9 Chapter 9

Vesuvius threw the pouch on the floor of his cave, making loud clinking noise that echoed throughout the whole cave. All of his dragon instincts and emotion were seeping with happiness as he placed the foundation of his own dragon hoard.

Ding!

//

You met a hidden condition to unlock hidden racial ability: [Dragon Hoard LV 1]

Condition: Create a hoard of treasures!

Effects: Buff the stats when defending your hoard. Your MP, HP and stamina recovery will get buffed while sleeping on top of your hoard. The size of buffs depends on the ratio of the size of the hoard to your level.

//

'I guess there can't be a dragon without hoard...'

(AN: I know that POV shifts can be annoying, but don't worry, mine will be short and sparingly used.)

POV BoobaFet's party:

A tall man in an outfit made out of hardened leather with a long green cape flapping in the wind walked along the human-made path made through the thick forest foliage. He had a bright name: BoobaFet, floating above his head.

"I told you! I can already see the bandit camp. We managed to find it!"

A fat dwarf with a chainmail skirt that went all the way towards his knees retorted, "Yeah, Fet... but we spent hours lost in the forest. We should have hired that ranger to track the bandits, as I told you!" Above his head was a nametag with "FatHammer115" written on it.

The last member of their party, a female elf in robes and a staff in her hand, just shook her head and remained quiet. Above her head was written: Lili2005.

All three of them prepared their weapons, "It is too quiet! Is it possible that they want to ambush us?" Lili finally spoke.

"Nah, they are probably just not in the camp. We will enter it and ambush them when they return. Remember? I watched the guide on how to hunt bandits!"

They entered the camp with their weapons at the ready. A bunch of dead bodies with horrifying injuries littered the ground.

"Hahaha, what does your guide have to say about this?" the fat dwarf laughed.

Suddenly their quest logs updated. Ding!

//Quest updated.

The quest to eliminate bandits had been removed.

New hidden, unique quest!

Content: Find a culprit behind the killed bandits.

Reward: ???

Failure: none

//

"Hahaha, I told you so. I know what I am doing. We found a hidden quest line!" expression of Fet turned smug.

POV Vesuvius:

The small dragon woke and stretched his body, noticing that the pain from the injuries he had suffered was already gone.

'I should look at the spell from dragon magic. It is only at level one currently, but it should still contain at least a few basic spells. I can't forget about magic. It is one of the things that makes dragons the deadly predator that they are.'

He focused on that skill, and in the same way as with the fly, skill knowledge flooded his brain, causing sharp stabbing pain in his head.

One of the reasons why LOMM was such a masterpiece was its unique system of magic and skills. It wasn't like in other games. Players couldn't just cast a spell by pressing a button. Skills and spells in LOMM instead gave players knowledge and means to control mysterious energy in their avatars to create effects of abilities and spells. It basically created a new set of laws and rules that existed in parallel with mundane laws of physics.

Vesuvius chose the simplest spell and started to circulate energy in his body toward his brain. Mysterious symbols were forming in his vision, slowly arranging themselves into a weird diagram. He didn't know what each of the symbols meant. He only knew how they looked and how to arrange them to cast a specific spell. The energy started to flow through the symbols creating something akin to an electric circuit, and then...

"Crack!" diagram shattered like a pane of glass, causing Vesuvius to almost faint from sudden stabby pain.

'What have I done wrong... The whole spell circuit looked exactly like in knowledge from the system. I did it the same way I did when I played this game in my past life.'

A few hours passed, and Vesuvius was still trying to cast his first spell, but it always shattered, causing him serious headaches. He even took a break to hunt some animals to eat when the headache got too intense for him to focus.

'Maybe I should review the knowledge like an absolute noob; there is maybe some difference between dragon magic and regular magic that I am overlooking.'

Another hour passed, and Vesuvius shouted with his deep dragon voice, "Bingo! I found where the problem is."

'Dragons are considered the apex of magical beasts for a reason. Their mana is much more condensed and potent. It is like comparing old petroleum to rocket fuel. I need to move it slowly, but at the same time, I need to use a much smaller amount of it!'

In LOMM, spells didn't have their mana cost written next to them, as it often depended on the skill of the caster and their mana management. This caused Vesuvius to use his memories about how much mana was needed from his old life. However, dragon magic needed much less mana to activate at the price of the need for much more careful and precise mana manipulation.

Magical symbols quickly formed again and arranged themselves into the diagram. Then Vesuvius carefully channelled an amount of mana equal to five mana into the circuit, ensuring that not even a drop of it got out of control.

An etheral transparent blue arm made out of the mist appeared out of nowhere. It slightly glowed in the dark cave. The arm slowly moved towards a small stone on the ground and grabbed it. Then arm moved, punching a wall of the cave. Arm hit the wall, harmlessly dispersing into a mist, leaving no visible damage.

'Wow, I can control it like my own arm. I can even feel it. However, it is soo weak and fragile that I don't that it can move more than a small rock.'

It was the most basic spell of dragon magic. One might ask why dragons had a need for such a spell.

However, Vesuvius knew the answer from deep within him, 'How could dragons count their coins and arrange them without small and precise fingers...'