Dragon Heart Chapter 4 (Original chapter Chapter 120)
Staring up at the bizarre machine, I really had no clue what to do about it. It was very obvious that my [Hoard Appraisal] ability was marking this odd machine as a treasure, and it was easy to see why; it was made of precious metals and was studded with strong and beautiful gems. Not only were the materials it was made of valuable, it was also a work of art and a marvel of engineering.
Still, I did not want to risk the damned thing blowing up in my face if I tried to disassemble it or pry a gem off. For all I knew, the thing was teetering on the verge of exploding at the drop of a hat. No, leaving the stupid thing here was the best plan…whatever it was.
Of more interest to me were the corpses of the mages who had, presumably, been responsible for operating the device. All twelve of them had died from a single cut across their jugular veins, meaning they had bled out in minutes. What was odd about the whole situation was their positioning. If they laid where they died, then half of them could have seen the others while they were being assassinated…yet there was no sign of a struggle in the room or on the bodies. No defensive wounds on the hands, no scraps of clothing in a dead clawed grip. Nothing. It was as if they hadn't seen their comrades get killed and had patiently waited for the assassins to go and kill them too.
Pondering this, I eyed their clothing and snorted. It was as dried out and delicate from who-knows-how-long it had been lying here. No, I wouldn't be taking these home.
Turning about face, I drag my bag out of the turret-fort and decide to head back to my cave. I'd been busy enough for one day.
Making my way back up the mountain was bloody difficult while carrying a bag full of loot. Just about the only good thing that came from the weight of the thing was the improved STR that I gained from it.
Getting back to the cave, I dumped my bag of loot onto the floor next to my helmet and waited.
You have acquired four pieces of treasure! Experience gained!
[Modest Silver Candlestick]
Treasure – Tier 0
A candlestick of adulterated silver, it is somewhat valuable.
[Heir's Dagger of Goldfine]
Treasure – Tier 1
The dagger belonging to the honorable heir of the Goldfine Family, it possesses the family crest on the blade with a fine ruby pommel. Not practical for use as a weapon, but more than enough to prove that the bearer is the Heir of the Goldfine Family.
[Fine Gold Necklace]
Treasure – Tier 1
A necklace of spun gold that was made by a Master Goldsmith in a short period of time. Selling this would feed a small family of four for six months.
[Ring of Goldfine]
Treasure – Tier 2
A ring belonging to the Head of the Goldfine Family. Identifies the bearer as either the Head of the Family or as someone speaking on his behalf. Made by a Master Goldsmith and charmed to glow when worn by a member of the Goldfine family, it has immense value to the family and any would happily pay a Duke's ransom for its safe return.
I had to whistle (mentally) at that. Not a bad haul for a single day's work. The candlestick made me quirk an eyebrow though. Tier 0? I had to assume that it was the lowest quality item that I could call a part of my hoard.
[DING!]
You gave successfully gathered at least one item from Tiers 0 through 3! You gain experience!
You have gathered four tiers of treasure! You are rewarded with the Spatial Magic spell [Dimension Pocket]!
[Dimension Pocket] (Active) [LV1, 0%]
Tier 4 Magic
A low-mid-tier spell of Spatial Magic. By using this spell, the user can create an extradimensional space in which to place items to save them the bother of physically carrying them. While it is a powerful spell for a beginner, I is by far one of the most commonly used spells to those not in the Knightly Orders, especially by dragons who go hunting for items to add to their hoard. While small at first, a master of this spell can make it large enough to even store a fortress within it.
- Costs 50 MP to use and 5 MP/Minute to maintain.
- Generates a special pocket the size of a watermelon.
- Opening the pocket to put in/take out items uses 5 MP per use.
You have learned your first spell! The MP stat has been unlocked! The MP Regen Stat has been unlocked! The HP Stat has been unlocked! HP Regen Stat has been unlocked!
MP is determined by WIS multiplied by INT! Current MP: 1443!
MP Regeneration is determined by WIS divided by 10 and rounded to the nearest round number! Current MP Regen: 4 MP per minute!
HP is determined by STR multiplied by DUR! Current HP: 1760!
HP Regeneration is determined by DUR divided by 10 and rounded to the nearest round number! Current HP Regen: 4 HP per minute!
My eyes crossed at the information overload. OK, so…I got experience for getting one treasure for each tier from zero to three. Ok, that's fine. I also got a free spell, which was nice…if not for the fact that the cost to maintain it was more than my current MP Regen, which had been the next thing to unlock. And I had a question here…why did I not have access to my HP and MP stats immediately?!
Ignoring that idiocy for a moment, I was puzzled by the way the description of the Spatial Magic [Dimension Pocket] classed it as a 'low-mid tier' spell when it was Tier 4.
[The Tier System: How It Affects You!]
The tier rating system is used by The System to classify beings, objects, spells and skills. There are twelve different tiers of power, starting with Tier 0. There is a useful way of classing a spell/skill/beast/being/spirit according to what its tier is.
Low-Class = Tier 0-Tier 3
Mid Class = Tier 4-Tier 7
High Class = Tier 8-Tier 10
World Class = Tier X
To use yourself as an example, Proto-Dragons are uniformly Classed as a Tier 8 being simply due to the future potential that they hold, regardless of how strong they actually are. Most other Baby Greater Dragons are classed between Tier 4 and Tier 7 depending on what their subspecies is.
Tier X is uniquely held by the supreme existences in this world, the Gods. Any being with this ranking is so far beyond the capabilities of anything else that there is a unique system for those beings, the Heavenly System. For this reason, they are also referred to as Transcendent Beings, as they have surpassed the World System's ability to measure their powers. It should be noted that several dragons also fall into this category.
The tier rating of a being is dependent on several criteria. Species rarity, combat strength ranking and ability within their species and achievements earned.
Spells and skills are different again, with their tier rating showing the maximum potential of the spell when used by an average user. Should one manage to raise the level of the spell beyond that, the spell/skill shall have its tier rating modified to reflect that.
Items, such as swords, treasures, medicines and ingredients are ranked by their properties and states. A rotting Divine Fruit will be Tier 0, regardless of the fact that it is still a Divine Fruit, for example. Ordinarily, a ripe Divine Fruit is a Tier X item, for your information.
Huh…OK. So by 'low-mid-class', it means that [Dimension Pocket] is a spell ranked at the very bottom of the Mid-Tier, and that most people who make use of it use it as a convenience rather than as a portable fortress holder. Makes sense.
As I thought about what I should do with this new spell of mine, I lined up my hoard in a neat line, in order of tier from left to right. Nodding to myself at the orderly way my treasures were organized, I flinched as I felt my stomach rumble. Guess breaking down a door with nothing but my head was hungry work.
Time for some magic gems for dinner!
The Next Day
Slums, Outside the City Walls
The crumbling (and very smelly, it must be known) slums were even worse than I thought. The place was more ruinous than I had expected, with the houses, which were mostly made of either wood or mud bricks, crumbling even as I stepped lightly around them.
Not only that, the skeletons around here were even weaker than the skeletons on the wall had been. They had been [Weak Skeleton Warriors], while the ones out here were just called [Weak Skeletons]. Not warriors, just dead civilians. It failed to surprise me, as medieval armies didn't abide by much in the way of casualty avoidance, but still.
Seriously, the stupid things couldn't hurt me. None of them were armed and so their bone punches and the like did jack all against my scales. I literally le ten on them surround me and beat on me for a couple of minutes to see if I would lose even one HP. I didn't.
Unfortunately, this also meant my experience acquisition was just as dismal as the skeletons' combat strength. I'd bashed…well, steamrolled, really, through about fifty of them and I'd barely gotten five percent on my experience gauge. Talk about trash mobs. At this rate, the boss of this area would turn out to be an ordinary weak skeleton soldier or something.
After knocking about the place for a while, I spotted the only skeleton in the area that wasn't wearing ragged tunics and trouser (breeches?). Unfortunately, it was wearing a cowl, a robe and had a staff in its skeletal hand. A spellcaster. Lovely.
I circled the undead mage warily, trying to discover exactly what kind of mage he was. In games, elemental mages were fairly easy to spot, as they generally wore the colour of their element. Unfortunately, unless dirty pale cream was associated with an element, then this world didn't have that tradition. Nor were there fancy symbols mounted atop the staff, or even any on a convenient chain around its neck.
Tucking my wings in, I dashed at the mage. I couldn't use my [Tail Catapult] skill because there was no ammunition lying around, aside from lumps of rotten wood, which were of dubious value as projectiles, so I had to attack head on. Stupid [Proto-Dragon] subspecies not having breath attacks…
It was just my luck that the pattering of my claws made the mage turn around and spot me. Its jaws started flapping with a clattering noise and it pointed its staff at me. The next moment, a bolt of white-tinged black light emerged from it and shot towards me. A common magic missile, I think you'd call it.
Jinking to the side, I continued my attack, using my new [Charge] skill in combination with [Skull Bash] in order to hopefully hurt the mage when I struck him.
Sadly that was not to be. With a wave of its staff, the undead mage summoned a wall of white-tinged black energy in front of him that I rammed into instead. I did crack it though, and the damned thing did shatter when I slashed it a couple of times with my claws.
As I did that, the skeletal mage shuffled backwards and send another couple of energy blasts my way. Surprisingly, they didn't hurt, and each only took a couple of tens of HP off me. Odd.
It took me a while to beat the stupid mage into shards of bone because it kept using that damned wall spell, but I managed it eventually.
You have defeated the [Slums] Area Boss [Slum Leader – Spatial Skeleton Mage]! The bindings of the remaining skeletons within the slums are weakened to the point that they disintegrate! Large amount of experience gained!
As I nodded at this, a white-tinged black energy coalesced itself in front of me from the shattered remains of the skeleton mage and then shot inside me, which was a surprise, I can tell you!
You have absorbed the remaining weak Spatial Magic from the defeated [Slum Leader – Spatial Skeleton Mage] in lieu of loot! You gain [Spatial Magic] at Level 1! Any [Spatial Magic] spells at your disposal are now able to be cast!
…so my decision to not cast the spell due to its drain on my MP was a moot point? Good to know.
When the pop-up appeared, asking if I wanted to claim the Slums as my territory, I hit 'Yes' at once. I was committed now, so I may as well grab every area I could.
[DING!]
Congratulations! You have claimed the [Slums of Malvin City] as your territory! You gain experience!
You have gained a level! LV1-LV2!
You gain DUR +3!
You gain AGI +5!
You gain INT +4!
You gain WIS +4!
Skill: [Rough Scales] has levelled up! LV7-LV8!
Skill: [Scaly Skin] has levelled up! LV10-LV11!
Skill: [Charge] has levelled up! LV4-LV5!
Skill: [Skull Bash] has levelled up! LV4-LV5!
Skill: [Tail Smack] has levelled up! LV7-LV8!
Skill: [Claw] has levelled up! LV4-LV5!
You have discovered a part of your draconic heritage! The Skill: [Draconic Magic Resistance] is now viewable!
[Draconic Magic Resistance] (Passive) [LV1, 0%]
Dragons, especially any subspecies of Greater Dragons, are more attuned to magic than almost any other species on Amaryllis. Magic naturally permeants their being and naturally grants them increased abilities with it. This is the defensive side of it, granting them increased resistance against any partially or purely magical attack fired against them. The more advanced your Growth Stage, the greater the effect.
- Grants immunity to enemy Tier 0 spells.
- Reduces the effects of enemy Tier 1-3 spells by 90%.
- Reduces the effects of enemy Tier 4-6 spells by 30%.
- Reduces the effects of enemy Tier 7-10 spells by 1%.
- At the [Baby] Stage, all resistances gain a 1% boost.
Well that last part explained why that magic missile washed off me like water off a duck's back. I'd bet that it was a Tier 1 spell or something. Hmm…as it was a Spatial Mage who cast it, would that make it something like [Spatial Bolt] or something? I'd have to see about learning more spells…somehow.
Still, it was a good thing to know that low-level spells would be almost completely useless against me, although I doubt that anyone brave enough to fight a dragon would bother with low-level spells in the first place. If anyone was stupid enough to do that then they'd be worthy of a Darwin Award, or whatever equivalent this world had.
Focusing now on my new territory with my [Hoard Appraisal] sense, I found that there were a lot of little bits of treasure scattered all over the place in dribs and drabs. Savings from the former occupants, I would guess. As this was a medieval setting, I would guess copper and silver coins, with gold being the top of the pile.
As I trotted around and started collecting the coins (I was right; mostly copper, with a smattering of silver and one gold), I used my first spell simply by focusing on it. [Dimensional Pocket] was useful for carrying all of the coins I picked up; the copper ones were about the size of a dime, the silver ones maybe a hair bigger, while the lone gold was the same size as a dollar coin, all of which fitted very well in the 'watermelon-sized' pocket.
Given the sheer size of the slum area, I was expecting to have to take a couple of trips to empty it of valuables, but it ended up being pretty much just the one trip…for the coins, that is. Once I deposited them just outside the mouth of my cave, I returned to the slums and scoured the area for anything else. Near the outer limits of the slums, atop a crumbling, but miraculously still intact, house, I found some kind of weird crystal orb thing about the size of a grapefruit. Aside from the fact that it was covered in dust, dirt and animal droppings, it was perfectly intact…and glowed with magic.
Suspicious.
Once again, I felt as if I had stumbled across something from the invading army that had sacked this place. Quite why they had placed this magical orb of dubious and unknown purpose here was a bit beyond me, but the fact that it was still pulsing with magic after who knows how long was ringing alarm bells for me. For all I knew it was what had resurrected the fallen as undead in the first place. Or, hell, it could be blocking magical communication in and out of the city.
Speaking personally, that's one of the first things I would do if I was about to invade a city when magic existed; cut them off from communicating magically with the rest of their country, along with undermining their magical defenses and causing chaos inside the city, causing their reaction to the invasion to fall. Thus, my idea wasn't necessarily a wrong one.
Unfortunately for me, there was only one way for me to find out what the hell this thing was doing…take it to my cave and place it with the rest of my hoard. This did not, as you might imagine, fill me with the warm fuzzies. But I really, really wanted to know what the hell this thing was doing so I could decide whether to smash it or not.
Letting out a squeak of irritation (yes, I was set to either squeak or growl, which made me really miss being able to swear aloud), I set about carrying the orb back to my hoard, not wanting to risk putting it in a [Dimensional Pocket] in case it exploded or something. I was treating it like one of L33t's inventions; volatile and more than likely going to blow up/implode/turn into cheese as soon as someone looked at it sideways.
Seriously, one of his inventions actually turned into cheese while I was in Philadelphia as Weaver. How a laser blaster turned into cheese is beyond me.
Anyway, as soon as I rolled the orb near to my hoard, that irritating little 'ding' noise rang again. Seriously, it was like the old Windows error noise.
[DING!]
You have acquired a Tier 4 Treasure to your Hoard!
[Orb of Severance]
Treasure – Tier 4
A magical device created hundreds of years ago. Exorbitantly expensive to make, the method of creation for the Orbs of Severance have been lost for many years, making this not only exceedingly useful, but exceedingly rare to boot. An Orb of Severance, once activated, designates an area to be severed from the flows of mana in the world. Essentially, this means that the area within holds the same amount of mana in as when it was activated, as well as preventing magical forms of communication from entering or leaving the area. If left active for too long, as in an entire year, the density of the mana grows until any animal or humanoid carcasses within are reanimated as undead. If left active for more than a century, this orb cannot be deactivated without causing a massive outpouring of unstable mana to the area surrounding the previously sealed area. Orbs of Severance are frequently used in this manner by dragon-wizards, as mana-dense areas are exceedingly good places to raise their young.
Okaaayyy…pause while I process this…alright, I'm good.
So.
Some idiot set this up when the city was attacked and didn't deactivate it when the armies fell back. Left for a year, and the fallen rose up as undead. Given that the place looked abandoned for a long time, I'm gonna go out on a limb and guess that it had been more than a hundred years since the Orb was activated.
Very carefully, I placed the dangerous globe of shining crystal (claiming it had given it a spring clean) at the back of my cave and resolved to find somewhere completely safe to place it so no idiot adventurer or dumb animal could accidentally destroy it and cause massed chaos. I may not know much about this world, but the words 'massive outpouring of unstable mana' lead me to believe that it is classed as a Bad Thing To Happen. So, safety first.
Still, my dragon mother had hit the motherlode when she found this place. Isolated, safe, mana dense…I had to guess that 'The System' had given her a nudge in the right direction. For whatever reason, I was rated quite highly by whatever the hell reincarnation system was running this place. Did it know that I had orchestrated Scion's death? Urgh, this was going to bother me for the foreseeable future, I could tell.
Deciding to get the coin situation sorted, I took one each of the coins (bronze, silver and gold) and placed them next to my hoard. The copper and silver were Tier 1, while the gold coin was Tier 2. They were called [Old Imperial Marks], apparently. Seems like the Empire, whoever they were, had changed their coinage since these had been made. Good to know.
Curling up on the floor, I tapped one claw on the metal floor as I thought about what I should do next. Obviously, I would have to start going deeper into the ruins of the city now that I controlled the outer limits and curtain wall. Thing is, from what little I knew from novels and the like (dubious knowledge there), the inner area of a medieval city was split into various districts if it was organized in any way, shape or form. A slum district outside the walls, a worker's district, a tradesman's district, a harbor district (if near the sea) and a military district would make up a lot of it, with the innermost areas being the merchant district, noble district, possibly a mages district, and the royal palace.
Thus far, everything seemed to be in-line with what I had expected, and there was definitely a palace here; you couldn't miss the damned place, it just loomed over the entire city. How anyone had gotten anything done in this city without that edifice of 'I AM HERE AND KNOW WHAT YOU ARE DOING' distracting the hell out of them is beyond me. Medieval Big Brother…eesh.
So, assuming that the rest of my assumptions about this place were in fact accurate, I would have to decide where I was going to expand to first. If my assumptions were wrong and the city was one big area…then I would have a lot of work in front of me. Well I would anyway, but taking things in bitesize chunks was easier. Kinda like how the Undersiders had divided Brockton Bay up into territories for each member, rather than trying to rule all of it as a group.
Haaah…I miss them. The chance that someone from Earth Bet other than me was on Amaryllis wasn't exactly beyond imagining, because there were at least forty-nine other reincarnated people here, but the chances that Alec or Brian were here wasn't high…and I didn't want to think about Lisa, Aisha, Lily or Sabah being here. Rachel…yeah, her too.
If they were here though…if they were, I want to find them. And protect them. Lily and Sabah might have joined reluctantly, but they had both been Undersiders. Lisa had been one of my best friends…and Aisha had stayed with me even as I descended into madness as Khepri. I had betrayed the Undersiders, for the best of reasons, but a betrayal was still a betrayal. I owed it to them…if they were even on the planet at all.
Shaking my head out of my morose thoughts, I stood up again and headed out. I had a city to conquer from a horde of teeming undead, after all.
OK, so, this chapter…may not be as high-quality as I would prefer it to be. I'm tired and in need of a good sleep, so I'll post this and be off for a bit of shuteye. For anyone wondering about Code Geass: Nina of the Submission…it's definitely in the works, I promise. It might be posted later than the end of April, but It WILL get posted. On AO3, just so you know.