POV Brown:
Thick clouds of smoke were drifting through the air. Two people slowly crept through the thick haze, their bodies wrapped in thick cloaks covered in ash. They had scarves wrapped around their faces to protect their lungs from the ash.
The heavy smell of burning and heat washed over their bodies. Bright lights flickered in the distance, the heavy smoke making it impossible to determine their source.
“Why are you so slow? Hurry up! This is our opportunity to look at the wyrm from closer!” one of them shouted in a feminine voice, her steps turning faster as her cloaked body quickly vanished in the smoke.
“Wait for me!” the second player immediately hurried up, quickly running towards the distant lights. Suddenly gush of wind revealed the brown coat under his dirty cloak.
Suddenly the female stopped, Brown almost bumping into her. She stood quietly and pointed forward.
Finally, they spotted the silhouette of a majestic and elegant beast lying on the ground, enshrouded by thick clouds of vapours. They couldn’t see any details, only the black outline with lines filled with magma and occasional golden glitter. A terrifying aura radiated out, making the bodies of the two players feel heavy.
Seeing how huge the beast was and the heat radiating out, preventing them from walking closer, they stopped.
“They have no chance…” the female spoke, and Brown couldn’t but inwardly agree with her assessment.
“This is definitely not a normal wyrm, these golden patterns and their sheer size.”
They looked at each other and simultaneously spoke, “It is a noble wyrm!”
Brown hurriedly turned on his recording, wanting to catch the massive noble wyrm for his quickly growing number of followers. He couldn’t help but feel excited, imagining an even greater influx of followers after finding out the true identity of the boss.
“Their chance of killing this wyrm just dropped even lower. They can’t avoid these insane AoE attacks.”
Brown couldn’t but agree again after witnessing their destructive powers with his own eyes. Wyrms were always dangerous foes with their powerful magic that could unleash massive attacks, easily wiping whole parties in a single attack.
Suddenly the massive black mass stirred, its enormous body rumbling, the heat radiated out of the wyrm growing even stronger. The ash clouds rose as a long tail covered in crystal spikes slithered through the ground.
Both of them froze. Brown’s heart skipped a beat as the mass of black volcanic stone rose from the ground, its black shadow looming over both of them, the sweat pouring down their bodies under the immense heat as if they were looking into an open furnace.
The pair of glowing golden circles looking like reverse-slitted eyes locked on them, the intimidating aura radiating out, making their bodies tense.
Suddenly mighty wind rose, stirring all of the smoke as the wyrm launched into the air, quickly vanishing into the distance.
“Why are we still alive?”
POV Vesuvius:
Vesuvius couldn’t move, his whole body itching and radiating heat as his cells quickly reconstituted, getting born anew. A new indescribable feeling awoke in his heart, his life force and mana slowly mixing together and forming a small pearl in his heart.
An intricate knowledge flooded his mind, teaching him how to enter deep meditation and use the pearl in his heart to convert the energies of his body and soul.
Suddenly his senses picked two being closing towards him, a smell of humans entering his nostrils. Vesuvius tried to lift his large arm to swap them away, but he couldn’t.
His irritation kept growing as if there was an itch inside of his body that he couldn’t scratch.
The faint miasma of dead covering the whole wastelands suddenly started to move, flowing towards the border of the barony like a river. Soon a fuzzy cold spot feeling like a death appeared in the distance, slowly moving deeper and deeper into the barony. It was far, but Vesuvius could already pick it up, feeling enormous energy radiating out.
It was a familiar feeling, encoded deep in the memories of dragons, ‘A reaper.’
At first, Vesuvius tried to struggle, trying to move his body to prepare for the fight as the cold kept getting closer and closer.
However, he soon stopped after putting together his innate knowledge and lore from his previous life, ‘The chance that they are here to fight is low.’ he already realised the reason for their presence when he spotted all of the miasma of the dead that started to gather on fields through the barony.
‘They are just like vultures. They just came to feed on the remnants.’
Reapers were master infiltrators, almost invisible to mortals until they revealed themselves or until the mortal got close to their death. They could easily blend with humans and settle in the location with lots of dead, quietly feeding on the dead energy and growing stronger. For humans, there was almost no way to identify them quickly.
‘This land must be like a feeding ground for them, with all of the battles and death that happened here in the short time.’ Until now, Vesuvius ignored the slight miasma of death drifting through the air, as it wasn’t in large amounts and would slowly dissipate.
Suddenly a new energy seeped out of the dragon, slowly flowing and saturating the burned soil, replacing the extracted dead energy. It was the life energy of dragons.
Finally, the feeling returned to the dragon’s limbs. His gaze fell upon the two pesky mortals.
‘Today is their lucky day.’
He immediately stood up and flapped his wings, ignoring the presence of the annoying little flies as the reaper was much more interesting to him, the two weaklings not even feeling interesting to him in the current situation.
He flapped his massive wings, his body streaking across the sky as he flew straight towards the quickly incoming cold spot in the distance. Vesuvius felt his greed quickly growing, ‘If they want to leech on my work and on my territory, then they should pay!’
Vesuvius felt his chance to strike a deal was relatively high as the reapers were most reasonable from the all four balance races.
Angels were unreasonable fanatics, demons were devious and dishonest, and dragons were greedy and prone to fits of rage. Compared to these, cold and pragmatic reapers were much better choices to deal with.
Most people considered them killing machines, but they weren’t. There are plenty of theories why reapers just didn’t go on the murder rampages to quickly grow in power, but Vesuvius, with his infinite lifespan, realised it.
‘Why should they? Every mortal will eventually die without reapers needing to even lift their fingers. The world is so full of the dead that there is no need for them to produce even more and endanger themself in a battle.’
The dragon flew above the fields, the golden wheat already ready to be harvested with dozens of tiny dots working on them. They all stopped their work looking at the black shadow in the sky. Some of them resumed their work, with others dropping their tools and running to hide.
The dragon kept flying further and further away from the town, the fields quickly turning more deserted with no one working on them.
The dragon glided high in the sky, and the cold kept getting stronger, a thick mist sprawling through the empty fields, the air feeling more cold than usual.
Vesuvius scanned the field with his golden eyes, his senses easily picking something moving in the mist.
“Reveal yourself!” the dragon’s deep voice resonated through the empty fields.
Soon the mist dispersed, revealing a hunched old man leaning on his stick. His face was white and covered in wrinkles, as if he was going to fall dead any moment. A cold and powerful magical energy was radiating out of him, his simple, unassuming clothes fluttering as if in the wind, even though the air was unnaturally still.
“Ohh, a dragon? Such a long time that I felt this, I almost forget this feeling.” the old man spoke in a coarse yet firm voice.
Before Vesuvius could speak, the man continued, “I know what you want. You dragons are always so greedy… well, speak, what do you want in exchange? Gold?”
The dragon’s heart shivered, his eyes briefly shining before he shook his head, knowing that there was something even more valuable he could gain, “No! I want your special services.”
The services of reapers were famous throughout the world, with them making deals in a similar manner to demons. However, they weren’t filled with loopholes and traps but were straightforwards with payments being lives. They also weren’t offering overblown promises, but death, death of enemies, death of rivals or maybe a few extra years of life.
In short, they were dealing with death.
The reaper stopped moving as if surprised, but a cold smile soon formed on his wrinkly pale face, the shadows looming over the land prolonging and frost spreading along the ground, “That will not be cheap. Are you sure that what you are offering is worth my services?”
“You must have felt all of the death that happened here just in this short time. And I am sure that the death count here will not stop growing soon. Maybe it will even speed up.”
Silence spread through the fields. The reaper stood on the ground as if thinking while the dragon quietly flapped his wings, hovering high above the fields.
The silence kept for a while, no one rushing to speak or move.