Chapter 271
Chapter 271 “Double head?”
Bone Dragon?
Du Wei skipped a beat. When it came to a dragon skeleton, he does indeed have a set. Although slightly incomplete, he can improvise if needed. Just when he wanted to speak again, an idea popped in his head: “Teacher is very stingy! Say what? Bring me to the ancient battlefields to scavenge dragon bones? Humph, you killed a gold lizard already and even trapped his soul. I’ll be dead before I believe you didn’t take his carcass with you.”
Green robe Gandalf became stumped at being caught. Making a guilty smile, he scratches his head: “This, ughhh…..”
Du Wei shakes his head: “Teacher you don’t have to say anything, since it’s teacher’s treasure, I be embarrassed to make this request.”
Gandalf immediately shouted: “Who said I can’t give you! Humph, merely a set of bones…. It’s just, there’s two problems.”
“Hmm?”
Hearing there’s opportunity; Du Wei immediately revealed an affectionate smile.
“Aigh …” Green Robe Gandalf sighed: “That day when I met that little gold lizard, my heart was stuffing with steam from being injured by his old man. At first I intended to hold back, but my discretion went out the window whenever I recalled my defeat. In the end, I bombarded that thing into dozens of pieces and only managed to salvage a third of the body…. Ughhh, fortunately, there’s a lot of scales left. If you use the gold scales, you can make a lot of nice things with them.”
A little pause later, he explains, “Before in history, it is rarely known for the carcass of a gold dragon to be refined into an undead dragon. For one thing, gold dragons are the royalty among their kind, powerful and dominating. Who can kill such a tough creature and take away their carcass? Secondly, as royalty, their companions would always take away their bodies for burial in the legendary tomb of the dragons. Never would they leave the carcass in the outside world. And most importantly, the last reason is… Let me tell you, the bones of a gold dragon are vastly different from the rest of their counterparts. It’s already quite the feat to refine a ordinary bone dragon, imagine doing it with a gold dragon’s carcass? You be dead long before you manage that feat. Then there’s the problem of gathering enough dead spirits to power your spell. You aren’t profoundly attuned to dark magic. Even if I help you, I’m still not an authentic dark mage. If we gather some regular bones to make one, I can still manage for the power of an ordinary bone dragon is limited. The ideal situation now is to use some ordinary bones and then add in the soul of that gold dragon. By doing so, the creature would come out exponentially stronger than an average undead. But if you get greedy and forcefully use the skeleton of a gold dragon, the number of undead spirits required will increase several fold…. Frankly speaking, throughout the ages, none has achieved such a feat. I’m no different, nor do I have such a large amount of dead spirits in my inventory. If you go on a killing spree and attract the attention of the magic law enforcement team, I’m not going to help you settle the trouble!”
Du Wei thought and thought before whispering at Gandalf: “Teacher, maybe things aren’t that difficult.”
Subsequently, Du Wei pulled Gandalf out of the castle and headed for the house in the back of the castle.
Normally guarded by a set of guards outside and a series of barriers, this here was the forbidden ground placed under Du Wei’s command. Before Du Wei would often use this area as a place to do some simple magic experiments, but as Anglia City grew into his personal production base, Du Wei rarely came back.
Following Du Wei into this magic laboratory, Gandalf’s first thought was how satisfied he was with the furnishing and equipment’s of this place. After all, most of the things in here were given to him by Master Alley from the magic union.
“Teacher, my space magic is really meager and could only open up this much space in this house…. And the stuff I’m about to take out can’t be seen by outsiders… You see, can you…”
Gandalf nodded and had a look around with his arms behind his back. From the outside, this magic laboratory looked like it could only fit a few rooms. But once inside, the space was at least three to five times larger. Apparently Du Wei expanded the space using spatial magic.
Going a circle around the room, Gandalf laughed: “Don’t blame yourself. You only started learning magic recently. In such a short time frame, you did very well already to manage this much.”
After that, the old guy rummaged through his robe and pulled out several silver badges from his pocket. Stacking it in his hand, he ran to the four corners of the room and decorated all of Du Wei’s original inscriptions with the badges and a set of magic crystals.
Then with a little rumble, the sight in front of Du Wei changed and began to distort. From a space equal to a giant house, the space expanded to become a big stadium! As expected, a Magister sure is amazing!
Still somewhat dissatisfied, Gandalf sighed: “The magic circles you placed were originally too small, thus I can only do this much. I don’t have time to help you redo the magic inscriptions so you will need to modify it yourself…. Okay, what did you want to show me again?”
With a space as big as a stadium, Du Wei immediately pulled out the bone dragon inside his storage ring!
Seeing the twenty meters long body suddenly appear in front of the two, Gandalf immediately narrowed up his eyes with light beaming inside. Gandalf’s after all a super magician, he knows it when something good appears before him.
Can’t even wait for Du Wei to react, Gandalf rushes up to touch, knock, and praise it again and again. Once the old man got the excitement out of his old body, he turns to look back at Du Wei: “Good stuff you got here! Boy, where did you steal this eh?!”
Du Wei smiles embarrassingly like he was caught red handed. From how he went to Watt City and how he scammed that Dark Mage into fighting the second prince, he carefully went over the story.
Upon hearing the name Tartaglia, Gandalf’s brow picked up: “Tartaglia? I vaguely remember that name. Humph, who would have expected this… A dark mage reaching eighth rank is no easy feat and extremely rare to come by. Yet he met his end because you scammed him? Boy, you really are cunning you know that.”
Speaking up to here, Gandalf suddenly remembers his own experience with Du Wei back in the capital city. From how he was tricked by Du Wei and how he was shamed by running away, this eccentric old man hurries to change the topic: “Hmm, this skeleton is already considered top grade!
I don’t know how much time the dark magician spent rummaging through the ancient battlefields, but from one look, I can see at least three to four kinds of dragons mixed in here. Some are even top grade material! Unfortunately, the quality is uneven where some pieces are barely passable for use. But overall, this can be considered top grade. And…..”
Pausing for a moment, he reaches out to gently knock on the bone dragon. From his fingers, a faint hint of black smoke leaked out from the tip. Du Wei recognizes it, that stuff was the dark energy produced from dead spirits.
Du Wei’s not surprised that this old man had dead spirits in his inventory. After all, this old monster lived long enough to match his life span several times over.
But this spec of dark energy released by Gandalf was very soon absorbed by the bone dragon. Laughing, Gandalf explains: “And look…. The most wonderful part of this bone dragon is that it’s not a newly gathered set! It was already a finished product created by a high level dark magician, just that the dragon soul inside is destroyed. After being killed, you were lucky enough to pick it up for cheap. Unlike a fresh skeleton, we don’t have to go through the usual process of pouring dead spirits into it, saving us quite the trouble and time involved. The simplest way now is to inject the gold dragon’s soul into this skeleton. Using the dark spell, which I’m going to teach you, we can directly turn this thing into your pet… However, it will be such a waste to use this skeleton like it is now!”
Hearing the last part, Du Wei started to get excited… This Green Hat’s finally willing to give him something nice!
Like him, Green Hat’s eyes were also full of excitement. Like a chef facing a rare ingredient, a magician would love to have wing at any rare material.
Finally tossing his stinginess away, the old man summons his storage item. And from it, the carcass of a gold dragon appears beside Du Wei.
Sure enough, the identity of this thing was the poor second dragon prince!
Oh how majestic this prince looked back then. Holding that golden spear, this guy took on tens of thousands of soldiers alone and never backed down. And now, this prince was nothing more than pieces of meat and bone on the ground. At least the head remains intact, but other than that, every other part were lopped into pieces or broken by some major impact.
After taking everything out, Gandalf sat his buttocks down and simply ignored Du Wei. Carefully eyeing the stuff in front of his old eyes, this old geezer began to brood over what to do.
Du Wei knew this old mage was busying figuring out the best way to fuse the two bodies together, therefore, he decided to leave him be. Running to the side, Du Wei decided to amuse himself by picking up some gold scales to look over.
As expected of a gold dragon’s scale. Even without the dragon aura circulating across these scales, the hardness of the material alone was enough to make it a rare product. Compared to ordinary metal, this scale was heavens above everything else.
If used to make weapons and armor…
Thinking up to here, Du Wei quickly scurries over to collect all the scales. Aside from the ones on the floor, there are still many left on the body. Not being polite, Du Wei pulled out a dagger and began his efforts of prying them off. However, he soon realized a simple dagger wasn’t going to do. Luckily in his possession was the legendary sword “Beauty under the Moonlight”. Using this razor sharp sword, Du Wei spent his afternoon flaking the poor corpse and stripping it of all its glory.
After Du Wei finished his task of stripping the scales, Du Wei found that the old man was still busy brooding over what to do. Not wanting to disturb the old guy, Du Wei decided it was far better for him to go somewhere else for now. Tossing the scales into his storage ring, he made his way outside and left the old man to daze around all day.
It didn’t take long for Marde to bring over all of the best blacksmiths in the castle – every one of these craftsmen were hired by Du Wei through tremendous costs. Originally these people had their own business in the capital, but considering the fact that Du Wei would expand heavily in the Northwest, these blacksmiths decided the prospect in the Northwest were better.
Aside from the very high preferential treatment given to them by Du Wei, each one of them also brought along at least ten apprentices. As craftsman with the highest paying wage on the continent, they would naturally serve Du Wei without faltering.
Dumping a bunch of the gold scales in front of these expert craftsmen, Du Wei asked: “Have a look, what kind of weapons can you guys make?”
Puzzled, one of the blacksmith picked up a scale to be surprised by how light it was. Knocking it, this guy frowns and asked: “Duke, this isn’t metal is it? If I recall, the magic beast scales you tasked us to craft before in the capital are similar to these scales. But those scales were nowhere close to being this big.”
Du Wei smiled: “Indeed, these aren’t metal… Hmm, these scales…. Yes, they are scales of some magic beast.”
At the answer, the blacksmith became depressed: “My lord, we wasted so many of those scales the last time. If you ask us to craft these again, I’m not sure how many more we will waste.”
“The method of refining is not your concern. What I want to ask is if I give you the method, will you be able to craft me some armor and weapons?”
The blacksmith mused for a while and said: “It’s not hard if its armor. Many of the generals nowadays are wearing those ‘leaf styled’ armors, similar to how these scales look. It’s just that these scales are a little bit on the big side. But that’s fine; we can grind and polish it to size. The problem though is the shoulder pads and arm guards… I’m not sure if we can bend these to size…. My lord, I can’t give you a definite answer right now. The only way is to test it first.”
Du Wei nodded and handed three pieces of the dragon scales for these craftsmen to study.
These dragon scales really are the best material to build armor! Best thing of all, they are naturally attuned to magic. Though mithril can do the same, that stuff was too hard to come by and way too expensive!
If he can manufacture several sets from these scales, ha-ha, can’t be lower than artifact class.
Thinking about it some more, Du Wei decided to throw in the gold spear for the blacksmiths to study too. Although the thing’s broken in half, but the original product was too big to begin with. With only half the spear, it just so happens to be the perfect size for human use.
However, Du Wei wasn’t without precaution. After leaving, he ordered his guard captain, Old Smoke, to monitor these craftsmen.
As a world traveler, it be shameful to let someone stick a spy in his ranks.
Handling this matter, Du Wei again returned to the laboratory. By now, Gandalf was already up and busy measuring the skeleton while constantly mumbling something like he was very distressed: “Aigh… Just can’t have the best of both worlds! No matter what, there’s always waste…. What to do, what to do!”
Seeing Gandalf was no longer stuck in his meditating pose, Du Wei went up and asked with a laugh: “Teacher, what did you say?”
Gandalf looked at Du Wei: “This is good stuff. If we leave any bones out, it will be a total waste. I intended to expand the size of the dragon to include both skeletons, but sadly, I can’t seem to make it work without sending it off balance. Excluding the rejections deprived from their different affinity, it always comes out either too bloated or too small somewhere. Either outcome will end up affecting its combat capacity. Then there’s the problem with the head. That part is the most precious in both dragon and most complete. Losing either skull in the final product is horribly wasteful!”
Not even blinking, Du Wei suddenly smiled: “Teacher… You’ve blinded yourself this time! If you don’t want to waste either skull, then why not make a double headed dragon?”
“Double… Double-headed dragon?” Gandalf lapsed out for a second before a gleam of light sparkled out of those eyes of his. Shouting, Gandalf screams with great delight: “Awesome, perfect, wonderful!@!!”