Biomass stored:
940.4 KG
Biomass required for evolution: 320 KG
Congratulations! You’ve received an Epic roll!
Rolling for evolution choices…
Please select from the following three options:
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Are you not entertained?
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Increase Mass
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Hulk’s Shorts
I didn’t have a choice. My armour was pressing in around my gut, and I felt sleepy. That pleasant urge to snooze you get after a nice Sunday dinner with the family. An opportunity to digest and politely ignore the rest of the people present by feigning sleep.
Whether the epic roll was due to all the Umbraxis steaks I’d been chowing down on over the last few days, or the gods had actually managed to persuade IMPS to go easy on me with the choices, I couldn’t tell. But I knew vaguely what all the options meant.
Increase Mass was an old and tempting favourite. The first one was clearly related to gladiatorial combat, and the last one…
I chose Hulk’s Shorts. Maximus died at the end, so I wasn’t going to lean into that bullshit, but Hulk’s shorts always survived his transformation, and I had been praying for some way to not end up with my dick swinging about in fresh air every time I became a mammal. A shiver passed over my skin as it took effect, but in my armour, no one could have seen it.
The other primary factor in my decision was that Increase Mass, although being very tempting, tended to be painful and take a while to work itself out. I didn’t have half an hour to an hour to spend curled up in agony. I had more monsters to kill for the entertainment of the mob.
Which was going to give me more biomass. Shit. Setting aside my current predicament, the next time we had a big battle, which was coming up in a few weeks according to that dance card that Duke Smith had given me, I was going to explode with biomass. Bloody Gods. Bloody IMPS.
Strafing runs, that satisfying feeling of raining fire from on high, that was the bread and butter of any dragon's ego, would immediately turn me into something from my three-hundred-pound wedding, or whatever those fucking shows were called. I had once again been royally fucked by the system.
“LAB IS DOWN!” Roddy’s voice echoed out around me after my moment of internal reverie. “The Guild Captain has fallen to the mighty beast! You know the old saying, though. Set a thief to catch a thief. Or in this case, unleash a pack of Cycleraptors to catch their oversized cousin!”
Fuck you, Roddy.
The portcullis that the poor, doomed, possibly necrophiliac beast rapist had emerged from twitched for a moment, then rose jerkily once more. I’d never seen feathered dinosaurs before. The three creatures that slipped into the arena looked like the aspirational dreams of evil parrots.
Green and gold feathers, which I approved of based on their shininess, gleamed in the harsh light as the devil-chickens sprinted out to surround me. They paused, one to either side, and one behind me. The ones I could see cocked their heads to one side in a weirdly bird-like tic, and then they chittered quietly to each other.
Even over the roars of the crowd, I could pick out the weird sing-song chirping from the monsters. They moved as one, charging forward. I heard the soft thuds of the Cycleraptor behind me, long claws digging into the sand, as it approached.
One doesn’t like to brag, but even weighed down by sixty kilos of armour, I was still pretty nimble. I leapt straight up just as they converged on my former position, hind legs raised as they leapt, long claws catching the light.
As I landed next to the tangled mass of unhappy lizards, my mace swept out to batter them all away like Sauron dealing with those pesky elves. They were sent tumbling across the arena, hisses of pain ringing out. The crowd booed.
“Fuck you! You want them to eat me?” I yelled, my voice blaring from the speaker system.
“YES! DA DA DA DUH!” The bastards started chanting, almost everyone making a chopping motion with their right hands on the DUH part of the invocation.
This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it
Having nearly fifty thousand assholes cheering for me to be destroyed finally put an end to any concerns I might have harboured for the common man. Fuck that guy. He was clearly a douche. His future draconic overlord would be merciful only as and when it suited me.
The smartest of the pack was already circling, having regained her feet the fastest. I got the feeling she wouldn’t move until her sisters were back on the hunt, so I decided to take advantage of the limited window of numerical parity.
Charging forward with a yell, the bloody lizard turned and bolted away. I considered this to be most unsporting.
“I’m not gonna kill you,” I grunted as I charged after her. “I promise. I just want—you know what, screw this.”
I raised my left hand and a gem that was carefully seated in the knuckle of my middle finger on the gauntlet of whatever the blah blah, I honestly couldn’t be bothered to remember the stupid names, flashed.
If you ever saw that scene in the Resident Evil movie, the one with the laser grid, you know exactly what happened. And yes, you remember that scene, just because it was a shitty film doesn’t mean you didn’t watch it. The creature's legs fell apart into square LEGO bricks, the torso, tail, fang-filled maw, and Henry Caville-tier forelimbs all intact.
“Augendae Vitae! Abnegant Mortem! Sanara Vulnera! Systema Tarda!”
A green glow surrounded my downed foe as the healing magic went to work. I nodded in satisfaction. I’d put the enemy down without killing it and earning myself another shitload of biomass I couldn’t store. Another goddamn feathered dinosaur disrupted my smugness and sent me tumbling to the side as claws raked at my midriff.
Bright lights flared as the primary killing claws, nearly eight inches long, slashed back and forth across my armour. The damn thing didn’t care; it just kept attacking.
“When you spill the blood of the pack, the rest go into a battle frenzy! How can Bob the Battler overcome the berserking reptiles? Will he be able to—”
I phased out Roddy’s commentary. I’d lost my mace in the tumble, so I back-handed the dino in the face, sending teeth and blood scattering across the golden sands. Burning-Bag-Of-Poo-On-The-Porch brought my foot crashing down on one of the Cycleraptors' knees, grinding it into the dirt and eliciting a harsh screech.
“Fuck you.” Crunch. “You T-Rex arm having.” Snap. “Motherfucker.” A stamp punctuated each piece of invective. Both legs and the tail were now very definitely mulch. I cast the healing spells again to stem the bleeding and stop me from exploding as a result of gaining too much biomass.
“And then they were two.” I glared at the uninjured psychoparrot as it circled me slowly. It chirped angrily. “Yeah, and your mum was worse. Come on then.” I raised my hand and flexed the fingers in the non-sexual come-hither gesture.
It hissed in rage and broke into a sprint straight at me. Thank god animals are dumb. As it leapt at me, I rolled to the side and let it soar past me. Coming back to my feet, I lunged forward and brought my fist down on the base of its spine. Unfortunately, it had been paying attention, and like a cat, it twisted its back out of the way. My fist threw up a plume of sand as it crashed into the sand that made it through my visor and into my eyes.
Blinking furiously, tears streaming down my face, I cursed the lack of nictitating membranes in my mammal form. Something slammed into me from the left, knocking me off balance. One arm raised to try and keep myself on my feet, I felt something slice into my armpit.
On the plus side, it hadn’t gone for my balls. The chittering was coming from all around me. I knew it couldn’t be everywhere at once… The fucking crowd was mimicking the demon-fowl’s noises to mess with me. I was going to burn this whole fucking city down at some point. I’d probably let the people escape before I did it, bad karma to commit genocide after all, but we would see how they liked being homeless and dispossessed…
I fell into something resembling parade attention. Arms at my sides, legs pressed together. I took a few more hits on my armour while I worked the sand out of my eyes, but nothing managed to injure me.
As soon as I could see again, I caught the thing by the throat as it flew towards me. The relentlessness, uncaring determination, stirred something in the draconic part of my mind. I could respect it. Even, at a push, admire it. This creature's desire to kill me mirrored my own feelings towards thieves and anyone who threatened sweet Esme.
Still, no point getting sentimental. Claws flashed across my armoured chest as it hissed and spat at me. I caught one leg in my free hand, then heaved. A spray of red went out to turn golden sands crimson, and the snapping jaws hung open as though it was in shock. To be fair, it probably was.
I twisted my grip and caught the tail. A hard squeeze elicited a shriek of pain, and bones crunched within my gauntlet. If they were anything like cats, this dude wouldn’t be performing acrobatics anymore. Not that it could with only one functional leg. Oh shit.
I cast healing to stem the blood loss and spun in a circle to toss the monster away. It bounced across the arena and came to a stop in a mewling mess next to one of its sisters.
“CAN IT BE?” Roderick’s voice dropped as he continued. “Can a vicious dragon only show mercy to other lizards?”
“Oi! I only killed the first guy because he threatened to—well, you guys heard. And no one shit talks my wife and gets to live. Anyone want to try?” I raised my visor and glared at the crowd. I savoured the moment of terrified silence that followed. “Are you not entertained?” I smirked to myself for having gotten the line in.
They roared in… approval? The crowd began chanting my name, only a handful at first, but it gradually built into a deafening bellow that drowned out the pitiful cries of the Cycleraptors.
“Get these poor beasts out of there and let me face a real enemy! Nothing so far has been worthy of my taking the time to even transform! Whoever booked the enemies did a really shit job this time, eh?”
“Shit job! Shit job!” the crowd chanted in reply.
“Do you want to see a dragon? Do you want to see WHAT I CAN REALLY DO!”
“We’ll be taking a short intermission, please feel free to avail yourself of the concession stands and the bookmakers!” Roddy tried to call, but the crowd were once again chanting.
“REALLY DO! REALLY DO!”
“You want to see what it looks like when a dragon is actually pushed, not against some disposable trash, but against a real enemy?”
“YYYEEEESSSSS!”
“Good.”
The voice was flat and cold, but cut through the cheering idiots, silencing them. There was an explosion of gore-covered sand in front of me. As it cleared, the figure of a man in gold-embroidered clothing stood, wiping the dust from his epaulettes.
“I am Jack Stocks, The Shadowlight, Baron of Fibywiby and the surrounding lands. You interjected in my cousin Brigitte’s fight, so it is only fair that I do the same.”