Carl walks down the streets of Nashville, his head constantly on a swivel as he tries his best to not look suspicious. Atral rolls her eyes in annoyance as she remembers the long-winded speech Carl gave her not even 10 minutes ago.
A huge misunderstanding happened when Carl brandished a knife but Atral, but after hearing his idea, Atral couldn’t help but be in awe at Carl’s craftiness.
Carl came up with an idea on how to get Atral not immediately killed by some of the higher-ups. That was to cut up Atral’s body and give her just enough of a health potion to heal her wounds but leave behind a scar. They would then say that Atral had survived for the past year inside of the Dungeon below Nashville. Carl then spent the last hour teaching Atral everything he knew about the dungeon so their stories would align. Luckily Atral had been a genius-level student and took the information in quickly.
On top of that, there were some people with the ability to use lie detector magic, but the concept of Atral spawning in the dungeon wasn’t a lie, and they wouldn’t lie about how they met either.
Hopefully, this would be enough to get Atral some sort of identification before the people got too suspicious of her. Most people don’t know about the deal made with The Archiver, so Carl was hoping to get Atral an ID before any more people knew.
They soon arrived at the most horrifying place on the planet… This world’s version of the DMV, called the LO or Licensing Office.
Luckily, today the line was shorter than usual and Carl predicted that they would only have to wait around an hour and a half before speaking to someone. Atral was stunned by this estimate and started to panic.
“You should see it on bad days, I’ve seen some people wait upwards of 4 hours just to be able and tell the LO their problem, then the LO took 2 hours to help them. I’ve seen people nearly die of thirst when waiting in a line that went outside during a hot day. There was also the one person that went crazy and attacked the person behind the desk, causing a 2-day delay for everyone else.”
Atral shivered when thinking about entering this horrifying building. Nothing like this was ever in her world. Atral came to the conclusion that humans were just very inefficient.
While in line, Atral saw armored men constantly running around, like something big was happening. Atral reflexively covered her head more with the cloak Carl gave her. Carl explained how strong some of the Pioneer Kings were, especially one named Black Kitsune. Luckily he doesn’t interact much with the others so at least Atral will never face him in the near future.
Apparently, there are 10 Pioneer Kings. 3 of them live in Nashville, which is the capital of the continent of Iakios. Nashville is where both Carl and Atral are right now.
The three kings who live here are The Tongue of the Serpent, The Undead Lord, and The Crusher of Stars.
Though the names are extraordinary sounding, none of them of truly that strong. The names are mainly to provoke fear and awe. The Crusher of Stars can’t actually crush stars, but according to Carl his hands are so strong that he could take a set of armor and crumple it like it's a leaf. They also all have their own deities, however, nobody knows the names of them.
All of this information, Carl gave to Atral. Carl is pretty respected around Nashville considering Harry and he were some of the first people to go out and map the dungeon below the streets of the city. This led to Carl being able to attend some meetings between the higher-ups of the city and learn all of this important information.
Carl and Atral soon make it to the front of the line. By soon, two hours have already passed and Atral’s eyes have glossed over due to the boredom.
At first her heart was racing due to being in public while being wanted, however, she soon realized that everyone here didn’t want to be there and probably wouldn’t report the Dragonkin woman.
Finally being able to gaze upon the demons that run the LO, Atral sees a normal looking old woman, however, the woman’s gaze is fierce.
“Name?” the woman says with a raspy voice.
Carl looks over at Atral and motions for her to introduce herself.
“A-Atral… Atral Rivertail.” Atral replies with a quiet voice as she avoids eye contact with the clerk.
“State your problem.”
The clerk has yet to blink or stop staring at Atral’s face, making the dragonkin woman even more nervous.
“I.. need an ID.”
“Why don’t you have one?”
“I was stuck in the dungeons for a year until Carl found me.”
The clerk looks Atral up and down before giving the dragonkin a scoff.
“Stuck in the dungeons? Yeah okay. How did you live so long then? Seems like our illegal immigration problem is just getting worse. Guards!”
Guards come from the sides of the room, looking happy that something is finally happening since they do nothing but sit here all day.
Carl looks around nervously and wonders how they get themselves out of this predicament. If they get deported, someone who knows about the second wave might question Atral. Since Carl is with Atral they would start to question Carl as well.
This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
Not wanting to die, Carl goes to speak up, but Atral’s action stops him in his tracks.
Completely removing the upper half of her clothing, Atral bears her body for all to see.
Atral’s scales were once considered as beautiful as gems. They were a deep blue that reflected beautifully in the night. Now, they are many scales completely destroyed and torn off while scars litter her hide.
Carl came up with the idea of scarring her body, but Atral did it herself in a different room so this is Carl’s first time seeing it. The sight is heart wrenching enough to make people standing behind Atral look away.
“If you want to say I didn’t live in the dungeons for a year, how about you tell that to the fucking ghoul that bit Carl’s partner in half! Tell that to the gods who have watched me struggle! Finally, tell that to yourself at night when you send me away when looking at my scars!” Atral yells with a confident voice.
The clerk is caught completely off guard and a word cannot leave her mouth as she is mesmerized by the sight.
The woman coughs loudly after Atral’s loud display and finally blinks and looks away from Atral.
“I am sorry for doubting you. I will try my best to help you. I hope you enjoy Nashville.”
The clerk waves away the guards, who approve of Atral’s scars since they too have some from the initial summoning into this world.
Atral covers her body once more and continues to ride her wave of confidence till she finishes the ID process.
Afterwards, Atral holds her new ID in her hands while standing outside of the LO. She rapidly shakes her head back and forth in embarrassment when she thinks back on what she did.
“I can’t believe I had the courage to talk like that to someone!” Atral squeals out. She was never a confident type, and so doing something like that is foreign to her.
“Well, it is a good thing you did it since it saved us a lot of trouble. Here, how about I treat you to some lunch.”
When hearing anything about food, Atral immediately perks up and looks at Carl excitedly, her tail wagging back and forth.
“Can it be meat?!” Atral asks as she brings her face close to Carl’s in excitement.
“Yes, yes, we can get whatever you want.” Carl says as he pats Atral’s head like she is a spoiled granddaughter.
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As our two champions above ground are having a good time, our champion below ground continues to thrive..
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Nekesh takes their first steps in their new body. After having eaten every corpse of those foolish humans, Nekesh has finally gotten its form back.
Well kind of, considering Nekesh is the size of a small child. Luckily for Nekesh eating these bodies has levelled him up and he can feel himself becoming stronger.
Nekesh was Level 1 but is now Level 4. Nekesh feels himself being slightly stronger even while in his tiny form.
The claws that could cut through human bone are smaller now, but still there. Their jaw can still unhinge and nearly eat people whole, so Nekesh doesn’t mind this form too much.
Looking around in the dark dungeon, the floor has been completely cleaned off all the bodies and blood that once stained it.
Nekesh literally licked the floor clean in hopes to regain as much power as possible. Being a champion of The God of Sloth and Gluttony, this shouldn’t be that surprising.
Nekesh stomach growls once more, asking for more sacrifice to the void that is their stomach. Nekesh thinks about the best way to feed himself as much as possible as soon as possible, but soon the sound of footsteps is like dinnerbells to Nekesh’s ears.
Nekesh finds himself a large rock in the dungeons and hides behind it while activating his Stalk skill.
A group of humans soon come into Nekesh’s view and the Ghoul stays vigilant since he doesn’t want to make another mistake of underestimating his prey.
Luckily for Nekesh, the group of people have no armor at all and are simply wearing weird colored clothing.
“Geralt, you said you knew where we were going.” one of the humans yells as they try to catch their breath.
The one in the front, a younger looking man with a confident smile catches his breath as well and turns back to his group.
“Look everyone, my contact was supposed to be here, we just need to wait and I’m sure they will find us. Let us take a break and catch out stamina.”
The group has already been swayed by Geralt’s charm and cunning so they listen to him and they all find a spot on the wall to lean against.
Nekesh thinks about the best way to eat everyone here, but there is simply too many. With there being 25 humans, Nekesh is worried that one will carry a spear that suddenly destroys his body or that they deafen him again.
Though Nekesh doesn’t want to fight, he refuses to let such a large bounty of food go past him, so Nekesh changes his style up a bit.
Retracting his claws and enlarging his eyes, Nekesh tries to look as cute as possible.
Walking out from behind his rock and towards the group of humans, Nekesh tries to sound as harmless as possible.
“Geralt, is that you?” Nekesh says in a high pitched tone.
All of the human’s suddenly look in the direction of Nekesh. Their eyes are suddenly full of discomfort and terror when they see Nekesh.
Nekesh does not look cute at all, in fact he looks even more horrifying than before. He might not have claws, but his smile full of razor sharp teeth is enough to make some turn pale. On top of that, the humans feel like his large eyes are peering into their souls.
“That motherfucker is straight outta horror movie.” says one large human male in the back.
The group slowly backs away from Nekesh as he comes forward. Geralt walks towards Nekesh, differing from the rest.
Geralt’s face has a smile plastered on it that looks like Geralt is reminiscing about good times in the past.
“There he is, my best friend and contact in this world.” Geralt says as he comes forward and opens his arms wide. Nekesh has seen this action between creatures before. It seems Geralt is welcoming the Ghoul into a hug.
The Ghoul not wanting to blow his cover pounces into the hug of Geralt. He might of done it a little more violently than Geralt expected, causing the human to fall backwards from Nekesh’s momentum and strength.
The humans scream in horror as they expect Geralt to be devoured by the small creature, but on the contrary, Geralt simply laughs while patting Nekesh’s back.
“Why don’t you introduce yourself to the others instead of breaking my ribs.” Geralt says as he winces in pain from Nekesh’s hug.
“My name… is Nekesh. Pleasure to eat, I mean meet you.”