It's been a few days since I headed out with Ogein, and still I’ve yet to find any sort of civilization. Ogein says he resided fairly deep into the mountains, right near the area where dragon territory begins. At the very least it gives me some information as to where I may be, but it doesn’t necessarily narrow it down by much. The map of Novina was a single megacontinent, however the major regions were mostly separated by this massive mountain range in the middle of the map which itself was just as large as each region. This area was the territory of the Dragons, and both due to the presence of the Dragons and the mountainous terrain which gives dragons an advantage, settlement of the area was supposedly near-impossible. For the most part in the game it was really just a region for high-level players, an end-game zone of sorts with the best loot and the strongest enemies.

The outskirts of the mountain range are where we are currently, it was still mountainous and rocky but it was still relatively abundant in the occasional forest or grasslands, though the elevation was still higher and the terrain was mostly rocky. It's these outskirts where the Wyverns make their territory. Unfortunately since the mountain range is so massive, we could be in just about any region, or at least any of the four main ones: the North, the North-East, the South-East, or the West. Unfortunately Ogein doesn’t know where he resided and since he lived so deep into the mountain range, he doesn’t know what the neighboring nations are like either so I can’t narrow it down further. If we headed deeper into the mountains I may be able to find a location or landmark that would let me know where we are, however even with all my skills and magic I’m still a level 80, that would likely be suicidal to find conflict with a dragon, though as an Elder Dragonkin I may be able to get away with it. Still, not worth the chance.

Throughout the journey, in particular every time I hunt for our food (although I don’t actually need to eat much being a mostly magic-based lifeform due to how advanced my evolution is), I’ve figured out something essential about my magical skills: my magical proficiencies seem to have carried over. Proficiencies are more or less how skilled you are in a certain area, with there being four main types in the game; physical, magical, language, and other. The other category included things like alchemy and cooking among other non-combatitive and non-casting abilities. Languages were simply how much you knew certain languages as the name suggests. Physical and Magical areas however were how well you knew specific spells or attacks, and while they were easily ignorable by casual players, competitive or high tier players would use it to min-max their builds, especially when leveling up becomes a drag by their max level.

Proficiency came in three categories, and in the case of magic it was the Magical School, the Magical Category, and the Magical Spell. The Magical School proficiency was how good you were in said school of magic, such as common magic, Demonic Magic, Draconic Magic, and others. The Magical Category was reflective of the various categories of magic like Healing, Fire, and Air, among others. Magical Spell proficiency was done on a spell-by-spell basis. To increase one’s proficiency you simply utilized the spell you wanted to be more proficient in a lot. With the knowledge I have now of the game’s original nature, it makes sense why the system was included as it reflects reality much more, do a spell more often and you’re better at it.

The reason proficiencies carry over is so vital is that I can cast spells which one would normally need to be a higher level to. When casting most spells you can cast it in one of three ways. The first way was to cast it at its base level normally, the second was to cast it a tier above its base level, using more magic but making it stronger, though one needs to be a certain level higher to do this, amd the last being to cast it at a tier below, making it weaker but use less magic. This system meant that so long as you knew the spell, you could cast it at a lower tier even if your magical level wasn’t at the spell’s level. The problem with this was that casting a spell while not at the spell’s level brought the risk of the spell failing which at best would simply cause the spell to fail, wasting your mana, or at worst basically kill you instantly. The risk of this happening however is completely negated with a high enough proficiency in the spell you’re casting. In the game it was basically impossible to get a high enough proficiency with a spell before reaching the level needed to cast it normally, however in my case my level’s pushed back to 80 but I can cast spells likely up to level 150 without fear of killing myself from a magical failure.

A similar system applies to physical proficiencies, however with some exceptions, attacks weren’t really limited by levels, rather their damage scaled with the proficiency level and the user’s physical level so it's not necessarily as big of a deal with my sword fighting skills. Though it does mean I’m likely instinctively able to utilize numerous sword fighting techniques.

Because of this, leveling back up will be a breeze, especially considering experience wasn’t gained by killing monsters, but by attacking them, which in hindsight again makes more sense considering it was based on a real world. It did certainly make for a unique system where you basically gained experience points more based on your damage than your kills which made it less exploitable but at times more confusing and tedious. Spells automatically have a set experience range when you cast them, however the higher level the spell, the more experience points are gained, and while casting a spell at a lower tier does lower the experience somewhat, the experience is still noticeably more than casting at a level closer to one’s own, and without risk of the higher-tier spell failing on me, grinding up to my racial limit, which itself is abnormally high, should be a breeze.

After a few more days of travel and a few experiments with my martial skills, particularly my sword skills, which proved to have retained their proficiency, we eventually headed into a cave for cover for the night as it looked as if it was about to rain. This wasn’t the first time we had sought cover in a cave, however as I moved deeper into the cave I eventually stumbled upon a large ancient structure. Large, cracked, and broken stone pillars towered above my head up to the roof as stone bricks lined the ground, many of them having been engulfed by moss, vegetation, and the earth below. The door directly at the end of this court of pillars was similarly constructed in stone, extravagant engravings having been made into the door in a language that I didn’t recognize, but strangely I did understand.

Initially I assumed this language to be Draconic from how it generally looked, however further examination revealed that this was ‘Ancient Draconic’ rather than conventional Draconic. But that begged the question of how I knew Ancient Draconic at all. Ancient Draconic was the hardest language to learn in the game due to how rare any means to learn it were. Knowing it was essential to utilize the most powerful magic in the game: Ancient Draconic Magic. As an Elder Pure Dragonkin I have basic knowledge of the language, but does my understanding of this much Ancient Draconic count as ‘basic?’ I used an appraisal skill on myself again, normally such skills don't show things like language proficiency, however since I’m using it on myself it does if I desire it to. 

‘Yep… That's interesting… It appears that being an Elder Divine Dragonkin made me a full expert in Ancient Draconic… Considering that means I can learn all Ancient Draconic spells now so long as I find a means to learn them, I may want to keep this fact to myself.’

Looking at the wall, while I was able to make out some of the figures in Ancient Draconic, most of the text was worn out so it came out looking like a game of wheel of fortune rather than a coherent sentence. Regardless, Ancient Draconic likely means this is a decent level dungeon, I might need to be slightly worried as Ancient Draconic stuff was usually for those over level 100, but I have high tier magic, so I’ll be fine.

Ogein approached from behind and looked up and the large stone structure which acted as the entrance for the dungeon and looked disinterested, mumbling “What exactly are you planning on doing?”

I began to walk up to the door as I turned back, “I’m going inside the dungeon, if you wish to join you can, but I don’t really care if you do, I need to grind my skills!”

“What do you mean by grind…?” Ogein asked, reasonably confused.

I simply shrugged and opened the large doors, revealing a long corridor which seemed to lead deeper into the dungeon as Ogein rolled his eyes, muttering “I thought we were trying to find civilization…”

I waved my hand back at him as I began walking into the dungeon, “That can wait, I’ll only be so long.”

Ogein sighed and rushed up to walk behind me, “I don’t feel like waiting there to wonder if you died or not, if you get into trouble I’m running out of here though.”

“Yeah, yeah, whatever.” I extended my hand as a single magical circle appeared in front of it as I casted a detection spell. The spell functioned to detect traps, or more specifically it was more like an algorithm that detected abnormalities which could be traps or secret passages. Fortunately I wasn’t detecting much, though I was still cautious with moving through the corridor.

Eventually we reached the end of the corridor without much trouble, luckily the whole way was lit with magical crystals which, while I initially thought might be valuable, turned out to be poor quality stones only really usable as a glorified light source. How they lasted so long is beyond me. At the end of the corridor was some sort of contraption, initially I didn’t recognize it but then I realized it was a magical elevator!

Magical elevators are advanced technology, only really found in dungeons, they utilize magic to move the compartment up and down like normal elevators. I completely forgot about them! I suppose I simply assumed they were one of the ‘creative liberties’ drava made when translating the game and forgot about them. Nevertheless I stepped in quickly and waited for Ogein to do the same before utilizing magic to activate the elevator.

Ogein jumped slightly as it started to move, likely startled at what the elevator was as he looked over at me, “How exactly did you know how this works?”

“Oh I’ve seen these things before, they’re in a few dungeons.” I responded, I wonder how rare dungeons actually are in this world and how explored many of them tend to be, for all I know these kinds of dungeons have never been touched… Which simply means more loot for me!

After about a minute the elevator stopped moving as it landed on the floor, the magical crystals moving the elevator ceased glowing as I took a step out and immediately noticed something about the texture of the floor; ‘It's… sticky?’ Looking down I noticed what I was stepping in, it was cobwebs.

‘A spider dungeon huh? I never liked these things. The spider part alone wasn’t really that good for most players, but I mostly hated how most spider bosses tended to have a few dozen weak spider minions, it was tedious to deal with all of them.

I opened my hands as two flaming spheres appeared in each of them, ready to cast fire magic should it be needed, but in the next moment I realized there was no giant spider in this room, only a fairly short human-like girl, shadow-black hair down to her neck and crimson red eyes staring at me with her face in a pout. Her hands were placed firmly at her hips as she leaned forwards, the pouting clearly showing some form of annoyance. Looking again at the girl I noticed three sets of spider-like limbs extending from her back; there was no doubt, this was a Spiderfolk.

The Spiderfolk, despite seemingly residing deep within a dungeon, wore quite nice clothing, a black and white frilled skirt, a white shirt covered by a black capelet with a white outline and black sleeves with white frills. Even her 6 spider-like limbs from her back were fairly neat, being more smooth than hairy with only a small amount of hair which wasn’t even noticeable.

Spiderfolk were a less popular race and one that was incredibly rare to find in the game. I believe they had a nation in the North-East, but as per the game’s story and lore it was lost not too long before the initial launch of the game, so I assume the same applies here. The question really was what a Spiderfolk was doing in the middle of a dungeon. Using appraisal she was actually quite a decent level Spiderfolk, standing at Level 63 Physically and 21 Magically. In fact she was a High Spiderfolk rather than a normal one, however I know nothing of the evolution of Spiderfolk as a race so I’m not really sure what being a High Spiderfolk means or if it's even the highest form of Spiderfolk.

The girl’s pouting continued for a few more moments before she spoke in a slightly childish voice, “Well? You gonna say something?! You crush my home and you don’t even have the ability to say anything about it?!”

I was taken aback by the sudden anger coming off of the small Spiderfolk, “Crushed your home…?” I looked behind me and realized that it was quite likely that there was a lot more webbing under where the elevator landed, ‘If I had to guess she may have been living under that area for so long she simply didn’t even notice there was an elevator above her. I suppose this is partially my fault…’

I looked back towards the spiderfolk, scratching the back of my head nervously as I tried to explain myself, “Ah well, you see we came down on that elevator… and it kind of seems to have lowered onto you home… I didn’t know you were under there so… sorry, can I maybe make it up to you?”

‘I’d offer money, but I can’t really guess the real-estate value of a random spot in a dungeon prone to being crushed by an elevator. I assume it was made from her own webbing too, so it probably wasn’t actually that expensive.’

The spiderfolk remained pouting as Ogein simply looked confused at the Spiderfolk, simply sighing as he moved to lay down in the elevator and wait for it to be over. The spiderfolk returned to standing straight before she spoke again, “Fine! I’ll make you pay one way or another! How about this, you help me out of the dungeon and let me have whatever money that old pile of bones has lying around and I’ll call us even.”

“Get out of the dungeon? Have you been stuck here?” I asked, curious as to her situation since it didn’t really make sense for one single spiderfolk to be down here, maybe a small group would make sense, but just one implies she’s not been here her entire life.

“Technically speaking, yes, however I’ve not really had a need to leave, I was contemptuous enough living here until you CRUSHED MY HOME!” The small spiderfolk was still very much upset about that, but trying to move on I began to walk.

“Well then, c’mon let's go, you mentioned an ‘old pile of bones’ is that the final boss of this dungeon?”

The Spiderfolk turned, looking somewhat confused but spoke, “That's a weird way to put it, but I suppose. If you want to use whatever that contraption is you need to beat him in order for it to go back up with someone in it, otherwise it wont go up unless there's nobody on it. Since that wyvern of yours is on it, it’s likely not going up anytime soon.”

“What exactly is he then? Is he an undead of sorts?” The description ‘old pile of bones’ made me immediately assume a skeleton, but it could simply be in reference to an old creature, perhaps an Ancient Dragon? No way in hell I can take on one of those right now.

The spiderfolk nodded, “Yep, an Undead Dragon. Supposedly he was formerly an Ancient Dragon or whatever they’re called, but he utilized some ritual to keep himself alive. Don’t worry about the Ancient Dragon part though, supposedly he’s quite frail compared to his past life, so he shouldn’t be too strong.”

“By the way I thought I should ask your name, I’m Athena Eris!” I proclaim my name proudly, I wasn’t sure why I felt the need to do so, but it was said that Dragonkin are a proud race, I suppose being proud of one’s name was an instinctive nature of theirs.

“My name is Spinni.” The spiderfolk said quietly.

‘Really? Just… Spinni? That's… incredibly unoriginal. No way in hell a spider named their child after the word ‘spin.’ Whatever, maybe Spiderfolk all make their names puns, I believe there was one race known for doing that, I can’t recall which though, it wasn’t the spiderfolk I don’t believe.’

The two of us then set out to move down deeper into the dungeon. According to Spinni the dungeon was only three floors big, with only the third floor being of any significant size. The first floor was really just the corridor to the elevator, the second floor was mostly for the storage of random junk as well as other rooms the Dragon used in his past life. The ‘dungeon’ lacked any traps as it was more or less just this Dragon’s house which he rebranded into a tomb of sorts. All the undead creatures within it are more or less manifestations of the necrotic aura he emits, though all of them are loyal to him.

There are some other creatures in here besides the undead too, but most aren’t actually inherently aggressive, not really attacking unless threatened. The second floor didn’t have too many enemies as Spinni had supposedly put a decent amount of effort into keeping it clear of too many undead. There were, of course, some undead, but before I could properly practice my magic on them, Spinni destroyed them with ease.

Spinni’s fighting style was frankly amazing, and to my knowledge it wasn’t quite possible (not that many people would’ve tried due to the unpopularity of both Spiderfolk and the playstyle) in Novina. Spinni didn’t use armor or weapons, rather was an unarmed and unarmored fighting build similar to how monks are in other RPGs. Aside from her apparent skill as a martial artist, she’s able to utilize all eight of her arms, both the three spider-like sets and her human arms to make rapid punches. In the game both the monk playstyle and the Spiderfolk race were equally unpopular so nobody likely actually tried it, but I’m not sure it was actually implemented in the game that way.

Unfortunately the unpopularity of the monk-like gameplay style means I know little of how it works. One of the main appeals to the game was its in-depth magical system and the ability to design your own armor, gear, and to an extent spells if you had the right abilities. In a game with an abundance of armor, weapons, and spells to choose from, choosing to simply not use any of them wasn’t quite a popular decision, so not too many people went for the playstyle.

By the time we reached the staircase to the final floor I began to prepare myself to practice my magic on this last floor. “Spinni, mind if I take over from here?”

Spinni shrugged and stretched her arms, “I intended for you to, at least to a degree. I was mostly relying on you to take down the bastard at the end of this last hallway.”

“Judging by the way you say it, you must really not like this guy. Can I ask why exactly?” I turned to Spinni to see her with a slightly aggravated face, though the aggravation was more a result of her thinking of the undead dragon rather than anything I did directly.

“He makes me pay taxes.” Spinni said blankly.

I looked over in confusion before deciding to worry about it later. I opened the door to the final hallway of this ‘dungeon’ which at this point could hardly be called one. The room where the skeletal dragon resided was directly at the opposite end of the hallway. Since the entire ‘dungeon’ was built to be this dragon’s house, there isn’t actually any elaborate path we have to take to fight the boss. All we have to do is walk across this long hallway. The hallway was grand but worn down in nature. The smell of death filled the halls and what was likely once grand furnishings were torn up and knocked all over the place. As I prepared a flaming orb in my right hand the doors on both sides of the hallway opened and undead all flooded into the main hall, likely knowing of our approach and wanting to overwhelm us.

I held my hand to the side, forcing Spinni back a bit as I held out both hands, the flaming orb resting in front of them both as three red magical circles appeared in front of it, alternating in size with the middle circle being the largest with two equally sized circles in front and behind it. The flaming orb began to spin rapidly as the magical circles glowed. This was a high tier spell, a Level 110 one to be precise, but I’m casting it at a level 80, and thanks to my proficiency I’ll have no problems with that…

“Reduce all to ash! Flamethrower!”

Suddenly an eruption of crimson flame came from the orb, creating a massive beam of fire into the hallway, practically scorching all of the undead as I moved it left to right. Regardless, more undead came, one after another, climbing over the scorched charcoal-black skeletal corpses of their brethren as they too succumbed to the flames. The spell was in a way an advanced form of Scorch, however whereas scorch was much more like a glorified blowtorch, the spell flamethrower, which was in fact invented by a player, much more represents the functions of a flamethrower, more spread and less direct damage but far better at AOE or catching people on fire.

With all of the undead, who were all weak to fire to some extent, now scorched and reduced to little more than an ash pile, I moved through the corridor as Spinni remained frozen for a moment before rushing up to me. “The hell was that?! I could tell you had a lot of power but I didn’t expect that!”

“Was it really that much?” It would be good to know the true scale of this world. Either way I would’ve used a higher tier spell solely for the sake of gaining more levels, but when I’m around more people, being more accurate to the power scale of this world may be better.

“Of course it is! That much power puts you as one of the top mages in the world! I suppose I should’ve expected that much from an Elder Dragonkin, I’ve heard many of you are adept with magic, having trained under the Dragons directly… You know, now that I think about it, what do you intend to do when we’re done here, Athena?”

“Me? Hmm… Currently I’m taking that Wyvern, Ogein, over to a city to buy him some food. Whether or not he stays after is up to him, but from there I don’t have any direct plans.”

Spinni gave a grin as we continued to walk down the now empty and slightly scorched hallway, “Well then I have an offer for you. With your skills you could fetch quite a high price for fulfilling high skill bounties and quests. As both a skilled martial artist and adept with money I could serve as both a useful ally and a valuable manager to make sure you get a fair pay on your efforts.”

“I assume you think I can make money?”

“Of course! The highest paid position outside of nobility or royalty is being a top-tier mage. In some cases the mages are more influential and powerful than the monarch themselves! Considering your strength you’d only need to grow so much before you surpass even some of the highest human mages!”

“I suppose I have no direct problem with you coming along and managing finances. To tell you the truth I don’t really know how exactly to handle money…” In my past life I had basically not managed much money at all. I did some fucking around with random investments and happened to get lucky enough to live on my ass for several years, it never had anything to do with my own skill with cash. “...I have also seen you fight, you’re quite skilled I will say, not that I’m really great at analyzing the skill of martial artists.” Though I can see their exact physical strength with appraisal.

“Perfect! Then it’s settled and we’ll both be unfathomably rich in no time! For now let's just make this fossil pay for making me pay taxes!”

‘I mean she was staying in his home. I’d call it more rent than anything.’

Opening the door, the large skeletal dragon looked down and grumbled to himself, though he had no mouth to grumble out of, only a jaw. The dragon spoke only once as he stood up, preparing for a fight, “Pathetic, to think I was worried about the humans who sucked up to those glorified lizards that we call our descendents. Whatever, I’ll destroy you anyways, you’ve been a real pain in my… I don’t really have an ass do I?”

I rolled my eyes at the dragon’s monologue as I realized the dragon’s level was at 80, which at this point was now lower than my own level. ‘I was hoping for a challenge but I suppose it's best to get it over quickly.’

I raised my right hand as a glowing orb, shimmering brightly like the sun manifested itself in front of my palm along with a magical circle, glowing a bright golden color as the Dragon opened his jaw and began manifesting a dark purple orb inside it.

“Shine your light upon the world! Sol!”

Suddenly several beams of light shot out of the glowing orb forwards in numerous random directions. Wherever the beams of light hit the skeletal dragon it burned straight through like a knife through butter as the Dragon laughed and leaned forwards, continuing its manifestation of its attack, aimed directly at me. Unfortunately for it, the attack wasn’t done yet.

Suddenly the orb of sunlight glowed brighter than before and the next second a single large beam of light erupted from the magical circle, engulfing the skull of the skeletal dragon as it disintegrated away. As the light died down and the orb dissipated all that was left of the Dragon was the collapsed skeletal structure of its body, much of which I quickly put into my Item Box. Spinni, luckily, was too distracted to notice as she moved towards his treasury in awe.

The amount of gold the dragon had was significant, but not totally overwhelming, enough for both of us to likely live the life of a noble for a few months easily, though it was likely better spent elsewhere or saved. Though since she’d be handling our money… “You can have it, I don’t really need it directly. Besides you’re managing our finances anyways. Do you have a way to carry it around?”

Spinni held up what looked to be a small wallet purse of sorts, the kind which could click open and close with ease. “This is a magical item, it can hold an infinite amount of items for the most part, but it's restricted in that it can only hold what it considers currency of some kind.”

I’ve never heard of an item like that personally in the game, however considering players already had infinite storage in the item box, such an item would be useless to add into the game. Though the question arose, “How did you acquire what I can only assume to be a fairly rare item?”

Spinni smirked and quickly finished putting all of the dragon’s gold into the bag, “Hmm I wonder, how DID I get it? Guess we may never know!”

‘She’s lying to me, but I think it’d be best if I didn’t know.’

“Anything else then? If not, I think it's time we head out.”

Spinni nodded as she made sure there was no gold left in the Dragon’s care. “Yep! Let's go!”

The two of us once more made our way through the Dragon’s former home, heading upstairs to Ogein who looked annoyed that we had interrupted his nap as he sat up while I activated the elevator, allowing it to go back up. Once back up we exited the dungeon and set up camp finally in the cave. 

‘The dungeon was frankly lackluster however we’ve gained a new ally, so there’s that at least. She seems competent as a fighter, but she may have some ways to go to catch up to my own personal level. Speaking of which it’s risen up to 89 now from all the hunting we’ve been doing. Normally it wouldn’t be so easy to level up that much around level 80, however since my racial base level is 80, leveling up is still a breeze. For now we still have a single direction to go: towards civilization. Once we’re there… Well… I’ll figure something out!”

SwissChocolates

Join the Discord for updates, the ability to help with writing ideas (Only for those who click on the reaction role, it is not required that all who join the discord do so but the option is there), or to see reference images for some of the characters throughout the series or the map whenever I get around to making it (also flags if I ever make those because I do enjoy making flags for things) Invite is: https://discord.gg/xcCvpSxmA7