POV Vesuvius:
The enormous black dragon floated above the royal castle, his colossal body hovering above the clouds, hidden from the eyes of the city, throwing its sprawling shadow over the castle and streets.
The next moment, a massive golden circle ignited behind the dragon, glowing and radiating on the background of an inky black night sky shrouded in thick clouds.
Vesuvius finally felt that his evolution towards magic had paid off as he effortlessly guided mana through the huge magical diagram.
The whole diagram was complex, looking like a huge circle with lots of small circles, squares, and triangles chaotically sewn through it.
All of them were inter-connected by lines with randomly sown letters between them.
In its centre was a single unknown, curved rune, each and every line and angle of it screaming with profoundness and knowledge far beyond his.
'I can't even imagine the knowledge needed to create something like this from scratch.'
Mana flowed through the magic circuit, igniting each of its parts one by one. A weird feeling was already spreading through the dragon's body, some invisible force touching each of his muscles, bones, and veins.
The whole circle was already brightly burning, and then Vesuvius focused even more. A single small golden glowing droplet looking like liquified gold moved from his heart into his mind.
The droplet flowed straight into the central rune, and the bright golden radiance enveloped his whole body like a cocoon.
It was painless as Vesuvius felt the weird energy move and circulate through his body, bending reality itself and bypassing both the laws of physics and the rules of magic.
The bright golden light flashed as if golden lightning had struck across the sky. The next moment, at least a four-meter-tall monstrous form appeared high above the city, and the dragon vanished.
It had massive crystalline wings with golden veins pulsing within the red crystals growing out of its back.
Its stature looked as if someone had grabbed a dragon and forcefully rearranged its whole musculature and skeleton to make it bipedal.
Its black and golden armoured head was crowned by long, curled crystal horns interwoven with golden webbing.
Its body glinted in the moonlight, covered in its natural black armour decorated with gold and crimson crystal.
A long tail ending in two blade-like edges made of the same red crystal grew out of its back.
Massive crystalline claws glowed on its legs and hands.
It looked almost like a draconian in a much larger and more pompous variant.
Vesuvius slightly moved his hand, his head spinning, making him feel dizzy at the sudden change of perspective. He felt uncomfortable, as if he wore unfitting clothes. He hated the feeling of weakness that came with it.
His body was smaller, and although his stats remained unchanged, he lacked the power of his own form.
The stats, especially the body stats, weren't absolute. If a giant with ten strengths competed with a human with a strength of twenty, the giant would still win as the stats just boosted the body above its natural limit.
'Size matters. Well, I will return back to my original form when I am done.'
It wasn't just his physical attributes. He also felt his magic power to be decreased and weakened, 'For dragons, their bodies and cells also amplify their magical force.'
Vesuvius flapped his wings, gliding towards the central courtyard. His body turned into a colourful blur as he landed with a loud bang.
The kobolds in their black armours all glanced at him, their golden eyes glowing in the darkness.
The next moment they all fell on their knees, bowing their heads as they recognised their ruler and creator.
"Bring me the mage!" His command resonated through the night-covered courtyard, and the kobold moved to fulfil it.
'So this is the power of the divine energy. The energy that is bound only by one's affinity and knowledge.'
Vesuvius didn't understand anything about the spell he had just cast. The symbols in it, even its structure, looked so foreign compared to any magic he had seen before that it felt like a bottomless chasm.
The dragon entered the long corridor of the castle, his tall multiple meters long form moving down it with the metallic clanging of his claws impacting against the polished marble tiles.
His earth affinity held the floor under him, protecting it from breaking under the sheer force of his steps.
The whole castle was huge, its main parts oversized, allowing even his multimeter-tall form to move easily.
'How does it feel to live as a small human in such a large space? It must be uncomfortable...'
The guards standing on both sides of the corridor immediately bowed in his path, with the civil servants freezing in terror. The aura blazing out of his body flooded the aisles with heat and magic.
The hallway before him opened into the massive throne room, the tall pillars rising towards the decorated vaulted ceiling, the light entering from all sides through massive vitrage windows, amplifying the natural moonlight.
The single throne lay on its opposite side on a marble pedestal.
'Too small!'
Gold burst out of the glowing red ring on his finger, and golden coins flowed out, clanging and ringing as they rained on the marble floor.
The dragon raised his armoured clawed hand, the gold and the throne both melting.
The molten gold flowed, rearranging and transforming itself, forming a massive golden throne.
The whole throne was huge, like the throne of Zeus in his temple, evoking fear and respect within any mortal facing it.
Vesuvius slowly approached his throne, his eyes brightly shining and glowing as his divine ass landed on the plain, hard gold, his black tail curling around the backseat.
His former self and his draconic self were burning with joy as he sat on gold while fulfilling the fantasy of sitting on a throne. It even slightly suppressed the discomfort of his transformed body.
'Why does it feel so great to fit inside of a building? I took it for granted for a long time, and now I am awed by it. I need to build a larger castle that would fit me in my natural body. No... something like that would be ridiculously huge. Maybe a giant hole in the mountain like that of Smaug? No, I am much larger than even him... Maybe if I could somehow modify this spell to just shrink my dragon body instead of fully transforming into this draconian form?'
A kobold in a long crimson cape entered and bowed its horned head, saying, "You Majesty, the archmage has arrived."
'Huh, that was fast... Anyway, this might also be an answer to my problem. Maybe I don't have to shrink my body directly, but only space around it and do some weird space shenanigan like that in the temple...'
A tapping of something against the floor came from the long entry hallway, the dragon's sensitive hearing immediately catching it.
'Ahhh, that reminds me of this!'
Ding!
//
You have used the item upgrade token on [Skill Copy Ring (1 use)]
Please choose one option:
[Skill Copy Ring (2 uses)]
[Perfect Skill Copy Ring (1 use)]
[Temporary Skill Copy Ring (10 uses) (1-day duration)]
//
Without thinking too long, Vesuvius picked the first option, 'I can perfect the skills myself later, and temporary copies are a bad investment.'
A light enveloped the ring on one of his fingers, its size immediately growing, with a second metallic circle connecting to the original one.
POV The Archmage:
The old mage walked down the long hallways, rubbing his long white beard, the taps of his staff on the floor echoing through the richly decorated corridor.
He couldn't help but feel his whole body becoming tenser and tenser, some invisible pressure falling upon his shoulders.
"M-master? Why is mana moving so weirdly."
"It is suppressed by a potent source of magical radiation, a very potent source... But not an extremely potent source."
The golden eyes of the guards were looking at them from all directions, 'Why does a dragon even need guards? I doubt there would be some idiot trying to do something stupid around such a beast.'
They stopped before a massive engraved gate, the magical energy burning right behind it, making the old man's hair and beard stand up.
The gate smoothly opened, and hot air rushed out.
The old mage's eyes went wide as he noticed the enormous golden throne and the dragon sitting on it.
He immediately fell on his knees, not just out of respect for the dragon being a dragon or a king but also because he knew how complex such magic was, 'Such a large-scale body transformation magic is truly masterful! It is not just some illusion. This is full and real body transmutation.'
"Raise your head, mortal!"
The old mage and his apprentice behind him both raised their heads and gazed upon the dragon. Every nook of its body screamed with perfection, 'Haha, we humans are so far behind in evolution.'
The rings on the dragon's finger flashed slightly, something passing through his body. He couldn't tell what it was, 'Maybe some kind of scanning magic?'
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