His new clothes arrived later that day, and though they didn't fit Lucas nearly as well as Mr. Twee's outfits had, he was just grateful not to be half-naked anymore. When the women in this house looked at him like he was on the menu, that just wasn't going to fly.

He wasn't on the menu, but it seemed that almost everything else was, and the feast he walked into that night was more extravagant than lunch would have led him to believe. Lucas went to dinner that night, mindful of what to eat and drink, but was overwhelmed by his choices.

There was a ham, a roast chicken, and a roast, and those were just the main courses. "You didn't tell the chef what you wanted," the head maid said, acting as if this was his fault, "So, she made sure you had plenty of options."

Lucas shook his head. There were several appetizers and soups, along with any number of desserts. It was nearly half as much food as he'd bought to celebrate his engagement in Meadowin, and as near as he could tell, it had all been made for him.

"What's going to happen to these leftovers when I'm done?" Lucas asked, halfway through his second course, when he realized the sheer magnitude of the disaster that awaited when he announced he was full.

"Well, the staff will eat," the maid he'd scolded at lunch offered.

"And after that?" Lucas continued, unwilling to be dissuaded.

"Well…" the brunette that had first greeted him answered, trying to stall from the other side of the table. "Unfortunately, only so much food can really be put to use…"

The women, at least, had backed off to some degree. That was the other good thing he'd discovered at dinner besides the mountain of food he was facing down alone. It was like they'd come to some mutual agreement that being too forward was driving him away. So, instead, while all of them were unfailingly polite and sweet, there was a thin veneer of professionalism and deniability to everything they said, which made their futile attempts at seduction almost bearable.

"That's bullshit," Lucas countered. "As long as I'm the only guest in the Prince's little love nest, I don't want more food being prepared than is actually going to be eaten. Make sure the leftovers are given to the beggars at least."

"But sir, that would be beneath the dignity of—" the blonde started to protest, but Lucas cut her off.

"All of you have been really keen on making sure I enjoy myself," he countered, "But you know what would make me really unhappy? Besides being aggressively flirted with the day after my fiancée died? Knowing a meal like this went to waste. You get me?"

"Y-yes, sir," they both agreed, thoroughly cowed by his dark words.

Lucas felt like shit for being like this, but then he really didn't have a choice. In fact, he felt so bad about it that he reached for his wine glass and almost downed it. He was forced to pretend to drink it before setting it back down and switching to water once more.

Just like at lunch, it was only the red wine that was spiked, which made his life easier. At a feast like this, drinking was the last thing he wanted anyway.

Lucas ate more than he should have. He indulged to the fullest, but that wasn't enough to stop him from encouraging the servants to pull up chairs and start eating themselves or from using that resulting distraction to steal a butter knife up his sleeve. He wasn't going to hurt himself, or anyone else for that matter.

He was just going to use it to wedge his door shut so that no one tried to sneak into his bed in the middle of the night. Honestly, after the bathtub stunt that the dark-haired maid had pulled, he wouldn't put it past them, and he had no interest in waking up to some naked beauty that didn't understand the meaning of no.

The only beauty in my bed is Danaria, he reminded himself, but there's no way I'll be able to see her again until Skylara is dealt with.

Lucas didn't get back to his room until late that night. Even though that was the case, his day was far from wasted. After dinner, he did the same thing he'd done once he'd sent off his missives and spent the remainder of the evening until he fell asleep dwelling on his plans for revenge. If anything, the crass flirtation he was being subjected to had inflamed his anger.

He wanted to take that dragon down in the worst way, and part of him wanted to knock the Prince from his pedestal as well. The man hadn't actually done anything to cause this situation directly, but Lucas couldn't help but blame him for enabling that monster.

To anyone who was watching him, and he was sure that he was being watched by means that were magic or mundane, it might have looked like he was doing nothing at all. He certainly looked like someone who'd just lost the woman he loved as he stared up at the ceiling for more than half the day.

The emotion that twisted his heart wasn't sadness, though; it was anger, and his blank eyes were fixed on something no one else could see. He whiled away the hours deep in his system interface as he tried to decide what it was he was going to need to do to end Skylara.

Realistically, he could have probably whipped up the strongest dose of Blue that he was capable of making and delivering it to her as an apology before watching her flat line. Before all of this, that certainly would have worked, but now he doubted that she trusted him enough to take what he made so recklessly.

I should have made her OD that night when I had a chance, he thought with a sigh as he remembered the night he'd made her think they'd banged.

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That opportunity was lost to Lucas now, so he tried not to dwell on it any more than he had tried to dwell on all the times he should have offed Adin. Instead, he focused on his stats. If he was going to be a mother fucking dragon slayer, he was going to have to up his sword game about a thousand percent. Fortunately, he had a shitload of points lying around to do that with if he decided it was the right move.

Name: Lucas Sharpe Class: Magical Chemist Level: 8

Agility: 13 Endurance: 11 Appearance 10

Intelligence: 14 Strength: 11 Soul: 10

Health: 100% Mana: 100%

Status Effect: None.

Imbued Equipment: Ring of Vanishing (Fine Quality)

You have unspent points. Please use them to increase your ability scores or gain feats/perks.

Lucas had 35 points, and near as he could tell, that was enough to get his strength and his endurance to 15 and his agility to 20. He wasn't sure how strong or fast that was, but even that probably wasn't enough to beat a dragon.

I could boost all that with potions and elixirs, too, he told himself. Lucas had done that ages ago in his fight with Sir Tristian and a couple other appropriate battles, so he had some idea of exactly how much two or three points could affect things.

He had Enduring High, now too, which would make performance-enhancing drugs last that much longer. Is there anything that makes them work better, though? He asked himself as he flipped through the list. Some kind of increased sensitivity?

Lucas had no way of searching through the long lists of abilities he could purchase, but so far he hadn't found one. If he did, though, that one would be a must-have.

Even if he didn't, though, he was pretty sure that getting +1 when you had 20 of something was a lot more powerful than +1 when you had ten of it, so from that perspective, at least, there was lots of synergy in that choice. Still, for now, he resisted. He wanted to do some precise testing at Blackgate with potions calibrated to various strengths when he got out of here. Not only would making up a whole pile of those give him more experience points. They would also be a lot more fun than anything he could do in this house.

As he had that thought, the image of the nude dryad sprang to mind as if to refute his statement, but he suppressed it. She's not in this house, he reminded himself, and even if she was, she wouldn't be half as pretty as Danaria.

As Lucas' thoughts about boosting his attributes chased themselves round and round in his head, he eventually returned to the lists of advantages and abilities that might be able to help him. There were some straightforward powers like Heroic Toughness and Infatigable that would make him much tougher without too big an investment. Those were definitely on the list.

Unfortunately, what there wasn't much of was combat abilities. He didn't have any sort of super strike waiting to be unlocked, and as powerful as magic was, he was pretty sure that in a fight with someone who could breathe fire, that would be alike a flintlock vs an AK-47. The Prince had a whole guild of mages. So, if mages could take out a dragon, he wouldn't be worried about her.

I have those achievements, he considered. Fancy Footwork, and whatever the murdery one was. Maybe if I get those, it will unlock new abilities that will make me better with a sword. Is a sword even big enough to kill a dragon, though? I might need a lance or some shit.

Regardless of what he didn't pick up, the first purchase that he made was one in the foraging section. Preferred Enemy seemed to exist so that he could have an easier time harvesting certain varieties of reagents, but that wasn't what he planned on using it for.

For 1 point it gave him extensive knowledge of a specific variety of creature as well as 10% increased damage and a 25% increased quantity in harvesting yields. For 2 points, one could focus on a subspecies, and it increased that knowledge to encyclopedic levels and, most importantly, increased the damage to 30% as one suddenly knew exactly where and how to strike. It also increased the quality of the yields by 25%.

As soon as Lucas was sure that it applied to dragons, and specifically red dragons, he selected it. As soon as he did so, his mind was flooded with information about dragons, and specifically, the fiery crimson ones like Skylara. He suddenly knew how big they got, how old they could be, and how hot their fire was. He even knew what their eggs looked like. No, more than that, he knew what the properties of dragon egg shells were and how useful they could be in armor oil of fire resistance and…

Lucas was having trouble even keeping up with the things he knew about dragons at this point. He'd gotten it because he wanted to know where to stab the bitch to kill her as quickly as possible, but his mind was flooding with the nature of the scale patterns and a thousand points of trivia. The red sequined dresses she wore to balls most nights were actually her scaly skin in a transformed state. The fact that she could take them off, put them on, or change their appearance didn't seem to matter.

Worse, though, was the fact that her supple skin was just as hard as her underbelly was normally. Though that was weak by draconic standards, it was still harder than steel and…

"Fucking hell!" Lucas groaned, grabbing his skull to ensure it didn't fly apart from all of this new information. He'd gotten what he wanted, but it might well be more than he needed by a long shot. For better or worse now, he had a doctorate in dragonology,

I just hope all this gives me the information I need to kill the bitch, he thought as he started to dig through the vast pile of alchemical and combat knowledge that now filled his brain.

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