“Bob, what have you done?” Kat snapped at me, straightening her low-cut, lacy apron. “Angelic Wings shouldn’t have led to a divine roll. Have you been sending the system feet pics or something?”

  “The system is an asshole. And no, I haven’t.”

  “Heaven’s Cloudy Pinnacle! That’s why. Scale-brain, listen to me very carefully: if you don’t have something nice to say, say nothing. In fact, apply that to your toddler-tier thoughts as well. It especially applies to any opinions you may or may not have that relate to THE TRIBULATION DAMNED INTELLIGENCE THAT GOVERNS EVERY ASPECT OF YOUR EXISTENCE!”

  She yelled the last part into my ear, at very close range, but before I could flinch away, I discovered a reason to be grateful that her letter-opener of a sword had recently been transformed into a feather duster. With her tiny bosom heaving and straining her stripper-esque outfit to the maximum, she set about smacking all the delicate parts of my head. Eyes, ears, and nostrils all received a drubbing, ephemeral pink hearts floating away from every strike.

  “Damn it, Kat!” I rolled to my feet and flapped my new feathery wings to try and drive her away, but she simply became transparent and flew into my chest. I clutched at my scaly torso, half worried she was going to re-manifest and start beating the crap out of my heart or lungs.

  She didn’t try to kill me from the inside. Instead, she rose halfway out of my snout like a draconic-pixie centaur and continued battering at my eyeballs with her feathery weapon.

  I closed my eyes and tried to swat her off my nose, with little success. When the impacts stopped coming, I risked opening one eye to find her sweaty, her tiny dress in total, and very immodest disarray, leaning on her weapon on the ground and panting heavily.

  ”You are my curse, Bob. All you have to do is not die before you get enough karma to get an upgrade, and I’m golden. More importantly for you: you’ll be golden too. Walking the path of a demi-god is not conducive to you being a friendly dragon.” She dropped down, legs hanging to either side of my snout, and I discovered that underwear was not included in her costume. For an entire microsecond, I felt sorry for her, but then I blinked, and the battering my face had just received took that sympathy away.

  “I don’t have any control over what the evolutions throw at me,” I growled, lowering my bulk back to the ground.

  “You’ve got more than you think. The choices you make affect the loot table for future upgrades, for a start. Keep your opinions of the system polite and subservient, Bob. You’ll thank me later,” she said with a sigh.

  “I am a dragon! I am above everything! Literally, half the time!”

  “Is that what the birds on Earth think of humans?”

  “They aren’t dragons,” I grumbled.

  “No, but enough humans, or Dwarves, Orlics, Pixies, Elves, Janglebonks, or whatever can still pull you down and kill you.” I was reminded about how easily that Hunter mage had been able to knock me out of the sky, and a shiver of fear ran through me that only fueled my anger. “I’m not going to argue about this, Bob. Don’t let the dragon control the man. Your options boil down to becoming pretty much unkillable, pretty much able to kill anything, or aligning yourself with your patron deities.” She crossed her arms and glared at me. “Guess which I think you should take?”

  “You want me to serve Light and Music.” She nodded. “I won’t. Dragons do not serve.”

  I chose God Forged Scales. I needed time to sort out my karma, and getting a huge bump in the draconic equivalent of the human ARM stat should help buy me that time. I looked about suspiciously. My neck curled round to scan down my body, but there was no pain and nothing was happening. I was unchanged.

  “I think it was a dud? I’m not feeling anyth–Oh shit!”

  “I get that a lot. Don’t sweat it, Boberino.” A being had appeared at my side, right in front of my snout. A four-metre-tall machine made of bronze, multiple arms, and shoulder-mounted tentacles moved in and began to poke and prod at my flank. I couldn’t move. “You sure about this, lad? It’s a lot of work, even for me.”

  “Who the fuck are you?” I grunted, barely able to move the air in my lungs to speak.

  “Call me Artificer. Light and Music speak highly of you, by the way.”

  “I’m glad.”

  “Lord Artificer, you don’t have to do this. You could refuse the call,” Kat said, and I went cross-eyed as I tried to focus on her.

  “And now you betray me?” I managed to snap.

  “No, Bob.” She rested a hand on my nose and looked at me with sad eyes. “I’m trying to help you. This won’t be–”

  “Ekaterina. It’s a pleasure to meet you as well. We’ve been watching your adventures with interest.” The metal monster split open, and a man stepped out of its chest. He was short and thin, with neat, dark hair that was carefully parted to one side. The titan resealed and moved closer to me. One of its massive metal claws reached out and grasped the edge of one of my scales. It pulled experimentally, sending a spike of pain through me, but I couldn’t snap, bathe it in acid, or shift my bulk away from the gleaming pincers it used as hands.

  A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  It pulled harder, and with a sensation I imagine would be like having a finger or toenail ripped off, my scale came free. More of the machines appeared and began to repeat the process. Each one pulled a scale free and turned to the forges that appeared behind the constructs to begin to hammer and shape my scales. Glowing metals sprang into existence and were beaten into my scales, then one end would be heated to a dull glow, and the finished product would be jammed back into my flesh wherever it had been pulled from. It was not a pleasant experience, to put it mildly.

  All the while that this was going on, Kat and the stranger who had stepped out of the first robot sat cross-legged on the floor and chatted politely. The smith produced a pot of tea with a wave of his hand, and they sipped while I failed to scream as every scale on my body was torn free, enhanced, and then replaced.

  “Well, Ekaterina, it has been a delight. I don’t think Bob is going to be civil when I release him, so could you sign the warranty?” asked the stranger after what felt like an eternity of pain.

  “Sure, Nik.” Kat hopped up and scanned down a document that the god produced. She pulled a quill from her cleavage and squiggled and dated on a dotted line at the bottom. “Good for twenty megatons. That seems a bit over the top?” she asked as she did a flourish at the end of writing her incredibly long and unwieldy title.

  “God Forged Scales are not something I take lightly. His survivability is now a testament to my prowess, so if he can’t take a proper slap, it reflects badly on me. Umbrat and Silentium both have hate-boners for the poor fool. I’d be doing my friends a disservice if I made it too easy for them.”

  I hated this man. Being. Whatever the hell he was. It had turned out that not only did I have tiny scales between my fingers and toes, I also had them inside my mouth, in my ears and nostrils, and in certain other places I shuddered to consider. I’d been forced to hold still as tiny versions of the industrial grippers that served as hands had invaded every part of my body.

  “That’s fair. He is a silly boy. Well, Nik, it’s been a pleasure. For us, anyway.” I narrowed my eyes at her back. “Thanks for taking the edge off his pain.” I had regained enough range of motion that my eyes widened in shock. That had been the anaesthetised version?

  “Anything for you, Kat. When you get back out there–” he waved a hand above his head, “–do put in a good word for me?”

  “Sure. You take care now!” Kat bounced on her heels, which were clad in six-inch stilettos, and waved happily as the god climbed back into his mech suit and vanished.

  “I–” she began.

  “Don’t.”

  “–told you so.” She finished quietly. “You feeling alright, big guy?”

  “I didn’t know I had scales inside my… No, I’m not feeling alright, Princess. I need a drink.”

  “Well, you’re tough now. Really tough. Let’s head back to the portal hub. You can port to the Cod from there.” She fluttered up and landed just behind my crown of newly remade horns. Having those extracted and reinserted had arguably been the worst part of the process. A gentle hand rested on the still-sensitive scales that lined the bases of my black horns. Normally, I wouldn’t have felt a soft touch like that, but every inch of me burned as I headed back to the hatch and made my way through the dungeon.

  Reginald had set up the portal hub on the mana crystal floor. It was filled with a vast expanse of glowing blue gem-like formations that filled me with power, instantly recharging my mana. They were some kind of weird fungus that ate up and condensed the ambient mana of the dungeon, or something like that. I’d zoned out and dreamed about shinies halfway through the lecture.

  To one side of the array of portals, set like a series of doorways next to each other, all of them showing a different scene from their companions, lay the pile of items I was to sell in the city. Away to one side, out of sight of most anyone passing through the portals, lay another pile, carefully guarded by a pair of cyber-bunnies. This was of the glittering grey stone the expanded mining team had been pulling out of the Arkendrite vein deep in the heart of the mountain.

  I shifted back into my human form, but the pain lingered. Pulling on what I thought of as my ‘noble costume’, finely made clothing that was edged in delicate stitching and lacy frills, I surveyed my goods. A pile of weapons and armour, mostly looted from the noob adventurers that had fallen to the combat floors, along with the assorted items that came from chests that we didn’t want to keep, was scooped up into my pocket universe, along with a couple of hundred kilos of Arkendrite.

  “I’ll get to work on the new floors. Going to need to hire some more minions.”

  “Fine.” It wasn’t fine, but my physical pain outweighed the spiritual pain of spending gold right now, and I couldn’t bring myself to care. I checked the greed-demon, but he was doing unseemly things to himself in an imaginary rain of gold at the back of my mind. As long as the income was good, he didn’t seem to notice the occasional outgoing too much.

  “Bob, before you go–” I ignored Kat and walked through the portal to the Cod. A pair of robo-rabbits also guarded the other end of this one, and it let out into the barroom between the counter and the toilets, where my old job board had been so many months ago.

  The Cod had changed. The furniture was all new and fancy compared to what it had been. The chairs were no longer simple wooden arse-supports. They were padded and embroidered. The tables were made of rich, honey-coloured wood that glistened in the light of the glowballs now lining the walls. The air still smelled of stew, fresh-baked bread, and delicious pastries. The wholesome smells from the kitchen managed to mingle with the smell of ale and spilt wine. There was also the stench from the sweaty locals crammed into their seats, waiting for the evening's entertainment, and the kitchen and human scents managed to combine and produce a familiar, comfortable taste to the air as my tongue flicked out.

  I saw a number of adventurer teams, hard-eyed men and women in leather and steel who were carefully avoiding catching my eyes. They were keeping to themselves, and their quiet conversation was lost in the hubbub of the pub.

  “Hello, lover,” Esme said as she passed me with a tray of drinks, bumping her hip against my side and winking at me. “I’ve got a few things I’d like you to pick up in the city!” She swayed away from me. My lust-monkey punched my greed-goblin in the face and wrestled it to the ground as it rebelled at her words.

  Huh. Maybe playing my demons off against each other was the solution?