Brewing Bad (Fantasy Isekai Light LitRPG)

Lucas had done everything right. He'd played the doting lover, made incredibly concentrated potions, and set the perfect trap. Yet even as Heisenburgle crashed through the trellis and aimed the lance right at her heart, he knew it was all for naught. He could see it in the way that Skylara moved; everything happened in slow motion then, except for him and her, and as debris flew past them, he knew that all the surprise in the world wouldn't be enough.

A sniper's bullet might not be enough, he thought forlornly as he watched her move. Even in her human form, loaded with enough Blue to kill a hippo, she had the reflexes of a jungle cat.

In the blink of an eye, she shifted her stance slightly, and the lance skittered across her skin, making sparks as it went instead of penetrating her. Lucas could only see what happened because his agility potion was beginning to course through his own system,

"You!" she roared as she charged forward, not making it clear if she was talking to Lucas or to Heisenburgle. Lucas ignored her words and moved with all the speed and strength he could muster. He saw very clearly what she was about to do. She was going to rip the gnome's head clean off.

She never got the chance, though, because as fast and as strong as she was, in this moment, he was faster. Her mortal form restrained her, whereas his had been supercharged until it bordered on the divine. Lucas grabbed her and sent her flying, even as the Hyperquadabulator toppled over and sent the gnome and the lance flying in different directions.

When Skylara got to her feet, she looked at Lucas with as much surprise as she did rage. "I should have never given you a second chance," she growled as her human features began to shift away to more reptilian ones. "The Prince wanted me, but I wanted this too badly, and now I will have to strike you down."

Lucas didn't respond. He just picked up the closest thing to a weapon that was available, which turned out to be a wrought iron post, and thrust it at her like a spear. She made no move to dodge it; she didn't need to. Even with all of his strength, the weapon was much too weak to pierce Skylara's hide now that her flesh had been replaced with scales, and she'd almost doubled in size. It bent beneath the force of his strike but didn't seem to even hurt her.

"You could have had everything!" she implored him. "You could have had pleasure and bliss, and you threw it away for what?"

"Because I'm trying to be a decent human being," he answered.

"Then die as you've lived!" she screeched, "An awful, worthless bastard!"

She unleashed a gout of fire then, though it was only half as strong as those she unleashed in her true form, it was enough to send him running for cover as she sprayed the entire courtyard in a curtain of flames. She moved fast, but right now, so did he.

He blazed through the burning path, trying to ignore the heat and the smoke nipping at his heels as he made for his stash. Still, even with all that speed, he only made it to where he'd stashed his sword before she reared up above the curtain of smoke and burning hedges as a dragon at nearly full strength.

Heisenburgle was probably lost in the fire somewhere, but he had water-cooled armor for that. He should be fine. Lucas' bigger problem was the bitch that was looking at him like he was on the menu.

"You're a cockroach, Lucas," she roared. "You're a cockroach, and as much as I'll miss your product, my only regret is that I can kill you only once!"

Her words were punctuated with a second wave of fire that was twice as powerful as the first blast had been. It had been a wildfire, but this was napalm. Fortunately, by that point, he reached his cloak and flung it around his shoulders just before he hunkered down and let it wash over him like a tide.

Lucas hadn't felt a thing when he'd shoved his hands into burning coals, but this was different. It wasn't quite enough to be painful, but even with whatever magic this thing was using, he began to sweat like he'd stepped into a sauna cranked to the max.

You stay here and hide, and you might live, he told himself, but you let her take off, and you'll never get another chance at this. Next time, she'll hear you coming from a mile away.

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It was a shitty situation. He knew that, but what could he do? Reluctantly, with the fires still raging all around him and Skylara still cursing his name at an ear-bleeding volume, he got to his feat. Even being fireproof, it was hard to convince himself he'd be okay while the garden was on fire all around him.

He couldn't afford to linger, though. Not only might the dragons take off at any moment, but his potions wouldn't last forever either. They were five-minute maximum strength affairs. His Enduring High talent doubled that to ten, but even so, he'd already used one or two minutes of that just running for his life and dealing with the firestorm.

While the smoke didn't actually give him any trouble breathing, he knew he'd pay for that once the endurance potion wore off. He also knew that the balls of concentrated wyrmsbane oil he'd planted in the garden were probably smoldering by now, too.

If I can just keep her here long enough, those might do some real damage, he hoped, now that the lance was out of commission.

The only plus side to the thick smoke was that Skylara didn't see him coming the second time. Why should she? She was too busy gloating and making cover while he charged her under cover of her own flames. Wherever he struck next, he needed to make it count.

As he approached her at top speed, he considered his options. The underbelly was the best bet for doing real damage, but it was also a very dangerous move; attacking a dragon from below gave them every chance in the world to simply flatten you with their bulk, and if there was one thing he'd learned about Skylara by chasing her half naked ass around this evening it was that she was bulky.

Even without armor, that same bulk would shield most of her vital organs. His sword simply wasn't long enough to do real damage, which left in a large muscle to inject a butt load of poison into, or maybe a tendon to reduce her mobility. Both were chancy, but he didn't really have a choice.

Wings it is, he decided after a moment's thought. While it would be easier to strike at one of her legs, she wouldn't be running out of there, and if he could stop her from flying away, his chances would improve immensely.

So, he ran straight for her left leg and used it as a springboard before leaping even higher. That gave her the chance to feel him and adjust, but it was too late. She was taken entirely by surprise as he lept nearly fifteen feet in the air and sliced partway through the membrane on the near wing before firmly embedding his sword in her exposed muscle.

In that fraction of a second, he had the chance to try to sever the ligament that would ground her completely but chose the muscle instead. He lacked the leverage to really hack through a part of her that might as well have been a steel cable while he was soaring through the air; the muscle seemed the better bet.

He was partially right, at least in part, a moment later when her tail cracked like an elephant-sized bullwhip in the spot where he would have landed if he hadn't embedded his sword into her muscle. The blow would have taken his head clean off.

"Why won't you die!" she roared, beating her wings in vain as she struggled to dislodge him.

"You first bitch!" he spat back, holding on to his hilt as he pumped the handle, flooding her body with some of the most lethal dragon poison that had ever been devised. It wasn't a tenth as much as Heisenburgle's lance would have injected into her. Still, as he pumped the handle, squeezing more and more of the toxic Wrymsbane stew into her, he hoped it fucking hurt.

She tried to dislodge him for a few seconds more, then, when that didn't work, she did what he least expected and leaped into the sky. In that moment, he had to decide whether or not he should let go right away, but if she did, he was almost certain she'd get away. So, he hung on for dear life.

She'll go down somewhere, he told himself as she screeched and soared. And when she does, you'll be there to finish the job.

At least, that's what he'd planned. However, as her wobbly flightpath fought for altitude and her right wing grew weaker and weaker, she started to move erratically. At first, he thought she was about to crash, but instead, she began to engage in complicated aerial acrobatics right over the burning hedge maze.

The muscle had clamped down hard on his blade, so it wasn't going anywhere; it might not even be straight anymore. The rest of his body, though? He was flung around all over the place, and only the shocking strength of his grip kept him from falling to his death. Against any other opponent, he would have felt superhuman with this much alchemy running through his veins; against a dragon, though, it was just enough to avoid being eaten instantly.

"Get off me!" Skylara roared.

"That's not what you were saying the rest of the night!" Lucas joked though he doubted she could hear him over the roar of the wind.

Whether she heard him or not, though, the diving corkscrew that followed was particularly violent. After several minutes of struggle, that shook him free. While his sword stayed embedded deeply in the dragoness' pectoralis muscle, her thrashing knocked him free of the weapon's blood-slick hilt, and he fell away to the earth, nearly a hundred feet below.

"Holy shit!" Lucas yelled as his mind raced, and the ground rushed up at him. Could his endurance potion keep him from becoming street pizza? He didn't know, but he was about to find out the hard way, and he was not looking forward to it.