A Gamer's Guide 210 (Patreon)

Five seconds pass, and then ten, and then fifteen, and then…

The priest sighs loudly. “If neither of you want to fight, then—”

“I want to fight!” Goss chirps.

“Y—yeah, that’s right!” I say. “We’re totally going to fight. I just… I need to gather myself a little, okay? Dragons are supposed to be super strong, so I need to be ready.” Even if said dragon is literally a tween.

“Exactly!” Goss says, pacing where he stands. “I’ve heard that humans are super strong, unkillable beasts who would just as soon eat a baby as defeat a dragon!” I can tell by the awestruck tone in his voice that he admires the qualities mentioned, but I still kind of want to correct him to explain that not all humans eat babies. “In other words,” Goss continues, “I have to prepare myself. Um, mentally. This is my first real fight, after all!”

…Because he’s only thirteen. What the heck is he even doing, being involved in all of this? He shouldn’t be here, being called a dastardly dragon, kidnapping priests… Sure, he’s happy about this, but doesn’t he know I’m going to kill him? Or maybe he’s too arrogant to realize it. He did mention something about how killing me would let him become a four-winged dragon, whatever that is.

I cross my arms. “So, um, Goss…” He turns to me, a quirk at his lips making it obvious that he’s trying to suppress a smile.

“Yes, K—Kitty?”

I pause a moment before speaking. “Are you ready?”

He flaps his wings happily. “Yeah, of course I am! I’m totally—” The look in my eye makes him freeze in place. He folds his wings across his back, his tail no longer wagging for the first time since our meeting.

I take a step closer to him, keeping my face neutral and my words measured. “Are you ready, Goss?” And below that, ‘Is this really what you want?’

He draws himself up slightly, his eyes gaining a hint of determination as sharp as any blade. “Y—yeah. I’m ready.”

I let my shoulders fall a little. “Alright, then.” My eyes fall again on the status message hovering above his head.

<Dragon (Lv.173) [BOSS]>

…That’s a ridiculous level. Just to compare, I glance at my own stats.

<Top—Status—Community>

<PrissyKittyPrincess

Human Level 133

Agility: 371 (+47)

Strength: 288 (+47)

Stamina: 404 (+47)

Magic Power: N/A>

I am completely outmatched. As always. All I can wonder is what Goss must have done to gain such a high level in such a short amount of time. Nevertheless… It doesn’t matter anymore. Soon, he’ll be dead, I’ll be a few levels stronger, and I’ll be one floor higher. That’s how it’s going to go.

Turning away from my stats, I look back at Goss. The look on his face tells me everything, but a quick sniff affirms it. He’s scared. More than that, though, he’s excited. I can smell it. He wants this. So it’s okay.

I loosen up a little, take a step to the right and then one to the left, and while Goss is still confused, I fall into a dash. The world blurs around me and within a flash, I find myself next to him, my sharp claws shooting out to gauge into his side, only to find them harmlessly bouncing off of hard scales. No, not scales. Now that I’m close enough to look at them, the scales in question are actually the folded-down feathers previously puffed up in pride. Harder than steel.

I leap back, finding the dragon blinking at me, eyes wide. “Whoa, that was so fast!” His shock is soon replaced by a cocksure grin. “But is it faster than… this?!”

The air cracks and something the approximate weight of a semi-truck whips into my side, my chest buffered only barely by my left arm, though I can still tell that a few of my ribs have been not only broken, but indeed pulverized, my arm following a similar fate. My body, as limp as a ragdoll, flies several meters through the air, the airborne status giving me plenty of time to recover my thoughts enough to summersault, spin into a ball and hit the ground in a gracious and ready cat-stance. Wary of further attacks, I look up at the dragon between stray strands of my hair, only to find him alternating between looking at me, looking at his outstretched tail, and looking at the priest.

“...Whoa!” he exclaims, the feathers on his tail unfurling back into their fluffy form. “That was awesome! Totally hornific! Did you see that, Kitty—”

The second his eyes fall on me he realizes his folly. Kind as I am, I give him a few seconds to regain his composure, his tail’s feathers folding back into a sleek and heavy club. Once these seconds are over, I leap into a roll, the confused glances he shoots to the left and right informing me that, at the very least, FPB works on him.

It’s been a while since I fought such an annoyingly massive opponent. Hopefully, the general strategies will still work. Rolling at my fastest speed, I go straight at him, swerving only to dodge the erratically whipping tail, a random strike from his massive paw that looked as though it had weirdly soft paw pads, and then eventually get behind him. For a moment, I don’t do anything, just waiting for him to stop moving so much. While waiting, I accidentally make eye contact with the priest. He’s looking straight at me. I blink at him. He waves at me. I wave back at him, accidentally breaking the FPB.

Goss snorts huffily. “Why are you—”

Before he has time to turn around and ask why I’m sitting right underneath his ass, I leap at his ankle, attaching myself to it by the jaws. Thanks to my endeavors on floor 22 with chewing on metal, I was able to get my dragon fang skill to level two. A skill I now make good use of by successfully chewing through the feathers and getting at the tough flesh underneath. Unfortunately, even with that, I’m not quite able to get through, so I’m left chewing and gnawing while the dragon begins strutting around, going “Ow, ow, ow!” and kicking his leg in an attempt to get me off.

I am, unfortunately, as tenacious as a tick, so I just keep biting.

“You bloodsucking…!” His wings unfurl and begin to beat powerfully, air being displaced and leaves going flying as he heaves his heavy body into the air, legs dangling beneath him. And as for my own part…

Holy shit. Holy shit. I’m flying. I’m literally in the air!

With every wingstroke, he brings us higher, the summit we were on becoming smaller and smaller until the priest is little more than a dot. The world around us is massive. From up here, I can see everything. Is this what it’s like to ride in a plane? It’s exhilarating! But also kind of scary. But still—

“If you don’t let go,” Goss shouts above the roaring of the wind, “I’m going to drop you, and you’re gonna crack like a wooden doll!”

What the heck is he…? Grabbing hold of his leg, I stop biting to chastise him for his dumb logic. “Okay, first of all, what are you even going to do if not drop me? We’re literally like a thousand feet in the air, so if I stop biting you, you’re obviously going to—”

He kicks his leg slightly. My fingers slip on his scales and I go plummeting.

Daaaaaaamn youuuuuu Gosssssssssssss—!

The ground approaches rapidly, and an old instinct in the back of my head starts counting the seconds. I get closer and closer. I passed ten seconds a few seconds back, so I feel fairly certain that this is it. Frankly, by all the metrics, this is probably the dumbest way to die. When I come back as a ghost, I’m going to haunt the shit out of this guy. Though, on the other hand, considering that I’ve yet to be haunted by anyone, the chances are low that the after-life is of the ghost type. Anyways, a pretty good run, all and all. I’ll see you all in he—

A pair of massive clawed hands grab me mere meters from the ground, decreasing my plummet from dozens of meters per second to only a few as Goss cackles loudly and sets me down on the ground. “Haha, I got you, Kitty! Now, let’s get back to—”

I take a few steps away from him, hunch over, and barf up my liquified intestines. Acting more on instinct than anything else, I quickly begin to scarf down my mangled left arm, swallowing the bone bits and mushy tissue like it’s the first thing I’ve eaten in weeks, which wouldn’t be entirely incorrect. As I’m wolfing down my own flesh, I focus the regeneration onto my stomach, ignoring the reeling sense of disreality coming over me.

Alright. Alright. That wasn’t too good, but there was enough flesh in my arm to regenerate it partially, so I didn’t have to eat all of it. I turn back to Goss.

He seems oddly worried. “Are you, um…?”

I fly at him. My claws are ineffective but my teeth work. Still, his folded feathers are thick enough to use as footholds, so I rush up the side of his arm and onto his back, where I stand between his half-folded wings. The back is usually the weak point of large creatures, so I should have some time to—

His long neck twists around until he faces me, his head being larger than I am. We stare at each other for a long moment, trying to understand each other’s thought processes. Am I going to attack him? Is he going to attack me?

I take the safe before the unsafe and throw myself at his head like a leaping facehugger, trying to get a hold of his tongue so I can gauge it out, but his lips are sealed tight. Oh, well. Might as well go for his eyeballs the—

He cranes his neck back, squeezes his eyes shut, and slams his face into the ground.

…Ah… Arghhh…

With both of my arms broken, I can’t hold on to him anymore, and I think my spine broke, so that’s no good either. He leans back out, sighing. I draw in a ragged breath that fills my lungs with warm liquid, the resulting cough making my chest rattle. But that’s alright. I eat the last parts of my arm, shifting my back as I do in order to place the spine back in its proper place. Broken bones aren’t too bad to handle since they don’t need much tissue to heal. With my bones back in place, I leap to my feet again, good as new.

I crack my neck. He stares down at me. With my various battle meditations active, my arm is quickly healing. I wipe the blood from my face.

He frowns at me. “You’re, um… kind of hard to kill. You know that, right?”

Quickly deducing that he isn’t the type to attack while talking, I answer, saying, “Yeah, I know.” And a moment’s pause, I continue. “And you,” I say, “are really hard to hurt.”

“Well, I am a dragon, after all.” He grins proudly. “And a type seven, at that!”

“...I don’t know what that means.”

“Do you hate the gods?”

His words give me pause. I hum into my hand. “Most of them,” I say. “A few are alright.”

“Well, I hate all of them,” Goss says with the pride of someone who probably doesn’t know who he’s actually denouncing. “God of goblins, goddess of dragons, god of knowledge… They all suck, and I’m living proof! See, I hated the gods so much that they made me into a dragon, which means that—”

“If you’d attend my sermons,” the priest abruptly says, “you’d know that that isn’t how it works.”

“Is so!” Goss barks. He turns to me, his ruffled feathers falling back into place. “Anyways, it isn’t important. We were fighting. And I’m about to show you my secret trump card that will totally incinerate you and destroy you forever, leaving not even a body to be buried! Mwa-ha-ha-ha—”

“Don’t you dare burn my garden!” the priest says in a rare display of actual anger. Standing up in his cage, he affixes the dragon with his strict gaze. “If you burn this place, I’ll ensure you don’t get so much as a hare in provisions for a month!”

Goss’ jaw slacks open. “I—I was just… You can’t seriously…? But I—” One look from the priest shuts him up properly. His wings slouch across his back and he looks down at the ground, muttering, “Okay, Father Moonlight…”

The priest takes a seat once again, huffing. “You’ve already made a mess of it enough with all this blood and claw marks…”

“S—sorry…”