Dragon Core: The Dragon-Girl Evolution & Princess-Collecting Dungeon Core Isekai LITRPG! (+ Comic!)

Barjuchne woke with something on her chest.

Several somethings, in fact. The weight was distributed across her body in a pattern that suggested multiple sources rather than a single one. She opened one eye and took inventory.

Blibli had puddled across her stomach, her translucent mass spread thin and warm. F.P. was curled against her left side, her small form tucked into the gap between her arm and her ribs. The twin saintesses had positioned themselves along her right flank, their heads resting on each other's shoulders, their breathing synchronised even in sleep. Further out, Rou-ya lay on the gold with her arms crossed and one leg dangling off the edge of the pile. Ei stood against the far wall, all four arms folded, her compound eyes half-lidded but clearly still monitoring the room.

Bruschetta had somehow attached herself to Barjuchne's leg during the night and was gripping it with both hands, her wool pressed flat against the scales.

Ead sat in a chair nearby, bound at the ankles herself, writing in her notebook by candlelight. She had not slept from the looks of it.

Schmand, the royal princess, had not moved from where Barjuchne had placed her on the gold pile the previous evening. She was sitting upright with her arms crossed and her jaw set, her silk dress hopelessly creased, her hair escaping its arrangement. The dark circles under her eyes suggested she had also not slept out of pure stubborn resistance to doing what she was told.

"This is degrading," Schmand said the moment she saw Barjuchne's eye open. "I slept on money."

"Isn’t it wonderful?" Barjuchne replied.

"I demand to leave. At once."

Barjuchne sat up, displacing Blibli, who sloshed onto the coins with a cheerful wobble, and F.P., who grabbed a coin and held it the way a person holds a pillow. The twin saintesses stirred in unison, their eyes opening at the same moment.

“Okay. Bye,” replied the dragon. “You can go. That’s allowed. I only have two prisoners right now.”

A voice from the side, relevant to that statement. “Question. Do you dream?” asked Ead, looking up from the notebook she had been filling with details about the dragon. A bandage was wound around her forehead.

The scholar princess had been partially shackled around her legs but was given ‘free enough’ roam, since she seemed to not have been intent on causing any trouble at the moment.

It was an F.P.-sort-of deal.

“Only good things,” replied Barjuchne with sarcasm.

“...Fascinating,” replied Ead, scribbling. Although it wasn’t clear if that interest was aimed at the response itself or at the snark behind it.

Sitting there with crossed arms, Schamnd stared at Barjuchne, air filling her face. Then she looked away, not saying anything more.

"Meeting day," Barjuchne said. "Everyone. Now."

Barjuchne rose, peeled Bruschetta off her leg, and set her aside. The sheep princess made a small sound of protest but settled back onto the coins without waking fully.

“...Wait. Why aren’t you in chains?” Barjuchne asked, registering Bruschetta’s presence for the first time that morning.

“She is,” replied Rou-ya, rubbing her tired face as she sat upright slowly.

Barjuchne looked back down at the beast-kin-appearing sheep princess. She actually did have shackles still tied around her wrists, broken free from the stone walls of the mountain through what appears to have been exceptional motivation. The chain anchor mount was still attached to a piece of rock that looked like it had been worn off and out of the wall through sheer willpower and force.

“See?” asked Barjuchne, pointing at Bruschetta as she looked back at Schmand. “Some people like being here.”

“If you had to eat one of them, which one would you choose first? Is there a system?” asked Ead, having finished making an empty graph in her notes. “What is the main qualifier that makes one princess more or less edible than another? Race? Musculature?”

Barjuchne came down the gold heap. “Well. My personal theory is that I’d start with the most annoying one first,” explained the dragon.

Ead seemed to miss or ignore the sarcasm once again, taking her notes feverishly.

The stone table was clear except for a map that Rou-ya had started work on before her collapse, its surface marked with territorial boundaries in coloured chalk.

Veliah was already there when Barjuchne arrived. She had been awake for hours, judging by the state of the organised piles of documents arranged on the table in neat categories. Her hair was pulled back and her sleeves were rolled up. She looked tired but functional.

"Inventory of the situation," Veliah said, before Barjuchne could sit down. She placed a hand on the map. "The dungeon's structural damage is moderate. The main hall took the worst of it. Three corridors need rebuilding. The obsidian gate is intact enough, but the outer defences need work, clearly."

She thought for a second, running across some numbers.

“I think most of it will regenerate by itself. But the Dragon Clan will need to put in a week to fix up the decorations."

Barjuchne shot a look at Rou-ya, who stiffed up like a board. "The Dragon Clan works very hard!" said the goblin. Her face was pale. She sat back down and put her head on the table.

"How much gold is missing?" asked Barjuchne, letting that obvious lie slide.

"None. There's actually more than when you left." Veliah picked up a ledger. "The church tribute has been flowing non-stop through the mushroom circles. The income is substantial."

"How substantial?"

"More than you had when you left. Considerably. We’ve begun filling the empty chambers down below, near the magma. There are a few secondary treasuries now. We can’t close most of the doors anymore."

Barjuchne's tail, what remained of it, twitched with something between satisfaction and anxiety. More gold was good. More gold was always good. But the circumstances that produced it were complicated.

“It’s a slight risk. But only one or two adventurers have gotten that deep so far.”

“Really? They did?” asked Barjuchne, surprised. Most adventurers falter before they even get to the hot springs, which is now the early-midsection of the dungeon. Its deepest depths were mostly untouched and pristine.

“Yeah. We’ve been getting a few top-level adventurers. It’s not an issue yet, but it’ll be one sooner or later. When they start banding together.”

She looked up. “And there’s the matter of Jaesowen Vale.”

Barjuchne froze.

“The village needs to be rebuilt,” said Veliah without judgement. She looked back at her papers. “And I suggest that you repay for it with some extra on top.”

She knew that Barjuchne destroyed the village, going after her. But did she know about her father? Veliah said nothing more, just going through her papers.

“Sure,” replied Barjuchne.

The others filed in over the next few minutes. Ei scuttled along the wall and positioned herself in the corner, her four arms working through a small piece of stone she was carving into what looked like a little figurine. F.P. landed on the table's edge and sat with her legs crossed. Blibli flowed up the chair leg and formed a rough approximation of a seated shape. The twin saintesses entered together and sat together on two chairs that they scooted against each other.

Chains dragging behind her, Bruschetta appeared in the doorway and looked at the full table. She had no reservations about noisily scooting a heavy chair across the stone floor, pressing it into the gap between Barjuchne's and Veliah's chair. She did not ask permission. She simply settled there and looked up at the dragon with an expression of complete devotion.

Ead was carried in by two goblins, still bound to her chair. She had requested to be present, or rather, she had stated that her observational data would be incomplete without access to group dynamics.

Schmand did not come. Barjuchne suspected she was still stubbornly sitting on the pile of gold with her arms crossed.

— She wasn’t really sure what that girl was hoping to achieve.

"Right," Barjuchne said. She looked at the assembled faces. Her princesses. Her favorite problems. "I need to know what we're dealing with. All of it."

F.P. spoke first. "The political situation outside is, to put it simply, extraordinary. The Holy Church's endorsement of you has effectively neutralised organised military resistance within the nation. The king's army has marched and failed. The crown is weakened."

"The king still has forces," Veliah added. "His personal host is intact, but it's the last card he has. If he commits it and loses, the kingdom is open to its enemies, who are already testing the borders."

"And the church?" Barjuchne asked.

The twin saintesses spoke. "The faithful serve the Heavenly Dragon," they said together. "All affiliated clergy, all ordained members, and all sanctuary structures. They are yours."

"All of them," the first confirmed.

"Worldwide," the second added.

"But there are many other nations that follow their own faiths," said both, each one taking one word after the other until the sentence was complete.

Barjuchne let that settle. A mostly worldwide religious network, devoted to her. She'd just been busy collecting gold and kissed a few princesses, and now she was the head of a global faith.

Life.

“The eggs are healthy,” said Ei. “Mine promises to be the most powerful. Upon birth, it will devour the weaker brood.”

A series of glares.

"There's not going to be any devouring. What about the adventurers?" Barjuchne asked.

"Constant," Rou-ya said from the table, her voice muffled by her own arms. "They come in waves. Small groups, mostly. The outer defences handle most of them."

"The economy," Veliah said, flipping a page in her ledger. "The roads are safe, which means trade flows, which means the towns are prosperous, which means they can pay more tribute. It's self-sustaining. All good there. The lizardmen patrols are doing wonders in reducing the road's many dangers for the merchants and guilds. They love you."

Silence.

"Moving on," Barjuchne said. "What about outside the nation?"

F.P. uncrossed her legs and recrossed them the other way. "The Eastern Empire is aware of you. They have been for some time." Barjuchne looked at her, wondering where this hidden information was coming from all of a sudden once more from the fairy. F.P., sensing that, went on. "Their agent network extends well beyond their borders. I spoke with Veliah. The cloth you found at the dead patrol site is an eastern military issue. I know it."

"The dead patrol," Barjuchne said. "Tell me about that."

Veliah opened a different section of her ledger. "Two lizardmen, found dead in a clearing south of the river,” she reported to the group. “Killed with eastern weapons. Their camp had been cleared in a hurry, but we recovered a scrap of cloth with eastern stitching and a broken arrow with unfamiliar fletching." She looked up. "I suspect it was some reconnaissance group that ran into your patrol."

"Someone is scouting us," Rou-ya said, lifting her head. Her golden eyes were sharper now, the schemer surfacing through the exhaustion. "You don't send scouts unless you're planning something."

"The Eastern Empire has a long history with dragons," F.P. said. Her voice had lost its usual mocking edge. "They have their reasons."

"What reasons?"

"Their dynasty was founded on a grudge. One of their princesses was involved with a dragon centuries ago. She died. They blame dragons and they have been waiting for one to return." F.P. examined her nails. "I would assume they are pleased to finally have their chance at revenge."

“I don’t even know these people,” said Barjuchne. “Why is everyone in this world so emotional all the time?”

"They have the largest standing military in the known world," Veliah added.

"And a navy," Rou-ya said.

At that reminder, Veliah came over, pulling a cloth out of a bucket and offered it to Barjuchne. The hydra girl took it, wiping herself down. The air moisture content inside the mountain was exceptionally high, but even here, she needed topping up.

Dripping, Barjuchne looked at the map. The eastern territories were marked on the far edge, beyond the sea. A vast empire, powerful, with a generational grudge and the resources to act on it.

"The king, here," Barjuchne said. "What's he doing?"

Veliah and Rou-ya exchanged a glance.

"The king is desperate," Veliah said. "His church has abandoned him. His army failed. His daughter is here and he is running out of options." She paused. "There are rumours about a summoning artefact. Something the crown retired generations ago."

"What kind of artefact?"

"A bell," Veliah said. "Broken. Ceremonially retired. It was used to summon heroes in the old days. True heroes. Not adventurers or knights. They’re something more powerful."

“...Heroes?” asked Barjuchne, her interested peaked. “I want a hero.”

The quest was running out of time. She only had a couple of weeks left at this point and things were looking dire.

“Can we get them use it?”

“Hard to say. Nobody knows what the reason was why they stopped summon heroes to solve generational crises.”

Ead, who had been writing continuously throughout the entire conversation, looked up from her notebook. "Heroes are not a natural phenomenon," she said. Her voice carried the flat tone of someone reciting a fact. "They are summoned. Created. An external force designates an individual and grants them exceptional abilities for the purpose of resolving a specific threat. The process requires a catalyst. A situation that bridges the gap between the mundane and the divine.” She adjusted her shackled legs. "If the king has the hero’s bell and the dragon is designated as an appropriate threat, a hero will come. It is inevitable."

The room was quiet.

"Thank you for that input," Barjuchne said.

“A hero is exceptionally powerful though,” noted Ead. “A single strike from a true hero’s blade would level this mountain from afar, turning this place into a flatland. I don’t think you would survive.”

“Thank you. Enough input.”

"Understood," Ead said, and returned to her notebook. "A question, then. Do you urinate and how often? What is the color and volume of it?"

Barjuchne snapped her fingers. The goblins came back in, picking up Ead's chair and carrying her back outside of the room.

The discussion continued for another hour. Details were argued over. F.P. suggested conquering neighbouring kingdoms as a buffer zone and was told no. Rou-ya proposed a layered defence network using the mushroom circles as rapid deployment corridors for more aggressive patrols that consisted of more than just lizardmen, which was approved. The twin saintesses offered to coordinate the church's intelligence network, which Barjuchne accepted with the uneasy feeling of having accidentally become the pope.

Blibli suggested they eat their enemies.

— Accepted, in spirit.