Few guards in heavly enchanted rune armours and with massive crossbows in their arms were standing in a quickly made watch tower. It was extremely basic, just a wooden platform placed on top of four wooden pillars. Darkness was everywhere as it was night and thick clouds obscured the moon.
“Whoos!” suddenly, a sound came from the distance, and the two guards looked around.
“Have you heard it?”
“Yeah, what was that? I can’t see anything.”
“Must have been the wind.”
Night sky flared up in bright orange light, and a thick and bright stream of magma fell from the clouds hitting the ground in the middle of the camp. The stream of magma moved, creating a trail of destruction. Tents were flooded by lava burning their inhabitants. The disgusting smell of burned flesh drifted through the air.
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“Quickly raise the alarm!”
One of the guards in the watch tower hit a small bell hanging from the wooden construction. Sounds of bells sounded through the camp, hunters exiting their tents in a rush, fastening their armours at the run.
“Shit, where is it? I can’t see shit in this darkness! Quickly, let the mages use flares.”
Soldiers grabbed massive metallic crossbows, looking upwards towards the sky. But they couldn’t see a thing through the darkness, clouds and smoke rising from burned tents. Patches of lava were flowing through the camp and quickly cooling down, preventing their eyes from getting used to the darkness.
Then the skies flared up in orange light once again, revealing a silhouette of the massive draconic beast. Sounds of released springs sounded through the camp as the hunters released a swarm of glowing bolts towards the silhouette. At the same time, another stream of magma reached the ground, blinding everyone in a sudden influx of bright light.
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The magma struck the ground right into the middle of the unit, splashing around like water from a high-pressure hose. In the meantime, the bolts reached the sky, and the dark silhouette stopped its attack and rolled to the side, avoiding the bolts while vanishing into the darkness.
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Suddenly one of the patrols on the tower aimed staff upwards and a glowing flare shot up towards the sky, covering everything in bright light. Other hunters have already started to load big ballistae with massive bolts. Officers were loudly barking out orders at the quickly organising hunters.
“You lazy pigs! Load those weapons if you want to live!”
Soldiers ran towards massive ballistae placed in the corner of their camp. The dragon easily noticed it and opened his mouth, sending another stream of magma. The magma dropped straight at the ballista, its metallic parts melting and wood turning into cinders. The wave of heat spread, stopping hunters that were running towards it. Runes on their armour glowing in an attempt to stop the heat.
The big dragon between the clouds took one last glance at the burning camp and released an earth-shattering roar accompanied by a wave of black smoke before flapping his slightly glowing wings and flying into the distance.
The cloud hit the ground, rising massive amount of dust as it sent ignited tents flying, creating havoc in the camp.
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More and more magical flares launched upwards, turning the night into a day. Fires were quickly spreading from a tent to a tent, hunters trying to put them down with buckets of water and mages releasing streams of water. However, the dragon was already far from the camp, letting a small drop of magma hit the ground as he grinned, ‘They might have lots of people with a higher level than me, but when attacked during sleep without equipment, they are still just squishy humans.’
That was the dragon’s intention the whole time. He never intended to annihilate the whole camp, as it would get much harder after his initial attack when the hunters woke up. On top of that, the wyrm annihilating the whole camp of hunters would brink too much attention, compared to just ambush killing a few hunters and destroying lots of their equipment.
‘Hopefully, they will retreat in the morning; if not, I will continue my guerilla warfare.’
Vesuvius knew that his enemies weren’t like undead, with unlimited morale. They will not fight him unit their last breath; all he needed to do was cause large enough material and live damage to force them to retreat.
The dragon kept flying into a distance, flames in the camp visible from afar.
As he flew home, he realised something, ‘I need to find allies between natives, and strong at that to support me. I can’t just rely on players. They don’t have the influence needed to politically protect me.’
After a while, he found a possible candidate, ‘The Church of Fire God, they worship flames and fire god as sacred. As a dragon belonging to the fire element, I should be able to deal with them. However, they are considered to be one of the more extreme and dangerous churches. I need to consider it.’
The Church of Fire God had a terrible reputation as a bunch of fanatics burning anyone who they considered a heretic. Their belief in the purity of fire went to an insane degree, sometimes burning whole towns if they were suspected of dealing with demons or during a plague. It was one of the churches most normal people avoided. Their believers mostly consisted of pyromancers, blacksmiths and fanatics. They weren’t the greatest in a number of worshipers. However, their military strength was one of the greatest among great elemental churches.
‘As a bonus, they were one of the churches that had not participated in dragon hunts. Still, I am not strong enough to go deal with them. I want to be strong enough to at least escape before trying something so dangerous.’ In the end, he pushed the thoughts to later as he was still too weak to project his power out of this small region.