The vault had an eight-digit security lock on it and I set the code to the dates of Lesley and Bartholomew's deaths in reverse order, like reading it in a mirror, to make it harder for people to guess.
I also placed my Elven Dictionary on one of the book shelves in the library.
Once I finished removing all the pertinent items from my purse and storing them, I began work on protecting my property. I started by putting up a protective barrier enchantment taught to me by the elves. To make the spell hold through anything, I had to place the enchantment on eleven small stones and embed those stones in the marble wall around the property, one in each corner and one in the center of the wall on each side. The southern wall was the exception. Since the gate was there, I had to place two stones where the wall met the ground and two at the top of the wall, one on each side of the gate.
The spell was called Two-Way Wall and created an invisible barrier shaped like a cube around the property. The barrier kept anything from entering or exiting the property. It went forty feet into the air and forty feet beneath the surface. I had to put four stones around the gate to exclude the gate from the spell.
For the gate, I used a different type of enchantment. It was the one that Aurora had used on Avenger Headquarters. The spell, called Barrier Scan, would scan the intentions of anyone who touched it. If the person was a player-killer, thief, or someone who had ill will toward whoever was on the inside of the barrier they wouldn't be able to enter, and the barrier would bounce them backward like they'd run full speed into a trampoline turned on its side.
Instead of placing the spell directly on the gate, I placed it about two feet away from the gate exterior and wrapped the spell around the exterior walls as well. Even though the Two-Way Wall spell would keep people from being able to enter the property from the sides, people might still try. It would be best to test intentions for anyone who came near my home.
The difference between Barrier Scan and Wall of Intentions, the spell I’d cast for the goblins, was that Barrier Scan wouldn't kick someone out of my home if they were already inside and their intentions turned evil. I would have to be careful about who I let in my home, but I was confident enough in my skills that if I was attacked by someone I let in my home, I would easily crush them.
The center of the gate had a large orb on it. It was the equivalent of a doorbell, except instead of ringing, it was more like a voice mail. The person awaiting access would place their hand on the orb and it would activate. The device would ask the person to announce their name and intentions. Once that was complete, it would send the recorded greeting throughout the property if the owner was present, but if not present it would tell them to come back later as no one was home.
The orb was completely useless until it was activated the first time by the owner of the property. It had to be touched by the owner in order to register the person's data in its system. It would scan the property for the data signature of the owner whenever someone touched it to determine if they were home. It also controlled the gate's lock. The gate would only unlock when the owner touched it or told the orb to let the guest in.
After activating the orb, I figured I should also set up some external defenses since Jared and Marvin were beginning their head hunt. I spent the rest of my first day in the house attempting to establish magical defenses. I didn’t have much luck in that regard.
I was going to put some physical protection around my house until I realized that the only way I could do that was if I purchased more land around the outside of the wall. I would make sure to purchase extra land at a later date for those defenses, but for now I would stick solely to magical defenses.
There wasn't much I could do in regard to magical defenses since most of my ideas, like setting up fire mines that would set off fire spells if stepped on, might accidentally target innocent people or animals that stepped on them. After a lot of failed ideas, I ended up casting an enchantment on the walls that would make them unbreakable. If the walls broke, my barrier wouldn't hold. Since I couldn't work the enchantment into the wall as it was being built, I would have to cast the enchantment once every two weeks to make sure that it didn't deteriorate.
I also placed an enchantment called Lightning Arc on the gate and external walls. It was a homing spell that locked on a target and attacked with multiple lightning bolts. I set up the enchantment so that it would only activate when the Barrier Scan spell expelled someone. That way, they wouldn't only be pushed back, but fried for attempting to break into my home.
I spent the next two weeks preparing for my journey to Dragon Peaks. It took a lot of work, but it felt good being able to apply my trades again. It helped me to take my mind off all the bad things that had happened in my life recently. I spent a lot of time over those two weeks with Zephyra.
We would spend hours talking about random things just to get our minds off the past while I worked diligently to make sure I could get to Queen Fangora without being killed by a dragon horde.
I spent some time working in the library, trying to create a new spell that might come in handy at Dragon Peaks and in the future. It took me about a week, working four hours a day on it. I was so glad when I'd completed the spell. This wasn't a new spell like my Stone of the Ages, but one of the many existing spells that hadn't been uncovered in Discovery of Magic yet.
I also spent time working on my outfit. I didn't need to create a new one in order to use Bartholomew's scales. All I needed to do was sew the scales into the fabric and cast the enchantments I needed while I was sewing.
I recast all the enchantments that were currently on the outfit so that they would extend to the dragon scales. I also added an enchantment called Brilliance that kept the clothing clean and gave a luminescent glow to the scales when reflected in the sun. This was purely for visual effect and served no function, other than possible intimidation, as it would pull people's eyes toward the fabric. My hope was, once their eyes were on the fabric, they would realize I was wearing dragon scales which would tell them I was not to be trifled with.
When I was finished, the outfit was more beautiful than ever with Bartholomew's pearl-like scales on it. It was also more protective than before. It was no longer enchanted clothing. It was enchanted scale-mail armor that could protect against almost any attack, magical and physical. My only worry was that it might not protect against a dragon’s claws, considering how torn up Bartholomew was when I first met him. Most of that damage had been inflicted by Darian and his friends, not the humans who were trying to kill him.
My only areas of weakness for physical attacks were the diamond-shaped openings on my chest and stomach and my exposed upper arms, but they were small enough targets that they were difficult to hit, and I could easily twist my body so that the attack hit the scales instead.
After the outfit was complete, I began working on my new weapon. I wished I had some spider silk, but it didn't really matter since my current gloves were made from silkworm silk. I began the work by making the gloves themselves. As I sewed, I wove the enchantments into the fabric, making sure all the enchantments from the original gloves were placed on the gloves I was making.
I had to make sure that all the enchantments I used on the gloves were cast again when I sewed in the scales and yet again when I attached the retraction device for the swords. I added a few enchantments not on the original gloves like the anti-theft enchantment, an enchantment to make the silk fabric invincible, which was slightly different to the enchantment on the original gloves which made the silk as hard as titanium. The original enchantment still made the gloves vulnerable to wear and tear. I also added the Brilliance enchantment and the enchantment that I'd been working on at the Discovery of Magic altar called Concussion. I put a small cotton padding about half an inch thick on the four fingers of each glove in the middle of where the knuckle and the first finger joint connected and placed the Concussion enchantment upon the padding only.
It probably wouldn't help against the dragons like I'd originally hoped. Their mass was far too heavy for the spell to really do anything, but there were many other uses for it.
After I finished adding Bartholomew's scales to the gloves I began working on the swords. It took me about two days to make the sword retraction devices due to all the small parts. I made them out of the Chrylonium from Bartholomew's bones since I wasn't sure if normal metal would be able to successfully house Chrylonium swords.
I made sure while I was building the weapons and retraction devices that I cast the same enchantments on them as the sword-gloves now stored in my vault. I made sure they wouldn't break, couldn't be stolen, wouldn't wear down or rust, wouldn't be stained in blood or dirt, and that the metal was as light as the silk gloves themselves. I also had to place an enchantment on the retraction device that made the sword blades shrink when retracted and grow when released.
Once the retraction devices were complete, I had to forge the swords. It was much the same process with the swords as far as the spells were concerned. Since the Chrylonium was such a durable metal, I made the blades thinner than any sword I'd ever seen. The blades were straight and double-edged. I made them using folding techniques that were generally reserved for making a katana. I folded the blades two hundred times each and made the swords long and thin enough that it was almost impossible to see the sword if it was turned blade toward you.
The blades were fifty feet long and about an eighth of an inch thick. I didn't have to worry about normal sword thickness or how sharp to make the blade since the sword was enchanted not to break or dull. I made the blade so fine and sharp that it could move at incredible speeds and cut through anything like it were moving through air.
It took a week to finish the sword-gloves in their entirety and when they were finished, I began making my trek towards Dragon Peaks. As I got closer to Dragon Peaks, I noticed a small town not too far from the peaks themselves.
I wasn't sure why people would want to live this close to beings that could kill them like flies. Still, dragons didn't come down from their mountains unless they were rogues and rogues didn't bother with small towns. They searched out large cities to destroy. Never-the-less, I wouldn't want to live this close to something that could kill me on a whim.
I decided that before I faced the dragons and returned Bartholomew's Heart, I would visit the town to register my items at the town’s local bank.
Most items in the game didn’t have specific names. They were just labeled things like silk outfit, katana, longsword, chain-mail armor, and the like, but unique items and limited items could be registered and given a name. It cost one hundred gold coins per item you wanted to register, but it was worth it. Registering an item was like patenting it back on Earth. Once an item was registered, no one except the person who registered the item was allowed to create that item. Anytime someone tried to create the registered item it would be deleted by Aurora.
Spells, armor, clothing, weapons, potions; anything that was made to be a unique item or limited item could be registered by the creator of the item. Registering an item created a unique shopping and trading environment since no one could make an item that had been registered unless they bought the rights from the current owner. Residents of the SRU and players alike could register items. Normal items weren’t allowed to be registered, meaning you couldn’t create a broadsword and register it so that no one else can make broadswords. Registration was for magical and enchanted items only and was rarely done due to the cost.
Most of the residents of the SRU wouldn't think about registering their items and giving them names normally. However, with more and more players arriving, registration was likely to increase so that players couldn't take the craftsman’s business away by making a copy of a non-registered item and registering it themselves.
The gloves I purchased for seven hundred gold coins were one of those items that should have been registered but weren't. I could only hope that the craftsman who created them would make a second copy and register it. I would hate to see the residents of the SRU lose a lot of business because players stole their ideas and registered the items in their names.
Luckily, my gloves were a similar concept but made out of different materials, so registering the gloves wouldn't keep the person who made my original gloves from making another one.
As I approached the town’s steel gate, I felt like I was looking at the decorative gates that often bordered cemeteries. The metal of the gate swirled around into letters depicting the town’s name, but the letters all looked like dragons soaring through the sky. The town's name was Dragon's Shadow. I smirked at the irony and shook my head in disbelief. Maybe they thought if they seemed to appreciate the dragons then they wouldn't be targeted. It was simple logic that wouldn't hold when you compared it to what Bartholomew had told me about dragons.
I made straight for the bank amidst the whispers I had gotten used to hearing. It seemed that even in this small town, people had heard the rumors, good and bad, about the White Avenger.
I made sure to register my Stone of the Ages enchantment and my Concussion enchantment while I was there registering my new outfit and gloves. I named the outfit Pearl Dragon Silk Scale Armor and the sword-gloves Pearl Dragon's Pride.
The silk outfit itself wasn't registered as it was the elves that made it for me and it would be cruel of me to repay their kindness by stopping them from ever being able to make this style of clothing again. The registration applied to the clothing as a whole, including the dragon scales and added enchantments.
After completing the registration process, I took to the streets once again. I had nothing left to do in this town and I was as prepared as I ever would be for my journey to Dragon Peaks. As I made my way to the city entrance, I noticed a shift in the atmosphere around me. The gossip had ceased, and the streets held fewer people.
Although it was normally impossible for people to tell the difference between players and residents of the SRU cities, I was beginning to have an easier time of it. The players were typically the ones who fled in terror while the residents of this world typically were admiring and even in awe of me. If they feared me, they tried not to show it, and they always acted cordially toward me.
It seemed that here was no exception. The players in this town, whom I'd never even met before, fled into the surrounding buildings or used the fountain to teleport away from here at their first opportunity.
I could take the hint. I wasn't wanted. I was more grateful about having my own place than ever. I was beginning to despise coming into towns and felt I would be better off simply staying to myself in the SRU. I'd spent the majority of my time here traveling anyway. Maybe I wasn't meant to mingle with the other players or the humans of this world.
There was only one human I'd come to befriend who was still alive and she was the only one that still showed me kindness and treated me like a person and not an idol. I had my friendships among the dwarves and the elves and for me that was plenty. There were other species I could try to befriend as well.
There wouldn't be a need for me to come to town except on the rare occasion where I needed to resupply food and other necessities I couldn't make myself or obtain in the wild.
Lost in my own thoughts, I made my way through the city gate and continued my hike toward Dragon Peaks. As I continued to march, I realized Dragon's Shadow wasn't as close to Dragon Peaks as I'd originally thought. The mountains were so huge that they belied distance. It took me another forty-five minutes walking at a brisk pace to reach the edge of the nearest slope.
The mountains were a drastic change from the surrounding area. The surrounding valley was lush with green grass and wi
ldflowers of every sort, but as I approached the base of the mountains the greenery just stopped as if there was an invisible line it was forbidden to cross. The lack of vegetation was more foreboding than any of the warnings Bartholomew had given me.
A chill ran up my spine as I surveyed the slopes. They were steep, uneven, and often jagged rock. There wasn't the slightest hint of grass or weed growing on the mountainside. There was no path to follow and I hadn't brought any mountain climbing gear. It didn't matter though. In a worst-case scenario, I could fly up the mountain, but I wanted to keep as much magical power in reserve as possible.
Since I'd used my Stone of the Ages enchantment, I had such a vast supply of magical power at my fingertips that it felt limitless, but if there was to be a battle ahead, that limitless power may very well be a water pistol against such fierce opponents.
I took one more glance up at the mountainside that dispelled all life and let out a deep breath as I formulated my resolve. Then I stepped into the world of dragons.
Fangora's Law
As I stepped onto the barren ground, I understood why there was no vegetation. The ground emitted heat like a volcano, only far more potent. If my clothes didn’t have protection magic on them, they would have already burned to ash. The enchantment and Bartholomew's scales were the only things that kept my feet from boiling. The smell of wildflowers shifted to the smell of burning brush and sulfur.
My body began to sweat after less than a minute and I was finding the trek up the mountain more difficult with each passing step. Each handhold was like sticking my hand in an open flame. My gloves and boots were a buffer, but they couldn't stop all the heat from leaking through to my skin.
It was a slow and grueling process to make my way up the mountainside. It took a few hours before my feet came to rest on the first flat land. I stood over a crevice, one foot on each side. The crevice stretched forward, decreasing in width as it entered a large cave. I had reached the first of what would be a large quantity of dragon nests.
Virtual Me- Valkyrie Page 26