Chương 76: Chapter 77: Dragon? Dragon

Dragon We're not too far from where I met Wrax the first time. I'm pretty sure that means we're in higher level territory now. So outside of the 'reach' of the Sylvan Lords.

"You met him near here?" Ash asks.

"Do we want to go looking for him?"

"I've never eaten dragon meat," El says.

"I don't think we can kill him," I say.

"He may only be level thirty, but he has a hundred and fifty thousand hit points." El lets out a whistle.

"Yeah, that'll take a while."

"I was thinking about taking him up on his offer," Ash says.

"Let him kill us and level us back up a few times. Get the increase in stats like Caleb has. Maybe spend some time practicing skills and spells and abilities while we're at it. Do you think he'll be willing to do it with three of us?"

"I'm not sure I want to play," El says.

"I don't like the idea of dying over and over again."

"You end up a lot stronger," I point out.

"And yeah, I think he'd be willing to do it with three of us. If not, I'm sure I could convince him."

"I do want to be stronger," El says.

"But still. Dying hurts, doesn't it?" I nod.

"Since when are you afraid of pain?"

"I'm not afraid of pain," she says.

"But I am afraid of dying."

"Why?" Ash asks.

"We've died before."

"Yeah, but that doesn't count. We weren't killed. We just didn't make it to the right place in time. We didn't die; we got reset."

"I've died," I point out.

"Since then. Twice, in fact. I'm still me, I'm still here."

"We don't know that," she says.

"You came back hotter, but how do we know that it's the same you? Like, aren't you someone new now that you've died? You don't have your original body anymore." Ash looks down at herself.

"None of us have our original bodies," she says.

"Yeah," she says.

"I guess that's true. But still, I don't know that-- I'm not sure- I don't want to die."

"Okay," I say.

"You don't have to die."

"You're going to fall behind if you don't," Ash says.

"That's true," I say.

"Potentially really far behind." El grinds one foot into the ground.

"I still don't like it," she says.

"Just try it one time," Ash says.

"You can go after we do, so that you know what it's like."

"Can we not talk about this anymore?" El asks. She doesn't like admitting that she's scared. But I understand. Death is scary. It's been drilled into our heads for our entire lives that death is, probably, the end. We've been told that staying alive is important, that there's nothing more important. I get it; I don't like dying either. Just the concept of it bothers me. But the bottom line is that if we can find Wrax, taking him up on his offer is going to be for the best.

We'll be improving ourselves over everyone else, breaking the game system to make ourselves more powerful. It'll make a huge difference against other players, and in general in the world. But the cost is going to be pretty extreme. Death could be a major change. What if the constant death makes life less important, less valuable? What if it changes who we are and how we see the world? What if it changes our personalities? That's something to watch out for. If we start to change, we can put an end to the experiment.

First, though, we have to find Wrax. We have to hunt him down. The only good part is that he is likely looking for me, too. If he finds us or we find him, we can move on to the whole leveling and getting killed thing. We continue on the road, hoping that the exposed area will be visible from the sky, so that Wrax can see us if he flies overhead. As we travel, I eventually find a track that I've been looking forward to finding for almost a week. Bargheast tracks. And from the smell of the trail, they're nearby.

I draw my sword. Gigi and El draw their own weapons. Just in time, too. Almost as soon as we draw our weapons, the creatures leap out of the underbrush and attack. Bargheast. Rare elite monster level 24. HP: 6, 000/6, 000. There are six of them, and they quickly move to surround us, two attacking each of us. I use a Bleeding Strike on one of them, dealing 366 damage as it leaps forward to bite me. I chop at its mouth and avoid the teeth, but the one behind me bites for 34 damage.

There's something cathartic about this fight. It isn't a particularly difficult fight. I have more hit points than I did last time, I do more damage, and my stats are universally better. I'm also several levels higher than I was last time I fought them. I almost don't even bother with Mab's Rage, figuring that I can take them out slowly and carefully. But then I remember that one of the goals is to get my spells to higher levels, so I should be using Mab's Rage every time I can.

I cast the spell, and the swirling cold wind starts to pick up, ripping away at each of the bargheasts as they try to outmaneuver us. They're slowed down, and I use that to my advantage when the next one leaps at me, skewering it on my blade for 524 damage, tossing it aside in time to dodge the second one's attack. Stolen novel; please report. Mab's Rage makes the battle even faster. By the time the spell ends, the fight is essentially over.

Gigi and El both finish their enemies before I finish mine, but they don't have the time to even come and help me before I put the last of the bargheasts down. The whole battle, they only did 640 damage to me. That's not even enough to get my Shell below three thousand. I make sure to skin the bargheasts on the road, where Wrax will be able to see. And by the time I finish skinning them, the dragon does, in fact, find us. He lands much more gently than he did the first time, not digging up the road at all.

He just flares his wings as he gets close to the ground, flapping them a few times to get rid of his forward momentum, and then lands heavily on his paws. Wrax. Legendary rare elite dragon, level 30. HP: 150, 000/150, 000.

"Hello Wrax," I say, waving to him. I don't put my sword down, just in case. He looks at me.

"You've made level thirty," he says. He sounds disappointed.

"I needed the extra talent," I say.

"But it will make the cost of your resurrection higher." He glances briefly at El and Ash, but doesn't say anything to them yet.

"So we add a few more levels on top of this," I say.

"Then you kill me."

"Will you then reach this level again before you find me?"

"About that," I say. I gesture to Ash and El.

"We were thinking that we could find a safe place and set that as our regeneration site. Then we could do this all much faster."

"The three of you, then?" Wrax asks.

"You're not going to try to convince me not to kill you?"

"We're going to let you do it," Ash says.

"To exploit the system and get more power."

"What is in it for me?" Wrax asks.

"What's in it for you? This was your idea," I say.

"You're the one who wanted me to be able to take on the god slayer. I'm offering you a better chance to do it. Three of us will be better at it than one. More likely to win."

"Still."

"You get the experience it takes to help us level up," Ash says.

"We would only be leveling one at a time. The rest of us will be training skills, abilities, and spells. You would level one of us up, then slay that one and pick up the next of us. So you're always getting half of the experience it takes to level us up. That should help you level up, won't it?" Wrax considers this for a moment.

"This is a good point," he says.

"I do want more power for myself as well."

"And if you like it, I'd rather go down fighting," El says.

"So you can have a fight with me every couple of days."

"That is not especially appealing," Wrax says.

"You will lose your equipment if we fight and I kill you."

"I'll put my equipment in my bag, except for one weapon," she says.

"Then we'll fight."

"That could be amusing," Wrax agrees.

"And you are already high enough level to kill. But we need to find you all a safe space first." He taps one huge claw against his teeth.

"This is difficult. I cannot carry the three of you comfortably." I look at him. He looks like he could pick up a wagon in his claws and fly away with it, horse and all. But he's only so big. Is it a matter of not being able to carry the weight, or a matter of not being able to fit us on his back?

"Can you carry us uncomfortably?" Ash asks. Wrax nods.

"I can carry two of you in my claws. It will be uncomfortable, potentially painful, but it will not be deadly."

"Fine then," Ash says.

"You can carry me."

"Me too," El says, not wanting to be outdone. She seems to be responding to her own fear with an aggressive desire to prove that she's not scared. I don't know if she's fooling herself, but I hope so.

"Very well," Wrax says. He turns his snake like head towards me.

"Climb aboard as you did before," he says.

"We will fly to my den. Then I will be able to reward you as well, the reward I owe you from last time. The women I will grip each in a claw. Hold tight, because I will endeavor not to squeeze hard enough to harm you." I get another level of riding as I jam my feet under the scales and Wrax takes off. I can hear the girls grunting in pain as he crushes them a little bit to be able to leap up into the air and unfurl his wings, but we're soon flying through the air.

He takes us towards the mountains on the edge of the forest, taking us up a few hundred feet to a cave. It's cold riding on his back, though I imagine the girls are plenty warm wrapped up in his talons. I just hope he isn't hurting them too much. When we arrive in his den, I see that it's a giant cave. It's so big that it dwarfs Wrax, even though he is the size of a school bus. If he tripled in size, he would still easily fit here. I wonder if he'll get bigger when he levels up.

There is a hoard of gold and silver, all in a pile that looks like it's meant for sleeping on. A nest of coins and bones. Then, along the walls of the cave, there are suits of armor, weapons racks, and even a book shelf. He has it all artfully arranged so that a person could walk through it and admire his collection, or so that he could admire it himself from inside his nest. The cave itself is dry and open, with plenty of room for all of us.

There are a few pools of liquid that could be water or could be acid around the cave, but they're easy enough to avoid. Wrax drops the girls before coming in for a landing, and they fall heavily to the floor. They're both back on their feet by the time I slide off his back, though. And neither of them have lost any hit points, though I can't say for sure how strong their Shells still are.

"So I will take one of you out to level you up, while the other two remain here and practice your other skills and such?" he asks.

"Who wishes to go first?" Ash steps forward.

"I do," she says.

"Get me to level thirty nine and then kill me."

"Very well." Wrax looks at me, then gestures to his collection of weapons and armor.

"Take your pick of whatever item you wish to have. But take only one; these things are special to me."

"We can get you more treasure when we level up, if you like," Ash says.

"I may be amenable to that," Wrax says. Then he takes a deep breath and lets it out as a sigh.

"Before we go, you must set this as your respawn point." He seems a bit hesitant.

"Are you sure you're okay with that?" I ask him.

"It will be much better than having to retrieve you from the city," he says to me.

"I am not thrilled to have three adventurers in my lair. But we are allied now, are we not?"

"We are," I say.

"But I understand you not wanting us in your space." He nods.

"It runs counter to my instincts," he says. Then he huffs a sound that I'm pretty sure is a laugh.

"Then again, at least I get to kill the intruders a few times." He turns to Ash.

"Climb upon my back. Wedge your feet beneath my scales as Caleb has done, and hold on tight. We will not be traveling far, but we will be going fast." I find the menu that allows me to reset where my spawn location is, and set the current location as my respawn point. A timer begins counting down from twenty four hours before I can set it again. I nod in confirmation and look over at Ash and El. They both nod, El more solemnly than Ash.

Ash starts to climb up his back, quickly finding the area between the spikes on his back where I sat, and wedges her feet under the scales.

"Do you have a ranged attack?" I ask her.

"I have a spell," she assures me.

"Then stay on his back and just use that spell," I say.

"You have to participate in the battle to get the experience, but it'll be faster if you let him do most of the killing."

"Indeed it will," Wrax says.

"I am mighty, and my attacks are deadly." He preens a little bit.

"Okay," Ash says, putting her shield on her back and pulling a bow out of her spatial bag.

"I'm not great with this, but I can use it to help." The two of them fly off. This time, Wrax gets a running start and leaps out of his cave and into the air. Ash screams like she's on a roller coaster, and I hear the sound of her laughing fade away as they fly off.