All the Dust that Falls

Chapter 197: A Deal is a Deal

Bee batted aside the tentative thrust that Tony opened their latest exchange with. As the bristles knocked his stick to the side, she rotated and tapped his shoulder with the wooden handle of her own practice broom. If it had been the broom that Void had made for her, he would have lost the arm at the least.

"You need to commit. That thrust was slow and weak, but still more exposing than a feint." Bee commented as she followed up her attack, demonstrating the Paladin's mistake by driving the end into his chest. With an 'oof,' Tony's breath left him, and he fell back. "If you are going to attack, then attack."

Truthfully the training was as useful for her as it was for Tony. It gave her something to focus on to distract her from the overload of information her new class dumped in her mind.

Stepping back, Bee waited for Tony to reach his feet, levering himself up with the haft of his weapon. She considered whether she might have been going a little hard on him. He didn't have the Broom Proficiency skill yet, though she hoped he would get it soon. On top of that, the fact that she was nearly double his level made the spars one-sided, even without the added grace from skills.

Name: Tony, Level: 29, Race: Human, Class: Paladin of Spot, Age: 24, Highest Stat: Charisma, Lowest Stat: Dexterity

Level 30 should be within his reach soon; he had been 29 for some time now. Bee grimaced in frustration. Even though she had crossed level 50, she still didn't have a new field available in her Scan results. Maybe she hadn't been using it enough for it to grow anymore? Lately, she had been making a conscious effort to Scan everyone she interacted with, but so far, nothing.

She wasn't entirely sure what else she would want the skill to tell her. The only other possible thing might be specific stats and their associated values. But other than that, the fact that she wasn't sure where else the skill could go might have been a sign that it wouldn't grow more. Still, she could only hope.

Setting her feet, she readied to engage Tony again. The ground shook slightly before either of them could make the first move.

Both of their stances lowered a bit to keep their balance as they looked around. Everyone outside had frozen in shock before looking around, confused. In the distance, Bee could see a black cloud rising from the north. "I hope that's not going to be a problem…"

—

I was halfway down the mountain by the time I caught myself with my thrusters. I had narrowly avoided smashing into the rocks along the way, just able to nudge myself around the obstacles. So when I did bounce off the ground, I hit a slightly softer, snowy, icy part.

But the steep angle was such that I didn't receive much damage, no more than a few scratches that my skills had already taken care of. Stabilizing myself with the hover. I looked back up toward the top of the mountain and the cave. I sure hoped Daedalus was all right.

With a slight bit of effort, I shot up back into the cave almost as fast as I had left it. In the back, I spotted Daedalus lying prone on the ground. He sat there, still and unmoving, for several seconds. I did nothing but observe until I saw the slight rise of his scaled chest. I felt my bristles relax slightly. Good. The dragon's still alive.

It would have been a shame if my trade had killed him. The beast was magnificent and quite a nice guy, to boot.

"Ugh," the grunt echoed from the back of the cave. I trundled over to check on him, and I noticed his eyes were still closed. One of those massive red wings had crumpled against the cave wall in a weird shape, bent in places that didn't look like they were intended to be bent, and blood was slowly seeping out of several cracks in his scaled armor.

I beeped out a message while prodding his nose with my claw, hoping that he might understand without my holograms. "Hey. Hey. Are you okay?" A deep groan rumbled throughout the cavern, and I let out a cheery beep. "Good morning. Good morning!"

"Ooooowwwww," grunted the dragon as he forced one of his eyes open to look at me. "ow, that hurt."

I was already busy scanning him. Surprisingly, my advanced sensors couldn't penetrate his scales at all. They left only a void of information beyond the edges of his skin. But I could get a good estimation of his wing's state. I scrolled a message for him to read. I displayed a new message. "Sorry about that. You broke at least four bones in your wing and probably more in your ribs, but I can't really tell. Hitting walls that hard was not a good idea."

Along with the words, I added a little diagram to illustrate where in the wings the breaks were.

Daedalus just snorted in my general direction. The force of the blast from his nose threw me back several feet as I skidded on the ground. "Do you think I wanted to hit the wall? Well, my wings are going to take forever to heal now. And yeah, I definitely did bruise some ribs, at least. Oh, hey, do you mind helping me set my wing? I have a skill that will eventually take care of it, but it's going to be much faster if it's in the proper place. Aligning bones is hard."

"Sure, I don't mind. What do you want me to do?": I projected.

Slowly, the magnificent Red Dragon got up and gingerly turned around. "Okay, so we'll start by the base of the wing and move out. Grab it right here."

He indicated with his nose spot in the wing and held while I pulled. I grabbed it and, with my thrusters, did my best to resist the dragons leaning to the other side. It was slow, but the area slowly stretched, and the bone realigned.

Quietly, I could hear the dragon muttering what must have been quite foul curses as the bones shifted in his wing. Once they were aligned, a. Shimmering golden energy plated over the area, keeping it stiff.

"All right, that's one down." Daedalus said, "Do you mind helping me with the others?"

***

Fixing up Daedalus took a lot longer than I would have thought. The bones in the extremities were much more delicate than expected, and each one we set was one that we risked messing up later. Also, my domain didn't have the same effect on this process that I felt it should have.

While I hadn't tested it with people, this felt like it shouldn't be that different from rebuilding a stone wall. Of course, it could have been because Daedalus was a living thing, or it could be due to the magic he innately possessed. Nearly everything that I had seen so far warned me that Daedalus was a monster of might and power. It wouldn't have surprised me if it was harder to heal him just because of how much more there was to his body.

Still, when I had asked about that, the dragon had very indignantly stated that he was not fat. Apparently, dragons were as confusing as humans since I had no idea what that had to do with anything.

Now that his sides had stopped bleeding and his wing was splinted, we settled back in our positions. Him on top of the pile of coins I had yet to organize, and me on the clean floor across from him. "Well, that could have gone better."

Despite his words and general sorry state, Daedalus was still smiling. The expression of teeth might have made many afraid of him, but I didn't have what I had heard humans call the prey instinct. So I just beeped my agreement.

"Not much though!" The grin widened so much that I calculated a non-zero probability that his face would split in two and his jaw would fall to the floor. "Do you know how long it's been since I last leveled?"

Before I had a chance to take a guess, he shouted an answer to his own question. "I have no idea either! Thousands of years before I went to sleep at least. I wasn't even halfway to my next level at that point. If you give me that much again, there's a good chance I could get a second level. Twice in one millennia!"

"That doesn't seem like a lot?" I printed it out.

"Not a lot. Not a lot, he says." Daedalus huffed. "How old are you? Once you get past 50 leveling really slows down. And besides, we dragons naturally level slowly. Something to do with being functionally immortal."

"I didn't notice much of a difference after 50." I supposed it might have been a little slower. But taking into account the type and frequency of enemies I had come across, that speed had seemed rather constant. Besides, I wasn't sure what my age had to do with anything.

Daedalus eyed me with a bit of suspicion. "You must have been fighting constantly and finding rare high level enemies to say that. Or maybe your race gets experience from more than just combat. Unless your race has some leveling bonus?"

"I'm not sure. Maybe?" We just left it at that for a few minutes, both getting lost in our thoughts. After several cycles of processing, I asked if he wanted to continue.

"Not right now. I need to assimilate the energy and get used to this. Besides, if that kind of blowback happens again I would like to be healed beforehand." Daedalus demurred gracefully. "But I'll take that as an acceptable down payment. Now, how about we look at these prizes you wanted?"

It didn't matter to me when he wanted his energy. I didn't mind making the trek over here. Daedalus was fun to talk to, and besides, I wanted to ask him a lot of questions about his companion and what had happened to him. That would have to wait until next time, though. I was already anxious to return to my tasks at the castle. I had only been able to stay this long because I could potentially save a lot of time in getting prizes done now.

"So what are the competitions that you were looking to give rewards for?" Daedalus asked as his back turned, and he started rummaging about in some of the chests in the back of his cave.

I listed the competitions, starting with what sounded like an adult version of hide and seek and ending with the Nighty Knights one-on-one combat tournament.

"Interesting. Interesting. I think we can find some appropriate prizes for all of those." Daedalus said, his snout buried in this treasure as he searched. "Now for the first competition, it sounds like they are a bunch of scouts, no?"

Not waiting for my response, he tossed something at me. I caught it and folded the fabric neatly before placing it in front of me. "You can't go wrong with a good cloak of invisibility. It won't work against anything higher than level 65 but that should still be good enough for beginner scouts."

I examined the cloth more closely, curious about how it worked. The blackish fabric wasn't made of wool but rather something much smoother and finer. I wanted to admire it, but my attention was soon pulled back to the dragon. He continued looking through his collection, speaking over his shoulder all the while. "Now for the baking competition, I was thinking something like this…"