“Oh!” Melia jumped as she turned around to face Jessica, slamming her fist into her open palm. “I am! The best dragon ever!”

  Jessica was clearly struggling internally, but it appeared she was working to maintain the old, laid back and friendly dynamic they started with.

  “Right. Weren’t you the one the most surprised when the [Obsidian Dragon] came down? Didn’t you ask if that’s what a dragon looked like?”

  “Details!” Melia waved her hand like she was shooing away a pesky fly. “I know what dragons look like, I was just…surprised. I didn’t expect it to be so small.”

  “That,” Y’cennia’s mouth fell open, “Was small? My lady?”

  “No,” Melia swatted at her. “Bad kitty.”

  Y’cennia hissed, clearly not liking the comparison, but if she was going to tack on weird titles instead of using Melia’s name, she had it coming. At least the others laughed.

  “And yes, that was small.”

  “Says who?” Jessica asked. “It had to be the size of a house!”

  “Eh, the dragons I know are much, much bigger.”

  “Do you…know many dragons?” Alastair asked.

  “Isn’t that just because you’re so short?” Ellesea mumbled. The others gave her pitying looks, being the shortest normal person on their team.

  “I know one,” Melia admitted, if she counted herself. Then, she had a bright idea. “Hey! You know, that Sable guy was right. Even if he is a turd bucket. Lots of people probably only agreed to come thanks to the rewards, which I’m guessing the guild will handle, but those might be a lot less now that there’s no loot. Sooooooo…!”

  Melia waved her arms with a flourish as she searched her inventory for something…fitting.

  “...here! My gift to you, for slaying the great big dragon!”

  Out from her inventory, like pulling a trinket out of an envelope, Melia retrieved her scale. The same one she absentmindedly scratched off of her shoulder, the same one that she picked up in the mansion and used as a mirror.

  The same one that was nearly 8 feet long and 4 feet wide.

  The impenetrable blackness gleamed in the low light, and Melia waddled it awkwardly to lean against a nearby tree.

  The four young adventurers stared at the odd, oblong pentagon, their brains trying to reconcile what it was. They could see it was highly magical, even the ones not accustomed to dealing with magic. Each and every one of them could tell that it was a material of profound strength.

  Melia, oblivious to her companions’ growing dread and consternation, puffed a hot breath on the glassy surface and polished an edge with her sleeve. She winked at her smiling reflection and turned to face the others while pointing back at it, as if to say, “pretty cool, right?”

  Several seconds passed and nobody spoke, and Melia’s smile began to falter.

  “By the old gods, what in the infernal hells is that?” Alastair eventually whispered, horrified. He had tried to inspect it, but he was no crafter or scholar. The only thing [Identify] returned to him was a name, [Obsidian Dragon Scale], the words in deep, bold crimson.

  “It’s a dragon scale, obviously,” Melia giggled. Jessica made a choking sound beside her.

  “Yes, we can see that,” Alastair said. Y’cennia had inched closer, stretching a hand out toward it, almost reverently.

  “It’s an artifact,” she whispered in awe. “Even Grandmaster craftsmen dream of working with an artifact.”

  Y’cennia, as a dedicated [Alchemist], could see a little more than the others with her [Inspect].

  [Obsidian Dragon Scale]

  Quality: 5 stars

  Level: ???

  Rarity: Artifact

  This is a scale from an immensely powerful magical creature. Useful in many armorsmithing professions, dragon scales can also be used as catalysts and ingredients in [Alchemy], [Enchanting], and [Engineering]. Great care must be given to ensure proper preparation. Not suitable for recipes under level 1850.

  An artifact. A real, honest to goodness artifact in the flesh. Y’cennia never even considered if she would ever see one in her lifetime, let alone have the chance to touch one.

  And, if her ears had not just betrayed her, this was being given to them? Like some sort of last second, afterthought gift?

  Why?

  More importantly, how?

  At her level, there wasn’t a chance she’d be able to use it effectively. Y’cennia didn’t think anybody in the kingdom could use it effectively. Not with a base requirement that made it unsuitable for anything less than level 1850.

  What, was this a scale from the Dragon King himself?

  …no, Y’cennia begged in her mind, gods, if you’re listening, please don’t answer that.

  It was heartbreaking just looking at the beautiful, daunting thing.

  Y’cennia, like any crafter worth their salt, had the skill [Downgrade], which allowed them to lower an item’s rarity, quality, or presumed stat values in order to be used in a lower level craft.

  But who in their right mind would ever consider downgrading an artifact level dragon scale? It was blasphemous to even consider it.

  And it was positively enormous! Surely if she could manage to scrape and shave it down, this one scale alone would last her entire lifetime in alchemy without running out.

  But then she would be mutilating this…thing! This perfect, holy specimen of a reagent!

  Yes, she could probably find a way to incorporate it into her trade, and oh, the levels it would give her, but…

  It was like going to a five star restaurant, with a system titled [Chef], ordering a feast that granted actual buffs to stats…and then taking it to the park and scattering it as food for pigeons.

  Y’cennia seemed frozen, with her hand outstretched, unable to bring it forward just one more inch, like she was afraid her hand would pass right through it and she’d find she was in a dream.

  “You’re…giving this to us?” Ellesea finally asked. She couldn’t see as much as Y’cennia, but she had much more of a grasp on its magical potential than her other two companions. She could feel the thing thrumming with hidden power and magical potential. Her own inner reserves felt like a raindrop next to the ocean that was this scale.

  “Yeah,” Melia simply stated. “Do you not want it?”

  Half the group let out pained choking sounds and groans, but Jessica spoke for the rest.

  “Do you have any idea what something like this is worth?”

  No, Melia really didn’t. To her, it was like shedding dead skin.

  But she wasn’t dumb enough to say that.

  “I’m not really too concerned with money,” she eventually said. It was the truth. Even if her scales ended up being priceless, she had enough money she could actually put a price on them. This only served to outrage Jessica further.

  “Listen, Melia, if you’re going to go around pretending to be a dragon, the first thing you should know is that they are greedy sons of bitches. Like, there’s a reason they’re famous for hoards.”

  “I’m aware of hoards,” Melia chuckled dryly. She gave them all a peculiar look, none of them knew that each of them was slowly developing into something Melia could physically sense and possibly trace, just by being something she valued.

  “I…can’t use this,” Y’cennia eventually said. It sounded like it physically pained her to admit it, physically damaging her.

  “Maybe not now,” Melia chuckled. “But don’t worry. We’ll get you there.”

  The poor girl was speechless. She didn’t know if Melia had a high enough level to inspect the scale and see its requirements. Nobody was “getting there” to use this thing, not in crafting and certainly not to the level required for any item that eventually got made by it. She didn’t have the heart to break it to the tiny gnome, but for as valuable as this was, it was pretty much a glorified paperweight.

  Melia seemed to have some idea of her internal struggle, because she gave the group a wry smile.

  “If all else fails, you can always hide behind it. It probably makes a good wall.”

  The next several minutes consisted of Melia’s team slowly approaching her scale as if it were a dragon itself, tiptoeing closer to eventually poke it with a shaky outstretched finger. Once they assured themselves that it wouldn’t bite, they got down to working on the real question.

  How were they going to store it? At first Melia suggested simply leaving it in one of their tents, but Y’cennia got visibly insulted, and she had a good point when she mentioned that not all adventurers were the scrupulous types and they weren’t exactly hidden where they stood. Their camp was surrounded by other camps, and even though the excitement had died down considerably and some people had already moved on with their lives, a good portion of people remained.

  Some because they had nothing better to do, some because of the planned feast for “defeating the dragon”, and some because they genuinely needed to rest and recover after the whole ordeal.

  Melia then suggested one of them stick it into their inventory, which made several of them stare at her judgmentally, scoffing at the idea of an item of this caliber being able to fit into an inventory, until she pointed out that she had just taken it out of hers.

  The next several minutes passed as each of them poked and prodded the giant scale, trying to see how to fit it into their inventory.

  Melia watched in amusement as she perceived what she thought was an invisible game of Tetris. She couldn’t see the inventory of the others, just as they couldn’t see hers, or anybody else’s for that matter. Melia hadn’t thought too deeply about it before now, but she didn’t know exactly how the inventory system worked.

  In the game, players didn’t have a sort of invisible box that simply held their junk. Instead, they had bags, which technically didn’t have any physical form that people could see, only taking up space on the player’s display. Every character was given one 16 slot bag upon character creation, which at the game’s launch was quite large. Players had to either buy medium or small ones from vendors at outrageous prices, find them as rewards from rare, hidden quest chains, or find them as very rare drops from end game raid bosses.

  Over time, through many expansions, as players accrued more and more junk they wanted to haul around with them, a mere 10 to 16 slots soon became wildly inefficient. Some expansions introduced special bags dedicated to specific things only, such as mining materials, herbs, enchanting materials, and so on. These bags sacrificed the utility of being able to store anything for a larger capacity.

  Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.

  By the end, Melia’s bag slots and her bank were both filled with high level bags of all types, giving her over a thousand slots of storage in her personal inventory alone.

  She had enough tact to not bring this up with the others as they scratched their heads over the scale, which back in the game, would have only taken a single inventory slot, just like any unique item. Melia wondered if it could be stacked if she shed another one.

  Feasts took time to prepare, so the group loitered at camp falling into a comfortable, if only very slightly awkward silence. All her new teammates kept sending furtive glances toward Melia, as if she was about to change her mind and storm off or make unreasonable demands. She did her best to ignore them.

  Instead she turned her gaze toward the abbey, and from this side of the miniature valley it was in, she could see the group of clergymen loitering around her planters, studying them.

  “You look like you’re up to no good,” Jessica followed her gaze as she sat down next to her. “Why do I get the feeling if left alone, you’d create an even bigger disaster?”

  “That’s not fair,” Melia laughed.

  “To who?” Jessica smirked. “Honestly I don’t know what was worse, the real dragon that attacked, or you.”

  “I am a real dragon,” Melia pouted without any real heat. “You just can’t appreciate my dragon-ness.”

  “Right,” Jessica rolled her eyes, which again fell on the abbey in the distance. “A [Gardening] dragon. That would be a first.”

  “I’m not just a [Gardener], you know. If you really must know, I already had a few improvements in mind.”

  “Oh no,” Jessica closed her eyes and groaned. “Weird magic growing plots wasn’t enough?”

  “To be fair, I’m not quite done with those,” Melia admitted. The last bit of flair she wanted to add was entirely decoration and wholly useless in reality. It was an item she had in her building decorations menu that, when she first saw it, sent her into a fit of laughter that spiked her vital readings and nearly had her nurses pull her from the game.

  Unlike the [Planters] or other useful decorations like fish tanks, that could display catches that actual [Fishermen] caught, or even something like a table or chairs that somebody could sit in, certain items were vanity only, decorations that did nothing but look cool or pretty.

  These were mostly divided into art categories like paintings and sculptures, but sometimes the lines got blurred and one could really question the “artistic vision” of a certain piece.

  Such as the [Moai Head] based on the ones found on Easter Island.

  When Melia unlocked it, she was confused at first. Sure, she had heard about the monolithic giant heads and seen pictures of them in books. But in the game it was hard to visualize something when all she could see of it was a thumbnail in her crafting window.

  She honestly thought it would be a paperweight, something that could fit on a desk, like one of those momentum toys with the balls that clanked back and forth.

  Imagine her surprise when she finally went out and gathered the (suspiciously huge amount of) materials!

  She placed the thing down in the front yard of her player home and it took up at least a quarter of the space in front of her house.

  It had to be over 10 feet tall and Melia spent the next several hours positioning other objects in such a way that she could scale the dumb thing.

  In the end, it really did serve no purpose except to draw attention, and Melia eventually placed it right on the edge of her property, where her neighbor had a tall hedge for a fence, but the eyes of the statue peeked over, like it was some sort of giant peeping Tom.

  She never did find out how her neighbor felt about it.

  So Melia, genius that she was, thought it would be hilarious to put two of them down in front of the abbey’s new plots, like silent sentinels, and maybe from time to time she would pivot them to face other directions, just to mess with the brothers.

  “No,” Jessica tried scolding Melia, watching her mischievous grin grow wider and wider. “Whatever you’re planning, just no.”

  “We’ll see,” Melia put her plan to the side. She’d need to visit her bank to get some of those materials if she wanted to craft two heads. The recipe called for ridiculous materials that weren’t used in much else, as if knowing full well how useless and silly the thing was and making the [Mason] work for it.

  “I was also thinking about upgrading their well,” Melia rambled on, deciding she might as well share her full thoughts and plans. After taking a bath in the abbey, she found it left much to be desired. She had several schematics that could improve the abbey’s infrastructure, from increased water flow, to automatic water retrieval, to creating a full time system that could power a mill or other magitech works. They had the river right there, she didn’t necessarily need to dig down into the ground.

  “Why…would you do that?” Jessica asked, perplexed. “Not that the brothers and sisters wouldn’t appreciate it, but that’s not something the average person just simply decides to do. Wells aren’t cheap, you know. And what the hell? Aren’t you just some random passing gnome? What connections do you have to a small town like this? You’ve already given them a magical garden. Why are you so invested here?”

  “What can I say?” Melia shrugged. “This place is a sort of second home to me.”

  Melia couldn’t tell Jessica that it was more of a whim than anything, that she was flush with cash, sitting atop a mountain of gold in her inventory, and that she had fond memories of the place from back when it was a starter zone in a video game.

  Melia wasn’t lying either: she found herself incredibly nostalgic at the sight of the mountains, the vineyard, and even the grand church building with its tall steeple and bell tower.

  She just didn’t know if that nostalgia would be equally as strong with the next place she visited.

  If it was, and it turned out the whole world was as exciting and fresh and new as the abbey had seemed and she never set foot here again…well, Melia wouldn’t consider it a waste, regardless. She had the power to make people’s lives better, and she affected change in her own little way.

  Not that she could ever see herself leaving and never returning. Abbyton, and the mansion overlooking it, was her new home.

  “Maybe I’ll build a greenhouse, too,” Melia muttered, watching some men spreading seeds and testing the earth in the plots. [Planters], as amazing as they were, were outdoor fields that needed to obey the seasons. She could build a greenhouse to solve any sort of dilemma regarding choice and suitability of crops. And like the [Planters], she could make a [Greenhouse] that was larger on the inside than it was on the outside-

  “Oh gods,” Jessica wailed. “Please, just one world shattering revelation at a time, thanks.”

  A plan for another time, then. Melia made a mental note to put that one on the back burner, for after she built the [Moai Heads], and she’d need to get the enchanted glass from her bank anyways.

  “Are you done terrorizing poor Jessica?” Alastair asked as Melia wandered back toward the fire pit. Jessica was staring out into the distance, eyes glazed over.

  “For now,” Melia smirked. “Maybe I’ll go back to it later.”

  “So long as you leave enough intact that she can still eat dinner,” Alastair chuckled. “We wouldn’t want her to miss the feast you so graciously forced upon us.”

  “Any excuse to eat,” Melia grinned, though perhaps her new team was not taking her seriously when she said it. She wasn’t planning on holding back tonight, though she did plan on leaving some for everybody else.

  Melia glanced around, curious to find what everybody else was doing. The scale was gone, so either somebody managed to stuff it into their inventory or it was hidden in a tent.

  Judging from how Y’cennia had what looked like her entire inventory sprawled out around her, Melia guessed she’d done everything to try.

  Melia knew all too well one of the greatest detriments to a dedicated crafter: inventory management. And not just the simple type of keeping your junk in places one could easily find it, but the ever growing need, obsession, to find newer, better, higher quality ingredients.

  Y'cennia seemed to be sorting her stuff into various piles determined by their use. She had a whole pile of delicate glass bottles, ranging from classic test tube looking vials to large, pyramid shaped flasks, to little squat things that couldn’t possibly hold more than a thimble of liquid.

  Next she had plants and herbs, set apart by green leafy things that looked like mint, to flowering things like lavender, to root type things like wild carrots. Melia spotted a whole heap of daisy-like flowers she knew to be [Daybloom] and a short, grey, oval leaf with serrated edges called [Silverleaf]. Both primary ingredients for simple [Healing Potions].

  Judging from the final pile, which seemed to be completed potions and crafts, [Healing Potions] were something the group was always in need of, so she probably needed to keep them well in stock.

  Melia watched silently as the budding [Alchemist] lit a small fire in the pit with the help of a firestarter, a simple tool that repeatedly rubbed a piece of flint over a chunk of steel as one squeezed the handle, showering anything under the containment head with sparks.

  Y’cennia quickly got a flame going with a deft hand and set up a small cauldron on a rack above the flame. Being so small, the fire wouldn’t be good for most crafts, barely able to heat her alembic and retort, just enough to boil water.

  But from what Melia could see, that would suffice. Y’cennia was already lost to the world, focusing her skills such as [Dehydrate] and [Cure] to process in moments what would normally take days. She then tossed the now visibly altered leaves and petals into a mortar and started grinding them. Once she reduced them to a fine powder, Y’cennia added them to the boiling [Pure Water] to distill down to their essence, creating a simple, low level potion.

  Melia subtly glanced up at the catgirl’s face, screwed up in concentration, and suddenly remembered that she was only level 198, very low level herself.

  Melia didn’t know what was average for people of this world. She heard that adventurers often made it to rank 5 before retiring, but not as many went any further than that.

  In game terms, that would have been level 50. It was a respectable level, especially at the very beginning when max level was 60, but being level 50 at a max of 100 was not terrible either, especially for civilians and NPCs. Melia wondered if that same rank 5 average held true for crafters as well, since their method to level looked vastly different than somebody who killed monsters all day.

  Melia watched in silence for several minutes as Y’cennia did nothing but craft, craft, and craft some more. A sardonic smile crept over Melia’s face, remembering her own struggles with the grind.

  After one random attempt, which startled Y’cennia herself so it must not have been on purpose, she was bathed in a familiar, warm golden light.

  “Congratulations!” Melia squealed in genuine glee. It took a considerable amount of willpower not to say something stupid, like: gratz on your ding.

  Y’cennia carefully finished her set, making sure not to waste anything before she finally let herself relax. Her smile grew huge, her ears and tail twitched in happiness, and she looked so happy it seemed she might float away.

  Melia patted her on the leg as the others called out their congratulation, letting the catkin bask in the euphoria of a level up. That made her level 199 now, only one more to go and she’d be rank two. Melia was already subconsciously plotting how to gather reagents and materials to boost the grind.

  With Jessica brooding, Alastair locked in quiet meditation, and Y’cennia doing her best not to float away, Melia turned her gaze to her final companion.

  Ellesea was studying what looked like a fantasy textbook, taking notes and doing magic homework.

  Melia never really got to participate in the school experience, having done most of her learning through online courses and tutors, so she found the prospect fascinating.

  The [Mage] was reading over a thick tome with esoteric shapes and diagrams, which should have made no sense to Melia, but her brain recognized as formations and runes for spells.

  Magical homework! Melia thought with glee. She clambered up part of a fallen log to peer down as Ellesea scratched out a few sentences, crossed some out, and flipped through the pages of her book. Besides the large textbook looking thing, there were several other tomes spread around the girl in a semicircle. One seemed to be a glossary of runes and their meanings.

  Veritii

  Wusk

  Wynn

  Yama

  Those were, for a lack of the proper term which Melia didn’t know, conjunctions. By themselves they didn’t do anything in a spell, but they told other things what to do and who to do it to. Much like verbs acting on nouns, to continue the linguistic equivalent. Yama in particular connected two actions together much like “and” would, but only if the actions themselves were benign and self deployed. It was a niche word that was sparingly found in buffs applied by the caster to the caster, and only activated as a secondary effect.

  In some regards, spells were actually a language of their own, just barely understood and insanely complex, unlike the words people used to talk to each other.

  What Melia couldn’t understand was why Ellesea was tasked with solving this particular problem, or what the point of the exercise was.

  From what she saw of the original diagram, the base form of the lattice, where the runes were then attached, was hexagonal, which wasn’t ideal for an attack spell, which usually had an odd amount of hardpoints to attach runes, and usually in prime numbers. Three, five, and seven point diagrams were the most prominent in any spell Melia could think of.

  But it didn’t seem like a buff either, which was usually in base eight, with the addition of a four point lattice. Melia knew a single 64 point spell that was immensely difficult (it had been the level 100 spell released with the last expansion), but she could theoretically see how it might be possible to stretch out a latticework for 128 or 256 points.

  But the sheer cost of something like that would be…catastrophic. That was bordering on ritual or group casting that would then affect huge swaths of land or else do things to entire armies.

  So what needed a six point lattice?

  “You know, you’re not very stealthy,” Ellesea said without looking up over her shoulder. She sounded incredibly amused. “They told me you’re supposed to be a high level [Rogue]. I’m not impressed.”

  “Eh,” Melia shrugged, hopping down and walking in front of the girl. “It never was my strongest class.”

  “Well? Have you satisfied your curiosity? I’ve also been told gnomes have an unquenchable thirst for discovering the unknown. I must say, you’re proving all the rumors right.”

  “Actually, I have not!” Melia said brightly. “You said you’re a grad student at an academy? Is this some sort of homework?”

  “Not an academy; the academy,” Ellesea corrected her gently. She worked hard to get in despite her family’s interference. “Transgracia’s Arcanus Scholastia, Thaumaturgical Academy of Horizon.”

  Melia blinked.

  “That’s…a mouthful.”

  Ellesea had the good grace to blush.

  “We do usually just call it ‘the academy’.”

  Now that she thought about it, Melia remembered the multistory building in Horizon that held the class trainers for multiple magical classes having a ridiculous sounding name. No player ever called it by its actual name: to even find the name a player had to wander to a certain spot which was the main gates and read the sign, which they couldn’t do if their language skills weren’t high enough. Elsewise it just looked like a fancy wrought iron gate with a massive, detailed arch.

  “It’s not often I’m able to talk to the others about my studies,” Ellesea said as she smiled. She closed her books and shifted her attention to the gnome. “They don’t have the patience or aptitude for it. Not that that’s a bad thing! Different people have their strengths and weaknesses…not everybody is born with the gift to manipulate mana.”

  “I was suitably fortunate,” Melia admitted, skirting around how her own aptitude came from clicking the class at character creation. “I couldn’t help but notice your books seemed focused entirely on the arcane branch. If I remember correctly, you said you were an Arcane [Mage]. It’s not often I find another enthusiast.”

  “Oh?” Ellesea’s eyes sparkled. “Have you studied the branch, then?”

  “You might say I had an intense fascination with it for quite some time,” Melia chuckled. “Do you mind if I ask some questions?”

  “Be my guest.”