The Monster Mage

28

^^ Earth Elemental Dragon ^^

The dragon chuckled softly, curling his neck around me like an anaconda, and spoke again, his voice coming from all sides of me, now. "Worry not, my Mistress... I am bound to your will, now and forever; I have found a new Host, is all... I enticed your Dragon Familiar to eat me, and the rest was simple... but I didn't expect the dragon to be your bonded familiar in this way... his will and even his mind are chained tightly to yours even more tightly than the Elemental's were tied to me, and inhabiting his body simply means that I am now tied to you as well... I see now where my plan failed, and I shiver in anticipation to see yours; the plan you defeated me to see through... I am... so very curious."

I sighed and carefully examined him, then extracted Dagon's Mind (locked away in a dark corner and left to sit,) and placed it into a new body of his. Next I removed all of his powers and abilities, especially the powers he'd gained access to by eating the main crystal, and finally I gathered the crystals of the Core that were currently controlling the dragon's body in front of me, feeding them to Dagon.

"That's Alright; Dagon is more senior than you, so as your punishment, you'll work here in the Marble Room, directing the Fairies and Building Monsters... you'll be designing more effective ways of killing humans, gathering their souls and the Mana inside them after you are successful, then resurrecting them to do it all over again... and again... and again. It's much more efficient than simply killing them once." I explained, then insulated his body like a reverse of my own protections, so he couldn't control anyone else, -not even the monsters he would be building,- without my permission. His abilities (and his identity crystal,) were then sequestered into their own portion of my Vault, just like Dagon and Puk's and my own.

He gave me an intrigued look, and laid down in the center of the chamber. "Oh? I suppose that does make sense... like milking a Cow, rather than killing it for steak... steak is so much more tasty, but milk is more sustainable... and when it stops giving milk..." he grinned savagely.

"Indeed. And, considering I've gathered all the Dungeons on this continent here, we'll be receiving all of the accumulated Mana they'll be losing when they 'Die'. The amount needed to resurrect them will be subtracted from that, but it's a negligible amount, when compared to the returns... there is a point of diminishing returns, but I'm sure we won't reach that point for a long while yet." I shrugged, and directed the knowledge of how the Dungeon was to be run into his mind, then commanded the Fairies to obey him, when his orders didn't conflict with the rules of the dungeon or orders from myself or the Guild.

Next, the interiors of the Marbles hollowed out at my direction, and along with a bit of material gathered from around the Dragon's floor, I added them to his body, watching him swell like a Parade Balloon with a helium hose attached. The Cores had originally added up to be a 60ft-diameter sphere; now they made a 240ft dragon, (the Asian Lòng variety, narrow and svelte and wingless,) with a newly-designed organ in his throat to replace fire-breath. Instead of fire, he would spew fog made of evaporated slime, which I knew could melt flesh from bones and turn stone into slop in mere moments with a direct application. He would create this fog, the dungeon cores and Fairies would shape it into monsters and send them along to their designated dungeon, then he would eat the crystals that formed on the surfaces of the cores when the fog came back, post-defeat of the aforementioned monsters.

He shivered and examined himself as the changes finalized, then hummed, his voice like a crack of thunder. "MISTRESS, I WONDER AT-" I swiftly cast a spell to limit the sound around me from harming my ears, and it softened to reasonable levels. "My apologies, Mistress, but I wonder at the rate of return? The adventurers will be taking Magical Crystals from the Dungeons... I'm sure you have a plan for that, but I do not know what it is."