Polymath Redux

Chapter 3//The Dragon Slayer

“Ugh, son of a shit. My head hurts…” as his consciousness returned, those were the first words spoken by ‘Mordred’. First, his lungs gasped for air as though they had been devoid of them until now- which then devolved into a series of violent coughs. It took a little more than a bit for him to regain composure and regulate his body’s state of normalcy. “Can’t think straight, but that’s probably normal,” he muttered to himself as he remembered what happened just prior to waking up.

Most of the regular functions of his body went through a brief period of malfunction, but soon returned to normal.

It took a moment for his eyes to adjust to the brightness of natural light, but as he opened them he was revealed to a canvas-like painting of nature’s beauty. “Huh?” his mouth opened and flapped, although no sound other than gasps of disbelief were let out. His mind was fully committed to enter ‘panic-mode’ but his body was so frozen stiff they collided with destructive feedback in his mind. All thoughts were on hold.

A vast, almost infinite landscape of greenery. It was as though a marvellous nature painting had manifested before his eyes. A sea of emerald created by the vast collective of trees that made up the forest existed below. He then finally noticed that his altitude was much higher than of trees, which was more than a little problematic.

A gentle breeze brushed past his body, cooling him down a little and reverting his malfunctioning brain. Above him were clouds, but there were also some at his eye-level. He was trapped upon a tall mountainous area, or more accurate a plateaued portion of a mountain. He peered down the side of the cliff and saw it was dangerously high up. ‘About 4000 metres?’ he estimated in his head.

It would’ve been such a simple matter to write this entire experience off as a vivid hallucination or a dream. Dream or no, this was as real as it got. The sensation of the wind against his face, the smell of thin mountainous air and the brilliance of the sun shining above his head. “This is real. Accept it, but don’t lose to it,” he chanted to himself.

“Calm down. No, yeah… I’m calm,” he took in a deep breath and let it out. “Okay, so what happens now?” even he found it a little odd at how calm he was in this situation. No, perhaps ‘calm’ wasn’t quite the right word; it was as if his mind had gone way past the panic stage and made a full revolution, rebooting back into ‘safe-mode’, and all the bad thoughts were being held back.

He eyed back down at the side of the mountain once more. “Should I try to climb down?” there were a few things he could do in this situation. He had two choices to make: he could either attempt to climb down or wait for some kind of rescue plane. Although, waiting for a plane that may never come meant that he would slowly exhaust his strength to climb down the side if he wanted to do it later. He needed to commit to either climbing down when he had the physical strength to do so or wait it out permanently.

However, it was then a thought rammed its way into his head like a ten-tonne truck. What if he was really dead? He remembered suffering from a traumatic migraine, so it wouldn’t be so farfetched to assume the sheer pain had killed him. Fortunately, he quickly shuddered the thought from his mind. “No, that kind of thinking won’t help me now. For now, let’s assume I’m still alive.” The thing that would help him now was not thinking about ‘why’ or ‘who’, but ‘how’ he would get down.

If this was at all like the game he played, all he would’ve needed to do was casually jump down. “But this is real,” he confirmed to himself.

Scared? He definitely was; he never accomplished much in his life, and there was so much more he wanted to do. Which is why, if he still wanted to do those things then he would have to choose his course of action now. “… If I die- when I die- I at least don’t want to go out like a coward,” this was his only consolation prize for the decision he made this day.

Being a home-security guard, most people wouldn’t assume he was physically fit, but he had maintained a steady muscle tone with regular exercise and healthy eating. Admittedly, he had never attempted rock-climbing before, but this was the perfect opportunity to learn. ‘Let’s see, about 243 steps to the first protrusion. If I make it there, I could probably rest for a bit before continuing,’ he planned out his escape route in his mind.

Despite his inexperience in climbing, he it rather easy- it was as if his body already knew instinctively what to do. His hands naturally found protruding rocks to grip onto, and his feet also found steady paths. Not even a fully thirty minutes had elapsed, and he was already onto the first resting point- he had estimated at least two or three hours would pass before he made it here. He didn’t even particularly find himself short of breath and could easily continue down the entire mountain if he felt like it. “Am I going to live?”

As ‘Mordred’ resolved himself to resume his suicidal climb down the mountain, a most feral roar shook the heavens above him. It was similar to the kinds of screeching those flame dragons back in the game made. The clouds wobbled and parted so suddenly that he didn’t understand what was going on. “What the hell was that?” he shifted his shoulders and turned his head around to examine the origin for the bestial roar.

Far off in the horizon, it could be seen. What could be seen? Surfing upon skies with its large, blood-coloured wings. A very familiar shape; he had seen one recently in the game. “No way.” For a moment he teetered back into thinking maybe this really was all just a dream. The reddish ‘dragon’ that he watched gliding towards him was part of his imagination created because he had recently just slew one in the game. That would explain most of this.

Unfortunately, his celebration proved a little too premature. A massive ball of inferno spewed from the creature’s mouth and soared towards him. Before it even hit the mountain, portions of it melted away into molten rock just from the heat alone. When it finally made contact, the entire top of the mountain had been completely eviscerated and turned into watery magma. The heat alone seemed like it would sear off his face, yet he felt it wasn’t as hot as he had expected.

The mountain trembled as if it were frightened of the beast. Large chunks of molten boulders crashed and collapsed from above- some came close to knocking him off. Yet, through some miraculous acrobatic feat, Mordred manged to cling on. With bleeding eyes, he gazed back at the monster responsible. Large, sanguine wings and scales, a long blood-red tail, sharp claws and rows of jagged teeth. There was no point in making excuses to himself about the identify of this creature.

Its mouth almost seemed to curl up, like it was delighting in his misery.

The structural integrity of the mountain collapsed soon after. A literal hellish rockslide of doom and fire crashed down around him. Although Mordred tried his dearest to stay on, that the rushing inferno made that impossible. Losing balance, the piece of rock he had grabbed onto chipped off and now he was falling. “Ah,” no words left his mouth as a cruel sense of zen-like detachment overwhelmed his mind. ‘I’m dying,’ he realized, yet it didn’t feel real.

Time suddenly slowed down, or that’s what it felt like as he appeared to hover for a brief few seconds before landing on a small protracted cliff. He found himself safe, although there were still chunks of fiery rocks sliding past him, it didn’t hurt him or feel particularly hot. He even caught one of the burning rocks and… nothing. He knew it was searing hot because the moment he threw it on the floor, a part of it melted away. “What the hell?”

He checked over his body to see if everything was fine. Other than a bit of dirt, there were no injuries, not even his clothes were torn… “wait, clothes?” he suddenly realized that his clothes had been swapped out. “Huh?” Looking down at his own body, he instantly recognized what he had been wearing. A pristine white overcoat with a mysterious dark suit beneath. “Isn’t this ‘that’?”

He took the moment to think back, even as fiery rocks rained down and the mountain was collapsing- this was more important. ‘When I fell earlier, that time slowing down…’ he had witnessed it thousands of times before through a monitor. It was an acrobatic skill that the [Assassin] class had access to. It was known as ‘Soft Landing’, which negated fall damage to a certain extent.

Reasonably, it wouldn’t have been hard to formulate an explanation with all these factors, ‘but no, that can’t be possible,’ he doubted himself. Yet, there was nothing else he could think of at this moment. His clothes and the ability he exhibited were all the same from the game he had played- it was ‘Mordred’s’ abilities and equipment. His arms were supposed to be thin and scrawny, but now they were slender and sturdy looking.

He then turned his attention back to the ‘creature’. “Right, there’s a dragon there,” no doubt that was a monster only seen in fantasies. Taking these into consideration, was it such a stretch to consider for a moment he had inherited these fantastical traits straight from his game character?

The red dragon that had just witness Mordred landing safely roared at the heavens with blood-curdling irritation. It appeared almost mad and disappointed that Mordred hadn’t ‘kicked the bucket’ from that attack. Deciding to take the more direct approach to finish him off, the monster soared straight at him like a guided missile.

“Does it want to kill me that badly? Tch, if I’m wrong about this then it’s really all over.” As hard as it was to fathom, there was no choice other than to accept it. The only way to survive this ordeal was to kill that dragon before it killed him. “Don’t worry,” he tried to calm himself. “I’ve killed hundreds of them before. In fact, I’ve killed the Red Dragon’s God. This is a walk in the park compared to that.” He needed to become ‘Mordred’ not just in appearance and ability, but also in mind.

He took in the dreaded atmosphere of the situation and formed it into a sinister ‘smirk’.

The actor.

The schemer.

The deceiver.

The puppet-master.

The Polymath.

That was who ‘Mordred’ was.

Ferocity against Malice. The dragon slithered and with great force and fury as it angrily charged towards him. It opened its mouth, readying a fire breath attack that could dissolve the entire mountain if let be. A flash of its scorching heat lit with a sinister glow. Yet, as it was about to launch the fire of its breath attack, it suddenly stopped when the target was no longer there.

‘Blink’: a skill that allowed instantaneous short distance teleportation.

“Looking for me?” a harrowing voice filled with spite whispered from the dragon’s back. Before it had time to react, Mordred’s hand glowed with an ominous red hue. Like a guillotine, his hand swung horizontally across the dragon’s back. A reddish arc projected forward, liberating its head from the rest of its body. ‘Assassinate’; against the fearsome might of this skill, its normally nigh-indestructible steel scales were like butter against a hot knife. “I’d say something cool but, you’re not worth it.”

With a final feral screech, the monster was no more.

Mordred had won.