Our attackers will be faced with the choice of attacking us when there was a possibility of beasts coming down on us as well. I opted to leave the packs loaded when we stopped. Since I detected an enemy it was to be expected. The birds would be unsaddled, and allowed to rest as usual. I wasn't planning on loading up the birds even when we did get attacked.
The predators would become my test dummies. I frowned to myself as I sat down next to the fire Sekka had built while I was tying the birds up. I focused my whole mind on my dragon body. Placing runes on two scales at once. I made sure to spread them equally around my body since I knew I wasn't going to have time to get them all.
My scales were only the size of a human palm despite my massive nearly thirty foot height. I'd been growing taller even while I wasn't using my dragon body right now. I could only imagine the amount of damage I could do if I had some sort of overlapping attack pattern on my scales, but there was a risk to that short of thing. If the runes didn't work as individual enchantments for each scale then there was a high risk of back lash if the chain that controlled the mana failed. I was already worried about the potential problems I might face by enchanting my own scales.
It could interrupt my mana flow or it could cause something even worse. My body recognized my mana, and allowed it to flow freely, but the runes might not be the same. Thankfully I couldn't coat my wing membranes in runes so if there was some sort of problem reabsorbing my mana through my scales then I could use my wings to draw it back in. I knew there would be a day when it wouldn't really matter if I lived long enough. The problem was I had to live long enough first, and I kept putting myself in incredibly dangerous situations.
There was also the negative to not having my wings coated too. They wouldn't have that extra layer of protection that my scales had. If I didn't have enough mana to open a portal then I wouldn't be able to fly away if something did happen. Again that would only be a problem while I was young. Most of my problems would only be a problem while I was still young, and fairly weak.
My core not being overflowing all the time had slowed my cores growth, but it hadn't stopped it. I didn't know if that was one of the benefits of becoming a king or not, but I would find out when I went home, and compared my growth with Aurora. I wasn't so worried about the weight of leaving earth anymore now that I had left the planet, but complaining about the fact that I'd lost a literal home field advantage was kind of pointless at the moment. I managed to get a little over a third of my scales done before something struck, and destroyed our little barrier. It would be another few weeks before the I would be able to use these barrier stones again now that their charge was fully spent.
My eyes snapped open, and my senses sharpened. Six enemies. I licked my lips in anticipation before drawing both blades, and rushing into the fray. The speed of my passing nearly blew out the fire like a candle. Sekka, who had been pretending to sleep, threw his blanket off, and flicked his whip around in his grip.
He could hold off a few of them if I needed it, but I didn't know if he would get much of a chance to hold them off. I was looking forward to this fight so much that by the time it came I was already at my peak. To the elves before me my strength would appear monstrous. I let a hint of mana flow into my poison blade to coat it's surface in basilisk venom. Gravel was a lot easier to hide then a body, and if anyone saw this gravel they would never realize the mistake they made until they took the time to assemble the pieces.
Treading on the bodies of their former allies with no idea that they were dead in the first place. The best kind of murder was the kind you could flaunt without having anyone have the slightest clue of what you had done. I imagined that I would be using basilisk venom to make my enemies disappear for a while in the future. Paving the walkways with my dead enemies was one way to send a message without spreading the gruesome image of bodies on pikes like the old stories. Hiding darkness beneath a layer of innocence was the best way to make people miss it.
There were less, and less people underestimating me these days so I didn't know how much of a point there was to trying to get underestimated. The only idiot that was stupid enough to underestimate me were the ones that didn't see the real me. My blade met little to no resistance as it went through the raised arm of the man in the front. He was preparing to throw a spear at me, but I was faster then he expected me to be. He cried out in surprise before losing his head on the backswing of my other blade.
My next strike knocked the next man off his feet. I'd hit him with the back of my blade, and my swing wasn't fast enough to make dull sharp so I simply rattled him like a giant maracas. Breaking bones as I watched him fly backwards. Six was far too few for me to get any real enjoyment out of this. I flicked the space blade, and felt it's demand for mana.
It would slow time again with this strike. It had been a while since I'd seen that effect on a living creature. My strike might have barely nicked his flesh, but the effect could immediately be seen. He slowed to a crawl as the man behind him slammed right into his unmoving comrade. I jumped back when I realized one of them was no longer in front of me.