Jjhutto_Son of Flame
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B3. Ch. 4 Pissing Contest
🕑 Added 2024-05-20 19:40:40 +0000 UTC
Tilly shared a brief look with Ichiro before surging to his feet.
“I may have misjudged this one, my friend…” He said sheepishly, rising just as fast as Tilly, “I am sorry gentlemen, but it seems our time must be cut short.” He called, already moving with Tilly toward the door.
Whatever that was, Tilly was sure it wouldn’t wait forever before rampaging through the city. So he pumped his arms for all that he was worth, bursting past the confused guards, and onto the street, making a B-line to the main road. Ichiro easily caught up and held pace with Tilly as they ran at what must have been thirty or forty miles per hour through the city and out into the empty camp.
The roads were still mostly empty, but Tilly heard distant screams coming from the parade ground as the people dispaired in the face of another unexpected threat. A grim part of Tilly’s mind couldn’t help but admit that the voice had sounded far too close to the snake god manifestation for comfort. If they were facing something like that, Tilly had no clue what he could possibly do to stop it… Not that it mattered. He and a few others were all this place had.
Tilly felt a wind blow past him and caught a brief glimpse of Erash astride something furred with too many legs followed closely by Hiro, Linus, and Threstus whose full sprint vastly eclipsed his own. Tilly’s lungs were already burning, and he sorely felt his lack of real stats in anything but Endurance. Instead of whining about it, he just doggedly poured on more speed.
The tents and long house were almost a blur as they moved through the camp coming to where the road diverged. One path stayed straight, snaking up the mountain toward the temple, the other curved with its base, leading around to its rear where the quarry and mine had been discovered. This path was broader and had seen the passage of hundreds of carts over the last month as resources had been pulled into the Alliance’s projects at breakneck speeds.
As they circumvented the base of the mountain, a deep chuckle resounded from up ahead, “And so the ants send their finest little soldiers… Perhaps a demonstration is in order?”
The words rumbled through Tilly’s ribcage like speakers at an EDM concert and he struggled to breathe through condescension dripping from the powerful voice. They turned the last bend in the road to find the others stopped short before something that had once been a fanciful possibility, even on Nephesh until this moment.
The entrance to the mines had been shattered open into a gaping hole in the side of the mountain by the emergence of an actual Dragon. It sat before the mouth of the subterranean passage with its head reared up and smoke cascading from between its huge teeth. Tilly stuttered to a stop well short of the others, who stood dwarfed before their three-story opponent. Their weapons seemed less than impotent in their hands as they stood opposite the legendary creature.
Level ??? Heart Fire Dragon
“Dragon, by what authority do you claim this land?” Hiro shouted up.
Its teeth flashed in what could only be a predatory smile, as a blue light began to kindle behind its eyes, and a matching glow built deep in its throat. “My own,” he spat, opening his jaws wide.
The blue of that flame was unmistakable to Tilly and even as the others in front of him sprinted out of the path of the breath attack, he stepped forward and shouted the first thing that came to mind, “I recognize your flame Dragon, for it is the same as my own!” Along with his words, he activated Wrath’s shroud and screwed his eyes shut as the dragon belched forth a torrent of azure flame.
An unimaginable heat washed over him, and he felt his armor shift in response to its new environment. The scorching sensation drilled into every nerve of his body, but just like with his flame Abilities the sensation was accompanied by no pain, and after a few seconds the feeling abated and Tilly opened his eyes.
He found himself in the middle of a huge arc of incinerated foliage. What little grass had remained near the quarry basin had been turned to ash, and any shrubbery left in the area had been turned to ash. Thankfully, Tilly caught sight of the rest of his companions just outside of the blast radius as a frustrated rumbling snarl echoed off the rock walls surrounding the group.
“This is becoming an irritating pattern! What are you? And how do you draw strength from my Horde?”
The metaphysical weight had receded from the dragon’s voice, and Tilly found it much easier to think now that each word wasn’t pounding into his psyche like a battering ram.
“What do you mean draw strength from your horde?” Tilly shouted back, waving back the others. Something wasn’t adding up here. This wasn’t some random attack, and it was certainly not a coincidence that the dragon had access to Origin’s flame.
The smoldering blue flames dancing in the back of the dragon’s throat began to wane as the creature itself looked back toward the new giant opening it had created and took a deep breath in through its ridged nostrils. The vanguard of the Alliance’s elites stood ready even as the dragon seemed to have momentarily forgotten their presence. Instead after its deep breath in, it began to mutter under its breath.
“She said… the Scorch signified… consolidated… not absorbed.” Tilly was able to catch snatches of the dragon’s musing as it lost itself in discovering the answer to a puzzle it had just discovered. Not wanting to lose initiative completely, Tilly decided to do something stupid. Possibly the stupidest thing he had ever done, but he was more than sure that inaction would result in something worse.
“Now I am asking! By what authority do you claim our Faction?” Tilly shouted, evoking Flame’s Wrath to punctuate his words, displaying mastery over the same element the dragon had just wielded. The dragon’s head whipped back around, and the sharp iris’ dilated as its head dipped to better take in Tilly’s form. In the face of its incredible form, Tilly was again struck by the stupidity of what he was about to attempt.
He jostled the bracelets now adorning his wrists, irrationally checking to make sure they were still there as the dragon leaned in to examine Tilly, giving him an up-close and personal view of its primal and terrifying form. The sheen of its scales was a matte metallic grey, and above its eye ridges were the beginnings of two large horns, one ending in a razor point, and the other broken off just above its base. As it lowered its head to Tilly’s level, its lips pulled back in a prominent display of something that might have been a smile.
“Ah, one of the Hairless Monkeys… Your kind has always had trouble knowing their place. I Claim these lands by right of power. Normally I would incinerate all of you, and just speak to the next two-leg to show up trembling with tribute… But it seems that you are tied to my Horde somehow, and I do hate to let something so novel go to waste.”
‘Pissing contest it is…’
Tilly’s mind went into overdrive as the dragon's answer confirmed what he had suspected. His heart tried to gallop out of his chest as he answered in a surprisingly disinterested tone.
“Incinerate is a big word. That felt more like a warm breeze if you ask me. You know, if your claim is based on power, then I challenge you to a simple exchange of blows. Your best against my best. The one left standing lays claim to the land.”
The dragon’s eyes dilated even further, and it let out a hiss that sounded more like a steam engine putting off pressure than something that you would expect from a reptile.
“You Dare-”
“I dare all day big guy!” Tilly interrupted with a shout, despite the newly renewed force of the dragon's words making Tilly’s knees knock. “I’ll even let you have the first shot! But fair warning, you might want to try something besides that little candle flame you’ve got hidden back there-”
The dragon roared in outrage, and Tilly felt both his ears pop as the tender drums inside ruptured. In his peripherals, he saw Hiro drawing back his blade, and Erash muttering a spell under her breath, even as her eyes scanned the quarry mouth for some escape.
Tilly again waved them down, and Ichiro shouted something that Tilly could no longer hear. The dragon finished its roar and reared back its head, “Very well, meet your end.” It growled, somehow making itself heard even through Tilly’s temporary deafness. Then its head flashed forward, and Tilly barely managed to register the movement in time to activate [Resolute].
Teeth closed in and an indescribable pressure pushed in on the upper half of Tilly’s body, which had been momentarily bolstered by the full might of the System. Like the flame before it, Tilly experienced the full terrifying weight of the creature's power, but none of the accompanying destruction such an attack should have produced.
Then as fast as it had appeared, the jaws enclosing Tilly’s body were gone. He was left standing there and had to pull on every ounce of will he had to keep from collapsing on the ground in terror at the sheer animalistic ferocity that had accompanied the strike.
“What Trickery is this?!” The dragon growled, looking around at the others as if trying to unravel some plot.
“No trickery, just hard-earned power. Same as yours I am sure…” Tilly called out distractedly as he engaged the power thrumming through his bracelets.
You are about to activate Celestial Bracelets of Substitutional Might. Select one of your following Stats to exchange values with your highest. This effect will last ten breaths.
>Strength
>Intelegence
>Wisdom
>Dexterity
>Constitution
Tilly mentally selected Strength and felt ice shoot into his veins from one of the bracelets, extracting something from his body as the other bracelet poured fire in. The new energy did not replace what was lost, instead carving its one painful path through each strang of his musculature.
The dragon focused back on Tilly, baring all his teeth anew, ready to strike again, and Tilly knew he had to keep its pride on the line if he was going to have any chance of living out the next few moments.
“What? Afraid of one little hit from a ‘hairless monkey’?” He called goadingly through the intense sensations wracking his body as the exchange finished pulling and pushing on Tilly’s body like a pair of toddlers fighting over a new toy. His muscles ballooned under his armor, which seamlessly grew in size to accompany his newly engorged form. As the transformation finished, his tendons screamed, and his bones creaked under the new strain of the immense strength now coiled within his form.
“This farce is a waste of my time… I can smell divine magic on you, but know this… Our kind was around long before those uppity newcomers took their place on this plane. No little magic trick is going to save you after you expend yourself against my superior form…” It said, lowering its head and thrusting out its chest where thick ridges of metallic-looking scales overlapped each other in a display of natural armor that was unmatched on Nephesh.
Tilly had pulled up his notification log as the dragon monologued and smiled even as he crouched down, groaning through the immense pain that his now inadequate Endurance and Constitution forced his new Min-Maxed form. None of that mattered though. He just needed to get in one hit… and with the title he had temporarily gained, he was pretty sure he was about to rock this dragon’s world.
Warning, you no longer fulfill the requirements for the Title: [Resolute]. The title has been revoked but can be regained if the requirements are met again in the future.
Congratulations! You have earned the Title: [All-Might]
[All-Might]: Your Strength Stat is higher than all of your other Stats combined. As long as this remains true, you may empower a single strike with double your Strength once per day.
