toward the ground while making sure to keep his airspeed low, and came in near a river where there was an area that was wide and flat. He flared his wings and came to land gently.
Now that he thought about it though he needed a humanoid form. He reached into Adaline's memories and looked for the feeling that Adaline had whenever she shifted to her Dark Elf form. It seemed almost instinctual in her memories. Adam reached with his mind for his Johnathan Bennard body and was pleasantly surprised when he felt the Chaos within him envelop his body and in a pearlescent smoke that he stepped out of naked. With an expression of his will some of his Chaos converted to a black jumpsuit and he was once again human in clothes that felt normal to him.
A quick check of his Status Screen verified that he was still an Adamantium Dragon and that all of his attributes were still the same but he was now human. Adam did a little stretching to test his new body's flexibility and then ran through a couple of martial arts katas which garnered him skill level one in Tae Kwon Do, Judo, and Kung fu. So it seemed that his skills hadn’t transferred into this new existence but his memories once again allowed him to circumvent gaining a new skill. Also, with the message he’d received concerning Stealth, he was pretty sure he’d have no issues hurting anything he hit, or more importantly preventing anyone from hitting him in close quarters.
Adam kept Stealth active and then started making his way through the forest toward one of the small towns he’d seen nearby. Luckily it looked quite small, probably no more than 5,000 or so people in it. He increased his speed until he was easily traveling through the forest at over 100 miles an hour. He also knew that if necessary he could move much faster either by running or jumping.
Adam concentrated for a moment and felt the chaos within him shift as he rose into the air and began flying by will alone. He checked his attributes and noted immediately that his flight was powered completely by his Chaos attribute. It was regenerating at the same rate as his mana but flying was using up his chaos attribute. Not a lot at first but he did not doubt that if he tried to move faster he’d have to spend more. Next, he tried a site-to-site teleport and was pleasantly surprised when that only cost 100 chaos per foot traveled. Since his mana regen was listed at 7.46E+44 currently teleporting a couple of miles wasn’t going to be a problem. Considering he could teleport from Earth to the Andromeda Galaxy for 5.71E+25 Chaos under these restrictions he had some range and he’d be able to do so over and over as his Chaos Regenerated immediately. For a second he wondered what that looked like in the parallel plains and dimensions when he used so much chaos and it refilled just as quickly. Or, did the chaos just wait nearby to be reabsorbed after he’d used it to form an effect before it was reabsorbed back into him? Almost like a Chaos hack? He’d better keep that thought to himself.
So, he didn’t have the Spellweaver ability anymore. His Mold Chaos ability was letting him utilize Chaos as if it were any school of magic. Any school of magic? He tested that by thinking about opening a portal through time one minute into the past for exactly 5 seconds and then closing it. A moment later a portal opened in front of him for five seconds and closed. One minute from the point the portal opened he willed a portal to open one minute into the past, held it open for five seconds, and then let it close. That had been extremely expensive at 1 billion chaos but he’d been able to do it.
WARNING! TEMPORAL ANOMALY DETECTED!
Oh, look it’s you. This is your only warning. Time Travel forward is not restricted. Time Travel into the past is restricted. If your interaction with time causes issues, you and I will have issues. Let's not have issues.
“So traveling back in time to recover all of my loved ones?” Adam said jokingly.
Would cause me to have issues with others which would then cause me to have issues with YOU...
“Fine!” Adam said petulantly even though he knew the others that whoever was running the prompts referred to was already on his shit list and they’d be getting marked off that list someday if he had anything to say about it.
Besides that wasn’t something to worry about right now. Right now he already had an idea about how to bring his loved ones back without using time travel and also, he was coming up to the road that led into a town that looked like something he’d find out somewhere in Idaho or Washington State away from the cities. A small town, set up for hunters, fishers, and loggers.
The people were mostly human though he did notice a few older-looking elves or elf types. Half-Elves maybe. Adam morphed his clothes to a variation of what he saw other men wearing by taking the pattern off one person and using a color that was similar to someone else clothing. When he was done, he ended up with a set of jean-like pants that were off-black with a short-sleeved dull red shirt. He was now a Red Shirt. With the way the System, or whatever it was, seemed to be acting, he hoped it wasn’t a bad omen.
Adam made his way out of town to a bend in the road where he was sure no one could see him near a mountain trail, followed the trail out into the forest, and then turned around and walked back down the trail. Now, anyone who checked would find a trail that back into the forest. He didn’t walk slow but he didn’t walk too fast as he made sure to make the tracks he was making easily discernable for anyone that came to check his story.
As he came up the road into the town proper a group of men and women stood in the road waiting for him.
“That’ll be far enough stranger,” an elderly human woman called out in common. “What business you be bringing to Cabin Fort?”
“I was just hiking through the forest and noticed the town, thought I’d try to pick up any news and see if they’re been any changes I should know about since I went on my walkabout,” Adam said.
“How long have you been out?” One of the elders asked.
“Honestly, it’s felt like forever,” Adam said.