His silver gaze flicked to the lone figure who shimmered into being beside the marble plinth: a draconic humanoid with emerald green scales dulled slightly by spawn sickness, thick black spines curving back from brow to nape like a defensive crown. He blinked slowly, clearly disoriented — tail twitching with tension.
Cataphractan. Male. New or newly dead. Pag.
Prolix double-checked the name tag, confirming his mark. The player looked strong enough to survive a few hits, clueless enough to be useful.
Without a word, Prolix tapped into the HUD, sending the trade request.
Player ProlixalParagon wishes to trade with you, do you accept?<
The Cataphractan glanced over — then startled violently, releasing a high-pitched rasp somewhere between a shriek and a snort of steam. His spines flared in surprise as he registered the white-furred Fennician crouched eye-level with him on a barrel — appearing, it must have seemed, from thin air.
ProlixalParagon blinked once, slow and calm. No threat. Just observation. Silver eyes met slit-pupiled green in what he hoped translated as neutral greeting. Then he lifted one gloved hand in a lazy wave and gestured toward the floating dialog box.
Pag hesitated, then muttered, “Oh, uh… I have nothing to trade. Sorry.”
Prolix exaggerated an eye-roll and pointed at the Cataphractan’s nearly naked form — scaled, yes, and durable, but still shivering under the after-effects of respawn. He mimed tugging at his own armor, then gestured to Pag again.
A flicker of realization crossed the reptilian face. The spines lowered slightly. Prolix watched the embarrassment creep across the other player’s posture, that familiar tension of disorientation and exposure. The kind of moment that made people accept things without asking questions.
There. Hook set.
The trade window blinked open. Prolix dropped his offerings in: a set of thick woolen robes lined with red, supple leather boots, silver-ringed gloves with crimson crystal accents, and a wide sash clasped with another red gem. Carefully weathered, slightly frayed — not too pristine. Worn just enough to whisper importance.
He finalized his half with a toothy grin, gesturing for Pag to do the same.
Pag tapped Accept.
The second the dialog box faded, Prolix was already gone.
A silent drop off the barrel, a backward blink-step into the shadows behind a cargo cart, and he vanished down the alley without so much as a breath of sound. No thanks expected. No trail left.
He didn’t need to see the aftermath. He knew the outcome.
Pag would open his inventory and find the robes equipped — just unusual enough to stand out, just familiar enough to attract the wrong kind of attention. The color scheme, the gems, the court-tailored shape: all designed to look like something taken from someone important. Someone missing.
By the time Pag wandered near a watch ward, or got flagged by a regional scan, the whispers would start.
“Isn’t that the prince’s coat?”
“No way he killed Tomlin, right?”
“Where did a new player get that set?”
ProlixalParagon slipped out a side gate toward the portside cliff paths, his disguise kit already in hand. Time to disappear again.
Not murder. Not theft. Just… tailored misdirection.
His ears flicked once as he heard an NPC bark an alarm in the far distance.
You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.
Perfect. The story was already writing itself.
The alley narrowed as ProlixalParagon descended deeper into the city’s underbelly, slipping from torchlight into pockets of gloom and copper-stained mist. Draggor’s capital—Vhal’Zaruun, the Spine-Set Citadel—loomed above him like a buried memory surfaced through sediment and steel. It was a city carved from ambition and oaths, where stone spires pierced the storm-drenched skies and the banners of a hundred minor houses snapped in the wind like teeth bared for blood.
Here, even shadows had loyalties.
Prolix ducked beneath a rusted conduit spilling alchemical runoff, stepping lightly across a cracked hexstone grate. A notification blinked in the corner of his HUD:
[Area Discovered: Lower Vhal'Zaruun – Guild Market Sub-Tier]
[Passive Stealth Bonus: +5 in dim light. Detection chance reduced by 12%.]
His cloak shimmered briefly, adjusting to the ambient luminance—one of the few perks from his modified [Umbral Mantle] schema. The path ahead split at a trio of merchant stalls, their awnings mottled with rustmold and faded sigils. One sold hot sandbread and pickled lizard meat, another hawked shell-chits for illegal fast travel services. The third—a collapsible gearsmith tent stitched from vulture hide and chitin—had what he came for.
Not the vendor, nor the wares.
The contact.
“Cowl deep. Teeth out,” murmured Prolix under his breath—activating a low-level [Tinker’s Cant: Signal Cipher]. A brief shimmer pulsed through the crystal buttons on his gloves. In the reflection of a cracked lantern mirror, a shape detached from the shadows.
Female-presenting, tall, armored in scale-thin obsidian mesh: a half-elven broker tagged as Kishnari the Stitch. Her title flickered with an orange exclamation mark—quest-giver designation. She said nothing, but handed him a glyph-inscribed envelope sealed in black wax.
>Type: Instigation / Reputation Manipulation<
>Difficulty: Adaptive (Player Scaling Detected)<
>Reward Tier: Undisclosed (GM Flag Active)<
>Accept?<
He blink-clicked Yes.
Another breadcrumb. Another step toward the deeper layers of the city’s lie-soaked core. Every action here was theater. And he? He’d always been good at playing parts.
He slipped the envelope into his satchel, turning just as the scent of ozone cut the air. Somewhere behind him, the spawn square flared again—another resurrection, another player tossed into the world wet and wide-eyed. The Cataphractan would be fumbling through dialogue trees by now, attention drawn by whispers, guards, or worse.
By nightfall, the city would be alive with rumor.
And ProlixalParagon? He’d be far beneath the spires, chasing ghosts through the underrails of Draggor’s throne-forged heart.
One moment, ProlixalParagon stood amidst the mildew-stained chaos of Vhal’Zaruun’s lower market tier. The next, he slipped through a trick-panel elevator disguised as a tool shed, descending in silence through iron-cored stone. Ancient gears ground beneath his feet—slow and deliberate, untouched by time or oversight.
>Zone Transition: “Substrata Sector 7-A – Bound Workshop of Tinker’s Guild (Redline Access)<
The lift settled with a metallic sigh, gears locking into place beneath his boots. As the doors split, sigillight flickered to life along the floor in sweeping arcs of crimson and copper — welcoming him back into the depths of the Bound Workshop.
ProlixalParagon exhaled slowly, ears adjusting to the hum of resonant mana beneath the stone. This place had no scent of rot, no cry of gulls or stink of the harbor’s sludge. Here, it was copper and dust and charged silence — the kind of stillness that made thoughts sharpen.
He crossed the chamber swiftly, cloak fluttering behind him as he approached his workstation. But something on the intake bench caught his attention.
A package.
Not one he’d left.
Wrapped in worn vellum and cinched tight with memory-thread — a material that curled like burned leaves in response to touch. Someone had dropped this here. Someone who’d known he’d find it.
With a furrowed brow and a flick of one claw, Prolix undid the knot.
Inside was a thin sheaf of blue-tinted alloy paper etched with impossibly fine lines: glyph-circuitry, pressure nodes, magethermal conduits — all woven into a single design. The shape was familiar now, painfully so. He’d spent hours staring at versions of it. Dreaming them.
A slow grin curled Prolix’s muzzle.
He traced the schematic with one gloved finger. This wasn’t just armor. It was legacy — whispered about in forgotten patch notes and half-buried NPC side-dialogues: an old dev artifact, maybe, or a player-forged myth that had survived engine rewrites.
The Legacy Core.
Built not just to protect, but to adapt. To remember.
Once assembled, it would bond to him—permanently. No transfers. No re-crafts. Soulbound, down to his code signature. And unlike other scaling gear, this one wouldn’t just mirror his stats — it would amplify class functions, evolving as he evolved. Reflex augments. Energy bleed damping. Reactive flares keyed to Tinkerer-specific constructs.
But only at Level 40.
Prolix was still eight levels short.
He exhaled slowly and turned toward the auto-schematic loom, slotting the blueprint into its reader with deliberate care. The machine chirped once, then began parsing the design.
The holographic projection formed midair — five overlapping segments, one of them now glowing with new detail. A chestplate with nested sockets, modular glyphplates, and an arc-infused anchor port along the spine. He could almost feel its weight already.
Not just a piece of armor.
An inheritance. A claim.
He drummed clawtips against the bench, thinking. That meant someone else was tracking these. Someone who wanted the set completed — or wanted him to complete it.
Which meant he’d just painted another mark on his back.
He flicked to his map — the auto-log showed the blueprint’s place of origin had been scrubbed. No delivery NPC. No player drop. Not even a time-stamp.
Classic.
“Alright, mystery crafter,” he murmured aloud, sliding the remaining two blueprint slots into a private folder. “Let’s see who’s still playing this game.”
As the loom continued to scan the new segment, ProlixalParagon turned toward the secondary bay — the one rigged for prototype assembly.
If the next two were anywhere near the capital, he'd find them. And if not...
Well.
He was a Tinkerer.
He’d build the path to them.