This new class [Avatar of Life] was incredible.
Cain opened his skill tree and found that it was basically all creation-based skills, with an innate ability to alter nature within his level in kilometers. One of the skills let him appoint Assistants, which sounded somewhere between puppets and Priestesses, to do the work on his behalf, while another let him grant blessings, which would advance in power when he reached the Demigod Realm, the first stage of Divinity.
"So this is what an endgame Class looks like. I don't really see where there is to go with this. Summoning became summoning or creation, and my puppets are now as powerful as my old Echoes were." Cain mused as he poured his skill points into all of the interesting-looking paths, saving the more esoteric ones for later.
Creating new forms of Divine Crafting Materials was very cool but not high enough on the priority list to get his points yet.
Blessing people with one of his skills for 24 hours made the cut, though. Because he was a benevolent sort of person and because he didn't have to tell them that it was going to wear off the very next day if he didn't want to.
"Sect Master Cain. I have a request. There are no more Opal Prismatic Males. I don't suppose that you could . . ." The little dragon with a sweet tooth asked with a flustered expression.
"Well, I don't see why not. I haven't tried creating a summon as an independent being yet, though I could free the ones I made before." Cain agreed. That had to be worth some experience, right? He was an Avatar of Life now, and he was helping someone get laid.
That totally had to count.
Cain looked into her thoughts to see what the Dragon thought the perfect man would look like in Dragon and humanoid form, then called out a [Free Being] and imbued it with a sense of devotion to her and some basic skills like hunting and cooking that every Puppet he created would have.
All he needed was a name. Lars, this dragon would be Lars.
"Lars, meet your fellow Opal Prismatic Dragon, Leeann. Leeann, meet Lars." He introduced them.
"Well, hello there, sexy." Did I get summoned to a Divine Realm, or did you descend to meet me?" Lars asked once the introductions were finished.
The older dragons chuckled at his cheesy pickup line, but it worked especially well on his counterpart, who was blushing a rainbow of colors.
"Oh, he is smooth. Next, he will compliment her scales, just watch." One of the other young dragons whispered to Luna, who was standing next to her.
Sure enough, Lars leaned forward to brush his muzzle against hers. "What polish do you use? I simply must have some for myself."
From what Cain could tell, that was as good as a public kiss only seconds after they met, but Leeann was leaning into it, then she grabbed his wingtip with her forepaw.
"Come with me, and I will show you."
The two young dragons flew off to her nest, where she spelled the entrance for privacy and soundproofing. Cain smirked up at them while half of the crowd shook their head in dismay at the scene.
"That ability is practically cheating. You used her thoughts of the perfect personality and appearance to make a mate for her, didn't you?" One of the Ancients, a Bronze Dragon that Cain vaguely remembered meeting before, asked.
Cain gave the old dragon a smile. "Yes, in both dragon and human form, so even if they transform to go somewhere together, he will still be perfect for her."
"See, this is why the Nature Dragons refuse to do transformations, except in exceptional cases. Everyone gets jealous," One of the others rumbled.
"The rest of my skills are similar to each other, and mostly for the creation and altering of natural surroundings, which might not be considered polite inside the mountain," Cain added.
"How about the lower levels? We are running low on Nests now that we have the power to stop the humans from constantly hunting us in this region, so a few new ones to test out your new skills might not be a bad idea." Someone suggested, looking pointedly at the nest under the Matriarch.
"That's not a bad idea. And you can close up that entrance you found so that the humans can't sneak in that way again." She agreed.
A number of older dragons, transformed into human shapes due to the currently crowded conditions in what amounted to the Dragon's town square, began leading the way toward what they thought would be a good area for development, deeper underground and further from the main column of the city, for the species that liked a bit more privacy than most.
It also reduced the risk that they would have to make an emergency intervention if Cain should make a mistake in his first few attempts at carving nests into the mountain.
Cain called a Dwarven Engineer into [Merger] with him and inspected the area, noting the available materials. The dragons liked natural surroundings, and their homes didn't usually contain materials that didn't belong to the mountain, except for their personal belongings.
That meant that he had a lot of granite and obsidian to work with from this area and not much else.
[What do you think? Like the Pillars and alcoves of Graska to give that solid feeling, or should we go more flowing and rounded, like the underground cities of the Gnomes?] Cain asked the Engineer.
[Dragons are like Elves. They like pointless and decorative carvings, no matter what they tell you. So go for the curved and pointy Elven styles, like the South Coast of the Serrah Woods.] The Engineer recommended showing Cain how that would work inside a mountain.
The rooms were square, but all of the doorways and interior windows had pointed arches lined with elegant carvings. Cain decided to do all the carvings in the style of the Ancient houses that he had been in while keeping the basic elven styling cues.
That would give a nice personalized touch to the area. From what he could tell, the nest was usually one large front room, with a smaller nest off one side, often hidden by a curved tunnel so that others couldn't see inside.
The standard height was sixty meters, giving the dragons room to grow into their nest without ever having to move, so Cain made this one the same way while adding a few extras to the front room, including a human-sized kitchen with bench seating and a table made of the natural stone.
The actual nest room was entered from the back corner while extending forward so that the occupant couldn't be seen until the intruder was actually inside the second room.
He even carved the floor with a slight indent so that the loot that Dragons liked to pile in their nest would naturally move to the middle of the room, where it could be best appreciated.
"What do you all think? How do you like a Dragon Nest designed by an Ancient?" Cain asked.
"I know it is pretty bare right now, but everyone likes to personalize their own space, so I left room for paintings, statues, and such all through the alcoves and tried not to clutter the space too much."
"Not bad at all. But why is the floor not flat?" Someone asked from the back.
"Empty a bag of coins from your storage ring, and you will see," Cain called back, loud enough to be heard through the thick stone.
"Is that a self-piling treasure horde? I mean, it will only work for the young ones who don't have enough to cover the floor, but that is ingenious." The dragon laughed, and Cain heard the sound of coins spilling over and over as he played with the feature.
"Should I make more like it along this wall? There should be room for three in total." Cain asked the oldest of the Dragons who were examining the carvings around the doorframes.
"Where did you find this creature? It should have gone extinct tens of thousands of years ago." One of them asked, pointing to the carving of a hippogryph.
"They still exist, or I should say that they again exist, on my homeworld. They were reintroduced during the second Great War and trapped in time-looped dungeons.
Then the intelligent species learned ways to remove clones of creatures from the dungeons, and they became rare but not extinct on the surface.
The carving style is from a particular historical city that I found hidden in the mountains during my travels." Cain explained.
"I like it. Do the others this way too. It makes the new lairs feel like they have a bit of history to them instead of trying to embrace something new or trendy."
With that in mind, Cain made the other two exactly the same, creating a uniform row of Dragon nests in the formerly abandoned tunnel deep within the ground.
The Earth Element Dragons opened up the tunnels that led to the three new nests while they made plans to develop the whole zone under this portion of the forest at a later date. That wasn't Cain's problem, though, as even the near future to the Dragons was at least a decade later, and he wasn't planning to be here anywhere near that long.
"I should go check on my disciples and make sure that my Daughter hasn't hugged anyone to death. She's a bit too cuddly for most people's personal space." Cain told the dragons, who began making their way back up to the main level, eager to see if Cain was right about the chances of Luna having captured someone unwilling.
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