by A. M. Sohma
As the dragon exhaled a smoke ring, Kit took the opportunity to say, “We should fall back and have Prowl trap it with a stun trap. That’ll give everybody time to reset their skills.”
It seemed no one heard her over the din of battle, for Axel launched another Gut Buster—at least this time he was smart enough to move after the attack. Cookie jumped from the shadows of the wall, landing on the dragon’s back. “Backstab!” She sliced her dagger down the row of scales, doing a little more damage this time.
Kit gaped at the dragon’s daunting health bar that hovered above its head. In spite of all the attacks, they had only lowered his health by a sixth. Maybe even less.
We’ve got to change our tactic!
Wildly attacking the dragon was doing more harm than help, and Riko, instead of attacking (despite the fact she had the highest attack power due to her level), was frantically healing. “Nature’s Blessing!” The druid pointed to Cookie, restoring some of her health.
“Don’t just stand there, party leader. Tell them what to do!” Prowl growled.
“I’ve tried!”
“Yeah, well you haven’t been loud enough to get their attention. They’re going to get themselves killed at this rate, and they’ll take Riko down with them!”
Kit leaped to the side, barely avoiding the dragon’s tail when it swung it at her. “This is why I shouldn’t be the party leader. I can’t do it!”
“Stop making excuses,” Prowl said. “I’ve seen you in action—you know tactics better than anybody here thanks to your main character! We need that right now, so grow a spine, and do your job!”
Kit gritted her teeth, angry because she knew the saboteur was right. Unfortunately, the realization came too late as the dragon had divided the team with Vic, Gil, and Riko on one side of the monster, and Axel, Cookie, Kit, and Prowl on the other. There was no way for everyone to retreat and group up. Kit chewed on her lip as she thought. “Do you have any item that will stun it, like your pepper grit?”
“Here.” Prowl tossed her a small packet. “You’ll have to get it in its eyes though. Sorry.”
“I don’t mind. After spending this much time as this character, I’m used to crummy jobs by now,” Kit said dryly. Clenching the powder tight in her fist, she ran straight for the dragon. She ducked, barely avoiding it when it smashed its tail into a wall—dislodging some crystals and rocks that pelted her like hail.
With its attention stuck on Vic and Gil, Kit ran up its front right leg, exhilarated when she felt her elf race traits kick in and give her an extra burst of agility. The dragon didn’t notice her until she climbed all the way up its neck and began to use some of the ridges on its forehead as handholds to climb down its face.
It shook its head, jarring Kit and slamming her against its sharp scales. The scales made slices on her legs, arms, and of course her unprotected stomach.
Kit hissed at the sharp pain but kept climbing. When she was close enough to its right eyeball, she clung to its scales—bloodying her hands—and tried to rip open the packet with her teeth. She almost lost her grip on the thing due to her slippery, bloodied hands, but she was able to pour the packet into its open eye before it managed to dislodge her. It tossed her up over its head so she landed on the spines of its back with a painful crack.
Kit coughed, the air thrust out of her, though she was aware of the fact that the dragon had frozen and was no longer moving. She switched to the party channel and desperately sucked in air so she could shout. “Stop attacking! Prowl, lay traps in layers to hold the dragon back so it keeps triggering them every time it moves forward. Everyone else, fallback to the entrance of the treasure chamber, or Riko will no longer heal you!”
Kit rolled off the dragon, her back aching horrifically from the impact, and joined Vic in running to the door.
Prowl wasted no time in making the pathway between the dragon and the door a sea of traps.
“Those aren’t gonna hold him long,” he warned as the dragon crashed through the first line of traps and was held in place.
Kit flicked her fans open. “They don’t have to. We just need enough time to reorganize ourselves.” She launched into her only skill—Battlefield March—twisting and twirling in a confined space near the party. The music that accompanied her skill twined around the group, improving their physical attack and defense skills.
As she danced, she continued to speak. “Vic, focus your fire on its face—particularly its eyes and its mouth. Bubble Barrage uses less mana, right?”
“Yes. And it’s instantaneous—no casting time. But it’s not very strong.”
“If you use it on the right part of the target it will be. So only use Bubble Barrage. Fireball won’t do much damage to the dragon anyway. Don’t hit him with everything you have, instead aim for slow and steady so you don’t drain your mana too quickly. Once he breaks free of those traps, Cookie, Axel, and Prowl, you three need to launch your highest damage-dealing attacks. Gil, while they do that, use your taunt skill and try to keep the dragon’s attention on you. It won’t hold with the amount of fire power being thrown around, but it will distract him and make him keep switching targets. If that doesn’t work, use your hammer strike skill on him. Finally, Riko.”
“You want me to heal, right?”
“No. I want you to get your Earthen Pit skill ready and then use it on the dragon when it reaches the last of the traps, before everyone else attacks. Then immediately use Nature’s Bindings and tie him up with vines, but call it out when you do!”
“He’s to the last line of traps,” Prowl said.
“Riko, start casting Earthen Pit!” Kit spun around to face the incoming dragon. “Here we go!”
Just as the dragon lurched free of the traps, Riko hit it with Earthen Pit, opening a hole under it. The skill was unable to swallow him up—as it had with the nether wolf—but the sides of the pit closed in, crushing the dragon and causing massive damage.
As it roared, Vic kept up a steady stream of bubbles. Though her knees shook, her aim was good, and she hit its eyes, blinding it.
Gil, running with Cookie, Axel, and Prowl, hit it with a taunt, making the dragon weave its head back and forth between himself, Riko, and Vic.
Axel stabbed the dragon in the throat, which did more damage than all of his previous attacks combined—although he barely avoided getting crushed when the dragon smashed its head down on him. Unfortunately, when Axel rolled out of the way, he smacked into one of the treasure piles, causing a rather large chest to fall on top of him.
Prowl ran past the fallen warrior and slapped what appeared to be a wad of clay on the dragon’s snout. He must have been using some kind of aggression-lowering skill, as the dragon didn’t even glance at him.
Cookie seized the opportunity to stab the dragon in the eye, inflicting a bleeding wound on it that slowly carved away at its health.
The dragon thrashed wildly, squirming out of the pit Riko had trapped it in. It flung Axel to the side and would have scooped Cookie away from the rest of the party with its tail if not for Gil. The crusader raised his Shield Wall, which absorbed some of the damage and instead sent both him and Cookie sprawling backwards.
Prowl nimbly avoided the dragon’s thrashing and slapped something on its underbelly.
“Casting Nature’s Bindings,” Riko shouted.
“Cookie, Gil, Axel, and Prowl—get out of there until he’s tied up again.” Kit—who had forced herself to fight her instinct to hang back and instead danced near the dragon so the stat boost from her dance could cover the entire party—zipped back to Riko’s side.
“Hold off! I need one more second.” Prowl completed his circuit around the dragon and slapped another wad of clay on its side.
“Nature’s Bindings,” Riko said. Vines sprouted out of the ground and wrapped around the dragon, holding him in place.
Kit stopped dancing—there were no attacks being launched at the moment anyway—to give her mana a few moments to recover. “Start casting Earthen Pit again, Riko. Wha
t are you doing, Prowl?”
The Saboteur crouched down and flipped a dagger out of his boot. He ran his thumb across the blade and murmured a few words, making the droplet of blood that now coated the dagger glow. “You wanted my biggest attack? This is it. It’s got a mega long cooldown before I can use it again, though, so this is our only shot.”
The dragon chewed at the vines, snapping them and freeing his front legs.
“Wait until I cast Earthen Pit again, then I can hold him for you,” Riko said.
Kit’s heart shuddered when the dragon tilted its head back and roared, and she could see the smallest flicker of light gather at its throat. “No, cast it now, Prowl.”
“But Earthen Pit—”
“The dragon is about to use a fire attack—he’s head-on, and there’s no way he can miss us so we have to interrupt him instead. Cast it, Prowl!”
Prowl whipped his dagger out in front of him and ran at the enraged beast. “Mangle!”
The wads of clay Prowl had stuck to the dragon shot out lines of dark blue light, forming a triangle. Black fog blasted around the beast, and it suddenly began to move slower—as if it were stuck in tar.
The attack had laid a powerful de-buff on the dragon that greatly stripped away his agility and defense.
Cookie whistled. “Now that is what I call a de-buff.”
“Yeah, but that’s not the attack,” Kit said.
Red tendrils of light shot out of the clay masses and convened to one spot on the dragon’s throat—right where Axel had stabbed him in the previous run. Prowl skidded to a stop just below the dragon’s head even as the monster’s mouth began to sputter with flames. He threw his dagger, which bit deep into the dragon’s hide and shed red sparks.
Bolts of lightning zipped from the dagger to the wads of clay, before the red magic that swirled around the weapon erupted with a flash of light and a loud boom.
Its attack interrupted, the dragon swallowed its fire and roared with pain as its health plummeted.
Kit sprinted for the dragon. “Riko—use Earthen Pit. Everyone else, attack!”
The druid released her spell—which had been building during Prowl’s attack—and the cavern floor fell out from underneath the dragon again and pinned it in place while further crushing it.
Bubbles filled the air as Vic attacked, and Kit leaped into her dance just before Axel, Cookie, and Gil reached the dragon and started pounding on it.
The dragon started to squirm loose of the crater Riko held him in, but he had only a bit of health left. He freed one leg and started to unfurl his wings—which smashed into the ceiling and dropped chunks of rock down on them.
Both of its eyes started to glow, and jagged lines of fire traveled down its spine and encircled its claws.
It’s going to launch a final attack. It will kill us!
“Attack him with everything you have—take him down!” Kit shouted.
“Gut Buster!”
“Hammer Strike!”
Cookie, unlike the others, crouched low to the cave floor and stared up at the dragon with narrowed eyes. The dragon roared and began to launch a fire attack accompanied with a shockwave that sent everyone sprawling. Flames flooded the area, roasting them with such blistering heat and pain, Kit and the others were paralyzed…except for Cookie. She flicked two daggers, nailing the dragon in the roof of the mouth.
Her assault chiseled away at the last little bit of the dragon’s health. Its eyes turned vacant, and it cut off its attack before collapsing on the ground and shaking the tunnel.
Kit—her clothes smoldering and ashy even though her pink hair was as perfect as ever—collapsed to her knees with only a few points of health left. “We did it.”
Rainbow-colored lights flashed around her while musical notes bumped her burned skin. The familiar “LEVEL UP” message flashed above her head, welcoming her to level twelve. A glance at the rest of the party revealed everyone except for Riko and Prowl had leveled-up as well.
Her character panel automatically popped up.
Congratulations! You have learned the dancer skill: The Luck-Luck Dance
Your sheer luck allows you to live dangerously—or foolishly!
Effect: Increases party members’ luck and critical hits. Can be interrupted.
Kit scratched her nose and considered the skill—which wasn’t bad despite its ridiculous name. She was a little surprised, though, as dancers were known to have de-buff skills to cast on enemies, and it seemed strange to get two buff skills in a row. Unless, maybe the de-buff skills became less used when the raid-build dancers fell out of favor…. “If only this skill worked outside of battle. Maybe then I wouldn’t take a bat to the face.”
Vic and Riko plopped to the ground next to her, their mana completely drained. “I can’t believe we survived that,” Vic said.
Riko turned a suspicious eye on Prowl. “Mangle is that attack of yours that uses soul shards, doesn’t it?”
Prowl adjusted his goggles and swept ash from his hair. “Yeah.”
Riko’s left eyebrow twitched. “Are you crazy?! Three of those shards cost as much as a good weapon!”
“Do you think we could have beaten that thing if I hadn’t used Mangle?” Prowl asked.
Riko scowled at him, but she got up and stood long enough to cast a healing spell on herself before sitting down again.
Gil limped over to the group. “That was more difficult than I imagined it would be.”
“I told you dragons were tough,” Axel said.
“Then why were you the one who got the dragon’s attention and launched the first attack?” Vic asked.
“That was an accident,” Axel insisted.
Kit studied her fans’ paper surface, looking for damage from the dragon’s final attack. “We’re going to have to re-think our strategy for snagging the seal.”
Prowl snorted. “No kidding.”
“I think we could defeat another dragon,” Cookie said. “My concern, though, is that it will be impossibly difficult to pull just one. In this case, we faced a single dragon because there was only one in this tunnel. When it opens up into the bigger cavern, there’s no place to hide or withdraw, so it’s pretty much a given we’ll have at least two charging us at once.”
“I don’t believe we can fight two dragons at the same time,” Gil said.
“My mana won’t last through two,” Vic volunteered.
“I won’t be able to use Mangle for a few hours,” Prowl said.
Riko stood and this time cast a healing spell on Prowl and Kit, then sat down again to boost her mana recovery. “Plus that skill costs thousands of gold.”
“Cash isn’t really a concern right now,” Prowl said.
“Cash is always a concern,” Riko corrected.
“So what do we do?” Axel asked. “Try to catch one dragon at a time and lure them back to this tunnel?”
“No,” Kit said. “We’re going to sneak our way through.”
Everyone in the party swung his or her gaze to her.
“…what?” Prowl finally asked.
“You’re all correct. We haven’t a hope that we can fight our way through when we’re this low-leveled,” Kit said. “However, if we can avoid detection, grab the seal, and then split, I think we can make it.”
“But what about the dragons?” Gil asked.
“The dragons don’t matter. The quest, remember, is to reclaim the seal. Technically, we don’t have to kill any. We just have to get the seal and get out in one piece.” Kit stretched her arms out in front of her as Riko’s heal settled into her bones, restoring her to full health.
“Wouldn’t that be even more dangerous?” Vic asked. “We might accidentally pull multiple dragons at once.”
Riko tapped her fingers on the cave floor. “The answer is both yes and no. While the actual plan itself might be more dangerous while we’re in the process of pulling it off, it’s still far more doable than trying to kill every single dragon in this cave.” She stood up again,
and cast her heal on Vic, Cookie, Gil, and Axel before sitting pretzel style on the ground once more.
“Plus it will take a lot less time,” Cookie said.
“I don’t like it,” Axel announced. “Sneaking around isn’t my style.”
“That’s why you’ll stay here, along with Vic and Gil,” Kit said.
“I approve,” Vic chirped.
“Why do you wish for us to stay behind?” Gil asked.
“Cookie has a skill that lets her walk-through shadows without being seen. As Prowl is also one of the thief classes, I’m assuming he has one as well, right?” Kit looked inquiringly at the saboteur, who nodded.
“But Riko doesn’t have any such skill,” Gil said.
“You’re right, but she’s much higher leveled, and she has a heal skill. If we are spotted, it will be necessary for her to heal whatever party member is carrying the seal.”
Axel snorted. “Then why are you going? You can’t tell me you’ll be useful for anything.”
Kit shrugged, not at all offended by the truth in his words. “I’m not. So I’m going along as bait. If we’re caught, hopefully I’ll be able to distract the dragons long enough to give the rest of the party a head start.”
“Wouldn’t it be better if I went along to act as bait?” Gil asked. “I have my taunt skills and more health points than you do.”
“Yeah, but it’s pretty much guaranteed that the bait is going to become crispy fried chicken and will respawn back in Brunascar,” Kit said.
“And you’ll lose experience,” Axel was quick to add.
Kit adjusted the collar of her shirt. “In any case, there’s no point in making you go through it when the dragons can just as easily fry me. Does everyone agree that this is our best course of action?”
“It will certainly be far faster than attacking each dragon individually,” Riko said.
“You might all die,” Vic pointed out pessimistically.
Prowl shrugged. “If we wipe, we’ll just come back and give it another go.”
“Listen to you, mister optimistic,” Riko said.
The saboteur stood and adjusted his dagger belt. “I don’t think we’ll all die, except for Kit, that is. She’s definitely a goner.”