Somewhere in the baron’s castle:
The sound of shattered glass sounded through a room. The room was relatively big, with comfortably looking cushioned armchairs placed in front of a huge fireplace. The light was getting in through small defendable windows. Two beautiful girls in green maid uniforms rushed in with brooms and quickly started to clean shattered glass.
“Dammit, so much gold wasted and no results!” both maids slightly jumped up at the loud voice of the middle-aged man. The man had a well-preserved muscular physique, shoulder-length black hair and a moustache. He wore a close-fitting green doublet with embroidery of a shield with a black raven on it. A visible red aura rose from him as he looked into the fireplace, the flames only reminding him of his problem.
“Dammit, why me? Why do I have to have an elder wyrm in my fief?” then he shot a glare at the man sitting in the second armchair. He wore a green military coat with golden embroidery. His looks were mostly unassuming except for his bulging muscles, bald head and massive scars littering his face.
“You are my commander. Make a plan to slay that overgrown lizard…but stay out of the mountains. The wyrm will have too many advantages there.”
The man stood up and exited the room with a slight bow, sweat rolling down his pale face from the horrible aura of the baron.
Lorenia was a world filled with people with incredible personal strength. So nobility reflected such reality. All of the nobles had their titles, not because of just their lineage but due to their great battle power. If a noble had no heir strong enough to inherit a title, the title would be given to another strong candidate outside of their family. However, that wasn’t very common as noble heirs had strong genes nurtured over many generations and much more resources to utilise than commoners.
Baron often thought about killing the wyrm by himself, but he had his pride as noble to avoid stepping in personally for as long as possible.
‘Stupid lizard, it killed my son, annihilated one of my guard units, wasted my gold, undermined my authority and caused chaos in the population of immortals living on my land.’
POV Vesuvius:
The dragon was lying on top of his hoard, which grew significantly from the last time, recovering from his injuries. His black scales were fully exposed as pieces of black volcanic stone that used to be his armour laid on the ground next to him. Small trails of magma were pouring out of his scales like sweat from humans, slowly forming new armour layer by layer. Uncomfortable feeling as if he was naked kept bugging him as it was the first time that his armour was so damaged that he had to shed it and grow a new one. Except for the dungeon, but there it was automatically repaired after finishing the dungeon.
As he was just lying there, he had lots of time to think, and there was one idea he got, ‘Can I engrave magical runes into my volcanic armour or scales?’
The fight against hunters in runic armours gave him that idea after he realised the great effects of such runes. He knew that there were lots of humans using something similar in the form of magical tattoos, but their effects were different. They mostly gave boosts in stats or were used to cast some magic or different ability. On the other hand, runes used to enchant armours made the material much stronger or gave it new properties.
‘Humans probably are not engraving armour runes into their skin as it makes little to no sense to harden their skin as it would be uncomfortable and effects minuscule. However, dragons are different. Our natural defences are already strong so boosting that even more would have great effects.’
Runes used to enchant armours were capable of great stuff, but they had limits. Using them to change human skin into powerful armour would be hard. On top of that, it would be horrible to have stone-like skin.
Vesuvius wanted to test it immediately, but he had one big problem that prevented him from it, ‘I need a skilled runic enchanter.’
As a dragon, he couldn’t just go into a city and visit a workshop to order his modification like a human ordering new armour. Also, none of his minions went on such a path. He had two that were artists, but they were a blacksmith and an alchemist, respectively.
‘I will post mission to scout a trustworthy runic enchanter… if it ends without results, I will just let minions kidnap one. But I am sure that they will be able to find someone.’
Artists were often passionate about their work, so he was sure that many individuals would even fight for an opportunity to engrave their runes onto wyrm or dragon just to try something new and unexplored.
Then he remembered that there was still the ring he gained as a reward for killing the hunters. He immediately willed towards his storage pouch, and a small golden ring, with ornamental scales all over it and a small head of drake made out of a red, slightly glowing metal, appeared lying on the ground in front of him.
When he got his spatial pouch, the system automatically started to put his rewards into it, saving him lots of hassle.
//Analyze result:
Name: Red Drake Ring
Category: Magical Accessory
Grade: A
Item level: 20
Effects: Increases power of all attacks and spells based on fire or its derivative elements by 10%; Increases fire resistance by 15%; +5 MAG
//
When the dragon looked at the result, he had mixed feelings about that, ‘Well, that increased attack power is more than great, but on the other hand, that fire resistance is absolutely useless to me.’
In the end, he stretched his front limb forwards, and the ring magically grew in size before placing itself on a long claw. Finally, the dragon closed his eyes and returned to sleep to recover from his injuries as soon as possible.