Some of it was the difference in stats. He knew that, even if he hadn’t fully understood it.
Part of the reason that Alarion had zoned out so readily during his lessons was the lack of practicality. He lived in things he could touch, things he could manipulate and examine in practice not in theory. Simply being told the value of his attributes was nothing compared to feeling the power they gave him in the moment.
The previous night he’d been fighting with a 10% penalty. Today he was fighting with a 5% bonus and Alarion lived in that difference as his weapon clashed against the dragon’s sweeping grasp. He was quicker to recognize the danger, faster to shift his posture to parry. He more easily deflected the attack and his hand stung slightly less under the sudden abuse.
If he’d had these abilities the previous night, Alarion was convinced that he would have eked out a pyrrhic victory in his last battle. Studying the dragon over nearly fifty fights had given him a strong understanding of its tactics and its physiology. Its strengths and its weaknesses.
This was a foe that had been tailor made to his attributes, and he’d been fighting it under-strength and under-trained.
But neither accounted for just how badly he was beating it.
Alarion liked to think of fighting the dragon not as one long fight, but as a series of bouts. One of them would take the initiative, and they would dance briefly in a short exchange of attacks, blocks, dodges and parries. His goal was to get in and chip away at the dragon’s considerable pool of HP with his faster movements and smaller size making him a difficult target. The dragon, meanwhile, sought to minimize the damage Alarion inflicted, while aiming for a crushing blow that could finish the fight or greatly diminish the boy’s capacity.
Each bout could last as long as a minute, though most were considerably shorter. Some were false starts, where a feint from either side brought the bout to an end before it truly began. Others ended abruptly when Alarion was caught by an attack, killing or grievously wounding him. By this metric his first attempt had been a mere two bouts , while his final attempt the previous night had been a grueling thirty-eight.
So far, this fight had lasted nine bouts and already the dragon was showing signs of its flagging strength. No amount of increased attributes or persistent study accounted for it.
The real secret, was that Alarion was calm.
His first fights he had been frightened. Understandably so. But when that fear gave way, what took its place was no better. He’d been frustrated. Angry. How did that attack land? Why couldn’t he properly keep count. He’d have had it if not for a thousand little excuses that had chipped away at his willpower and perpetuated a cycle of mistakes.
Coming at it fresh and clear-headed, neither hungry, nor tired, nor irate made all the difference.
The creature’s tail had ended fully a quarter of their fights the previous night. It was so easy to concentrate on enormous fangs and razor sharp talons. Easy to forget how quickly that inhuman appendage could whip around to shatter his bones. Now its attack felt almost charmingly clumsy as Alarion faded to the side in one motion, and cut a full two feet off the tip in the next.
The creature roared in agony and rage at the offense, but Alarion left it no time to mourn the loss. He pressured the beast, cycling from one bout to the next without the traditional breather. With his muscles fresh and his attributes enhanced, he had stamina to spare, enough to rake an awful line through the scales that covered the dragon’s sternum.
It retaliated and he dodged again, punishing the arm that had the temerity to swipe at him. Alarion was confident, but not arrogant, retreating in the face of a renewed assault.
He felt there was a flow to the fight that he hadn’t felt the previous night. A push and pull, give and take sensation that he now understood some small part of. Intrinsically he knew that not all fights would have this back and forth to them. It was a curious feature of a battle where he was so evenly matched, but where his opponent was not easily slain. At the same time he knew that the experience could be invaluable. That there was some kernel of truth to this style of combat, and that he had only glimpsed the periphery of it.
The sensation fled as quickly as it had come, returning Alarion to the here and now, to face a dragon that was limping. Partially dismembered.
And about to breathe fire.
“No!” Alarion swore in dismay. Normally the dragon started to utilize its breath close to the twentieth bout. Alarion had that number in mind, but it was clear to him now that its choice to breath fire had more to do with damage than time. Alarion was ahead of schedule, and he hadn’t even been watching for the telltale signs.
To dodge the breath he needed to be closer and already moving parallel, not distant and flatfooted. To interrupt it as he’d done with the roar he’d need to be closer still. And to block it was suicide.
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Alarion retreated as far as he could manage as the dragon drew in a deep breath, putting as much distance as he could between himself and the soon to come cone of flame. As the dragon’s shoulders reared up, the boy drove the tip of his greatsword into the courtyard stone, turned his body to the side and braced behind it.
The fire crashed over him in a wave, spilling out over either side of the steel barrier that shielded Alarion from the worst of it. His awakened physique helped him to endure the pain, but a frightened glance at his left arm showed the skin blackening where it was closest to the blade. Warning after warning appeared at one corner of his vision, telling him that he was on fire, while the indicator for his HP dropped precipitously.
And then it was over. The last of the flames rushed past him like a gust of wind and Alarion spared a glance for the most notable system messages:
You have suffered extreme fire damage. HP -106.
Your left arm has been amputated.
New flaw! One Armed Man.
New Condition! Bleeding – Severe.
[Bleeding – Minor] – Lose 1% total HP per second.
You have cauterized your wound.
Bleeding condition – Ended.
He didn’t look at his arm. That way lay madness, and he needed his wits about him. This wasn’t real, the arm would heal. He was glad that either the shock, the severity or the nature of the wound had left it as more of a dull ache.
This thing had just tried to rob him of his victory. He didn’t need to fight it and pain at the same time.
Alarion reached for his sword as he advanced over the scorched ground toward the dragon. The weapon came away from the ground more easily than he would have expected. Too easily. Too light.
What he held was no longer an Imperial Greatsword. It could not even be charitably called a sword. The hilt and blade guard had withstood the worst of the flames with mere warping, but the core of Alarion’s blade had distorted unevenly as it softened under the heat of the flame. One edge remained sharp, and there was a diagonal point on the same side from where the weapon had snapped off under Alarion’s rough handling. He was left with roughly a foot of hilt, and a foot of misshapen blade. ZEKE had the last laugh.
Alarion would fight with a dagger after all.
The wounded dragon began to close the distance between them. Alarion could read its intent well enough. It wouldn’t be satisfied to end him in fire. Not after that humiliation. Not that it now had the upper hand.
With unrestrained anger, a roar to match any the dragon would have been capable of and the assistance of Thrown Weapon Mastery Alarion put lie to the dragon’s gloating.
The ruined sword raced through the air with the practiced accuracy of a teenager who had spent months hunting birds with rocks. It struck point first into the dragon’s right eye and buried all the way to the hilt, provoking a roar of outrage to match Alarion’s own.
With a running leap he did not even know he was capable of, Alarion followed his thrown weapon. His fingers caught the scales of the dragon’s maw and held for dear life as it flicked its head in an attempt to dislodge both him and the weapon that had so blinded it. When that failed, it slammed the side of its head down against the ground in an attempt to crush him.
It had the opposite effect. Alarion tucked his legs beneath him to avoid being crushed, then braced against the ground just long enough to scramble fully onto the dragon’s face. Once there he wrenched the weapon free and raked it twice more across the eye, ruining it completely.
There was no flow anymore. No artistry. No bouts. The dragon raked its own face with talons in an attempt to dislodge a passenger who had already departed, blinded by pain and actual blindness. For his part Alarion had slid beneath the dragon, capitalizing on one of his earlier victories. His new weapon could not meaningfully pierce or shatter scales like its forefather, but it could exploit the wreck that had already been made of the dragon’s breast.
Alarion put everything into the attacks. They were shallow by his standards, but they were quick and dirty. With no second arm to brace against the dragon he’d taken to holding the ‘knife’ in a reverse grip, stabbing the dragon’s chest over and over again in sweeping up and down movements.
It tried to retreat, to escape. Survival instincts overrode sense. It could have just crushed him, laid its entire body weight down upon him. That probably would have been enough. But to do so it would have had to embrace the knife. The dragon was no longer haughty. No longer cautious. No longer angry. It was panicked.
In the end there was no fanfare, no coup de grace. The dragon did not explode or dissolve when it died, and the void arena did not collapse with its passing. Its movements grew sluggish, it retreated slower and slower. It fell, not on top of him, but onto one side and Alarion kept stabbing long after it had stopped moving. When the moment finally came, it was with a silent notification.
> [Quest Complete - Dragon Slayer]
“Status.” Alarion said.
“Acceptable.” ZEKE replied, his tone positively brimming with resignation.
Alarion ignored him, quickly navigating to his quest menu.
> Dragon Slayer [Complete]
>
> Description: There is a dragon. Sort of. Slay it.
>
> Success Conditions: Defeat the Dragon conjured by Elena’s Void Arena ritual.
>
> Failure Conditions: Fail to meet success conditions within one day. Defeat the dragon with outside assistance. Defeat the dragon with a weapon other than an Imperial Greatsword. Gain any additional skills.
>
> Bonus Condition: Defeat the Dragon conjured by Elena’s Void Arena ritual within fifty attempts.
>
> Upgraded Reward: One Exceptional Quest Box
>
> Penalty: None.
>
> Note: This quest was automatically assigned due to the flaw [Single-Minded] and does not count against the once-per-day limit of Self-Motivated.
> Would you like to claim your Reward? Yes/No
“Is there a reason I shouldn’t claim my reward now?” Alarion asked.
Elena looked at him as though he’d grown a second head just for the fact that he’d had the self-control to ask first. “None here. Rewards do not expire, to my knowledge, so it can sometimes be advantageous to hold them if they will be hard to transport or you worry they may be stolen.”
Alarion nodded and mentally selected ‘Yes’.