Forged By The Apocalypse - A LitRPG With Draconic Potential

The final battle of the war room was set to be a long one. Despite the outcome being obvious and their advantage only increasing, Cal’s army could not break that final piece of defence necessary to finish off the fight. Since Cal’s Dao had solidified and the result was a foregone conclusion, it was only then that I decided to have a look at how the game worked. The moment I placed my hand onto the crystal at the centre of the table, Cal’s head whipped around so fast I thought we were being attacked from behind.

His eyes widened at me, but said nothing. The scowl which had taken ownership of Cal’s face faded quickly, replaced with both wonder and a little trepidation. “I was wondering why our army point production just tripled.” Cal sighed and turned his attention back to the fighting. I watched as the enemy position was overrun from that point, the stalemate broken.

The crystal connected me to every unit on our side, and allowed me to see through their eyes. I picked a fighter at random and stepped into their mind, taking direct control and standing upon the battlefield for the first time. The scents, sounds and other sensations all combined to assault me the moment I joined the marching units, but I didn’t flinch away from it. The others had been fighting like this for hours, after all.

As the awful truth of war was pushing itself against my nostrils, I was able to keep myself separate. Within my real body, I could feel mana churning, some of it entering the war game crystal. Not enough for my mana to even drop a percentage, but the added strength to the army was clear. Just my natural mana regeneration alone cleared the other’s by more than three times, which made a sort of sense while being a sign that I was different to most. I absent-mindedly started casting Mana Bolts into nearby enemies, turning whatever was unfortunate to be hit into dust.

Try as I might to think I’m not special, the System would do its best to show me I was. I didn’t begrudge Cal his newly formed Dao or getting the time to rest, though. For all I knew, the enemy would have been given resources to match our’s if I had been involved earlier. Without letting myself get too caught up in my thoughts, I arrived at the main battle line, where undead generals were fighting for their lives, ironically. “Hold them back, fools!” A whiny voice groaned, petulance readily apparent in their tone.

Larry and Morris were engaged with a behemoth of bone, both controlling the bodies of warriors with far greater technique and power than their own. The huge form easily cleared sixteen feet in height, and dozens of bones wrapped around each other to form a facsimile of the limbs which smashed and grabbed at the pair of brothers. I was unsure who was who, but a grasping hand clutched around one of them, only to be broken to pieces from within as the true deciding factor of this war showed itself.

No, the brothers hadn’t become expert warriors, forged by war or anything like that. I flexed the hands at my sides, the strangeness of occupying an alternate body still wearing off even now. The brothers had been piloting their personal fighters for some time, and were both passed the awkward numb phase, as well as inhibiting powerful bodies to start with. By timing their charges, the two brothers used their shieldbearer bodies to charge right through the creature, severing limbs. In a flashy display of quick, powerful blows, the pair dismantled the large bone golem and moved on to other enemies.

During the battle, Cal had focused the kill experience onto a smaller and smaller number of their soldiers. Like in the “real world,” when an enemy fell, a portion of their life’s worth passed to the victor. At least, that was true for our side. What the undead side had in numbers, they lacked in potential for growth. While the rotten horde arguably started out stronger, they had lost the initiative because of Cal’s tactics and now it was simply a matter of time.

Each of the commanders was controlling one of the dozen units which Cal had prepared for the final push. I acted mainly as a grunt in the middle of the swell, following the strategy their commander had already outlined to the others. I would just get in the way if I tried to act on my own, so I just made myself useful doing what I was good at. Right now, that was sniping the harassing aerial units and clearing the skies.

A mighty roar shook the entire challenge room of the Elite dungeon. I saw Cal flinch as he felt it, too. I was half-looking through my real eyes, the other half of my perception still firing salvos of Mana Bolts into the air. Being in two bodies meant the Dao which blanketed the battlefield hit me twice. There was a second grade Dao user behind the outburst. The complexity of the assault on my senses was intense, but I managed to stay in control of the piloted body. The same wasn’t true for the others, who each fell away from the stone table clutching their heads in pain and coughing like they had been inside a burning building.

“I think the System is throwing a tantrum.” I spoke through my real body as the others recovered from the whip of Dao that had thrown them aside. I didn’t think my presence within the simulation had brought about this response, but it was impossible to be certain. The reason for the outburst was irrelevant, whether it was because of me or just always set to happen at the end of the challenge, I wasn’t going to let the hard work of the others fail here. This level of strength would crush them no matter what they did in response. For the first time since fighting Cavarix, my own Dao stirred. The Constellation was still forming, but the process was nearly complete. “Cal, do you have a strong unit for me to use?”

It took more effort than I would admit, but I managed to release a trickle of the energy contained within. The gravitational forces within my newly restructured soul space made it difficult, but from the way Cal’s head whipped in my direction, it had done something. With confused exhilaration clear on his face, Cal nodded. “Oh yeah, I think I’ve got just the thing.”

Cal couldn’t have known. That was my fault. As the skies above my position began to boil with bright blue flashes of light, I flinched. “Impossible! This is impossible!” That whiny cry from earlier was louder now, but beginning to be drowned out in the noise of the storm. The somewhat unsuitable sunny day that had persisted for the battle became drenched in rain and pathetic fallacy. The lightning above crackled, illuminating the claws and snout that started to push through the clouds. If the roar before shook the battlefield, the next one shook existence. “Does that work, Grant?” Cal asked, laughing with the others as they watched a true destroyer arrive.

“Uh… yeah. That’ll work.” I let the soldier I was controlling return to his programming, returning to my real body before jumping into the newest unit. From our vantage a few miles away, it was clear this was not the actual Storm Dragon’s form. That thing was a world-ender simply by passing near them. This dragon would need to actively break a sweat to tear a world apart, at least.

No, this wasn’t the Storm Dragon. It was… my dragon. The Tempest Dragon, in all of its current glory. The Storm Dragon had a classically Chinese style to its dragon form, a massive serpentine body matched with a large head. Its limbs weren’t tiny, but proportionally they were small. The clawed arms which ripped the clouds apart above the war were not spindly when compared to the body they were attached to.

There was an intense rushing noise and the clouds were blasted away. The appearance of the Tempest Dragon was all anyone could look at. A massive pair of mighty wings had smashed the thunderstorm above apart like it was a puff of smoke. A horned and ridged head, structurally similar to a wolf, descended first. Its neck snaked along after, attached to a muscular and fierce body. The physicality of a tiger fused with a crocodile, the Tempest Dragon was as fearsome a creature as I had ever seen or imagined. Scales of electric blue were coupled with deeper sapphire and navy colourations throughout, while markings of white gave the appearance of a thunderstorm being contained within its body.

Which, I knew, it was.

Taking a deep breath, I fell fully into the shape of the dragon. I could swear I heard a chuckle in the back of my mind as I did so, my Dao laughing at me for being scared. Somewhere along the way, with the events of that first day, the battle against the Storm Dragon and the nightmares I had experienced since, I had gained an actual fear of the regal lizards. So, maybe my magic laughing at me for it wasn’t a surprise, but it still stung a little.

A miasma was rising from the mausoleum across the battlefield. The war was still ongoing below, but as the hill opposite our own crumbled to pieces, it was clear that the opposing general had given up on their initial strategy. Dao continued to gather. I had faced the same Dao against Nezzerul and Cavarix, each with their own slight twist. They were not wielding the Dao of Death, I had realised, but something adjacent to the idea. Nezzerul’s Dao wasn’t simply death, it was closer to the Dao of Undying Loyalty, if I had to name it. Cavarix’s was of course the Dao of Rot.

From below my descending form, slowed only by the two makeshift parachutes of my huge wings, a deathly energy rose. Dao of Dessication? Dao of Pestilence? The magical nerd inside me couldn’t help but try and pick apart the sensations I could feel, but the practical part focused on dodging the incoming punch. A huge skeletal fist scratched the side of my face, no doubt drawing first blood. The rest of the giant pulled itself from the ground, destroying the battlefield completely.

Unable to contain my rage at the insult of being actually harmed by this pathetic construct of bone, I felt a burning in my chest. The bonfire soon became an inferno, within seconds an unstoppable force was pushing its way out. The sensation felt profound, each molecule of my body reacting not just to the natural mana-made magic within, but also something more. It was the Dao of the Tempest and Dragon in tandem, but something even more complex and unintelligible, too. I gave up trying to pick apart the feeling, content to simply let it rip.

With a sound like a dozen jet engines being supercharged at once, the power in the dragon’s chest - my chest - grew. My long claws drove into the soft, muddy earth as I found purchase on the solid bedrock beneath. I planted my limbs like the longest of roots, splaying my wings wide to add to my brace. The skeleton giant was gibberish obscenities and rage as I rushed to pull itself fully from the ground. With a popping candy feeling, the first sparks started to dance between my fangs. The light became so bright my eyes demanded they shut but I refused. I wouldn’t miss a second of this moment, devouring it, memorising every magical impulse and instinct which flowed through the strange body. I contained the power for as long as possible, analysing it as best I could.

Mana fused with Dao was an easy to understand concept, but there was something more happening within the breath of a dragon which I could not yet understand. There was a sliver of frustration in the movement, but I reared my long neck back before shooting the head forward. The energy inside exploded outward, guided by my intent. The physical body itself couldn’t hope to contain such power, and it was only through magic that a dragon could unleash the strength. Even as the force began to rip from my own mouth, I was staggered at how dangerous it felt to even perform.

However, it was with reckless abandon, pride and excitement that I unleashed the True Dragon’s Breath of the Tempest Dragon upon my enemies. Even as the energy caused my own avatar to crumble, the magic far too potent for a mortal body to handle, I laughed. It hurt, but I had never felt more powerful or closer to my aspired enemy. I would not be able to replicate the attack any time soon, but I had felt how it worked. That was enough. My psyche fell away from the dragon as it fell to the ground, completely spent, and I slumped in the chair I had been sitting in the whole time.

“I think I got ‘em,” I chuckled.

The battlefield was gone, replaced by a truly destroyed world. The force of the dragon’s breath had torn not only the firmament from the ground, it had brought with it the magma buried so far down. That same magma had then been infused with the energy of the tempest. Rivers of electrified lava covered the land as tornadoes of fire began to appear, the crazy wind patterns giving birth to even more intense weather.

Cal scratched his head, nodding with a stunned expression on his face. “Yeah… I reckon you did.”