The Dwarven Tyrant hated his title, you didn’t hear anyone call Paul the Orcken Tyrant. It turned out that changing the way people called you was more difficult than he first thought. He needed to do something big. Something that would cause enough of a fuss so that even Lihua’s fight would be overshadowed.

  “Now after today you will call me the Smith Tyrant okay?” he paused, “no wait Smith is too common of a last name, call me Forgelord Tyrant? No wait, lord and Tyrant, nono. Hmm I remember being called Smithing Tyrant. Why didn’t that catch on?”

  “I believe that was because you told them you wanted to be called the Forgeking Tyrant a few days later.”

  “Forgeking Tyrant? No that can’t have been it,” he shook his head, “it must have been Lihua spreading rumors. She still doesn’t like what happened to her bigger fanclub.”

  He was debating with his [Enchanter] aide in front of his customers. Three nervous dragonslayers sat in front of him eying each other and pretending they were just here for business.

  “Well? Forge Tyrant after today? Okay?”

  They looked up at him, “yes sir, and about the commission’s payment, the Coryx hide is here.”

  “Good, good.”

  The goods were swapped for an Epic grade sword, fit for a dragonslayer. The [Dragonslayer Knight] marveled at the blade in his hands.

  Then he thrust forward at the Tyrant’s chest.

  The two at his side stood up as the [Dragonslayer Mage] casted a variant of [Dragonfire] and the [Darksky Stalker] threw thirty knives that portaled immediately in his face.

  The Dwarven Tyrant simply sat there as his own enchanted gear blocked all the point things. The dragonfire merely licked away at him.

  “You’re using fire. Against me?!”

  Stupid crazy kids. But that wasn’t what he was concerned about. He eyed his [Enchanter] aide. The man had been conveniently left out of the volley of attacks, their eyes met and the aide rolled his eyes. He raised his hands and the chamber lit up with magic.

  The dragonfire reversed on the [Mage], the portals dissipated and the walls started firing on the dragonslayers.

  The dragonslayers yelped in shock as they looked accusatory at the [Enchanter], “you promised you’d help us! You traitor!”

  The three knew better than to fight in a chamber that an [Enchanter] had helped build, they fled down the tunnels at blinding speeds.

  “Should I close off the gates?” Fykar asked.

  “Nah, it’s time anyway. There’s forty dragonslayers outside right?”

  “I believe the Witch Tyrant said there’s forty-eight.”

  “Eh, good enough, fifty dragonslayers is pretty good,” the Dwarven Tyrant looked at his aide, “you weren’t tempted at all? You might have earned yourself a Legend you know.”

  “Perhaps…”

  They hadn’t worked together as long as most of his other friends. If Fykar, his dragonslayer [Enchanter] had tried to help them there was a pretty good chance he’d be dead. The dragonslayers outside weren’t wrong to focus him, he was indeed the weakest of all the Tyrants.

  If the fifty dragonslayers had slain him and had the help of Fykar then they could have used his home as a base against the Tyrants.

  It might have worked… if they had a Legend or two of their own.

  “Perhaps I was tempted,” his aide smiled at him, “but I would not miss this for the world.”

  The Dwarven Tyrant nodded.

  “Aye. Let’s earn ourselves a Legend.”

  –

  The three fleeing dragonslayers rushed out of the mountainside and towards the waiting line of hidden dragonslayers. There were squads waiting in every exit of the mountain. Fifty one dragonslayers in total now.

  Even more than for the Witch Tyrant. After all, the Dwarven Tyrant didn’t stop you from healing and could curse you from another world. Every team that had a [Healer] class had come for the assault. It would be safer, but more importantly?

  The Dwarven Tyrant was filthy rich.

  “Assassination failed?” He asked, he was still wearing a mask and was leading the assault.

  “Fucking [Enchanter] betrayed us. We weren’t fighting both of them in a deathtrap.”

  “Fair enough,” he said.

  The assassination was always a long shot, the Dwarven Tyrant had multiple safety measures in his home.

  “Alright, everyone enter from your positions and go slow. Treat it like a Trial and things will go smoothly. A Tyrant’s horde awaits!”

  Now that was how you motivated adventurers. They were all used to navigating dungeons and killing bosses at the end. All of them had faced the dragon of the Tenth Trial. How tough could the Dwarven Tyrant be?

  All the information indicated that he was, at best, as good as a [Blademaster] in the twelfth realm team. They took up their positions around the mountain entrances.

  And that was when the mountain, the largest mountain in all of The Realm started shaking. All the dragonslayers at the base started looking at the entrance to the home of the dwarven Tyrant and dropped their jaws. It was crumbling?

  Massive cracks spread from the sides and down to the base.

  “Rockfall!” He called out with his aura, “it’s probably a defensive mechanism.”

  Collapsing the entrances would be frustrating to deal with but they were dragonslayers. A bit of digging wouldn’t be too bad.

  He punched through a boulder that was the size of a house.

  It would be dangerous if they’d delayed long enough for the other Tyrants to get here. He was about to give the signal to the squads but the shaking didn’t stop, it only got louder. No longer did the cracks look like small fissures, it looked like someone had taken a miles long [Cleave] skill and had used it multiple times on the mountain.

  “What the fuck?” Someone called out.

  Most of them retreated into the skies and regrouped, watching the mountain continue to crumble. Dragonslayer or not, nobody wanted to be buried under an entire mountain as it crashed around them.

  “Is it… rising?”

  All fifty dragonslayers watched in shock as the largest mountain in the Realm began to rise.

  –

  The Dwarven Tyrant had spent two days working on a Quasi-Legendary artifact for an adventurer he did not know. Everyone believed it took him months for one of those. It wasn’t an unfair assessment, every other crafter would take years to create even a single Epic tier artifact.

  Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

  Still, if the Dwarven Tyrant had only been taking a fraction of the time to do commissions…

  What had he been doing in his spare time?

  “Break the chains!”

  “Aye!”

  Excited voices echoed back to him through both enchantments and wired devices.

  He wasn’t like the other Tyrants; he was not so far above everyone else that working alone was meaningless.

  “Chains broken!”

  “Maximum mana through the floatstone!”

  His [Enchanter] picked at his ear.

  “You don’t have to yell, I’m right here.”

  The [Enchanter] passed his mana through the circuits. The floatstone was infused into the walls, sometimes smelted, sometimes just pieced in and connected to the circuitry itself. It wasn’t a perfect seamless integration, their advancements in magitech weren’t there quite yet.

  It had been hell trying to understand mana circuitry before his aide… no, his friend had come here and helped him along. Floatstone was both very magical and somehow incredibly, annoyingly, magically non conductive.

  Their forge, their home began to rise. Magic started to pulse and vibrate the air around it. Crushing and loosening the hard stone that surrounded them.

  Even as mad as they were, they hadn’t decided to make the entire mountain float.

  Just half of it.

  The mountain started splitting. Heaping chunks of stone and precious ore exposed as the actual building began to make itself visible. Those idiots had thought they had mapped out his home with skills and magic. They didn’t know the first thing about advanced magic. The skills… he had asked for Lihua’s help for some of those.

  Screens flickered on as the first cameras of the fortress came alive. It saw in multiple spectrums and could even see magic.

  It wouldn’t catch all the [Rogues] with their skills active, but the others?

  A program started processing all the masked dragonslayers, taking in their height, weight, density and even heat. Signatures that identified them all as unique. Their tics and even breathing patterns were being logged.

  Names started matching to most of them, skills listed at the side.

  Oh dragonslayers could have hidden all of that, even their weight.

  If they had even known it would be a problem.

  And that was just the surveillance.

  As the fortress rose above the ground the sky rippled in a telltale sign, the dragonslayers looking up to realize another Legend had been born.

  Then the notification hit.

  The Dwarven Tyrant frowned.

  “Who edited that? Hey!” He went to the screen and changed it.

  It was edited again.

  …

  The back and forth continued until there was a rumble on the side. An attack hit the rising fortress from above. Then more. The dragonslayers had started their assault.

  “Shit!” he swore, “those idiots don’t even realize how fucked they are.”

  “Battlestations!” Fykar yelled.

  “That’s my line!”

  –

  The first warning was when an enormous barrel broke out from the side of the mountain–it blew every alert skill in the field.

  The second warning was when the rising mountain pulsed with magic, creating more ripples in the sky.

  There was no third warning.

  A giant ballista bolt flew out from a hole. A dragonslayer flew ahead to block. Far before the projectile reached them, it exploded into countless enchanted shards. Each little shard a variation of enchanted and reinforced monster parts

  Most of the pieces were blocked by the blocking skill. Far too many simply ignored the skill and pierced through, peppering the dragonslayers behind them. The force was comparable to a [Dragonslayer Rogue] continually trying to stab them without skills.

  Manageable but definitely not fun to handle.

  Then five more bolts launched from the same hole in quick succession.

  “Destroy that hole!”

  A [Cometstorm] battered away at the shimmering barrier that surrounded the enormous fortress. A [Rogue] blasted away with strikes that would have penetrated the hide of most monsters in Sector Ten.

  More and more dragonslayers added to the bombardment as everything within Sector Eight started fleeing the apocalyptic scene. A team of Eighths that had simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time were hit by a fraction of a fraction of the bombardment and perished, far before they could even activate their skills.

  Three minutes, the bombardment lasted for three whole minutes. The dragonslayers started hesitating, discouraged by the lack of any visible progress.

  A loud, annoyed voice called out above all of them.

  “Oi! You can’t even break this idiot’s first layer? How can we even call this a proper ship launch? Put your back into it!”

  The dragonslayers stopped completely and looked at each other. The leader of the dragonslayers called to the others.

  “That, that has to be a bluff! The barrier has to be close to breaking.”

  A masked [Rogue] with an Epic bow stowed his weapon.

  “Okay, fuck this, I’m out.”

  “Hey! listen to me, we are all committed to assaulting the Tyrants, you think you can leave now?”

  “Nobody knows who I am, whatever this looks like a bust.”

  Funnily enough, it was the Dwarven Tyrant that came to the leader’s aid.

  “‘Course I know who you are, you’re Oltier the [Hunter]! Hah! You think just because you’re pretending to use a bow I wouldn’t recognize ya? C’mon keep firing!”

  Oltier’s eyes widened, he didn’t normally use a bow. If the Dwarven Tyrant wanted to scare everyone, he was doing a good job.

  “I know most of you folk! If you can’t break this idiot’s damned barrier–hey getoff me!” It sounded like there was a scuffle over the speaker. “If you can’t break the first layer I’ll give the entire list of names to the Witch Tyrant.”

  The Dwarven Tyrant only had to call one more name before the dragonslayers restarted their bombardments–if only to make sure nobody else heard.

  …

  The barrier broke seven minutes later. It might not have sounded like a long time but he didn’t believe anyone, not even the Passive Tyrant could have blocked a bombardment by fifty dragonslayers for over ten minutes.

  The fortress was fully out of the mountainside now. Most of the loose rock had been broken away, pulverized by mana vibrations.

  The stone revealed a misshapen dome with a hexagonal base. Despite being dragonslayers they began to feel a bit of megalophobia looking at the impossibly large structure.

  It still rose higher. The next layer of a shimmering barrier showing that the Dwarven Tyrant hadn’t been lying about them having only damaged the first layer.

  “Okay!” the Tyrant called out, “you can all piss off now.”

  How could they leave now? They had just broken the barrier and the fortress itself looked like a weapon of war to end all weapons of war. This prize would be something beyond money, beyond wealth.

  A [Rogue] wrapped in cloth appeared next to him.

  “I’m getting news that the Witch Tyrant slaughtered all of them. She and Indigo were wrapped in a dome of blood. Going to guess the Tyrant wins that one.”

  “”

  That had been twenty eight to one. All the crazy bastards had gone there. “Did the Shadow Tyrant get past?”

  “I don’t think so, we just underestimated the so-called weaker Tyrants,” the masked [Rogue] stared at the fortress, there was desire and ambition in those eyes, he shook his head, “I’m out, I’ll be hiding on Earth until we can negotiate. I suggest you all do the same.”

  “He didn’t list your name, we can still -”

  “Shut it, the Witch will find out if I stay. If you talk I will kill you.”

  That was the end of the operation. They hadn’t come completely empty handed, this masked [Rogue] was their ace in the hole. Only he knew about the man’s Legend but it seemed all for naught. The dragonslayers all saw his expression and morale was broken.

  “C’mon I told you, get!” The Dwarven Tyrant yelled, “if the Witch comes here you’re all dead, or you’ll be wishing you were dead.”

  Out of the side revealed hundreds of barrels, similar to the one that had fired the exploding shards.

  They all decided to flee.

  –

  Unlike most of the other Tyrants, the Dwarven Tyrant did not work alone. He was not so far beyond everyone else in his field of passion that it was meaningless. In fact, one of the Realmer dwarves that were here today had been his first teacher!

  People working together bringing their ideas together and pushing each other made far more sense than a bunch of misfits dragging two worlds on their backs.

  His old teacher, Yutin, raised a mug.

  “Cheers!”

  “Cheers!” They chorused.

  There were three more dragonslayers and fifty of the best realmer craftsmen in this room. They all drank together, uncaring about rank or realm grade.

  “Is it really alright to let them live?” A realmer dwarf, Gosdric, asked.

  Ah, his old teacher’s little boy. All grown up now. Yutin looked like he wanted to strangle his own son, he made do with slapping the boy over the head.

  The Dwarven Tyrant just chortled.

  “Maybe if I wanted to keep the [Warlord] part of my class.” he shook his head, “no, no, WHAT ARE WE?”

  “CRAFTERS!”

  “CREATORS!”

  “If we can help it we will show those idiots that keep picking combat classes that there’s a better way. That the world doesn’t have to be ruled by meatheads with the strongest arm or the most evil magic.”

  “I heard some of the other smiths helped out the dragonslayers. Even helped plot against you.”

  This time Yutin poured a drink over his son, a terrible insult in dwarven culture. Gosdric looked flabbergasted by his own father.

  “And that is perfectly fine! Some competition is great!”

  The dragonslayer [Enchanter] rolled his eyes from the corner of his room while everyone else chuckled. Whether the Dwarven Tyrant had a Legend or not, there would be no competition after today.

  The Tyrant looked down at his mug and sighed. Someone poured him a drink as he gave thanks.

  He read the alert as it came.

  “I hope Mezhar and his team survives.”

  –

  Ryan lay down, grinning on the forest floor, surrounded by dead bodies.

  He never felt more alive.

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