The majestic dragon stood on a massive boulder, smoke rising from his body as he looked at a masked figure in front of him.
"Your draconic highness, here is a report. We lost eight cows and five sheep during the last night."
The dragon nodded his head, observing his minions busy exchanging information between their second batch that came to replace the first one.
'That is more than expected, but now that we know about the monsters getting attracted by the light, this night should be better.'
Vesuvius opened the event that he set up for this expedition just to check details one more time.
// Current faction event:
Story: The elder wyrm Vesuvius wants to start a wyvern breeding program, but to do that, he needs you to escort animals across the mountains to feed his wyverns.
Objective: Escort the animals along the river shore and cross the mountains.
Point sources global (Add points to every player participating):
+50 event points for each animal that safely reaches destinations
- 50 event points for each animal that dies along the journey
Point sources personal (Add points to specific players):
+10-50 (depends on the strength of the killed monster) event points for each monster killed when defending the herd
+ 5 event points for each hour of game time played during the event
Rewards:
1st place in the number of points: Lightning Volcano Dracodactyl
2nd place in the number of points: Volcano Dracodactyl
3rd place in the number of points: Lightning Dracodactyl
More than three-quarters of the animals survive: New unique faction resource: Dracodactyls; New faction resource: Wyverns
All of the players: Faction points, XP and gold calculated from the number of event points
//
'It looks like this works well... They were cooperating to protect the cows more than just focusing on slaying monsters the last night.'
Suddenly a loud voice interrupted the dragon's thoughts, "Just you wait! I will burn these disgusting wolves tonight!" the player in red, who had just logged in with a flash of light, started to shout at the whole encampment.
"Muu!" a big cow mooed in the response and returned to eating grass sticking from between rocks.
Suddenly the dragonkin mage waved her staff in panic, "No! Please keep fires to a minimum! A light attracts these monsters!"
'Shit, I really need to recruit more of these serious hardcore leader-type roleplayers like that one with a weird haircut!'
Suddenly the soil started to vibrate as if something had moved under the surface. Vibrations kept getting stronger and stronger with the whole mountain shaking. Soon massive crevices started to open all over the place.
The players grabbed their weapons in panic and excitement, looking around, not knowing what was happening while trying to keep their balance.
The animals panicked, creating a cacophony of animal sounds and stomping with their legs. The mana gathered in the dragon's eyes, with rings of magical symbols forming around his reptilian irises. Then a bright light flashed, and the animals immediately stopped panicking, calmly standing with everything around them shaking.
'What is going on here? Is it just a natural earthquake, or is something bad going to happen?'
He knew that whatever could cause such a massive earthquake was definitely a beast with immense strength.
Suddenly soil erupted on the other side of the river, stones and soil launching into the air as a massive worm came out of the ground. Dozens of lines of sharp teeth rotated in its circular mouth, making it look like a stone shredder. Its head, without eyes, was wiggling in the air, reaching at least eight floors into the air. Its whole body was covered in a layer of hard-looking grey stone.
Vesuvius immediately calmed down, his muscles relaxing, 'It is just a Titan Earthworm.'
Titan earthworms might look extremely dangerous, and they were, but they weren't aggressive monsters as they mostly fed on stone and metals, extracting earth elemental energy from it to sustain themselves.
They would eat materials with their stones crushing mouths in front. Then the material would pass through their body, where mana would get extracted from it before exiting from its second end, filling tunnels behind. Such a processed material would be weakened, losing its natural mana and needing time to regain it naturally.
However, they have still been considered calamities as they often surfaced to take a breath, breaking havoc as they did, similar to how whales had to regularly emerge from the water to breathe.
As the dragon kept looking at the massive wiggling worm and his dragonkins, an idea formed in his head, 'Can I feed it my blood to create some horrible monster? This is a beast with a level of at least sixty. It would be a really great weapon.'.
An image of a massive worm covered in draconic scales, breathing streams of magma appeared in his mind, but then he shook his head, remembering the fanatic behaviour of the wyverns and the small elf when he offered them his blood, 'If this thing goes berserk trying to suck my blood, that would be bad. I will rather keep this idea for later when I am sure to at least escape from this thing.'
The massive worm wiggled one last time as it descended back to its hole, vibrations slowly calming down. A circular dark hole remained in the ground, with clouds of soil dust still covering the whole surroundings.
Suddenly Vesuvius frowned, twisting his draconic face as he realised that he missed an opportunity, 'Damn it, I could have sent my minions with blood or maybe try to throw my blood into its mouth from a great height without needing to approach it, now that I think about.'
Soon his mood fixed, 'Well, maybe it is for the better... What if it somehow inherited the dragon's love for gold and started devouring all of the gold veins? Then there would be much less gold for me! Damn, the day is short. We need to move!'
The dragon opened his mouth, his deep voice shaking surrounding once more and bringing the players out of their stupor, "Start moving while it is still daylight! So pack and move!"
The players immediately rushed away, shouting as the herd of animals moved forwards, following the river, their hooves drumming on boulders brought by the river.