Forged By The Apocalypse - A LitRPG With Draconic Potential

Another of the special resources created by the System upon my exit from the dungeon was, as I predicted, within a land of smoke and flames. Entering the range of its influence was like walking into a furnace. Just a hundred metres away, the air was cool and clear, but after passing an imperceptible barrier, a wall of heat and the air filled with haze and ash. As with the mountain, the tree and the metal orb, the Natural Treasure was remaking the world around it.

I wondered if the whole world would eventually be altered by items like these. The Grade One resources were sizable, and I bet if I rolled the Metallurgic Metamorph around it would take a long time to run out of steam. What did a Grade Three, or Four resource look like? The twitchy dragon in my soul, uncomfortable from my encounters with Steel, almost salivated at the thought of so much power.

If I could find one that fit me perfectly…

I had fairly high hopes for this one but the immediate discomfort made wonder how closely related fire and dragons would be. Naea and I were both able to fight off the Grade One heat of the area by channelling our Dao. Rivers and Tempests were both more powerful than something as basic as heat, even when the temperature was increased by the ambient Dao. The ambient warmth was definitely impressive though.

Julianna walked forward, throwing her arms wide as she soaked up the energy in the blistering air like I might a sea breeze. I was glad she had accepted my invite, not just because I thought she was beautiful with her mahogany coloured skin and gorgeous smile. I knew she would get some benefit from this place, given her newly formed Dao of Fire.

The source of the heat became clear quickly when a geyser erupted, sending an immense burst of scalding water into the air. It landed on my skin like acid, the water far hotter than would have been naturally possible before the shift. The Dao of Heat seemed to be altering physics to allow water to act like magma. Again, Julianna surprised me as the beautiful woman danced in the flaming rain. The sight was as beautiful as anything I had seen since The Shift.

I liked the world now, I realised. I liked it much more than before with the smog and waste and boredom. Of course, there was the addition of monsters and magic to the world which made things confusing and dangerous, but as I watched Julianna dealing with a Fire Sprite, I couldn’t help but think that for all the danger… The world had become so beautiful.

With skin of fluorescent oranges, and hair that wasn’t too far off mine. Long, red candle flames bounced about the tiny fairy-type creature’s head as it flitted around the laughing woman playfully. The small wisp of flame had a mind of its own, and more than half that mind was telling it to mess with Naea. The “real” fairy, as she called herself, was quite snobbish when it came to the sprites, flicking them into sparks which reformed with a firecracker pop and a giggle. “Not a fan of your littler cousins?” I asked.

Naea spat, and the small glob of saliva didn’t even hit the ground before it sizzled into nothing. I poked her, to her additional annoyance. “They’re dumb,” she replied, “and they only last about five minutes before-”

Pop.

Julianna sighed as the latest of the Fire Sprites to come and play got too excited and exploded. This one became a fantastic shower of blue and green sparks. Even after Naea had explained that sprites were essentially just pure mana given life, it was still a little concerning to see a creature so full of life burst into nothing. For the co-leader of Newtown, and her connection to the Dao in the air, it was becoming personal. She had attempted to create a familiar contract with one of the sprites after Naea said it was possible, but it hadn’t worked yet. Once her mana touched them, they overfilled and burst like a balloon

I decided to start trying to distract the group from the somewhat harrowing lightshow. “Got anything about volcanos in your database, Naea?” She didn’t enjoy the humidity, temperature or the locals, but I had seen her eyes open wide with wonder at the molten geological fixtures. The updrafts over magma were apparently very tickly.

“Not really?” She answered with a tilt of her head, searching for the disjointed knowledge in her mind. “I know what lava is, and what the difference between that and magma is. Oh! That’s why the water’s doing that? Getting so hot it bubbles up like that?”

“That’s right!” Sometimes Naea acted like such a little kid. It was easy to treat her that way when she let me. “But there’s something more important that happens, too.”

“Volcanic eruptions!” Naea shouted the two words with glee, and I almost agreed due to her earnestness. But no, she’d like the surprise if I could just find one. A few minutes later, the reveal was ready. There were a few interesting things to spot, and more than a few creatures around that were definitely avoiding us.

The Grade One resource had not produced many Grade One creatures, it seemed. In our short time so far, we hadn’t even seen anything that could really be considered a monster. The Firehawk Monarch had pruned its lands too much, leaving a quiet ecosystem filled with placid creatures which did not hunt. If there was no struggle, then there wouldn’t be much growth either.

Spotting what I had been hoping for since I saw the giant bird, I smiled and began explaining. “So, just like we can spot some molten rock on the surface, there’s even more below. The best part of volcanic activity is the hot springs. Apparently the Firehawk Monarch agreed. It was definitely keeping the best resource for itself. How the Golem got it to leave this place is beyond me.”

“They must have been scared of you,” Julianna suggested. I could tell by the way she spoke the words that she didn’t necessarily disagree with the idea. It wasn’t the nicest feeling in the world to know I potentially frightened those around me, but I didn’t avoid the idea either.

“The claimants? Do you think? They weren’t that much of a problem.” I didn’t mention Steel, and the fact that I would be a lot more free of responsibility if the creature wasn’t so interested in a partnership. If Steel had attacked outright, the population of Ascentown would be approximately two.

“Yeah,” Naea agreed with Julianna, “I mean you smashed through them, but could anyone else have done that? The metal bastard made the right choice I guess. Weird creep.” The two women nodded at each other sagely and I snorted, pulling my shirt over my head. I kept a poker face as I met Julianna’s eyes during their wandering of my muscles. The System had done wonders at cutting away the puppy fat.

“I guess I mostly agree. Steel is definitely weird, but if it really is an ally then it’s a strong one. Everything’s complicated and I would honestly rather have just had the fight, but it told me some interesting things. Steel has been useful already, if it’s telling the truth about them.” I had the instinct to be defensive about Steel, not to protect the chromatic collaborator, but to guard myself. Like it or not, ignored or embraced, Steel was a part of my soul and my future for the foreseeable.

“What kind of things did it teach you?” There was a very specific tone in Julianna’s voice that made me feel hotter than the springs around us. After checking with a toe, I jumped headfirst into the pool. Coming up quickly, I warned against doing so while rubbing my sore head to the laughs of the women. The pain disappeared nearly instantly, and then came the waves of relaxation. I shuddered and gasped intensely, but I didn’t feel embarrassed by the laughter anymore.

Everything was great.

Every strand of tension within my muscles was kneaded away by the gently bubbling waters. As though some consciousness pervaded within the waters, the most strained parts of my body were soothed first. I carried an unsurprising amount of tightness all over, but an immediate warm burn within my hands told me they were the worst affected. As the hot spring bubbled around me, the water began to carry away stress as well as accumulated damage. “Come on in,” I said lazily, “the water’s fiiiiine.”

Once we were comfortable and the slight magical effects of the warm waters were less distracting, I explained to Julianna and Naea everything I had learned from Steel and what I felt the implications were. “Essentially, there’s an unseen time limit over our heads, and as that time limit descends more and more powerful invaders will come to Earth for its resources. It takes having a single Dao Pool before you can become a Grade One, or it makes it far easier at least. Whether it just takes two Dao Pool or an evolved Dao for Grade Two, I can’t say until I get there. Steel said something like explaining how to grasp the Dao would actually make it harder. You either get it or you don’t.

“The stronger we get as a planet, the quicker that barrier falls. There will be peak Grade… Zero? Null? Level twenty nines that are ready to become Grade Ones. They’ll be coming soon, if I had to guess.” I felt like a coward, but decided not to mention that my own bloated power level was chipping away at the boundary quicker than others. An anxious part of myself worried I would be stopped from advancing if it weighed out better for the greater good. I knew it was selfish, but if the Earth needed a bulwark, it could be me.

“So, there’s bottlenecks ahead and enemies racing forward. They’ll already know how to climb, as they’ve existed within the System for a long time.” Julianna wore the serious expression of a leader as she categorised the threat neatly. “No regard for our culture or the people… It’ll be a slaughter.”

I nodded with a frown. “That sounds about right.”

“So, what can we do?” Naea asked. She had a lovely pink one piece swimsuit on, one I had taken from a plastic doll for the occasion. Instead of sitting in the water, she floated on top like a lilypad. “Is it even our problem?”

“Well, it should still be a fair few years before even Grade Ones can freely arrive from what Steel told me, which feels like way too long to think about but also too soon.” Once the barrier weakened to the point that someone as strong as the Golem Prince could appear anywhere? Grade Ones were comic superheroes, burgeoning superweapons all. I myself, while not quite a typical Grade One, would be able to tear apart an old world city without a scratch.

Unless they dropped a nuke. I cycled my mana curiously for a moment. “You think you could survive a nuke, yet?” I asked innocently, using Air Manipulation within the water to increase the bubble and create a churning effect.

“Nuke? Yet?! As in, surviving a nuclear blast while being in the epicentre?” Julianna’s raised voice made me burst out laughing. It was easy to forget that she was a bit of a nerd. I had been joking to start with, but once I considered the question in truth I had to shrug. Honestly, I wasn’t thinking of nuclear weapons as the upper limit to what I wanted to face.

“I mean, yeah? There’s no upper limit on this stuff, you know?” I knew that unlike myself, Julianna had not seen the destruction that was possible out there. The Storm Dragon’s attention was more devastating to a planet than any single explosion from the old world. The concept seemed to both annoy and excite Julianna, who’s own Dao of Fire upped the temperature of the water. “You’d be more suited to surviving than I would. Something to look forward to.”

Letting her stew, literally, I hopped out of the pool with a wink and went for a quick exploration. A current of mana had snaked past on a convection current, and it suggested we were close to our target. Just as I thought, not three minutes jog away and there it was. I was becoming old hat at spotting the shimmer of a dungeon entrance by now.

They weren’t marked with mana, exactly, though a swirl of energy which lit up my Stormborn Manasight did make it obvious this time. There were still so many unknowns when it came to the System. Perversely, I seemed to deal with things within the System dungeons far easier than the new version of the real world.

As she sidled up beside me, Julianna wrapped her fingers in mine. A kaleidoscope of butterflies came to life in my chest and I smiled. Turning my head, wondering if this counted as a date, I asked an important question.

“Have you done any Dungeon runs Julianna?”