Short story- Dragon Sorcerer- Part 4 (Patreon)

Part 4- Monk?

“Cami, please step back from me. I’m going to try something new.”

That was technically correct but to a dragon could magic ever be truly new. This was something that had been accomplished many times in my ancestor’s memories. Well, maybe not this exact thing. From what I could tell, what I was going to do was generally looked down upon by blue dragons, but other species did it often.

After my awakening a number of abilities became available to me and others were there for me to purchase with DKP. Shape changing was a natural extension of the way that magic flowed through my body, and yet it was also frightening in a sense. Every dragon knew that they were blessed of the gods to be born in the most perfect form ever created.

Nothing that crawled upon the earth, flew in the air, or swam in the depths could ever be as majestic as a dragon, not to mention beautiful. But, sometimes other shapes served a purpose. My kin had left behind most of Taleia but if I wanted to mingle with the lesser races, I needed a form that wouldn’t scare them.

I turned my thoughts inward and activated the ability. As I guessed it was as easy as visualizing what I wanted but there were some limitations which I learned as a notification alerted me.

You are activating the Shape Change ability for the first time. This ability is currently at level 1. This will enable you to take the shape of anything from the size of a mouse to your natural size. You may activate this ability up to three times per day. Reverting to your natural form does not count as a use. The number of uses and available shaping options will increase as the ability is leveled up.

Note: shape changing will not provide you with any equipment or clothing but will store any that you are wearing in an extra-dimensional space for the duration of your change. Those items can not be accessed while they are in that space.

Shaping will also heal you for up to 50% of your total health.

At your current level, the shaping process requires 30 seconds to be completed.

Stat Allocation:

1) Your Mind stat and immunities remain with you in any form you take

2) If the new form has a superior physical stat then you will assume that stat.

3) If the new form has an inferior physical stat then your natural stat and that form’s stat will be averaged to produce your temporary stat.

4) If you take the form of a sapient race possessing levels you will be assigned a class(es) and level appropriate to your abilities. Your control over this will increase as the skill is leveled up.

I smiled as I read the description until I lost myself in the wonder of feeling my body change. It happened so slowly that it felt odd to feel. My tail was sucked into my body. My wings shriveled up and then became shoulder blades. My long neck was squished together as my noble head was twisted into that of an ugly human.

The very first thing I noticed was how cold the wind felt against my now very soft and very naked body. Gone were my beautiful scales and now all I had was this pinkish skin. Cami gasped and said something, but her voice sounded so much softer. My hearing clearly wasn’t nearly as good as it had been before.

Then I noticed how I couldn’t smell anything. A wave of fear ran through me. It was practically like being blind. I struggled to gain control of myself and realized this was one of the things the dragon dream had warned me of. I couldn’t see or hear as well but my senses of touch and taste should be much more refined. I wasn’t sure that was a good trade off at all and it certainly didn’t make up for a total loss of my olfactory sense.

Wait, I could smell a very faint scent of blood, but it was like it was from a long time ago or perhaps was half a mile away. This was very frustrating. As much as dragons relied upon keen sight and hearing, my sense of smell was the way I had learned to experience the world around me before I even was able to open my eyes. Word could lie, and sight might be distracted, but my nose often revealed truths to me that the other missed.

I had to push down the urge to take back my normal form. I felt almost claustrophobic in this shape. It was like I was crammed into a tiny box. The world around me felt massive. I didn’t like that sensation. Then I heard Cami again, “Nico? Is that you?”

I tried to twist my neck to look at her and felt a sharp pain. Okay, note to self. This tiny neck is not very flexible. So, I turned my body. She gasped again as she saw my front side. I didn’t understand what the problem was. Her face grew red, which something told me that meant she was embarrassed. Hmm… there was some suggestion in the dragon dream that humans and other races got nervous around nudity.

It made sense in a way. They were rather ugly after all and every human I had encountered so far had always been covering up most of their body with what they called clothes. Maybe it was because they didn’t have beautiful scales and so jealously tried to imitate dragons. If that were the case they were doing a very poor job of it.

“It’s me. Do I look okay?” I asked. I noticed she was averting her eyes.

“Uh…, you’re naked.”

“I was naked before too.” Her logic was clearly flawed. She’d been staring at me naked for quite a while as we spoke.

“We need to get you some clothes. Can you use magic to do that?”

I quickly scanned through the options I had available to me. I limited it to the abilities or spells I could buy for 2 DKP or less, despite the fact that I wanted to spend some time scrolling through the options I would have in the future. I also got rid of any combat or more esoteric abilities and focused on the ones which seemed to be related. In the end I boiled it down to two options but neither of them solved my problem.

Create Food and Water (1 DKP)- Conjure food and water out of thin air. Create enough to satisfy your hunger and thirst in dragon form. The food will be of a type which is appealing to your current form but will only be basic. Cast Time: 1 minute. Mana Cost: 20. Note when you are in a different form the spell may be modified to create only enough for your current size. In the human form mana cost is reduced to 3.

Fabricate (2 DKP)- Take base material and create a new product. May affect up to 2 cubic feet of material at base level. End product will be of suitable quality. Quality may be improved my mastering the relevant mundane skill. Cast Time: 1 minute. Mana Cost: 15.

Cami asked, “What are you doing? It’s like you are all alone and staring off into the sky. We seriously need to get you some clothes.”

I looked around for a minute. Her attitude wasn’t pleasing. She needed to remember what I was even if I wasn’t in my natural form. But then again she was helping me, so I wouldn’t punish her now. “I can’t magic up cloths as you asked, but I do have the option to gain an ability that might help.”

Then I looked around and saw the bodies of the knights I had slain. Their clothing was pretty much all torn up, but if I gathered the raw material I should be able to make something suitable from that. I explained what I had in mind to Cami and she agreed. It irked me not to be able to consider any of the other abilities like Enhanced Regeneration or Telepathy. I could have even upgrade my breath weapon and there was something called Shocking Heal which sounded cool, but it would have to wait. Hopefully, it wouldn’t be to hard to gain more DKP.

We stripped enough cloth and even some of the metal armor off the knights. I made sure it wasn’t more than two cubic feet, but I quickly realized that was a pretty sizeable amount of material for a human. My perspective was a dragon was simply skewed.

I tried to picture what I wanted in my head, but to be fair my experience with human attire was fairly limited and mostly negative. If Cami hadn’t pointed out that I would need boots I would have forgotten about that. What weak creatures they were that humans couldn’t even walk around without something on their feet. What I ended up with was far cooler than anything else I had seen a human wearing. Cami didn’t agree but she was a human child what did she know.

Looking down at what I had made, I smiled. I had a cloth shirt, but instead of the boring cloth shirts the humans who were farmers had worn, my shirt had little bits of the metal fabricated into small imitation scales. I like the way it shimmered, even if Cami thought it looked odd. The pants were boring like the other humans but I guess it couldn’t all be great. My boots were covered in metal on top of the toes with a metal piece. I also had metal bands around my wrists as I thought that would be helpful if I had to fight.

Thinking about that made me realize I needed to check my status sheet. I had no idea what the magic had assigned me in terms of a human form.

Nicosandumas

Apparent Race: Human

Apparent Age: 17

Class: Monk/Sorcerer

Level: 6th/4th

DKP: 0

Height: 6’1” Weight: 186 lbs.

Speed: 4 mph

The size change was pretty appalling. I mean I had known it was but seeing the numbers only drove home the fact that I was pathetically tiny now. This was definitely going to take some time to get used to.

Then seeing the comparable classes didn’t actually tell me much. I was going to have to ask Cami about it.

“So, I’m a monk now. What’s a monk?”

She scratched her head and laughed. “How can you be something and not know what it is?”

“Hey don’t laugh. I’ve never changed shape before now. The magic of my ability tried to assign me a human class which was comparable to my natural aptitudes. But what’s a monk? It says I’m a monk sorcerer. I basically know what a sorcerer is but not what a monk is.”

“Are you sure that monk wasn’t your class before?” Cami asked.

“As if dragons would need a class. We just are.”

Cami shook her head but finally answered me, “I think monks are like fighters who fight with their hands and feet, but I’ve never meet one. My papa said he once saw one go into a bar and get attacked but he was the only one who walked out.”

I nodded along. “Ah, so suitably deadly. That is appropriate. I don’t suppose you know anything about human levels, do you?”

Once again she shook her head. This time it was to signal her ignorance. I was disappointed but felt proud that I was already figuring out human expressions. Maybe this wouldn’t be so complicated.

Then I looked at my stats and at first I was confused until I opened a flashing mark next to each of my stats.

Note: stats are race specific. Your dragon stats are based upon dragon form and human stats are based upon human form. For every race, 10 is a baseline for an average adult member of that race. Every +1 equals approximately a 10% increase up to 20 and then every +1 above that equals a 10% increase over 20. This continues onward.

Hmm… I nodded to myself. That made sense. It explained why my stats now seemed so much higher. My strength stat for example was a combination of my dragon form and human for and then divided by two, but it was scored on a human scale. Since even a weak dragon would be stronger than your average human this showed me to be significantly stronger in human form relative to what I expected other humans to be. Although to be fair, I really didn’t know what their stats were.

STR: 34

AGI: 10

DUR: 23

MIND: 12

HP: 84/118

Regen Rate: 20 HP/day

Armor Rating: 10

Immunities: Electricity, Sleep, Paralyzation

Resistances: Magic- 30%, Physical Damage: 0

ATK: 18

DMG: 1-4+12 (punch), 1-6+12 (kick)

Critical Strike: 5%

For some reason, my Agility hadn’t increased. I internally cursed this clumsy human body. That had to be the reason. Dragon agility just had to be greater than human agility. I mean, I was having trouble walking straight with these two weird legs. Nothing was the length or proportion it should be. This body was straight up a horror show.

Once, I was comfortable that I had some idea about what I was doing I turned to a fourteen year old for clarification. It really was humbling, but I didn’t have anyone else to ask. “Cami, where do I go now?”

Before she could say anything, I saw a man sneaking up behind her. He was in the same soft clothing that the farmer had on. He might have even been one of the men who was here before. It was hard to say. All humans look alike.

Suddenly he stood up and ran forward. He looked all around frantically. When Cami saw him said, “Papa.”

He nodded but kept scouring the horizon as though he were expecting to see something. Finally, he turned to her. “Where’d the dragon go?”

“It’s gone. Aren’t you glad that I’m still safe?”

“Gone? Gone where? How?” Then he looked at me before asking, “And who are you?”

Cami and I hadn’t had a chance to work out a cover story for that, so I wasn’t sure what to say. Luckily, Cami seemed to be able to think quickly. That or she was just experienced at lying to her father. “His name is Nico. He is a wandering mage. He tricked the dragon into leaving with an illusion.”

Her sire didn’t answer at first as he scratched his beard. When he did speak he asked, “Why didn’t we see it fly off then?”

She shrugged her shoulders and made an odd expression on her face. “How should I know. I’m only a girl.”

Her sire pulled back his hand and suddenly had an air of violence about him. “Don’t give me any lip.”

I didn’t know exactly what was going on or why she would take part of her mouth off to give it to him, but I just assumed it was some odd human way of doing things. I didn’t really want to see Cami be struck though so I moved to intercept his blow. That was when things got even more complicated.