To say that Jacob’s stunned would be the understatement of the century. He knows that Lancelot has a Draconic Constitution—despite not having any idea where it came from. Still, it means that Lancelot’s base strength is actually pretty close to a Dragonkin’s in many regards. The problem was that the previously-chubby-man had never had anyone teaching him how to learn to use his strength.
Jacob, however, thanks to The Grimoire Extraordinaire, has done what would have been impossible to practically anybody else: he’s fixed every single flaw that Lancelot had in his Skills, down to the way he circulated Mana.
Yet, watching the now thin, cheekbone-y Lancelot, he doesn’t fully understand what’s happening.
“Is your new Class this good?” Jacob asks, surprised.
“New Class? Wait, for a Squire?!”
Everyone looks at the nameless Elf laying out cold through the wall, with the innkeeper making a tab of all the damages his poor place is getting.
“That’s his Squire?! What do you mean?! Are you joking?! That Elf was at Platinum Rank! His strength was probably at Advanced Platinum Rank! Didn’t they say that the Fake Champion was barely at Intermediate Platinum?!”
“I know!” Someone else chimes in. “But how the hell does he have a Squire who’s stronger than him?! What has the world come to, even?!”
“The Class is really good, Boss,” Lancelot nods. “But now I’m hungry all the time.”
Jacob just stares with an unchanging expression, “you mean… exactly like before?”
“Worse! Way worse! I always feel like I’m starved! Speaking of which, could I get some of that soup?”
“Order your own,” Jacob says, moving in front of the little soup remaining in his bowl.
“Oh, come on, you haven’t finished it!”
“Because they assaulted me! Have you lost your eyes?” Jacob replies, crossing his arms.
“Anyway, sit down. We have to talk.”
Then, however, Jacob notices that the crowd isn’t thinning.
If anything, it has only gotten bigger.
“Huh, actually,” Jacob sighs, “maybe we need to change spot.”
“Where do you think you’re going?!” A guy, a Human this time, walks forward with a giant axe in his hands. “I’m taking you down, Fake Champion.”
When his aura erupts, he’s at Peak Platinum Rank.
Jacob groans and facepalms.
“It’s going to be like this for a while, isn’t it?”
“No one gets to my boss before going through me!” Lancelot declares, awkwardly shifting forward.
Jacob suddenly notices that Lancelot didn’t get new pants, he’s still wearing his oversized pants before the weight loss—he’s just put a very narrow belt on them.
“Lancelot, you need pants and a new robe. We’ll go get you sorted out later to Elder—”
“Silence!” The human thunders. “You scrawny idiot, move before I paint the wall with your innards! A Squire shouldn’t mess with real Students!”
Jacob sees Lancelot move forward, trip, and faceplant because of his pants.
What have I done to deserve this? He walks forward and, with a few movements of his hand, cuts the long ends of the pants that were getting in the way, leaving Lancelot with very wide shorts.
“Hah! Genius!” Lancelot nods, very satisfied.
“He just cut his pants, what genius is in that?!” Someone comments from the back.
“I swear, I’ll eat my hat if that Squire manages to last ten seconds against this guy. He’s a Peak Platinum Rank, for crying out loud!”
“I’ll eat your hat if the skinny guy can last five seconds!”
The guy launches forward, attacking Lancelot, and the axe howls through the air as he tries to split the thin Squire from shoulder to hip. Lancelot’s eyes widen for a heartbeat, and then his feet plant on the floorboards.
Lancelot raises his left hand and catches the blade in his palm. The momentum is stopped so abruptly that the guy’s arms jolt as if he just hit a wall made of metal.
There’s even a slight metallic twang as the guy comes to a stop.
The man tries as hard as he can to wrench the axe back, screaming at the top of his lungs, “give me back my damn axe!”
But, for all he’s pulling, Lancelot’s finger feel like a steel clamp.
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A guy in the crowd has already thrown his hat away.
Another one has nodded thankfully toward him.
“Move!” the man spits, and he tries to slam his knee into Lancelot’s ribs.
Lancelot doesn’t shift and when the leg finds him, there’s a sickening crunch to the impact.
“AHH!”
But before he can say anything else, Lancelot slaps him. The slap renders the man instantly unconscious, making him leave the axe behind, out of his grip, as he flies away.
He hits the far wall, and the wall caves in, and the man vanishes through it in a burst of dust and shattered plaster.
Silence takes the room for a second, and then the innkeeper screams.
“MY WALLS!” he roars. “DO YOU ANIMALS THINK I BUILD THIS PLACE OUT OF AIR?!”
Lancelot flexes his fingers once, and then he looks at Jacob with a grin that is too proud to be polite.
“Boss,” Lancelot says, “did you see that?”
Jacob keeps his face steady because he does not want the crowd to know how impressed he actually is.
“That was… interesting,” Jacob clears his throat. “Good job, Lancelot. We’ll find a place to eat now.”
“FIRST YOU’LL PAY FOR THE DAMN WALLS YOUR SQUIRE DESTROYED!” The innkeeper shouts.
“I know,” Jacob says, and then he turns to the man who made so many holes in the walls. “You just increased your debt to me.”
Lancelot blinks. “Boss, I don’t have any money. Wait, what debt? Are you keeping tabs of everything?”
“I do,” Jacob replies. “It is called your future rewards from Quests and whatnot. I’m investing in your food because it makes you stronger. But at some point, you’ll have to pay it back.”
“What?!” Lancelot shouts, horrified. “All the food I ate is on my tab?!”
“It was my treat a couple of times,” Jacob smiles wickedly. “But the rest is all on you. By my calculations, you owe about 55 Diamond Coins. We’ll talk about the interest later on.”
“The interest?!” Lancelot cries out. “That’s cruel!”
One of them swallows loudly. “He… he slapped a Peak Platinum into another wall.”
“No,” another whispers, “he slapped him through the wall.”
“That is a Squire,” a third says, and his voice goes thin. “That is the Fake Champion’s Squire.”
But then, as Jacob and Lancelot are getting ready to leave, a very tall figure, so tall he has to bow his head, appears in the midst of the crowd.
“You’re not going anywhere before facing me. I haven’t made such a long journey for nothing.”
The voice is deep and resonant and everyone turns to see a twelve-foot tall Minotaur.
Jacob frowns, feeling the aura of the Minotaur and placing it roughly at Early Diamond Rank.
That’s too much for Lancelot, I believe. His current power sits beyond Peak Platinum Rank and Diamond Rank—his physique is incredible, but this guy looks dangerous for him.
“Lancelot, let me take this,” Jacob says, cracking his neck.
But Lancelot sticks out his hand, pulling Jacob back.
“Boss, let me show you something. The way you came out and made lots of Infernals pissed inspired me.”
“Inspired you?” Jacob frowns. “What do you mean inspired you?”
“I’m going to piss off a few people with this, Boss. I hope you don’t hold it against me.”
“You want to go against me, little Squire?” The Minotaur gives a booming laugh. “You have no idea what you’re signing yourself up for. I’m about to break every single bone in your body.”
The Minotaur takes a large bronze shield from his back and sword so large it must be six feet long.
But then, Lancelot slowly widens his stance and says, “Dragon Soul.”
A shockwave rocks the inn and Jacob can feel the foundations of the place starting to shake, which make him hug a spasming Lancelot and jump over the people and right into the street outside.
What happens next is beyond Jacob’s wildest imagination.
Lancelot’s body slowly grows larger and larger, with scales sprouting all on his skin and assuming a blue tint.
The blue tint deepens and reflects sunlight like lapis lazuli.
His chest expands and his shoulder become much wider. His spine lengthens with a series of cracks, while his neck becomes thicker, with muscles bulging out.
His hands grow into claws and his pants, previously very wide, get stretched over his now giant thighs.
Jacob watches the Mana in Lancelot body exploding through new veins, creating a pressure that makes his jaw go slack.
A tail sprouts from Lancelot’s lower back and then his face turns into a half-muzzle, just like Vyrrak’s.
Did he just become a damn Dragonkin? Jacob wonders. Oh. Oh… this is what he meant.
Jacob now understands why he had inspired Lancelot. Him declaring himself King Baalrek’s apprentice angered Infernals. Lancelot turning into a Dragonkin, considering how apparently obsessed they were with blood purity, would go almost as bad with them as what Jacob did with Infernals.
When the change ends, Lancelot stands in the street and he is eight feet tall.
There’s only one problem that Jacob can spot with this new, intimidating form.
“Why are you fat again?” Jacob frowns.
The scary Dragonkin Lancelot turned into is… very chubby.
Lancelot shrugs after looking down at himself.
“It was like this since I first used it. I have no idea.”
Jacob stares at him and then he looks at the Minotaur, since the Minotaur is staring too and his grin is coming back.
The Minotaur lets out a booming laugh and he points the enormous sword at Lancelot’s stomach. “So you turn into a Dragonkin in the shape of a pig. I came all this way for this?”
“When you say that you came all this way, what do you mean?” Jacob suddenly asks.
“With the Academy opening the recruiting again and the spots of Champions open for anyone to take, I made my journey from the distant kingdom of Nangdria to here.”
“The Headmaster re-opened the recruitment?” Jacob is confused.
“Yeah, Boss,” Lancelot, now a very tall and very obese Dragonkin, says. “Lots of people are coming.”
This means more guys like this, or even stronger, are going to come to the Academy. If I had to guess, this is yet another Headmaster’s game. Champions… he doesn’t want us to lose the spot—at least, that’s my guess.
Jacob’s eyes widen a moment.
He wants to recruit more people, that old creature! Let’s say a bunch of people come here, they’d have to abide by the Academy’s rules. That means that, if they stayed long enough to graduate, the Headmaster would get a bunch of Knights who came here for the wrong thing and ended up, knowing or unknowing, waging war against monsters and having to take a bunch of Quests.
I can only hope to one day become as manipulating and sly as that man, Jacob finds himself thinking.
“Enough chatter,” the giant Minotaur says. “Let me break you so that I can get to your little friend. This is the first time I see a Squire being stronger than the person they serve. It appears that I’ll become a Champion on my first day at the Academy, HA!”
