Tim's POV
The Azerlisia Mountains had been always visible from E-Rantel, But now I think I know how to become an Adamantite ranked adventurer.
The frost dragon Olasird'arc Haylilyal had occupied the dwarf fortress in those mountains for 150 years. The dwarves had been displaced, their kingdom taken, their ancestral halls turned into a dragon's den. By the canon timeline I remembered, the situation remained unresolved for a very long ass time, the dwarves lacking the capability to retake their home, the surrounding human kingdoms lacking either the capability or the inclination to help.
I was not going to be there indefinitely.
I packed my stuff first, traveling supplies, my weapons, extra food for the road, was I getting ahead of myself, I dont know how strong the dragons were.
The run to the Azerlisia Mountains took several hours at full speed, the landscape changing character as I moved northeast, the farmland of E-Rantel's surroundings giving way to the rougher terrain of the foothills, the vegetation shifting toward the hardier varieties that was altitude and cold.
The dwarf fortress was visible from the lower slopes, a structure of impressive engineering built into the mountain face, designed for function. Currently occupied by Assholes, that had no appreciation for its engineering.
I went into the tunnels.
The Quagoas emerged from side passages with the territorial aggression. I dispatched them as they came, a single punch each, They dropped like flys.
I stopped over the third dead one and I looked at it's body.
The Quagoa body had the approximate dimensions of a humanoid form under the distinctive blue-grey skin. Not a comfortable fit, not a convincing disguise to any Quagoa. But frost dragons, by everything I knew of the species, were creatures of significant power and correspondingly limited interest in the details of the lesser beings that occupied their territory.
I skinned it with practiced efficiency, as I pulled the hide over my travelling clothes, and continued deeper into the tunnel system.
More Quagoas. More quick dispatches.
The fortress proper opened ahead, the tunnels giving way to carved halls, the scale expanding into the architecture of a civilisation. And on the gold pile at the centre of the main hall, coiled with the absolute comfort of a creature that had not faced a genuine threat in years, was Olasird'arc Haylilyal [level 44]
Frost dragon. The pale blue-white scales caught the cold light of the fortress's permanent illumination and scattered it.
Three shapes nearby. Frost dragon females, each large, each currently in the heavy stillness of rest. His wives, as the lore had described them.
The gold pile was a mountain of accumulated wealth in the form of coins and objects and things that had value and had been added to the pile because the dragon found value aesthetically pleasing to them. I reached into my pack for the sack of gold coins I had brought for exactly this purpose, shifted the Quagoa skin to present the most plausible silhouette I could manage, and walked toward the pile with the unhurried movement of something delivering tribute.
Olasird'arc opened one eye.
The eye was the size of a shield. The slit pupil tracked me across the room with the lazy precision.
I bowed. Held up the sack. Made the gesture of offering.
"Pour it, On the pile," said Olasird'arc. and then he closed his eye again.
I approached the pile. Began pouring the coins slowly.
The eye stayed closed.
I pulled back my arm, loaded everything I had into the trajectory, and drove my fist into his eye socket.
What followed was messy.
I had expected the initial strike to do significant damage, the force calculation for a level forty-five punch delivered into the soft tissue of an eye and through to the brain should have killed him. What I had not fully accounted for was the specific geometry of a frost dragon's skull, which was considerably deeper between the eye socket and the brain than a human skull was, and which meant that significant penetration was required before the strike reached the brain tissue.
My arm went in to the elbow before the screaming started.
Olasird'arc's head came up with my arm still embedded in it, which lifted me off the gold pile and into the air. I started spinning my fist. The screaming escalated. He thrashed and rolled and the gold pile spilled over, and the three dragon wives came awake.
His clawed at my back.
The deep cuts of a frost dragon's claws going through cloth and skin and into the muscle beneath as the pain was unbearable.
I did not stop.
I twisted. I drove deeper. Olasird'arc's thrashing became less coordinated, the spams , and then he went down, Foam at the mouth.
I pulled my arm out and turned to face three frost dragons, as I see their expression of rage, as I pretented to fall dead.
The decision to play dead was tactical, I needed a moment, my back was losing blood at a fast pace, I went down convincingly, arranged myself in the posture of someone who had been taken out of the fight, and began running *Light Healing* at maximum intensity into the wounds.
I was aware that this was not the most sophisticated plan I had ever executed, but I will sneak attack again.
Munuinia Ilyslym's POV [level 34]
She had loved Olasird'arc with the particular love of a creature who had shared territory and warmth and decades of existence with another creature, and the thing that had killed him was lying in her husband's gold and she could feel the healing magic moving through its body like an insult.
*It thinks I cannot sense that.*
She crossed the hall toward it, her grief converted entirely into the focused intent to end the thing that had taken her mate, the cold building in her chest for the breath that would finish this. The other two wives were flanking, which was correct. This would be over in seconds.
The insect moved.
She had been ready, had known it was coming, had her jaws open and positioned, but the speed of it was still something she had not fully prepared for. It came at her eye, which was the obvious target, the vulnerable point, the same technique it had used on Olasird'arc, and she bit down on the arm before the fist connected.
Her teeth went through flesh.
Not through bone. She felt the impact of her jaw against the skeletal structure of the arm and felt the structure hold, which was wrong, which was not what happened when she bit down on things, and the insect *screamed, a satisfying sound, a sound of genuine pain.
It started to lift her.
The sensation of being lifted was one that Munuinia Ilyslym had not experienced since she was young enough to be carried as an infant, and experiencing it now, in this context, at the ends of a bleeding creature that should by all rights be dying.
She was hit to another dragon.
She hit it with another dragon on top of her, which was her sister-wife, and the impact of two large frost dragons meeting a stone floor simultaneously made a large BOOM.
She did not let go of the arm.
She was Munuinia Ilyslym. And this insect will die by my jaws.
The insect waved her around. This was the most accurate description of what occurred, she was on the end of the arm, her mass deployed against her own children, the sound of scales against stone and the blood that followed telling her what was happened to her offspring without needing to look.
She could feel him slowing. The blood loss was killing him.
One more swing. She braced for the impact, she would hold, she would hold until the arm till-
The arm ripped off at the shoulder.
She hit the wall.
Tim's POV
I looked at where my arm had been.
There was a frost dragon attached to the end of it until approximately three seconds ago.
The good news was that one of her children, in the process of blasting me with ice magic, had frozen the wound shut. I would like to believe this was accidental.
I broke his neck for the assistance.
The two remaining dragon wives were down, one from the impact of being used as a weapon, one from the fall. Munuinia Ilyslym was against the wall, conscious, her eyes on me with the specific expression of rage.
I jumped to her, as I stomped her skull in.
The fight ended.
I stood in the wreckage of the hall for a moment, among the gold that had scattered across the floor, the still forms of Olasird'arc and his wives, the smaller bodies of the dragon children who had dead in various positions in the heat of the fight, and the various architectural elements that had been damaged during the process and assessed my condition.
One arm, missing my face. Back wounds that the *Light Healing* had partially addressed but not completed.
I was still standing.
"man, that was such a bad idea, fighting the stupid dragons"
I went upstairs to the library.
The door was heavy and well-made as I pushed it open.
Hejinmal's POV [level 22]
The sounds of the battle had been reaching the library for what felt like hours, the screaming, the impacts, the blast of ice magic. Hejinmal had pulled himself as far into the stacks of books as he could, and had covered his head with his wings.
Then silence.
A silence that stretched long enough that he had begun the slow and extremely careful process of hoping it might mean it's over, before the footsteps started. Coming from the main hall, moving through the corridors, approaching he way slowly.
The library door opened.
Hejinmal looked at what came through it.
It was tall, taller than most of the dwarfs he had seen in the fortress over the years. It was covered in blood. It had one arm. Its face was, the face was wrong, the frost-burns and claw damage and general evidence of sustained combat creating an appearance that his mind kept trying to find where it's eyes were.
And It was smiling at him.
A toothy bloody smile.
"You want to be friends?" it said.
Hejinmal became very aware, that he had lost control of his bladder.
The thing in the doorway looked at the spreading puddle on the library floor.
Tim's stats
LeveL [50]
Assassin: [3/10] [Updated]
Dragon Slayer: [4/5] [New]