Dragon Power

"I don't want money!" Meta yelled. "I want my brother back!"

Tears ran down his cheeks and onto his beard. He picked up an arrow that Meda had used earlier, and for a fleeting moment Zeeth thought he was going to stab himself, but he instead ran to the dead dragon and tried to plunge the arrow into its foot, the foot that was still stained with Meda's blood. The arrow hardly made a dent and snapped in half, the tip began deteriorating and his clothes stained with Chaos Magic as they were burned away.

Page dragged him back by his shoulders yelling, "stop! You're going to hurt yourself, don't get too close!"

"The bastard killed my brother! I'm going to kill it! I'm going to search for it in hell and break every bone in its body!" he yelled, trying, unsuccessfully, to break from Page's grip and stab the dragon again.

"Then don't do it now! The magic is still too concentrated, you're going to get hurt! Meda wouldn't want you to hurt yourself unnecessarily!"

That seemed to snap him back to reality and realize how dangerous it was. He calmed down and continued to stare at the coffin. "Let's-let's bring him back. We'll send him to the hunters association and find his will. It should be with his hunter's files."

"We have a hunters association at First Dwarven. Let's send him there. They can teleport a bunch of us to their main building and we can get his files."

"Okay. thank you." Meta bent down and, along with Page, carried the coffin over to the carriage.

"I'll let you be alone with him." Page said when they had set the coffin in an empty carriage.

"What will we do with the dragon's body?" Gror asked when Page joined them in looking at it.

"We will take it apart and store it in my bag. A portion will go to Meta and the Merchants for Meda's help and sacrifice."

"You know how to take apart a dragon?" Gror asked, surprised, "have you done that before?"

"Before this?" Page thought about his past life, where he had dismantled at least three dragon carcasses, "no. not before this. But my father taught me almost religiously how to dismantle and use a dragon's body perfectly if I ever came upon one. He didn't want me to waste such an opportunity if it ever came up."

Page quickly got to work, taking off scales and cleaning up damaged parts, like the blood that was spilled onto its pale underside. "We are really lucky you used that Fluctu Potion, the value of the scales of this dragon exploded in value compared to what they were before. They were so damaged before, I don't know if I could have even sold any of it without the black market."

"Yeah, but it cost a whole Fluctu Potion. Was it worth it?"

"In terms of money, I think so. You would've had a hard time selling the potion without putting yourself at great risk, and some people might not even want it because they know no one can use it properly. But having dragon parts to sell means you are a hunter strong enough to hunt dragons, hardly any petty thieves would try to take you on."

Unknown to any of them, two of his slimes were soaking in the dragon's powerful chaos magic, one was Mel, which was turning from a light shade of purple to a dark black while the other was growing tiny purple scales.

The sun was rising, casting a golden glow on the floor when Page finished taking apart the dragon and storing it. His spatial bag was overflowing with things now and he had to take out a few objects to simply keep all the dragon parts in there.

He carried a large cooler powered by ice magic and a small magic gem over to Meta and told him, "this box contains 25 scales straight from it's back, some of the best scales, some dragon meat, a few bones from its ribs, and five bags of Dragon blood. I would give you some of its teeth, but they are so infested with Chaos Magic that it wrecks your bones to just touch them."

"Thank you," he said, his voice hoarse and silent from lack of use. "But I don't want it. I don't want anything to do with the dragon. It brings back… memories that I don't want to think about right now."

Page looked to Zeeth for assistance but he shrugged, not knowing what to do. "Then is there anything we can do to help?"

"No. You've all been great, thanks for saving our lives time and time again. First the thieves, then the dragon. I really can't thank you enough." and he broke into sobs again.

They left Meta alone again, taking the cooler with them. "What are we going to do?" Gror asked.

"We just have to let him feel better by himself. There's not much we can do to help someone get over the grief of death unless you want to bring him back to life." said Page. "also, guys. There's something I need to show you. Follow me."

He led them to another cooler, this one smaller than the one he wanted to give Meta, but powered by many more gems. He opened the top up, a parade of colors steaming out from it. They looked inside and a large, still thumping, a lump of black and red flesh.

Gror instantly pinched his nose and reared back a little, saying, "What is that? It smells like blood and alcohol!"

"Is that...its heart?"

Page nodded to Zeeths question.

Surprised, Gror asked, "Why is it still beating? And why does it reek?"

"I think it's because of this," and he reached inside with a thick metal stick and prodded open a closed vessel the size of an arm. Inside, they saw a multicolored glow shimmering and changing.

"That glow, it looks like the Fluctu Potion! Is the potion keeping it alive?"

"No, if that was the case then the dragon should have continued living. I think when the dragon was trying to synthesize the potion, there was too much magic in itself and it couldn't expend it all in time so it tried to move the potion elsewhere, through its blood vessels, and, eventually, into its heart. This is the main location where all the Fluctu Potion that it could use fled and the excessive mana from the potion is simply mimicking the thumping of a heart. The heart was clogged before the dragon even fell and became this."

"So what do we do with it now? Can it still be used?"

"I think, with a bit of science and time, we could make it something like a Fluctu Potion again. The only issue is, I don't think we have that kind of resource and I'm afraid it won't work. We're just going to have to keep it in this cooler and preserve whatever it is until we can figure something out."

"Will there be the same amount of the potion here as before?"

"I don't think so, you saw how much magic is used to heal all of its injuries, it regrew all the scratches and scars on its scales, fixed its eyes and even its injured leg. But I think some of it might be reimbursed through its intense chaos magic which was mixed in while it was in the dragon's body."

Zeeth suddenly felt a sudden swell of magic from one of his arms, as did Page. they both stared at it for a moment and remembered, "my slimes soak in magic, there would've been one that took in the Chaos Magic!"

They convince Gror to go back to the carriages, where someone was serving cooked kebab that Zeeth secretly made from his table while they stayed behind to see what the Chaos Magic did to his slimes. Mel was lying on top of the other slime that began to grow scales so the first one he sensed was Mel. He pulled it out and he was shocked at how dark it got while Page grinned, "it's starting to look more like it did in my past. Good improvement. Now let's go eat kebab,"

"No, there's another one," said Zeeth as he popped out a second, compressed slime. He expanded it some more and they were now both shocked at the scales. They were growing like thick plates of armor around the slime, tiny black wings were also growing, although not nearly big enough for the slime to fly. Small fangs were growing from its centers like the jaws of a dragon and purple haze coated all the teeth. The slime's eyes were closed, it was unconscious, trying to take in everything at once.

"Hey! What are you guys doing?" Gror yelled from a distance with his mouth full of food, "come eat some of this kabab! It's delicious!"