Some of it was the difference in stats. He knew that, even if he hadn't fully understood it.

Alarion zoned out so readily during his lessons partly because of the lack of practicality. He lived in things he could touch, manipulate, and examine in practice, not in theory. Being told the value of his attributes was nothing compared to feeling the power they gave him in the moment.

The previous night, he'd been fighting with a 10% penalty. Today, he was fighting with a 5% bonus, and Alarion lived in that difference as his weapon clashed against the dragon's sweeping grasp. He was quicker to recognize the danger and faster to shift his posture to parry. He more easily deflected the attack, and his hand stung slightly less under the sudden abuse.

If he'd had these abilities the previous night, Alarion was convinced that he would have eked out a pyrrhic victory. Studying the dragon over nearly fifty fights had given him a strong understanding of its tactics and physiology. Its strengths and its weaknesses.

This foe had been tailor-made to his attributes, and he'd been fighting it under-strength and under-trained.

But neither accounted for just how badly he was beating it.

Alarion liked to think of fighting the dragon not as one long fight, but as a series of bouts. One of them would take the initiative, and they would dance briefly in a quick exchange of attacks, blocks, dodges, and parries. His goal was to get in and chip away at the dragon's considerable pool of HP with his faster movements and smaller size, making him a difficult target. Meanwhile, the dragon sought to minimize the damage Alarion inflicted, aiming for a crushing blow that could finish the fight or diminish the boy's capacity.

Each bout could last as long as a minute, though most were considerably shorter. Some were false starts, where a feint from either side brought the bout to an end before it truly began. Other bouts ended abruptly when an attack caught Alarion, killing or grievously wounding him. By this metric, his first attempt had been a mere two bouts, while his last attempt the previous night had been a grueling thirty-eight.

So far, this fight had lasted nine bouts, and already the dragon was showing signs of its flagging strength. No amount of increased attributes or persistent study accounted for it.

The real secret was that Alarion was calm.

In his first fights, he had been frightened. Understandably so. But when that fear gave way, what took its place was no better. He became frustrated. Angry. How did that attack land? Why couldn't he properly keep count? He'd have had it if not for a thousand little excuses that had chipped away at his willpower and perpetuated a cycle of mistakes.

Coming at it fresh and clear-headed, neither hungry, nor tired, nor irate, made all the difference.

The creature's tail had ended a quarter of their fights the previous day. It was so easy to concentrate on enormous fangs and razor-sharp talons. Easy to forget how quickly that inhuman appendage could whip around to shatter his bones. Now it's attack felt almost charmingly clumsy as Alarion faded to the side in one motion, and cut a full two feet off the tip in the next.

The creature roared in agony and rage at the offense, but Alarion left it no time to mourn the loss. He pressured the beast, cycling from one bout to the next without the traditional breather. With his muscles fresh and his attributes enhanced, he had stamina to spare, enough to rake an awful line through the scales that covered the dragon's sternum.

It retaliated, and he dodged again, punishing the arm that had the temerity to swipe at him. Alarion was confident, but not arrogant, retreating in the face of a renewed assault.

He felt a flow to the fight he hadn't felt the previous night. A push and pull, give and take sensation that he now understood some small part of. Intrinsically, he knew that not all fights would have this back-and-forth. It was a curious feature of a battle where he was so evenly matched, but his opponent was not easily slain. At the same time, he knew that the experience could be invaluable. That there was some kernel of truth to this style of combat, and that he had only glimpsed the periphery of it.

The sensation fled as quickly as it had come, returning Alarion to the here and now, to face a limping dragon. Partially dismembered.

And about to breathe fire.

"No!" Alarion swore in dismay. Usually, the dragon began using its breath close to the twentieth bout. Alarion had that number in mind, but he realized now that its choice to breathe fire had more to do with damage than time. Alarion was ahead of schedule and hadn't even been watching for the telltale signs.

To dodge the breath, he needed to be closer and already moving parallel, not distant and flatfooted. He'd need to be closer still to interrupt it as he'd done with the roar. And to block it was suicide.

Wasn't it?

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Alarion retreated as far as he could manage as the dragon drew in a deep breath, putting as much distance as possible between himself and the soon-to-come cone of flame. As the dragon's shoulders reared up, the boy drove the tip of his greatsword into the courtyard stone, turned his body to the side, and braced behind it.

The fire crashed over him in a wave, spilling out over either side of the steel barrier that shielded Alarion from the worst of it. His awakened physique helped him to endure the pain, but a frightened glance at his left arm showed the skin blackening where it was closest to the blade. Warning after warning appeared in one corner of his vision, telling him he was on fire, while the indicator for his HP dropped precipitously.

And then it was over. The last of the flames rushed past him like a gust of wind, and Alarion spared a glance for the most notable system messages:

You have suffered extreme fire damage. HP -106. Your left arm has been amputated. New flaw! One Armed Man. New Condition! Bleeding – Severe. [Bleeding – Severe] – Lose 1% total HP per second. You have cauterized your wound. Bleeding condition – Ended.

He didn't look at his arm. That way lay madness, and he needed his wits about him. This wasn't real. The arm would heal when it was over. He was glad that either the shock, the severity, or the nature of the wound had left it as more of a dull ache.

This thing had just tried to rob him of his victory. He didn't need to fight it and the pain at the same time.

Alarion reached for his sword as he advanced over the scorched ground toward the dragon. The weapon came away from the ground more easily than he would have expected. Too easily. Too light.

What he held was no longer an Imperial Greatsword. It could not even be charitably called a sword. The hilt and blade guard had withstood the worst of the flames with mere warping, but the core of Alarion's blade had distorted unevenly as it softened under the flame's heat. One edge remained sharp, and there was a diagonal point on the same side from where the weapon had snapped off under Alarion's rough handling. He had roughly a foot of hilt and a foot of misshapen blade remaining. ZEKE had the last laugh.

Alarion would fight with a dagger after all.

The wounded dragon began to close the distance between them. Alarion could read its intent well enough. The dragon wouldn't be satisfied with ending him in fire. Not after that humiliation. Not that it now had the upper hand.

With unrestrained anger, a roar to match any the dragon would have been capable of, and the help of [Thrown Weapon Mastery], Alarion put lie to the dragon's gloating.

The ruined sword raced through the air with the practiced accuracy of a teenager who had spent months hunting birds with rocks. It struck point first into the dragon's right eye and buried all the way to the hilt, provoking a roar of outrage to match Alarion's own.

With a running leap he did not even know he was capable of, Alarion followed his thrown weapon. His fingers caught the scales of the dragon's maw and held for dear life as it flicked its head to dislodge both him and the weapon that had blinded it. When that failed, it slammed the side of its head down against the ground in an attempt to crush him.

It had the opposite effect. Alarion tucked his legs beneath him to avoid being pulverized, then braced against the ground just long enough to scramble fully onto the dragon's face. Once there, he wrenched the weapon free and raked it twice more across the eye, ruining it completely.

There was no flow anymore. No artistry. No bouts. The dragon raked its face with talons to dislodge a passenger who had already departed, blinded by pain and actual blindness. For his part, Alarion had slid beneath the dragon, capitalizing on one of his earlier victories. His new weapon could not meaningfully pierce or shatter scales like its forefather, but it could exploit the wreck that had already been made of the dragon's breast.

Alarion put everything into the attacks. They were shallow by his standards, but they were quick and dirty. With no second arm to brace against the dragon, he held the 'knife' in a reverse grip, stabbing the dragon's chest repeatedly in sweeping up and down movements.

It tried to retreat, to escape. Survival instincts overrode sense. It could have just crushed him, laid its entire body weight upon him. That would have been enough. But to do so, it would have had to embrace the knife. The dragon was no longer haughty. No longer cautious. No longer angry. It panicked.

In the end, there was no fanfare, no coup de grâce. The dragon did not explode or dissolve when it died, and the void arena did not collapse with its passing. Its movements grew sluggish; it retreated slower and slower. It fell, not on top of him, but onto one side, and Alarion kept stabbing long after it had stopped moving. When the moment finally came, it was with a silent notification.

[Quest Complete - Dragon Slayer]

"Status," Alarion said.

"Acceptable," ZEKE replied, his tone positively brimming with resignation.

Alarion ignored him, quickly navigating to his quest menu.

Dragon Slayer [Complete]

Description: There is a dragon. Sort of. Slay it.

Success Conditions: Defeat the Dragon conjured by Elena's Void Arena ritual.

Failure Conditions: Fail to meet success conditions within one day. Defeat the dragon with outside assistance. Defeat the dragon with a weapon other than an Imperial Greatsword. Gain any additional skills.

Bonus Condition: Defeat the Dragon conjured by Elena's Void Arena ritual within fifty attempts.

Upgraded Reward: One Exceptional Quest Box

Penalty: None.

Note: This quest was automatically assigned due to the flaw [Single-Minded] and does not count against the once-per-day limit of Self-Motivated.

Would you like to claim your Reward? Yes/No?

"Is there a reason I shouldn't claim my reward now?" Alarion asked.

Elena looked at him as though he'd grown a second head just because he'd had the self-control to ask first. "None here. Rewards do not expire, to my knowledge, so it can sometimes be advantageous to hold them if they will be hard to transport or you worry they may be stolen."

Alarion nodded and mentally selected 'Yes'.

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