(Strive 9:3)

My fingers flew through a sequence of gestures, and the protective cloak of aura sprang up around me. For all I knew, the heat would scorch through my Hardening like a paper bag, but it was all I could think to do before the jet of flame reached me.

Then I was burning, blinded and choked by fire and fumes, the last rags of my clothing burning away. The roar of it filled my ears, my nostrils, set every exposed orifice alight with pain, and I squeezed my eyes tightly shut against the firestorm. I thought I heard a distant bang! of El’s Firecracker spell going off, but I couldn’t be sure.

Miraculously, my shield seemed to be holding, given that I wasn’t burnt to a crisp yet. The flames ratcheted up in intensity, as if the dragon had realized I was still alive and was eager to finish the job.

I dropped to the floor, where the heat was lessened, though it was like the difference between baking in the front of the oven versus the back. Either way, I was going to be cooked eventually. Something had to happen fast.

Adrenaline held the worst of the pain at bay, so I used the moment to recast Harden. Then, still laying in the white-hot stream of fire, I pulled up my inventory. Even with my eyes closed, I could see the interface glowing on the inside of my eyelid, white against dark red. I selected the only useful item I had left and felt it spawn into my hand.

My air rifle.

The toy gun felt dinky as hell in my hands as I blindly fumbled my way to the trigger guard. It was meant for hunting small game, not dragon-slaying. Regardless, I pointed the gun in the direction the heat emanated from and mashed the trigger like my life depended on it. Its throat is its weak point. I held onto that one thought. The rifle jumped sharply in my hand as pellets flew until it clicked, the magazine empty.

There was a choked growl that sounded disbelieving, and I felt the flames around me dissipate. I gasped in a lungful of air, finally able to see and breathe again. The dragon was roaring in its death throes, spraying flame as it gnashed and spun on the floor. Its tail and claws made deep furrows in the earth.

Finally, it spat something out with a clink of metal and fell still. My fingers seemed reluctant to obey as I cast Examine toward it.

Red dragon key. Grants access to the floor nine exit.

I was too tired to feel triumphant. Hell, I couldn’t even move from my prone position on the ground. Though the battle had lasted less than a minute, it was like I’d just run a marathon. The energy drain from shielding the dragon’s breath was unbelievable.

El came up and nosed my face in concern. “You okay?”

“Water,” I croaked.

I half-crawled—and was half-dragged by El—to the broken fountain which still vented its contents up like a natural geyser. I stuck my face in the stream and let it soak into me.

Your energy has been restored!

It felt like being waterboarded with the nectar of the gods, and after choking and sputtering for a minute, I felt that whatever had been taken out of me by my overuse of magic had been restored. So it seemed like it was mana, after all. I flopped over and lay on the ground. Truth be told, I didn’t really feel the need to rest anymore. It felt like I was badly sunburned, and that was it. Still, I wanted to lie there forever.

El was still looking at me with concern, so I reached out and tried to scratch behind her ears with a finger.

“Nah,” she said, shying away from me. “Not a pet.”

“Fair enough.” I dropped my hand.

“That makes one more time you’ve saved me,” El twitched her whiskers. “We’re back to even.”

I chuckled at that. “You seem annoyed.”

“Au contraire, mon ami. I’m grateful.” El nodded her head toward the sputtering fountain. “Notice the color of the liquid?”

I grunted in response.

“And I didn’t make a single golden shower joke.”

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Rolling onto my back, I gazed up through the smoke-filled sky to where I knew the tenth floor was above it. Other people. “Your restraint is appreciated,” I said, as the fountain dried up.

We were silent as another volcano boomed in the distance.

“Oh, alright. Scratch if you want.” El pushed her head against my hand. “But this is a one-time thing.”

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The red dragon key reflected its owner in that it was searing hot to the touch. I had to hot-potato it from hand to hand before stowing it in my inventory.

El’s signpost had claimed there was a cave nearby that contained the exit, and after a brief search, we found an entrance in a rock wall that seemed promising.

We stepped into the cavern, lighting our Lux lamps against the dimness. It was cooler in here, thankfully, and we soon encountered an ornate door built of red metal. I gingerly slid the key into the keyhole, and the door swung open on oiled hinges.

The dragon’s hoard within was obviously never meant for the dragon itself. I couldn’t picture it squeezing its bulky body through the narrow tunnels into this place. And even if it did, it wouldn’t’ve had the dexterity to unlock the glittering chests of candies strewn about the room on heaps of golden coins.

In spite of the treasure, my eyes were immediately drawn to the podium standing at the center of the room. It seemed to radiate a haze of heat, but it wasn’t painful. I flashed Examine, and the description appeared:

Red Dragon Upgrade Station. Augments strength and fire-based techniques.

I raced El to the slot and beat her, inserting my braceleted hand. It locked me in, and my ring began to pulse.

Downloading…

“Not fair,” said El, climbing up the podium. “You’ve got a height advantage.”

Downloading…

“Skill issue,” I replied. “And stop pulling on my hand, it’s almost done.”

Download complete.

I removed my wrist, and text scrolled onto my contact.

The Harden technique has been upgraded.

Impact and tensile strength increased.

Barrier temperature and heat resistance increased.

And the cherry on top:

Time limit removed. Cancellable by reversing the activation sequence.

After rereading the patch notes a few times, I slowly signed the spell with my kada hand, savoring the anticipation as each character lit in a burning red circle around my wrist bracelet.

H-A-R-D-E-N.

The shielding aura flared out from me like wildfire before compressing to a thin layer against my skin. Seen through a red haze, the whole world seemed to burn around me. Now this was power. And I could have this on all the time?

I stepped away from the podium, reaching for one of the candies in the chests, and it melted from my radiating heat. Okay, maybe not all the time. I signed Harden in reverse, expecting the aura to extinguish around me as it usually did when the timer ran out.

To my surprise, I exploded.

Not in a literal sense, with guts and gore flying everywhere in chunks. No, the compressed aura around me seemed to detonate, releasing a surge of energy outwards in all directions. Coins and treasure chests near me blew away to clatter against the walls, some half-melted. Thankfully, I’d been far enough from El that the wind from the shockwave only ruffled her fur.

“The fuck was that?” she said.

“Oh, man.” I put my palm against my face, suddenly drained. “That is going to be… a tradeoff, for sure.”

This explosive deactivation could be a useful tool, but it would have to be worked around. First and foremost, I had to throw away my primary defense for a single shot at an attack. If that didn’t work, I was up shit creek without a paddle.

And not only was it ridiculously unstealthy, it was downright dangerous to any allies who happened to be close to me. If there was a situation where I had to cancel the technique quickly…

Tricky. Potentially powerful, but very tricky.

“Maybe wait a sec—” I began saying to El, but she had already inserted her kada paw into the slot. I watched in silence as light flowed from the podium into her ring for a few seconds before she was released.

When she twisted her hands into the activation sequence for her Firecracker spell, there was a flash, followed by a chain of explosions in different colors across the ceiling of the chamber. Sparkling trails slowly descended around us like a fireworks display, and the room filled with their acrid smell.

“New and improved,” El said.

“Pretty,” I commented, a bit jealous of the lack of downsides to her upgrade.

Although my explosion had liquefied the candies in the treasure chests closest to me, there was still a plethora of magic candies scattered throughout the room. I looted most of the reds and greens, and El stuck to her favored blues. She gleefully looted the coins as well, although I wasn’t sure if they were more than set decoration.

I popped an Atomic Fireball of Force into my mouth and was rewarded with a scalded tongue and a level-up message from my udjat. We chewed as we walked deeper into the cave, where an especially ornate elevator waited patiently for us, with rising dragon designs on each side.

“This is it, then,” I said as we stepped into the elevator cabin. “Our nine-floor-long tutorial is finally over.” Looking vaguely upwards, I stared at an imagined camera. “You know, Hilbert, usually the point of a tutorial is to allow players to learn the ropes in a friendly, low-stakes environment.”

El scratched herself. “I’m gonna have some words for that smug prick next time we see him. Some claws too.”

“Fuck it,” I sighed, jabbing the button that’d take us out of our isolated instance and up to the tenth floor. “Let’s go make some friends.”