Polymath Redux

Chapter 2: Three easy steps on how to kill a Red Dragon

After deciding that he crept closer to the edge to calculate how many steps it'd take and if there was any points he could rest. Sure enough there were several points on the slope were he could take momentary breaks to regain stamina. They were around 200 meters apart making it extremely punishing to make any errors.

Starting with his left leg he slowly climbed down. Both extremely nervous and scared to death he grit his teeth and continued. The constant wind blowing past him was howling as if to taunt him. It was singing his death.

"Shit, shit, shit, shit, what did I do to deserve this? Was it because I was too arrogant? Was that it?"

He found he could distract himself by commenting on the situation, thereby making the prospect of plunging to his death slightly less horrific. Despite not being the athletic type, he found it odd that he was able to rather easily climb down. Successfully making it to the first protrusion he sat to take a breather while trying to avoid looking directly down. He could see the clouds in front of him further cementing his predicament.

He knew he couldn't delaying climbing down any more, because night was about to fall. Resuming his climb down once more he slowly put his leg forward to check for balance. Suddenly from afar he heard a bone chilling roar. One that shook even the sky above him. Luckily the tremor didn't affect the mountain too much, but he was stunned in place at the ungodly sound.

"That... didn't sound too good."

Mordred shifted his head to get a better vision of what was coming, and a small figure could be seen flying towards him on the horizon. It was too far away to make any detail of what it was and since it was so far away he decided to ignore it and resume his climb down.

But he was once again met with the same beastly roar. This time the unidentified object that was flying towards him was more visible. With an instantly recognizable shape Mordred panicked and started to climb down even fast.

"You've got to be joking. No, no, no, no."

It was large, red, winged and scaled. The wings spanned its entire body length, which was about 10 meters, with hardened scales all over its body. Sharp claws and teeth that looked like it could bite through solid steel and if that wasn't horrifying enough, it had a spike tipped tail to emulate a horned mace.

Now one may be wondering how Mordred was able to get all of that detail in a few short seconds and from so far away. To be quite honest, Mordred himself didn't really get it either, he was just kind of able to 'see' far away, but it was no time to be pondering on the details of his vision at the current time. Flying red death was charging at him at a frightening pace!

Though Mordred didn't want to quite believe it was to the case, but clearly the dragon had laid its sights on him. Just like straight out of a fantasy fiction, it spat fire from its mouth, specifically it was a ball of intense liquid-like fire that melted anything in the vicinity.

It just barely grazed Mordred and upon contact with the mountain it instantly melted, boring a hole through it. There was no time to even think about why it wasn't as hot as Mordred had initially thought it to be, the mountain was hit with intense heat but he wasn't? However it wasn't quite the time now, because of the initial melting of the mountain it destabilized it, causing a rockslide.

It wasn't just rocks, molten rocks started crashing down.

"Why?! Why god dammit!"

Losing balance because of panic, Mordred lost grip of the surface he was hanging onto and fell backwards, seemingly plummeting to his death. This was the end of the story, for him to be dragged into an unknown world and dying in the first few minutes, no reason, no explanation, just confusion.

As he fell backwards, time seemed to slow down as his life flashed before his eyes. Though there really weren't too many things he was fond of but he still regretted dying in such an unreasonable place. While falling down he noticed the dragon just suspended in the air with its wings; it was smiling at him, or at least that's what it seemed like.

Was it smiling because it had successfully plunged Mordred to his death?

"God damn you! You shitty lizard! I'll kill you!"

Regret filled him as he fell, but something miraculous happened. He fell about what seemed to be 200 meters and just stopped mere inches away from hitting the next protrusion. Then he slowly started floating down, letting him land safety.

"Just what?!"

Confusion swelled inside him even more! Then he realized... what this was. He had witnessed and experienced it thousands of times, behind a monitor. It was an acrobatic skill under the [assassin] subsection, a skill known as [soft landing]. The gist of the skill was that it negated falling damage by reducing the inertia greatly, the maximum range was 250 meters, and as long as it was within that range the user wouldn't suffer any injuries.

But the question is why did it activate for him?

Reasonably speaking it would be easy for him to come up with an answer for that but one must also not forget that this was reality for Mordred. He couldn't so easily accept the premise that just maybe he inherited his game character's powers. No, it couldn't be, that was in the realm of fantasy!

But what about that dragon? Clearly that was fantasy... so then could it really be?

He hadn't noticed it before but the clothes Mordred was currently wearing was greatly reminiscent of the equipment his game avatar wore. A white overcoat and inside a black vest with a red tie and black trousers. He had black gloves and touching his right ear there was a silver earpiece.

'This was it!' he thought. He couldn't mistake these equipment, it really was his game avatar's! Though honestly quite hard to believe, for the moment he decided to go with the flow and an evil smirk etched across his face; revenge.

"Tch, if I'm wrong about this then I'm screwed."

Without giving Mordred any further time to recover the dragon once again lunged towards him when it noticed that Mordred didn't die. Slightly opening its mouth to throw another fireball his way.

"Dammit Mordred, concentrate! This is the only thing I can rely on! Don't screw this up man!"

He spoke to himself as he closed his eyes and soon felt his body falling down. He was no longer at the protrusion, instead he was a bit farther up, specifically he had landed on top of the dragon's back.

[Blink], it was another skill under the [assassin] subsection. In essence it was a short range teleportation skill. Since the skill provided a great deal of mobility and distance closing or expanding, it was very useful even if it didn't have any additional effects.

"Ahahahahah! Fuck! This is it!"

He shouted while holding onto the back of the dragon. Slowly he raised his hands as it started to bask in a menacing red aura.

"This is revenge!"

He shouted.

Mordred, not his real name but it was real enough for him. As a human being he was flawed in many ways however his one greatest flaw was that he was a very vain person, he didn't consider the fact that anyone could be greater than him. Of course he understood in his head that there was always someone higher and greater but as long as he didn't see it for himself personally, they were just as fantastic as this dragon.

Not an illusion of grandeur, just a childish sense of arrogance. He knew this well.

Feeling all the power concentrated on the tip of his hands he swung down on the dragon's back and pierced through its extremely tough scaly armor and deep into its heart. [Assassinate], a signature skill of the [assassin] subsection, a powerful bread and butter skill. Its power doubled if used against a person's back.

Right now he was unarmed thus it would render the attack weak, but with Mordred's specs, even an unarmed [assassinate] was enough to one hit kill a red dragon.

He had won.