The imposing, blue head of the dragon inched closer to Isabelle as its long, scaly neck slithered further down into the palace from the hole in the palace ceiling. Its huge nostrils quivered. It was sniffing her. Isabelle felt horrible chills.
Wasn’t her hp pretty low? Isabelle thought, ‘Check hp.’
[Your current hp is 11/61]
Fuck. That wasn’t good.
The dragon let loose a deep, groaning coo from its partially open jaws. Isabelle could see rows and rows of terrible teeth. Somehow, this icy blue dragon seemed a little scarier than the young red dragon she’d slain with her party recently. But it wasn’t time to dwell on that. She needed to heal. Isabelle opened her inventory.
Inventory: Isabelle
Carrying capacity: 169/203
Item
Traits
Kobold Ashes x3
+2 hp, +4 carry weight
Potion of Mind Reading
+0.5 carry weight
Butter Tongue x5
+1 hp, +0.5 carry weight
Potion of Endless Stamina x2
+0.5 carry weight
Potion of Greater Health x3
+20 hp, +0.5 carry weight
Abbreviated list based on prior use. Focus to see more items…
Hmm. So many options. First, she took a potion of greater health.
[Potion of Greater Health drunken]
[+20 hp]
Isabelle wanted to save her other two health potions if at all possible. She decided the best move was to go ahead and eat the kobold ashes.
[Kobold Ashes x3 snorted]
Snorted? Fuck’s sake, Isabelle hadn’t realized she had to snort them.
[+6 hp]
Isabelle grimaced as the sensation of inhaling long lines of ashes rolled around her sinuses and gummed-up her nostrils. She sneezed a few times.
Isabelle regarded the dragon. It was still just staring at her, hauntingly. Why wasn’t it doing anything? Was it waiting for something? Maybe it wasn’t going to kill her, after all. Maybe it was a peaceful dragon.
The dragon hacked. And wheezed. And then, the dragon spat a barrage of bones out over the balcony. Isabelle focused on them.
[Loot ‘Duchess of Cloud Reach’?]
Isabelle did want to try looting the skeleton, but the dragon didn’t look ready to let that happen. Its jaws opened wide as it gnashed teeth and growled with such power that it jostled Isabelle around.
With a horrible crash and smash a huge dragon claw crushed through the ceiling and slammed into the balcony, reducing the entire structure to rubble and sending Isabelle tumbling down through the air.
[-10 hp]
Isabelle landed on the palace floor beside Tahsi, who was eating some bread.
[-5 hp]
Damn. Hitting the palace had almost taken as much out of Isabelle as getting stomped on by the dragon had!
“Oh, hey Isabelle,” said Tahsi. “How’s it going?”
“How’s it going?” Isabelle was furious. “Tahsi, how can you be so calm at a time like this? There’s a fucking dragon here!”
“Yea, but all the warforged are so scared that they stopped trying to kill Sir Jingles and me, so I’m looking at the silver linings here,” said Tahsi.
“The warforged are scared?” Isabelle asked. “I didn’t even realized those metal things had feelings.”
“Wow,” said a nearby warforged that had been cowering behind their own shield at the sight of the dragon. “I didn’t know that the player was so prejudiced and ignorant. We’re people too, you know.”
Before Isabelle could respond, the dragon smashed its other arm through another side of the palace and stomped its claw down on a cluster of warforged. Hot oil and spinning gears rained across the room. The rest of the warforged, including the one that had been cowering beside Isabelle, screamed wildly as they jumped up and ran out of the busted palace doors.
“See?” said Tahsi. “They’re terrified, Isabelle. By the way, do you want any bread?”
Isabelle did want some bread, she decided, seeing as she’d just lost 15 hp. She accepted it with muted joy and took large yet painful bites, swallowing the stale, tasteless food as fast as she possibly could.
[+5 hp]
[+4 hp]
[+1 hp]
Isabelle shuddered, having finished the bread. At least she’d managed to recover some hp before this massive fucking dragon took it all away again.
“Tahsi, I’ve got a question,” said Isabelle. “Why is this dragon so much more imposing than the dragon we faced earlier?”
“Well—” Tahsi swallowed a bite of bread, “—this one is a frost dragon. I do think it’s still a young one, by the tender look of its scales and such, but it’s a little stronger than the dragon we last faced.”
Tender look of its scales? Isabelle looked at the dragon’s scales. They looked gnarled, like blue sandpaper covered in knives. Tahsi had lost his mind.
“Plus, it’s a frost dragon, and you’re wearing a bunch of fire dragon armor,” said Tahsi. “That armor puts you at a bit of a diametrically opposed angle to this dragon, where it can do a lot more damage to you. Comparatively, of course, to anyone else. I mean, let’s be honest, Isabelle, any dragon can do a whole hell of a lot more damage than you can. Of course, the trade off to that is that you can also do more damage to it. Ice can put out fire, fire can melt ice, et cetera et cetera. At least it’s not, like, a water dragon or anything. Then you’d really be screwed. Water dragons get the advantage over you, and you get a disadvantage over them. Just something to note, seeing as we seem to be encountering a lot more dragons than either of us expected recently.”
Isabelle scowled. She hadn’t realized her fire dragon armor could actually make her weaker against something, though it made sense when she thought about it. “How do you know all that, anyway, Tahsi?” she asked.
“Do you know how high my wis is, Isabelle?” Tahsi asked. Then, he shrugged in order to check his stats himself. “It’s seventy, by the way. Seventy. That’s how I know.”
Isabelle rolled her eyes. If only character sheets came with a pride score.
Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.
“Better act fast, Isabelle,” said Tahsi. “That dragon seems like it’s trying to decide which of us it wants to eat.”
Shit, the dragon really was looking down at them eagerly. A bead of icy drool started to drip from its jaws. How stressful. Isabelle looked around. Where were the horses? She found them, huddled together near a large pile of palace rubble. At least they were still alive. Isabelle dashed towards them and looked for the burlap sack tied to Lugano that contained Stelas’ head. It wasn’t there!
“Where’s Stelas’ head?” asked Isabelle. She had been hoping he might have some items in his inventory that could help her.
“Oh, I think Jingles has it,” said Tahsi.
“Where’s Jingles?” asked Isabelle.
Before Tahsi could answer, the dragon’s jaws swung open. Its cheeks engorged and its eyes glowed a bright blue. A huge beam of chilling white ice shot out of its maw and covered Tahsi.
[Tahsi -25 hp]
[Tahsi -15 hp frost damage]
[Party member Tahsi is frozen]
When it had passed, Isabelle noted a huge glacial structure that held her party member inside, frozen with a hearty chunk of bread still trapped in his cheeks.
“Jingles!” said Isabelle. “Where the fuck are you?”
No response. What a pussy, Isabelle thought.
[Error: There is not a ‘What a pussy’ command found in the system]
Isabelle rolled her eyes. Looked like it was all up to her to slay this beast. She’d been hoping to get some of Stelas’ arrows and his crossbow that weren’t enchanted with chills attacks, since she figured this dragon would just resist them. Then again, maybe Isabelle could try and shoot some flame blasts this dragon’s way instead. She opened her inventory, but Isabelle only intended to apply a couple of her mana-boosting items. She didn’t want to give up any of her armor protection this time.
Inventory: Isabelle
Carrying capacity: 169/203
Item
Traits
Ring of Improved Destroy
+3 destroy
Ring of Increased Mana
+5 mana
Abbreviated list based on prior use. Focus to see more items…
[Ring of Improved Destroy equipped]
[+3 destroy]
[Ring of Increased Mana equipped]
[+5 mana]
Isabelle cracked her knuckles and raised her hands at the dragon. Its head snaked around the upper realm of the palace, bumping againt crystal chandeliers and smashing them to bits. It didn’t seem to know where she was! Isabelle crouched so that she could see her current visibility.
[Current Visibility: 0/300]
Nice! Isabelle had this in the bag. She raised both her hands towards the dragon and thought ‘Cast Ice Blast.’
Wait—shit! Did she really just think about casting ice blast? Not flame blast?
[Mana 90%]
Shards of ice shot from her hands and pelted the dragon’s long, blue neck.
[Sneak attack]
[803 damage dealt]
[‘Young Frost Dragon’ resisted frost damage]
Shit. That was disappointing. Worse still, it didn’t even seem like the damned dragon had noticed she’d hit it! Then again, maybe that was a good thing. Isabelle thought about casting flame blast, but she also thought that maybe she could just keep casting ice blast without the dragon knowing and maybe just kock all its health out. Then again, Isabelle hadn’t the damndest idea how much health the dragon had. Maybe she could use the system to figure that out. Isabelle focused on the dragon and thought ‘See Hp.’
[‘Yound Frost Dragon’ has 2005/2341 hp]
That was odd. The hp didn’t seem to correspond to the damage that the dragon had taken.
[Clarification: If this wasn’t clear already, damage and hp are only partially linked. You str and const, as well as your combat levels, not only affect how much damage you deal and how much damage you taken, but also affect how much hp you lose for a given point of damage on a rolling scale where v is the amount of hp remaining after an attack, x is the damage dealt, y is your hp, z is your str, a is your const, and b, c, d, e, f, and g are randomized integers from -100 to 100. You can visualize that equation as y(z+a+b+c+d+e+f+g) - x = v, though visualization isn’t necessarily necessary for the process to take place. As this happens for your own hp/damage ratios, it also happens for the hp/damage of anyone you attack. At this point, you ought to be well thankful for the amount of damage you are consistently managing to deal to NPCs that greatly rival your comparatively low hp. Were they to see your stats, they would probably refer to you at this point as ‘OP,’ meaning overpowered. Of course, they don’t have a system, so it’ll be our little secret, now won’t it?]
Isabelle didn’t know how to feel about that. She definitely didn’t feel overpowered. Hell, she felt underpowered. She’d been at the brink of death more times in the few days she’d incarnated in this new world than she had probaly in her entire existence back on Earth! Overpowered. What an insult.
Still, Isabelle was focusing on the system when she ought to have been focused on the dragon. It smashed the rest of its scaly, colossal form through the hole in the palace and clambered all the way to the floor. The wall toppled down to dusty rubble, revealing a near empty city street. The dragon cooed deeply and menacingly as it licked the air with its massive, wet tongue. It tasted the air, sniffing and snorting. It was looking for her. Isabelle raised her hands and thought ‘Cast Flame Blast,’ and this time she focused on expending as much mana as she could.
[Mana 18%]
It almost felt like her hands had become a flamethrower as a huge blast of fire shot from Isabelle’s fingers and engulfed the dragon. Its scales glowed red for a moment.
[3416 damage dealt]
[1294 fire damage dealt]
The dragon cried out a pained wail and it staggered backward. The ground shook, and the remaining bit of ceiling lost its beautiful molding to the forces of gravity as it shattered on the floor.
[Mana 20%]
Still twenty percent of mana! Isabelle figured she ought to do something. But what? The dragon wasn’t close to death, was it? Isabelle focused on the dragon and thought ‘See Hp.’
[‘Young Frost Dragon’ has 1678/2341 hp]
What the fuck was the point of the system even telling her the damage if it was only going to do that much actual damage? Why couldn’t the system just show her the amount of hp the dragon had at all times? Then, she could just watch the bar slowly go down as she attacked it. Wouldn’t that make more sense? Wouldn’t that be more useful?
[Clarification: You are welcome to die and attempt to reincarnate somewhere else where the system works that way if you would like, though the system cannot guarantee that you reincarnate in a world with a system, or that you reincarnate as a human, or indeed whether you reincarnate with sentience at all.]
Isabelle rolled her eyes. Classic system sassiness, right there.
But she only had that moment to scoff at the system’s sassiness, because the dragon was looking right at her. It cocked its head and let loose a deep, threatening coo that shook the liquid in Isabelle’s inner ears.
[Mana 25%]
Isabell had an idea. She dashed out of her cover of palace rubble and towards Tahsi, still frozen in the cluster of ice, and thought ‘Cast Flame Blast.’
[Mana 11%]
A poof of fire melted the ice in her path quickly, freeing a shivering Tahsi from its clutches.
“Oh shit!” said Tahsi, his teeth chattering. “That dragon looks angry, Isabelle!”
“It is!” she said.
They ran together towards the palace staircase beyond the now-shattered gate that had once held them trapped in the main room. The dragon stomped towards them and raised an awful claw, preparing to slam it towards the player and her party member and crush them like ants.
“Tahsi, distract it!” said Isabelle. “I have an idea!”
“What? Distract it?” Tahsi asked. “But Isabelle, I—”
[Speechcraft attempt: persuade]
“Tahsi come on I don’t want either of us to die! I just melted you out of the ice! Now distract the dragon so I can run up the staircase already! Don’t make me keep making persuasion attempts while this thing gets ready to gobble use up like raw chickens!” said Isabelle.
[Speechcraft succeeded]
“Fine, Isabelle, fine,” said Tahsi. He turned around and smiled at the dragon. “Hey there, little buddy! Er, big buddy, I guess.”
The dragon snaked its huge head toward Tahsi, its sinister serpentine eyes shrinking to slits.
“Say, you aren’t gluten intolerant, are you?” Tahsi asked the beast.
The dragon cocked its head in confusion.
Curious, and a little distracted, Isabelle stopped running up the stairs to eavesdrop in and see what exactly Tahsi was doing.
[Speechcraft attempt: persuade]
“You would know if you were, trust me, most people with a gluten intolerance are very sure to let everybody know about it. I’m a baker, I should know,” said Tahsi. “Look, why don’t we stop this whole, this whole fighting thing and just focus on food for a second? Would you like that? I’d like that.”
[Speechcraft had mixed results]
Mixed results? Did that mean that Tahsi had a chance at persuading this dragon not to kill them? Then again, combat mode did not deactivate.
The dragon inched its head closer to Tahsi. It gave him a few sniffs. Then, it gave him a long, thrusting lick. He shivered.
Isabelle had to stop getting distracted. She ran up the staircase, reaching the doors. She could see the one door that opened up to the now-crushed balcony hanging over the main palace room. But, even from the shadows of the top of the stairs, Isabelle could see she had a clean shot at the dragon’s head. Especially with it leaned down towards Tahsi. Still, she wasn’t entirely certain she ought to attack it. It almost seemed to…well, it almost seemed to like him. Or at least how he tasted. It kept licking him!
“Hey now!” Tahsi said to the young frost dragon. “I didn’t want you to think about eating me! I’m not food, I promise! Don’t you notice I’ve got all these scales? You’ve got scales, I’ve got scales, we’ve really got a lot in common here, bud, though you’re blue and giant of course.”
The dragon cooed deeply and gave Tahsi another lick.
“Do, uh, are you licking me because you want to eat me?” Tahsi asked the dragon.
Isabelle could’ve sworn that she saw this icy blue dragon blush.
“Oh my gods,” said Tahsi. “Hey, uh, I wasn’t trying to, well, I mean to say, uh, well, I mean, I’m sure you’re a nice dragon, but—”
The dragon wrapped its tongue around Tahsi and drew him closer, pursing its open lips. It then unfurled and pulled back its tongue and placed its scaly lips on the top of Tahsi’s head, giving him a big old smooch.
Isabelle grimaced. What was going to happen next? Would the dragon put on some fucking Barry White or something? Making matters worse, she realized that Tahsi didn’t seem to be resisting as much any more. He kind of seemed into it. Isabelle was growing increasingly uncomfortable, while also feeling incredibly frustrated that her plan to kill the dragon had become essentially a worthless abstraction. Still, why was combat mode still activated if this dragon was… well… was so distracted?
[-60 hp]
What the fuck? All but one of her hp in one horrible blow? How had that happened? Isabelle dropped to her knees as her heart throbbed. Someone had just stabbed her in the back of the neck! She felt a cold, metal claw grasp around her. Her vision tunneled horribly, and she felt so nauseous that even an attempt at standing made her get sick.
“Hello there, player,” said the voice of a warforged behind Isabelle.
“Take her to the palace cauldron,” commanded a serpentine voice. Isabelle saw standing over her a tall, muscular lady who seemed like some sort of horrible bipedal iguana. She wasn’t a kobold, of that much Isabelle was sure.
“As you command, Zsutzi,” said the warforged. It pulled Isabelle to her feet, though her knees buckled and even coordinating a step felt near impossible. “Don’t try anything. Don’t even speak. If you think your nasty little kobold friend can do anything to help you now, well… let’s just say he’s a little too distracted. What a fucking freak.”
“Yes, I too can’t believe he’s getting it on with a dragon back there,” said the iguana-woman. “But let’s try not to dwell on it too much, I just had lunch recently and don’t want to get sick. Now, take her to the cauldron already, Gashgear.”
Gashgear? That was a hell of a name. Then again, it was a warforged the iguana-lady was talking to.
“Of course, Zsutzi,” said Gashgear. He pulled out a rope and tied it tightly around Isabelle’s neck. Then, he placed a black satin bag over her head. “Follow where I pull you, player. Keep in mind, no funny business or you’re fucking dead.”
Isabelle swallowed air uncomfortably as the warforged led her stumbling forward in what seemed to be endless darkness.