Trial by Fire: A LitRPG Dragonrider Adventure (Archemi Online Chronicles Book 2)

by James Osiris Baldwin

  Now and then, I reminded myself that she wasn’t real, but inevitably concluded that it didn’t matter. Archemi was my reality now, and not a day went by where I wasn't grateful to have Karalti in my life. She was curious, mischievous, adorable, and needy, but she was also deeply loving, with a powerful need to please and to learn. I stroked over her folded wings, her horns, her shoulder. She continued to snooze on while I bought up her character sheet for review.

  Karalti - Queen Dragon

  Level 2 Hatchling

  Strength: 12

  Dexterity: 17

  Stamina: 13

  Will: 15

  Wisdom: 5

  Intelligence: 12

  HP: 250/250

  MP: 50/50

  Affinity: Darkness/Life

  EXP: 374 (233 to next level)

  Lexica: 2

  Spells: 0

  Skills:

  Acrobatics 3

  - Aerial Acrobatics 4

  Dive

  [Karalti has two unspent skill points!]

  Abilities:

  Gift of the Blood: See detailed description for more information.

  Eviscerate: A power attack with the front claws.

  (New!) Ghost Fire: 65-90 damage; sticky fire that burns underwater. 2 Charges, 30 min recharge time.

  Bite: 25-30 damage.

  Gore: A dragon’s unarmed attacks do double damage and cause Bleeding.

  Spells:

  None.

  Karalti had two unspent Skill Points from her last level and one new Lexica point. She was also halfway to Level 3 already – probably because she’d landed some fire damage on the Level 25 Mage. At Level 3, she’d be able to take her first spell, but I was going to hold off selecting one until Level 4 or 5. Each one of my dragon’s levels came with a selection of two possible spells. Provided she had the required number of Lexica points, Karalti could learn either of the spells before or at her current level. This meant that if you hoarded points, you could get better spells later on – though when I brought up her Magic tree, I noticed that some powerful spells required ‘lesser’ versions of the same spell to be selectable. Greater Darkness needed Darkness as a prerequisite; Telekinesis needed Presdigitation.

  Level 3 had a good pair of basic spells: Detect Magic and Shadow Double. Each one cost 3 Lexica points, so she would be able to take one. I was going to have to see what kind of combat role she played at larger sizes. Both spells were potentially very useful, especially as I was not capable of using any magic – just special abilities that chewed up Adrenaline Points and-or HP to execute powerful attacks and evasive maneuvers.

  With a hand resting on her snoring flank, I brought up her Path menu:

  This was also something I already had to think about. Dragons levelled differently than players. Superficially, it was similar in that Karalti got to take a Path and then an Advanced Path, which in this game was equivalent to taking a Class. There were some differences. Players started out with a basic general Path – Warrior, Mage, Specialist, or Artificer. At Level 5, they had the option to take a specialized class, or Advanced Path.

  Karalti had to grow to Level 5 just to take her basic Path, which was less like a character class and more like a developmental track for her that shaped her strengths and weaknesses. She wouldn’t get to take an Advanced Path until her soft cap at Level 30. I assumed that was because of how powerful dragons were at levels 1-30 compared to the average player character or NPC. Advanced Paths were an endgame feature for dragons.

  Draconic Paths: The Path of Power and the Path of Alacrity

  Dragons mature slowly, and like humans, they can only take an Advanced Path when they are experienced adults. A dragon reaches adulthood at Level 30. From hatching to maturity, your Queen dragon can invest points into one of two basic Paths: The Path of Power and the Path of Alacrity.

  Path of Power: This Path focuses on your dragon’s strength and offensive abilities, improving their ability to take and deal damage, and the strength of their breath weapon.

  Path of Alacrity: This Path focuses on your dragon’s mobility and defensive abilities, improving their speed, agility, and tactical movement at high altitude.

  At first, I’d been disappointed in the Path ‘gap’ between Level 2 and Level 5, but that gap had a purpose. It was there so you had time to think about what Path you were going to take your mount along. It was impossible to tell what kind of personality or native talent your dragon had at Level 1 or 2, but I knew I’d have a good idea by Level 5. Not only that, but at Level 5, I was pretty sure she’d be big enough to start flying – which meant we’d be able to experiment as a team before we committed to one of the two main paths: Power or Alacrity. The Path of Royalty definitely looked interesting, but not at low levels. My assessment of the Path of Royalty was that it was for mid-to-end game play. Once Karalti had a some clout and we had the option to gather allies or minions, I’d start investing into that Path.

  My dragon had two unspent skill points. I decided to put another point into her existing Acrobatics skill, bringing it to Acrobatics 5, and one into a new skill, Stealth. Stealth covered both sneaking and hiding. At her size and level – and given that we were headed for an urban environment – it made sense to make sure she was able to fly nimbly and successfully hide if she had to.

  "Morning, sleepyhead," I said, closing the HUD menu. "Time to get up. We've got training.”

  Karalti snored on.

  "Come on, kiddo." I gave her a couple of shakes.

  "Uugooo..." Karalti balled up like a cat, tucking her head under her wing.

  "Yep. Training. You’re gonna be the best flier in the world, remember?" I pushed off her and made my way around her tail to sit on the edge of the bed. "Come on, chop-chop."

  "Nuu. Karalti sleep." Her telepathic voice was blurry.

  "Nope. Karalti gets out of bed and embraces the suck." I was beginning to sound like my old NCO. "Up and at 'em, sunshine."

  "Nuuuuuu. Sun can go die." But she untucked her head and peered at me blearily. Her eyes were even more stunning than her skin: a tight bicolor core of black and pure amethyst purple, shot through with silver. "Karalti hate the sun."

  "Me too, but we need to get stronger. We're doing hoops and beams today."

  While my dragon groaned and rustled around under the covers, I dropped and started doing push-ups. There were no Stat Points to assign in Archemi – you got what you trained for. If you wanted to raise Strength, you lifted weights, overloaded your pack and marched around, or worked a forge and hammer. If you wanted to improve your Dexterity, you ran laps, learned gymnastics, or practiced knife throwing, parkour, or similar activities. Same with all the others. You wanted more INT? You read books and learned stuff. Wisdom? I’d found that thinking about strategy and tactics, playing games, and getting to know NPCs reliably improved Wisdom. The difference between Archemi and IRL, the thing that made this process fun, was that you got immediate, tangible benefits for training. Your muscles pumped when you gained a point. Your mind got keener, your vision improved. You saw the improvements training made to your body, your mind, and your Attack, Defense, Evasion, and other abilities.

  It reminded me a lot of the training program I’d used to get fit when I’d really started to get into motorcycle stunt work. Being an enormous dork, I used augmented reality apps that added an RPG element to my training, and had worked on becoming a ‘Level 15 Barbarian’ by checking off workouts over weeks and months. Karalti leveled her stats exactly the same way, and so did Cutthroat. Thus, training.

  I'd finished two sets of 50 push-ups by the time Karalti slithered out of bed. She yawned, revealing twin rows of razor-sharp teeth, and smacked her jaws together couple of times. "Karalti hates hoops."

  "It's time you started using first-person pronouns, Tidbit." I cracked my knuckles and then turned back to my exercises. Clap push-ups, then burpees. "You're a big fire-breathing girl now. No more baby talk."

  Karalti regarded me pensively, her in eyelids half clos
ed. "So I can say stuff like… ‘If you make me fly hoops, I’ll set you on fire?’"

  "As long as you say it in first person."

  "What about… I hate hoops, and I hate you for making me fly through them? And I want five chickens, aaand..."

  "You're a Queen Dragon, not a dragon princess. You’ll eat what you’re given.”

  The little dragon finally hopped to the floor, stretching her wings and curling her back feet up against her ribs one at a time, like a bird. "I’m so hungry though. Bleh. Well, I guess hoops are okay, but do I have to wear the…?"

  Her pupils contracted to points, and then she turned her head away from me, studying the ceiling intently.

  I stood up, and arched an eyebrow. “That what?”

  “Nope! Nuthin!” Karalti made a show of preening underneath her wing. “Wow, I sure got really big after I levelled, huh?”

  I rolled my eyes, and went to get the source of her dread. My backpack.

  Karalti whined aloud, flattening her wings against her body. "Nuuuu! No backpack!"

  "Yes, backpack." Everything we owned was loaded in my pack, which weighed about sixty pounds. Karalti was still too little to carry all of it while flying, so I sorted about thirty pounds of weapons, valuable junk, and tools onto the floor while she griped and stamped her feet.

  “Don’t wanna!”

  "Of course you don’t wanna. But you're already twice as big as you were at Level 1. Think how strong you’ll be by your next level after some resistance training.”

  “I don’t care! It’s heavy!”

  I sighed, standing up with it over one shoulder. “You want to carry me some day, don’t you?”

  Her wings drooped. “Yeah.”

  “I weigh a hundred and eighty pounds. This weighs less than a quarter of Hector. Do you remember why we use the backpack for training?"

  She looked sidelong. “Because you’re a fatass?”

  I mock-scowled, and reached back to grab my butt. “I’ll have you know that my ass is a supple, perky marvel of nature, young lady.”

  Karalti play-bowed to me, tail lashing with mirth. “Yeah! Because it’s fat!”

  I narrowed my eyes. “If you want to make your stand on that hill, be prepared to die on it, because I will twerk on you.”

  Dragons were intensely visual creatures, and the rant made Karalti squeal with laughter and cover her eyes. How she knew what twerking was, I’ll never know. “Aaaaghhh, whyyy??!”

  “Me and my perfect ass have no shame whatsoever, and you will regret ever questioning the mass and might of my posterior. Now, unless you want to see Uncle Hector crack walnuts with his buttcheeks, try again,” I said.

  Karalti's eyes and nostrils scrunched up in a draconic pout. "Because resistance training with balanced weight makes it easier to fly?”

  “That’s right.”

  “You better wear it too!"

  “I will. I’ll even go first.” I walked over and booped her on the snout with my finger. “I don’t expect you to do anything I wouldn’t do myself.”

  Once we actually got outside and got moving, Karalti's surliness was replaced by giggling enthusiasm. She bounded across the rolling deck and practically threw herself over the railing, chirping with delight as she swooped up into the cold, choppy wind. This time, her exuberant morning flight was accompanied by gouts of white fire.

  I watched her for a few minutes, admiring the way she cut the air. That one skill point had made a noticeable difference in her agility. While she warmed up, I did two sets of ten while wearing the pack where she could see me. I hadn’t told her it didn’t actually weigh thirty pounds – it weighed forty. That was for my benefit, as well as hers. When I was done, I’d gained another point to Strength and Stamina. "Okay, Tidbit. Time to work."

  "Oki!" Karalti swung around and backwinged to land on the banister of the ship, flapping to keep her balance, and turned to present her back to me.

  "That’s the spirit." I buckled the straps back around her wings and arms, then around her chest. “Soon we’ll be able to do this together.”

  “Yeah!” She looked around inquisitively. “Where should I train?”

  I pointed up at the ship’s masts and overhead, horizontal sails. “I want you to cut figure eights through the rigging. That’ll force you to keep with the ship, too.”

  "Oof. That's hard." She looked up at the rigging with trepidation. “How heavy is this pack?”

  “Thirty pounds,” I lied.

  Karalti groaned under her breath. “Thirty! I can’t fly with thirty!”

  "Of course you can. You can do it, muscles.” I clapped her on the shoulder. “Embrace the suck, enjoy the pain – it means you’re growing.”

  She wibbled for a couple of seconds, but then looked back at me with determination in her eyes. “Okay… I’m gonna do it! I’m gonna be the strongest! Watch me!”

  When I stepped back, my dragon stood on her back legs and stretched her wings out to their full ten-foot span. She had long, streamlined wings, like a bird of prey. Karalti dove off the railing and dropped like a stone for a good twenty feet before she caught a thermal and rose, puffing with effort, and headed for the rigging. While she did that, I tied myself into an improvised rope harness, and knotted that to the railing before leaping up to balance on the edge. It was, in a word, terrifying. The ship was bucking up and down on the currents of air. To my left, there was nothing but sky and an eight thousand foot drop onto land. It was exactly what I needed.

  My dragon had to build her strength to be able to carry me, and I had to build my mind up to being able to fly on her – and fight on her back. Even though I was immune to inertia and had no phobia of heights, that didn't mean that I was immune to rational fear. I could look over the edge of a skyship like this and not feel sick or dizzy, but my inner monkey still screamed in horror whenever I wobbled on the railing. If I was going to be a good dragon rider, I had to be completely unafraid of falling. Even though Karalti was nowhere near being able to carry me yet, she wasn't going to be a gawky little hatchling for very long - and riding a dragon wasn't as simple as sitting on it while it flapped around. Archemi’s physics were very real, and you didn't just magically stay on something diving at two hundred miles per hour without the proper skills and gear to hold on.

  There was something else I had to master, too: using my HUD while suspended over extreme heights. I found stable footing on the railing and called it up, holding my spear out for balance while I glanced over my own character sheet:

  Dragozin Hector - Dauntan (Tuun)

  Level 9 Dark Lancer

  ==Stats==

  Strength: 20

  Dexterity: 24

  Stamina: 22

  Will: 21

  Wisdom: 22

  Intelligence: 19

  HP: 459

  XP: 1358 (576 to Next Level)

  Adrenaline: 166

  Renown: Notable adventurer (General); Wanted Outlaw (Ilia), Heretic (Hercynia)

  ==Abilities==

  =Racial=

  Blessing of Burna: +10% bonus to resist disease; +5% Stamina bonus to recover from illnesses. Immune to Pox and Lockjaw. +10% cold resistance. All physical needs accrue 2% slower.

  Plateau Native: No Stamina penalties in thin air, -2 Stamina penalty at sea level.

  Saddle Born: All Riding skills increase 5% faster.

  Sun-sight: No vision penalties in bright or very bright light, -5% penalty in dark environments.

  Blessing of Tarn: +15% movement speed.

  Blessing of Hrrun: No airsickness, reduced inertia, no vertigo.

  =Dragonforged Abilities=

  Mana Tolerance: You have great resistance to Stranging and Mana Sickness, and may consume magical potions without permanent ill effects. Your toxicity threshold is now equal to your HP. See the Mana Tolerance ability entry for details and related skill and ability trees. Exceeding your Mana Threshold brings on symptoms of Mana Sickness and drains HP.

  Eagle Eyes: 20/5 eyesight with enhanc
ed spectrum, 340-degree visual field.

  G-force resistance 1: You can remain conscious at up to 5 g of horizontal or vertical pressure.

  Stone Bones 1: +10 resistance to crushing damage, 5 damage reduction.

  Deep Breather: 1.5x lung capacity.

  Iron Body 1: You are practically immune to extremes of heat and cold. You can safely weather extremes between -20 and 120 degrees Fahrenheit.

  Gyroscopic orientation: You cannot be disabled by extremes of motion. You are immune to disorientation and vertigo, and suffer no penalty to vision or concentration while spinning, falling, or while upside down.

  Blood Pact: By undergoing the Rite of Marantha, you have become dependent on dragon blood to sustain your metabolism. Every week, you must consume at least one Dragon Blood Elixir to maintain your abilities. Failure to consume the potion will trigger the Starvation and Withdrawal statuses. All abilities gained through the Rite will become unavailable, and AP will regenerate 50% slower.

  Stranged: The Rite has resulted in permanent mutations to your body which are visible and identifiable by some creatures. In places (or with people) where Stranged or magical beings have pariah status, you suffer a Severe penalty to all social interactions.

  =Traits=

  Curiosity: You are an open-minded and engaged person, willing to question your modes of thinking and doing and readily accept new ideas. Combat, craft, and class skills gain 5% more quickly.

  Introvert: With a preference for your own company or small groups of loyal friends, you gain a 5% bonus to accumulate skills in solitude, provided you are not disturbed. Fatigue accumulates 10% faster in large groups and crowds outside of combat situations.