I had ten seconds to act before we hit bottom, so I scrambled as quickly as I could up to the dragon's head. “I'm sorry about this.” I said and took out my sword, activated all the enchantments on it and my armor, making both glow, then I shoved the blade deep into the dragon's right eye.
“ROOOOOOOWWWWRRRRR!!!!” The dragon yelled in pain.
I held the hilt and gently kicked off as I activated my Lightning ring and boosted it with my armor's power. “I'm really sorry.” I said and channelled everything into the sword.
The entire chasm lit up and I let the hilt go. The Lightning still arced to the sword as it acted like a conductor and all that power went right into the dragon's brain. Both eyeballs burst as the dragon convulsed. I could easily see the bottom now and just before I hit, I activated Featherfall.
The dragon was too focused on my attack to deploy its wings, so it hit the ground at nearly terminal velocity. Since the thing was gigantic, it weighed a lot and had a lot of mass, which meant when it hit without slowing itself down like I had, its slightly softer underbelly was pretty much crushed.
I was very glad that I had worn my full suit of armor, because I was in front of the mouth as a lot of the dragon's guts and blood spewed out and slammed into me. I was pushed back against the wall of the chasm until it stopped and it left me covered from head to toe in gore as I stood in a giant pool of mulched dragon insides.
Luckily, one of the enchantments was the magic equivalent of no sticking, so all that blood and gore slid right off. Eventually. I had to jump up and down a couple of times to get some of the smaller chunks to dislodge and fall to the ground. I ended the Lightning attack and activated my Light ring to light up the area. I walked over to the dragon's head, pulled out the sword, and flicked it to get the residue off of it and stored it.
____
Congratulations! You have defeated the Legendary Dragon of the Tell Mountains as a Level 64 combatant without any fighting abilities. You faced death and mocked it, even though you don't have any points in stats or skills. Extra bonuses for Daredevil and Reckless apply. Good Job!
Experience earned: 8,950,435 (x1)
Daredevil Bonus (x3): 26,851,305
Reckless Bonus (x2): 17,900,870
First Legendary Kill Bonus: 5,000,000
Grand Total: 58,702,610 Experience Points
____
You have proven that the Daredevil and Reckless skills are insufficient for the way you throw yourself into danger and they have been combined into singular skill, Battle Crazy. You live for battle and gain experience bonuses every time you fight, for any reason or in any capacity. Grants skills Blood Frenzy (Strength skill), Multiple Opponent Combat (Agility Skill), You Are Nothing To Me (Charisma / Intimidation skill)
____
Total Levels gained: 35
Stat Points available for distribution: 350 + 640 unspent = 990
Skills unlocked: 0 (none are locked)
Skill points available: 175 + 270 unspent = 445
____
Congratulations! You have reached the level cap of 99.
Devourer class specific skills are now safe to use without repercussion.
Experience Overload Bonus: Extra experience gained can be converted to Stat Points or Skill Points at the cost of 1,000 Experience for 1 point.
Unspent Experience: 11,256,899
Current Point Potential: 11,256
____
“Jesus fucking Christ!” I yelled at the popups in front of me. “That can't be real! It can't!” I walked around and my armored boots squelched in the dragon's guts. “On the last world, once I reached the level cap, that was it. All other experience I gained was wasted. I couldn't store them and it didn't let me gain extra stat points or skill points, which was why I was so limited at the end.”
I hadn't formed my question into a prayer or thought about the Goddess Jasindia while asking it, so I didn't really expect an answer. I shook my head at the ridiculousness of the situation.
One dragon. I thought in disbelief. If I had met it first, I think I would have reached Level 99 right away, especially since I was level 1 at the time. I looked at the slightly deflated corpse of the thing and wondered what I was going to do with it. I was going to need proof that I killed it, so I needed to take the head.
I got to work and used my sword to pry up the scales on the dragon's neck and then took my time sawing the head off. It took a while. Just because it was dead, it didn't stop the body from resisting both physical and magical attacks. I didn't spend any points to make myself stronger, either. My eight rings gave me +120 Strength, which meant the cap was pretty high, probably the same as my armor at 999.
The math didn't work for a balance, which meant I would normally have to divide the points up and focus on the stats I used the most. With the experience overload conversion, I had a very hard decision to make. Did I make them all stat points, all skill points, split them evenly or skew them one way or the other? Do I focus on skills and leave my stats, or do I ignore the skills and pump my stats up?
I had fifteen stats to level up, which was insane, since each supposedly needed 999, which was 14,985 points. With my current potential and my actual points, I only had 12,246. Which sucks. The worst part, I had tons of skills that were currently at level one. I knew they would only take 99, just like my level, so I could potentially level 123 skills to max, assuming they were able to level.
It was quite the mess, especially since if I left myself with no stats or skills, the bonuses and experience I gained would be much better than if I tried pumping myself up. If I stayed the way I was, I could never remove my armor, not without severely risking myself like I had when having sex with the cat woman. I sighed at my squishy normal body, because reinforcing myself now would hamper my experience gains and slow my progress down to a crawl.
I held out my hands. “Protection.” I moved my left hand. “Potential.” I moved my right hand. I pretended they were scales and moved them up and down as I thought over the risk and reward system that I had almost no experience with. I quickly glanced at my basic status and the stats were the same ones that I had at level one, and then I looked at the long list of skills that were also still level one. My hands moved up and down for several minutes as I debated.
“Aww, fuck it.” I said and dropped my right hand of potential and held up the left for protection. “I'll add 500 to each of my stats and then use the rest of the points to distribute across all of my skills.”
I stored the severed head and sat down on the dragon's body as I started to add the stat points. I knew I was limiting myself and my growth, because I would only gain minimal experience from now on with my stats so high. I couldn't justify staying in danger of being hurt, though. I looked at my status before I confirmed permanently what I was doing. What was funny was that it didn't show me the enchantment bonuses from my armor or rings, only my own personal stats and powers.
____
Damon (Level 99) Status:
| Body: | Strength | 600 | Reflexes | 600 | ||
| Recovery | (+) 530 | Agility | (+) 550 | |||
| Resilience | (+) 570 | Dexterity | (+) 550 | |||
| Mind: | Intelligence | 600 | Charisma | 600 | ||
| Alertness | (+) 540 | Intuition | (+) 525 | |||
| Wisdom | (+) 560 | Willpower | (+) 575 | |||
| Magic: | Mana | 600 | ||||
| Offensive | (+) 590 | |||||
| Defensive | (+) 510 |
I looked them over and I debated the need for them to be evened out as I second guessed my choice to put 500 points into each of them. I cursed at myself for my indecision and chose to accept the current layout as official and spent 7,500 points of my 12,246 and it left 4,746 for me to spread over my skills.
Since I didn't want to cut myself off from being able to add points if I gained new skills, I only added 45 points into the 80 skills I had, which cost me 3,600 points. It left me with 1,146 points for new skills and I was very happy for that, because any more experience I gained, I could save for stat points.
With all my decisions made and my course set, I stood up and looked at the dragon's body. I thought about just storing it and possibly having something made from it or selling it. With my personal stats so high, I would have no trouble storing it. I looked over the mess it had made and then realized that I was standing on a pile of gold.
“Yeah, all right. Decision made.” I said and touched the dragon's body. I used my now Level 45 Compression skill and it sucked up all the expelled guts and blood as the dragon's headless corpse was squeezed into a round ball in only a few seconds. It was surprisingly close to the size of the stone that blocked the entrance to the cave system. I used my Level 45 Shrink skill to reduce it in size to something I could fit inside my mouth, then I used my Devourer class special ability and ate it.
It didn't have the capacity to level, which meant it had always been at full power. I felt a little light headed as my body consumed everything that the dragon was. I stumbled and sat down as all of the loot and things it had gathered and owned were pulled into my inventory. I had to cast Calmness and Clarity on myself to stop from passing out as the dragon's skills and abilities folded into my own. My body shook as some of my base stats jumped up a considerable amount.
Even with the two spells helping me, my mind reeled as my body adjusted to consuming a Legendary Creature. I hadn't eaten anything like it before, so my experience with these things was sorely lacking. I developed a splitting headache and held my head as I bent over to try and mitigate the side effects of the process. I cast several spells and nothing worked, not even Major Healing.
Whatever was wrong with me was all mental damage and I would have to suffer through it. Or not.
My Clarity and Calmness spells suddenly cut off. It felt like the headache filled every part of my brain and I couldn't take it anymore as I fell unconscious.
*
“He has been gone too long.” The Freemartin said several hours later.
“He is the Savior.” One of the cat women said. “He will return when he is done.”
“Done with what? He was only supposed to scout for the dragon.” The Freemartin said.
The cat women looked at each other and then back at her.
“Scout?” The favorite cat woman asked. “Did you not see him? Did you not listen to him?”
“I don't know what you mean.” The Freemartin said.
“He was going to look for it so he could kill it.” The favorite said. “He won't be back until he accomplishes that task.”
“How do you know that?” The Freemartin asked.
“He killed Fangtooth and everyone else in the rogue clan that kidnapped us.” She said. “Then he wiped out a Coon village of thieves in an instant.”
“In... an instant.” The Freemartin whispered and the cats nodded.
“He claimed me in the leader's bed surrounded by loot.” The favorite said. “It was glorious.”
“He changed his birth machine from a smooth shaft to barbs.” One of the others said.
“Not just the ones on the end to make us prepared, either. They were all over.”
The Freemartin didn't say anything in response.
“Do not worry, he is not part of our clan.” The favorite said. “Although, I hope he will become one.”
“He would make a very fine King.” One of the others said and the four cat women lightly purred. “We would have many kittens for him.”
“Litters and litters of them.” The favorite said and her purring grew loud. “Perhaps if I still had my tail, he would bless me.”
“I don't think our lack of a tail bothers him.” One of them said.
“We could ask.” Another said.
“No. If he says it does, we would be shamed by him as we will be when we return to the village.” The last one said. “We will stay quiet about it and not bother him.”
The others nodded in agreement.
The Freemartin looked over at the closest mountain and wondered what the metal man was doing right then. She imagined a long and drawn out battle, the two competitors looking for weaknesses in the other, then they charge and butt heads. They circle around and size each other up, hoping to catch the other off-guard, then they charge in for the kill.
She felt her body react to the imagined fight and hoped that her new Tup was strong enough to live after the dragon defeated him. She would hate to go back to the herd and tell them that she had lost him to the dragon and needed to return. She imagined the look on her mother's face if she had to tell her that the metal man who promised to defend her land was dead.
No, he's alive. He has to be. The Freemartin thought and sat in the cart as she waited for him to return. She wasn't sure why she was starting to feel desperate to have him back by her side.
*
“Ugggghhhhh.” I groaned as I opened my eyes and looked up at the thick darkness of the chasm I was currently at the bottom of. My headache wasn't as bad now and I had no clue how long I was out. My body was stiff and I sat up. The chasm was completely empty, so all that glittering gold I had seen before was all in my inventory. When I checked it, I also had a few hundred tons of metal ore.
“What the f...” I stopped myself before I cursed at the absurd amount and what kinds it was. Gold, silver, iron, copper, nickel, lead, aluminum, zinc, platinum, and tin were in their own slots and there was a lot of it. Iron had the most with copper right behind it. Gold and aluminum were behind that and silver was a very close fifth.
I shook my head at it, because of what it represented. The dragon apparently owned the mountain, or possibly all the mountains in the area. When I absorbed it and its assets were automatically looted by my ability to absorb it, all of the metal ore it owned was funnelled right into my inventory. I didn't have to mine it or even go looking for it. I increased the intensity of the Light I was emitting and looked at the chasm wall to see large veins of ore missing from it.
“Oh, crap.” I said and looked up, only to see 60 feet of illuminated rock face that was starting to crumble and another 60 feet past that was dimly lit and I could still see it crumbling. A low rumble started above me and I quickly ran around until I found a relatively clear rock surface. I jumped as high as I could and dug my armored hands into the rock face and climbed as fast as I could.
Ten seconds of falling meant that I had a very long way to climb. The chasm I was in was rumbling louder as all the spaces inside the rock that the ore used to be in started to collapse. On the plus side, I was a hell of a lot stronger and faster than I was before. I climbed up the side of the chasm as fast as I had run using just my armor.
A large chunk of rock popped out of the side of the chasm and slid out, then it dropped down towards me. I activated the enchantments on the armor and pulled myself in close to the rock face and held on. The chunk hit the side and tumbled a little faster, struck the wall just above where my hands were and the edge slammed into the top of my helm. The clang of metal was very loud and hurt my ears, as well as having a hundred tons or so of rock compressing my neck. The rock flipped over and dropped down into the darkness and I cast a Major Healing spell on myself.
The pain eased on my neck and I continued to climb as rock, dirt, and debris rolled down past me and the rumbling sounds picked up. Luckily, there were no more large pieces to endanger me from above and I kept climbing. I passed by the spot where the large chunk of rock had come from and saw it had a large empty spot behind it, which meant the ore had been holding the thing in place.
I looked around and saw similar spots were scattered all over the rock face and was glad that I had started climbing when I did. If I had stayed at the bottom, I would have been crushed and probably buried. Being strong and having armor could only do so much when part of a mountain fell on top of you.
I kept climbing and the rumbling seemed to settle down as I neared the top of the chasm. I felt relief that the ore was down much lower and I wasn't in as much danger now. Thankfully, I was on the right side of the chasm and pulled myself up into the cave entrance. I laid down to catch my breath and to let my stamina recover... and it did so in under sixty seconds.
I felt fine and sat up, not understanding how I could recover from that long of a climb so quickly, that is until I looked at my status again.
____
Damon (Level 99) Status:
| Body: | Strength | 999 | Reflexes | 600 | ||
| Recovery | (+) 999 | Agility | (+) 550 | |||
| Resilience | (+) 999 | Dexterity | (+) 550 | |||
| Mind: | Intelligence | 800 | Charisma | 800 | ||
| Alertness | (+) 740 | Intuition | (+) 725 | |||
| Wisdom | (+) 760 | Willpower | (+) 775 | |||
| Magic: | Mana | 999 | ||||
| Offensive | (+) 999 | |||||
| Defensive | (+) 999 |
“Jesus fucking Christ!” I yelled at the massive stat boosts and sat there as I stared at the results of absorbing a legendary dragon.
I had ten seconds to act before we hit bottom, so I scrambled as quickly as I could up to the dragon's head. “I'm sorry about this.” I said and took out my sword, activated all the enchantments on it and my armor, making both glow, then I shoved the blade deep into the dragon's right eye.
“ROOOOOOOWWWWRRRRR!!!!” The dragon yelled in pain.
I held the hilt and gently kicked off as I activated my Lightning ring and boosted it with my armor's power. “I'm really sorry.” I said and channelled everything into the sword.
The entire chasm lit up and I let the hilt go. The Lightning still arced to the sword as it acted like a conductor and all that power went right into the dragon's brain. Both eyeballs burst as the dragon convulsed. I could easily see the bottom now and just before I hit, I activated Featherfall.
The dragon was too focused on my attack to deploy its wings, so it hit the ground at nearly terminal velocity. Since the thing was gigantic, it weighed a lot and had a lot of mass, which meant when it hit without slowing itself down like I had, its slightly softer underbelly was pretty much crushed.
I was very glad that I had worn my full suit of armor, because I was in front of the mouth as a lot of the dragon's guts and blood spewed out and slammed into me. I was pushed back against the wall of the chasm until it stopped and it left me covered from head to toe in gore as I stood in a giant pool of mulched dragon insides.
Luckily, one of the enchantments was the magic equivalent of no sticking, so all that blood and gore slid right off. Eventually. I had to jump up and down a couple of times to get some of the smaller chunks to dislodge and fall to the ground. I ended the Lightning attack and activated my Light ring to light up the area. I walked over to the dragon's head, pulled out the sword, and flicked it to get the residue off of it and stored it.
____
Congratulations! You have defeated the Legendary Dragon of the Tell Mountains as a Level 64 combatant without any fighting abilities. You faced death and mocked it, even though you don't have any points in stats or skills. Extra bonuses for Daredevil and Reckless apply. Good Job!
Experience earned: 8,950,435 (x1)
Daredevil Bonus (x3): 26,851,305
Reckless Bonus (x2): 17,900,870
First Legendary Kill Bonus: 5,000,000
Grand Total: 58,702,610 Experience Points
____
You have proven that the Daredevil and Reckless skills are insufficient for the way you throw yourself into danger and they have been combined into singular skill, Battle Crazy. You live for battle and gain experience bonuses every time you fight, for any reason or in any capacity. Grants skills Blood Frenzy (Strength skill), Multiple Opponent Combat (Agility Skill), You Are Nothing To Me (Charisma / Intimidation skill)
____
Total Levels gained: 35
Stat Points available for distribution: 350 + 640 unspent = 990
Skills unlocked: 0 (none are locked)
Skill points available: 175 + 270 unspent = 445
____
Congratulations! You have reached the level cap of 99.
Devourer class specific skills are now safe to use without repercussion.
Experience Overload Bonus: Extra experience gained can be converted to Stat Points or Skill Points at the cost of 1,000 Experience for 1 point.
Unspent Experience: 11,256,899
Current Point Potential: 11,256
____
“Jesus fucking Christ!” I yelled at the popups in front of me. “That can't be real! It can't!” I walked around and my armored boots squelched in the dragon's guts. “On the last world, once I reached the level cap, that was it. All other experience I gained was wasted. I couldn't store them and it didn't let me gain extra stat points or skill points, which was why I was so limited at the end.”
I hadn't formed my question into a prayer or thought about the Goddess Jasindia while asking it, so I didn't really expect an answer. I shook my head at the ridiculousness of the situation.
One dragon. I thought in disbelief. If I had met it first, I think I would have reached Level 99 right away, especially since I was level 1 at the time. I looked at the slightly deflated corpse of the thing and wondered what I was going to do with it. I was going to need proof that I killed it, so I needed to take the head.
I got to work and used my sword to pry up the scales on the dragon's neck and then took my time sawing the head off. It took a while. Just because it was dead, it didn't stop the body from resisting both physical and magical attacks. I didn't spend any points to make myself stronger, either. My eight rings gave me +120 Strength, which meant the cap was pretty high, probably the same as my armor at 999.
The math didn't work for a balance, which meant I would normally have to divide the points up and focus on the stats I used the most. With the experience overload conversion, I had a very hard decision to make. Did I make them all stat points, all skill points, split them evenly or skew them one way or the other? Do I focus on skills and leave my stats, or do I ignore the skills and pump my stats up?
I had fifteen stats to level up, which was insane, since each supposedly needed 999, which was 14,985 points. With my current potential and my actual points, I only had 12,246. Which sucks. The worst part, I had tons of skills that were currently at level one. I knew they would only take 99, just like my level, so I could potentially level 123 skills to max, assuming they were able to level.
It was quite the mess, especially since if I left myself with no stats or skills, the bonuses and experience I gained would be much better than if I tried pumping myself up. If I stayed the way I was, I could never remove my armor, not without severely risking myself like I had when having sex with the cat woman. I sighed at my squishy normal body, because reinforcing myself now would hamper my experience gains and slow my progress down to a crawl.
I held out my hands. “Protection.” I moved my left hand. “Potential.” I moved my right hand. I pretended they were scales and moved them up and down as I thought over the risk and reward system that I had almost no experience with. I quickly glanced at my basic status and the stats were the same ones that I had at level one, and then I looked at the long list of skills that were also still level one. My hands moved up and down for several minutes as I debated.
“Aww, fuck it.” I said and dropped my right hand of potential and held up the left for protection. “I'll add 500 to each of my stats and then use the rest of the points to distribute across all of my skills.”
I stored the severed head and sat down on the dragon's body as I started to add the stat points. I knew I was limiting myself and my growth, because I would only gain minimal experience from now on with my stats so high. I couldn't justify staying in danger of being hurt, though. I looked at my status before I confirmed permanently what I was doing. What was funny was that it didn't show me the enchantment bonuses from my armor or rings, only my own personal stats and powers.
____
Damon (Level 99) Status:
| Body: | Strength | 600 | Reflexes | 600 | ||
| Recovery | (+) 530 | Agility | (+) 550 | |||
| Resilience | (+) 570 | Dexterity | (+) 550 | |||
| Mind: | Intelligence | 600 | Charisma | 600 | ||
| Alertness | (+) 540 | Intuition | (+) 525 | |||
| Wisdom | (+) 560 | Willpower | (+) 575 | |||
| Magic: | Mana | 600 | ||||
| Offensive | (+) 590 | |||||
| Defensive | (+) 510 |
I looked them over and I debated the need for them to be evened out as I second guessed my choice to put 500 points into each of them. I cursed at myself for my indecision and chose to accept the current layout as official and spent 7,500 points of my 12,246 and it left 4,746 for me to spread over my skills.
Since I didn't want to cut myself off from being able to add points if I gained new skills, I only added 45 points into the 80 skills I had, which cost me 3,600 points. It left me with 1,146 points for new skills and I was very happy for that, because any more experience I gained, I could save for stat points.
With all my decisions made and my course set, I stood up and looked at the dragon's body. I thought about just storing it and possibly having something made from it or selling it. With my personal stats so high, I would have no trouble storing it. I looked over the mess it had made and then realized that I was standing on a pile of gold.
“Yeah, all right. Decision made.” I said and touched the dragon's body. I used my now Level 45 Compression skill and it sucked up all the expelled guts and blood as the dragon's headless corpse was squeezed into a round ball in only a few seconds. It was surprisingly close to the size of the stone that blocked the entrance to the cave system. I used my Level 45 Shrink skill to reduce it in size to something I could fit inside my mouth, then I used my Devourer class special ability and ate it.
It didn't have the capacity to level, which meant it had always been at full power. I felt a little light headed as my body consumed everything that the dragon was. I stumbled and sat down as all of the loot and things it had gathered and owned were pulled into my inventory. I had to cast Calmness and Clarity on myself to stop from passing out as the dragon's skills and abilities folded into my own. My body shook as some of my base stats jumped up a considerable amount.
Even with the two spells helping me, my mind reeled as my body adjusted to consuming a Legendary Creature. I hadn't eaten anything like it before, so my experience with these things was sorely lacking. I developed a splitting headache and held my head as I bent over to try and mitigate the side effects of the process. I cast several spells and nothing worked, not even Major Healing.
Whatever was wrong with me was all mental damage and I would have to suffer through it. Or not.
My Clarity and Calmness spells suddenly cut off. It felt like the headache filled every part of my brain and I couldn't take it anymore as I fell unconscious.
*
“He has been gone too long.” The Freemartin said several hours later.
“He is the Savior.” One of the cat women said. “He will return when he is done.”
“Done with what? He was only supposed to scout for the dragon.” The Freemartin said.
The cat women looked at each other and then back at her.
“Scout?” The favorite cat woman asked. “Did you not see him? Did you not listen to him?”
“I don't know what you mean.” The Freemartin said.
“He was going to look for it so he could kill it.” The favorite said. “He won't be back until he accomplishes that task.”
“How do you know that?” The Freemartin asked.
“He killed Fangtooth and everyone else in the rogue clan that kidnapped us.” She said. “Then he wiped out a Coon village of thieves in an instant.”
“In... an instant.” The Freemartin whispered and the cats nodded.
“He claimed me in the leader's bed surrounded by loot.” The favorite said. “It was glorious.”
“He changed his birth machine from a smooth shaft to barbs.” One of the others said.
“Not just the ones on the end to make us prepared, either. They were all over.”
The Freemartin didn't say anything in response.
“Do not worry, he is not part of our clan.” The favorite said. “Although, I hope he will become one.”
“He would make a very fine King.” One of the others said and the four cat women lightly purred. “We would have many kittens for him.”
“Litters and litters of them.” The favorite said and her purring grew loud. “Perhaps if I still had my tail, he would bless me.”
“I don't think our lack of a tail bothers him.” One of them said.
“We could ask.” Another said.
“No. If he says it does, we would be shamed by him as we will be when we return to the village.” The last one said. “We will stay quiet about it and not bother him.”
The others nodded in agreement.
The Freemartin looked over at the closest mountain and wondered what the metal man was doing right then. She imagined a long and drawn out battle, the two competitors looking for weaknesses in the other, then they charge and butt heads. They circle around and size each other up, hoping to catch the other off-guard, then they charge in for the kill.
She felt her body react to the imagined fight and hoped that her new Tup was strong enough to live after the dragon defeated him. She would hate to go back to the herd and tell them that she had lost him to the dragon and needed to return. She imagined the look on her mother's face if she had to tell her that the metal man who promised to defend her land was dead.
No, he's alive. He has to be. The Freemartin thought and sat in the cart as she waited for him to return. She wasn't sure why she was starting to feel desperate to have him back by her side.
*
“Ugggghhhhh.” I groaned as I opened my eyes and looked up at the thick darkness of the chasm I was currently at the bottom of. My headache wasn't as bad now and I had no clue how long I was out. My body was stiff and I sat up. The chasm was completely empty, so all that glittering gold I had seen before was all in my inventory. When I checked it, I also had a few hundred tons of metal ore.
“What the f...” I stopped myself before I cursed at the absurd amount and what kinds it was. Gold, silver, iron, copper, nickel, lead, aluminum, zinc, platinum, and tin were in their own slots and there was a lot of it. Iron had the most with copper right behind it. Gold and aluminum were behind that and silver was a very close fifth.
I shook my head at it, because of what it represented. The dragon apparently owned the mountain, or possibly all the mountains in the area. When I absorbed it and its assets were automatically looted by my ability to absorb it, all of the metal ore it owned was funnelled right into my inventory. I didn't have to mine it or even go looking for it. I increased the intensity of the Light I was emitting and looked at the chasm wall to see large veins of ore missing from it.
“Oh, crap.” I said and looked up, only to see 60 feet of illuminated rock face that was starting to crumble and another 60 feet past that was dimly lit and I could still see it crumbling. A low rumble started above me and I quickly ran around until I found a relatively clear rock surface. I jumped as high as I could and dug my armored hands into the rock face and climbed as fast as I could.
Ten seconds of falling meant that I had a very long way to climb. The chasm I was in was rumbling louder as all the spaces inside the rock that the ore used to be in started to collapse. On the plus side, I was a hell of a lot stronger and faster than I was before. I climbed up the side of the chasm as fast as I had run using just my armor.
A large chunk of rock popped out of the side of the chasm and slid out, then it dropped down towards me. I activated the enchantments on the armor and pulled myself in close to the rock face and held on. The chunk hit the side and tumbled a little faster, struck the wall just above where my hands were and the edge slammed into the top of my helm. The clang of metal was very loud and hurt my ears, as well as having a hundred tons or so of rock compressing my neck. The rock flipped over and dropped down into the darkness and I cast a Major Healing spell on myself.
The pain eased on my neck and I continued to climb as rock, dirt, and debris rolled down past me and the rumbling sounds picked up. Luckily, there were no more large pieces to endanger me from above and I kept climbing. I passed by the spot where the large chunk of rock had come from and saw it had a large empty spot behind it, which meant the ore had been holding the thing in place.
I looked around and saw similar spots were scattered all over the rock face and was glad that I had started climbing when I did. If I had stayed at the bottom, I would have been crushed and probably buried. Being strong and having armor could only do so much when part of a mountain fell on top of you.
I kept climbing and the rumbling seemed to settle down as I neared the top of the chasm. I felt relief that the ore was down much lower and I wasn't in as much danger now. Thankfully, I was on the right side of the chasm and pulled myself up into the cave entrance. I laid down to catch my breath and to let my stamina recover... and it did so in under sixty seconds.
I felt fine and sat up, not understanding how I could recover from that long of a climb so quickly, that is until I looked at my status again.
____
Damon (Level 99) Status:
| Body: | Strength | 999 | Reflexes | 600 | ||
| Recovery | (+) 999 | Agility | (+) 550 | |||
| Resilience | (+) 999 | Dexterity | (+) 550 | |||
| Mind: | Intelligence | 800 | Charisma | 800 | ||
| Alertness | (+) 740 | Intuition | (+) 725 | |||
| Wisdom | (+) 760 | Willpower | (+) 775 | |||
| Magic: | Mana | 999 | ||||
| Offensive | (+) 999 | |||||
| Defensive | (+) 999 |
“Jesus fucking Christ!” I yelled at the massive stat boosts and sat there as I stared at the results of absorbing a legendary dragon.
