POV PunkGuy:
A thick black stone bridge went right through the center of the volcanic caldera. A blazing hot magma bubbled and shined under it, heating the stone bridge into a bright red color.
Tall, black towers grew around the volcano, their tips piercing through the dark clouds. There were terraces upon terraces on them allowing people to stand there and watch battles. Small figures were moving everywhere on top of the volcano, working like a colony of ants.
The winds loudly spun and howled while sucking away all of the smoke, giving a perfect clean view of the bridge leading above the volcano.
“This is an arena that is fitting for this kingdom.” A single player with a bow on his shoulder and a weird punk haircut stood on top of one of the towers, his vine-red cape flowing in the wind.
“Better hope that it will not end up in a failure…” The voice of a young woman came from behind him, making him turn towards it.
The young-looking NPC woman stood right behind his back. She was the famous insane baroness. She was the woman who mercilessly organized purges, killing and executing anyone who didn’t fit into the twisted image of the kingdom.
The whole forum was spammed with posts discussing her crimes and the rumors about her secret masked agents dragging away anyone suspected of treason.
‘Why do I feel like we are the evil ones here?’ Initially, when he joined, he wanted to help dragons that were dying out. He felt like he belonged to the good side.
However, he witnessed how it changed from a small organization trying to survive and live in peace into a totalitarian regime slowly transforming a whole country to do its bidding.
‘Maybe it will change for better in the future. Sometimes to do good one must do evil first.’
Shudders ran down his spine as the baroness stared straight at him with her red-glowing, reverse-slitted eyes. He never understood why droves of players simped on her, an obvious and murderous psycho.
“There is nothing that can go wrong. The winners will join us, while we can throw some consolation prizes to the losers, binding them all to our cause. With his majesty watching, there is no way that someone would try stirring trouble.”
He wasn’t blinded by the rewards like the other players around him. He saw the flaws and cracks under the surface.
Sadly for him, it was too late to back out, as his power and everything else were tied into the faction, ‘It is like a cult. When you notice something is wrong, it is already too late to leave, as they own your house and hold your family as hostages.’
“I hope so… otherwise, someone will have to suffer the consequences. We invested too much of our reputation and name into this. If this ends up in a catastrophe, it will take a long time to recover.”
POV Troublemakers:
A large skyship filled with passengers floated in the sea of white clouds, the tall peaks underneath it looking like small mounds and rocks.
Three players stood on its board, watching the mesmerizing landscape beneath them, “To think that monsters occupy such a beautiful land.”
They were all fully decked in heavy armor forget out of slightly glowing, silvery metal.
Their long cloaks made of colorful feathers flowed down their backs, reaching all the way to their armored boots. They all stood straight, without any obvious weakness, as if they were professional soldiers.
Everyone on the ship kept their distance from them while throwing curious glances at their expensive-looking equipment.
“What has CleoCat found out?” Their leader, a tall yet young-looking man with blonde hair and blue eyes, looking straight out of a fairy tale, looked at his shorter friend wearing thick golden-trimmed glasses.
“Based upon the distance that the dragon detected her, we estimated the size of its domain and its relative strength.” The man in glasses waved his hand, a piece of parchment materializing out of nowhere.
The captain grabbed the letter, his eyes almost popping out of his eyesockets, “This can’t be correct… the dragon seems too powerful for its estimated age. There must be something that we are missing here.”
“It doesn’t matter, captain, for now… we are not going to fight the dragon. That is not our mission… Please stay focused and don’t get distracted. We must keep our identities hidden.”
“Please, prepare for the landing. We are approaching our target destination. The dragon city. We hope that you enjoyed your flight and that you will again use the services of Vertigo Airship Company.”
POV Vesuvius:
The dragon stood amidst a massive vortex of mana spinning and rotating around his huge body, its blue light reflecting within his armor and horns. The wild vortex was spinning faster and faster, concentrating on a small spot before the dragon.
‘This might work!’
The whole mountain range was shaking, with avalanches falling down the steep inclines.
All of the rotating mana sending waves through the distant forest, causing all of the trees to bend and wave as if there was a massive storm.
Vesuvius refused to leave his kingdom unprepared for the war, but he knew that he needed to give his minions something powerful. Something that would give them the edge to turn the battlefield even without him.
‘If I, my most powerful minions, and the wyrm will get tied down by the angels, only my weaker minions will remain to fight the hordes of mortal armies.’
𝑶𝔳𝗅xt.𝒸𝑶𝐌
The light of mana was getting brighter and brighter even though the vortex of mana was shrinking as if it was getting sucked into a black hole.
In the next second, all of the mana vanished, leaving behind only the quiet valley and a massive pulsing crystal levitating in the air.
The crystal was large and brightly shining, looking like a crystalized star the size of a small car.
‘You, my little one, you will fuel the armies of my kingdom!’
The more he used it, the more he realized that his ability to grow crystals out of pure, concentrated mana was much more versatile than he thought before.
His eyes brightly shone as he imagined all his soldiers parading through the battlefields in the enhanced armors with mana crystals embedded within them, fueling all of the enchantments and improving their battle capacity.
The glow of his eyes became even brighter as he imagined massive weapons using the crystals as their power source, unleashing massive beams of pure man from the walls of his castles and cities and blasting through the lines of his enemies.
‘My enemies have something similar, but they have to use dozens of mages to recharge their crystals as they are only regular crystals storing energy.
They are like batteries, while mine are instead pure energy, like fuel rods in a nuclear reactor, giving them much better longevity and much larger energy output.’
The mana flashed again, blue lights brightly glowing as the mana started to condense once more.
The dragon’s crystal horns radiated a bright blue light, emitting river-like streams of pure, draconic mana that flooded the whole atmosphere in a matter of seconds.
A small crystal split from his armor, rising into the air. And then, like a sponge, it started to suck and absorb all of the dragon’s mana from the surrounding air, sucking it in while growing in size and radiance.
The massive vortex of mana formed once more, the mana flowing in snake-like streams, happily slithering towards the small but quickly growing crystal.
Suddenly the dragon turned towards the sky, something large entering his domain. His eyes went wide as he recognized what it was.
It was a wyrm, a wyrm that was easily large, as multiple large houses were put next to each other. There wasn’t even a sign of any domain.
‘So it is an adult wyrm? What do they want?’ The dragon was interested, but he still kept the mana spinning and the small crystal growing.
POV The Unknown Wyrm:
The young wyrm, only a few decades old, soared through the sky, the wind flowing around its sleek, silvery scales.
Its eyes shone with wisdom beyond any mortal of the same age as it looked around, heading straight toward the tall mountains in the distance.
‘So the rumors were true…’ The wyrms flapped their wings faster, flying straight toward the burning spot of mana and domain on the horizon. Even from a distance, the wyrm felt huge amounts of energy washing over its body, the amount of mana in the air being so staggering that it finally realized the true difference between a dragon and a wyrm.
The power was so shocking, shaking the whole wyrm.
The wyrm had a single goal, a goal that was harder and harder to do in the quickly changing world.
‘Humans are spreading everywhere, they taking more and more of the space for themselves while pushing everyone else further and further away.’