I felt my mouth gape open as I peered into the lair from over Saly’s shoulder. The room was filled with gold, so much that even a share of it would likely make us the richest people on the island.

However, my gaze was drawn more firmly to the gold’s owner: a large, red dragon the size of a house. It sat atop the gold pile, eyes closed and snoring.

Its fearsome snores caused the entire room to vibrate with a deep, bassy hum. Its scales hung regally around its body, but most shockingly of all, it seemed to be a hybrid of both western and eastern mythology.

The dragon had the fat body of a western beast, but the head and arms of the eastern dragons of legend. Its slender face looked out of place atop such a large frame, and the thin white moustache fluttering with the breath of every snore was… a little strange.

Sally: A sleeping dragon should make for easy prey. You’ve lucked out.

Kaleb: We’ll see.

Sally wisely spoke to me through the group chat. Keeping the volume as low as possible was a sound strategy.

I wasn’t so certain the battle would be as simple as a sleepy assassination, but it should definitely give us an advantage.

I opened up my own chat with the team and we carefully planned our opening move. It was quite simple really. The three attackers among us would all charge our most potent attacks and release them at exactly the same time.

Theoretically, that should make for an extreme amount of opening damage to sway the battle in our favour. Our healer, Reggie, would hang back in a support role and provide assistance where necessary.

Before we moved into position, I focused on the dragon activating the pop-up notification on my HUD.

You have discovered a mythical monster:

Gold Eyes Red Dragon

This flame throwing beauty is everything a Charizard aspires to be. Elegant, tough, powerful and… greedy.

The Gold Eyes Red Dragon is a fearsome hoarder of wealth, like a better-looking Jeff Bezos.

Dragons are solitary creatures by nature and rarely take kindly to intruders visiting their home unannounced. Like a Floridian with a shotgun, they will happily take out home invaders with self-assured, extreme prejudice.

I don’t want this notification to drag-on so I’ll end it here. Good look player, you’ll need it.

I didn’t have the time to spare admonishing the system for its terrible jokes and Earthen cultural references, instead focusing on the tidbit of information that was actually useful.

Dragons being solitary creatures was good to know. Hopefully it would mean that this fight wouldn’t have any unexpected visitors crashing the party.

I took a deep breath and activated the stealth mechanic provided by my armour. I had very little time before it would run out, but with the extra ten free points pushing my intelligence stat up, I was sure it would be enough to reach my position.

I would be stationed across the room, drawing the most attention after the initial attack, and helping our group to hit the beast from all sides.

My heart fluttered as I quickly crept past the mountains of gold. I had to tread a careful path as not to accidentally cause the clanking of metal coins which would no doubt wake the dragon up.

Luckily though, the room was quite small so I didn’t have far to go. Once I reached my position on the far side, I drew my bow. My stealth skill had run out halfway across the room, but luckily it didn’t seem to matter.

It was more of a precautionary activation anyway, just in case my steps caused the sleeping dragon to rear its head.

I aimed my bow, nocking an arrow and drawing the string. I activated my Soul Shot skill and began channelling energy into the arrow.

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At the same time, Bell’s hands began glowing crimson as she held them out before her, forming a pushing stance with her wrists touching and her bottom hand inverted. It reminded me of a Goku move as fire started to circle and grow between her palms.

Jamie had the least amount of movement to make, stopping near the entrance with Reggie right behind him.

Sally, Tilly, and Panda watched with bated breath from the dwarven mine shaft as he dropped into a half-squat stance. He held a single arm, pointed out towards the dragon in a fist, using his spare hand to steady it by gripping his forearm tightly.

I’d only seen him do this once before; in his solo battle. Apparently it was quite draining for him, but as a team we decided that water attacks were likely going to give us an advantage against a fire breathing dragon, so it made sense to have him use his most powerful skill from the off.

Reggie: Are you all ready?

He was in charge of timing the simultaneous attacks since he was the only one of us that was free to use his full mental faculties to assess the situation unobjectively.

None of us replied to his message, but he took our silence as a yes as he issued the command.

Reggie: Now!

I released my arrow which soared so fast my eyes couldn’t keep up with it as it sank into the dragon’s face. Its scales bubbled and hissed as acid melted through the skin.

At the same time Bell’s spinning fireball launched through the air, colliding with opposite side of the dragon’s face. It probably wasn’t very effective, but I could feel the heat from all the way on the other side of the room. It seemed to simply bounce off the dragon’s flame-retardant scales, but it did so in a brilliant show of force and flame.

From the front, Jamie opened his hand and a powerful, firehose-like stream of water erupted from his palm. It struck the dragon directly on the nose, simultaneously putting out Bell’s fire and causing a cloud of sizzling steam to fill the room, obscuring our vision.

“Burn motherfucker, burn motherfucker burn!” Bell half yelled; half sang as the steam caused a moist film to cover my skin.

“Are you singing Five Finger Death Punch?” I asked incredulously from across the room.

“Hell yeah!” She cheered.

“I always figured you’d be more of a Taylor Swift fan.”

“Don’t be sexist Kaleb, it’s not a good look on you.” She chided and though I couldn’t see her through the steamy haze, I imagined an admonishing look on her anime-like face.

“Just because I’m a white girl doesn’t automatically mean I like Taylor Swift.” She continued, blasting another fireball in the direction of the dragon.

“… I mean, statistically it’s pretty likely…” I muttered, as I fired a few arrows into the steam.

Our little chat didn’t last long.

A large gust of wind pummelled me and I went flying into a large stack of gold to my rear. The mist began to dissipate and the unharmed dragon stood proudly atop his mountain of treasure, wings spread wide and moustache twitching.

“How dare you!” It bellowed in a deep, commanding tone. The voice bounced around the cave, almost deafening me. “Only cowards attack when their foe is a’slumber.”

Jesus who is this guy? He sounds like an Arthurian knight.

I scrambled to my feet and raised my bow once more, nocking an arrow.

“Sit down you insolent cure!” The dragon shouted, its gold eyes flashing dangerously as it swept its wing towards me like a backhand.

I fell back into the gold with a clinking crash, staring up at its face. Merely moments ago it was bubbling, skin melting where my arrow had hit. Yet now it looked fully healed, barely a scratch on it.

What the hell was up with this thing?

I heard a scream and looked to my side as Jamie launched a second water attack. He looked ill, the fatigue finally getting to him.

“Die you big fucking lizard!” He yelled as a torrent of water shot from his palm, hitting the dragon in its open mouth.

I was pretty sure that was the first time I’d heard him swear. It was definitely the first time he’d sounded anything more than meek or humble, though his quipping definitely needed work.

“Impromptu waterboarding?” Bell asked, a little too casually for mid battle. “The C.I.A would be proud.”

The dragon spat out the water but didn’t look overly perturbed by the attack. I had a sinking feeling, deep in my gut, that this dragon was way more powerful than we had been led to believe.

“Well I never.” It began, its voice rising in volume as its anger raged. “The rudeness of the youth today. Fucking humans!”

It looked at Jamie with fiery eyes and snorted in his direction. Two small fireballs hurtled from its nose towards the water mage.

“Jamie!” Reggie shouted, pushing him aside from behind and taking both hits directly in the chest. His body roared into flames as he screamed.

It was painful to watch.

Jamie looked up from the floor and held his hands out like he did with his water spells but nothing happened. Reggie writhed in agony as his hair burnt off and his skin began melting.

The smell of burning skin and viscera filled the lair and I had to cup my hand over my mouth to hold the vomit back. It was revolting.

I rushed towards him, looking through my inventory to find anything that might help. If only I hadn’t used all the slime condensate on the forest fire.

The dragon batted its wing at the space between me and our healer, blasting me backwards to the floor once again. My health had taken a surprising battering from the wind attack which barely seemed more than offhand gestures from our opponent.

I was sitting at less than half of my maximum HP as the dragon loomed above me, a shadow casting a menacing glare from the beast’s narrowed golden eyes.

Reggie’s fire was put out by the wind and he struggled to his knees, looking lost and confused.. His skin looked like ash and his lips had peeled back to reveal his bleeding gums and teeth. One of his eyes had popped in the intense heat and bloody gore leaked from the eye socket.

“Reggie!” Jamie screamed as he scrabbled towards his friend, catching him just as he couldn’t kneel anymore.

Tears crested the water mage’s face as he looked down in horror at his charred friend.

Reggie wasn’t dead just yet though and I pulled a healing potion out of my inventory and threw it towards them from my prone position.

Jamie noticed and scrambled to catch the potentially lifesaving liquid, fumbling, but managing to pull the potion into his chest.

The dragon sneered, snorting steam and took a step towards us. The lair shook as gold piles started falling, like a landslide, but of coins. It didn’t seem like our foe was going to give us any time to take a breather.

I looked up and nocked another arrow, still prone and covered in gold. The dragon glanced towards me out of the corner of its eye.

I fired my arrow.