I was ready and so was Nilah. We would find this dragon, hope he''s problematic so we don''t have to talk to him and steal his beard. It’s not as if he’s going to use it. I went into the mountains yesterday and tried to summon Tero but no response, no free beard for me.
I followed the river upstream and hopped up the cascades. They made me feel like messing around but I decided to focus and followed it deep into the mountains and found a small lake. Several small streams ran into this lake and this water ran down the mountains. I was expecting to find something cool in this lake but it was just a normal lake. This lake was almost on the same latitude as the south of Jurna jungle so I should find these dragons if I go north. I kept my eyes open because I didn''t want to get ambushed.
The variety in lifeforms was wide, there were some monsters but they minded their own business. The air was cold and clean. It was refreshing! Some mountains had cold tops but most were relatively green. Some were rocky but those were in the minority. Living in the mountains is also another alternative.
Girai is at the foot of the mountains so that doesn''t really count. Now how would I lure dragons? I could create a large mass of fire mana. They will certainly notice that.
I spotted a mountain in the distance that was quite rocky and barren, that would be my target! I used the stupid amount of mana that Nilah gave me a while ago to cast a [Foxfire: Autumn Breeze], I used a bright orange color that''s hotter and attracts more attention. It melted the mountain side and it was stronger and bigger than I expected.
All I need to do is wait, so I sat down and waited. The temperature rose after 10 minutes and 2 2-winged fire dragons arrived to inspect the molten area. They started to feed on the fire mana that got left as a residue. Not even checking out what caused it? How reckless… I guess, they''re dragons alright. 2 dragons for the price of one.
Do we 2v2 them Nilah or do you want to take on one and I take the other? Nilah showed some fighting spirit, I think she wants to fight one by herself.
Alright, how about this, I launch you at the left one and you can turn to your normal size midair, how about that? Nilah agreed with the idea. She sat on my foot. I kicked and sent her flying at the left dragon. Midair she turned in the huge fox with 9 tails and tackled the first dragon and frost burst all over the place. This dragon had no idea what just happened. I shot [Frost arrows] at the other and froze his wings. I jumped at him and landed on him. He started heating up but I didn''t care. Nilah entangled the dragon she was fighting in her tails and was mercilessly draining its mana.
Hey Nilah! We’re here for their beards not to kill them! Be a bit nicer! She eased up and just absorbed whatever mana that got shot at her. The dragon I was on kept thrashing.
We are just coming for your beards, stop struggling! He kept thrashing, I guess this was on me since I was talking in Kaledonian. I forgot that dragons don''t even try most of the time, I assume they''re not even trying right now. I held on and climbed to the dragon''s head. The whole area turned into a hellscape; everything was on fire.
We are here to trim your beards! I said in draconian. The dragon seemed to calm down a bit and then started to thrash again.
You heard me, didn''t you!? Stop pretending you didn''t understand me! My draconian is impeccable!
“Me not know whadda ya talkin'' bout eh? Ye accent a wee weir'' innit?” Of course, these dragons have some stupid thick accent, just what I need. Nilah, they''re retarded! Show no mercy! Get that beard!
I got my most heat-resistant wires out and wrapped them around the dragon''s neck. Then I sent frost magic through them to make sure they lasted longer. To then get to the head and inspecting the dragon''s beard. It wasn''t anything impressive but it was something.
Hey, stop thrashing and turning this place into a hell pit or else I have to knock you out! You don''t want that to happen to you?! I pointed at the other dragon which seemed to have cooled off quite a lot because Nilah sapped all the heat out of it. This made the dragon lethargic and Nilah was slapping it with her paw or tail whenever he tried to move too much.
“Git off me ya kidnapper!” How about you listen while I still ask nice! I froze his wings since he was trying to take off which caused him to crash into the mountain. I got my dagger out and went for his beard. My first 4 daggers shattered attempting to trim the beard but the 5th one did the trick. I had to keep replacing the daggers because they got dull after one attempt. A shadow clone would be responsible for trimming the beard of the other dragon. The dragon that I was fighting let out a loud roar.
I hope you know that calling your friends won''t improve your situation! I [shadow bound] the dragon and continued trimming the beard. It was a satisfactory amount but I hoped I could get more, calling for allies might be a blessing in disguise.
The beards were trimmed. I let the dragon go and Nilah let the other go too. He just had slight hypothermia. Probably the first time I encountered a fire dragon with hypothermia. These didn''t seem too strong or at least not motivated enough to show off. Nilah started to spin her tails like I do when using [Tail Dynamo].
Ehh Nilah, what are you doing? The dragon reinforcements arrived and the area started to freeze over while she was spinning her tails. The whole area turned into a mana-free zone. Right, this isn''t completely overpowered at all… The dragons were here yes, but they couldn''t use magic or eat magic to power up. Some landed and slipped. It has been a while since I saw a dragon make a fool out of himself.
“Wadya want?!” I want some beards!
“Scale off!” What does that mean? Does that mean something like fuck off? It’s hard to understand these guys. I could also use some scales though. Nilah, change of plan! We’re also taking some scales!
A dragon without magic is just a large flying lizard that’s just tougher than anything else. I hopped on Nilah’s head and she slammed dragons with her tails and I shot frost arrows at their wings to get them out of the sky.
I need to stress how much easier Nilah was making this for me. She was sucking up mana in this area and also was just a huge body that had tails large enough to knock a 2-winged dragon around if she hit them well. The dragons were still larger than her but not by much. She could only restrain 9 dragons because she had 9 tails. I sent some shadow clones to keep the other dragons busy while I collected more beards and scales.
Hey, Nilah can you ease up on sapping the heat from them? Some dragons started to sneeze. Were they catching colds? I had enough when the horde of dragons all started to fly away. Nilah released the dragons she was restraining and they flew away too. I have a bad feeling. These weirdos wouldn''t just run away like this. The sky turned dark and the wind started to pick up.
“You stupid 2-winged fire dragons! I told you to stop creating such a ruckus!” A large dragon head appeared from the clouds. Now this dragon looked different. I recognized this dragon head as one from the no-winged dragons and this one seems to be a wind dragon. While I have no problems fighting these 2-winged fire dragons, this wind dragon seems ancient. “Hmm, interesting, this area seems to have no mana. A nostalgic sight, It has been over 40 years since I’ve seen this.” 40 dragon years, that''s 4000 human years, yup this guy is ancient.
“And a nine-tailed fox nonetheless, I remember you guys looking a bit different though, I didn''t know you had a form that actually looked like a fox!” It seems he was mistaking Nilah, for the 9t race. Hey! Excuse me! I know this is a weird question but can I trim your beard?! This dragon had quite the beard. He also sounded more intelligent than the other dragons I’ve met.
“Ah, a human, I’m sorry I didn''t notice you.“ He flew down and floated near us to get a better look. He was huge, his head was as big as Nilah in her large form. “You are not a human, you smell different.” I got my tails out. “Ohh, that''s more how I remember you guys, what is the deal with this one?” Uhh, she’s a skill my grandfather gave me.
“Hmm, I can remember seeing something similar years ago. I had fought a nine-tailed spirit fox who used something similar. Good times, I haven''t had a good fight in decades!” Did that guy perhaps go by the name Alep Oures?
“You know him?! I haven''t heard that name in such a long time! Unfortunately, he died long ago, just thinking about it makes me mad. It was nice to meet you, I’m a bit upset recalling his death so I think I am going to hunt down a god and kill him!” Uhh, he is my grandfather as I said. The dragon took a closer look.
“Hmm, that actually makes a lot of sense you also smell just like him and have the same skill, why didn''t you tell me!” I already told you twice… how many more times do I have to tell you?
“The youth these days like to be mysterious.” Hey, are you listening? Ugh, for a moment I forgot that I was talking to a dragon.
“Very well, is there anything I can do for you?” I need some dragon beard and possibly some scales.
“Hmm, your race is always up to something interesting, very well I shall grant you your request on one condition!” Oh shit, here we go, what do I have to do?
“I want a good fight!” Huh? You could sneeze and I’d be dead…
“You underestimate your race; you guys can do pretty nasty stuff when you’re pushed to the limit. Come on! It will be fun; I will go easy on you and take it out on a random god later.” Uhh, as long as you give that god a good whooping I guess, it will be fine.
“Let''s go for this; we either stop when I’m satisfied or after you’ve lost 3 lives, does that sound fair?” Sounds like a terrible deal on your end since you could easily get rid of 3 but I’m ok with those.
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“Well, I really feel like venting on some random god so either way will be fine.” Right…
“What do I call you? My name is Inyr.” Agnis Hourai.
“Ooh, that reminds me of something but first our battle! You can fight right?” I think so. Right, Nilah! Show him what you can do! Because I’d like to know too! Nilah fired a [Frost Nova] at Inyr and he dodged by flying up and disappeared in the clouds above.
Ugh, cheater! Come Nilah! Nilah turned small and hopped on my head. I connected to the air leyline currents and used wind [Dragon]. It was nowhere as big as Inyr but it was still big. I jumped on its head and sent it up to the clouds after Inyr. Following a real wind dragon into the skies is not a good idea but I don''t have any alternatives.
“That is an interesting skill you have there, it can be easily mistaken for the real deal!” That’s the point! I dodged [Wind blasts], [Wind blades], and large [Air balls]. I needed to keep this up until this [Dragon] becomes sentient. Nilah blocked various attacks with frost magic. She jumped off my head and became big again and grabbed Inyr with 3 of their tails and climbed on top of him and started to blast him with frost magic. It did something but not a lot.
“Haha foxes riding dragons! How exciting!” He really didn''t care that Nilah was on his back attacking him… While it is easy to shoot a 2-winged dragon out of the sky, it’s hard to do this to a no-winged dragon… I had to put in more effort because I had to make [Dragon] make a complicated evasive manoeuvres. I narrowly evaded but Inyr performed the same movements [Dragon] just did.
My tail reminded me that Tero once said that dragons follow the movement of their elements Dragonvein or something. This guy did fly differently from how Tero flies. It reminded me indeed of how to use wind Dragonvein. [Dragon] became sentient so I didn''t have to worry about evading or falling off now. I jumped off [Dragon] and sent it to crash into Inyr. He tried to counter it with [Dragonbreath] but Nilah started spinning her tails. It didn''t completely disable the [Dragonbreath] but the power dropped considerably. I also started to spin my tails and started to collect lightning.
I got close to Inyr and Nilah grabbed me with her tail and aimed to slam me on his head. I tried to time this with a [Crimson palm] but he threw both of us off. [Dragon] picked us up and prevented us from falling too far down. So now there was an enormous wind dragon fighting a smaller dragon with 2 foxes on its back that had their tails spinning in the middle of a thundercloud. I was attracting the lightning with my tails. Nilah picked me up with a tail and threw me at Inyr. The lightning flashed red and I used [God of Thunder]. It was a direct hit but Inyr didn''t care. I used [Hurricane path] to attempt to get on his back through the turbulent winds.
“It is funny, you fight like you have fought a wind dragon before!” I haven''t but I’m familiar with hurricanes! I used [Counter spin] which disrupted his movement and I gathered more lightning and dropped an orange [God of Thunder] on him. I was about to fall on him and swapped myself with [Dragon]. [Dragon] and Nilah crashed into Inyr and this did seem to do some damage. I changed [Dragon] to become lightning element and queued up [Howling Updraft] followed by [Tempest step] with a tornado kick. I didn''t think that a tornado will do anything to him but at least it might buy me time.
Inyr was sending wind blades and other attacks all over the place. [Dragon] had to body block some and Nilah was doing her best to drop the power of these attacks with her no mana zone, which was useful but didn''t work so well against ancient dragons.
“Very impressive, something bothers me though, is this all there is to this dragon made out of energy?” Uhhm, it is quite strong, you’re just too strong!
“Most of your attacks seem to get stronger the longer you''re doing those dances but this one doesn''t.” Inyr slapped [Dragon] and sent it and Nilah flying downward. I had to use [Pressure] to drop my altitude to evade a [Dragon Dance] that created wind spirals and wind spears that homed into me and created several high-pressure spinning air spheres. It sucked in some attacks and ripped them yo shreds.
What do you mean? I don’t feel like my attacks do anything! I used [God of Thunder] again and Inyr narrowly evaded it.
“Don’t worry, I can tell, so what will happen if you use the same movements that you did to create that dragon? Oh, it didn''t crash to the ground.” [Dragon] used a lightning [Dragonbreath] while ascending. Uuh, I don''t know, I make another one?
“I see, you don’t have anyone to test these kinds of skills out on, I can acknowledge that that could make races like us weaker, go on try to use that skill again!” [Dragon] plucked me out of the sky and coiled up because multiple of those high-pressure spinning air spheres were rapidly closing in on us. I followed his advice and used [Dragon] again. Something seemed different. I didn''t make another [Dragon] it seemed to be stronger but leyline information was flowing into my head. I can keep reusing [Dragon] and after meeting certain requirements I can make it transition in a stronger technique. It was some kind of flowchart. I took control over [Dragon] again and sent it toward Inyr. It had turned into orange lightning by now. My stance shifted causing it to turn into wind and blew Inyr back by several hundreds of meters.
“Yes! Yes! That’s what I’m talking about!” [Dragon] ascended and dropped Nilah on Inyr. I turned [Dragon] back into orange lightning and divebombed on Inyr. He seemed unfazed but was enjoying it nonetheless. My stance shifted again and turned [Dragon] into fire and set the area ablaze. Spinning fireballs and fire tornadoes flew around everywhere. [Dragon] was shrinking in size but gaining power. I was putting in a lot of effort to evade all the attacks Inyr threw at me. Nilah tried to keep Inyr in check but she got thrown off again. I shifted stance and changed [Dragon] into water and caught Nilah. The dragon was barely big enough to hold her so she went into her small and cute mode and hopped on my head.
You did well. [Dragon] used [waterfall] and it punched through the attacks Inyr had been sending at us.
Nilah, it’s time to show him the power of ice. She released a lot of frost magic and [Dragon] turned into frost. [Dragon] was considerably faster now and Inyr was unable to hit us or follow us. An ice [Dragonbreath] froze a part of his body and he lost control over that part for a moment. I jumped off and [Dragon] crashed into Inyr, shattering into a million pieces for them to reform back into a [Dragon] moments after.
“Ooh! That is going to leave a bruise!” He slammed his tail into [Dragon]. It shattered again and the shattered pieces hit Inyr. I used [Dragon] again and several spots on Inyr’s body started to glow.
“Oh, what is this?”
Every living being has leyline energy in their body, and Inyr is no exception. Because Inyr got hit by attacks from [Dragon] I could now pull the leyline energy out of his body and use it to create more [Dragons].
Inyr is strong so I can pull a lot out of him. 12 [Dragons] stronger than the previous got pulled out of him and started attacking him. “I knew it! It does get stronger!” He was doing a great job fighting off 11 [Dragons], the 12th plucked us out of the sky.
They assaulted Inyr for 10 minutes before combining together and forming one big [Dragon] half the size of Inyr. I was still riding the 12th [Dragon] which is technically the 2nd dragon now that the rest had combined. The ice [Dragon] was fighting Inyr head-on. It was losing badly but it still got some good attacks in. I got a phoenix flower out and invigorated myself and went 9t mode and locked the space around Inyr to limit his movements. I turned back time on any attacks he tried to pull while having [Dragon] go at him.
“Yes! Yes! The memories of my fight with Alep!” He started to glow and broke out of the spatial lock. I tried to create a rift but it was too weak to do anything. He glowed in blue green light, coiled and then let out a [Dragonroar]. It knocked me and [Dragon] away.
Inyr came at us. He was way faster than ever. It seemed as if he moved through a vacuum. No wind, nothing. He coiled around us with his head inside the coil. We were stuck in a hollow ball made out of Inyr. We were trapped.
“You lose, but I am satisfied. That was a good battle, you also seemed to have figured out a bit more about this interesting power of yours.” Thank you for being my punching bag, although you hardly felt any of that. I cancelled my 9t mode.
“Well, I tried to keep my defence as low as possible. There was only 1 attack you did that actually hurt, when you pulled that strange energy out of me. It was damage that came from inside me so it’s impossible to defend against.“ Hmm, I see I will keep that in mind, thanks. I also cancelled the big [Dragon] and we landed on the ground.
“Whenever you feel like having a spar, I will always be available! Now let me bring you to my lair.” I hopped on his head and he flew up. He kept ascending. Was he going to space? The air was thin and cold. I am lucky that I’m resistant to cold. I don''t know if we’re in space but it seems we’re close. Inyr flew at a big floating cloud in the distance.
If that’s what a wind dragons lair looks like then I’m not surprised nobody has found any. We landed on the cloud and I hopped off.
“You will be fine walking on these clouds but don''t make it a habit you would have fallen through if you were any other race.” I made a shadow clone that had a human body and he slowly sank through the cloud and eventually fell through. Yikes.
“Let''s see, dragon beard, some claws, maybe some teeth, a pile of scales, I’m glad I kept all this junk. How about a wind egg? What’s that?
“A pocket of vacuum,” Then why is it called a wind egg?
“I don’t know, I didn''t name it like this. Want some? You can trap someone''s head in it, which makes for fast wins, I once killed a minor god like that. It was quite spectacular!” This works on gods?
“Well gods are a pain in the ass, most magic doesn''t work on them so you need special kinds of magic to deal with them like your frost magic or those fancy dances you do. They didn''t hurt me much but I could feel them, if it was magic, I wouldn''t have felt anything. Those attacks you do, don''t seem to care about magical defences. Keep training kid, you’re on to something.” Thank you. I stashed all the stuff Inyr gave me. It seems that the no-winged dragons are more reasonable than the two-winged dragons.
“Right before I forgot, I talked to Neia a human year ago. She found out that Hourai, your homeland is gone after failing to contact her brother. You might want to pay her a visit.” Neia?
“Neia Mikazuki, I think she said her brother was Viridian Mikazuki, the Mikazuki family have been friends with the Oures family for ages. At least I think so. The only things I can remember from before the Great Eraser are names. And this seems to be consistent. Whenever I meet other dragons or other legendary beings and I recognize them we all seem to have in common that names and some information around those names get remembered. I don''t even remember what life I lead before the Great Eraser but I do remember the name of your grandfather and an exciting fight I don''t remember how I met him, why we were fighting, only that it was exciting! Anyways, go visit Neia, she lives in Aquini kingdom, somewhere ehh, I forgot, but you''re both spirit foxes so you will bump into each other. I will tell her I sent Alep’s grandson her way when I next meet her.“ The Aquini Kingdom, ok thanks.
“Hey, I don''t think I need to tell you but the population of your race is extremely low, be careful. I noticed some divine activity recently. The gods are up to no good again, be careful. I am going to kill a god that thinks it''s a great idea to replace all the air on the planet with alcohol, unbelievable these gods.” It seems you have a lot on your plate too. Good luck.
Inyr flew off into space and left me behind in his lair. I assume he thinks I can get back down safely. I can but… a lift would have been nice. I jumped down and petted Nilah while falling. It would take quite a while before I would land. I was aiming for a mountaintop close to the small lake. I would land in a pile of snow and then slide down into the lake and surf down to Girai. Perfect plan!
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