Chapter 60: DD3 Chapter 006 – Flight

Typh had a very high intelligence score.

A lot of the time she allowed herself to forget about that, about what it really meant to think so much faster than anyone else did. She liked to play at being a more mundane version of herself, someone whose stats and skills didn’t make them so monstrously different from everyone she interacted with. In the time it took most people to formulate a sentence she’d have usually thought of at least twenty. They weren’t necessarily twenty times more eloquent or insightful, but it was always nice to have options to choose from.   

Her intelligence score did not make her smarter in the conventional sense, but it allowed her to process large quantities of information at truly frightening speeds. Most of the time she used this ability to simply walk around Creation with a large bubble of awareness continuously feeding her exacting details of her surroundings. Everything from the sweat beading down the sloping curve of Arilla’s chest, to the perfumed smell of black lilies that doused the Queen’s clothing, Typh was aware of it all in painstaking, multi-sensory clarity. 

Months ago, when her mental stats had been lower, [Sovereign’s Perception] had been difficult in human cities. The onslaught of constant activity brought about by so many creatures living in such close proximity to one another had been overwhelming at times. However, she’d since accumulated over 100 levels in her secondary class and had grown beyond such trifling difficulties. 

Now when the air crackled with spent mana, when steel-plated boots raced along the ground, and something foul slithered beneath the skin of fifteen different men, she parsed through every vivid sensation with as much ease as she breathed.

On the rare occasions such as this one, when she did use her intelligence score to its fullest potential, it was almost always in combat. There she would use her powerful mind, to not only enhance each individual spell, but to also keep track of multiple fast-moving missiles which she would then use to herd, entrap, and ultimately destroy her chosen foes. Many classers had the stats to either evade or withstand one of her skill-empowered manabolts, but few within her tier could tolerate a hundred flying at them all at once. 

When she wasn’t multitasking to the ridiculous degrees required to keep a swarm of active spellfire swirling through the air, when her attention was focused on a singular task, Typh had found that she could effectively stretch out time. Wielding her will like a club, the dragon could lean hard into her System augmented mind, to take in the abundance of information [Sovereign’s Perception] fed her and formulate the best plan for her survival.

This was one of those times when her ability to quickly think her way out of a difficult situation would determine whether she lived or died.

On the surface, she was fucked.

Looking deeper, things weren’t that much better.

But with an intelligence score of 225 she had the time to look very deep, and there she saw a faint glimmer of hope.

The Alchemic Knights had been tainted for some time. That, or the refinements to the ‘Capstone Solution’ the Queen had referenced were far more extensive than she could have possibly imagined. The dragon could hear the irregularity in their powerful heartbeats, the masses that moved through their lungs, and the thin tendrils that squirmed between thick layers of skill-enhanced muscle. The knights were fast approaching the point when they would shed their humanity altogether, but that was a problem for tomorrow. 

Their armour was heavy, denser than what Arilla was wearing by an order of magnitude. The edges of their blades were tipped with an enticingly pure alloy of adamantine, and the fuller was covered in surprisingly adequate runes for sharpness, durability, and conductivity. 

Equipped as they were, Typh could maybe handle four or five of them; if she was in her draconic form, if she was fresh, and if she didn’t have to worry about Arilla getting caught in the crossfire. With additional preparation, she could easily handle more than five, but in her current condition, she didn’t think she could take one, let alone the fifteen surging towards her.

She shifted, cutting off the flow of mana to [Sovereign's Form] with a thought. The change was like stretching out a stiff muscle, briefly painful but intensely satisfying. She felt the edges of her human body dissolve into motes of effervescent mana as it was shunted into the System’s arms while her draconic form took its place. Of course, as large as the room she was standing in was, like most parts of the palace it wasn’t designed to fit a hundred-and-ten-foot-long dragon. 

With her naturally powerful scales, further reinforced by her skills and her strength, the wall behind her exploded outwards like a sheet of chalk struck by a sledgehammer. The carpets beneath her feet were instantaneously flattened and the stone floors underneath them were crushed into a fine powder that rose into the air. As her back rose, the ceiling rose with it, masonry bulging out into the floor above while her wings unfurled out around her.

It felt better even if it wasn’t quite right.

Name: Typh

Species: Sovereign Dragon (True)

Age: 54

HP: 4392/5230

SP: 5124/5230

MP: 4508/5540

Strength: 150

Dexterity: 90

Vitality: 125

Intelligence: 225

Willpower: 160

Charisma: 152

Class: Young Adult Sovereign Dragon - Level 199*

Sovereign's Arcana - Level 197

Sovereign's Aura - Level 196

Sovereign's Body - Level 199

Sovereign's Breath - Level 194

Sovereign's Perception - Level 190 

Sovereign’s Form - Level 132

Class: Sovereign Conqueror - Level 103

Conqueror’s Abjurations - Level 102

Conqueror’s Command - Level 86

Conqueror’s Empowerment - Level 100

Conqueror’s Guidance - Level 103

Conqueror’s Levy - Level 100

Conqueror’s Reservoir - Level 101

Traits: Runt

Young Adult Sovereign Dragon* - One of the rarest true dragon breeds native to the Dragonspine Mountains, Sovereign Dragons are famed for their near physical perfection as well as their innate magical abilities.

As a young adult of your species, you are just coming into the beginnings of your true power.

+3 Str, +1 Dex, +2 Vit, +2 Int, +2 Will, +2 Cha, +3 Free Stats at each interval, [Dragon] tagged.

*You are prevented from ranking up in this class until you reach the age of 100.

Sovereign's Arcana - You may directly expend mana to create magical effects. You may add this skill’s level twice to your effective intelligence and willpower for determining the efficacy of your magical effects, the size of your mana pool and the rates of regeneration. In addition, your magic is more resistant to dispelling and may more easily use visualised runes as a focus.

Sovereign's Aura - You may project an aura with a maximum radius determined by your charisma score + (this skill level * 2). Within the bounds of your aura, you may expend mana to alter energetic, physical and psychological properties. In addition, your aura is more potent and better able to overpower others.

Sovereign's Body - You gain flat damage mitigation and hostile magic resistance equal to twice this skill’s level. You may also add twice this skill’s level to your effective strength and vitality scores. In addition, your health regeneration is increased by one step. 

Sovereign's Breath - When spending mana to augment your breath weapon, you may alter the frequency, size, and duration of your flames, increasing the base damage by twice this skill’s level where any additional damage is composed of equal parts kinetic and thermal energy. Damage dealt also reduces the stamina and mana pools of targets.  

Sovereign's Perception - In addition to enhancing your senses, you may see in a perfect sphere without the need for line of sight with a maximum radius determined by your willpower + twice this skill’s level. You may also perceive non-visible magical auras, effects, and system-generated descriptions.

Sovereign’s Form - Used by dragons since the dawn of Creation to infiltrate, interbreed and otherwise observe the other enlightened species, this skill allows you to adopt the form of another species indefinitely with its own resource pools based on your adjusted stats.

Available Forms:

Human Female.

Whilst active, skills dependent on your dragon physiology are suppressed, physical attributes are capped at Sovereign's Form's skill level, and your Dragon Class will be hidden for the duration of this skill's use. Forms not currently in use have their regeneration rates increased by one step.

Sovereign Conqueror - You have claimed an occupied territory through force of arms. As a result, you are given the option of further strengthening your command over others. 

+1 Str, +2 Vit, +5 Int, +1 Will, +3 Cha, +3 Free Stats at each interval, [Noble] tagged.

Conqueror’s Abjurations - This skill improves your effective intelligence by this skill’s level for all protective spells and wards that you create. While defending your territory or your subjects, this effect is doubled. When casting protective spells over your subjects or territory, the mana cost is reduced by this skill’s level. Additionally, a portion of the damage normally blocked by effects benefitting from this skill may be stored and released as a distinct attack with a reduced effect equal to 0.1% of the original attack per skill level.

Conqueror’s Command - This skill grants your subjects the ability to understand your non-verbal commands provided that they can clearly hear or see you. While carrying out your commands, in exchange for stamina spent you may temporarily increase their physical attributes by half this skill’s level. 

Conqueror’s Empowerment - You may add this skill’s level to your effective intelligence score for determining the potency and finesse of your magical effects. If the spell or mana effect includes a moving payload, then upon impact, the target will suffer as if hit by Sovereign's Breath with 1/10th of the original spell’s cost to fuel the secondary skill. Additionally, while your MP is full, your MP regeneration will instead regenerate your HP and provide a mild boost to your physical stats equal to 1/10th of this skill’s level, this effect is shared by all subjects sworn to you within line of sight.

Conqueror’s Guidance - This skill provides limited course correction, guidance, and scrying effect for all spells fired up to a range determined by (intelligence + skill level) * 10 feet. Consenting spell casters within line of sight may also cede directional control over their spells to you in order to gain the benefits of this skill and receive the benefits of Conqueror’s Command. Course correction is limited to 0.1 degrees per skill level for every foot travelled.

Conqueror’s Levy - This skill allows you to simultaneously syphon mana from multiple willing subjects with an efficiency of 1 mana received for every 1 point donated. If the donated mana is immediately used to cast a spell, that spell benefits from 1/100th of the donors’ cumulative intelligence scores. The range of this skill is limited to line of sight. 

Conqueror’s Reservoir - This skill allows you to imbue objects, creatures, and your aura with a mana supply separate and distinct from your own. This mana can be recalled at will and used to power your auras’ active effects or to give imbued objects and auras a velocity and direction powered by its own external mana reservoir. Creatures benefiting from external mana reserves gain the full MP benefits of Conqueror’s Empowerment, although stored MP is consumed at a ratio of 10 for every 1 HP regenerated. Stored mana used with this skill generates 1/10th the normal amount of manaburn and will not start to dissipate until quantities exceed 100 * this skill’s level.

Runt - You are the runt of your clutch. You are physically smaller and apply -1 Str, -1 Vit, +1 Int, +1 Will at each interval for your species class.

Typh had managed to recover somewhat since her fight with the fourth-tier adventurers which had left her more than just a little bit bloody. She wasn’t delusional enough to think that her brief respite had changed things. She knew that she was still hopelessly outmatched, but with her mind now occupying her draconic brain, she could see things with a cold clarity denied to her smaller, more impassioned form.

The dragon wasted all of half a moment to take everything in with a fresh perspective. 

The sunken pits where the Alchemic Knights' eyes should have been. The Queen watching open-mouthed with fascination from behind compounding layers of translucent mana and rune-etched steel. The falling ceiling that rained painted plaster down on them all, while distant soldiers raced through the echoing halls of the Royal Residence, eager to protect a King they didn’t know was already dead. 

Most pressingly of all, she noticed that the spear blades which had just butchered Terythia’s last ruler were now coming straight for Arilla.

She would have to do something about that.

Typh immediately conjured a curved wall of sloping force at an angle between her mouth and the floor in front of her warrior. It wouldn’t be enough to stop the spears, not with how strong an Alchemic Knight was, but that wasn’t the point of it. At the same time she spun her spell, Typh exhaled. [Sovereign’s Breath] pulsed in her chest, the draconic skill drank deep on her mana supply and transformed every drop of potent power into a torrent of searing flames. 

As the knights advanced, her breath weapon raced down to meet them in a wide cone-shaped by her arcane barrier. The protective spell shielding Arilla bowed inwards. Golden fire and thundering force inched towards her, but Typh’s magic held as she knew it would. 

The onrushing knights took the full brunt of the blast. Surprised by how quickly she had transformed, the front five were lifted from the ground by the impact and sent soaring backwards across the room. The runes on their armour flared as the arcane enchantment mitigated some of the intense heat and dampened the colossal force into something their fifth-tier bodies could handle. The knights smashed through the far wall, entering and swiftly exiting the hallway beyond, before they crashed into a new chamber which quickly caught ablaze.

While the distant five clambered back to their feet, seemingly unharmed in a room that was suddenly on fire, the second and third ranks—ten knights in total—were already advancing. Whether they’d had time to brace, or activate defensive skills didn’t matter, what did, was that they were now sprinting forwards while Typh’s dragonfire rolled harmlessly off of them.

Their blades shone gold with reflected light while contrasting auras extended out from their armoured hands to envelop their weapons. Vibrant shades of sizzling mana trailed behind them as they ran. Their offensive skills literally warped the shape of their swords, shields, and spears into larger, more threatening configurations. Edges grew serrated or doubled in size, faces that were contorted in pain or death appeared on shield bosses, and most concerningly of all, ghostly tentacles studded in fangs writhed along spear shafts and sword handles.

Typh quickly reached the conclusion that they had overstayed their welcome. 

Still exhaling, still pouring out dragonfire, concussive force, and mana in a relentless onslaught that was hostile to all forms of life, the dragon snatched her warrior up in a foreclaw, fanned her wings, and with a single powerful beat, leapt up into the sky.

If the ceiling had been falling before, it completely collapsed now. Large chunks of masonry fell down around her, ricocheting off her scales only to scatter across the burning carpet. She swiftly passed through another floor of the palace to the sound of more crashing stonework, before bursting through the roof and up into the night’s sky. With a second thunderous beat of her wings, she clawed her way up away from the ground and the numerous threats still on it.

Of course, it was never going to be that easy. 

Ten knights, clad in skill-forged steel so dense that Arilla wouldn’t have been able to move in it, leapt from the ground. Their weapons were bared, ready to carve into her as they soared upwards using nothing more than the power of their own muscles. 

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Typh saw them coming and unleashed a storm of manabolts to stop them. She used every skill she had to ensure that each knight was met with a stream of missiles composed of superheated, hardened mana that liberally doused them in dragonfire on impact. 

Concussive blasts accompanied with bright flashes of gold lit up the sky above the palace, momentarily turning night into day. Each echoing blast that struck true, scorched armour and depleted the knights’ limited upwards momentum. Unfortunately, not many bolts struck true. 

The moment she unleashed her volleys, they responded with skills of their own. Some knights momentarily blipped or phased out of existence, others conjured immaterial shields or simply used the very real ones strapped to their arms. A few deflected, or otherwise cut through her spells with the glowing edges of their expertly wielded blades. The methods varied wildly, but ultimately, few spells hit hard enough to stop their rapid ascent.

Of the ten who leapt from the ground, Typh could only stop three.

The remaining seven crashed into her like missiles. Encased in skill-forged steel, each knight collided with a mass that far exceeded what should have been possible from their limited size. Her scales cracked and painful vibrations were sent running through her bones. Before she could react, their blades stabbed into her underbelly, and strong hands grabbed onto whatever they could as they firmly anchored themselves in place. 

Understandably she roared with pain. 

Years of fighting adventurers in caves had given Typh a lot of experience in dealing with blades. She’d lost count of how many times she had felt a metal edge slip beneath her scales, but never before had she been carved up like this.

Using their rune-etched weapons and their alchemically-enhanced strength, they crawled along Typh’s body, racing up towards her neck and wings where they could easily put an end to her frantic flight. And yet, with steel rhythmically plunging through her guts and her blood spilling out from countless wounds, she beat her wings and climbed. 

As soon as she had cleared the palace, the defenders on the surrounding walls fired on her once again. Countless attacks soon filled the air and while most of them were harmless, enough weren’t to make a difference. Barked orders rang out across the fortifications, and soon siege weapons and ritual spells were targeting her massive form while she desperately tried to gain enough altitude to put herself out of their range.

Spheres of fire washed over her scales harmlessly while she cradled Arilla protectively in her foreclaws and ignored the searing lances of pain that worked their way up her body with every one of the knights’ stabs. Typh was a very large creature, and while they would certainly kill her if nothing changed, it would take them time to carve through her massive bulk.

She spun, flying upwards in a tight spiral while trying to keep the thicker scales on her back facing her attackers on the ground in what was fast becoming an impossible defensive dance. The constant motion of her rotating body also served to jostle the knights, forcing them to dig their blades deeper as they tried to hold on. More crucially, it slowed their attempts to climb her body. 

The stomach wounds, while painful and traumatic, were not immediately lethal, and with her draconic will she could tolerate a lot more of them before they became an urgent problem. 

Typh was continuously casting cascading lances of force and fire which swerved down in curving patterns to strike at the knights clinging to her body. Her spells that ‘missed’ went on to target and ultimately destroy the siege weapons and ritual circles on the walls below. 

She snaked her neck down to bite at the Alchemic Knights, unwilling to let them crawl over her uncontested, but they were strong and fast. Using the wounds they had carved into her for handholds, they fought back with frightening proficiency while she flew. The dragon’s best attempts to physically force them off of her resulted in little more than deep cuts to her mouth and face.

Still, she climbed. 

Even with the mounting pain she could be fast when she wanted to be, and in this moment Typh needed to be fast. She leant hard into her stats and willed the System to give her every ounce of speed it would. The clouds above beckoned to her and she did everything in her power to push past the agonising wounds and ascend higher into the sky—something which became increasingly difficult to do as the knights progressively hacked their way through her prodigious health pool.

An Alchemic Knight finally made it up to her neck, finding their way to where Arilla liked to sit, and it was there that she felt the critical strike. With [Sovereign’s Perception] she watched helplessly as her spells splashed off his armour while he swung his blade down in a vicious arc. One strike of his sword carved a large notch right out of her and it was only her size that saved her. 

Scale parted, muscle tore, and a deep groove was sliced through thick bone, but fortunately her spine survived the initial blow. It wouldn’t survive a second.

She looked down at the distant city below her and had to trust that it would be enough. With stabbing knights crawling all over her, she realised that she couldn’t delay any longer. She pumped mana through [Sovereign's Form] as hard and as fast as she could. The skill recognised the steel inside her body and tried to resist, but she didn’t care about its protestations. She was the one being stabbed to death—Creation could deal with the inconvenience.

Typh forced her will over it, and just like that, her draconic body disappeared.

Creation shuddered, struggling to reconcile the sudden absence of the dragon that seven knights and one warrior were dependent on for their upward motion. The Alchemic Knights who had their weapons inside of her were dragged through the sky by their rapidly repositioning blades, while the two that didn’t began to fall mutely through the open air. 

The swords, spears and hands inside of her remained in place, although the translation of their positions from one of her bodies to the other got a bit fuzzy. 

The spear tip that had been slicing through the membrane of her wing came out after parting her bicep. The stabbing blades in her torso and back now impaled her all the way through. Her lungs immediately collapsed, her kidneys were shredded, and only the System knew what other vital organs were destroyed. Armoured hands that had previously held onto tough scales, now tore at and pulped her much more delicate flesh while their blades carved through her scaleless skin without resistance.

In an instant, the knights had accomplished everything they had failed to do over the course of the entire battle: inflicting several lethal traumas on Typh all at once.

And then their blades continued moving. The momentum of their powerful blows was not yet spent. Her much smaller body provided a comparatively smaller canvas for them to cut into. Her much weaker flesh put up far less resistance to hold their blades in place. So when they were dragged around by their rapidly repositioning blades, they carried on moving right out into the open air.

Buffeted by the traumatic impacts, Typh was sent spinning up into the sky amidst ribbons of red. Their vice-like grips failed to stop her, instead they tore free from her body with handfuls of mashed flesh, before they too started to fall. 

The seven Alchemic Knights who had been carried miles above Helion on the body of a dragon that never wanted them, now had to learn to fly. It was that or seeing if the tainted monster blood slithering through their veins would let them come back from a fall of this magnitude.

Typh was betting that it wouldn’t.

The wind whipped at her hair and face as she spun around out of control. Crimson trails streamed from her many, grievous wounds and she remembered with a smile that she was completely out of dresses. 

Then she promptly vomited up blood and pieces of herself, while before her eyes, her left arm was carried away by the breeze. Sprays of gore slipped out of her with an eerie lack of sensation and her consciousness immediately threatened to recede. She knew that if she allowed herself to blackout she wouldn’t wake again. She would die, first as a human, and then again as a dragon almost immediately after. 

Typh didn’t know how long it would take for her to shift while she was effectively dead in her human body, but given her location, several miles above the palace, it wasn’t a good idea to find out.

She looked down at those falling beneath her and reached out with her magic to pull Arilla in close, but between the spinning and everything else it was far too much for her fading mind to hold together. She fumbled unsuccessfully at the spell for a time, the simple forms escaping her as everything grew increasingly cold and distant.

She briefly saw the warrior's hazel eyes meet hers, and the woman she loved more than gold mouthed something important that was snatched away by the rushing wind.

The Alchemic Knights who were falling only a few dozen or so feet below launched a flurry of ghostly blades of force at them both. Arilla had somehow seen them coming and had pressed her arms to the side, dodging those meant for her as she plunged through the air to intercept the knights’ attacks aimed at Typh. 

The warrior was hit hard. 

Her already ruined armour took the brunt of those blows and cracked loudly with every ghostly strike. Spidering fissures were sent running through the heavy metal while fresh blood misted the air around her. Any fantasies Typh may have held about Arilla being okay were quickly killed when she saw the sheer quantity of red streaming out of her body.

The force of the impacts sent Arilla racing up towards Typh. Their fingertips briefly touched and before they could part, the warrior’s steel-clad hand wrapped around the dragon’s cold bloodless one.

Typh blurred again and became a dragon. She was still seriously wounded, but she wasn’t about to die in the next few seconds. Holding her warrior close, she began to flap her wings to begin her descent, but even as they plummeted towards Creation, the Alchemic Knights were not done. 

Seeing what had happened to Arilla, they attacked each other. Four knights sacrificed themselves to send glowing blades of force into their best positioned three. The chosen knights took the attacks full-on without attempting to dodge and their armour fractured and split as they were flung up into Typh’s once again colossal body. 

One knight bounced off of her after scoring a shallow strike to her leg.

A heartbeat passed and she hoped the other two might fare the same, but she wasn’t that lucky. They collided with her and an instant later their blades dug in beneath her scales. Mailed fingers once again pried into her, and they began to climb, resuming the journey towards her injured spine.

Typh knew that her tricks wouldn’t work a second time around and so she carefully angled her body and committed to crashing from the sky. She wrapped her foreclaws protectively around her lover, who had grown concerningly limp, and corkscrewed down towards Creation.

Time passed while the knights’ stabs grew closer to something vital and the wide slabs of the ancient Old Road, grew larger in her vision. She tried to spare Arilla from the worst and tucked her protectively against her chest, rolling her body to ensure that the knights took a heavy blow. She hit the ground at speed, pulsing her mana at the last moment to ensure she hit the ground knight first. 

She rolled over their forms to the sound of breaking bones, before going on to crash and smash along the length of the cleared street. She slid forwards amidst a cascade of golden sparks and trailing destruction. Her health redlined from the impact, but she finally dislodged the knights who spun out as they bled off their own momentum. 

Struggling to raise her head, she could see signs of her army’s conquest all around, although this far into Helion it looked like it had largely been a bloodless affair. Beyond clearing the streets so that her troops could better move through them, this stretch of the Old Road looked much like any other. 

If you ignored the four injured creatures lying prone on the ground.

Typh slowly clambered to her feet. Her wings were bent at unnatural angles and trailed painfully on the floor while stars swam in her vision. In front of her, some hundred feet away were the two knights. They were in rough shape, having first been injured by their allies' offensive skills, and then again in the fall—but it wasn’t enough to stop them as they both stood up and readied their weapons.

The dragon roared her defiance, a primal scream of potent fury that she threw at her attackers. She poured all of her rage and frustrations into it and surprised herself with the depths of her anger. The immense pressure to be better than she was, the pain, the fear, the unrelenting unfairness of it all, it all came out of her while the ground trembled and nearby window shutters rattled on the houses that lined the ancient street.

She could smell the noxious taint emanating from them. It was even more noticeable now that they were wounded and bleeding. Somewhere a Monster had sunk its tentacles in Terythia. She’d known that for some time, but whether it was the beast in the west pulling strings from afar, or another creature more local to the region she did not know, she only knew what was standing in front of her.

Corrupted humans playing at being loyal soldiers. It begged so many questions. Why weren’t they killing indiscriminately? Was it their knight classes holding them in check? Or were they playing a longer game? She hated that she didn’t know. 

Typh immediately discounted the possibility that the Queen was correct, that the Capstone Solution—a fancy name for eldritch poison—could ever be tamed. Finer minds than this age possessed had already tried and failed to weaponise the Monsters’ corruption. It couldn’t be done, that way lay only madness and death. Tainted creatures always lost the System’s blessing, and inevitably became nothing more than a particularly bad horror. Of course, that same ancestral knowledge was extremely clear that Monsters, their spawn, and their tainted slaves all killed for killing’s sake.

A complacent Monster in the west shouldn’t have been possible. The tainted knights in front of her should have been foaming at the mouth in their fury to kill her. So why was she wrong? What was she missing?

She supposed she could always try to find the answers if she lived through the day.

Typh pawed at the slabs of the Old Road in her anxiety, her aching claws failing to even scuff the ancient construction. She was spent. Her health was near its limit, and while she still had stamina to burn, her perilously-low mana reserves were a serious obstacle between her and further violence.

The tainted knights advanced as her roar guttered out. They moved slowly—casually even—savouring the kill they knew they had won. Arilla groaned weakly in her sleep, splayed out on the road beside her, and Typh, seeing no other way to protect her, stepped over the immobile warrior. 

She readied herself as best she could, lowering her head close to the ground and tensing her shoulders in preparation for a pounce.  

The knights saw this and paused, coming to a complete stop while the dragon finally smiled.

 

“Idiots,” the dragon rumbled.

The rattle of the wooden shutters clattering against their frames had only grown louder. The vibrating earth beneath their feet had steadily become stronger, and yet Typh’s defiant roar had already faded into the night.

One Alchemic Knight turned towards the growing storm, and she smelt the unmistakable whiff of panic even obscured as it was by the corruption in his veins. The pair tried to scatter, to jump to safety, but while Typh lacked the strength to end them, she could keep them on the ground for just a few more seconds. Between her spells and lunging claws, she used her superior size to swat them down to the earth, taking the wounds and the pain in exchange for those precious moments.

They squared off against her, their fear rising right up until the moment they ran out of time.

Then the cavalry charge hit them in the rear. 

It wasn’t real cavalry, Typh didn’t have nearly enough horses for that, but she had wargs. Bestial creatures that blurred the lines between wolf and man, and ran just as easily on fours legs as they did two. Thanks to the level gain the last Monster had given them, most were approaching the peak of second-tier, with some having reached up into third where their cap would keep them. Added to their numbers were adventurers, ratlings, and the plain brave and stupid, mounted on warbeasts tamed with skills or bred in dungeons for this very purpose. 

Some mounts were almost as twisted as the Alchemic Knights, like the odd rat ogre that lumbered past, but all of them were sprinting, thundering down the Old Road as fast as their legs could take them. 

Individually they still didn’t have the kind of attacks that could scratch an Alchemic Knight in their prime, but an injured one with failing armour? Well, quantity has a quality of its own, and Typh had the quantity to make up for their individual failings. 

Tavern logic said that one alchemic knight was an even match for a hundred third-tier classers, maybe even five considering all the crap they had running through their veins. 

Whether it was a thousand or ten—Typh was far too tired to count—her cavalry charge raced past the knights with lances, swords, and claws at the ready. The Alchemics spun, swinging blades and skills into the advancing horde, but despite every advantage their tier gave them, they only had so much stamina. 

The attacks kept coming, and the knights were forced back inch by inch as the dead spilled out around them. Typh added her own spells into the mix, but she had the bulk of her attention elsewhere. 

She watched with satisfaction as blood, first red and then black, streamed from her foes’ failing armour. How their flesh peeled back down to their bones, and how it tried to reform under the influence of sprouting tentacles only to be further shredded by Typh’s enthusiastic soldiers who had answered her cry of rage with one of their own.

The thunderous sound of thousands of racing feet, coupled with the victorious screams on so many lips was better than any bard song Typh had ever heard. Although, if she listened for it, she could hear Eliza’s tune hummed by more than a few of the classers in the charge. 

The dragon waited patiently while the knights died in front of her. She received the twin notifications from the System and added them to the rest, which unfortunately did not quite number ten. 

She may have escaped the palace and defeated those sent to kill her, but she had failed to take the city. There was only one way it was going to end now, and it wasn’t going to be pretty.

Typh looked up at the green moon looking down on them all with glee and shuddered. There was no way around it, there was going to have to be a siege.

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And last but not least, Dragon's Dilemma Book 1: A Sovereign's Scorn, is on sale on  With the 

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