-Margaret Mont-Bismuth-

I honestly couldn’t figure out who to be more impressed with: the giant dragon fruit dragon, Vertrala, with all his modes now that Tabitha has levelled up her Mercury-Gardenia account to have full access to all of them or the even more giant dragon-scorpion chimera, Scorpius, with how fast he was able to kill dead riders with his spear-covered stinger and scorpion claws. Honestly I was leaning toward Scorpius because for every dead rider I managed to down between my conjured handgun and spells from my bevor, the phantasma managed to take down at least half a dozen more. Catching my breath between uses of Mind Strike and Soul Strike, I asked Scorpius,

“Just how powerful are you?”

“I’m legion tier 2.5… although my actual tier is tier 4.2…” answered Scorpius as he slammed one of his four dragon legs onto a dead rider with a spider mount, crushing it instantly.

“Wait… that doesn’t track,” replied Tabitha from her current safe spot behind a high school’s cement fence-wall. “Shouldn’t you be a higher tier? A lot higher?”

“Foolish dragon tamer… making yourself stronger than tier… is an integral part of being a powerful being… you should know that already with your… fellow dragon.”

“So pinnacles of mages just being pinnacles of mages,” I noted with a sigh, realizing what he meant: Tabitha has Vertrala who was already a powerful spirit in his own right that was further enhanced by five legacies and a 13 mandala formula budget Grand Key while Scorpius himself was a phantasma further enhanced by a phantasma composite facsimile, phantasma stratum 2 composite facsimile, and a 14 mandala formula Grade Key… Talk about lucky, I thought to myself before going back to focus on the fight. We weren’t anywhere closer to finding Clockwork Witchwork or whoever caused all this because the dragons were just attracting more and more monsters.

Clasping onto my handgun to center myself, I went to observing the battlefield: the outer frontal buildings of the high school were completely wrecked from dragon’s breaths and hails of spears. I couldn’t but wonder just how much it was going to cost Mita and the others to repair all this damage. At least the latest group of dead riders, all disgusting ones riding on giant locust and spider mounts, were now dead so we could move on. Dark monsters really do cause a lot of collateral damage… although not as much as Vertrala and Scorpius.

“I sense a powerful foe to the north of us,” commented Vertrala as he shrunk back to his tiny compact form.

“Is it the Glory Daze member that did all of this?” Tabitha asked as she paused to take a breather and drink a soda-potion.

“I can’t tell, I am not a mere scout or tracker, I am a great dragon.”

“Well Jaffa and Candy haven’t told us the others have found them… so we might as well check it out… I guess.”

“Shouldn’t we be avoiding unnessecary fights right now?” I questioned the sweet tooth, fishing through my Proxy Inventory to grab a soda-potion for myself. Popping the cap, I downed the blueberry-fruit punch flavored concoction, feeling my mouth and throat tingle from the fizz and energizing and fluid feeling of blue manas.

“I guess… I know Daphne told me that Scorpius has limited use before.”

“Don’t worry… Daphne hasn’t used me in multiple moons… so she still has five charges left for this form… I shall be able to fight for five and half more hours if she wills,” noted the giant draconic chimera dismissively. A charge system? That’s one way to make it so you could hit above your weight class, even if upgrading it to be usable for higher tiers of magic could be a hassle…

“That’s good to know. What do you think Margaret, should we just try to find out who Vertrala is sensing?”

“Well we’re in our simulated bodies and Clockwork Witchwork didn’t seem to have any way to drag out our real bodies,” I noted, mulling over our options since either way we were going to have more, especially if the amount of dark monsters appearing ramped up again. “Okay let’s check it out.”

It didn’t take too long to discover what Vertrala was sensing after a few minutes of walking: circling around a skyscraper near one of the larger cracks in space-time was a serpentine dragon with six arms made of an old-timey scales instead of wings with a tall cloaked figure riding it. This was one of the times I was glad I had this floral-patterned bevor cause my mouth honestly went a bit slack jaw at the sight. A dragon-riding dead rider?!

“Hmm, it may not be the Glory Daze vagrants we were looking for, but it is looking like a worthy foe nonetheless,” chimed Vertrala with a snort, already looking at Tabitha to activate one of his transformations.

“Are we seriously going to fight a dragon?” I asked before realizing I already knew the answer.

“Of course.”

“So what, you and Scorpius are going to fly up there and fight. What about me and Tabitha?”

“Tabitha will fuse with me and you will ride us or hide.”

“There’s no point in trying to stop him, Margaret. Once he makes up his mind he’ll just keep pestering me, us, about it,” pointed out the sweet tooth with a dejected sigh before casting, “Unlock Obscuring Mode.” With that, Tabitha and Vertrala glowed and fused together into their signature sort of humanoid dragon form with giant floating fragments of mist-covered sugar.

“Now are you going to join us or cower? I do not let others ride me so frivolously so treat this as a great honour.”

“Fine, I’ll ride you, but I’m not treating it like an honour,” I replied, clambering onto the fruity dragon’s back with the help of one of the sugar fragments that I could only guess Tabitha was maneuvering to let me use it as a foothold. No way I’ll be able to fire my gun like this, guess I’ll just have to use my bevor and hit it with shitty banes, I quipped to myself as I got myself situated, grabbing a loose dragon fruit skin-like scale for stability. As both Vertrala and Scorpius lifted off, I could see the dragon riding dead rider take note of us from holes in the mist shroud that Vertrala was giving off.

“Who dares near me? False dragons?” shouted the dead rider in a loud accusatory tone: I could feel Vertrala bristle in rage at the remark. Haha, talk about a sore spot.

“How dare you! Taste the might of the great dragon Vertrala and the misty shrouds of his Obscuring Mode!” roared Vertrala, belting out a stream of dragon’s breath that looks like a mana-infused fog bank before I could feel a trickle of calm and positivity that I knew came from Tabitha. I really wish she would actually bother to teach me how to do that magic: it definitely was a godsend in both arguments and fights.

Twirling to avoid most of the dragon’s breath as possible, the dead rider started to chant and cast true magic: translucent spheres of dead rider dungeon-mana filled the air and honed on both Vertrala and Scorpius. Luckily I was currently being obscured by Vertrala’s mist shroud and fragments of sugar, but that didn’t mean I shouldn’t try to contribute to the fight. Taking the opportunities as they came, I threw out Mind Strikes and Soul Strikes whenever I could see the dead rider through the mist, but the chances were little enough that I was starting to feel left out. Which felt totally weird cause I was flying on the back of a fused dragon and fighting another freaking dragon right now.

“Tabitha, if you can give me a clear enough view of the monster? I need visuals to cast,” I whispered to the dragon, trying not to draw attention to myself as the three dragons flew through the air. As translucent spheres of dungeon-mana, empowered dragon’s breaths, and hails of poisonous spears were exchanged, a pair of extra colourful cake-eye-balls appeared next to me as two slits in the mist shroud appeared in front of me. “Thanks, now let’s do this. Mind Strike. Soul Strike. Willpower Down.”

As I felt my throat get parched as a side effect of my bevor’s spells and my stimulated body’s mana dip, I saw that the dead rider and its dragon mount fumbled for a split second. Who would fucking thought, you could barely considered these spells to be double digit level wise and they are doing work, I thought to myself unsure to be impressed with myself or disappointed with the dark monster. 

“Foul false dragons with bane magic! How dare you sully my sapience!” screamed both the dead rider and the dragon, eerily in sync. But all I could think is how annoying it was that literally all the dragons I knew talked all old-timey, well I guess except for Lechiff. That and it was useful that the monster still hasn’t noticed me.

“Your sapience… is nothing special… You are simply another blight… for us to slay,” shot back Scorpius as he rammed the dead rider’s mount, missing the dead rider itself with one of its spear-covered pinning claw blows by a few inches and instead hitting its mount’s neck. Squirming and trying to escape, the dead rider started to chant more verses of true magic; seeing my chance to interrupted him, I chanted some quick spells of my own,

“Willpower Down. Perception Down.” As the two banes hit the monster, I felt a washing feeling of a cleansing spell: not wanting to waste my efforts I swallowed my spit and belted out another string of banes, “Anti-Cleanse. Willpower Down. Perception Down.”

“No! No! No!” howled the dead rider as I ruined his concentration and spellcasting, only to have Vertrala land an empowered dragon’s breath on its mount's face, shearing off scales to reveal an inky miasma underneath. “I-I-I yield! Spare me! Please spare me dragons!”

“Spare you? You who insulted me?” scowled Vertrala as Scorpius slammed the dark monster into the side of the nearby skyscraper as it continued to struggle and squirm.

“I swear! I swear on my-my name! Scalugon the Last!”

“Wait… he has a name?” I asked, louder than I intended. A monster with a name? Especially as fancy at that one? That was rare, stupidly rare.

“Yes! I have a name! I am a high-familiar! I can contract with you and the other dragon’s summoner!”

“You have the power to create… contracts yourself? Clearly you are not only a coward but… a charlatan,” commented Scorpius as he slowly dragged the dead rider down the ground, ripping up the dragon mount’s backside and arms in the process.

“I do not lie, I promise on my name and draconic lineage!” yelped Scalugon the Last, no longer stuttering but clearly still panicked. “I have amassed a great deal of power, energy, and mana from the myriad times I’ve been drawn to the layer of reality. I can shape it to create multiple mandala inscriptions, facsimiles even!”

“Facsimiles huh?” asked Tabitha, sliding out of Vertrala as he shifted to his normal giant form. “How about legacies?”

“Yes! Yes! If I had a framework I could replicate such magic! My skill is peerless, I promise.”

“Heh, Margaret what do you think? You want a dragon? Or I guess a dead rider?... Whatever you would want to call this thing.”

“If it stops shouting so much. Geez it’s loud,” I replied, trying to play it cool. I know it didn’t take too much to defeat this dark monster, but we did have Scorpius helping us and not to mention… this thing was a fucking dragon! I mean contracts for such monsters were definitely rarities, like superhero and villain-worthy, famous person-worthy.

Smiling, the sweet tooth looked back at the dead rider and its extremely damaged dragon mount and went to stating her demands for the two of us. Before I knew it, I was watching it analyze, replicate, and modify the mandala inscriptions and facsimiles that empowered Vertrala and tied him to Tabitha. After a few minutes of crazy displays of hurried spellcraft, Scalugon the Last presented the two of us each a set of six mandala inscriptions, an extra class specialty set for Eldritch Being Tech, two matching features and a synthesis feature, and a mirroring legacy. I can’t believe I’m getting a power up in the middle of a crisis like this. Talk about my luck… even if probably I can’t right now, I thought to myself amazement, thinking that this wasn’t a ‘beggars can’t be choosers' situation because how out of the ordinary and useful this encounter was. My cousin and my boyfriend’s Enigma was seriously a jackpot for those lucky enough to be close to them.