The dragon took one last look at the burning chapel and spread his wings flying towards the black sky. The only remaining structure that he could see was the dark tower on the horizon, but he considered it a place for the fight with the dungeon's final boss, so he ignored it.
'Where the hell am I supposed to find the last crystal...' he flew above the small horde of skeletons marching in old rusty armours. The dragon opened his mouth in frustration and released a stream of magma. The magma washed through the lines of the undead, annihilating them in dozens.
[+20XP]
[+30XP]
[+10XP]
...
Notifications about getting XP flooded the corner of the dragon's vision.
'This will take a while...'
One day later:
Vesuvius spent the whole day looking for anything that would lead to the crystal. However, he found nothing. The only thing that kept his mood up was that he annihilated a huge amount of lesser undead, levelling up one time. He finally reached eleven ability points, so he decided to level up one of his abilities.
'I wanted this for a long time... I will level up my Draconic Vitality. If I get ganged up by lots of attackers, more vitality scaling could save my life. I will keep the last remaining point.'
Vesuvius was more than confident in his current attack power as his true dragon breath dealt enormous damage, and on top of that, it ignored half of the enemy's resistance. What he wasn't confident about was his survivability. He spent a long time thinking about what would be better, to level up once his dragon vitality or five times his scales.
'Scaling abilities are always too good to ignore. They will just grow more and more effective as I get more raw stats from items, levels and titles. They are a good investment for the future.'
Ultimately, he refused to sacrifice long-term profit for the shortsighted boost in his power.
Ding!
//
Draconic Vitality (LV 2) --> Draconic Vitality (LV 3)
//
Suddenly he spotted really big bones sticking from the ground under him. He immediately grinned, 'Finally!'
He dived down, landing nearby to the bone, crushing a few loitering skeletons under him.
[+10XP]
[+10XP]
[+10XP]
After looking at the bones, he realized something. It wasn't one big bone but smaller bones connected to each other. It looked more like a long tail.
Few skeletons were loitering around, but the dragon ignored them as they were not dangerous to him in such small numbers. The dragon instead slowly walked towards the bone tail, opened up his big mouth filled with massive canines and bit into the tail.
"Crack!" his teeth crushed the bones biting off a chunk from the tail.
Suddenly ground around the tail moved upwards, and a massive bone beast ascended from the grey soil. At first, a gigantic dinosaur-like skull rose up from the ground, still covered in grey soil. Large blue flames were burning in its eye sockets. Then two bony wing structures pierced from the ground. And finally, a massive skeletal torso of some draconic beast surfaced above the grey soil. It was standing on four huge bone legs ending in sharp claws. The whole skeleton was pristinely white even though it was covered in soil for who knows how long. The whole skeletal beast was at least twice as large as Vesuvius, even though it lacked muscles.
Vesuvius immediately used use his analysis of the skeleton.
Ding!
//
Analyze result:
Species: [Miniboss] Young Adult Fire Drake (Undead - Skeleton)
Level: 13
Danger level: dangerous
//
Ding!
//
Hierarchical suppression activated, your enemy will be weakened!
//
Even though it was just a drake, the dragon felt a great need to kill the undead to free a member of the draconic species from such a disgraceful form of existence. However, he felt no rage against the undead, just pity.
The drake flapped its bone wings, slowly lifting from the ground, defying all laws of physics on the way.
Vesuvius looked pitifully at his lesser brethren, but inwardly he felt lucky, 'Such a great providence, I can maybe use this skeleton to trick players. Also, it is fire attributed, the element that I should be immune to.'
The drake opened its skull jaws, and ghostly blue flames erupted from the depth of its skull, rushing all the way towards the dragon covered in the dark smoke.
'Shit... How could I forget about this.'
The dragon flapped his own wings, lifting from the ground just in time to avoid most of the stream of blue flames. Still, some blue flames hit him, dispersing smoke around him and burning his volcanic armour. He felt no heat from the flames as his affinity negated it; however, an uncomfortable and indescribable feeling spread through his body. It felt tainted and unnatural. Then a powerful lifeforce exploded from his dragon hearth, pushing away unnatural energy that defied both life and death.
'Of course, its flames are tainted by undead elements.'
The dragon launched himself at the skeletal drake, his claws ready to crush the bones of the drake. He reached the drake in just a few moments, crashing into its body, sending the undead drake towards the ground. A cloud of grey soil rose up as the skeleton created a small crevice during its landing.
"Crack!"
Using his chance, Vesuvius landed on top of the drake, breaking a few of the drake's bones with the force of his impact. He opened up his mouth and bit the drake's neck. Chewing at the thick knuckle bone.
The drake began to trash, trying to get rid of the dragon on its back. However, the dragon dug his claws into the drake's bones and held on to its back, slowly crushing the drake's spine.
"Snap!" finally, the drakes spine snapped, and the massive skeleton became limp with the blue flames in its eyes dying.
"Ding!" a small red crystal appeared out of nowhere, landing on the grey soil.
'This was too easy... It even felt like cheating. '
In the world of LOMM, magical beings like demons, angels and dragons had an extremely strict hierarchy that was enforced on all levels. For example, baron rank demons felt compelled to listen to orders of count demons, and in the case that they decide to fight against their superior, they would be greatly weakened.