Kryos ascended the incline and that sense of satisfaction, a sensation of some urge being quelled, surged in his chest. He was certain this was the instinct his mom had told him about. The winds picked up as the sun continued its slow descent. Glancing back, he held up his hand-claw to the setting sun, and tried to line up fingers between the horizon and bottom of the blazing orb, just how his dad had taught him.
Maybe thirty minutes until nightfall, he thought.
That wouldn’t be an issue. As a half-dragon, he had Supreme Darkvision as a (Species) Trait. He would be able to see in extreme darkness when normal vision would fail, and so he did not worry too much about the darkness. No, his larger concern was exposure. The winds that were growing in intensity carried a biting chill with them. It was not as cold as the mountain peaks and snow above, but it was a far cry from the comforting warmth that constantly smothered him in the Drakemount.
The crevasse took him another ten minutes to reach, and by then the sun was fading against his back, the last rays of light providing good warmth. The rising rock faces on either side gave him a feeling of comfort: it was just like home. As he walked between the two craggy faces—wide enough that he could have held his arms out sideways if he wished—he could make out plenty of cracks that ran through the rocks. Trickles of water slithered down those crevices, and he went over to one and snaked out his long tongue.
The liquid was clear, slightly mineral-y, but refreshing regardless. He curved his tongue into a little funnel and drank a few mouthfuls before pulling away from the rock wall and continuing into the comforting dark of the merging cliff faces. Perhaps over decades the water runoff had carved this channel, or maybe the constantly expanding landmass had made this channel between these two mountains.
No matter the case, it felt comfortable. The winds no longer bit at him, and Kryos felt that urge grow ever stronger. That itch-like feeling on the back of his neck seemed to move around to the right side of his neck, and as he kept walking down the narrowing path, it kept rotating until it was on his right side.
Then he heard it: a sigh, or a whisper. Kryos wasn’t sure what it was, but something just whispered.
“Seek.”
He didn’t know who or what it was. “Hello?” he softly asked, hand drifting to the hilt of his dad’s old broadsword. No voice responded, and as he faced the source of the noise, the feeling that was on his right side shifted to the front of his neck.
He thought, maybe this is like some sort of direction sense?
Bringing claws to bear, he dug them into the steep slope and began climbing up. After a fifteen-foot ascent into the widening crevasse, he came upon a landing. Poking his head over and peering around cautiously, he could make out several cave entrances. They were low—only two or three feet in height, and wide. There were signs of habitation all around: scratches on the stone, bones stripped bare that were strewn along the ledge, and to his utter disgust, a pile of refuse off to his left.
Pulling himself up, he stayed crouched and drew the blade out of its sheath with a rasping sigh. Kryos could feel the heft in his hand, and knew well-enough how to use it—his dad had trained him. But, he kept the weapon in his left hand, and his right hand was free with his sharpened claw ready for combat as well. His mom had taught him to fight with his natural weapons, and those tools were just as useful.
To his satisfaction, he saw what his dad and mom had both told him about—the SAVE system recognizing and integrating him, as it would any dragon arriving from the Drakemount, whether native to the world or not. Local integration with whatever world’s mechanics, laws, languages, and the like would be imbued into the dragon. Lucky for Kryos, he had everything taught to him by his parents.
[Welcome to Vorunor!]
[System Activated—New Arrival Integration Begun.]
[Species Detected: Dragon.]
[SAVE System Enabled.]
[Would you like to see your Status?]
“No,” Kryos whispered. Part of him wanted to see what he’d been told about his whole life, but the instinctual desire for whatever pulled him forward overrode that want. Stepping forward carefully, he angled to his left—following the shift of the feeling along the front of his neck until he came to the largest of the cave entrances. He could see the interior perfectly.
It was empty of inhabitants. The chamber was oval in shape, with a longer depth than width, with a surprisingly high ceiling that was twelve feet tall and eight wide. There was a hole leading farther back into what was doubtless an even deeper cavern, but that is not what drew Kryos’ attention.
His gaze was drawn to the pile of what looked to be shed wool or fur that had been gathered up into a bed of sorts. The warm feeling in the front of his neck had turned from an itch to a burning-hot need, as if he had a thirst he needed to quench, a parched throat needing to be satiated. Moving forward, he made for the pile.
A loud hiss echoed out from above him, and a fur-covered quadrupedal creature dove at him from a tunnel up above. Kryos was bowled to the ground, and the monster let out a hiss as its sharp, tunneling claws gouged into his scale armor, ripping away a few of the wyrmling scales and finding purchase in Kryos’ skin underneath, right along his stomach. Kryos let out a hiss of pain and brought his right finger-claws into a single, united point as he punched into its side.
His fist plunged through the thick hide like a wyvern bone sewing needle through wyrm hide, and he opened his claw once it was inside the creature and began twisting, trying to shred whatever meat was inside. The creature scrabbled to get away, yanking itself back, and partially pulling Kryos up off of his back, almost helping the half-dragon stand up. Kryos ripped his claw free and brought the hand to cover his now-bleeding wound on his stomach as he took in the monster.
It was some type of earth dragon, with armored plates along its top, a furry underside, huge front legs with massive claws that looked like they were perfect for boring through rock and dirt—or flesh, as Kryos realized as he winced at the pain along his gut, letting out an unintentional grunt. Its face had an elongated snout, lined with razor-sharp teeth but dominated by a front set of incisors that stuck down over the bottom jaw almost like a shovel.
It lunged forward, and Kryos instinctively activated his Constant Skill, Pressure Field, and Toggle Skill, Singularity Stance.
The area around him surged with gravitic pressure, and everything increased in weight except for him. The monster that had attacked him slowed: its movement speed and reaction time, which Kryos knew would give him an edge in a fight. But, even with that advantage, he knew this creature was going to prove quite the challenge.
That’s where the second Skill came in. His body mass increased and he stabilized in localized space, becoming much harder to move, gaining some measure of protection from physical harm, but becoming slower himself. In the moment, it was a good tradeoff.
The creature’s lunge ended with it meeting the flat of Kryos’ sword, which he raised in a horizontal block. Despite the creature being his size, presumably about equal in weight, and having launched its whole body at him to bowl him over, Kryos only had to take a step back to keep his balance. The monster seemed surprised at the lack of movement of its prey.
Kryos used that moment of confusion to strike. He used his right hand to stab out from where it was at his midsection, right into the thing’s throat. The moment it impacted, Mass Instinct activated, and he instinctively increased the mass of his strike to amplify the force of the hit he delivered. His knife-like claw-tip points dug into the underside of the thing’s throat, and it threw itself backward, preventing a lethal blow.
Kryos didn’t let up, taking a step forward and swinging down with an overhand chop. The monster didn’t move, and Kryos realized his folly as his dad’s sword hit the shell and snapped in half.
Well, crap.
The broken blade went skittering to Kryos’ left, and he dropped the useless hilt as the monster scooted back a few feet, seeming to appraise its foe. Kryos didn’t let up, and instead moved forward, the words of his mother echoing through his ears about how a dragon dominates. There was treasure nearby, and he wanted it. This thing wanted to keep it? Well too bad. It was going to belong to him no matter what.
Then, the monster did something Kryos did not expect. It opened its mouth, and a stream of acid spewed forth. Thanks to Pressure Field, the stream was lower than the monster probably anticipated for the trajectory to fly. And, thanks to Kryos’ experience dealing with acid wyrmlings back in the Drakemount, he was familiar enough with the caustic substance to know that his scales could easily take the hit. He raised both forearms in front of his chest, and took the impact.
The wyrmling scale armor suffered the impact, and began to slough off, leaving his arms perfectly free and clear. Kryos rushed forward, flicking his arms to the side as the remnants of the armor slid off of his forearms. He let loose with a kick, making sure to blade his foot to turn his foot-claw into a wickedly sharp spike.
Crack! Schlick!
His foot slammed into the thing’s head, breaking the jaw, and then he felt the warmth of blood and the familiar bite of acid as his foot-claw broke through the interior of the skull cavity, through whatever sac held the remnants of acid, and into the brain.
The creature reeled back from the blow, flipping over onto its back from the force of the kick, and then lay still. Kryos put his foot down and sucked in breaths. His heart was thumping, adrenaline spiking through his body, and he felt giddy. “I—” he let out a barking laugh. “I did it!”
That laugh made him wince, and he felt his abdomen flare in pain again. He reached around for one of the Healing Potions, found it on the strap of the Trader’s Pouch, uncorked the vial, and slurped down the foul-tasting sludge. He forced himself to choke it down, and almost instantly his stomach healed over and his foot stopped pulsating in time with his heart. Capping the vial, he put it back into the strap, and then turned his eyes to the small pile of treasure.
Moving over to it, he let his Skills fade and knelt as he began to sort through the objects. The moment his fingers touched the strewn about coins, a fervor took ahold of him. The sensation in his neck was gone, and a relief washed over him: a feeling like he had just accomplished a monumental task, and his mom or dad had told him how proud they were of him.
He began moving the coins into piles—some bits of copper, some pieces of electrum, mostly pieces of silver, a handful of gold pieces, and even one platinum piece. He didn’t know how he knew the names of the precious metals the coins were made from—he just knew the moment his fingers touched them.
A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
Then, once the coins were in neat little piles next to the nest, he saw the stones. They weren’t normal stones: these were a steely grey with a darker grey around them. He reached out and grabbed one, and immediately recognized what they were—raw silver ore, unprocessed. Valuable, but not coinage yet.
As he held them in his hand, an epiphany hit him.
This is what it is to be a dragon, he thought. This is what it feels like to have a hoard. I wonder if the sensation will always be like this?
He grabbed all the coins and ore and shoved it into his Trader’s Pouch. The moment he did, he received a message in the corner of his vision.
[Your Hoard has reached the EHV (effective hoard value) to qualify for a level up!]
[You have gained 1 level! Level 2!]
[Choose 1 Stat Point to Allocate!]
Kryos smiled. His bag was his current hoard, and it had just obtained enough value to make him stronger. This is how dragons gained power. Unlike everyone else on Vorunor who gained Experience by performing deeds related to their Class, dragons grew in strength based on the value of their accumulated wealth.
Let’s put that one point into Strength.
[Confirmed!]
He felt the change immediately. His body felt ever-so-slightly more sturdy, as if he had just recovered from a long session of lifting rocks with his mom and was capable of lifting even bigger rocks. He glanced at his forearm and could see the little bit of bulk under the scales that wasn’t there before.
Kryos looked over at the corpse of the creature he had slain. The chitinous plates were strong. He reasoned that it could make for a good shield, perhaps. Standing up, he went over to the corpse, grabbed it, and dragged it outside to the little cliff. Sitting down, he used his sharp claw-fingers to butcher it in the dark, cutting away the hard shell plates and shoving those into the Trader’s Pouch. Unfortunately, his EHV didn’t go up from those.
They must not have a wealth value, he thought. Maybe if they were actually worked into armor or a shield they would contribute.
He considered taking some of the meat of the monster, but thought better of it and instead shoved the corpse into the crevasse. It would lure other predators and keep them busy while he slept. He moved back into the cave with the nest, and set to fortifying it as best he could. There were a few big boulders outside that, thanks to his natural strength and bulky frame, he could move to cover up the entrance.
There was a deeper cavern behind where he’d be holing up for the night, but a quick glance down that way and a silent listening session gave him enough confidence to be reasonably sure that nothing would come that way. Still, he tossed several smaller rocks down the tunnel that would crunch underfoot and hopefully wake him up.
Moving over to the nest, he tried his best to make himself comfortable on the furry space. It had a damp smell, but was surprisingly comfortable. As he lay there, curled up, in the quiet of the cave, he realized just how foreign the place he was in truly was.
And how alone he was.
It was utterly silent. No sound of his parents off in the other room: his father’s light whispers as he talked during his sleep, or the occasional sound of his mother’s night-time excursions where she would go outside of their abode to fly around the Drakemount. There was no soft, enchanted harp music to lull him to sleep.
This was a silence unlike anything Kryos had ever felt before, and it was isolating. He shut his eyes and whispered, “Mom, dad, I’m alive. I made it one day.” The sound of his own voice in the space provided a little bit of comfort. “I found some treasure, and started my hoard.” Hearing those words, my hoard, filled him with a giddy sense of glee that almost overrode the disquiet at his loneliness.
Almost.
“Mom, thanks for teaching me to fight like a dragon,” he continued. “And dad . . . I’m sorry about your sword.” Kryos opened his eyes and spied the broken blade and hilt across the room. It wasn’t a valuable weapon, and even his dad admitted that he only had it because it was expected of a noble to carry one on their hip at all times.
Kryos shut his eyes once more and tried to fall asleep, knowing he was not in the safety of his parent’s abode, in the Drakemount . . . that he was in the outermost regions of a world that was harsh, cruel, and unforgiving.
Bang!
Kryos woke with a start. A distant noise echoed and resonated throughout his small cave. He sat upright and waited, trying to listen for another sound. A few seconds later, another sound met his ears: an echo of a rumble.
A cave in? He thought. Maybe deeper in the tunnel system—
His thoughts were interrupted by the same urge as before, that itch at the back of his neck, surged to the front of his neck and became an almost blistering heat. That instinct for treasure, almost like a need, pointed him in the direction of the deeper cavern. His feet-claws crunched on the little rocks he had set down as a warning system, and he had to squat as the tunnel narrowed down significantly. These were not natural, but dug by the monster he had slain, as evidenced by the scoop-like claw marks along the walls.
He kept moving, and the tunnel angled downward.
Should I stop? He thought, glancing back up the tunnel. I mean, I don’t know what’s down here. One of those creatures got me pretty good, I only have limited food and water, two more Healing Potions, and am still a bit injured.
The smart thing to do would be to go back up, finish sleeping, then head toward that line of smoke he had seen that marked out civilization. It couldn’t have been more than a day of walking away. If he did that, he would be able to meet other people, socialize, and perhaps find this Quest Conclave his dad had told him stories about: which was just one of many ways Kryos could make money and build up his hoard.
Even as those thoughts crossed his mind, the heat along his neck migrated toward his torso, and urged him to descend deeper. Something down in the depths was valuable, and he craved it, wanted it—desparately so. It called to him, and he heard that whispered word in his ear once more.
“Seek.”
He didn’t know where it came from, or who said it, but his draconic instinct won out over rational thought and he descended the sloping tunnel. Digging his claws into the walls, he was able to slow his rate of descent until the carved tunnel ended, and he ended up at a natural chute. Looking down, he could see that the rocky pit zig-zagged back and forth out of sight. Bringing his claws to bear, he dug them into the harder rock, finding it more difficult to gain purchase—but still able to keep himself from falling thanks to the three-foot-ish space and his ability to push his arms and legs out.
Making his way down the chute, after about fifty feet he was suspended above a thirty-foot drop down to a large tunnel. It was easily twenty feet wide and just as tall. But this wasn’t natural . . . it was hewn rock. He’d seen such rock in the Drakemount before, when earth dragons shifted their claws to large, single-tipped shapes and taken chunks out of the walls, only for the consciousness inside the mountain to zap them away and punish them for daring to try and alter it, just how it had tried to do that to Kryos when he tried to take a diamond from the wall.
Ah, right, dad called that shape a pick, I think.
Kryos gauged the fall distance, and knew he would need to roll with the landing. Still, it would hurt. He planted his feet, made sure the vial-side of the strap on his Trader’s Pouch was tucked into his chest, and then swung his legs down. He fell the thirty feet, landed on his legs, let them crumple under him, and rolled.
It still hurt, and he came out of the roll stumbling then falling onto his side. He pulled the bottom of his feet up to his hands and winced, hissing in pain as he rubbed them. “Ouch,” he muttered, rubbing them. His feet might be scale covered and able to take a lot of punishment, but raw impacts still hurt.
With a thought, he checked his HP.
-----
HP: 112 / 140
-----
He grimaced and dismissed the message in the corner of his vision. He wasn’t in dire danger, and he didn’t warrant himself in a critical enough condition to use a Healing Potion quite yet. Laying there, he could hear sounds off in the distance to his left. The sounds of rock on rock, metal on rock, and metal on metal. But it was far off, and he knew he was only hearing echoes in the tunnel.
Some type of mining underway?
He got to his feet, winced a bit at the tenderness, and then looked around. He could see what appeared to be old support structures along the sides of the tunnel: old wooden beams that had been shoved against the exterior walls and then along the ceiling. The walls themselves had seams of rock ripped out of them, and then it struck Kryos. He had to be in a silver mine. It explained the ore he found in the monster nest.
This has to be the older section. I bet the sound I’m hearing are miners in the newer section. This must be a really deep part that connects up to the town I saw in the distance. Maybe they have one of those cart systems dad told me about. What did he call them . . . chain-wagons? That would speed up getting to and from these older sections.
As he walked toward the distant sound of mining, he pondered the area he was in. No, it made more sense that this was perhaps an old branch that was exhausted. He was sure he was heading the direction the town was in, so it made sense that the mine entrance was near the town, the miners had pursued these silver veins to their end, and then left the tunnel vacant and empty as they backtracked to the entrance and sought another vein.
The heat in Kryos’ chest became hotter, and he felt his pace picking up almost unintentionally as he broke into a jog. The instinctual need drove him onward, the desire for whatever wealth lay ahead was unlike anything he had felt before.
The tunnel began to open up wider, and instead of singular veins on either wall, veins along the ceiling, floor, and walls were all carved out and harvested. Smaller side tunnels had been excavated and seemingly explored before being abandoned as well, their hidden treasures long since gathered. Kryos could discern the noises much better now that he was closer. It had been a good five minutes of jogging, and he could clearly make out the sounds. It was not pick on stone like the earth dragons trying their digging at the Drakemount, and the voices were not people talking in a way that suggested they were working.
No, the voices were screaming in panic, overlapping, shouting orders. Some were howling in pain, others barked commands, and above the fray Kryos could hear a chittering noise. It was something that pricked at his ears, and made him wince at the high-pitch frequency. He picked up his pace to a sprint—not just out of a need for whatever wealth lay ahead, but also because he had to see what was making that noise.
As he began to round a bend, he came to a stop. He saw a desperate struggle at play. Light from sparking, blue and green torches illuminated a rock fall which had little flashes of red poking out from the other side, which signaled some type of rescue attempt underway. The section had collapsed, and on the side Kryos found himself on, miners were trapped. Six of them. They were swinging picks and shovels with wild abandon, using oil from lanterns as temporary flaming barricades, and even throwing rocks at what appeared to be a swarm of monsters. Four to be exact.
These were unlike anything Kryos had seen before. They were squat, with four legs, a torso that jutted up in the center, and had six arms that each had wiggling tendrils. Each tendril was covered with sucking nodes that reminded him of the flayer dragons that would latch onto unsuspecting wyrmlings and rend scale from flesh, and he gulped as he knew what they could do. There didn’t seem to be a head. They were easily half the size of a man, but their tendrils gave them a lot more reach. It did not seem they had shells or any other natural defensive outer part.
What do I do?
He could help the trapped miners, perhaps buy them more time while their fellows dug the rockfall away to rescue them. He could wait until the rockfall was cleared, and then help out the survivors. He could retreat and find another way out of the mine—from what his dad had taught him of the world, he knew mines had vent shafts in case of collapse to provide air flow.
More-so, he evaluated the risk to himself. He was a dragon, he was above them. His mom wouldn’t want him to go out of his way to help them unless there was something in it for him. He knew that this was a chance to get on well with the townspeople. A chance to prove that he wasn’t the stereotypical half-dragon to be feared. Or, rather, he could be feared but for the right reasons—feared for his combat prowess, but an asset that could be useful. It might be a way to build a reputation for himself.
His dad’s words also rang in his ears. These were people working jobs, who probably had families to go home to—maybe some of them had children, also. Children just like Kryos who loved their parents. People who loved them and would do anything to see them again.
That made the decision for him. The fact that the burning in his chest was pointing him right toward that rock fall also drove him forward.
Kryos shouted out, “Hey! Over here!” Two of the four creatures turned around to face him. “That’s right,” Kryos shouted. “Come and get me!”