"Warble Warble Warble"

"Fuck you too."

"Warble Warble"

"Aldernoth the Fourth, this cocoon you made for yourself will be your grave!"

"Warble Warble?"

"Alright, I'll tone down the cheese."

The dragon isn't stuck in place, but the low ceiling and cramped walls will definitely curb its movement. Roughly 80% of this interior space is occupied by the dragon.

This is a literal cocoon. It wasn't designed to fight in but to keep things out. Good job that did.

I run up the wall as the dragon bites at me a second too late. Brambles splinter everywhere.

He opens his mouth, and the green energy coalesces once again. I quickly draw Prometheus using [Beastial Storage] and fire all six chambers straight down its throat.

I wish the dragon had misfired and exploded from the inside, but that didn't happen. The sudden gunshots went straight to the back of the throat, causing the dragon to move his head in pain. His breath attack billows harmlessly to the side.

I swap Prometheus for Rob and toss my skeleton straight at the writhing dragon.

Rob flies at the dragon sprawled, a shovel in both hands. One shovel scrapes along the side of the dragon's long throat, breaking the wooden scales and revealing the verdant ones underneath.

The other shovel stabs itself in the joint between the dragon's torse and its wing.

Rob immediately gets decimated by thorns damage and gets blown up into a million pieces.

Pissed, the dragon tries to slam his large head against my body to crush it against the brambles. I elect to take the hit.

It doesn't even hurt. This mighty dragon of level 222 cannot hurt me physically.

He's surprised, even though he's seen my resilience firsthand. At this point, it's insulting.

I fist his nostril with my red-hot prosthetic arm and try to stab it in the eye with my sword.

He reals his head back and bellows in pain, causing me to miss my attempt to blind it. I harmlessly flip over his head and land on his neck. He got me out of his nostril, but I'm not done yet.

I cut into the dragon's exposed scales, leaving lacerations. They cauterize from the heat, but that won't affect what I want to do too much.

Before he can shake me off, I plunge both feet against the wound and attempt something.

I'm going to attempt to [Enroot] myself to the dragon. The skill specifies earth and biomes, but this is a [Nature] dragon specializing in brambles and thorns. I'm sure the ring will overlook a word or two to accept this feast.

If not, I'm going to keep starving it. I tell the ring to its 'face' that I'll stop feeding it.

It's dragon blood of the same affinity as my ring. If it ignores it because my blood is "that much better," I guess I'll take the compliment.

Both my legs shift into the mighty roots of a tree. It writhes into the wounds my sword left behind and holds me in place.

To my left is the dragon's head, to my right is the dragon's torse, and all the space in front me is the neck.

The dragon tries smacking me with his wing, but I don't move. He tries to claw at me, but it doesn't hurt.

I stab down at his neck as he rams and rubs his body against the bramble walls. It doesn't hurt as much as when I got ground and sanded down

Every slash of my barbed sword leaves uneven, messy, and cauterized wounds, making it harder for the dragon to heal them.

It has to heal the burnt, dead flesh before it can heal the sword slashes.

More green energy travels up his neck. I embed my sword into his flesh and punch the dragon's head with my glowing prosthetic. Steam escapes from the sword's wound as I leave scorched punch marks on his face.

His open maw is right in front of me. I can see the breath weapon forming. I rip the sword from its sheath, causing it to rain chunks of flesh and fried blood.

I pin the dragon's tongue to the bottom of its mouth with my sword before I take the entire breath weapon head-on. I refuse to let go.

The force of the blast not only rips the [Enroot] away but drags my blade down the length of its tongue, slitting the bottom jaw in half.

I'm forced against the wall. The energy is overwhelming. It feels like I'm being hosed down by the riot police with hydrochloric acid.

It burns. It's excruciating. My resistances aren't high enough for this. It's a constant damage that eats away at me.

Flash Gordon, who has been nestled inside the dragon this entire time, uses his rook skill [Faithful Protector] to appear and take the hit for me.

He enlarges himself so I'm hidden behind him.

Flash Gordon is naturally resistant to elemental energies, combined with this decent defense stat means that he's more equipped to handle this onslaught.

Unfortunately, it's not enough.

I gift him my resistance, trying to protect my protector. The outcome leads him to be immune to the attack. The breath eventually stops, leaving the dragon chagrined about the situation.

When it was about to finish off the annoyingly tenacious tamer, his first tamed beast saves him. He doesn't know my Flash Gordon is my first, but nevertheless.

I quickly excess the situation. Flash Gordon is low on health, so I should prioritize healing him. I inject a bit of healing into him.

My scorching hot metal objects have cooled down completely, and my normal hand is maimed.

I tried to protect my face with my hands, and my palms were shaven down to the bone. It's so melted and fucked that I'm not even bleeding.

Huh, my bones are a weird color. A bright, vibrant red, something that wouldn't be noticeable typically since I leak blood like a motherfucker.

Fuck... I'll need to repair my [Skeleton Gloves]...

Flash Gordon ran out of mana and reverted to his original size. I grasp him with my prosthetic arm and menacingly threaten the dragon with him.

The dragon looks down at me. We are both bloody and on the verge of death. This might be our final confrontation.

With everything behind it, I chuck Flash Gordon straight at the dragon. I even squeeze out an [Empower] and gift him [Colossus Slayer] for this attack.

Since Flash Gordon can float around and move with just his spirit, he autocorrects my aim and lands straight into the dragon's eye, popping it like a peeled grape.

With Flash Gordon's impressive damage, an additional +45% due to the title, and even more damage because I'm an excellent thrower, Flash Gordon finishes the job for me.

[Critical Hit!]

-3434

The dragon was not expecting that, not at all.

It was casting some spell or using an innate ability, but throwing a rock is quicker than magic.

The dragon falls. His wings limp, his bark scales peeling off, and the massive gravity-defying bramble cocoon starts disintegrating.

[Fell the Mighty (lv2) > Fell the Mighty (lv3)]

A dead body, a rock, a skeleton (who got stuck somewhere), and a very injured tamer fall hundreds of feet toward the top of a massive tree.

My [Bolster Resistance] wears off, and the tension leaves my body. Damn, I'm fucking exhausted. That battle took everything out of me.

I fucking died at one point. Next time I fight a dragon, it better roll over and die as soon as possible.

Duchess slows down our descent with one of her wind spells, but all it does is delay my landing.

Unless I fall on my neck or a joint funny, I'm immune to fall damage. Terminal velocity hasn't hurt for quite a while.

Maybe if I land on a spike or something...

I regroup with my beasts and make sure that everyone is alright and in one piece, then I carve a massive door on one of the gigantic branches underneath the sea of brambles.

I get Khan to push the dragon's corpse into my mansion. I also hop in to tell Dylan not to touch the dragon or influence it anyway.

You know what? He's not even allowed to look at it.

I want to leave it in my orchard, where the mana is the thickest, to see if a mana organ appears.

I make sure the dragon is dead. I watch it for a while to see if it comes back to life, and nothing happens.

Funnily, resurrecting the dragon as an undead is technically feasible for Dylan to work on. However, it's a [Nature] attributed dragon.

I think getting him to stop being weird around me would be easier.

"H-hey, Ellis. My master for whom I am a thrall of. Can I fix your glove? I'm very handy with undead items. I won't put it in my mouth."

"No."

"Okay. Instead, I'll 'collect' 'taxes' from lord Rob's citizens. Bye-bye!"

He skips away.

While watching the dragon, my health regenerated fully and my mana by some. I used [Heal Anything] on my more "permanent" injuries and let the rest heal naturally.

Now my body is filled with laceration scars. I can get rid of them whenever I want, but since they aren't affecting my body... Maybe when I have a shit ton of mana to waste.

Also, for the first time, my Gi is shredded.

It finally couldn't handle the damage. It's practically a cape that hands around my waist at this point. It's also slightly died green.

It still gives me the item stats and skills, so I'm not complaining.

Outside the manor, my beast and I sauntered over to where the dragon nested and searched the area. It's time to loot this fucker.

"..."

It's a shit ton of plants. Not just plants but seeds and a few other oddities. No gold, priceless artifacts, no magic items.

Wait.

There's a piece of driftwood that naturally looks like a dragon. Where did the dragon get driftwood? There's no ocean in this fracture!

Also, right next to his nest is a wooden box engraved with arcane runes. The box is directly above the center of the tree. A button on top of the box is glowing green.

I can warm my hands by the box since the curse energy is palpable. I [Bolster Resistance] and cure and cursed on me before investigating it.

[Cursed Cursewood Box of Keeping (On) A

Not only is this wooden box made by the mysterious Cursewood, but it has an additional curse.

Cursewood is a natural and potent regent for curse spells and rituals.

Curse with Amplification: Curses, cursed items, and other cursed oddities within the [Cursed Cursewood Box of Keeping] will be amplified.]

"(On)?"

I push the button, and the button turns red. I look around. I taste the air.

"Duchess?"

[Yes?]

"The potency of the curse has fallen, right? Am I just imagining that?"

[Thisss one believes you are correct. You are not imagining it.]

I open the box. and the item inside baffles me. It's a green star.

I don't mean a "twinkle twinkle" star, but a burning ball of green gas. Calling it a "sun" wouldn't be wrong.

A literal star. A micro celestial body, one so small it can fit in the palm of my hand. I kinda want to lick it.

[Star of Nature U

Densely concentrated source of [Nature] energy in the form of a star. It has imbued properties.

Property 1/?: It's a source of energy.

Property 2/?: It radiates the element of [Nature]

Property 3/?: ???

...

{This item is being used as a fuel source for a gigantic, ongoing ritual.}]

I try to touch it, but my hand starts getting harrier as I do. My nails elongate and sharpen. That's not good, but it's still something I can heal.

I close the box and try to pick it up, and oh boy, is it heavy.

I almost shit my guts out, but I lift the box a foot off the ground, and something breaks. It wasn't me.

I look up, and the sky shatters into millions of pieces. I no longer feel any cursed energy.

The sky is in a perpetual meteor shower, regardless of the time of day.

Duchess is the closest to me, and the others are ferrying the plants and seeds, so I beg for assistance.

"Duchess, please help with your telekinesis or something. It might be tiny, but it's so incredibly dense. It's killing me." Strains out of my mouth

[That's what she said.]