[POV: Jin]
What was this? A lizard with wings?
No, that wasn't right. It looked like some strange amalgamation of a lizard and a bat, yet my senses insisted that it was kin. That only made it more unsettling. It possessed the same golden scales and ferocious draconic presence as myself, but its body was fundamentally different. A pair of enormous, lizard-like wings extended from its back, giving the creature a silhouette that was both familiar and completely alien.
Where I possessed the natural grace of a dragon, this creature radiated something far more violent. Its presence pressed down upon the surroundings with an almost tangible force, reminding me strangely of the asuras I had heard about in ancient records.
And then there was its name.
Sloth?
What kind of name was that?
The sheer absurdity of the situation momentarily overwhelmed me. Between the strange creature before me, its bizarre transformation, and the pressure radiating from its body, I lost my initiative. That single moment of hesitation was enough.
Sloth disappeared.
Before I could react, a violent gust erupted from a single beat of his enormous wings. His figure blurred across the distance, and his claws seized my tail with the ease of a human grabbing a rope.
The world spun around me as he slammed me into the ground.
The impact shattered trees and sent chunks of earth flying in every direction. The ground beneath me cratered from the force, and for a moment, I couldn't comprehend how something that appeared so strange and inferior in form could possess such overwhelming physical strength.
I immediately twisted my body and slithered free.
I put distance between us while channeling thunder and lightning qi through my body, using it to accelerate my movement.
However, Sloth didn't give me the opportunity to recover. Roots erupted from the ground. It was a wood-attribute spell. They wrapped around my body from every direction, binding my limbs and constricting my serpentine form. I tore through them with my claws, ripping the roots apart one after another, but that brief struggle had accomplished exactly what Sloth wanted.
He had bought himself time.
By the time I freed myself, his enormous shadow had already covered me.
Sloth descended from above and slammed into me with his full weight. The impact drove me into the earth. I struggled beneath him, but the difference in physical strength was becoming painfully obvious.
I was being dominated.
I had fought my kin before. I had exchanged blows with dragons of various bloodlines and attributes, and I had never encountered one capable of overwhelming me so thoroughly through sheer physical strength.
Desperate, I unleashed thunder and lightning qi through my scales. The violent energy surged outward, intent on harming my offender. However, nothing happened. My eyes widened in awe at the very sight of my qi being nullified.
No.
That couldn't be right.
Every living thing in the universe possessed qi. Even dragons relied upon it. Our bodies might possess different affinities and inheritances, but qi was the foundation upon which life itself operated. Yet my qi simply vanished against his golden scales.
I had never encountered a dragon capable of doing this.
Not once.
Sloth's entire bulk remained firmly planted on top of me. One claw seized my tail while another locked around my neck, preventing me from twisting free. There was no room left for restraint. I opened my maw. The full might of my dragon's breath erupted directly into his face. Thunder and lightning roared through the forest. The brilliance illuminated the ruined landscape, turning the surrounding trees into black silhouettes against the violent torrent. Sloth didn't let go. His claws remained exactly where they were. His posture didn't even shift. I poured more power into my breath.
The attack continued, lasting for ten breaths, then twenty, then thirty, and perhaps more. My dragon's breath finally began to weaken. The torrent dwindled into scattered arcs of lightning before becoming nothing more than wisps of embers drifting from my maw. I was exhausted.
Sloth looked down at me with pity in his eyes.
"It seems I've overestimated you," he said calmly, almost disappointed. "And here I actually tried hard to devise a strategy to deal with you."
My heart sank at the thought of him holding back.
Sloth reached down and grabbed my jaw. His claws forced my maw open. I struggled. I suddenly became aware of this mysterious creature, and genuine fear began to overwhelm me. My survival instincts screamed at me that this was extremely dangerous.
I watched as energy began gathering inside Sloth.
When he released it, his dragon's breath poured directly into my open maw. The moment it entered my body, I felt something fundamentally wrong. The strange energy coursing through him became clearer to my senses. It wasn't qi or any of the elemental power I recognized. It was something far stranger. It was some form of dimensional energy that did not belong to this world. Perhaps it didn't even belong to this plane of existence.
My body began to glow from within. Cracks of brilliant draconic flame spread beneath my scales. I tried to resist, but there was nothing I could do. My body burst apart from the inside. Motes of draconic flame scattered through the atmosphere, illuminating the ruined forest with fragments of golden light.
Above my perished body stood the winged golden dragon.
For a moment, I could only stare.
Even in death, some fragment of my consciousness remained, allowing me to witness the sight before me. He cut an imposing figure against the ruined mountains. The golden scales. The enormous wings. The overwhelming draconic presence. The absolute confidence of his posture.
He reminded me of the Dragon King from the legends of my childhood.
As an Eighth Tier dragon, I had witnessed countless extraordinary phenomena throughout my existence. I had seen ancient beasts, immortals, and battles that could shake mountains. Yet none of them could compare to this mysterious existence standing before me.
Perhaps the Goldenreach Mountains had gained a new master after all.
…
..
.
[POV: Sloth]
I didn't think I'd win that easily.
Either I had severely overestimated the dragon, or this had been an exceptionally bad matchup for him.
Canonically, dragons in LWO had magic-resistant scales. Most named dragons even possessed complete magic immunity, which was a massive headache for solo players like me who relied heavily on a caster-oriented class.
That was why the result bothered me.
I had a faint feeling that the dragon I had just fought didn't possess any meaningful magic resistance at all. He had been snuffed out by a single dragon's breath from my Wild Shape. I'd once spent more than a dozen dragon-breath runs against an elite dragon in the wilds before finally taking it down. I remembered that fight clearly because it had been incredibly tedious.
So why had this one been so easy?
The dragon's stats certainly hadn't suggested that. I had seen his health. It had been so enormous that I immediately switched into full serious mode. Yet the performance of the actual dragon had been completely inconsistent with those numbers.
Something wasn't adding up.
I undid my Wild Shape and returned to my human form. I still had plenty of energy to burn, so instead of standing around in the middle of the ruined forest, I decided to take a stroll. While walking, I also experimented with my summons.
There was a faint connection between us.
It wasn't exactly telepathy, at least not in the conventional sense. I could somehow perceive them, and they could perceive my intentions. It was difficult to put into words. The connection felt almost like a thought traveling somewhere beyond myself before being picked up by another mind.
I was going to need time to get used to it.
Practice, basically.
The same applied to Wild Shape.
When I had transformed into a dragon, moving my body had felt strange. It wasn't anything like controlling an avatar in VR. There was no artificial interface smoothing out my movements, no automated adjustment to my perspective, and no invisible system compensating for my lack of familiarity.
I actually had to move the body. I sighed at the thought. This was going to require more work. Since I clearly wasn't going to be logging out anytime soon, I guessed I might as well take my time and explore this world.
There was only one problem. I was getting really sleepy. I rubbed my eyes.
"Hm."
I had no idea what kind of world this was. I didn't even know whether I was still somewhere within the world of LWO or had been transported into an entirely different reality. But I figured that wherever there was civilization, there ought to be a comfortable bed somewhere. If there were humans or humanoid races with sufficient intelligence to build civilizations, then surely they'd invented beds. Right? That seemed like a pretty basic technological achievement. I decided to look around from the air.
"Wild Shape: Hawk."
My body shrank as feathers replaced skin, my bones becoming lighter as a pair of wings spread from my body. A moment later, I was airborne. I circled around the mountains, gaining altitude as I surveyed the surrounding landscape.
I guessed the dragon had called this place the Goldenreach Mountains.
There wasn't much resemblance to the Skyrend Mountains I knew from LWO. That confirmed it. I really had been transported somewhere completely unknown. As I flew overhead, I noticed my slimes were still hard at work. Or, more accurately, they were still eating everything in sight.
They had already consumed a considerable portion of the forest.
I mentally reached toward them.
"Find something else to eat."
The response was almost immediate. They paused and looked around, waiting for the rest of my orders. I could just unsummon them, but I felt unsafe. I'd need them to stay around, meaning they had to do something. If left alone with nothing to do, they'd resort to wandering about, which would have far more fearsome consequences than deforesting an entire area. I considered the mountains below.
"Try the mountain instead. Dig a cave or something and eat your way inside."
That seemed considerably more sensible than having them casually erase the landscape.
There were actually some positive outcomes to what they were doing. The slimes could consume organic matter and minerals, and their activities would probably have some effect on the environment. But those benefits were the kind of thing that would only become apparent generations later. Right now, they were simply destroying the forest. To my surprise, the slimes immediately changed direction. They bounced toward the mountain.
I watched them begin digging.
"...Huh."
This new method of controlling summons might actually be more effective than the UI. It would require practice on my part, obviously, but I could already see the potential. With the UI, I had to consciously navigate menus, select summons, issue commands, and keep track of everything happening on the battlefield. This was different. I only had to think. The summons seemed to pick up on my intentions almost immediately. With enough practice, I could probably make decisions faster and more accurately this way. That was unexpectedly convenient.
I continued circling through the sky.
Eventually, I spotted something that didn't belong in the wilderness. It was signs of civilization. A palace stood at the top of the mountains. I angled my wings and flew closer. The architecture was unfamiliar. It didn't resemble anything from LWO's established cultural sphere. The buildings had red roofs with edges that curved dramatically upward, creating an appearance I couldn't quite place.
I stared at it for a while.
"What kind of architecture is that?"
I had no answer. I descended toward the palace. Once I was close enough, I undid my Wild Shape and returned to human form. I landed near the entrance and cautiously stepped inside.
"Hello?"
My voice echoed through the halls, but there was no response. I frowned. The place felt abandoned. Furniture had been overturned, layers of dust covered the floors, and one of the pillars appeared to have been chewed by something.
I stared at the damaged pillar.
"What?"
It was a weird sight.
From the outside, the palace looked surprisingly well maintained. There were no obvious signs of decay, and the structure itself remained intact. Inside, however, it looked as though someone had simply left one day and never returned.
I wandered through the halls, ignoring the huge painting of the golden dragon.
Eventually, I found the bed chambers.
This part of the palace was in considerably better condition than the others. The room was clean, the furniture was intact, and the bed itself appeared to have been regularly maintained. I didn't think too much about it. I was too tired. I walked over and collapsed onto the bed. The mattress sank beneath me.
I yawned, pulled the blanket over myself, and closed my eyes.
"Yeah..."
I sank deeper into the mattress.
"This is the stuff of dreams, alright."