The vault presented before Viper and his team was simply amazing. It looked just like the safes in banks, but extra shiny. The number of enchantments on it was beyond their ability to reasonably count. Even so, that didn't make it unbeatable. All they needed to do was to open the lock without tripping any of the security measures.

Simple.

Fang was the best safecracker on the team, so the other three would be there to support whatever he needed; mana, health, brainpower, anything.

Fang got down on his knees and press his ear up against the warm metal. There was a constant hum running through it, as if it was electrified. The hum was the furthest thing from electricity, it was the resonance between the multiple enchantments. With so many of them populating such a small door, it caused some side effects.

Fang stated bluntly, "Tools."

They were handed over to him. Cracking magically enchanted safes differed greatly from regular safecracking. The tools were different, the dangers more intense, and the methods were unrecognizable. If regular safe cracking was DDR, then magic safecracking was a salsa mixed with a waltz on the ceiling and walls.

Fang took out a silver mallet that was also covered with enchantments. This would be a true test of the wallet; whoever had the more unique and powerful items was going to emerge victoriously.

He gently tapped the mallet in the exact center of the safe door. A very soft *ting* was emitted and traveled through the silent cave. Fang listened closely to the noise and moved the mallet slightly. *Ting*. The noise went through the cave, once again being analyzed thoroughly by Fang's expert ears.

He was listening for a certain resonance, looking for the area in the door with the densest area of enchantments, and then going from there. The hammer was able to send an extremely specific frequency of sound so that when it bounced back, Fang could interpret the density of the enchantments.

This constant hitting and listening went on for a solid two hours before Fang's eyes brightened and a broad smile crept along his face.

"Got it."

He pulled out a different tool, this one looking like an ice pick, and place it over the right area. Once it was in place, he pulled out a hammer that could have passed as Thor's. It was at least a thousand pounds of heavily enchanted, reinforced steel. Its sole purpose was to hit this ice pick as hard as he could.

And he did just that.

The hammer stuck down on the ice pick like it was a normal tent stake, only to have the ice pick explode forwards and pierce right through the vault door's exterior. The spike damaged the most important part of the door, the alarm system, but they weren't clear just yet.

The rest of the protections for the door woke up and started to activate. This was when the secondary purpose of the ice pick made itself useful.

With Fang's delicate control, he activated sections of the pick that sent pulses of electricity down its length. This electricity reacted violently with the metal of the pick and caused it to send thorn-like growths outwards.

These growths penetrated more enchantments as they were being activated. Glowing lights and flashes of almost death were being crushed under Fang's skill. Every time a trap was almost activated, it required him to kill it at that exact moment.

The order was very important as well. The flow of energy through the enchantments was like a wave, pulsing and then fading, pulsing and then fading. Fang was going through and killing everything during the first pulse of energy or else they would need to start all over. The door was advanced enough that it had an automatic repair enchantment that would fix any external damage.

Fang was sweating.

If that enchantment gets even a shred of mana, we're fucked. Good thing I have a trick up my sleeve.

Fang continued as normal for the millisecond timeframe that he was operating in before he switched it up.

Pulling out a third tool, something that looked like a doctor's stethoscope, he listened to the door and made sure to REALLY listen. With so many enchantments gone, the hum was low enough for him to find it. The feeling when he located the power source of the door was better than sex.

There you are, you little bastard.

Fang would have never been able to destroy all the enchantments in the time it took for a new pulse to wash over them, so he needed to do the next best thing, kill the power source. He did this by activating an enchantment on the stethoscope that sent a laser beam through the weakened metal and sent a microexplosion directly into the power core, destroying it forever.

Now that there wasn't anything left to power the enchantments, Fang continued to rip and shred their intricate structures to pieces. The whole activated part of the cracking lasted for only three seconds, but it was the most tense three seconds of the entire mission.

Without any of the enchantments left, the door was now just that, a door. Nothing more than a hunk of shiny copper and steel. Fang easily ripped right through it with his bare hands, like a hot knife through butter.

The sight on the other side of the door was one to behold. There were mountains of gold bars and endless piles of rare and precious metals. The Harbingers had great fortunes, but they were mostly tied up in training powerful people. They rarely ever hoarded stuff.

"This is... unbelievable!"

Viper tried to remain calm, but couldn't help it and started high-fiving everyone. Such a haul was probably beyond even Yual's imagination. They could start so many new projects with the amount of valuable stuff there was just lying around here.

Their excitement was cut a bit short when they saw one of the furthest gold piles shifting slightly, like it was breathing. They calmed down and put on their game faces; enemies inside the vault were still a possibility.

They rounded several mountains of stuff before they could see the disturbance. It was a dragon.

"Oh no."

The yellow scales of the dragon glistened brilliantly; they didn't match the reflective gold that surrounded it. Small jolts of lightning jumped between the scales, showing off its nature as a lightning dragon. Its long arms were curled gently around its body and its massive wings covered it like a blanket.

The dragon had yet to notice their presence, but it didn't matter. They would rather die than fail their mission, and yet the mission was doomed to fail. The annihilation cores would tear the capital to shreds in seconds, but a dragon would be able to stop the entire attack one-handed.

They were always AT LEAST level 90, at the bare minimum. The one in front of them wasn't showing up when they used inspect. That was bad. Very, very bad.

The group of four tried to now sneak their way out of the vault and back to their commander to report their failure when the dragon suddenly stirred. Its long neck rose out of the pile of valuables and looked at its guests.

With a wave of its hand, the door was fixed, trapping them inside. Its mouth, filled with rows of razor-sharp teeth, yawned and then smiled at them.

"Why hello there. I didn't expect to have visitors so soon."

Every word was another nail in their coffin. Everyone knew the story about The Legendary Gunn The Warhammer. Don't fuck with dragons. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.

The four of them were experts in combat, but even with full cooperation and no hesitation to die, they would still fall short. Killing a dragon before ascension was impossible; so they could only watch as it got closer to them.

It lowered its head right in front of Viper. His bladder needed constant reminders from his brain to hold shut and don't leak. The dragon found the sigh amusing. It loved to scare the ever-loving shit out of people.

"What? Snake got your tongue?"

Viper stood before the dragon that was in arms reach. No matter how he died, he would die standing. Fang had already collapsed in fear, his body starting to seize, leaving just him, Blood, and Poison.

"Don't you think it's rude to not introduce yourselves when entering someone's home?"

"*Cough* My name is Viper... and these are my teammates, Blood--- gesturing to the woman with slightly blond hair--- and Poison --- gesturing to the woman with her hair in a braid with black streaks in it --- We are here to blow this place up. The whole capital."

It was better to not withhold any information. They were already in the dragon's home, so there wasn't anything they could do against it forcefully stomping through their brains and retrieving the information it desired.

Better to not give a reason to do that.

The dragon laughed, "I appreciate your honesty. You must have stories you tell your young about dragons; everyone I've met on this planet always wears their plans on their vest when I'm around."

"We do tell stories. We pass down the tale of Gunn The Warhammer who foolishly fought a dragon and ended up with a destroyed class, needing to abandon it and rebuild as a warrior."

The dragon laughed. Viper didn't know what it found particularly funny about the quick synopsis, but he would play along regardless.

"My brother told me about that guy. He was helping him; he found his spirit righteous and strong-willed, enough to resist the humiliation of failure over and over. He made him go around the human world with deflated arms and pitiful legs, showing everyone how anemic he looked before my brother would tear his body apart and rebuild it. My brother was quite the character, even for a dragon. Way too interested in bipedal Sapien biology."

Viper was taken aback. Their universal story they told everyone so that they wouldn't fuck with dragons... was wrong?

Viper was only two hundred years old, so he hadn't lived through much of history. Hearing it straight from the horse's, or rather the dragon's, mouth was strange.

If the story was wrong, then maybe the dragons weren't all murderous blood blenders of death. Were they maybe even peaceful?

Poison stepped forward and asked her won question, "Have you lived down here that long? For eras?"

The dragon's expression turned sour. It didn't like the answer one bit.

"I'm trapped down here. And not just because I can't fit through the door, but because of the array beneath the capital."

Something clicked in Blood's mind, "Is that why the Empire grew so fast? It had your help?"

"Smart; for someone as young as you are. You are correct. I was the reason the empire grew in strength so quickly, but that cuckold of a King betrayed me. The only reason I helped that fucker was because he promised to release me from my entrapment."

"I've been trapped down here; underground for eras. Four dozen years ago, the king found me by coincidence and I trained him so he could grow in power and release me, then twenty years ago. He decided to screw me over and leave me trapped down here, building a monument to his ego over my tomb."

The anger from the dragon sent thick lightning bolts rolling off of him. The lightning was dense, like it was a liquid, dripping off his body. It would make a fantastic material to work with for crafters, but the team focused. They were having a conversation was a friendly dragon, one doesn't pass that up so easily.

"Maybe we could help you escape? We did break in here after all."

The dragon laughed. They had no idea how such large vocal cords could make a regular person noise; just chalking it up to a passive communication skill.

"You might be able to, but would you really want to? I AM still a dragon, I kill and slaughter and sleep. Are you sure you want to release that into the world?"

Viper thought about it. What was better than returning after a failure? Bringing back a fucking dragon friend! And best of all, Viper concocted a new plan, one that was slightly outside Yual's scope, but to achieve the same result.

"How about we get you out, and then you help us destroy every last city the Empire owns?"

"What I'm hearing is that I just win twice, what's in it for you?"

Viper smiled sweetly, "You will come back with us to our leader and stay passive towards us. You can keep all your treasure and sleep all day, we won't touch a scrap. That is what we get, a friendly dragon."

"A friendly dragon? No wonder my family keeps up the appearance of bloodthirsty murder machines. The moment one of us shows we won't kill you, you immediately think we are all cute and cuddly; humping our leg to get a scrap of power. Granted, sleeping all day and not having to worry about anything sounds like a dream. I'll accept your conditional offer."

"Fantastic! So, how do we stop this array?"

"First, you are gonna need A LOT of blood. Then, I exert pressure from inside the entrapment while you use this rock to channel a skill I put in it."

The dragon handed Viper a normal rock with powerful energy running through it. Identity showed that it held a skill within it, that once used, he would immediately gain.

[Crippling Array] was the skill, Viper didn't know exactly what it did, but he assumed that it weakened the array enough that the dragon could shatter it from the inside.

Viper used it. He gained the skill and watched the rock turn to dust and seep through his fingers.

"Great, it worked. I wasn't so sure that the skill would... never mind. Good job. Once you have a massive amount of blood, use the skill and it will seep into the ground, looking for the nearest array to cripple. The nearest array is obviously mine, so there isn't any need for your weak mind to try and guide it. You probably have enough mana, just make sure you use every last drop of it."

Viper nodded and walked back to the vault entrance. He dragged Fang along with him and had Poison and Blood lift his legs to get him out the door. The dragon opened it easily for them as the door was not part of the entrapment, just something the king had made to make his shitty mind more at rest.

It can't be easy knowing that you built your house on the ground above a dangerous beast.

They used their rad ninja skillz to make it back past the laser sharks and back up the shaft, once again using all the orb and their skills. Fang had woken up once they made it to the throne room. The other three shrugged it off, not blaming him. Like, come on, it was a fucking dragon.

They made it out of the castle, undetected and scurried through the alleyways out of the city. Since they were all pointed away from the castle, it made their escape that much easier than their entrance.

A few minutes later, they were once again on the outside, removing their disguises to reveal their true appearances.

Viper was a sharp-looking man with short, dark green hair. His skin was pale, showing off his pulsing green veins that ran just under the surface of his skin.

Blood had orange rust-colored hair and slightly tanned skin. Permanent red lines were tattooed under her eyes, making it look like she was crying blood.

Poison was Viper's younger sister sporting very similar features to her brother, but her hair was longer and her skin was slightly healthier looking.

Fang was the most impressive, turning into an Olympic bodybuilder with scars covering his entire body. There wasn't a single hand-sized section of skin that didn't have a scar from a cut on it. No one other than he knew how the scars remained with stuff like System healing. His long black hair was tied into a braid and his thick black beard made him look like a modern Viking.

The four odd individuals sprinted off into the forest, racing to try and make it in time to relay the new plan to their commander.

I hope he goes along with it; I'd hate to piss off a dragon.