Chapter 197: A Deal is a Deal

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.

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..."