POV BoobaFet:
Doors into an inn swung wide open, creaking in their hinges. Three persons walked in, a young human with a spear hanging from his back, a tall elven girl and a fat dwarf with a massive axe holstered on his back. They had oversized grey hoods over their heads, hiding their faces in shadows.
They suddenly stopped seeing that the whole inn was packed with people with nametags above their heads. Every table was occupied by people wearing high-quality armour shining in the dim lighting of the inn.
Each of their bodies was covered in mutations, some of them having wings growing from their back, long curled horns or tails waving behind their backs. Some of them even had brightly glowing eyes, radiating magical energy.
“Haha, look at these noobs!” a tall, bulky player with black hair wearing a rough-looking outfit made of expensive-looking furs and pelts stood up, towering above the trio. His muscles were unnaturally big and bulky, looking as if he had large watermelons in his arm, his skin looking rough as if made of stone.
A cacophony of laughter erupted out, every player in the inn looking at the trio with a predatory look.
“Yeah, get out of here, noobs. This is our inn now!” more and more players joined, taunting them and pointing their weapons at them while others laughed.
“Get the hell out of here before I throw you out of a window. We have a raid on a wyrm to plan, not something that a noob like yourself could understand!”
Booba put his hand on the shaft of the spear on his back, his reptilian eyes dangerously glittering.
‘Damn, what are they thinking!’
Suddenly soft hand fell on his shoulder, Lili whispering to him, “Stop it! Don’t you see that they are above level fifty? They would beat us like nothing!”
“Well, for once, I agree with Lili, but not because I can’t beat them but because we are in town! We can cause a large brawl here.” The fat dwarf looked through the crowd of aggressively-looking players, taking a step back.
Hearing his friends, Booba’s grip on the spear loosened as he turned backwards, pushing the doors wide open.
More laughter erupted from behind them as they walked towards the doors. “Yeah, go hunt some goblins! Well, if you dare. Haha!”
POV Vesuvius:
Loud bangs shattered the silence as the monstrous black dragon surrounded by heavy burning clouds appeared high in the sky above the horizon. Loud banging kept blasting again and again as a bright yellow light kept periodically illuminating the sky. His clawed limbs all pointed backwards, massive explosions of magma and smoke blasting from them, creating an inferno in the dragon’s tails.
Vesuvius fed his mana into his hind legs, and a large blast erupted out, magma raining towards the ground, his whole body accelerating even more, and a powerful shockwave made the surrounding clouds of black smoke whirl. The next moment the clouds ignited, covering the sky in flames.
The dragon kept flying above the mountains, everything around him blurry with powerful winds howling around him.
Suddenly he braced with his wings, quickly deaccelerating and gliding towards the ground, the black burned remnants of the forest around his hideout growing bigger and bigger.
The massive dragon landed right under the cliff, his long claws creating deep crevices in the soil and crushing all of the boulders.
His body dwarfed the small tiny tunnel in the cliff, too big to even dream of fitting through.
‘Do I really need to dig a bigger one again?’ he felt a headache rising in his head just thinking about such a menial chore unfitting a dragon like him.
‘Ohh! This is good.’ his eyes fell upon the remnants of the grey fortress on the horizon, his eyes slightly shining.
Most of the tower collapsed, leaving behind only its base, giving the dragon idea, ‘Living in a cave, that sound so poor… I will instead make my own tower, settling on its top.’
It sounded like an insanely large project by earth standards, requiring lots of time, manpower and material, but to Vesuvius, it felt simple.
‘If some incompetent human mages can build a tower so fast, then I can too. With my powers, I can easily produce large amounts of lava and then just cool it down with either wind or water, using it as a replacement for concrete.’
An image of a tall, pitch-black tower with lava flowing down its tall walls formed in the dragon’s mind, his heart beating faster in the excitement.
‘There are just too many advantages compared to a cave. I have wings, and I could easily enter while most of the enemies would have to slowly climb up the tower. Also, I can also easily end up trapped inside of a cave with enemies blocking my only exit, but with the tower, I could easily escape at any moment.’
Suddenly a voice brought him back to reality, “You draconic highness! We have bad news…”
A large group of players, all in black robes and in dragon-shaped masks, stood before the dragon, his large body dwarfing them all, even his claws being bigger than any of them. Thick clouds of volcanic gasses rose from him, filling the sky and covering everything in perpetual darkness, with the only source of light being the yellow and blue light radiating out of his body
Stupid bickering and coughing came from the group, inhaling the thick smoke.
“Hey, is it really our boss? Can’t this be like their big brother of a father?”
“Yes, you dummy, we just finished another event, so it makes sense for the boss to upgrade again!”
Vesuvius immediately retracted the smoke away from his minions, allowing them to breathe freely, “Speak, minion!
“Your highness, our people in the town caught some unsettling news… There is a large group of powerful immortals that wants to slay you.” one of the players in iron masks stepped forwards.
‘Just as I thought, this whole demon invasion brought too much attention to this region.’ Vesuvius wasn’t even surprised, and only one question was in his mind.
“Speak concretely, minion. What are their levels?!” Vesuvius felt that it wasn’t out of place for an NPC to ask so.
At first, NPCs didn’t know such a term, but after the long presence of players in Lorenia, they started to use such the term themself to quantify someone’s strength as it was exact and intuitive.
With the help of players giving them references, mages even managed to create tools that could measure energy radiating out of living beings to measure their levels, bringing an era where strength was easily measurable. Prior to that that there was no unified measurement system for personal strength, with different occupations in different countries using their own metrics.