12 Chapter 12

Vesuvius was lying on his small hoard, consisting of one pouch filled with coins. His long neck was turned towards his injured wing, licking around the hole after a spear with his long tongue.

'If I had known that there would be that miniboss, I would just kill a few goblins before flying away...'

Then he looked at the small brash ring lying on the stony cave floor in front of him. His mood immediately improved, causing him to show his long teeth as dragon greed in his heart erupted within him.

'Ohhh, how could I almost forget about you? My precious...'

He shook his head, suppressing his weird thoughts and used analyze on it.

//Analyze result:

Name: Ring of Goblin Stealth

Category: Magical Accessory

Grade: B

Item level: 15

Effects: Wearers' steps are making 50% less noise; Wearer is slightly harder to spot while being in a cover or darkness; +5 to all stats

//

The small dragon's teeth showed up even more after he read through the effects, 'This is definitely some good stuff. Especially at the beginning, when the stealth is important, as I am still weak.'

Vesuvius reached toward the ring with his front limb, stretching his finger to touch it. Immediately after it got close enough, the ring grew in size like dried food when put into water. Then the ring magically bounced out of the ground and flew up, putting itself on the dragon's outstretched reptilian finger.

In the world of LOMM, magical items could always change their shape and size to fit any sentient being making the overall game more fair and balanced.

His stomach grunted from hunger, demanding some food.

The small dragon stood up with his still sore, damaged muscles. His legs were shaking as each of his movements was causing pain. He visibly flinched before laying back on top of his hoard, 'It looks like I will be going nowhere today...'

"Grr!" his stomach growled again, 'I will just continue to study dragon magic to forget about my empty stomach.'

POV BoobaFet's party:

Three players were walking through the forest carefully looking for traces when the fat dwarf spoke, "Did we get lost again? I am telling you we need to go back to town and hire a ranger to help us track the beast that attacked bandits!"

"Haha, don't be absurd. We just need to look around the forest. We will not be hiring any thief that would just steal part of our loot!"

"Fet, don't..."

"Shut up, both of you. Do you smell it? Something was burning here!" Lili raised her hand.

"Hahaha, that must be a trace! I told you I know what am I doing!" Fet laughed and ran forward, jumping over the shrubs like a bunny.

The elf and the dwarf looked at each before they ran behind Fet. With every step, the massive stomach of the dwarf kept moving around like a sack full of water.

They quickly caught up with Fet who was standing above the corpse of a goblin. Around him was black burned ground and still smoking trees.

Fet pointed his spear at the corpse with a smug smile, "See that? It's the same type of injury as before. We must be o bright trace. Be ashamed of doubting my tactical genius. Also, now we know that out the enemy is using fire attacks."

//Quest updated.

The quest to Find a culprit behind killed bandits is updated with an additional objective!

Update: You found another site of the massacre. Find a culprit before he attacks again!

Addition reward: Higher quest rating!

//

? "He is still an idiot... but lucky one", the dwarf muttered quietly.

POV Vesuvius:

'This must be it! I am sure that my timing will be perfect now.' Vesuvius spent multiple hours practising his second spell, which was much harder as it required precise timing of all of its phases.

Mana poured throughout his body, creating a comfortable, warm feeling similar to that of drinking alcohol during a winter. Vesuvius opened his mouth. Magical runes and symbols formed into a circular diagram before materializing inside of his open mouth. Then they flared up in orange light that lightened up the whole cave. The small dragon breathed out the flame. Flames quickly passed from his throat into his mouth, where they touched the magical circle and slowly started to rotate, forming a sphere of flames. Time flew by, and the sphere grew in size and fire intensity.

Finally, the magical circle started to tremble like a water surface when hit by a stone. Vesuvius felt that it was his current limit as to how much fire he could put into the sphere, so he released the spell. The magical circle pulsed one last time, and a blazing fireball flew out of the dragon's mouth, flying straight out of the cave thing a nearby cliff.

"Booom!" sound of the explosion followed soon after that.

This was another difference between regular and dragon magic. Dragons have their specialized magic organs, like their fire-producing organ in their throat. Their innate dragon magic evolved to utilize these organs during spell casting. For example, if a human mage wanted to conjure a fireball, he would have to summon a fire out of mana, bound it, and shape it into a ball before firing it. Dragons, however, could skip one step as they could cheaply and quickly produce fire with their organs, greatly speeding up the cast speed, decreasing mana cost and increasing destructive power at the cost of the need for very precise timing during casting.

Vesuvius breathed out in relief, 'Luckily, I shot it out of the cave; otherwise, a ceiling would have fallen on my head... Still, that effect is pretty strong.'

One could doubt why a dragon would want to cast a fireball when they could simply spit fire out of their mouth. Vesuvius, however, smiled at the usefulness of his new spell, 'I already noticed a limited range of my fire breath during the fight with the goblin miniboss. This fireball has a much longer reach, giving me a powerful long-range attack.'