POV Vesuvius:
The dragon rested on top of his tower, his long tail hanging down from the roof, going all the way to the ground. His mind was still disturbed by the perpetual second heartbeat resonating through his body. As time went on, he was slowly getting used to it, even though it felt worrying for him to have a second heart that didn’t even belong to him.
His body was unmoving as he analyzed the information about the curse magic, his growing intelligence making it a much faster process.
In the end, he summarised it as magic fueled by negative feelings such as anger, envy or resentment. This aspect made it a powerful tool for dragons as they were filled with lots of negative emotions. It had a low potential for direct damage but was able to cause long-term or short-term negative effects.
‘Its level is too low for now to do something extreme with it like covering whole mountains in it or cursing someone for their whole life remotely, but it can be used to increase my combat power directly.’
From the information given to him by the system, he learned a few essential components, ‘I have effect circuits and then medium circuits.’
The dragon looked at a minion in black robes fluttering in the winds, his body straightening as if expecting some attack. “It is the time! Prepare my minion!”
“Yes, your highness, I am ready to become your testing subject!”
The dragon lifted his massive claw, its massive shadow covering the whole minion. Then an evil-looking neon-red pyramid flared up in his mind, crooked and twisted magical letters looking like anything he saw with his previous magic quickly arranging in chaotic, irregular shapes, the whole circuit screaming with insanity.
‘This should be effect circuit for the curse of weakness.’
The next moment the dragon pushed his mana into his claws, the speed of his second heartbeat quickly hastening. A neon-red reversed pyramid flared before his massive claw, evil feeling energy radiating out, the red glow increasing as more twisted and distorted symbols ignited, filling the whole inverted pyramid.
‘This should be a medium circuit for physical touch.’
As if linked, both circuits pulsed at once. An evil and thick wave of mana left the pyramid in his mind that slowly dissipated as if it lost its energy, flowing through his veins and bones before entering the reversed pyramid in his claw.
The inverted pyramid flashed, then melted into red energy that coated his claws.
The neon-red energy flowed, spreading through his claws and covering every nook and cranny.
Vesuvius lowered his claws. Their massive sharp crystal forms descended towards his minion at a slow speed, Vesuvius making sure that he wouldn’t squash the small meat bag under him.
The minion didn’t even flinch, standing with wide open arms as if welcoming the massive claw and the quest completion that would come together with it.
The claw gently struck the minion, his whole body bending and falling on his knees as a short pulse of red light escaped, flowing into his body.
“How do you feel, my minion?”
“Weak, my whole body feels much weaker?”
“If you could quantify it, how much would it be?” Vesuvius felt like laughing with how clever he felt with his elegant phrasing.
His minion went quiet, and Vesuvius felt him focus as if he was making some complicated calculations, “Twenty percent, your highness.”
The dragon nodded to himself, ‘Not bad for such a simple curse, but likely its effects against more resistant foes will be smaller.’
He already wanted to grin, feeling that this magic had a great future, but he shook his head, stopping himself from doing it.
‘At level one, I have sadly only this one medium circuit and also the curse of tiredness.’ the dragon mind briefly hovered above an option of levelling it up, hoping for some better medium, ‘It is fused with draconic magic so there must be some curse lense for my breath that would imbue it with some curse.’
However, in the end, he decided against doing so, feeling like there were better options to invest his four ability points.
The dragon’s magic-sensitive eyes were fully fixed upon his minion. Red curse-containing mana lingered on his body, a portion of it evaporating into the air like water, with the more significant part dissipating under the afflicted’s mana.
‘Somehow, it feels like a virus, with mana in the body fighting it like an immunity system.’
The curse was slowly dissipating, but Vesuvius was sure that with his dense dragon mana, it would linger on his minions for at least hours.
‘Could I create some deadly curse that would spread and duplicate itself like a real virus?… Well, I wouldn’t be first. There are werewolves, and a curse causes that… But maybe making it more subtle, spreading just with touch or even better air with an incubation period.’
Vesuvius shuddered, thinking about some horrible curse killing half of the world.
‘Wait, I have my high mage title. It should increase the level of my curses too!’
Vesuvius focused on his title, the level of curse magic immediately jumping up by three levels as the effects of the title were refreshed and recalculated.
It was one of the annoying parts of LOMM that were unintuitive, enraging many players who didn’t know that they had to refresh their titles to affect newly gained abilities.
(AN: Yup, this is not me, just trying to explain me often forgetting this :D!)
POV BoobaFet:
The forest was burning, and corpses of black-robed players, muscular men and draconified animals were sewn all over the ground. Orange flames and swatched of magma illuminated everything with their orange light.
Sounds of falling trees and loud bangs echoed through the forest, with occasional shouts or monster growls.
In the middle of the corpses stood Booba, his whole robes stained with blood, his bronze mask reflecting the flames, his reptilian eyes brightly glowing. His spear was pointed forward, and his mind focused.
A massive player with melon-sized biceps was facing him, his bald head reflecting the inferno surging around him. His knees were bent, and his breathing was calm as he stood in a standard boxing stance with his fist protecting his head.
Booba stabbed with his spear, its two clones following, one made of magma and the second made of lightning. All three pierced through the air at an insane speed, their sharp tips dangerously closing towards the mountain of muscles in the shape of a human.
The muscular player jumped backwards, causing slight tremors, his fist in a defensive boxing stance.
Booba just snickered, knowing that his spear had an insane advantage in its range, ‘Why are some people simply refusing to acknowledge that polearms are much superior!’
“Come, you fist peasant, taste my spear!”
He jumped forwards, rapidly stabbing without any break, his opponent quickly retreating. His spear kept whistling as he kept stabbing without any break, not feeling tired with his dragonkin constitution. Its copies made of lightning and magma followed by its sides, creating glowing lines in the air. With each stab of his spear rose powerful wind waves creating gashed in the forest soil, harmlessly bouncing from the man’s chiselled abs.
The man just kept taking steps backwards or to the sides, his massive body moving with the footwork worth of a master boxer, the spears swishing around him and not giving him any opportunity to counterattack.
“Come on, Lili, hurry up. This guy is dodging like insane!”
Suddenly a bright blue light flashed across the forest. Electrical crackling resounds everywhere as an arc of lightning strikes across the forest, striking the musclehead.
The musclehead rose up his fists, punching the incoming lightning, his two boulder-like fists smashing it apart, electricity flowing down into his body.
Booba felt smashing his head against the tree after seeing that someone tried to box with lightning, ‘Really, he is some kind of pugilist. He should have just covered his body in aura to suppress damage, but no, he wanted to smash it… Dammint, just because you cover your fist in the aura to protect it doesn’t mean that rest of your body would be the same.’
The man’s muscles spasmed, temporarily losing momentum. Booba used it to launch forwards and stab with his spear. His spear turned into a blur, its flaming blade piercing the man’s heart. His massive body fell to the ground with an audible thud, flames slowly devouring him.
The eyes of the musclehead leader fell on the burning body, his face contorting in rage. “Ahhh, I will revenge you, Tim!”.
The ground cracked under his muscular legs as he launched forwards, his body glowing from the aura, his light-radiating fist moving at an immense speed towards a player in an iron mask, the leaves rustling around him, drifted by the draft that he caused.
Everyone watched as his fist connected with the iron-masked player, the mask bending before the fist crashed into his head that exploded like an overpressured balloon, blood pieces of and brain raining everywhere.
A few droplets of blood fell in Booba, staining his black robes even more.
“He is the last one. Surround him! We will attack him from multiple directions at once!” the female voice came from behind the battlefield.
The monsters and the masked players moved, forming a circle around Ogre, all of their weapons pointed at him, their tips glittering in the orange light of flames.
“This is what you get for messing with dragons.”