From Player To Npc

Chapter 78: Dragon's puzzle

"You expect me not only to find a YOUNG EARTH Dragon but to get one of its teeth?"[Ameanum]

Dragons were considered young when they were between their first decade and before their first hundred years of living. Before that, they were considered Wyrmlings, and after that, they were Adults. When they reached their first thousand years of life, they were Ancient.

Each time they transitioned between those categories, there were massive boosts on their stats and powers.

An Earth Dragon was one of the artificially created Dragons, as researchers want to reproduce the Dragons' power, so they tried to make some using the Elements.

The Earth ones are one with the highest defense, even among real Dragons, but were the most difficult to create. Because the Earth Element mana is the biggest in quantity in the Mortal Realm, the resistance to creating something unnatural like that of such a degree was hundreds, maybe even thousands of ways more complex than with the rest of the Elements.

But even the rest of the elements were difficult to use for something like that as a massive amount of mana was needed, and the more mana, the more challenging it was to control it.

Varan nodded on the question of Ameanum like he gave him a simple request.

"You can see that my equipment isn't what it used to be, right? Also, even if I had it, you want me to find an Earth Dragon, the rarest one among them all, and a Young One nonetheless?"[Ameanum]

Varan was one of the few people who could make Ameanum lose his serious face. He had taken so many unreasonable Quests from him, and even sometimes, the reward wasn't worth it, but he took them nonetheless. 

But this didn't mean he didn't say anything about them.

"Oh, you don't have to worry about finding one. I have the whereabouts of one. Also, I am sure you can persuade him to help you without a fight. It is of the ones who still have some control yet."[Varan]

One of the problems with the Elemental Dragons was that even if you succeeded in creating one as time passed, it was getting harder to control them. 

If one lost control of their Dragon, there were many possibilities of what may happen next. The two most common ones were for the Dragon to explode into the mana that created it or losing its mind and kill everything as a brainless beast, starting with its creator most of the time.

The rarest one was for the Dragon to keep some intelligence and act accordingly.

"*sigh* and where is this Dragon?"[Ameanum]

He would generally have asked how he came across that information, but he knew Varan was secretive on those types of things, so he didn't bother.

Varan's smirk appeared once more on his face.

"He had created a lair of his in another Realm, but I can get you there or close enough."[Varan]

"What Realm? Is it one of the time passes at different rate cause as I said, I am in a hurry."[Ameanum]

"No need to worry. Yes, time passes at a different rate, but it is slower, meaning the more time you spend there, the less time will have passed here. One hour here should be a week there. But I doubt it will take you that long... most likely."[Varan]

Ameanum ignored the last comment as he sent an anonymous message to Marcy.

He told them to come into the cave, but they should first gather some of the other materials Varan needed.

He let Varan know about them getting here, and Varan told him that he would disable the traps to get here faster.

Then Varan brought out a crystal that looked the same as the ones he used for the TELEPORTATION, but four times its size. 

It didn't have a smooth surface but had on them what looked similar designs as a TELEPORTATION CIRCLE, just smaller to fit the space it had.

There were three circles carved on the crystal's surface, and each seemed to have slight differences from the others.

It seemed like the destination he would have to go he couldn't get there with one TELEPORTATION and had to make multiple ones by using this crystal to make all of them at once.

To make a crystal to act also as the TELEPORTATION CIRCLE wasn't something easy, and only a few Master or even Grandmaster Enchanters would have the chance of making something like that. As of making one acting as multiple circles, the list was even shorter.

But someone like Varan could create it using one finger only.

After describing his companions to him and sending some more messages to Marcy explaining the situation a bit, he activated the crystal.

Since he didn't have any mana, he used a Mana Gem given by Varan.

A portal opened in front of him, and he jumped in.

He was in a similar situation as when he got teleported by Ben back at Carda as he was falling and everything around him seemed to be purple.

He saw another portal in the distance down from him, and as he went through it, he was in another similar space falling, but this time everything was dark black instead of purple.

Another portal appeared under him after a while, and this time everything around him was green.

As he passed through another portal, it seemed like he reached his final destination as he hit solid ground.

He took some damage caused by the fall but not at a dangerous level.

He seemed to be underground at another cave system, but the tunnel was massive.

Its width seemed to be over twenty meters, and its height was unknown to Ameanum as it was too dark, and even with a torch, he wasn't able to see the ceiling, but he estimated it not to be more than twenty meters.

This was huge for a young dragon's lair and would mostly fit for an Adult or Ancient one.

'Maybe he is close to becoming an Adult?'[Ameanum]

Going from one age category to the other was boosting their size also as even if it was one year difference, their size could have a massive difference. It was close to evolving than natural growing, some would say.

But it wasn't like they were staying the same size the whole time while in one age category.

If he was close to becoming an adult, it made sense to extend his lair, and Ameanum noticed that a lot seemed to be something that happened in the last months.

'Hopefully, he is still a young one.'[Ameanum]

From what he knew, when a part of a specific species was needed, which could evolve like Dragons, the importance of what evolution was under was a matter of if what you needed it for would work or not. 

So if it had become an adult already, that meant he couldn't use his tooth as it would be useless even if it is the same species.

He kept quiet and didn't even speak out loud as he knew that those Dragons could use Earth-based Magic and quickly detect any nearby people with them.

He hoped that he was sleeping or wasn't using something like that yet as he enabled his STEALTH skill and started making his way deeper into the cave.

He was able to tell by some large footprints of the Dragon which side seemed to be where he most likely was, and the prints seemed not to have reached the size of an adult one yet.

As the prints were getting fresher, he decided to pull out his torch, which would make his moving slower but somewhat safer.

Even if we couldn't see entirely in the dark, his EAGLE EYES were giving him some better sight than usual to be able to see things a little better even in the pitch darkness.

He sometimes found multiple tunnels splitting the way to continue, and sometimes, he had to turn back after finding a dead end, but he wasn't giving up that easily.

He had to take a break sometimes as he was overusing his EAGLE EYES by keeping them active all the time, which wasn't the same as using PERCEPTION only, and it was giving him some headache at some point.

He had some rations on him, so he could eat and not get hungry, which would make his SP getting restored slowly and, at some point losing SP without doing anything.

Since he was underground after a while, he couldn't tell how much time had passed. 

But he wasn't going to give up yet.

He continued looking for footprints, and after a while, he understood that some were fakes to lead him astray.

He encountered some traps, like pitfalls with earth pikes or Enhancement Circles like the ones in Varan's cave, but all were of Earth-related results like creating a cocoon of stone to trap the one triggering or creating a massive rock on some height to fall and crush him, etc.

He had used the rest of his Silver Dust pouches, but after a while, he seemed to be able to notice them without the need of the dust as they weren't as well hidden as Varan's but were using the darkness mostly to stay hidden.

His movement seemed to become slightly faster, finding these traps and pass them without triggering them.

He was also confident of finding the actual footprints and follow them. 

He understood that there seemed that some places had portals which he couldn't see and was moving him to another site without him noticing or being able to tell the difference cause of the darkness.

He started making a map of the place and started putting on it all the traps and the areas where the portals seemed to be. He was able to detect them by throwing a stone in front of him. If there were a portal, the stone would disappear.

He tried to see where each portal was leading, but it seemed to be random as he tested the same ones multiple times, and each time was at another place, but there didn't seem to be a pattern of which one they would go next.

He noticed that there wasn't any way he could go that wasn't leading to a portal and was confident there wasn't any secret way.

It was a puzzle, but he still didn't have a clue of what the solution may be.

After some more tries, he noticed something.

Every time he was going through a portal, it led him to another random portal, except for the tenth one. 

No matter which it was, the tenth one seemed to be leading him to a place with no portal there.

The number of portals was also ten, so this wasn't a coincidence.

After testing some combinations, he noticed that if he went through the portals in a specific order, it teleported him in the same area each time and not a random one.

Now that he had a way to tell if he was going the right way, he just had to keep testing.

He was able to find the first five quite fast, but he seemed to have a problem with the rest, and sometimes the fifth one didn't seem to work.

As he was getting used to moving around without using the map and moving faster, he understood another of the variables of this puzzle.

It seemed after he went through the first one, there was a countdown in which when it ended, no matter what portal he went through, it would be considered as the wrong one.

He seemed to have five minutes which wasn't a long time as the portals were some distance from each other, but with Ameanum speed using ACCELERATION, he could make it.

Still, cause he had to test and find the right combination so had to take some breaks for overusing this Skill.

But after many tries, which he lost count of, and his feet felt like pierced by a million needles on fire, he was in an area he hadn't seen yet.

It was a vast hall, and he could see it all as there were lit torches to lighten it up entirely. 

There was a raised base in the middle of the hall, and over it was what at first look seemed like a statue of a large Dragon sleeping.

But then the Dragon started moving, revealing that it wasn't a statue after all.

The Dragon stood up on its four feet and looked towards Ameanum.

*Who dares coming into my home uninvited? SPEAK YOUR NAME INTRUDER.*[Earth Dragon]

Ameanum, fortunately, knew Dragonic, so he raised his arms as a sign of peace and thought carefully about his following actions.

1. This is in Dragonic, same language the Kobolds were speaking