223 – Draft – 1
“… ….”
“… ….”
Neither Minerva nor I could hide our bewilderment. Even though I was like that, even Minerva, who must have been through a lot of situations, was reacting like that, so it meant that it was absolutely not normal.
Actually, it wasn’t even normal.
The dragon’s corpse flew at least ten meters and landed on one side of the crater wall, slowly sliding to the floor, leaving flesh and blood on the wall. Smack! The sound of falling corpses echoed throughout the crater.
The exact weight is unknown, but no matter how rough it is, it is likely to be several tens to hundreds of tons. It was a weight that would not be easy to even get it to move from its seat, let alone blow it away.
A corpse of that weight and size was not simply pushed or lifted and thrown, but pushed away with strong enough force to crush it into a wall. And that’s just the shock wave.
“Hey, it just… ….”
“I’m fine too—”
I inadvertently opened my mouth to answer, but hesitated. It was because I didn’t know if another shock wave would explode. It just happened at an unexpected moment in a completely unexpected situation.
I pointed at my mouth and at the dragon’s corpse, and Minerva, who was staring at me with a puzzled expression, nodded in awe as if she noticed what I meant, and put a blue shield around herself.
“It’s OK to talk now.”
Minerva smiled happily and wrapped her arms around me.
To be honest, if the shockwave from earlier had gone in the direction of Minerva, not the dragon, I didn’t want to even imagine what would happen after that. It was fortunate that he turned his head.
No matter how Minerva was, she would have been prepared for considerable injury if she had been hit unprotected by a shock wave powerful enough to blow away the dragon’s corpse at close range.
In the worst case, it would have been more than that.
“If you can guess…… Judging by the child’s expression, it seems that there is none.”
“It’s not very rare, but it won’t help much in the current situation.”
As one of the key conditions for the boss fight in Eater of Worlds is a dragon word, the player could use a few other dragon words other than that condition. Literally just a few.
Besides, it wasn’t powerful enough to blow away dozens of tons of corpses dozens of meters as soon as it absorbed souls like it did just before.
In terms of the setting, anyway, the language containing the concepts used by dragons is incredibly strong! However, the in-game performance was enough to make the victim feel ashamed, so I didn’t use it well.
‘It’s not very unlikely, though.’
Just as the Easter egg weapon, which was treated as a flashlight in the game, was reborn as a sacred relic in the hands of the Pope, who knows if the dragon might have been refurbished here.
For that, I had to go find an NPC first. It is only after clearing various quests from that NPC that you will be able to use what can be called ‘Dragon Words’.
Or learn from Minerva after meeting certain conditions.
“First of all, as the child said, we must deal with the corpse first.”
Minerva imbued her staff with mana. The corpse stuck to the wall on the other side of the crater floated up and disappeared somewhere, wrapped in a teleportation magic circle.
“Where did you send it?”
“It’s the magic tower. I’ll sort it out for you, so don’t worry.”
“Is it okay to just send it like this?”
“Of course it’s fine. Rather, they would be happy to hear that they have new experimental materials. Aren’t dragon corpses something you can get your hands on if you want them?”
Hearing that, it seemed like there was no need to worry.
If you look back at the actions of the wizards when they discovered the crystal scroll, they would have liked it because they had a new experimental material, but they would not have suffered if they had to dismantle it.
Briefly dismissing my concerns, Minerva waved her staff lightly.
“Well then, let’s do our own thing, kid.”
Speaking of the conclusion, the power that drove the human scale dragon into the wall was never activated again.
I tried to recite thousands of words with a thick protective film around me in preparation for the unexpected, but I couldn’t activate a single word.
I thought I knew roughly why this happened. At that time, my thoughts were so complicated that I couldn’t turn my head, but when I thought about it after my head calmed down a bit, the difference was clear.
I felt like my whole body was boiling right after absorbing the dragon’s soul, but now it was like usual. After explaining the difference, Minerva nodded her head in agreement.
“It could have been a one-time use only.”
Once absorbed, the soul will remain permanently, but there is a possibility that the dragon’s ability to flow freely will only be a one-time event.
From noble mtl dot com
This time, it was outside the knowledge of the game, so I had no choice but to rely entirely on speculation.
“What are you going to do now? If you don’t have a way to come to mind right away, it’s not bad to take a break and cool your head.”
“Not very rare. Miss Minerva, do you know anything about dragon words, or have you ever wanted to study dragon words?”
“Dragon words…… Have you ever heard But isn’t that magic? The old me, weighed down by boredom, might have been interested, but not now. There are six more scrolls left to study, so don’t you have time to turn your attention to other things, kid?”
‘It’s fortunate.’
To enable Minerva to learn dragon words. The condition for activating the trigger was to kill the NPC who originally taught the dragon.
If you go to Arcana after absorbing the dragon’s soul, Arcana shows interest in the power. And she’ll help the player, so let’s research it, she says.
If you accept the offer, you will receive a magic scroll. Killing the NPC while holding the scroll and bringing it with your soul will clear it.
There was no particular reward, but the content of the quest was unsatisfying, and above all, the NPC was very friendly to the player, so it was a quest that I rarely saw unless I was deliberately determined.
‘Minerva won’t be like Arcana.’
Arcana in the game was not interested in anything but magic, not even the survival of the mage tower or the empire. She was just the kind of person who would end up with her once she could study her magic.
Since she has that kind of personality, she can casually say that if you kill someone and bring her soul, she will do the job for you.
“I need to stop by one more place, Miss Minerva.”
“I hope so.”
The decision was quick. It’s right to solve it as soon as possible rather than being in a state where you can’t give a definite answer like this.
The dragon I will meet from now on, no. To be honest, even calling that NPC a dragon was ambiguous. I was once a dragon, but now I’m just a normal human.
First of all, it was certain that he was a dragon, but he had never revealed his true form other than a human.
Even when he was betrayed by the player and died, he would not return to his dragon form even though he would ask pitifully why he did that. Besides, the corpse was left in its human form.
Therefore, there were some players who suspected that he was a cheater with false statements, but the fact that he could teach dragon words was real, so he tended to think so.
In his own words, he got tired of living for too long and changed into a human form once, but he didn’t go back because he didn’t like it more than he thought.
“Following Snow Mountain, Poison Swamp is the only unusual thing.”
Minerva waved her wand lightly at the terrible smell rising from the poison swamp on the floor. Every place her eyes could see immediately froze.
The smell that stings the nose unique to the poison swamp gradually subsided. In the process, he lightly ignored the minor damage that hundreds of monsters froze together.
“Since he has a unique personality, he might be a dragon and yet become a human.”
Minerva laughed at my answer.
“I understand. If so, is there anything I should be careful about?”
“There won’t be any specifics. Just like talking to a normal person-“
At that moment, a roaring sound was heard. It was literally, not metaphorically.
Minerva kept her mouth shut and used teleportation with an infinitely serious expression. As soon as she went to the source of the sound, her breath, made up of thunderbolts, flew.
But her thunderbolt breath couldn’t pierce the protective shield surrounding Minerva and me. The breath that bounced off the shield bent back and forth and created a huge pit on the poor floor.
The surrounding scenery was devastating, as if a natural disaster had occurred.
A landslide erupted from the hillside, and the clouds in the sky evaporated without a trace. One step late, kwarleung! And thunder roared.
The mountain peak, which was originally supposed to rise high, collapsed from the midpoint, covering everything below it, and there were pits the size of castles everywhere.
A bolt of lightning from the sky pierced the ground, causing an instant rupture and plowing the nearby ground. The nearby old trees were uprooted in bundles.
At the center of the destruction was a human and a dragon.
When the dragon flapped its wings, the wind pressure alone pulled out the trees below and the floor was overturned. Even the barely surviving trees swayed like reeds.
It was easy to recognize the face because the surrounding terrain was no different from an empty field.
The woman downstairs is different from the game, but judging by her horns rising above her head, she’s probably the NPC I’ve been looking for, and the one up in the sky…….
‘…… Why is that guy here? Why does he look like that again?’
It was a dragon that exhaled a breath made of thunderbolts and dropped thunderbolts around its body.
However, the appearance was a bit strange. Apparently, from my memory, the guy with dark gray scales and gray eyes had black scales and red eyes.
If only the scales were a little more indigo blue, if the overall size had been bigger, and if he hadn’t used thunderbolts, he would have been mistaken for a world eater.
“Minerva. Could you possibly fight that one?”
Humans and dragons were fighting.
Even when he was attacked by players and died, he didn’t resist once, but now he was fighting fiercely, spewing flames from his tiny mouth.
ㅡQuaguaguagwang!
But it was clear who had the upper hand. Unless they release the polymorph and return to their original form, there was no way they could win because the difference in physique was that big.
The flames were soon overpowered by lightning and pushed back, and a breath made of lightning swept through the slender body and threw it into the ridge.
“It looks similar to the one that appeared in the imperial palace, but it doesn’t seem to be as strong as that one. Can I kill him?”
I momentarily pondered for a while. Looking at the current situation, I don’t think he should be killed unconditionally, but there may be an unknown inside story.
For example, they were simply arguing.
“…… If possible, I would like to ask for suppression. Only when possible. If you think Minerva will get hurt, you can just kill her.”
“Okay. The child is relieved and wants to help that dragon first.”
Minerva pointed her staff at her. Then, a huge lump of mana appeared from the sky. It was a size that seemed to be twice the size of the dragon.
The dragon saw it and hesitated, then he unleashed his thunderbolt breath at the mana lump. A yellow bolt of lightning rips through the air and flies toward its target.
But to no avail. The thunderbolt pierced the mana mass in vain, and the mana mass struck the dragon’s body as it was. The dragon fell to the ground without making a sound.
I took advantage of that opportunity and approached the woman lying face down on the ridge. Her whole body was scorched, her clothes turned into something not even rags, and she was covered in blood, but she was still alive.
The woman opened her eyes slowly. Dragon’s unique vertical pupil looked at me.
“Human…… ?”
“Since the situation is urgent, I will start with a question. Should I kill that one, or should I save it?”
He pointed at the black dragon soaring high into the sky while smashing chunks of mana. The next magic appeared next to Minerva. The blue magic circle began to glow viciously.
“…… I can kill you…… Human, before that, help me.”
The woman who said that tore off all her rags and her own clothes, which were no different from her.
Her naked body was exposed, covered in blood and soot.