“How are we going to kill this thing?”
~
“Lately I’ve been really liking Fire II from Marwin’s shop.”
“Fire II? Still?”
“Okay I mean it’s not cutting-edge. But I have a system.”
“Do tell.”
“So you can’t just use Fire II on its own. What you can do is use Power Potentiator IV from Hyleria, the far kingdom, where there is a shop that still sells it. You use Power Potentiator IV to increase your own power and then Fire II behaves like a Fire V, without the cost of Fire V.
“Holy…”
“I know I know.”
“But I still don’t know if I’m convinced it’s the best way to do it.”
“No?”
“Last week Jannik visited. Necro-mage from the north. He said he chains Raise Undead II to Consume Lifeforce III, which is a ~somewhat favorable energy arbitrage, and he chains the energy from that transaction into Breathe Fire III, which he supplements with Wind VI.”
“Wind VI?!”
“I told you he was a necro-mage.”
“Well you know I can’t do Wind VI.”
…
…
…
~
“Boys? Hello? Gods it’s dark in here. Uh, are you two still in here?”
“Oh uh hey yeah we are. Sorry we were just. We were discussing tactics.”
“You’ve been in here for 3 months.”
“We were thinking maybe tomorrow would be the day we—”
“Forget about it. The dragon is already dead.”
“DEAD?! BUT HOW?! We still hadn’t come up with the right cost chaining, sequencing—”
“I cut its head off. With my sword.”
“How long did that take you?”
“Like 30 seconds.”
“There was no… You didn’t need to use any…”
“No I just cut its ugly head off. Go out and look. It’s in the field. You can see it.”
~
“I can’t stand those damn knights. Always thinking they have a solution. Thinking they’ve ‘already solved’ it. Like I guess he used a sword. Sure. Whatever. But I bet it was difficult. I bet there was friction.”
“Yeah. I bet it didn’t look as cool as the twelve-chain cost-efficiency flywheel we were discussing.”
“Nope.”
“And I bet it wasn’t as personalized to this dragon as our approach would have been.”
“Nope.”
“So what now? We’re not going to get the King’s Bounty.”
“True. What if we just stayed here?”
“Stayed here?”
“Sure. Come to think of it, I have a fourteen-step gold-theft chain that might materialize that Bounty…”
“Oh, do tell. This is going to be fun.”
* * *