I stumbled awake, reaching over by instinct to my right to grab my phone off my nightstand, however my hand simply stopped as it felt the rough, cold feeling of stone. I jolted up confused before I looked down and saw what I was wearing. Rather than any sort of night clothes or even what I wore the day before I wore a large armored dress with dark gray armorings with yellow linings throughout it with blue cloth for the skirt along with more pieces of armor. It was then I remembered what exactly had happened and the situation I was now in. What was just a few moments prior a vague dream-like memory of what had just happened once more became vivid as I fully regained consciousness.

Looking down, true to his word the armor was exactly how it was in the game. The game was fairly photorealistic as is, so visually speaking it's much the same as it looked there. Looking back I saw a large pair of draconic wings, black as night in its linings but crimson red everywhere else. Its mere presence on my back was confirmation I maintained my race as an Elder Dragonkin, however next was the matter of if my element remained the same. If he copied it over directly I would be an Elder Pure Dragonkin, and assuming he didn’t give me many additional levels as he said, my base level should be around 50.

Base Levels are effectively what level you start out as when you select a race, there’s no real cap on levels and there are two level sets, Physical Levels and Magical Levels. Dragonkin are balanced in both, and starting off in the game, the only types of Dragonkin you can select have a base Level of 10. High Dragonkin have a base level of 20, and Elders have a base level of 30. Pure Dragonkin has it even higher with the base Pure Dragonkin having a base level of 30, a High Pure Dragonkin being at level 40, and an Elder like I was at level 50.

This had more to do than simply my starting strength as one’s base level also determined their “limit.” As your level approaches this limit, and more so after you surpass it, gaining levels becomes incredibly hard. With a base level of 10, your limit would be 100, at a base level of 50 it was up to 180. Due to my grinding, my levels back in the game were 312 in magical levels, the highest of any player, and 252 in physical levels, not quite the highest but certainly up there. Though how exactly do I see my stats?

In the game you could learn appraisal magic pretty early on and upgrade it over time as you leveled up. Technically speaking as per the game’s lore, which likely translates to this world’s logic and history, skills and magic weren’t learned by simply growing stronger, rather it was a matter of if you knew how to cast them, only then did you simply need to apply the right amount of magical power, or mana. With that being said, do I know how to even cast any spells? I suppose there’s no harm in trying…

“Appraisal!”

In an instant a magical circle appeared directly on my eye, though rather than seeing it I saw stats, specifically of myself. This proved one thing, though I would need to do further testing, somehow I know how to cast at least some of the spells I learned. It's possible that when reincarnating me Drava did some messing with my brain to give me the instinctive ability to use the spells I knew. Regardless, it wasn't the time to worry about that, I needed to appraise my stats.

‘Huh? Level 80? My base level is… 80?!’

A base level of 80 should be impossible! The highest base level any playable race could achieve was level 50 like Elder Pure Dragonkin, Level 80 is 30 levels above that! Assuming it maintains the same system with limits as it did in game, that would mean rather than my limit being around level 180, it would be around 240! He said he scaled this world UP for the game, not DOWN! Just how strong are Elder Pure Dragonkin?!

Then I noticed something: I wasn’t an Elder Pure Dragonkin. My race was listed as something else entirely: an Elder Divine Dragonkin.

This explained so much but also raised even more questions. After a few moments of thought my best guess was that in order to become a Dragonkin, Drava forced an Elder pact between us, allowing me to become an Elder Dragonkin through a pact directly with him. Since he’s a god, above even the ancient dragons, it makes sense that my base level for being an elder of this variety would be so high.

The next question now is where exactly is my sword? It wasn’t anywhere around me when I woke up and I’m not holding it either. Either Drava didn’t reincarnate me with my sword or its in my item box. The problem with the item box is that according to the game’s lore and likely this world’s rules, the Item Box uses a pocket dimension, an incredibly rare and powerful ability. Even the simplest of pocket dimension spells requires level 100, however in the game we were allowed to use it even at level 10 as a ‘gift from the gods’. In reality it was really just lazy writing as an excuse to allow players to use it for gameplay purposes.

If I do have an Item Box, I doubt I’d have the magical power to maintain it, however with nothing else to try I opened my hand as I concentrated on accessing it. After a few seconds a small magical circle appeared in front of my hand, shimmering white. I pushed my hand against the circle, the circle glowing white where my hand and the circle met, with my hand seemingly vanishing beyond it. Moving it around felt like I was moving it through open air, and reaching in enough I managed to feel a handle of my sword. Pulling it out the magical circle glowed where the sword and the circle met until the circle shrank into nothingness once it was fully out.

The sword was just as grand and powerful as I remembered, aside from the lack of a God Stone. The sword’s blade was black as charcoal but smoother than steel, its crossguard looking like two dragon heads looking in opposite directions, two magical orbs in each of their mouths. Down the hilt the two dragons, each resembling an eastern dragon with a longer body curled around each other down to the bottom of the handle where yet another dragon head containing an orb pointed away from the blade. Between the curling dragons just below the blade on the cross guard was what appeared to be a red diamond-shaped crystal. In reality it's the mechanism which allowed the use of a God Stone, the smallest one ever made in the game. Normally it would be glowing, however without a God Stone inside of it, it was little more than a decoration for the time being.

The blade of the sword was almost entirely made of an alloy of Reinforced Dragonium and God Steel, technically the substance had no name, so at the time I began to call it Dragonium Steel. It was just about the strongest blade physically possible in the game without any sort of magical enhancements, unless of course you managed to get a blade of pure God Steel, but that would require a large percentage of all the God Steel ever created in the game. My armor too was lined with God Steel, just about every golden lining on my armor was pure God Steel. The rest of the armor was Reinforced Dragonium, the second strongest metal in the game created basically through refining the fossils of ancient dragons.

The sword was just as grand as it was when I used it, albeit less than half its strength, though since I had no use for it at the moment, I simply once more opened up my item box and slid it back in. The Item Box situation alone was confusing because I wasn’t the one maintaining the pocket dimension for sure. If I had to guess, it's likely Drava is the one maintaining it. He may not be able to interfere with the world right now, but creating a pocket dimension and giving me the necessary info to access it probably doesn’t count.

“Now then, all I need to do is find out where I am and I should be able to-”

“Ey! The hell you think you’re doing?! I’m trying to sleep over here?!” A loud, audibly annoyed voice rang out, turning I quickly saw what it was; a Wyvern.

Wyverns were basically the equivalent of dragons for low level players, though their size was usually far smaller. This one in particular was about the size of a horse, about average for Wyverns in the game. Analyzing him, he seems to be around level 77, a fairly average level considering most Wyverns ranged from level 65 to 90. If I had been reborn as a basic Pure Dragonkin, I would be in trouble.

With my thoughts more focused on analyzing him, the Wyvern, who I now noticed was red in coloring, meaning he had fire magic, grew impatient, shouting again, “I’m not sure what kind of magic you’re casting over here but it's really pissing me off!”

‘The hell have I done?! The only spells I’ve casted so far was Analysis and Item Box, if he’s made I woke him up nothing I did made noise. Unless…’

“I’ve only casted two spells, neither made noise, I’m not sure what you’re talking about!” I shouted towards the Wyvern, maybe my inner thoughts were right, but maybe he’s simply confused.

“Like I’d believe that! You don’t think I noticed the massive lightshow you put on over here! That’s not to mention the noise that came before it! You probably scared all the weaker monsters away for miles, how the hell am I supposed to hunt down food now!”

‘I see what’s happened… It appears that reincarnating me here probably was done through a massive spell. To be fair he practically ripped a hole between worlds, it's easy to see how that would cause a lot of noise.’

“W-Well I apologize for that I-I believe I didn’t realize just what I was doing…” I scratched behind my head, the last thing I wanted was to fight right now. I barely know how to use my magic and I’m not even sure if I know any spells besides Item Box and Analysis. Both are relatively simple spells when you get down to it, Item Box only really being simple because I’m simply accessing a pocket dimension, not making one as I initially feared. I have no clue if I can use more advanced offensive magic.

The wyvern sighed and stepped forward, “Whatever, since you’re probably the only food for miles I’ll have to just eat you!” The wyvern’s mouth opened wide as a sphere of magical energy built up, swirling around in a raging inferno.

With the Wyvern about to launch a spell I had no choice but to do the same. Holding up my hand flat perpendicular to the ground a small flaming ball appeared in my hand. The fireball shimmered a deep crimson red, reflective of the magical power I was putting into it. Next appeared a single magical circle directly in front of the flaming ball, glowing red with magical power as I prepared was a fairly basic fire magic spell.

Quickly the magic from the Wyvern shot out quickly as a scorching twister of hungry flames rushed forwards straight towards me as my own spell activated, a similar scorching fiery torrent erupting from the small flaming ball towards their attack. This was the first time I had launched an offensive spell in this world, and while it was certainly amazing to do, it was frankly terrifying to fight like this. Regardless, the two attacks were fairly equal in strength. The wyvern had launched a fire attack which was more or less an ability of the Wyvern rather than a spell, and I had launched the low-tier fire spell ‘Scorch’.

Eventually after a few moments of a fierce flaming lightshow of red, orange, and yellow the flames of both attacks died down without any damage to the casters. Grumbling, the Wyvern opened his mouth again, creating yet another scorching ball of fire, now met with four identical balls of flame appearing around his open mouth, all firing in unison as they met together in a single large beam of pure flaming destruction.

Quickly I reacted, Holding out my hand yet again as a small white sphere of magical energy manifested, three magical circles of increasing size appearing one after another in front of the orb, each one in front of the last. In the next second, with the flaming beam approaching me quickly the small white orb shot out a powerful white beam of sheer magical energy. The two beams met just short of where I was standing, a clashing of red and white colors as my beam slowly pushed back the flames.

The wyvern struggled to maintain his footing as his legs buckled and his mouth trembled, struggling to stay open as eventually his attack broke, the flaming balls disappearing as he was then engulfed in a blast of white light, knocking him back and burning him in several places, cracking and destroying much of his scaley exterior. After yet another few seconds the white beam slowly died down and condensed until it ceased to exist. I let the white orb fade away into nothingness as the magical circles disappeared too.

I let out a sigh of relief as I successfully not only beat the wyvern but managed to cast the Mid-Tier Spell, Solari. I moved forwards, climbing up the short but steep incline to where the Wyvern had been standing. The wyvern was now knocked back several feet, a trail of displaced dirt and stone where he had been knocked back. I stepped forwards, expecting to see a dead corpse of a wyvern but to my surprise he slowly stumbled back up.

Initially I debated attacking him now, however he was really no threat to me at the present moment. Besides he’s a Wyvern, we’re both technically descendents of the Dragons, so there’s really no need for us to be fighting anyways, right?

“You good Wyvern?” I asked, tilting my head slightly to the side with crossed arms.

The wyvern looked up at me, and while his face was far from human-like in any way, the expression of annoyance was still very much visible, “What does it look like?! You just blasted me with a beam of light! I’m in a lot of fucking pain!”

I shrugged, “Well you attacked first.”

The wyvern sighed and sat down, looking up at me a bit less annoyed but now certainly confused, “Of course I did! You scared away all the food for miles! If I was going to eat for the next week it was going to be you!”

“Couldn’t you just go wherever all the monsters I scared off went?”

The wyvern sighed and shook his head, “It’s not that easy. Surely you know at least the basics of how we wyverns do things? We’re not all that different from dragons in that aspect after all.”

‘Ah I remember now, Wyverns were highly territorial in the game weren’t they? It was nearly impossible to find two wyverns within a certain distance of each other, and it wasn’t too uncommon to see them fighting each other over, likely over territorial dominance. It’s possible this guy’s surrounded by the territories of other wyverns, which wouldn’t be an issue if it weren’t for the fact I scared off all his food… I suppose I owe this guy something at least.’

I sighed, “Yeah, yeah, you’re territorial and all that. Sorry about… scaring away everything…”

The wyvern grumbled and laid down, his wounds still burning in numerous places as he seemed content to just ignore them, “No use in apologizing now. So, are you done? You gonna kill me or something? You might as well at this point, make things a lot easier on me to die now than to slowly starve to death in a week.”

‘Now I just feel bad… I mean it's not really my fault exactly but still… I should do something for him at least.’

I scratched my chin in thought, the wyvern simply looking confused and tilting his head at my indecisiveness, over what exactly he had no real guess, “How about this, I plan on leaving here and finding some civilization somewhere. You can come with me and when we get there and on the way I’ll get you all the food you need to make up for it. Afterwards you can come back here if you’d like. I’ll even heal you up if you want.”

My healing magic was actually relatively lackluster back in the game, though considering how high my magical level was, even lackluster healing magic for me is still fairly good healing magic for someone of level 80 like my current state or level 77 like this wyvern.

The wyvern’s confusion only grew, though it didn’t seem like he intended to turn down my offer, “Are you… mentally sane? I feel like that's a lot of unnecessary steps when you could either just leave me here or kill me, both of which are less of a strain on you and the latter might even bring you some money so what gives?”

“Would you like me to leave you here? Because I can do that.”

“W-Well I didn’t say that… But what do you gain from this?”

I simply shrugged and moved closer to him, holding out my hand as a magical circle, this one colored green appeared, glowing brightly as it began to heal his wounds. His scales would take some time to regrow, but they’d be back eventually, likely after just a few weeks. “Not much, I didn’t really mean to scare off your prey so I suppose I owe you this much. If you want to come you can, otherwise I’ve healed your wounds so you should be able to at least survive so long as you can round up any remaining bits of prey in your territory.”

The wyvern sighed and stood up as he stretched, “I had heard the Dragonkin were a respectful race towards beings of fellow draconic descent but I did not expect this. I will join you, but the territory for quite a long distance is the territory of other wyverns, many are just as strong if not stronger than me, it may take some time before we’re in a territory we can hunt in without worry, though I worry my sheer presence may invite some agitation.”

‘Hmm, didn’t account for that… I don’t really want to fight more, however if my mid-tier spell could take down a fairly average wyvern like this, I can probably handle even the stronger end wyverns.’

“It’s no problem honestly. You’ve seen how well I handled you, I’m quite strong if I say so myself, and if you’re willing to help me with some fire support, then I don’t think there's much I need to worry about. Oh, by the way, do you have a name?”

The wyvern had begun to walk towards me, now following me as I began to walk down the slope of what seemed to be an edge of a rocky mountain range into a forest below, now speaking in response to me, “No, I do not. Most wyverns are isolative beings, we do not spend much time with our families so we do not have names.”

“It’s going to be real inconvenient if I have to keep calling you ‘wyvern’ this whole time… Mind if I just give you a name?”

“I suppose not if it makes things easier on you.”

“How about Mr.Flamey?”

“I retract my approval.”

“I’m just joking! Let's see… names… How about Ogein?”

The wyvern looked up, at least grateful that I came up with a name that was half-decent, “I suppose that works, never heard of it, what’s it mean?”

I shrugged, “I believe it means ‘fire’ in some language where I’m from.”

“I see… Not the most original but it sounds alright so I shall not complain.”

“Now then! Onwards we go! Though… you wouldn’t happen to know where the closest civilization is… do you Ogein..? If not, I’ll figure something out…”

Ogein looked up and sighed, “This is going to be a long trip…”

SwissChocolates

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