Dragons are one of the more peculiar types of monsters found throughout Cytheria. At times they are hostile, at others they are friendly, and at yet others they are utterly unconcerned with the affairs of the world around them.
In the distant past, dragons were numbered with the civilized races, but the System, in its infinite wisdom, decided to reduce them to monsters, placing them as obstacles in Territories across Cytheria. Most dragons found now are rated as Territory Bosses or Region Bosses, dominating their territory with overwhelming power. A young adult dragon is the equivalent of a high S-rank threat, and elder dragons are considered to be beyond ranking. The reason for this is that even the lowest-ranking race of dragon starts out with a body and spirit stat of 100 or more. Moreover, a dragon’s scales – even a young one’s – are capable of shedding blows from adamantine weapons without cracking and resist most magic.
As such, defeating a dragon is generally not realistic. Thankfully, the vast majority of dragons are not only capable of conversation but enjoy it on the rare occasion someone is brave enough to approach them. While a dragon’s personality might drive it to ‘enjoy’ such conversations in different ways (such as blue dragons’ love for gambling and black dragons’ love for deadly riddles), the fact remains that the race – for all its arrogance – is not uncivilized (despite the System’s proclamation).
As such, few dragons are direct threats to civilization. There are entire worlds within Cytheria that have thriving civilizations where the citizens pay dragons passage to use the Territory and World Gates, and forming a good relationship with a dragon is mostly seen as a better option than creating conflict with one.
However, like with all such matters, there are outliers. It is these outliers that have given dragons a reputation as monsters capable of unbelievable feats of destruction. In particular red dragons are known for their love of seeing cities burn, and a small but significant proportion of black dragons like to create regions where nothing else can live to serve as a nest.
The dragons least likely to behave in such a manner are the ‘metallic dragons’, as they tend to be quieter and have less of a tendency toward cruelty or brutality. Silver Dragons are known for their love of knowledge and study, and Gold Dragons are known for their wisdom and for taking the long view in most matters. Bronze Dragons are known for their playfulness and love of children of all races, and Brass dragons are known for their love of peace and quiet in the wilderness.
However, even these dragons have been known on occasion to be a threat to civilization. In the past, a Gold Dragon whose eggs were stolen by adventurers incinerated the civilization of Sag’arca, and a Silver Dragon whose mortal lover was killed by System Zealots froze the city-state of Dyanalis beneath a glacier that remains even today.
It is events like this that make it clear that dragons are prone to extreme reactions in situations where their emotions go beyond their control, and it is speculated that it is this behavior that led to the System naming their race as a monster race. Sadly, it is unlikely we will ever get an answer on this question (if only because the answer costs five trillion credits in the System Shop), so we can only speculate on what might be the truth…
~From A Study of Intelligent Monster Races
The Wilds – or the Untamed Territories, as they are at times called - are the lands beyond the frontier dominated by the sentient races. Most of these Territories are completely unknown to us, their resources untouched, their lands unexplored, and their monsters free to roam.
Expansion of civilized lands occurs in increments and usually only with massive loss of life. Thousands of D and C rank individuals will be poured into the grinder to conquer lesser dungeons and cleanse populations of dangerous monsters, while a few dozen B and A ranks will face off against the Territory Boss and explore the greater dungeons.
Occasionally, a Territory Boss turns out to be rational and reasonable. However, most Territory Bosses are non-sapient creatures who are only interested in eating, sleeping, and killing.
For explorers of the Wilds, System Shop Chits are a necessity, in order to purchase passcodes for Territory Gates and World Gates. Without them, they will become trapped in Territories far out of range of civilized lands, forced to delve dungeons in hope of finding a chit and enough resources to pay for passage.
The effort of exploring the Wilds is ongoing and eternal, not the least of which because unconquered Territories frequently move, changing which Territories they are connected to. It is only when a Territory is conquered or the Territory Boss forms a contract with a civilization that a Territory will stop moving.
It is said that Cytheria’s Territories were once fixed in place, with no Gates or Territory Bosses. However, the sources for these rumors are impossible to confirm, as most of them are so old that they predate the elven empires and the dragonian domination. For those of us who live today, they might as well be myth or legend.
Originally, the Adventurers Guild was formed to explore and ‘reclaim’ the Wilds. However, in the countless thousands of years since its founding, the number of Adventurers who devote themselves to this original purpose has been reduced to a remnant of a remnant. Only the most idealistic of young Adventurers consider exploration as a career, and even those that do usually give up within a few years…
~From the Weary Words of a Retired Adventurer
The Mongrel channeled his energy into End Strike, cutting a fire elemental – a humanoid figure made out of pure flames – in half, extinguishing its existence. Spears of ice impaled the one to his right, and blue foxfire embraced the two ice elementals flanking the party.
The twins were giggling hysterically as they tossed balls of blue fire at the lesser elementals in the room, amused by how easy it was to kill them. The elemental crystals that served as a reward for killing them clattered to the floor, and within another ten minutes, the monster house was clear.
The four members of the party picked up as many of the elemental crystals as they could, knowing that even these lesser crystals were pretty valuable in the shop and for enchanting.
A small wooden chest appeared in the center of the room, and Syana checked it over briefly before signaling it was free of traps. Kaede happily opened it, revealing two crimson health potions and a dagger made out of fiery crystal.
After some discussion, the dagger was handed off to Syana, and they continued their dungeon dive.
The Mongrel’s relationship with Syana was a bit awkward, given how they had met and her time as his slave, as brief as it was. However, Syana seemed to put the past behind her much quicker than he could, often joining the maidens in teasing him for some reason.
As such, he felt very much outnumbered in his current company… he really wished the wolf-man hadn’t bowed out of today’s dungeon dive.
“I can’t believe we managed to clear a monster house so quickly…” Syana muttered.
“Twilight Magic is just unfair. I thought you could only kill an elemental with elemental magic,” Fururu said, puffing out her cheeks.
“Twilight Magic is based off of Lightning Magic and my Gift,” He explained for the hundredth time. For some reason, the maidens thought his magic was unfair… which really he didn’t disagree with. Elementals were technically natural magical constructs, so it was highly effective against them, especially stone and wind elementals.
“I can’t believe you got a Gift Skill under level forty…” Kaede said, shaking her head. Out of necessity, he’d revealed some of his secrets – including his Gift and its related skills and Art.
Gift Skills were fusions of one’s Gift with a high-leveled base skill. Conceptual Gifts like Twilight were more likely to fuse with a skill than most, but it was still unusual to get a Gift Skill before level forty.
“It was born of necessity, not desire,” He said shortly, not wanting to elaborate. The experiences that led to him melding his Lightning Magic with Twilight had left scars almost as deep as his love life.
It said a lot about his love life that it was more traumatic than the violent disruption of his life that led to him giving up his name and redacting part of his status.
Once they were done resting, they moved back into the dungeon proper, which was – at present – an underground snowfield (if that made sense). Lesser ice elementals roamed the caves that made up the second level of the dungeon, and they were currently being tasked with hunting as many as they could so that their enchanters (including the Mongrel) could make an ice room for long-term food preservation.
Most of the time, the mongrel used one of his cheap iron blades, coating it with End Strike at the moment of impact to let it destroy the elementals. The degradation from using it was already evident in the dullness of the blade and the pits forming along its flat. If it hit something hard it would likely shatter.
His Art was energy-efficient and had fewer side-effects than using Twilight Magic, but it also rapidly accelerated wear and tear on the weapons he used.
“Ha!” He struck out with a shortsword, cutting through the body of an ice elemental. However, after it exited the construct’s body, it disintegrated into pieces, and he tossed the hilt to the side, taking a new one out of his ring.
“I can see why you don’t like using it,” Syana remarked. This was the third iron shortsword he’d gone through since they entered the dungeon. Each lasted about twenty uses of his Art before they disintegrated, though there were small variances for each. Considering that even a mass-produced iron sword could be expected to last through a few months of constant abuse, the deleterious effects of his Art and Gift were rather obvious.
“It’s expensive… mithril and adamantine are no problem, but iron, bronze, steel, and black iron all disintegrate in no time,” He grumbled.
“You have mithril weapons, so why don’t you use them?” She asked curiously.
“With mithril, Twilight imprints on the metal and it starts to eat through everything around it. I don’t own any pure adamantine weapons, so I don’t know what kind of effects – if any – it would have,” He replied.
A long time ago, he’d owned a longsword of mithril that had been imprinted by his Gift. He’d been forced to keep it in his spatial device to keep it from decaying everything it touched. He’d lost it some time ago, before he even became a mercenary. At times he missed it, though he did prefer bastard swords.
I never seem to have the money when I think of buying a mithril bastard sword… He thought wistfully. There was another option, but it wasn’t currently available to him. So, he dismissed the thought and continued cutting down elementals with End Strike when they came within his area of responsibility.
Syana, on the other hand, was having trouble. Her Ice Magic was worthless against elementals of the same type, so she was essentially being forced to act as a dodge tank, stabbing the natural constructs with her rapier and throwing stones at them to keep their attention while dodging their retaliation. On the first floor, her Ice Magic had been great against the wind elementals, so it was a bit frustrating.
After another few hours of fighting, they managed to reach the end of the floor and began counting their haul of crystals.
“Fifty-nine ice crystals, forty-one fire crystals, ninety-seven wind crystals, and seventeen earth crystals… not a bad haul,” The Mongrel commented as he dropped the last crystal into his ring.
“Not to mention the all the elemental salts,” Fururu said, shoveling the crystalline powder she had collected along the way into crude leather pouches after removing it from her ring. Fururu’s hobby was alchemy, and elemental salts were an excellent reagent for creating elemental resistance potions and elemental toxins. She was only barely beyond being a rank amateur, but she was still the best in their group (though that wasn’t saying much).
They moved on to the next floor, eager to see what the dungeon had to offer next.
______________________________________________________________
Name: Fururu
Level: 35
Class: Mercenary Shaman
Race: Fox Maiden
Body: 44
Mind: 75
Spirit: 52
Skills: Long Bow 6, Rapier 5, Hand-ax 6, Foxfire Magic 7, Curse Magic 5, Divination 8, Evasion 5, Fire Immunity, Poison Resistance 3, Madness Resistance 2, Curse Resistance 4, Damnation Resistance 2, Alchemy 5, Herbalism 5, Gardening 9, Assessment 8, Analysis 4
Gift: Mystic Eyes of Foresight
Arts: Foxfire Storm
Fururu checked her status for the thousandth time since they awakened in the territory. After awakening, she had gone from level 30 to level 35, her status improving greatly. She was concerned that her curse resistance had been insufficient to allow her to awaken on her own, but that just meant she would have to go back to training it like when they were first starting out.
Not exactly a fun idea, but it was a necessity if she was to really master Curse Magic. She’d pushed her five extra points into body, desiring the physical improvement that was virtually impossible for her to get on her own (her talent for the body stat was so low that going through months of hellish physical training would barely allow her to gain a tenth of a point extra at level up).
The amount of elemental salts and attuned herbs and minerals they’d found in the dungeon would serve well at training her alchemy. She wondered if she had time to create a garden of spiritual herbs…
No, that wasn’t likely. From what she was taught, she knew that Silver Dragons tended to be reasonable, as long as you made an offering of sufficient value to add to their horde. Since dragons could not access the System Shop, the best way to gain such an item would be to purchase something only available from the Shop that would be of interest to it. They might be forced to remain for a few weeks or a month or two, but not the four or five years it would take to create a real spiritual garden like her mother or grandmother.
Their chosen mate was a stubborn one. Their urge to play with him had actually caused him to recoil several times, as if remembering a similar experience. That was problematic. Neither Kaede nor Fururu had much control over their desire to make mischief. There had never been any real need to even try in the past.
Overt flirting and attempts at intimacy had no effect except to make him wary. Fighting together seemed to be bringing them closer, but the wall between them was thick.
“How frustrating… I never thought our chosen would be so difficult to claim,” She muttered as she wove a net of foxfire, mixing in a curse that weakened the greater earth elemental that served as the third floor’s miniboss.
Her sister wielded her twin shortswords, wreathed in blue foxfire as she cut deep into the elemental’s right knee, hoping to disable it, even if only temporarily. However, greater elementals were exponentially more powerful than lesser elementals, and earth elementals were known for their toughness. Her attacks only left scratches on the surface of the elemental’s stone body.
Name: Kaede
Level: 35
Class: Mercenary Bladedancer
Race: Fox Maiden
Body: 60
Mind: 63
Spirit: 58
Skills: Long Bow 7, Shortsword 6, Stiletto 5, Dual-Wield 4, Foxfire Magic 5, Wind Magic 5, Evasion 7, Sharp Intuition, Fire Immunity, Poison Resistance 3, Madness Resistance 2, Curse Resistance 3, Damnation Resistance 2, Dancing 9, Sewing 8, Weaving 5, Assessment 3, Analysis 8
Gift: Sacred Dancer
Arts: Dance of the Golden Fox
Of the two sisters, Kaede was far more balanced. While she didn’t have exceptional talent in any one stat, her stats all grew easier through daily training than most, making her reasonably formidable in all areas, without being exceptional in any given one. During times when there weren’t any good jobs at the Guilds, she often danced to her sister’s flute in taverns for coin, using her beauty and supernatural grace to bewitch men and women alike.
In this way, she was rather typical of fox maidens, who often made their way through life by charming and tricking those of other races. She was also simpler than Fururu, and she honestly found her chosen mate’s resistance to their advances puzzling, given the way he obviously appreciated their appearance.
At the moment, she was a bit frustrated with the giant elemental that refused to go down, so she began her Dance, weaving around its legs as a large portion of the energy ambient to the dungeon gathered around her body and blades, turning her blue foxfire golden as she naturally evaded its attacks and lashed out at its joints.
Her Art utilized a number of her skills, not the least her weapon skills, her dual-wield skill, her foxfire, her evasion, and her intuition. It also made use of her Gift, turning the dark-aspected flames of foxfire magic into sacred flames that burned the very energy the elemental was composed of, instead of trying to burn its physical substance.
This Art had its downsides, not the least of which that it was best used against multiple opponents or those much larger than her. Used against a fighter her own size, it actually rendered her more vulnerable, as it was reliant on her intuition to tell her how to use her enemies’ attacks against them. Against a single skilled opponent, the rhythm of her dance actually made her somewhat predictable, unfortunately. Against multiple opponents, however, she could quickly turn their attacks on each other or use opportunities to protect herself and strike at her enemies.
At present, her use of the Art was immature, so she still had numerous holes in her defenses that an experienced opponent could take advantage of, but that mattered little against the sub-sentient elemental as she shaved away at its body, bit by bit.
Mother taught me the dances to go along with my Gift, but mastering the war aspect is going to take decades, She thought idly as her left-hand sword finally succeeded in severing the left foot of the elemental, causing it to fall to one knee. Her sister’s cursed fox-fire burned the surface of the construct, eroding the armor to make it easier for Kaede to cut deeper into the elemental. Her next strike opened a long gash in the elemental’s cheek, followed by a dozen others in quick succession before the creature lashed out with a wave of earth spikes. Kaede was forced to leap atop the construct’s bent knee, whereupon she decided to climb up onto its shoulders.
Kaede began slashing her weapons deep into the back of its neck repeatedly, ignoring her sister’s cursed foxfire. She trusted her sister not to hit her. After fifteen rapid strikes, the head was half-severed and the creature collapsed, forcing her to leap off of its shoulder and onto the disrupted earth, barely avoiding the sharp tip of an earth spike to land beside Fururu.
The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
The construct began to dissolve, leaving a fist-sized brown crystal radiating immense amounts of energy.
The Mongrel clapped appreciatively, and she felt her tail wag excitedly. She saw her sister doing the same out of the corner of her eye and shrugged mentally, We really have fallen for him.
When she thought of how difficult it would be to get through to him, the immensity of what they were aiming for weighed down on her spirit, but she had no intention of giving up. She saw the same determination in her sister’s eyes, a matching flame of passion visible in the way her ears flared and turned toward him to catch his every word, her tail wagging at his mere presence.
Kaede knew she was the same, and she wondered if she would have to duel Syana, given the drow’s recent playfulness. However, that was a thought for later. Now she just wanted to be praised by her chosen.
_________________________________________________________________________
The Mongrel was already regretting his praise for the fox maidens. They had wanted to test themselves against the greater earth elemental, and he hadn’t had any reason to refuse them. Their perfectly-synchronized combat style had impressed him in truth, and he was fairly sure that even if he used his Gift, he would probably lose to them in combination.
However, he had forgotten that the fox maidens were just looking for excuses to get closer to him, and now he was buried in the fluff of their tails as they embraced him while Syana looked on with a wry smile. He knew very well that fox maidens used their tails as a weapon, and it was hard to resist the sheer fluffiness of their tails. If he was stupid enough to reach out and touch them of his own will, he would pay for it for a long time go come… because it would be a tacit permission for them to take things further.
Considering how much he loved fluffy tails, this was the perfect torture for him.
I really need to visit the red light district in whatever town or city we reach after getting out of the Wilds, He thought with a resigned look on his face. Avoiding the advances of the fox maidens was a lot harder out in the wilderness, where a part of him whispered that all he had to do to avoid his troubles was just give in and remain out beyond the reach of civilization.
He hated using the red light district, but it was better than giving in to Kaede and Fururu and repeating his past mistakes.
He hoped they were closer to the region where the Kingdom and Sakarka were. If they were nearer to Rifulle or Graspen, the dominant races would be dragonians or dwarves, neither of which fit his tastes. Not to mention that both lands were places of strong drink and plain (if hearty) food. He tended to prefer lighter drinks and spicy food when he wasn’t stuffing himself for the sake of training.
He knew it was stupid to be thinking that far into the future (and about that particular subject) when in the middle of a dungeon, but he wasn’t a stone or a monk. Gathering his will, he grasped their shoulders (ignoring the surprisingly cute chirps that came out of their mouths) and pushed them away, giving them a cold glare.
There was not a single trace of shame in their faces, only the typical desire mixed with mischievous laughter he was all-too-familiar with. Their tails were wagging eagerly, their ears twitching.
“Let’s continue to the next floor,” He said tiredly, passing them by as if nothing had happened.
He ignored their babbling protests from the fox girls and the giggling of the drow as he headed down to the next floor.
As they entered the fourth floor, Syana’s face paled and she fell to her knees. The fox girls wavered on their feet, and even the Mongrel had the desire to fall back.
Ah, that’s not good… He thought, recognizing the phenomenon. There was something on the fourth floor that belonged on a much, much deeper floor… something that Fliman probably wouldn’t be able to handle even if he had the magic to do so.
They quietly but quickly returned to the third floor and made their way out of the dungeon. None of them had any interest in stimulating whatever was waiting on the fourth floor.
Once they were outside the dungeon, they collapsed on the ground, breathing hard, cold sweat coating their skin.
“Th-that was…” Syana mumbled.
“… Wanderer…” Fururu mumbled.
Wanderers were Dungeon Bosses or mini-bosses that had freed themselves from the dungeon’s compulsion to remain in their boss rooms. Wanderers tended to use the other dungeon monsters as fodder for growth, becoming far more powerful than would otherwise be possible. Moreover, they were far less rational than monsters born in the wild, often killing for killing’s sake or escaping the dungeon entirely to rampage across the countryside.
From what they had sensed, it was either a high A-rank or low S-rank, comparing it to Fliman’s force of presence when he was going all out against the orcs. None of them were willing to think about what would have happened if they hadn’t run as soon as they sensed it.
They quickly made their way back to camp, even the sisters losing their usual playful manner.
“… what?” Fliman asked, his eyes widening.
“An A-rank, possibly S-rank, Wanderer was on the fourth floor of the elemental dungeon,” The Mongrel repeated himself four hours later, upon their arrival back at camp.
The camp itself was already taking on the look of a small village, with the half of the boat that was relatively intact (beyond the break in the keel) having been reinforced and turned into a two and a half-story town hall of sorts. The other half of the boat was broken down to make the floors and slat roofs for log cabins set up around the boat’s remains.
The sailors mostly lived in the remains of the boat, sleeping in their hammocks at night and going out to hunt during the day. The mercenaries and the boy and his butler preferred the cabins, and a small forge was set up on the edge of the clearing, with a charcoal pit set up next to it. Apparently, one of the dead mercenaries had been a skilled smith, and the contents of his spatial device had included a full set of smithing tools, a small anvil, and even a miniaturized forge and smelter.
So far only the Mongrel and two others had made use of it, but the charcoal pit was in constant use to keep the small forge supplied. The ores from the dungeons made it worth the effort, allowing them to maintain a supply of tools (even if none of them was up to forging an actual weapon) and repair iron and steel weapons.
“That’s… I guess we’ll have to give up on collecting more elemental crystals then,” Fliman said glumly after digesting what he heard.
The other mercenaries immediately began to argue, the group falling into a pattern of back-and-forth where ideas were presented then thrown out one after the other.
A set rule of fighting dungeon monsters was that a single adventurer of the same rank had a fifty-fifty chance of defeating a monster of their own rank. With the gap between A and S, that probability went down to less than five percent if the monster turned out to be S-rank, with Fliman only barely in the late stages of A-rank.
If there were two more A-ranks available, it would have been feasible for them to fight the Wanderer, but everyone else was either B-rank or below, with the Mongrel’s group being made up entirely of C-rank equivalents. The captain was a high B-rank, but he was specialized in fighting on the water and in it, not on land.
That was not to mention that S-rank monsters, no matter how weak… gained a basic intellect. As a result, just becoming S-rank would allow a monster to become exponentially more powerful. If they continued to evolve, they would eventually become an Awakened Beast, acknowledged as sentient by the System and allowed full access to the skill, Gift and Art part of the System.
The key was the Gift. For the sentient races, most based their growth around their Gift, at least to some extent, growing and evolving it in tune with their path through life. For an Awakened Beast, however, their Gift was the result of their Path, a manifestation of their power that raised them to a level that most sentients would never be able to comprehend.
As such, all sane denizens of Cytheria wanted to avoid encountering something that could potentially Awaken at any given time. Even S-ranked adventurers rarely hunted S-rank monsters for a similar set of reasons.
“I’ll get Licus and Risti go with you to act as scouts. They’ll be able to sense whether it is on the next floor before you actually enter it. We can’t do without the crystals, given their value on the Shop and for enchanting,” Fliman said reluctantly after some discussion with the others.
“One thousand credits for each lesser elemental crystal, five thousand for a regular elemental crystal, and twenty-five thousand for each greater elemental crystal. Compared to the materials recovered in the beast dungeons, it is just so much more efficient,” The captain said. He was one of those who hard argued the most fiercely for them to continue harvesting the elemental dungeon, despite the danger. Being away from the water was driving him a little crazy, though protecting his crew was keeping him from losing it altogether. Mer weren’t meant to spend so much time out of the water.
“With the ice crystals we can preserve a lot more meat, fruit, and vegetables without drying them or putting them in a spatial device,” Risti added, “Nobody here wants to eat dried meat and fruit for dinner every night during the winter.”
The others nodded, practically in unison. Only Fliman and Licus had seriously protested at continuing to harvest the elemental dungeon. The Mongrel’s group hadn’t wanted anything to do with it after their experience, either, but they were also the weakest group in the room.
… is this my bad luck with clients extending to comrades now? The Mongrel thought with more than a little exasperation.
__________________________________________________________________________
The Mongrel brought the adamantine hammer down on the orange-glowing rod of iron with a sharp breath, flattening out the end. As always when he had the opportunity to smith, the Mongrel had a slight smile on his face. He was unbothered by the heat of the forge and the sweat coating his bare upper body beneath the scarred leather apron.
He knew some of the others in camp were discomfited by the sight of the stubs of severed tail and wings visible when he went around without a shirt, but to him, smithing with a shirt on was a waste of perfectly good cloth. When the sparks from the length of iron burned his arms, he didn’t even flinch, the flesh repairing itself without him even having to think about it. Pus and blood from the burns dotted his arms, giving him a somewhat distasteful appearance, but he didn’t care.
All he cared about was the iron shovel slowly coming into being beneath his hammer.
The local dungeons had plenty of iron and copper, and as a result, he had plenty to work with when making tools for their temporary settlement. Over the past month, he had gradually settled in as the regular smith, spending three days a week in the forge, three days in the dungeon, and one day at rest.
At first, the fox maidens had watched him while he worked the forge, even taking advantage of their fire immunity to stand close while he worked. However, when they realized he didn’t even notice their presence while he worked, they began to sulk, finally leaving him alone.
In the past month, their little village had fallen into a routine. Due to how close winter was, the archers and those with extensive hunting experience spent most of their time hunting edible monsters, while those with a knowledge of plants gathered what they could from the forest and plains.
He finished out the rough shape of the shovel’s blade, then picked it up with tongs and quenched it in the barrel of magically-purified water next to the anvil. The hiss of hot metal hitting water, followed by steam emerging from the barrel soothed his spirit, and when he removed the still-intact shovel head from the barrel, he nodded with satisfaction.
It wasn’t a master work, by any standard. There were slight, barely noticeable uneven spots where he had put too much force or too little behind hammer blows during the forging process. However, a little time at the grindstone would sharpen the blade portion enough for it to serve its purpose. Given that he had only returned to forging things from scratch a month ago, it was a definite improvement. Repairs he could do in his sleep, but he had lost the feel for taking raw metal and turning it into something new in the four years since he last forged something from scratch.
It felt good though… and at the same time he felt a deep bitterness rise from within him, an old anger at the situation that wouldn’t let him just pick a more peaceful way of living. If he were a bit younger, it might have consumed him, but he simply took out an ingot of copper with his tongs after setting the shovel head aside and shoved it into the coals of the forge, stepping on the bellows pedal to revivify the flames.
This time he was making a simple copper pan for cooking breakfast over a fire. The copper was soon hot and soft enough to be easily worked, and he began hammering it flat, spreading out out into a rough circle. He then used the tip of the anvil to bend the edges downward one at a time, reheating the metal at regular intervals until he had the copper formed into a proper rounded fry pan, albeit one with regular divots along the edge due to his imperfect technique.
“You really seem happy when you are working the forge,” Risti observed from where she sat on a stool just outside, smoking a joint of greenweed thoughtfully as she looked at him.
He gave her a semblance of a wry smile, “I didn’t become a wanderer because I wanted to.”
His answer was deliberately obscure, failing to directly answer her unspoken question. He had nothing against Risti, and the last few weeks of delving the elemental dungeon with her as a scout had earned some trust. However, in his experience, telling people about why he had to move on so often tended to get them killed… even when they were much higher level than him. He sometimes wondered if the one who sent assassins after him wasn’t deliberately tormenting him by sending ones around or below his level every time. More than one high-leveled friend he had made over the years had fought higher-leveled assassins coming after him and taken them down into the underworld with them.
It happened a little too frequently to be entirely coincidence, to his mind.
This supposition was incorrect, of course. The one sending men after him wanted him dead, plain and simple. However, the Mongrel always seemed to end up under the protection of someone able to counter high-level assassins at just the right time, for some reason.
The paranoia that led the Mongrel to think it was deliberate was off-base in this case.
“Fliman managed to negotiate with the dragon, by the way,” Risti said casually.
“Really? What did it say?” The Mongrel asked curiously. That they weren’t dead indicated the dragon was willing to forgive their presence in its Territory, at the very least.
“She said she was willing to allow our eventual passage through the Gate if we presented certain Shop-only goods she can’t get herself due to being bound to the region. We are also to avoid harming her dragonling, her child who is in the elemental dungeon,” She said with a meaningful smile.
“Don’t tell me…” He said, making a face.
“Yeah, the thing we thought was a Wanderer? That’s her kid. Apparently he likes the flavor of greater fire and earth elementals and prefers to hunt inside that dungeon. You just had the bad luck to be there when he was playing,” She said with a humorous smile curving her lips, her ears twitching mockingly.
“… isn’t a dragon a lot worse than a Wanderer?” The Mongrel said aloud.
She nodded, “Yeah. Nothing anyone below S-rank can do to a dragon, even a child. Moreover, if you had somehow managed to hurt him… well lets just say none of us would be here now.”
He sighed, “Since we entered Ven’itza, it is like luck started to toy with us.”
“Yeah, even Fliman stopped blaming it on your legendary bad luck after he talked to the dragon. You wouldn’t be alive today if your luck was that bad,” She said with a smile.
“I hate to think how much money we are going to need to buy tribute for a dragon,” He muttered as he took out another ingot of copper and began the process of banging out another frypan.
“Yeah. From what he said, if we try to just buy the access codes, she’ll probably kill us before we can get through the Gate. The price for the stuff she wants is around forty million credits… and even with the entirety of the kid’s allowance for his school years, we only have eight million on hand, if we sell our extra equipment and food,” She said, her eyes dark with a mixture of fear and resignation.
“If we had access to the entirety of the elemental dungeon, we might manage it in a month or two,” He remarked absently as he began pounding the ingot flat, making sure to keep it even and in a vague circular shape as he went.
“Why’s that?” She asked.
“Greater elemental crystals… I’m pretty sure the fourth floor has a large number of opportunities to gain them. If we pushed hard enough, we could probably gather enough to pay for what the dragon wants, if what you are saying is correct,” He replied, not really paying attention to the therianthrope or her reactions.
“That’s true, but I’m pretty sure we’ve been warned away from the lower floors,” She said, looking a little angry.
“Risti, do you have a reason to want to hurry things? It can’t be the client… that boy is a half-elf, he has the time to wait while we spend a few years building up the funds to get out. So is it something personal?” He questioned, his stream of consciousness flowing out of his mouth freely as he pounded metal with his hammer.
“… this job was supposed to get me back to my homeland so I could see my oldest sister again,” She replied sadly.
He nodded slightly after a moment, “I see.”
He didn’t know what to say to Risti. She obviously valued her family bonds, which was unusual for a cat therianthrope, with their habit of tossing children out of the house when they reached puberty. He honestly found it hard to relate, considering his own history.
“My sister… was a bit strange for a cat therianthrope. Unlike our parents, she cared about each and every one of us, teaching us to read and write, calculate, and getting us weapon training as we got older. She even arranged for a Life Mage to train me in how to use my magic internally,” She said, a deep loneliness in her eyes.
“But our parents, when they realized what she was doing, arranged with the clan elders to have us sold as debt slaves and taken far away, believing in the traditions of the clan and their instincts as therianthropes over anything else,” Risti said, strong emotion burning in her eyes.
Selling one’s children as debt slaves to pay off one’s own debts or those of a clan or tribal group was common with some races and in some nations in Cytheria. Such children were guaranteed food and necessary shelter from the elements in exchange for performing non-sexual tasks until they met the System’s standard for debt repayment. Unlike adult slaves, they couldn’t be pressured into violence or sexual acts, and the cost of food, drink, and shelter could not be added to their debts. As a result, they tended to earn their freedom around the time they reached adulthood.
However, because their childhood was spent working at simple jobs, they rarely had the necessary skills to survive outside of slavery, and as a result, many of them fell into prostitution or manual labor jobs. Risti was obviously an exception. Nobody made it to B-rank without training, talent, and a little luck. Most likely, returning to visit her sister was an important ritual to her to break free of her time as a slave, or so the Mongrel postulated as he listened to her story.
He finished the pan just as she finished describing her time in slavery, and he sighed deeply at the burden of her trust. Risti obviously considered him someone worthy of confiding in, though he had no idea of why, so he decided to be straightforward with her, “Is there a need to hurry?”
“My sister is the clan’s shamanic priestess, providing divinations and blessings, as well as dancing at the festivals of the seasons. However, by tradition, one can only be a shamanic priestess until the age of thirty, whereupon the priestess must choose whether to become wife to the chieftain or be buried alive as a sacrifice to the System for the blessing of the spirits,” She explained, “My sister turns thirty in another two months, and I seriously doubt she’ll agree to marry the old fart currently wearing the feathered cloak.”
“What do you intend to do if you make it?” He asked gently as he stopped stoking the forge’s flames and sat on a stool next to her.
“I’ll challenge for the chief’s position, then use my first act to abolish the tradition of the shamanic priestess,” She said simply.
“Will that work?”
“Yes. The chieftain is the equivalent of a C-rank, and he won’t have grown much since. The path the chieftains follow doesn’t lead to high growth, so he won’t be above level forty,” She explained. Seeing that she was better than the average for a B-rank, she would probably easily win.
“What will you do after that?”
“I’ll forcibly replace the elders with younger people, then overturn the tradition of abandonment and forbid the selling of our children to cover the tribe’s debts. That’s what I hope to manage before I weaken enough that someone else can take my place, anyway,” She said, her eyes burning with determination.
“And if your sister is already gone when you arrive?”
“There is no need for a tribe that blindly follows traditions that call for the deaths of their own, now is there?” Her eyes glinted with a hard light.
“Is Licus going to join you?” He asked gently.
She closed her eyes and made a pained expression, “I haven’t asked him.”
“I don’t know either of you that well, but Licus loves you. It’s written on his face whenever he looks at you. I don’t trust my instincts when it comes to women, but I think you share his feelings. Whatever you choose, don’t do it alone, if you can avoid it. I might be younger than you, but my experience in life tells me that choosing to go it alone when you don’t have to is an idiot’s path,” He said, his expression showing a faint shadow of the sorrow he felt as his words uncovered old scars that still ached deep in his heart.
The last few weeks they had been delving the dungeon together, and the entire time, the relationship between Risti and Licus had visibly deepened, though he was unsure of what had happened to cause them to feel for one another in the first place. It had showed up in their synchronicity in combat, the perfect timing with which they fired arrows to distract elementals at just the right times… and in their living arrangements, since they were both sleeping in the same cabin.
“Yeah… I like him a lot as well, but my clan… it’s a pretty awful place. I don’t want to drag him down into the mud with them…” She said sadly.
“So don’t. Save your sister and take her with you when you leave. Why bother with a clan like that when you can form a new one with people you actually care about?” He suggested.
“… will you help? I need to make the credits as soon as possible,” She said with determination after almost an hour of consideration, where the Mongrel simply sat on the edge of the stool, waiting.
“Alright. I guess the first bit of business is to negotiate with a dragonling…” He said, scratching himself behind the cat ears as he tried to think of something that would convince such a powerful creature to let them use its hunting grounds.
_________________________________________________________________________
The Territory Boss, the ancient Silver Dragon known as Zu’agastraelicanica (shortened to Agastra) opened her eyes and snorted with amusement as she heard one of the silly mortals she allowed to live and hunt her Territory spoke of negotiating with her son.
Ever since her race committed the Grand Sin that had condemned them to a role as monsters in Cytheria, Agastra had ruled over the Territory that was once the hunting grounds around her lair. Like most of the dragons still living from the times of old, she had not taken part in committing the Grand Sin, but she paid the price for it without much concern.
Dragons had little need for the System, and it wasn’t uncommon for a dragon to sleep for thousands of years if they had nothing urgent to do. For a dragon as ancient as her, the millennia since the Sin had passed in the blink of an eye, and she had yet to experience much in the way of discomfiture as a result of her current role.
She was old enough that she felt civilization had little to offer, and she was beyond the desperate desire to build a great horde that drove many of her kind. That was not to say that she didn’t resent the removal of even the option to leave her Territory. However, she was also quite conscious of the fact that her race’s failure to restrain the fools who had damned them all had earned her her fate.
Her son, on the other hand, was a typical dragonling, arrogant, greedy, and lustful. He loved the shine of the crystals dropped by slain elementals, and when he discovered that eating the ice ones enhanced his body and breath, he had started to spend entire decades in the elemental dungeon, without even trying to leave.
As a result, his raw elemental energies were actually stronger than hers, though she was more skilled and her body much tougher. It was all-too-likely he would manage to grow enough to gain the acknowledgment of the System and become an Awakened Beast, like the ancestors of certain species of dragonoid had.
That was not her concern, however. If her son wished to betray the race for the sake of power, that was his business. She would simply produce another clutch of eggs and hope for one of the resulting dragonlings to become her successor.
She was nothing if not patient.
The mortals’ hopes of negotiating with her son amused her deeply. The boy was typical of young dragons when it came to his attitudes toward the lesser races, in that he considered them mostly to be just talking (and not particularly tasty) food. She honestly wondered if he had enough curiosity to counter his arrogance and deign to speak with walking meat.
Despite her warning to the leader of the mortals, she wouldn’t actually be angered if they managed to kill her son. More dragons died in childhood by far than otherwise, and a life without challenges was worthless when it came to raising a dragonling.
The warning was because of the only reason she would ever bother with mortals…
Candy and sweets from the System Shop. She hadn’t had sweets other than fruit from the forest in millennia. If her son killed the mortals, she wouldn’t be able to extort candy and other sugary treats out of them for passage. It was the only thing she missed about the System, the ability to have sweets anywhere as long as she had a token and some credits.
In the past, she’d even granted her mystic protection to bakeries that produced cakes for her, but she’d lost the related Art when she lost direct access to the System and her status.
Which was why she preferred to sleep most of the time. If she couldn’t eat sweets, she didn’t want to be awake.
She wondered what sweets the big human would bring her next…