Plague Dragons

Leaving the resistance camp after watching the literal cleric in silvery robes start jot down the numbers I gave him. I could still hear both the cleric's writing and the sword king candidate's answers to questions asked about the specific orders. I could still hear them even from fifty yards away on my way to the middle camp.

Stopping at the halfway point, I spend a few minutes thoughtfully working out the projection and manipulation of mana and elements before spending half of my mana raising wall fifty feet around my position in a perfect circle.

No matter how much I might like and respect my old comrades, I was once again my own man. In order to ensure a mutual respect and even instill some fear, I was willing to show off my cheap method of mass producing monsters. However, for things that I was not even sure of, I could not allow anyone to witness my experiments.

Since I had depleted most of my clan's current stock of mountable and aerial familiars, I need to work on some new products in order to entice the next group of people. Considering the name and the proclaimed goals of the guild, Bygones WERE Bygones was probably the main culprit behind bleeding and bashing Duality. As such, I planned to bleed them dry.

How would I do that with a limited stock of window product and a morally limited inventory? Make an irresistible product through my unique talents! Ten of the painstakingly captured ice and other evolved tree lizards were taken out of the clan store.

Even if I was going to make a sale to those monochromatic goblin lookin' bastards, I now had no products to offer without breaching the insurance stock of three lizards. I would need to make the others restock the clan store in order to get anything out of the big camp.

For the first experiment, I made an insanely large sacrifice of thirty percent of my health and one of my arms. Luckily, the magical cut was clean and cauterized. There was no bleeding damage at the cost of only regenerating half of my arm thanks to the burned flesh.

Thanks to one of my personal potions whose regen affect was doubled from the use of 'cordycep fluids', it only took a couple of minutes before my arm was fully returned.

As for the ice lizard that ate everything below my bicep, they mutated on the spot for half as long as it took to replace my arm. Unlike the usual infections that only took some physical contact and fluids, this wild son of a bitch dragon ate over half my arm! This was at least twice as much as the two hands I gifted to Hermes.

Its once opaque whitish blue icy scales darkened as their body softened inside and the flesh expanded to accommodate a new skeleton. Instead of the usual jagged and broken veins, the entire body of this dragon was undergoing a species change. The scales that were now dark blackish red like dried blood crystals grew large enough to cover most of the new body but somehow left long veins of bone yellow hide exposed in random spaces between scales.

From the creature's back grew up and out with large spines supporting fleshy webbing that somewhat looked like gliding wings if not for all of the blood trimmed spaces in the web-like flesh. On top of this the body grew half a time longer and wider to support a long row of curving yellow ivory blades along the creature's actual spine and tail.

To accommodate these bodily changes, the legs had grown almost twice as long and half a time thicker while the tail lengthened in proportion to the body. Similar to the tail, the transformed ice lizard's head grew hale a time longer and twice as wide to accommodate an enormous snout filled with multiple rows of protruding black fangs.

Even though I received ten thousand experience for creating the dragon subspecies called a 'Wingless CordAniSaur', I did not receive any titles because I did not yet own it. However, the most important point I was trying for had blessedly been achieved on the first try.

After switching between my horseman and monarch titles, I found that the Monarch of Plague worked better for controlling wild cordycep creatures because these were listed as a plague dragon. Next came the hard part of mass production.

With my other arm, I transformed another ice lizard into another CordAniSaur with stats in the two hundreds.

[Pain Tolerance raised by 5%]

Ten minutes later, I silently struggled through the simultaneous sacrifice of both of my legs and sixty percent of my health in quick succession to create two new plague dragons. I did not receive another increase in my pain tolerance which would have slightly reduced the actual pain I felt from round two. Sadly, after losing my legs I received a notification that my regeneration times would be halved because I was running low on cordyceps.

It would be at least an hour before the cordyceps had returned and my stunted healing would be gone, which left me with plenty of time to both familiarize myself with the plague dragons and the materials they might offer before setting to work on making potions. My main goal was using cordyceps from the dragons to make a regen focused potion for myself.

Most of what I made came out as weak healing and slightly stronger regenerating potions from the 'infected dragon essence' but after sacrificing my legs a second time I set right to work on perfecting the formula. This time around, I only had to spend forty minutes waiting for the debuff to pass before because drinking the 'failed' potions helped to replenish my cordycep colony.

This, of course, led me to simply take raw cordyceps from the dragons after each round of sacrificing. Regardless of this I continued on my regen research even after converting the last two lizards into dragons. Even without my cordyceps, this research allowed me to make several different regular regeneration focused potions for normal players based on the other raw materials and refinement.

By the time I had completed a line of one-part, two-part, and full regen potions to offer as products in proper sales, I stashed away all of the potions I would not be using while keeping the cheap one-part regen and my main cordycep regen potions in my character inventory. My character weight, thanks to this, was now over two-fifty units.

This might not sound like much, but it was fairly close to my actual Strength stat was brought on a negating of temporary movement speed. My base movement speed of around one-sixty-percent remained untouched, but I lost five percent from the overall speed. I had no idea how this might affect my Agility buffs and Melpomene only laughed at my questions.

Despite all this, I quickly and quietly dropped the walls providing my privacy back into the plateau to expose the ten twenty-foot long plague dragons to the world. THESE were my window shopping attractions while the rest of my stock would be laughable. To me, anyway.

There was already a group of people from the middle camp waiting just a few dozen yards away from the walls I had set up. Luckily, they were smart enough not to try physically disturbing me by peeking in even though there were probably numerous magical methods of doing so. Even if they had, I would have probably sensed their attempts disturbing the mana around my walls.

There were more than ten people in the group from the middle camp and they were all wearing matching armor made from a combination of basic leather and heavy metal augments. Each of them were some form of melee fighter wielding a variety of one or even two-handed weapons alongside large round shields. The bosses of their shields were all emblazoned with the clan emblem of Bygones WERE Bygones.

"Which one of you lucky bastards is the leader of this outfit?" I call out cheerfully while walking forward with empty hands spread out and raised while the dragons follow slowly behind me in a broad line. "I'm here to make sales and I just made a new line of products to replace what I previously lost."

One man who looked to be in his thirties or forties raised a large round-faced mace topped with a long and narrow blade as if in greeting while saying, "I'm the only leader you'll get to meet, boy. What do you think you're doing here, disturbing our clan? You better have a way to make this distraction up to us, we could be attacked by trolls at any moment!"

Ah, so my mere presence offended your sensibilities even though I was quietly at work behind closed… walls? You, sir, have earned my services!

"I was told by the goddess I serve that a big clan battle was going on," I lie straight through my teeth while continuing to calmly close the distance with ten dragons nearing level seventy following close behind. "What better time to sell pets and supplies than during a small clan war? I'd be a fool to miss this opportunity, just like you would."

Pointing the bladed mace directly at me when I come about fifteen yards away from their group, the man in charge says, "You're selling pets and supplies? I guess those giant lizards behind you are for sale, too?"

Smirking faintly at the clear interest shown on the man's face, I say, "But of course! Although, it looks like your camp lacks the numbers and your clan position lacks the funding to be able to afford these dragons. I was going to offer them to the big guys beside you. Of course, if you wanted to go broke buying my plague dragons then who would I be to stop you?"

"Why don't you just give them to us?" The man suddenly asks with a condescending and chilly sort of smile, apparently believing he could coerce or threaten me into giving up my goods. "We might not be the biggest clan here, but we're certainly bigger than you. We'll call it a favor and say we owe you one, how about it?"

Are you trying to bully me?! I have not even seen a bully since middle school, old man! You're already a thousand years too late to think you can bully me!

Smiling calmly on the surface despite the sudden storm of fury raging inside me, I simply state, "My name is Life Hack from Tragedy's Travelers, the new number one clan in reputation. You might have more numbers, for the moment, but you're far from bigger than we are. If you have nothing to offer me, then this is good day to you, sir!" With that, I simply turned and started walking away around their group while my dragons never turned their eyes and teeth away from the group of men.

Giving them a wide berth it took me some time just to get level with their group but when I did the leader, with an angrily darkened face, calls out, "How much for a dragon?"

Did you think yourself blind and then open your eyes? Smart man!

Whipping right around to face the man with a cheerful winning smile, I say, "Fifteen thousand gold apiece! I have already accepted all of the loans I can afford to, so if you don't have the full amounts then you can piss off! How many would you like?" I ask with my best attempt at a charming smile right after telling them to piss off.

I could see the man's jaw working as he clenched his teeth at my remarks, however I could tell that he was not dumb enough to let the opportunity pass them by.

Especially when the people that I supposedly intended to sell these dragons to were already greater in strength and numbers than them. Throw in a team of tanking plague dragons and a small team from the big camp could trampled through this middle camp. How could they possibly allow their competition to become even stronger?

How could they not have brains to know they were completely screwed from the start?

After only a few seconds of consideration, the leader who had never looked away from my cheerful expression suddenly asks, "What else have you got? Everybody could see all those potions you were giving out."

Nodding my head while reaching into my belt, I pull out a bottle of normal one-part potion that healed two hundred health after a full bottle and triggered a five-percent regen every other second for thirty seconds. For a quick regeneration effect in a large vial less than half the size of my tasty potion jars, this was actually pretty good. Seventy-five percent health in thirty seconds could be a tank's refuel while an off-tank is holding the healer and the mobs.

"I only had time to stock up on health recovery items, but for that reason I am willing to lower the price from five hundred per potions to three hundred per potion," I explain quickly and almost politely. "However, because my store is currently out of credit you must buy the current stock of one hundred if you seek to buy my potions."

Proving to be pretty quick with his maths, the man incredulously exclaims, "That's thirty thousand for a stack of potions! The shit you buy from the NPC shops are even better and only cost as much!"

"Sadly, I cannot budge on these prices because of material procurement," I say apologetically without apologizing. "And for the same reason the big camp next to you will buy them if you don't so I have little to worry about my investments right now. I mean… let me ask you something," I add quickly, deciding to change the topic for a moment.

"Do you see that little camp of what looks like a bunch of mercenaries over yonder?" I ask after swiftly stepping across the many yards of distance to drape my arm over the lead warrior's shoulder and turn him around to face the Duality camp as if we were long time pals.

Continuing before anyone even has time to react to my mana reduced Quick Step, I say softly but frankly, "This bunch of angry assholes were only too happy to pay up every coin in their pockets just for my original stock of pocket pets. When I took out the combined strength of just one stack of both restoration items, they begged me for loans and credit while pledging that the main body of their clan will pay out the loan with three-percent interest on every product order. Do you know what else this bunch of angry assholes bought from me on credit?"

Doing well to remain calm despite the overwhelming pressure of being grabbed and held at twice my movement speed with my accumulative buffs, the lead warrior just barely manages to stay standing with his own Strength and Endurance stats that were probably the main focus of all of his leveling points.

I myself only had six spare points from all of my tenth levels, but that number was downright negligible.

"What else did you give them, you crazy bastard," the man asks through clenched teeth with thinly maintained breathing as he slowly steadied out from the complete shock to his body. Just having an arm tossed around him like an old friend at high speed cost the man ten percent of his health. However, his health bar was currently blue instead of red and began refilling in less than a second with a '(Friendly Fire)' tag.

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