Vainqueur the Dragon

Congratulations! For repeatedly surviving a werewolf’s bite, you earned the [Silverfang] Personal Perk!

[Silverfang]: When biting a mono-type Humanoid, you can infect them with the Curse of Lycanthropy if they fail a moderate Vitality check. On the next full moon, unless the curse is dispelled, their species permanently change to werewolf (Humanoid/Beast).

As he laid in his bed, with biting and scratch marks everywhere on his body, Victor Dalton came to a sudden realization. All his life, the adventurer thought he was a man with standards, when it came to those he would sleep with.

But when pushed, it turned out he had none.

Considering his life path, consorting with demons, helping a dragon take over a country, indulging a bit with the flock of the Moon Man, and becoming half-monster himself, he should have seen it coming.

“I knew that Perk would work that way!” Chocolatine gloated next to him.

The worst thing was, that night had been the best Victor ever had. Screwing the human race had never felt so pleasurable.

“My Karma score is going to take a huge dump for this,” the vizier said. Miel would be so mad.

“Just falsify it!” Chocolatine happily suggested, like a grown-up shoulder devil. “I’m sure it can be done with the right spells. Malfy can help with it.”

Bad influence indeed. “So, uh… where do we go from here?” Victor asked. “Your brother will show up and wed us at gunpoint?”

“Silly, Croissant would kill you if he learned. Or he would try, and fail.”

“I figured, but that doesn’t answer my question.” In truth, while Victor had grown rather fond of her—a lot more than he thought he would—he didn’t want to settle down with anyone right now, and liked his bachelor lifestyle. On the other hand, he didn’t want to hurt her feelings either.

Chocolatine drew the blanket towards herself. “No tying down.”

“No tying down?” Victor raised an eyebrow in surprise.

“Except with ropes! I want foreplay, tension, excitement!” she began to rant with a disturbing, crazed face. “You breaking into my temple with a whip at night with a mad gleam in your eyes! Strolling on your horse and abducting me to the desert to have your way with me on the sand!”

As she described her weirdest and truly disturbing fantasies, Victor backed away until he had reached the end of the mattress. Her formerly cute face morphed into the purest expression of psychotic obsession.

“No, no, I have a better idea to spice it up further. We will need chains, a sacrificial altar, an electric slime, a sheep, and a knife!”

...

In hindsight, this may have been a mistake.

A huge mistake.

“But, but you start by using that Perk on me once a week until the end of the mating season.” She moved to bite his shoulder, Vic stopping her with a hand.

“I’m going to drink a healing potion downstairs first.” She took out a fifth of his HP, and the raid battle had taught him the importance of remaining in top shape at all times. Also, he needed some breathing room.

Victor put on a dressing gown and escaped the room while Chocolatine cheerfully hummed to herself, letting out a breath of relief after closing the door behind him.

…

…

He BLEEPed up.

Victor knew he shouldn’t have bred with the crazy, but he still did.

He needed to skip town. No, the entire country. He had to escape!

Charlene informed him many churches had started encouraging adventurers to discover new lands, even starting to build exploration fleets. He had to take the first boat and run, run, run!

America? Antarctica? Anywhere!

No, no, Vainqueur would summon him if he vanished without warning! He was trapped!

Think, Victor, think!

Buy time. Drink a potion, satisfy the wolf-fiend’s appetite, and then find a way to get out of this mess alive.

The fearful Grand Vizier moved downstairs to his dining room, where his undead servants always kept a stockpile of healing potions on the table. He found Allison waiting for him there, alongside a cadre of skeleton butlers. “Al?” Victor raised an eyebrow. “What are you doing in my house in the middle of the night?”

“I was done helping Vainqueur with his [Geomancer] training, and came to visit,” the dryad replied. “He grew angry when I told him he had to make seeds grow with magic instead of something more ‘bragworthy.’ He called it minion work.”

“But he still did it?”

“He tried, but I had to promise he would unearth a precious metal mine with this new class first,” Allison replied. “Since Ishfania is an alternate Iberia, I’m sure we can unearth some in the south.”

There was more money to make from developing a country than going quest hunting. Halloween and the confrontation with Icefang was less than six months away, and while Vainqueur disdained undragon-like activities, his hatred of his rival and desire to outshine him outweighed his pride.

Once they had stabilized Vainqueur’s new empire, Victor guessed they could turn their eyes outward.

If he lived that long.

“Vic, is something the matter?” Allison asked him with a worried gaze. “You look like a soldier volunteering for a suicide mission.”

“I am,” Victor replied, reddening, as he finished the bottle.

You have recovered all your HP... for now.

“No, seriously, what’s wrong?” The dryad insisted. “I am your friend. If you are in trouble, I will do anything to help.”

“I slept with Chocolatine.”

Allison marked a short pause. “Slept, or slept-slept?” Somehow, she made the question sound like. “Have you considered suicide?”

“Slept-bred.”

The dryad looked at him with a mix of astonishment at his stupidity, pity for his cruel fate, and a strange kind of awe for his boldness. “Vic, you are a lion-hearted man,” she finally said. “But you are also an idiot.”

“You helped set up the date!”

“Yes, a friendly date, so she would stop pestering you and move on. I didn’t think you would actually cross the point of no return.” Allison shook her head, biting her lip. “You know it’s mating season for werewolves until the end of the month?”

A chill went down his spine. “She said she was on the pill.”

“Not to transform into a werewolf during the full moon, but not for that part.”

Victor’s eyes turned empty, as a hellish frost seized his heart, and crushed his hopeful spirit.

“Thankfully for you, I don’t think a half-dragon and a werewolf can have children,” Allison tried to reassure him. “But to be sure, don’t do it again until June. She’s upstairs right?”

“You have to save me,” Victor begged her, “You’re her best friend and a priestess of the goddess of love. Relationship advice is your job.”

Allison joined her hands, furiously considering the matter as if her friend’s life depended on it. Because it did!

“Maybe you can learn to live with it?” she suggested sheepishly. “She’s… kind and loyal, when you get to know her. You learned to live with a dragon; you can survive her eccentricities and learn to enjoy them.”

“She hides a blood-covered knife under my bed.”

"But you still liked her enough to go on a date with, and plan a second one. Maybe you're just getting cold-feet because you are afraid of commitment."

"She's... she's too intense," Victor said. "She scares me to death."

"Maybe you should just tell her then, and put boundaries. Maybe you're just not ready to go too far for the moment."

"I don't want to hurt her feelings," Victor admitted. He had grown attached to her and had no idea how to deal with this. That, and doing so right after they tied the knot would be a major dick move. "I think she will take it as a rejection and start killing her 'rivals'."

“There are solutions,” Allison said with a sigh. “But none of them are good.”

“Anything is better than the alternative.”

The terrible noise of the manor’s magical alarm interrupted Allison before she could provide an escape route. “An intruder?” Saved from breeding! Victor immediately glanced at one of his undead servants. “Bring me my bazooka!”

“A bazooka?” Allison blinked.

“Rocket launchers solve everything,” Victor replied, rushing with her and his skeletons into the entrance hall.

They discovered a giant wolf in the middle of the room, surrounded by undead soldiers and trampling the gates beneath his claws. “Where is she?” Croissant growled in his monstrous form. “Where is she?! My sister suddenly vanished from our house, and I followed her smell there!”

“Oh, Croissant…” Tears of relief began to run down Victor’s cheeks. “You have come to save me?”

“You think you can blackmail me?” Croissant snarled back. “I don’t know how you caught on to me, but taking my sister hostage? I’m going to kill you for this!”

“Nobody is killing anyone,” Allison said, putting her hands on her hips. “Croissant, Chocolatine is... Chocolatine is fine. She’s probably the only happy person about the current situation.”

“Thank the gods, Croissant,” Victor said, as one of his skeletons offered him the bazooka. “I take back everything I said about you. I’ve never been so happy to see you!”

“What does this mean?” Croissant suddenly eyed the vizier’s dressing gown. “Wait, what are those bite marks on your neck? And why… why do you have her smell on you?”

Good question. A better one was, why did Victor suddenly hear ominous opera music in the background?

“What have you done?” Croissant showed his fangs. “You half-dragon bastard, what have you done?”

“Croissant, forgive me; I have done your sister.”

The background music suddenly ended, replaced with a tense silence. Croissant stood there, astonished, before glaring at the Vizier with cold fury.

“Enjoy the herpes then.”

...

“What?” Victor blinked.

“Enjoy the herpes,” Croissant repeated with a smug smile.

“You’re lying,” the vizier said. “You’re lying. You’re toying with me!”

“You don’t know where she has been,” Croissant taunted him, clearly delighting at one-upping his rival for once.

Allison tried to reassure him. “Vic, if this is true, I can still cure you both.”

“That is not the point!” the Grand Vizier sighed. Even if it was true, he was immune to disease, but the very thought... ugh... “Croissant, she is upstairs. You can take her back home.”

Much to his frustration, Croissant seemed torn between his brotherly over-protectiveness, and the sheer spite he felt towards Victor. “I dunno,” he said. “You know what they say… what is done cannot be undone.”

Victor grabbed the bazooka and pointing it at the werewolf. “Croissant, you will do your brotherly duty and take her back home, to defend her honor.”

“What?!”

"I have a bazooka and I'm not afraid to use it!"

"Vic, calm down," Allison tried to defuse the situation.

“The blackmail attempt failed, and you successfully rescued your sister, everybody is happy!” Victor ranted, before frowning. “Wait. Why did you think I would blackmail you with her?”

“You didn’t…” At that moment, Croissant realized he had said too much. “Oh. Nothing.”

“You said Victor was on to you.” Allison’s eyebrows narrowed.

“Because he’s a piece of dragon crap!” Croissant denied it.

The werewolf thought Victor was on to him? For what? What could Croissant have done to warrant the kidnapping of his sister? It must have been something truly serious. Something to do with Charlene, maybe?

“It was you.” Victor’s eyes widened, as he assembled the pieces of the puzzle. “You’re the one who intercepted Charlene’s letters with the adventurer's guild, and gave them to our enemies.”

At this moment, the werewolf realized he had given himself away.

So he tried to bolt out of the room, but Allison cast a spell faster. “[Accelerated Beastbane]!”

The dryad launched a sacred, green beam of light at the werewolf, hitting him in the back as he trampled a skeleton on his way to the outside. The spell immediately propelled him to the ground. “Damn it!” Croissant cursed.

“I have dealt with werewolves during the full moon for months,” Allison said. “You are not going anywhere.”

“Why?” Victor asked. “Why did you betray us?”

“Betray you? I was never on your side!” Croissant’s eyes flashed with anger. “You and that dragon ruined my life! You burned my home, put me through Furibon’s traps for nothing, treated me like crap, and stole my girlfriend! I’m sick of being humiliated all the time!”

“Stole? Charlene dumped you because you wanted to eat her, and you tried to sacrifice me first!” Victor protested.

“Your boss’s guests ate all of my sheep, and two of them mated on my house’s roof!”

“You’re going to the dungeon for your betrayal,” Victor said, crestfallen. “You can’t take her back.”

Congratulations! For arresting a mole in your midst, you earned a level in [Grand Vizier]!

+30 HP, +10 SP, +1 SKI, +1 INT, +2 CHA, +1 LCK.

“Do you have accomplices?” Victor asked.

“Doesn’t matter,” the werewolf replied. “You’re too late. I’m taking solace in the fact that you and the dragon are already BLEEPed.”

“We survived Brandon Maure,” Allison said, firmly on the government’s side. “Whatever your 'friends' have in store, we can beat it.”

“You idiot, they’re already in the city. You let them in.”