System Change

Settling the people down turned out to be quite easy. Seemingly working together, Blitz let out an earth shattering roar, and a transparent wave pulsed out from Lyra. The roar caused all the party members to center their gazes on Blitz, while the pulse of magic used by Lyra momentarily silenced the area.

From there, both Avery and Edgar appeared on the top of their dragons, which a few people began to notice. Once a few people noticed the two, it didn’t take long for everyone else to see them as well. Everyone stood stock-still, looking at what they finally figured out was the trial team back from their mission.

“As you can see,” Edgar started. “We have finished the trial.”

That seemed to be an understatement, as it set off another round of clamoring from most of the party members. Derek rolled his eyes and looked out through the small crowd of people, searching for someone in particular. Soon, his eyes found Tyron, who was hammering away on something a good distance away from the trial orbs.

It didn’t seem like the smith was affected by the appearance of the wyverns. Or, at least, if he was, he quickly figured out what was going on and got back to his smithing.

Derek tuned Edgar’s explanations to the party out and walked away from the small gathering toward Tyron. He’d let the prince deal with everything. For now, he had some urgent matters to attend to. All of which included the smith.

Derek soon arrived at the area the smith had made his temporary workplace in. Just as he respected Brandi’s smithing when she was working, he waited for Tyron to finish what he was doing and look up questioningly.

“If you don’t mind, I’d like you to follow me… away from everyone and everything. I think I have some things that may interest you,” Derek said.

“Dragon materials?” Tryon asked and nodded in the direction of Lyra, Blitz, and Jasper’s drake that had yet to be formally named.

“Something like that,” Derek confirmed.

“I’m definitely interested,” Tyron said, flipping his hand, and the blade he was working on disappeared into his storage.

“If you don’t mind, you may want to bring your temporary workstation with you,” Derek suggested.

Tyron shrugged and stored everything inside one of his rings. He didn’t show much emotion on his face, even with the allure of material acquired from dragonkin. It all fit his stoic character, Derek noted. Even with his spar against Avery, the smith had remained mostly calm and was even composed in admitting his defeat. Though he hadn’t been able to keep himself from quipping back at Avery that he was only a blacksmith.

It wasn’t long before Derek and the smith were far away from their camp. Derek even chose to go further away from everyone than they had for the spars. Tyron was the only person he had decided to let in on everything that had happened during the second trial.

Derek surveyed the surrounding area before deciding it was good enough, and the two stopped running.

“Okay,” Derek said. “First, I want to know what you can do with this. I have a few requests if you are able.” With a flick of his wrist, the corpse of the death-attuned wyvern crashed onto the ground in front of them.

When they were splitting the four corpses of the wyvern’s Derek had chosen the death-attuned one as his. Derek, Edgar, and Avery each received a whole wyvern corps, and the fourth was split between Jasper and Tara, even though they tried to turn it down. Derek, Edgar, and Avery had chosen to keep the overwhelming majority of the lesser dragonkin materials.

For Edgar, the material would go toward the kingdom’s army and equipment. Derek wanted it for both Silvi and Brandi. Brandi would be better off with quantity of material over quality for now, and Silvi would most definitely enjoy cooking dragons for a long time. Avery seemed to just go along with everything, but Derek was sure he would be seeing dragon steaks on the menu at the Crown Restaurant in the near future.

Derek watched Tyron as he examined the wyvern. He was still serious and all business, but Derek could tell it was taking everything he had to contain himself. Finally, Tyron backed away, and Derek quickly stored the wyvern’s corpse. He needed to keep it as fresh as possible.

“How long would it take you to dismantle the corpse?” Derek asked.

The giant of a smith rubbed his chin in thought. “It’s the first wyvern I’ve seen, so it will take longer than the second will,” the smith said. “I’d say around five or six hours. Two or three after getting some experience.”

Derek thought about what he said for a minute, then nodded. “Do you have any empty storage rings on you right now?”

Tyron reached inside one of his pockets and pulled out a surprisingly large pouch. Then he opened it and reached in, pulling out a handful of storage rings. “I wouldn’t be much of a blacksmith if I didn’t have a suitable amount of space to store materials. I brought even extra for the raid.”

Well, that explains the rarity of storage rings and why they are so hard to find on the market. I bet this man owns a large percentage of storage items in the kingdom. I wonder if he has the ability to craft them, Derek thought.

“Can you tell if anyone followed us out here?” Derek asked. He hadn’t sensed anyone, but that wasn’t his area of expertise, so he couldn’t know for sure, so he asked the smith.

“I doubt I could sense anyone you couldn’t,” the smith replied truthfully.

Derek sighed, then pulled out a red crystal from his storage. The crystal had Avery’s rune imprinted on it. He decided that the crystal would be better to use instead of telepathy right now and wasn’t sure it would even reach Avery if he tried. Soon, Avery picked up on the other end, and Derek vaguely explained what was going on.

In less than a minute, Lyra hovered above both Derek and Tyron, which was surprising because Derek hadn’t even said where they were. Avery was obviously showing off a bit to the smith.

“Hop on!” Avery yelled from above.

Derek moved quickly, and Tyron soon followed after a bit of hesitation. The trio soon found themselves soaring through the clouds at a speed Derek hadn’t thought possible for a human or beast. They flew in a straight line for over ten minutes at that speed before they came to a gleaming barrier in the distance.

“Looks like this is as far as the dungeon goes,” Avery said from a standing position as the amphithere slowed down before it crashed into the barrier. The man hadn’t bothered to hold on or even sit on Lyra while going at such a pace while Derek was gripping a scale with one of his hands and a pale Tyron was holding on for dear life.

Derek smile at seeing the way Tyron reacted to being flown around on the back of a dragon. It was nice to see something finally break the man, even if it was only for a moment.

With a small flap of her wings, Lyra floated down to the ground. Tyron was the first person to hit the ground. He looked quite thankful to be back on solid ground. What was more cliché than a massive man with an affinity for fire and metal/earth to hate heights, even with as illogical as that fear was with their stats.

Avery and Derek hopped off right behind the smith. Derek did a quick scan of his surroundings and nodded.

“I doubt we have to worry about anyone this far out,” he said.

“It would take quite a bit of tracking to find us,” Avery replied. “We didn’t exactly fly in a straight line.”

“We didn’t?” That was a surprise to Derek. It felt to him like they had just picked a single direction and went that way. Though he wasn’t really paying that much attention to it. Even though he didn’t struggle like Tyron had, he did spend a good amount of focus on not falling off.

Avery just shrugged.

“You don’t have to stay here if you have something else to do,” Derek said.

“Nothing’s going on for a while. The princeling is busy staving off questions, then he’ll need to figure out the next trial. He’ll let us know if he needs us,” Avery replied.

“Uhem…” Tyron cleared his throat. The color had returned to his face, and Derek was sure if he was imagining it, but it seemed like there was a bit of extra heat coming off the man. “So, other than the materials, which you didn’t have a problem showing me back when we were closer to the camp, what else is there? Why did we fly on that thing so far out here?”

Derek smiled and turned around. He reached into the void and pulled until a huge rip appeared in the air, showing the massive door to his Time Prison. “First, I would like some help to store some of the materials so they won’t spoil.”

He opened the door and a strong iron smell wafted over the trio and Lyra. The amount of blood and bodies inside his Time Prison was staggering. “We ran out of storage containers.”

“I can see that,” Tyron said with a crooked smile. “Give me a few minutes.” With that, the smith stepped inside and began filling up his storage rings with carcasses of dragonkin. It took him fifteen minutes to clear out the entire lobby, and that was with him only having to touch a corpse to send it into the ring.

Tyron came out of the Time Prison with over a dozen newly full storage rings. “What about the cells? Are there more materials inside?”

Derek looked at Avery, and they smiled at each other. “We’ll get to that later,” Derek answered. “First, what do you think about dismantling all the materials and splitting everything up into corresponding storage rings?”

Tyron narrowed his eyes and shot a look at Derek. “You want me, one of, if not the best blacksmith in the kingdom, maybe even the continent, to… spend… who knows how much time dismantling hundreds of enormous beasts in a dungeon with trials that award rewards like this?”

“Yes?” Derek grinned.

“You know that’s grunt work.”

“I plan on helping,” Derek said. “I need to get my Dismantle skill leveled.”

“What do I get out of it?” Tyron questioned.

“Materials?”

“I think I’m already going to be getting plenty of materials when all of you ask me to craft you weapons and armor. I may not even need that many materials, you know? And money is no issue for me.” Tyron gave Derek a toothy grin.

“Nothing gets by you, huh?” Derek smiled back. “What did you think about Lyra?” He looked at the amphithere coiled up at the side, seemingly sleeping.

“Can’t say I’m a fan,” the smith replied.

“One second,” Derek said, and went inside his prison. He walked over to a specific cell and placed his hand on it, increasing the speed at which the timer counted down, then walked back out.

“So that’s why…” Avery muttered and nodded.

“So, what would you think about a flightless dragonkin? How would you like to bond with one? Maybe one that can easily traverse through the ground?”