POV Vesuvius:
The words of the young elf hit the dragon like a hammer. The weird energy was always around him. Even now, he could faintly feel it flowing into his body, his XP bar slowly filling up. However, after years of playing LOMM as a player, he became so accustomed to it that he didn’t pay any attention to it, as his player mentality of just considering it to be a game design choice still affected him.
‘This whole thing is real. It is not just a gameplay feature, so what is it?’. As a dragon, he could easily see and feel the magic and life energy, but this weird energy didn’t feel nor behave like any of these two.
‘It is XP. But what even is this XP if it can make anyone stronger? If mana is the energy of a soul and the life force is the energy of a body, then where this ‘XP’ belongs?’
In the meantime, as he got lost in his thought, Alesia kept standing there, nervously fiddling with a strand of her blonde hair. Her eyes were filled with expectancy, making the dragon’s heart twitch in pain as he had to admit that he had no clue, hurting his image and pride simultaneously.
‘There is no way I can solve this mystery with my current knowledge… But I have to keep my image of being wise, so I will take the second-best option. I will act!’
The dragon opened his mouth, bright light and heat escaping out, turning the whole room into an oven, “Alesia, you are too young to learn truths of the universe. If I told you now, it would break you.”
Alesia opened her mouth, only to immediately close them again. Her childish face has taken on an expression fitting more an old person than a young-looking one like herself.
Finally, she pushed out an answer, “If is it what your Highness thinks…”
The dragon turned towards the black tunnel with daylight on its end leading towards the exit as he wordlessly walked out of the chamber. The cave shook under his steps, leaving behind footprints of molten stone.
Rays of daylight were entering through the large gaping hole in the ceiling, illuminating the tunnel. The dragon bent his legs and spread his wings. In an instant, his body launched upwards, shooting out of the hole in the ground like a missile out of a silo.
He had had enough of it. He was fed up with the waiting and wanted to finally level up. He wanted to blast some enemies to vent out all of his frustration at him being clueless about the mysterious XP.
‘The update will come soon anyway! It is time for the one last blast!’
His eyes caught movement all over the plains, his precise sight immediately distinguishing his allies from enemies and random players. At once all of his monsters started to retreat, abandoning their battles and leaving the confused players behind.
‘They are all trespassing on my territory! I tolerated them for a long time. It is time to end it. The time between updates should be long enough for my power to increase by a large margin. It should even allow me to become an adult dragon, finally forming my domain. By that time, I should be able to fight against much higher levels, so there is no reason carefully tread around them.’
Vesuvius already had plans in his head on how to speed up his levelling even more, ‘With the upcoming boost in power, I should instead work on bringing the attention of more players on me and harvest all of their XP for me! It is time to become flashy! But not too much, I need to bring droves of players, but I also need to avoid catching the attention of the top-tier players.’
The dragon flapped his wings, rising higher and higher into the sky before opening his mouth with his voice booming across the whole plains, “All of you! You are trespassers! But do not despair. All of you will be forgiven for your service of becoming the first victims of my new spell!”
Hundreds upon hundreds of eyes turned towards him, all of the black clouds obscuring him, parting away and revealing his imposing body for everyone to see. Some of the small ant-like figures were already running away without even looking up, their fear evident from their speed.
‘I have already brought too much attention on myself. The only way to stop any local organisation from even thinking about causing trouble is to show them how destructive I can be! I need to seed fear into their hearts.’
“Ooo, fire. Ooo magma! Ooo, the forces of volcanoes! All of you gather under my will!” his voice boomed, and hundreds of players spread all over the burned plain turned to run in an instant.
Vesuvius felt like laughing, knowing that all of these fancy words were nothing but theatrics to make it a more impactful experience.
‘Hopefully, this will work. Otherwise, I will look like a fool.’
Brightly glowing magical circuits flared up on his wings, quickly forming into squares. Then two circles materialised around the squares. They were trembling, mana leaking out of them as they were highly unstable.
The dragon pushed even more mana into them and redirected more of his focus, forcefully keeping them from collapsing.
“Ohh, resentments of dead dragons! Gather in my hands!” his voice was booming even louder, with even Vesuvius himself losing himself in the feeling of how pompously it sounded.
Two neon-red upside-down pyramids immediately formed on the surface of his wings, the neon-red energy spreading through their whole surface and their crystal structure.
The dragon flapped his red-glowing wings, and the blades of neon-red magma with golden trails launched out of their bone structure. Glowing magical symbols orbited around their sharp edges.
They abruptly stopped, and instead of moving forwards, they remained suspended in the air around the dragon sending shivers through the spines of everyone under him.
The dragon’s three horns shone brightly, the mana flowing through them in rivers as they held the blades in place.
“Ohh, rain of death and fire, heed to my will!” the dragon kept flapping his wings faster and faster, making them look like red blurs. The red blades kept launching out of them in higher and higher numbers.
The red blades with symbols orbiting around them slowly spread in all directions, making it look like thousands of red stars ignited in the sky.
The mana flowed through the dragon’s bones and veins at an insane rate, both of his hearts pumping at an immense speed. His head started to hurt, and his mana reserves were quickly dropping.
“Shit, run for your lives! The wyrm is going unleash some horrible attack!”
The panic erupted on the ground, everyone running so fast that they were falling over each other, their shouts reaching all the way towards the dragon, who felt like laughing as he knew that this spell was nothing but an overtaxing spell useless in actual combat.
‘Still, it will be a terrifying show!’