VRMMO: World's First Glyphborne

RRROOOOOOOOOOAAARR!

The dragon’s defiant roar cut across the air, making it tremble from its overwhelming presence. Unfortunately, despite the horrifying aura of death that it radiated and the constant warning roars that it was giving out to try to deter people from attacking it, the players heard that roar only as a signal to track it down.

While beasts and normal people alike ran from the Dragon for their lives, Graceless ran head first towards the source of the roar with fervent smiles on their faces, and Belladonna’s group was no different.

Beyond the inviting roars practically calling them to its location, the dragon had so kindly left them a trail of destruction to follow like a path that led directly to the loot. Trees had been reduced to smouldering charcoal stumps, the earth had turned completely black and was covered in a strange, shiny black rock that almost looked like it was made of a liquid despite being completely solid.

Houses had perfect lines of destruction carved through them, farmlands reduced to blackened patches of devistation as the destroyed livlihoods acted as the perfect markers for the excited Graceless. Who saw the families weeping over blackened corpses and generational losses as nothing more than set dressing to hype up the first World Boss of the game.

Belladonna couldn’t help but spare these people concerned and pitiful looks, their every mournful wail tugging at her heartstrings. But what could she do to help them really?

Punch their crops back to life? Carve a few glyphs of lightning or fire that would somehow bring their family members back to life? No, in situations like these she was as helpful as the rest of the people here.

Of course she was not the only one that got emotional at the ’set dressing’. For example Figg seemed to feel the pain of every destroyed plant that they passed by, and winced whenever they discovered a field of crops that had burned to the ground or live stock that had been slaughtered, or was in the process of a painful death.

Sometimes they even stopped to take care of that last one, at his pleading request.

But even if they were feeling the weight of what they were facing, it was only Belladonna at the moment that was feeling the weight of another thought.

As she looked at all the destruction that was left in this creatures path, she couldn’t help but overlay the image of her own world over it. Burned trees became melted cars, destroyed houses became collapsed corpo-blocks. Corpses... stayed exactly the same, with only some hints of metal beneath the charred flesh.

’If magic and Sebbie can come across... Who’s to say something else can’t? If our worlds start to become like each other, then how long until this becomes us? Or something even worse appears.’

Such morbid thoughts occupied her mind for the next mile or so, until they finally stumbled across the site of the historic battle.

A colossal lizard, the size of two African Elephants standing trunk to tail, stood atop the ruins of yet another farmhouse. It had an incredibly short neck, a long narrow snout and a long muscular tail that swept through the ruined farmhouse every time it turned, sending smouldering wooden fragments scattering across the impromptu battle arena.

Its massive body was covered in a craggy, rough black rock that had hints of an orange light pushing through the cracks between the stones. From where they stood, they could already see countless arrows, throwing daggers and spells plinked uselessly off of this stone carapace, like rain water off of a turtle’s back.

It was like a volcano that had come to life, and decided to take the form of a Komodo Dragon. That was an observation that was only reinforced by the dragons most deadly form of attack, its breath weapon.

Its powerful jaws carved through the ground, taking an entire mouthful of the earth, which was even more than one would expect as it had an expanding pouch under its chin like a pelican.

The pouch glowed with a deep orange light and flames spewed from two sections on the Dragons back just below where its wings connected. Wings that it kept folded tight against its body, and which were covered in even more rough stone, allowing them to act as shields for its vitals.

The process almost reminded Belladonna of a furnace, or some kind of refinery, but it didn’t last long enough to produce anything but death.

After a few seconds, once the throat pouch was glowing bright orange, the Dragon spewed out a torrent of thick, crag filled magma that washed over some of the players that were attacking it. Mainly the fools stupid enough to stand right in front of the head of a creature like this.

It was only surprising that they hadn’t been eaten first.

"It’s... bigger than I thought it was going to be. Like, I know it was going to be big... But it feels even worse in person, you know?" Figg muttered under his breath as the rest of the party gave slight nods of agreement.

All of them stared at the creature in reverent awe and trepidation, as they watched it completely slaughter and destroy the countless players that were throwing themselves at it.

"So... What’s our plan? We do have a plan, don’t we?" Vestra asked with a hint of concern, tightening her grip on her wand as she held it close to her chest.

Both she and Figg immediately turned their attention to Belladonna, who blushed slightly and shrugged with a half-hearted smile.

"Um... Hit it till it dies?"

They all groaned at her answer, the loudest amongst them being Saige, who finally put on a serious expression that didn’t look like it belonged on such an adorable face.

"Belladonna and Lilith will be our front line, Figg you work on control and Vestra and I will cover long range damage and area denial. Taunt skills seem to be having an effect, but risk the lava breath. Any death to that will be a worst case scenario, as you might not even be able to recover your body afterwards.

It has a build up to that, so when it starts to eat the dirt, either dodge or prevent if you can. Vestra, if you can use some of your illusions to give it a better target, do so. Especially if you can use it to have our competitors here encounter an ’accident’.

Keep your scrying skulls active and communicate through them alone. Focus on finding a weak spot, tell the others when you find it and we can focus on that. We don’t know if it has a second phase or not, so be on guard when it gets low. Not just against it, but against anyone who wants to kill steal from us.

Any questions?"

They all turned to him, blinking dumbly as they stared at him with blank expressions. There was something so strange about a femboy fox-kin rattling off instructions like some kind of drill sergeant.

Thankfully, someone finally broke the silence as they said,

"Yes, actually, I have a question."