Chapter 78: DD3 Chapter 24 – Aftermath

Name: Typh

Species: Human

Age: 18

HP: 1380/1380

SP: 1379/1380

MP: 5710/5710

Strength: 138

Dexterity: 100

Vitality: 138

Intelligence: 300

Willpower: 175

Charisma: 200

Class: Sovereign Conqueror - Level 167

Conqueror’s Abjurations - Level 112

Conqueror’s Command - Level 96

Conqueror’s Empowerment - Level 125

Conqueror’s Guidance - Level 111

Conqueror’s Levy - Level 118

Conqueror’s Reservoir - Level 120

167 levels sat firmly on her status next to the words ‘Sovereign Conqueror’. It was a dizzying number to have attached to her noble class, more so because she’d gained over 50 of those levels in a single day. Typh had put the majority of her free stats from her five-level intervals into her mental attributes—a habit which had yet to leave her from her days of possessing a mage class.

Her physical strength, while not amazing, was more than enough to get by on. Now that she was constantly surrounded by so many weak-bodied humans with low levels and even lower ambitions, she only had to concern herself with being stronger than the typical noble. There was always the risk of encountering someone—or something—physically stronger than her, but it made more sense to focus on her magic while she slowly gained levels in her [Sovereign’s Form] skill. 

In her true draconic body, she could just about hold her own against the fifth-tier knights that Queen Constancia liked so much. Typh knew that when the time came and she had to face them again that it would be her mind and her magic that won the day. She had no desire to ever face anything so nearly as lethal as a Monster in close combat again and her assault on the northern armies had been a compelling reminder of her natural strengths.

Typh was a dragon and no matter how strong she grew, the skies would always be her domain. 

There was a nagging temptation from her class to repeat her abhorrent actions—to commit wholesale slaughter on such a grand scale that it forced her level to rise regardless of how weak her individual enemies actually were. There were a myriad of different reasons why she shouldn't, from the moral to the political, but her emboldened noble instincts only cared for dominion and growth. Her class had tasted what she could offer it and wanted more: more levels, more conquest and of course, more death. 

It was only the horror of what she’d done that stopped her, but Typh was scared that she’d eventually find the reasons to do it again. She was supposed to save Terythia, not burn it to the ground and yet she couldn’t deny that killing all those men had felt so very good. Levelling was always a rush, one that only grew more intense with every tier. The flood of mana that she had received from turning the northern armies into ashes still made her toes curl with excitement and remembering the panicked faces of the fallen didn’t do nearly enough to dampen that too-visceral pleasure.

Typh closed her eyes and recalled with perfect clarity the vivid sensations of flying along the Old Road while she bathed the ground in flames. With her high mental stats it wasn’t hard to remember. She could now slip in and out of a memory with just as much ease as she slipped into a dress.

The looks of surprise, fear and confusion from her three hundred and forty-seven thousand victims were seared into her memory just as surely as she’d seared the flesh from their bones. She couldn’t even claim to have lost count of the lives she’d taken, but of the two numbers floating through her head, Typh chose to focus on the much smaller one. 

167 was a prime number after all, and that deserved to be respected. 

Her new level was her reward for winning the north in a single day. Her actions—heinous as they may have been—had been met with the System’s explicit approval. Every person she’d killed had earned her a separate ‘Congratulations’ and she’d be lying if she didn’t admit to clinging to that little detail as if it made it alright. Her slaughter made her everything her critics said she was: a monster, a savage, a feral beast hiding behind sweet smiles and pretty dress. Her only consolation was that the war for the north was over and the south would soon be hers too. Once the news circulated further, the remaining Terythian Lords would cave to her demands—even if it wasn’t her they swore their allegiance to.

She tried not to think about that betrayal and found that the air around her was growing noticeably warmer. The congealed blood on the floor of the stage cracked and smouldered, cooking before her eyes while the wood warped and the pungent scent of decaying iron filled her nose. Realising what she was doing, Typh quickly withdrew her mana from her hidden draconic skill, and winced at the sight of the scorched wood beneath her feet.

The dragon sighed. It was early and she was already tired; tired of arguing with Arilla about her refusal to kneel, tired of the intrusive memories that kept her awake, and she was tired that there was always another catastrophe just around the corner preventing her from making the progress she knew she was capable of. She just needed a single, solitary year of peace and she’d transform Terythia into a glorious beacon of humanity, lighting the way to a Monster free future.

But instead of peace, she had this.

Typh stared out across the ruins of the blood-splattered hall and tried not to groan as the sound of her tired exhalation travelled. The noise almost increased in volume as it crossed the length of the expansive hall. The natural acoustics the orchestra house was famed for truly were excellent. Even with the damage done to the sound amplification runes, she wouldn’t be surprised if the soldiers removing the bodies through the rear entrance had heard her fatigued sigh.

How very unsovereignly.

Typh knew that she should move a few steps away from centre stage so that she could issue all the orders she wanted in relative privacy, but there was something about this spot beyond how the sound carried that was different. There was an invigorating energy in the air that lingered. A part of her wanted to shy away from it, but another larger, more self-destructive voice in her head demanded that she stand still and bask in the comforting silence.

All in all, it was a very good spot to think in.

“Who did we lose?” Typh eventually asked, the weight of the expectant gazes on her skin finally compelling her to act.

“The audience primarily consisted of those with merchant classes. A mixture of well-moneyed individuals with ties both local and foreign to Helion. They were of course accompanied by guards and servants who bulked out the audience considerably. There were some minor members of the nobility in attendance, but unless they were favoured by someone important I doubt anything will come of it,” Halith explained. “You should be aware that several notable gang leaders were also in attendance. Their loss will potentially cause problems with the city’s stability—we had agreements with them, not their successors—and the Experience Markets could easily grow more predatory while the dust settles.”

“The criminals are no great loss. If Helion becomes more dangerous during the shuffle I doubt anyone will notice, not with everything else going on. But the merchants… that will be an issue…” Typh said with a sigh. “Did we lose anyone tied to us?”

“Several. Of particular concern are the deaths of Arnault Vatatzes and the Peiyon Gregoras. We needed them both to keep supplies flowing downstream from Rhelea and to keep your people fed. We’re less dependent on them now that the north has been subjugated, but—”

“Let’s not talk about the north right now,” Typh snapped, causing the remaining clerks surrounding the ratling to visibly flinch. The dragon exhaled and tried to let her anger go. She was almost successful. “Seize their assets for the time being. Say we’re investigating their murders and use the opportunity to quietly tie their estates closer to mine. Try not to forge too many documents, but if you need their blood to mark any contracts now would be the time to collect it. I want their businesses so intertwined with ours that by the time their heirs are sitting at the heads of their tables they can’t back out without facing financial ruin.”

“I’ll see it done, Lord Sovereign,” Halith bowed. With her words, a trio of attendants—two ratlings and one human—dipped their heads even lower and scurried off to vanish behind the heat-warped stage. 

“Now what actually happened here, because what I’m seeing looks exactly like what you said wouldn’t happen when you persuaded me to look the other way,” Typh intoned.

“We’re… not entirely sure,” Halith replied.

 

“There weren’t any survivors?” 

“None from the audience's side of the curtain—at least none that we can find. But a large portion of the merchandise—”

“Call them people, Halith.”

“Many of the people who were to be sold, have since reported their abduction and subsequent enslavement to the guard. From them, we know that everything was going normally until a bard was called to the stage… A level 42 bard,” the ratling paused.

“Eliza.”

“The descriptions match,” Halith said, bobbing her head up and down in what passed for a nod amongst her species. “Those in the cages reported hearing two verbal commands, each accompanied by a wave of power that forced them to obey. Several of the captured adventurers specified that it didn’t feel like mind magic. The effect they went on to describe lines up with the accounts we have of whatever it is she did in Rhelea, although this was obviously more violent in scope—more powerful too.”

“Specificity usually brings power…” Typh trailed off. “What were the commands?”

“To ‘Be Quiet,’ to ‘Freeze,’ and there was another third wave of power that preceded all the killing. None of the survivors heard it, but it doesn’t take a genius to extrapolate that it must have been some variation of ‘kill yourselves.’ ”

“System save us… She’s gotten stronger and more bloodthirsty. In Rhelea she could barely affect those in their third tier and those in their second could shrug it off if they tried. There must have been guards here equal to that and now they're all dead.” Halith’s tail twitched and Typh frowned. “What aren’t you telling me?”

“There were goblins present at the auction,” the ratling confessed.

“Explain.”

“As you suggested, there were classers present who were largely unaffected by Eliza’s commands including all the guards who weren’t part of the audience who were spared the final one. When they tried to escape or contain the slaughter, they were intercepted by a pair of goblins who were exceptionally thorough in ensuring that there were no armed survivors.”

“Two goblins fought off all of the Experience Merchant’s guards?”

“No. I believe the inquisitor you’re so fond of killed two as she escaped with Eliza and an as yet unidentified alchemist. But that's not the bad part.”

“How does this get any worse?” Typh asked.

“According to witnesses, the goblins were tagged as a Knight and a Queen,” Halith quickly answered. Typh immediately spun around to face the ratling, her golden dress billowing out around her as the dragon’s adjutant continued speaking. “There are an increasing number of reports of this particular pair throughout Helion. They’ve hit several reputable businesses we know to be tangentially involved with the Markets and again they were very thorough. We’re still finding the bodies, but we have enough independent statements to confirm both their tags and that their levels have reached at least level 60 in their new primary classes.”

“What are the tribes saying?”

“Nothing yet. They’re being cagey. I suspect they knew this—or something like it—was going to happen but have yet to firmly decide what they are going to do about it. Although, the fact that they aren’t all leaping to hunt them down is concerning.”

“A goblin civil war is more than just ‘concerning’. Do we even know how many of them there are within the city?”

“Estimates put their population as high as forty thousand, but we know they’ve spread beneath the surface so it could be much higher… It gets worse.”

“Halith, if you don’t tell me everything, I swear that I’m going to eat someone,” the dragon threatened.

“There has been significant interest from the kobold’s representatives and they aren’t viewing it with the disgust we’d expect or hope for. My office has also been inundated with sternly worded missives from the fungoids, earth sprites, wargs, satyrs, woodlings and every other species with a seat at the table all demanding to be kept in the loop.”

You are reading story Dragon’s Dilemma at novel35.com

“It’s been less than six hours.”  

“It has. I fear they’re viewing it as a test case before trying it for themselves—at this point, our reaction is almost as important as the goblins’.”

Typh closed her eyes and faced the hall. This was not a problem she wanted to deal with, but in hindsight, it was always bound to happen. The short-lived races she commanded didn’t want to be quite so short-lived and were apparently willing to risk their very sense of self to change that. The dragon balled her fists and breathed. In for eight and out for four as she tried to will away her anger, but there was so very much of it.

Instead, she did the next best thing and stuffed her fury down into its box. Someday when her authority wasn’t continuously being challenged she’d let it out, but for now she had to work.

“You’ve listed every major species under my banner except for your own?” Typh stated evenly. “Does the allure of all that power not tempt ratlings as well?”

“We don’t have nearly enough peak thirds for it to be an issue,” Halith replied and Typh could practically hear the unspoken ‘yet’.

The dragon frowned but said nothing. She couldn’t afford to alienate Halith, not when the ratling had made herself so vital to the smooth running of Typh’s domain. She desperately wanted Arilla’s comforting presence to ground her, to stop her from doing anything overly rash, but the warrior was too busy brooding to help and if they had another argument about the human’s refusal to kneel, she honestly might crack. 

Typh took another deep breath and resisted the urge to retreat to the warmth of her comfy bed.

“I want Eliza in custody. She’s too dangerous to be allowed to freely roam my city. Send third-tiers to bring her in—make it clear to them that if she’s in the company of Xan, or anyone else who could reasonably be the inquisitor in disguise, they are to back down and convey this message.”

“And that message is?”

“You can have your pet or the Inquisition can remain welcome in Terythia. You can’t have both.”

“Will that really work? You haven’t responded well to such ultimatums in the past.”

“It will work. Xan is a three-hundred-year-old force of nature. She has sacrificed everything for her duty to this country. She isn’t about to stop now over a bard. I on the other hand have never been so selfless—it's not the same as me and Arilla.”

“Very well… I’ll see it done,” Halith answered, and another attendant fled to presumably do just that. “And the goblins?”

Typh sighed. In many ways the goblins were her greatest asset even if they came with a whole host of increasingly dire problems.

“Get me a fucking carriage, I’ll see to them myself.”

“As you will it, Lord Sovereign.”

***

The opulent grandeur of the carriage did little to alleviate Typh’s rapidly souring mood. The horses pulling the vehicle along the cobbled road reeked of fear, naturally reacting to whatever combination of mana and fury was leaking out through her aura.

Despite the company of soldiers marching on either side of her carriage, their progress through Helion was torturously slow. The morning crowds had given way to a morning protest as soon as the local citizenry had realised exactly who was being driven through the busy street. Now her soldiers had to wade through a mass of angry civilians who hurled rocks almost as frequently as they did slurs.

Given the distance between Helion and its northern cities, Typh had been surprised to find out that the humans she ruled over even cared about the soldiers she’d killed. However, it seemed that the role of a country filled in for some of what humanity had lost when they’d been stripped of their species class—while no bonds tied their species together, Terythia itself seemed to unite them into something more than just a collection of individuals. 

Even though she recognised it as an immutable truth, she still didn’t understand why nationalism worked. Being proud of a place that was little more than dirt and lines on a map just didn’t sit right with her. Typh understood ownership and territory. Being proud of what you could produce and hoard made sense, but the sentimentality behind why one patch of identical dirt was better than another, was simply something she couldn’t comprehend. Those dead soldiers were strangers to her people—hostile ones literally intent on waging war on the city they called home—but now that they were dead, the people she’d spared from siege and carnage had now turned on her.

It was possible that in her failure to understand that patriotic zeal, she’d made a mistake in how she’d subjugated the north.

Outside the reinforced walls of her carriage, the people chanted “Monster!” at her. A delightfully ironic slur that she hoped they would never come to fully understand. There was the odd piece of florid prose that rose above the din and she would usually recognise the rhyme as something that had emerged from within the besieged palace, but by and large the protest seemed organic.

Given her foul mood, she was almost tempted to let her soldiers push back with more than just the buts of their spears, but that kind of thinking was how tyrants were deposed, and Typh was under no illusions that she was anything other than that.

The dragon drank deep on the amber liquid filling her tumbler. The harsh burn of the peaty whiskey energised her throat, but her vitality had grown far beyond this particular batch. She’d need something more potent to touch her, and that was just another thing on her plate to get around to. Once things calmed down a little—if they ever did—she promised herself to find better whiskey.

“You’re angry,” Halith said.

“Of course I am,” Typh replied.

“You can’t blame them for this. They’ve never had an opportunity like it and they likely never will again if it doesn’t work out.”

“Who? The humans?”

“No, this is entirely their fault. As you like to put it: fuck them,” the ratling swore. “I’m talking about the goblins. They’ve had it the worst of all of us.”

Typh raised an eyebrow, quietly urging the woman to go on and distract her from the unpleasant cacophony outside.

“I know that,” the dragon said.

“Do you? Do you really understand their plight?”

“You’re being awfully assertive, Halith.”

“We’re not in public, Typh, and I have it on good authority that you like assertive women.”

 

There was a long pause between them while the carriage crawled forwards to the chorus of impassioned jeers. The sound was muted somewhat by the wards etched into the reinforced wood, but the din outside was still very noticeable. Her perception skill gave her a perfect multi-sensory view of all that vitriolic hate, and it certainly wasn’t helping her calm down. It took all of her self-control to just sit there, letting it wash over her.

“You know I don’t do fur,” Typh eventually said, leaning into the distraction provided by the ratling’s company.

“That’s a good thing because I don’t do women—I don’t do anyone and I likely never will.”

“While I grieve for your lack of a sex life, what is this about?”

“Were I to ever engage in anything resembling romance, I would struggle to find a partner who saw me for anything other than my position. My subsequent entanglement would at best be used as a justification for my removal and at worst I would find myself replaced with whomever I chose for a lover,” Halith explained.

“You know I could change that. I could give you a title or formally declare you the leader of your people,” Typh offered.

“I appreciate the sentiment, but that's just not how we do things,” the ratling said, taking a sip of her drink. “You shouldn’t meddle in another species’ affairs, especially when you’ve yet to put in the effort of truly understanding them.”

“I understand you.”

“No you don’t, Typh. I understand that you’ve had a hard childhood—maybe even a hard life—but you are still a sovereign dragon. You have more magical and physical power by the nature of your birth than most of us will ever attain in our lifetimes, regardless of how hard we work for it. You will never die of old age, get sick, or grow frail. Your end will be a battle that you chose to fight. You may remember our history, and we may obey you, but do not make the mistake of thinking that you understand what it is to be one of us. We have our own cultures and rules that generally work better when our all-powerful-sovereign isn’t wading in with proclamations about who can speak for us and what we can do with our classes.”

“You gave me a very similar speech when you persuaded me to turn a blind eye to the Experience Markets.”

“I did, the Markets are after all a very human response to free classes. If they want to end them then it should be a human that does it. Although I do recall that I was much politer when I pushed for your apathy,” Halith said.

“And you want me to turn a blind eye to this as well?” Typh asked. “They’re breaking their greatest taboo.”

“They are breaking their taboo. Just because dragons have a similar one, doesn’t mean the goblins’ decision affects you. No one is forcing you to level your noble class to 200.”

“Does this mean you’re in favour of ratlings doing the same?”

“Publically, I’m very much against it. I’m already a progressive force amongst my kind because I happen to have a vagina and refuse to be relegated to a broodmare. I can’t afford to champion this issue without being deemed too radical. With that said, when I am eventually approached by a large enough group of peak-thirds I expect that I'll be very gracious when I reluctantly accept the new way of doing things.”

“Provided they make you their Queen.”

“I think I’d accept King as well. I like how Arilla has done it—so delightfully masculine—especially with all the implicit weakness in the word ‘Queen’.”

“I don’t think there’s any weakness associated with Queens.”

“You would think that.”

The two sat in their seats while the carriage rolled forwards another few feet. Typh stared at the drink in her hands and finished it, before moving to pour another.

“I’m going to ignore that tone,” Typh said. “So, the goblins have a Queen and I suppose I can live with that, provided she controls her people and obeys my commands.”

“Can you ask for much more?” Halith asked.

“I’m a dragon. I can demand whatever the fuck I want…” she said, pausing to take another deep drink while a horse whinnied up ahead. “I suppose the challenge lies in making sure that whoever emerges from the bloodbath the goblins are about to start remains loyal to me. They are breaking their biggest cultural taboo—and if it goes well for them, then potentially a lot more than just goblins will be racing past their species caps. I don’t want any reactionaries down the line pointing the finger at me and saying it only happened because of my meddling.”

“I couldn’t have said it better than myself,” the ratling agreed. “You’re learning.”

“It’s easy to get better at this when it’s so endless. Now let's finish our drinks and figure out how to resolve this without resorting to any violence. You said it yourself, I don’t understand what it’s like to be a goblin, and I want to make sure that both sides see me as their rightful sovereign.”

The dragon extended her hand and without any hesitation, the ratling clinked her glass against Typh’s and together they both took a deep drink. When the dragon swallowed the liquid down her throat, she could have sworn that it tasted just a little bit sweeter as the surges of anger quietened with the belief that just this once, everything would be okay.

And then the carriage exploded all around them. Chunks of wood and plush velvet flew through the air, while the two nonhumans were tossed up into the sky. 

The crowd roared their vicious approval and then the much-maligned violence really started.

You can find story with these keywords: Dragon’s Dilemma, Read Dragon’s Dilemma, Dragon’s Dilemma novel, Dragon’s Dilemma book, Dragon’s Dilemma story, Dragon’s Dilemma full, Dragon’s Dilemma Latest Chapter