Dragon Sorcerer 2- Interlude 14 (Patreon)

Interlude 14- Dragon Rider?

Cami was walking the streets of this small town. She had only just learned that the people here called it Easton. It was hardly original, but then she knew very well how people from a small town could be. Heck, she was barely more than someone from a small town. Her birthday would be next week and officially she’d become an adult by the standards she had been raised with, but she didn’t feel like an adult.

She was still making too many mistakes, but the simple fact was that she had also grown a great deal. It was just that the world was growing faster than she was, or at least her awareness of it. She could have gone back to her room, but after Nico revealed that he could speak to the entire town everyone seemed to want to talk to her.

They called her dragon rider or sapphire rider or even hero. On one hand, she knew that she was those things. She and Nico had saved the village from the baloth. She shuddered even thinking about it. Seeing Nico get hurt like that had torn at her heart. She had even felt the urge to leap on the baloth and tear at it with her bare teeth.

Such a move would have been suicidal of course, but that didn’t stop the impulse from forming in her heart. She could no longer deny the fact that the bond was having an effect upon who she was. As she accepted that fact, she found that she wasn’t worried about it. She wanted to be a hero. She wanted to make a difference and she could do that with Nico.

She smiled as she walked around a building and saw that Nico was still sprawled out. He was actually letting the children come up and touch him. She saw more than one nervous parent, but the children didn’t have any reservations. They saw Nico as a hero, and beyond that he was exotic and beautiful.

As for Nico, she understood a bit more about the notification she had received when they reached level 10 on their bond. He was prideful, but easy to win over with praise. She would have to look out for him. Cami wanted to trust Modessa and the others, but she stab them in their eye if she had to rather than let them try to take advantage of Nico. He was so powerful but so naïve, and she could be honest enough to laugh at the idea that she found him to be naïve, given how naïve she was herself.

She settled down to watch Nico with the children. He gobbled down any treats which were offered to him, but had assured her that he understood humans while perhaps not friends were definitely not food.

This gave her the chance to finally look at the loot she had obtained as well as the notifications. There has been a ton of upgrades lately and she was already feeling stronger. Cami pushed that thought aside, though. There had been glaring flaws in their fighting style. Nico had felt the same, the bond assured her.

Her solution was three-fold. First off, she needed to increase her survivability. Doing so would enable her to not be such a liability to Nico. Second, she decided she needed to obtain some healing magic or even more important some enhancement magic. It wasn’t one of top pursuits which the testing revealed for her, but she still believed it was necessary.

Her pursuits had been the wing for a dragon rider, a staff for a wizard, which supposedly meant that she had a good general aptitude for magic. She was going to lean into that to find ways to enhance Nico. Both of them had wanted to fight the baloth from the air, but they had lacked the firepower to do so.

Cami doubted that would be the last time such a thing would happen. So if Nico was going to have to wade into battle she needed to find ways to make him stronger. That, of course, left her with the third part of her plan. This might be the most important. She needed to increase her offensive capability.

Wielding the elevated version of Burning Sphere had been invigorating. It probably resonated with her third pursuit, that of elemental fire. She hoped between fire and shadow that she would be able to form a powerful set of offensive abilities. She would just have to push Modessa harder on that front. The woman was definitely training her, but clearly had her own pre-conceived notions about the path Cami should take.

Cami finally had to have Nico share the spell Identify with her. She was tired of having to depend on others for information. Now she used it on her new loot.

Buckler of the Bonded Quality: Legendary

Weight: 2 lbs.

Restriction: May only be used by an individual who possesses a true bond with a dragon.

Enhancements:

Size Manipulation: the shield may range between its base form of eight inches in diameter to 10 feet in diameter. The weight will never change, but it may be difficult to wield as the size grows.

Durability: Immune to non-epic damage.

Stat Boosts: Strength +25, Agility +10, Durability: +50

Armor: +6*

This loot is boosted beyond the normal drops in recognition of the accomplishment of being the first to kill a baloth in more than 1000 years. Normally, someone of your level would never be able to successfully wield a legendary object, but the restrictions serve instead of a level cap.

Note: This piece is part of a set, including a helm, breastplate, greaves, gauntlets, and boots.

*varies with size

Do you wish to attune to this object? Doing so will mean that no one else can use it for as long as you are alive.

She immediately chose yes. A tingling ran down her spine and she shivered, but then her eyes popped wide open. Cami had thought she’d understood what the stats meant, but the reality was so much more. As soon as the attunement process ended, her Strength nearly doubled and her Durability more than tripled.

It was hard to explain just how much more solid she felt. Her size hadn’t changed at all, but she felt powerful. The first few steps were difficult as she learned to control her body, although the extra Agility seemed to help with that. She paced around a few times and then practiced picking up rocks from the ground, throwing them, and then touching various objects around the village without damaging anything.

Only once that was complete did she feel like she could move on to the rest of her notifications.

You have defeated 1 x Tier 4 Baloth. A baloth is considered a special existence per the terms of the Pact. (Note while fighting beside your bonded dragon companion you gain full credit for all kills attributable to your dragon)

Due to one of the opponents being of a significantly higher Tier than your current level, your XP is multiplied. +3940 XP. In consideration of the fact that this was the first baloth killed in more than 1000 years, your XP is doubled to 7880.

Additionally, you gain +5 DKP.

The next notification was a surprise for her.

You have been awarded the title: Balance Rider. Your life is joined with one who stands at the middle of the Pact. Beware: moving down this path will often place you at odds with your fellow humans and even the gods. Some choices can not be unmade.

+2 levels to your bond (Stat share increases to 4%)

A new class is offered: Dragon Knight

Cami read the notification twice before moving on to see what this new class was.

You and the  dragon, Nicosandumas, have successfully fought a battle against a special existence together. You have fought from dragon back and won. Your bonded companion has become a Balance Warden and stepped onto the path of Draconis.

Your class, Dragon Rider, is upgraded to Dragon Knight. This is still an epic class but is more flexible. You will also gain more powerful skills.

Spear Mastery 1 is upgraded to Spear Mastery 2.

You are granted the skill: Shield Mastery 1.

You are granted the skill: Dragon Jousting 1.

Even amongst dragon riders, this class is considered rare. It also comes with a greater weight of responsibility. As your bonded companion grows, you must grow too, or you will hold him back. As your bonded companion grows, you must help him guard the balance, even when this makes you unpopular. You must never forget your duty as you are becoming the hand of the system in maintaining the Pact.

Your relationship with your bonded will become closer but also more challenging. You must be the voice of reason. You must be content to be a flame standing next to the sun.

Dragon Knights gain stats per level as follows:

 Strength: +1
 Agility: +1
 Durability: +2
 Mind: +2
 Free: +9

You have sufficient XP to reach level 8 as a Dragon Knight. Do you wish to apply the XP there or to your second class- currently set as Mage?

That was a no-brainer for Cami. She immediately chose to level up Dragon Knight. Because of the boosts in stats she gained with her gear, she immediately applied all of the free stats to Mind with the hope that would make her magic more powerful.

She had previously gained access to Tier 4 spells when she hit level seven. So now she wanted to see what this did for her. It appeared that it only increased the number of spells she could learn at Tier 3 and 4. But that was still important. She grinned. She had DKP to spend, but for now; she put that on hold. She had some plans for when she got back to the University.

 It was pastime that she moved forward.

____________________

Sheraleigh stretched out her wings. She hadn’t flown for a while now. What was it, two months or more? She had trouble tracking it. Her human servants were doing everything for her now. She was currently laying atop a nice pile of gold. It was luxurious and felt perfectly majestic against her scales.

The servants brought her food. They had even shown her how delicious, cooked food could be. There had been that one mishap when she took the hand off of one of the servants in her rush to eat a new treat, but he had two hands, so it shouldn’t be that big of a deal. To hear the way the human wailed and cried had said otherwise, but she couldn’t be bothered with such things.

For all of this comfort, she really only had to do one thing. Every few days, a human came down and insisted on speaking to her. At first she had thought to destroy the impudent human, but her experience with the adventurers who captured her warned her that at least some humans were too strong to be ignored.

Besides, this one seemed to be in command of all the human servants, so while he called himself the emperor, she tended to think of him as her major domo. He made sure all her needs were met and just wanted to talk to her.

Oh sure, he had been annoying when he wanted her to apologize to the human whose hand she had bitten off. He assured her that the servant had been healed, so she didn’t really see the point. Eventually, the emperor had let it drop, but it had made for an annoying conversation.

The other thing that he kept bringing up was his desire to have her bond with one of the people he called his imperial knights. She had no idea what that meant. Bonding was a word that she had only caught faint glimpses of in the dragon dream. It had been an unsettling experience. She’d been sucked into the memories of the grandest blue dragon she had ever seen, but then the dragon had insisted she was not ready and had actually kicked her out of the dream.

It had even hurt. She hadn’t known such a thing was possible, but it made her cautious about the dream in general and this concept of bonding specifically. Still, the emperor brought it up every day. He said that soon he would start bringing those he called candidates to see if Sheraleigh liked any of them. She wondered if that meant she was supposed to see which ones tasted the best. At least that was what she hoped it was more desserts.

____________________

Lisella shook her head. They had to leave town so they could speak in privacy. She just hoped they hadn’t made a mistake leaving Nico and Cami alone in Easton. She chuckled at the thought.

Modessa raised an eyebrow and so Lisella shared. “I was just laughing at the fact that I left a human town with a wild dragon curled up in the center of it and the thing I’m most worried about is how long we can let Nico stay in dragon shape before Tolston will catch wind of it.”

Modessa seemed to find that funny. She even grinned as she said, “Oh, let him stretch out. We’ve… no, I’ve been pretty hard on him. You saw how he attacked that monster. It clearly was outside of his desired way to fight and yet he didn’t hesitate to do what needed to be done to finish it. Besides, I thought your goddess was keeping his identity hidden.”

“Never good to test my goddess. At least that’s what I was taught as a girl.”

Liam coughed. “The bigger issue is that my expectations about Nico just changed.”

When neither Lisella nor Modessa said anything, the ranger continued, “I thought I had an accurate gauge on his power level, but it seems to be greater than I’d thought.”

Lisella shrugged. “As I told you I shared the basics from my stat sheet with him and was hoping he’d share more back, but it’s going to take time.”

Modessa said, “Now, I’m curious. How had you rated his power level?”

Liam stared off at a tree for a moment before he answered. “There is always a variance. You know we are all level twenty, but we have different strengths and might win under different circumstances against one another.”

Modessa snorted. “As if the princess could ever beat me straight up.”

Liam frowned. “That’s just it. You should know better than any of us. There is no such thing as a fair fight. If there is then it’s a sport for show. Fighting is about surviving and Nico showed more resilience than I’d expected today. Previously, I thought that he would absolutely beat either of you in a head on fight and likely Galbrecht. I gave him a 50/50 chance with me and more like 20/80 with Serius. Against us as a team, he wouldn’t have stood a chance.”

Lisella asked, “And what changed?”

“Some of it is what Modessa already pointed out. He is evolving. I think at the beginning of the battle it was clear that he wanted to fight from a range, but he quickly learned he didn’t have enough firepower for that.”

Modessa cut Liam off as she said, “He is constantly fighting close in when in human form. That’s the entire point of his class, isn’t it?”

“You’re missing my point. That is Nico as we’ve come to think of him. We know he’s a dragon, yet we don’t really treat him like that. At least I don’t. I find myself treating him like a human apprentice, a gifted one with odd personal traits, but still just a human apprentice.”

Lisella nodded along. “And when you watched him fight as a dragon, you realized just how little we know about him.”

“Right. We fought that thing, the baloth, before him. It was tough and injured all of us.”

“We could have killed it,” Modessa said.

“Yeah, maybe with some preparation, but the three of us were the worst match up for it. It’s healing stayed ahead of my damage. Your poison had little effect on it and shadow magic wasn’t working much better. Even our priestess was of limited use against it. If I’m not mistaken, you tried to banish it, didn’t you?”

Lisella sighed then. She remembered the fight. It had been hard as a healer. Neither Liam nor Modessa specialized at taking a hit. Her healing and buffs could only barely keep them up and that baloth hit hard. What was harder though was that she had not only tried to banish it but had also used a holy word against it. Both had failed. It wasn’t an extra-planar being, and it wasn’t a demon.

Then she attempted to impose a divine debuff on it and got a notification saying that the Pact prohibited such actions. That was bizarre to say the least. She hadn’t shared that part with the rest of her team, as she was still processing it herself.

When she didn’t say anything, Liam continued, “Suffice it to say that Nico proved he’s a better tank than Galbrecht, and can hit harder than Modessa up close. He has decent ranged attacks but doesn’t have my rate of fire or accuracy. The biggest area he seems to be lacking in is raw magical power. Those low level spells were never going to do much against a Tier 4 monster. Although, it sure seemed like they hit harder than I expected them to.”

Modessa said, “Cami told me that she gained an ability to draw on his DKP to cast her spells as though they were of a higher Tier. Supposedly, she can only reach 5th Tier, but I expect that will go up.”

Liam nodded. “That explains a great deal. But just imagine if they had more powerful spells to work with.”

Lisella stared off. She knew what the point of this discussion was. They needed to decide how to deal with Nico, but she couldn’t help but be even more excited now. She was his mentor and his potential seemed even higher. She absolutely had to reach an agreement between him and Forlay. She already had a feeling that he wouldn’t sign up to follow one of the gods, but gaining his loyalty to her home would be just as well.