“As a civilised being, I’m willing to give you a whole ten seconds to explain what just happened,” I growled. He smelled tasty, though, and it was taking a legendary feat of self-control to resist simply eating or squashing this mammal into paste.

  “Ah sir I already knew you were very tough my spells ascertained your ARM stat was off the charts so I went straight to high-end testing without thinking to warn you I’m so sorry please don’t eat me!” It came out in one long babbled rush.

  My nostrils contracted; I’d been ready to turn him into a fiery puddle. A quick check showed I was unharmed, although a couple of my incredibly precious feathers were smouldering slightly. That was the final straw.

  My snout lunged forward, and I bit his beloved crossbow in half as punishment, which turned out to be a mistake. This explosion genuinely hurt. My head snapped round, introducing me to the draconic equivalent of severe whiplash. My body was shoved backwards at the same time as Luckdire was launched to slam into a wall with what I hoped was a non-terminal splatting sound.

  I spat a single tooth out on the floor and glared at the man sliding down the wall. Huh. That was quite a lot of blood. I may have just done an oopsie. I switched back to human and hurried over, stepping over the kindling his weapon had become.

  “Hey, Prof, you ok?” I lifted his chin with one hand and slapped his cheek gently. His eyes were rolled back in his head, and he was limp in my grip. A moment later, a golden glow surrounded him, and he rolled over from the L-shape he’d assumed as his legs had met the floor and curled into the foetal position with a mew like a newborn kitten.

  I nudged him with a toe, and the moan shifted up half an octave. Ok. He wasn’t going to die.

  “You owe me an outfit. That was three sil- gold of finely woven whatever-it-was. What was that golden glow?” I pulled more clothes from storage and got dressed as he tried to pull himself together.

  “Duckspitter!” It was the first thing he wailed after he sat up. He began scrabbling at the splinters, all that was left of his weapon. “You bastard!”

  “Next time, warn a dragon if you’re going to try and immolate him.” I shrugged. Witness the field where I grow my sympathy and note how barren it is. “What was the golden glow?”

  “Glow? Bulb’s balls! That was my Earring of You-Ain’t-Dead-Yet! You fucking killed me, you scaly moron! Gods, getting Dad to recharge it is going to be a nightmare! He thinks my work is… well, never mind. If you ever go to court, you’ll meet him.”

  “Huh. I didn’t get any gold for killing you.”

  “You mean XP?”

  “I know what I meant. Seems you don’t know as much about monsters as you’d like. Are we done here?”

  “No, we're not fucking done here, you bastard. You wrecked the booths! Oh for the love of… The Principal is going to take my tenure away!”

  “I thought tenure meant you could do what you want and it couldn’t be taken away?”

  “Within reason! We– you just trashed half a million in equipment, killed your interviewer, and BROKE MY CROSSBOW!” He collapsed into a sobbing heap. I pulled some more clothes out and offered them to him. His own were shredded rags, and mostly red where they should have been purple.

  “Was it expensive?” I could sympathise with that at least.

  “It was invaluable! One of a kind, custom-made, and I spent all my trust fund for a year to get the materials to work the enchantments.”

  “Just so it could spit ducks at people?”

  “It was called Ducksplitter, with an L,” he snarled.

  “I’m sure… never mind. What did the ducks ever do to you? Look, how about we get this done, and I can get out of your hair? Maybe you can salvage some of it?” He looked up from the handful of kindling he’d collected and glared at me. “Or not. At least then we can be done with our official business, and we can forget about each other and go our separate ways.”

  He shrugged into the trousers and tunic I’d given him and stalked over to one of the functional booths. After fiddling with the controls for a moment, a translucent skeleton appeared and began making rude gestures in my direction.

  “So what, I hit it with some magic or something?”

  “One moment, sir.” Luckdire pulled a small device from a storage space and plopped it on the counter next to me. “Cycle through your Fundamentum first.” I assumed this wasn’t an ass joke.

  I channelled my mana using Ducta Potentia, ran through a few sigils with Artis Sigilis.

  Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more.

  “Arcanum Evocare.” A spark of purple hovered in front of my outstretched hand. It was bigger than before, chunkier and brighter.

  “Fine. So you are an Arcane affinity. You got a decent attack spell?” I shook my head. “What spells do you have?” I ran down the list as his face went from annoyed to skeptical to shocked.

  “Who the hell was your teacher?” he demanded when I finished.

  “I am a graduate of the university of life, I majored in getting the shit kicked out of me, with a minor in getting revenge. It’s possible that it should be the other way around.” I had generally been kicking buttocks rather than having mine kicked.

  “You picked up the two spells I used the first time you saw them, didn’t you?” His hatred was seemingly forgotten. Now he was intrigued.

  “Yeah. If I see the spell cast properly, it just goes into my list.”

  “But you’re so stupid!” I gave him a top-rated glare, but he paid me no mind. “How about this: Lux Caeca!” A beam of light shot from the closed eye sigil that formed in front of his palm and flashed into the head of the skeleton.

  New Syntheticus unlocked!

  Lux Caeca

  I repeated the spell, launching another beam of brilliance into the illusory target.

  “What does it do?” I asked, shaking out my hand. That light had been kind of hot.

  “Melts an enemy's eyeballs! And face. Watch closely, this one is more complicated: Incendium Singulare!” This time, the poor ghost-skellie was bathed in a column of brown fire.

  New Syntheticus unlocked!

  Incendium Singulare

  I repeated the spell as requested.

  “That one is fairly self-explanatory. Why is the fire brown, though?” Gaining access to some more spells was exactly what I’d been hoping for, and my mood was lifting as a result. I was almost ready to take Luckdire off the menu. Almost.

  “Helps make the stains match. Me Fuga!”

  New Syntheticus unlocked!

  Me Fuga

  The sigil was a human with angelic-looking wings this time, and I narrowed my eyes at the wizard. But I repeated the spell and found myself floating off the ground. It took me a moment to realise that I could mentally control my flight, and I was soon zooming back and forth down the target range, exulting in flight while trapped in my human form.

  “What else have you got?” My greed-demon hijacked my vocal chords and asked.

  “I don’t think I can teach you anymore. You aren’t a student. Despite your lack of faculties and obvious mental disability, you’re a magical savant. This is incredible. I’ll definitely speak on your behalf should you choose to apply to the Academy. Assuming I’m still a member of staff by then.” He picked up the thing he’d laid down before. It was a cube of yellow metal, at least it shone like metal in the flickering lights.

  “Oh. Ok. MAG is three hundred and…” he poked at the cube for a second, and nothing that I could see changed. “Three hundred and sixty-two. Bloody hell.” He turned and leaned back against the counter, staring at the thing in his hands. “You’re on par with a level eighty adventurer in terms of strength and agility. Not one who focuses on those stats, but you’re the same level as an all-rounder. ARM is off the charts. How the hell did that happen?”

  “It hurt,” I growled as the memory of being locked in place like a butterfly with a pin through its chest while machines plucked my scales from my hide and reworked them ran through my mind.

  “It’s… divine intervention? Oh, that makes more sense.” I swear my face didn’t move, but he read the answer in my eyes or something. “So what we’ve got, what you are, is a mid-tier level eighty allrounder with crazy survivability and a magic stat that puts you on par with most arch magi and uber-liches. And all this despite being repeatedly dropped on the head as a baby.” He looked up from his device, met my eyes, and smiled nervously. “Sir.”

  Naturally, I was superior; I was a dragon. And Luckdire was definitely back on the menu for that last comment.

  “So you’ve got what you need to complete the paperwork?” I asked. Seeing as free spells were no longer on the cards, I was more than happy to get out of here, finish my, ergh, shopping, and spend a quiet evening in the pub before picking up my hard-won gains from Phillpot in the morning.

  “Oh, I won’t complete the paperwork. Mrs Sanderson will handle that on your behalf in light of your, uh, association with The Enterprise. But I’ve got what I need to pass on!” he added hurriedly.

  “So how do I get out of here?” The warren of ever-shifting stairways, hallways, and rooms was such an incredibly bad design choice. Only a lunatic would think it would be a good idea.

  He led me back to the guest house, half-heartedly making polite small talk, mostly related to duck hunting and arcane circuitry. I had phased him out within minutes, just grunting periodically or nodding when he looked over at me.

  “You’ve got a dungeon, I hear?” he asked as we were about to part ways. I did, and I told him so. “I don’t suppose you have space for a magitech wizard on your roster?”

  “As a minion?”

  “Or as a resident. I’d be happy to rent a suitable space. I have some ideas that aren’t–” he glanced around nervously and dropped to a whisper, “– easy to experiment with in the city.”

  “I’ve got a space available. If you’re interested, I’m staying at the Long Horn for now. I’ve been roped into some ball for Viscount Von Kolbens, so I’m stuck here for a few days.”

  “I’ll take a look at my affairs and may reach out to you?” I knew I wasn’t supposed to eat people who came to rent in my dungeon, but surely having a solitary meal on hand wasn’t a bad thing? It would be like keeping a microwave meal in the freezer, just in case you’re feeling lazy and can’t be bothered to cook one night.

  “Sure. See you about.”

  Urchins shadowed me as I made my way back to the Horn, and I only needed to ask for directions three times. The first two resulted in a barrage of profanity, so for the third occasion, I strode over to the outremonder child who was panhandling just behind me and got them directly from him, along with a torrent of abuse as a bonus.

  I sat down at the bar and nodded to Beville, who passed me a glass of Golden Jack and resumed polishing the exact same glass he was always putting a shine on. I took a sip and sighed. I needed to eat, in the boring human way, and get some sleep. I’d assured Phillpot I’d be back at his place bright and sparkly in the morning for my payment.

  I sighed and felt the tension that had tightened my shoulders and neck since the meeting with the Quaestors began to ebb away. The pain from the whiplash throbbed, and I rubbed at one shoulder cautiously, like someone poking a bad tooth with their tongue. Yep, that hurt.

  “Baronet Bob. Perhaps I might join you?” It was almost a whisper from over my left shoulder. I recognised the voice from earlier but didn’t turn.

  “Defiant Bellend. What a delight. I’ve got a badge now, you know?”