The Dragon of Roads - World's End

With a thunderous collision like a ten-ton sledgehammer to my left jaw, my body found itself crashing down hard on my right side, the fight nearly knocked out of me in a single blow. Before my opponent could capitalize on my stunned condition, I utilized the last remnants of my focus and reasoning to detonate traps beneath my fallen body. Great gales of air sprung forth to push me upwards and backwards, my body landing on shaky legs as I recovered my wits from the devastating jolt to my noggin.

“Keep your head in range of your wings,” my opponent lectured as she swiped at me on my left side again.

This time, I backed my head up, my neck going high to make the required bend while I moved my left wing forward to block. The rake of her claws bounced off impotently, but her teeth grabbed ahold of my wing and tugged. She turned in place and swung me wide, and once again I found myself in a me-shaped crater as she slammed me into the earth. This time, I summoned forth a wave of water under me to push me away, her grasp on my wing already lifted as she readied her next attack. As I rolled with the wave to upright myself yet again, I witnessed an extraordinary feat of acrobatics as my opponent, somersaulting through the air, brought her tail down upon me at high speed. Though my wings blocked the worst of the blow, the overwhelming force still flattened me. Before I could react, my opponent had leaped into the air, her body twisting so that she landed facing the same way as me, but unfortunately for me, on top of me and in a grapple. Pinned by her superior weight and size, I found myself helpless before her might.

“This is where you would die,” she scolded as her teeth gently set themselves against the scales of my neck just below my head.

Hearty guffaws and cries of consternation came from the direction of the rabble of idle workers enjoying their time off by spectating me getting trounced time after time. Money changed hands as people won and lost fortunes while wagering how many exchanges I could withstand before I lost again.

“You are getting better,” Princess Nanu encouraged as she pinned me down snugly with her weight. “Well, a little better every day. I am actually having to try harder, but the bar was rather low to begin with,” she teased as she wiggled her hips and shoulders into me. You keep thinking as a humanoid would think, but you need to use your entire body like a dragon should.”

Her lecture over, she dismounted me and raked the back of her claws along my left side as she walked back to her starting position. With her draconic body over twice my size, she decided to be sporting and withhold from using active magic. Despite the handicap, her superior weight, reach, and finesse rendered our spars into one-sided beatdowns. We practiced fighting as dragons for an hour a day, and with our session only halfway over, the displeasure of getting smacked around still remained within my immediate future. Help, help; someone call domestic violence on her!

With it better to ‘die’ a thousand times in practice compared to once in a real fight, I resumed my place at my starting position. I considered myself clever, but nothing I could do worked on her. Breath attacks of any element just harmlessly washed off her. My swipes with my claws and smashes with my tail were no more than love-taps. Trying to overpower her was outright suicidal. Traps, which remained the bulk of my fighting kit, were likewise fruitless. She could easily see them despite their subtle and covert nature, and even the ones that did hit her likewise failed to secure an advantage for me. And to think, Nanu was ‘only’ a Princess. I could only wonder as to the horror and awesome destruction a King or Queen could unleash if let loose.

Being that I was an Emperor, I felt pretty weak, but to be fair, I was rather young, appearing to be in my early twenties in my human form. However, such physical aging would slow down considerably as I advanced in [Age] as a dragon. Even if I lived another ten thousand years, I would be capable of looking much the same in my human form as I do now if I so desired. Only this morning had I unlocked the Skills to take the form of other humanoids, which is to say races like orcs, dwarves, elves, and so on. However, I would need to make it through sparring before I could go try out such shapeshifting shenanigans, so I focused on the task at hand.

Nanu always gave me the initiative to attack, and so I lunged forward in a feint to bait out her claws. She fell for it, and as her claw swung past, I latched on to her hand with my mouth. But you see, dear reader, I had erred, for she had been the one to bait me. With me still clinging on tightly, she swung her arm in a backhand as she twisted her body, and with dastardly physics cordially inviting me to follow her momentum, I once again found myself sailing into the air.

Despite trying to let go of her to get away, her claws had wedged themselves in my teeth. This time, instead of hitting the ground, I crashed into her underside. She had gone prone in her swing and rolled over to continue the momentum of my impromptu flight. Her wings corralled me into her upturned body, and with her legs and free hand spinning my body as I came down, I found myself in the dragon-equivalent of a rear naked choke. Her teeth found purchase on my neck, and with my tail and limbs restrained respectively by her own appendages, I could find no leverage to free myself.

“Dead again,” she chided as she nibbled at me playfully.

At this point, I almost felt like she lorded her strength over me. Perhaps that was the point, to cement in my mind the vast disparity of power between us. She was not even at full strength for what a prominent Princess should be and I could not even begin to take her in a fight. While it may have appeared that she showboated every technique she knew to defeat me, much to the adulation of cheering fans, I believed it to be to my own benefit as to the versatility of the draconic form in terms of martial prowess. She deftly married adroit counters and graceful movements to engage me in maneuvers I thought physically impossible. I kept my temper in check only because I felt as though she wanted to coax that out and put me in my place. The lesson to be learned was if I fought a dragon who was a Marquess or higher in peerage, I would lose, plain and simple. Count Vladislav, whom I had fought months ago and defeated, had been a fluke.

“Tomorrow, I will size myself down to match you, and we will begin training in earnest.”, she informed me as we took our starting positions. “You have seen the bulk of what can be done without active magic to aid my prowess, and since dragons always fight with potent magic, continuing with just martial techniques alone would start to create bad patterns in your behavior. Just think of all the interesting new ways I can box your proverbial ears and flatten you,” she announced excitedly as the crowd cheered her on.

Anger swelled within me unbidden, and I casually wondered if I should water down the ale that the onlookers swigged heedless of my discomfort or spike it up high enough to knock them all out. Perhaps even, I should just eat one of them so they tone down their heckling. Now, that was a disturbing and intrusive thought that definitely seemed to stem from my draconic nature. I did not think such anger and pride were my vices, so perhaps I would have to talk to Nanu about it later.

“Temperance, Master, lest you drink too deeply from that chalice of dumb-bitch-juice and become intoxicated with poor judgment.”

Skull, my ever loving and faithful [Dragon Knight], safely concealed away in my shadow, offered sound counsel with a dash of sass. I did take a moment to collect myself, feeling vexed more at my mood swing than my martial performance. She and I shared a powerful bond, one where our thoughts and emotions could bleed into one another if we did not actively suppress such transmigrations. I did at least admit to myself that she reproached me with a fair degree of wit, for she matched her words to the habits of imbibement of the peanut gallery.

Mercifully, time eventually advanced until the hour of training came to an end. My healing Skills had earned their keep these last few months as Nanu beat me bloody day after day. It almost made me miss the days of my youth when I trained with the Bradberrys. However, Nanu at least made it up to me each night with affection and intimacy aplenty in our bedroom. Not that I ever wanted Mr. Bradberry to do such for me, but Mrs. Bradberry could have done worse by me than such an indulgence.

Today had been another day of digging tunnels. With an 82 foot diameter tunnel, of which about half of that volume was filled in with obsidicrete to prevent cave-ins and to allow a structure for roads and pipes, a great deal of earth needed to be excavated with each mile of progress. Such stone would then go through my [Basic Thermal Bottle], which would melt everything down to base natural elements (not to be confused with the elements of magic) and then reconstituted into my proprietary blend of obsidian or as quartz for S.M.A.R.T. crystals. Both relied heavily on oxygen and silicon, so finding rock with high concentrations of silicon, iron, and… I want to say magnolia. No, that’s a flower, but some other element that sounds similar to that. Anyway, just find some rock, correctly take it for granite, and then you have pretty much everything you need for obsidian, and thus, obsidicrete.

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The road that I, along with several thousand people under me, we were making was 72 feet wide, 1 foot deep, and roughly 3,000 miles long. However, with granite being only about 50-70 percent silicon by weight, some of the refuse had to be deposited into great storage silos I built along the road. Additionally, with granite being around 14 percent aluminum by weight, which was itself a valuable metal, I would still come away with a pretty penny. Add in the other traces of elements and the odd vein of precious ores, and I would have a great deal of spending cash once I made it to market.

I will spare you all the full math, but to build the road and the inside of the tunnels would require about 31 miles of tunnel to provide the materials needed, excluding any bridges or ramps. Awfully convenient, I would say, that the projected series of tunnels through three mountain ranges was estimated to be around 40 miles in length. With each mile providing just shy of 10 million tons of rock and other material to be moved out of the way, processed into obsidicrete, and then placed into location, I had my work cut out for me as the sole manufacturer of obsidicrete and the chief transporter of rock.

Everyone else either supported the various functions of our nomadic town or worked directly to prepare the terrain for my road. Around half of the people in the camp were workers that went forth to clear trees and rocks, cut and fill for smooth roads, or built retaining walls or other such infrastructure. It didn’t need to be permanent, but at least good enough to last a decade or two until I could come back through and build it properly. The S.M.A.R.T crystals created a relay, similar to an electrical grid, that would provide my mana to keep everything in tip-top shape. Ergo, as long as the mana supply lasted, I wouldn’t have to deal with much in the way of pesky maintenance tasks as the road repaired itself to the wear and tear of time and water damage.

For now, the relay of crystals remained largely dormant, for a few months without them working would not hurt anything. Eventually, we would come to a river, and with that, an infinite supply of moving water. The dwarves are a crafty people, and they know a thing or two about turning kinetic energy into magical energy, or as it is said across the world, mana. As long as our future mana stations were attuned to my mana signature and operating nominally, the crystals would continue to keep the road in good condition for hundreds if not thousands of years. I don’t know why cities don’t typically harness this same concept, for mana is a much more versatile and efficient medium than electricity, of which cities do not use either for any semblance of sophisticated infrastructure. Perhaps I would have to show the world someday by building my own fancy cities with running water and working sewer systems.

However, all of that would have to wait until after we prevented the end of the world. Indeed, the gods got together to spill the beans to us mere mortals about how a portal to another planet will open soon and unending tides of flesh-rending monstrosities will pour forth into our world to devour everything. I doubt their prophecy even rhymed, so they clearly whipped it up last-minute.

Regardless, the situation worked out well for me, as it secured vast wealth and legal privileges for my flight, even if that flight only had two members for now. As the Emperor of my flight, it was my duty to start popping out eggs to make children. The ‘making’ of children would be more literal than how humanoids do it, for I would consciously choose how to create my offspring. I would have great leeway in choosing their Blessings, and now I just needed to find a suitable breeding partner as I already had a few eggs primed and ready.

Technically, Princess Nanu, my adopted daughter, would work if I promoted her to Queen, but that would come with a host of downsides that outweighed the benefits. Dragons, which are creatures of magic and not biology, don’t really have a concept of incest, gender, sexual identity, or a whole host of ideas that would get you lynched by small-minded individuals. I aimed to create Dragon Consorts, which have a non-dragon parent, for they would speed up the process of growing my flight compared to Dragon Paragons, which have two dragon parents. Considering dragons of peerage, sans Emperors, regularly were ‘reborn’, ‘reforged’, ‘remade’, or whatever ‘re-word’ you cared to use, their relations to one another could change rapidly. The seeming paradoxical situation of being the mother of your mother was totally a normal aspect of life for dragons.

Nanu had told me to hold off on picking a mother for my children. She had kept it somewhat a surprise, but informed me that a perfect mother was on the way to camp any day now. My education in the ‘birds and the bees’ of dragons glossed over what made one humanoid better than another, but I trusted her judgment, as she had a great deal of experience in curating the pedigree of her previous and now largely extinct flight, The Secret Stalkers.

With a future session of ‘begetting’ on the horizon, for which my lovers dutifully helped me prepare for via ample sessions of practice, I ventured home with Nanu beside me and Skull in my shadow. Both of them, along with Chooka, were my primary paramours. Chooka, my mistress and primary lover, only edged out the other two by a somewhat slim margin. I try not to play favorites, but Chooka wins more times than not if there are competing interests. Fortunately, she was not a jealous lover, for as a [Courtesan], she had ample experience with having several lovers at a time. To be fair, monogamy was not a common thing in the world at that time, especially between members of other races where unwanted offspring were impossible.

In fact, Chooka was the one having to force me to branch out to other women so I could collect the Traits needed to build my flight. Traits are like blueprints to building dragons, and dragons tend to shapeshift into humanoids to whore their way into collecting said Traits. Chooka set up a calendar the very first day we made camp, and to help stress the need for me to build my flight, she even arranged the matchmaking of what lovers I would have each night. Naturally, Chooka, Skull, and Nanu got a piece of me every night, often with all of us together, but other random women also got in on the action. I don’t know for sure if she makes money off it and pimps me out or if I am doing it pro bono. Either way, I counted myself fortunate that my draconic heritage granted me the stamina, lust, and general lack for any need of sleep that one would require to meet such demands of the flesh.

The town itself was not much to look at, just a wall of obsidicrete on the outside to keep away predators and boxy wooden buildings on the inside to house people. The whole camp was designed to be easily disassembled, transported down the road, and then reassembled every so often. At one point, we had to move everyone past the mountains in several sorties of various flying crafts and critters. Ergo, we now dug the final stretch of tunnels through this particular mountain range backwards to reconnect with the rest while we advanced the road ever southward.

My comfy, little, wooden box of a house was about twice as big as others, but it housed four people and the physical contents of the hoards of two dragons. The power of a hoard came from not just its contents and perceived value, but also its availability to plunder and how well known it was. With the doors unlocked and everyone in camp knowing right where Nanu and I kept our respective hoards, we received ample boons from our coveted treasure in the form of [Hoard] Skills. My hoard was curated for quality, where each item was collected one at a time through a particular transaction or investment of my energy, whereas Nanu had a larger hoard, but only as the results of contracts involving secrecy. Some of us dragons are discerning in how we add to our hoard, unlike the uncultured swine out there that snatch up every last coin that they can get their grubby little claws on.

These days building my first major road were among the riskiest days of my youth. I had no way of knowing that each shrine I built along the road only contributed to my ascension to a demigod. I am The Dragon of Roads, a demigod of roads, bridges, and pretty much any overland transport system that doesn’t involve boats or going off-road through the wilderness. However, with as many pipe networks, sewers, aqueducts, and cities I have built in my day, it is a wonder that I didn’t get a name like ‘The Dragon of Infrastructure’. But what is a pipe if not a road for fluids, or a sewer if not a road for waste? However, I was not yet a demigod in those days, merely an Emperor trying to establish his flight before the other seven Emperors ganged up on me.

There was also the possibility we would all die well before then, especially if I did not finish this road that would allow the nations of the world to transport troops and supplies down south for the biggest war in living memory. At least one other flight, The Bone Wardens, were at least nominally my allies, but they had yet to send an envoy to me to establish diplomatic negotiations. However, we were only about one-fifth of the way complete, and that did not include the troubles of a massive bridge we would need to build and two more tunnel systems, so we were still reasonably far away from the territory of The Bone Wardens.

As we three approached our house, we observed Chooka standing outside with two individuals. One I recognized by her ashen skin, black hair, red eyes, full-plate armor, and rapier, but the other I knew only to be a female troll. The former could be none other than Blythnin, the Summarian elf who was a Platinum Adventurer and also known as “The Sting of Berkerin”. Come to think of it, I had not seen her other than in passing since our duel in the arena just before a war broke out some two years back, so I remained surprised and excited for the unexpected occasion to catch up.