Dragon Sorcerer 2- Chapter 85 (Patreon)

I'm curious about your theories regarding what the transformative, evolutionary goo is for. I know exactly what it's for and it is part of the original outline, but not sure that I've properly foreshadowed it.


Chapter 85- DKP

The rest of the day had ended up being very relaxing. It was oddly comforting to let the tiny humans praise me. Their admiration for me was so raw and unrefined that it made me feel warm inside. I hadn’t even realized the need I had for this.

I didn’t completely ignore the concerns held by the adventurers and Cami. They had some merit. But, none of them were dragons. Dragons need to live free or they die. Matilda and her ilk were proof of that in my mind. We weren’t in the city or at the university, and these people adored me. They’d do anything for them.

After all the children were taken away, I spoke to the same elderly female who had been speaking with the adventurers. It turned out she was the matriarch of this community, something they called the mayor.

She approached me and bowed from the waist. This was a human who knew how to treat me properly. I liked her already. “Thank you, great one. We are honored that you not only saved our village but also humored the curiosity of the children.”

“Your offspring were properly respectful. I do not know when I will be able to return here, but they will be welcome to admire my scales again when I do return.”

She stiffened at my words and got an odd expression on her face. Cami would be proud of me for noticing. “Did my words offend you?”

Her face grew the bright red that I associated with embarrassment and her body trembled in a way that I understood was a human way of showing fear. “Uh… oh… no, great one. Please forgive this one.”

“Deference is important, but so is the truth. I have said something that leaves you unsettled, please explain so that I may better understand humans. I will feel more comfortable offering my protection to this village if I understand your customs.”

She stared at the ground and for a moment, I contemplated simply flying off. Her reluctance was frustrating.

“It is nothing great one and we would be honored to have you as our protector. We have little wealth, but what we have we will gladly give to you. My reaction was only shock that you believed all the children to be mine.”

I chuckled, which seemed to scare her more. I gave her a moment to compose herself and then said, “That was my laughter. It isn’t a sound you need to fear. I did not suppose that all of those children were from laid or what is the human word… oh yes, birthed by you. I simply meant that they are your offspring or your offspring’s offspring. You are the elder matron of this group of humans are you not?”

“Uh, I guess I’m one of the older women, but I’m not used to being called elderly. Human women are sensitive about such things.” This time, she stood up a bit straighter as she spoke to me.

That pleased me. I was beginning to like the idea of adopting this town as mine. It might not be permanent, but it was close enough to the university that I would be a convenient respite from the disrespectful humans there. “It was not intended as an insult. Amongst my kind, the eldest are the most powerful and thus the most respected.”

“I like that. It might not be like this with mages, but amongst normal humans, we become more frail as we age.”

I wasn’t quite sure what to say to that. Certainly, Cami might have known the appropriate thing to say, but it escaped me. Somehow, saying that it sucked not to be a dragon didn’t seem like what I should say.

When I didn’t say anything more, she asked if I needed anything more. I was tempted to say that I could eat more, but Cami had advised me against eating too many of their animals because it would ruin their ability to raise more of them. Truthfully, I could eat more but didn’t need to. So with nothing more to do, she bowed and took her leave from me. I could definitely get used to that.

It was just as well. I had been ignoring notifications most of the day and recently more had popped up. Now I would get a chance to see all of the gains. I found that while gaining loot was the most intoxicating feeling in the world, there were two things close to it. The first would be seeing the life force of your enemy fade from their eyes as they fall before your might. Second would be the joy of increasing power, but that was mostly so it would be easier to do the other.

I just ordered all the notifications to pop up at the same time as I didn’t really care about the order.

Your bonded companion has upgraded her class to Dragon Knight. With this class, she will be better equipped to fight from your back. Experience will teach her when to stay back and when to lean forward, lightening your burden of knowing how to protect her.

She has gained additional skills.

You bond with your companion has increased to level 12 because you have learned to fight as one in battle. She has gained an additional 1% of your true stats. Now that she is both a dragon knight your bond has increased past level 10. You may choose to gain 10% of one of her stats. Note once this choice is made, it cannot be undone. This will tie directly to your evolutionary path. Do you wish to consider additional evolutionary paths?

That was a simple choice. Of course I did.

All evolutionary paths: Claw, Scale, Wing, Breath, or Mind.

Claw Path is the most aggressive of these. It will open new abilities such as significantly sharpened attacks and the ability to pierce even dragon scales. Cost: 100 DKP

Scale Path is the most defensive of possible evolutions. It will have the base effect of making your scales more durable but will also open the potential for new abilities such as reflective scales, shimmering scales, camouflage scales, absorbing scales, and others.

Cost: 150 DKP

Wing Path is focused upon mobility and speed. Your Agility will automatically be boosted by 25% and you will gain access to a variety of new abilities, including but not limited to Improved Sprint, Long Range Flight, and Void Flight.

Cost: 175 DKP

Breath Path is centered around the most defining of a true dragon’s abilities- namely their breath weapon. It will automatically reduce the recharge time needed, increase the damage, range, and area of effect. It will also open access to other ability such as Elemental Swap, Ghost Breath, Persistent Breath and others.

Cost: 175 DKP

Mind Path is the hardest to quantify. It is focused upon the magic of a dragon and potentially is the most powerful, but also requires the most patience and work. For this reason, it has only ever been very rarely selected. It will automatically increase your Mind by 25% and will decrease the cost of elevating spells for your bonded companion. The types of abilities it will open to you will depend upon your Pursuits and other choices you make along the way, but it has the potential to impact every aspect of your nature.

Cost: 250 DKP

I could immediately see why so many of my ancestors had chosen Claw of Scale. Many simply wanted a quick boost to their killing power. And gather DKP without a bonded companion would have been onerous. It wasn’t enough to kill monsters. There had to be actual threat to you in order to gain DKP. The sole exception being that killing other dragons always produced some DKP, at least after your magic was awakened.

The Breath Path might also have been interesting because I know I wished I could have fought the baloth from a distance and that would have made it far easier. Then thinking about the damage I had taken made the Scale Path seem more than a little viable. But I had to keep my eyes on the prize.

I had put up with all the problems humans caused and was staying at the university because I wanted magical power. That really only left one path open to me. I cursed though as I realized that after spending DKP during the battle, I wouldn’t have nearly enough to obtain it.

It was as though someone had flashed a mountain of gold in front of me and then yanked it all away. This was unacceptable, but there was little I could do about it for now. More fighting was needed. After all my spending, I was down to 113 DKP.

A sinking feeling settled in and I realized something worse was happening. Earning DKP before had seemed so easy but I realized a large part of that had been the specialized dungeon. When I asked Lisella about returning there, she said it would be difficult for us to leave Urgoi Island because students were prohibited from doing so for the first two years they attended the university.

While Serius could have teleported us away, we would be magically tracked and the administration would know that we had left the island. Then apparently there was also some sort of reset on how often we could use the dungeon although Lisella wasn’t sure about the rest period.

In the end, I felt my frustration growing. I needed more DKP, and I needed it now. I wanted that path and a part of me felt some responsibility for Matilda’s eggs, but I had to push that aside. At a cost of 250 DKP per egg, there was no way I would ever accrue the necessary points. With that frustration in mind, I looked at the rest of my notification.

Progress made on how the mighty have fallen. You have encountered one of the creatures specifically created to hunt dragons. Solidarity has never been the dragon way, but even the mightiest of beings can be taken down by enough foes. Progress: 42%

You have further integrated your class with your racial abilities. XP is awarded to push you to level 10 as a Dragon Disciple. This is to bring balance to your proper use of abilities. Continue to work on merging your two selves.

Class-based stat gains:

Strength: +4

Agility: +4

Durability: +4

Mind: +4

Free: +4 (+50 from title for a total of 54)

Before assigning any free, I continued going through the notifications:

Your companion has leveled up her class. You gain +10% to your age category.

Battles have increased your age category by 2%

Currently: Adult (92% towards mature adult)

Stat gains for age category:

Str: +24

Durability: +24

Mind: +6

You have grown.

It was such an odd feeling, but as soon as I accepted that notification; I grew seven inches longer and added a bit more mass. It made my scales tingle, yet the system pushed it all through at once.

Then I selected Mind as the stat that I would gain from Cami. As a frail human, it seemed like the best bet. Then I added enough Strength to bring me up to an even 400. There was something pleasing about that. I didn’t put any free points into Agility but spent enough to round my Durability gains up to 50 and then I sank the rest into Mind.

Cami granted me an extra four points in Mind which I assumed would only grow in the future. She and I probably needed to talk about our builds together some more. Then again, that might involve a discussion with Lisella and Modessa. Most of my memories suggested that dragons simply let growth happen and went by instinct. I was trying to find a way to improve upon that and yet, I couldn’t trust the adventurers.

Lisella had shown me at least a good portion of hero status sheet. That had to be worth something. I considered that I could either not trust and struggle through this on my own or I could extend trust and potentially end up mounted on some archmage’s wall as a trophy. Perhaps I could find a middle ground, a reasoned approach so to speak. I needed to both trust and yet not expose myself too much. I would need to think on this more.

I also had a gift coming from the gods, but wondered if that was more of a fishing hook than a gift. It seemed more than coincidental that given the small number of humans I knew, I could count a chosen of one of the gods amongst them. Galbrecht was a decent enough type for a human and if it weren’t for his split motivations, I might have been willing to trust him more completely.

There was just so much going on. The new title revealed more about this Pact which had been mentioned before. So far I could only conjecture about it, though. It seemed like the dragons were somehow middlemen in the Pact and that the systems was an Arbiter, except that didn’t really make sense with what I knew about the system up to this point.

There had been some slightly barbed notifications, but basically it seemed neutral. Perhaps the gods could influence the system, but I didn’t get the feeling that they controlled it. Maybe no one did. Was is the mind of some true god, a being so vast that it had created all we knew and then left the system behind to run it?

Again, this was mere speculation. My ancestors would likely roll over in their graves if they realized how much time I spent contemplating such things. Then it hit me. Was it possible that the Pact was some agreement between the gods and horrors about how Ileria would be handled and that dragons were intended to be the true arbiters of that agreement?

I found that concept pleasing. As far as I was concerned. Ileria was our world. We might suffer the lesser races to live here. We did need minions, after all. But the gods and horrors alike were interlopers in my mind. The only thing that made me wonder about that was the way that the system had identified Divine Magic as one of my pursuits.

Did that mean that I was meant to follow after the gods or that I was meant to walk a path similar to theirs? Hmm… Lord Nico, god of all Ileria. It had a nice ring to it.