Madman’s Retirement

"A smoothie."

"???" Dain had a confused face as he looked at Grant.

Grant shrugged. "Worth a try." He then went back to what he was doing, as Natalie looked on in morbid curiosity.

Morbid indeed. When can you ever see a descaled wyvern, that's still alive?

Earlier that day Natalie and Dain went out to look for Grant after a loud explosion, followed by reverberating noises through the forests caused the adventurers to stop and take a recount of all the adventurers, and when it was noticed Grant was missing, they went out.

Not because they were worried about him. By this point they were relatively sure he was just fine.

And they found him... next to a bound wyvern, forceps in hand. His words, not quite lining up with his soothing tone.

"Shh shh, we're almost done, just a few more scales, and we'll be all done."

And they believed him, because the wyvern was almost completely scaleless. And toothless. And missing membrane and nails. Honestly, it looked more like a plucked chicken.

While Natalie looked on in curiosity, Dain coughed a little. "So what happened?" He inquired.

Grant shrugged, not stopping, in spite of the wyvern's painful whimpering. Who knew a wyvern could whimper like that.

Natalie had a question. "Why didn't you kill it?" She asked rather innocently, but it caused the wyvern to freeze up, before sagging back down, as if hopelessly giving up. After having had all its scales plucked, perhaps death would be preferrable. Besides, how would it get out of these chains?

Indeed, the poor wyvern was tangled up in golden chains, seemingly unmovable, inscribed with runes on every chain, which Grant had seemingly used to wrap up the wyvern.

Grant chuckled at that, after finally collecting all the scales. "Why would I do that? True, killing the wyvern could get me more materials, like wyvern skin, wyvern hearts, wyvern blood, etc etc, but it isn't as profitable. You see, don't you know the saying about golden egg laying goose?" He takes out a potion that the two do not recognize, but the wyvern begins flaiiling, as if begging for it, almost instinctually.

"Never kill the golden egg laying goose."

Pouring the potion all over the wyvern, an almost immediate reaction occurs, as the wyvern starts growing in the scales, membrane everything, before those fall out as well, being replaced by better fangs, better scales, and it begins growing a pair of forelegs, which were undoubtedly painful to grow, and yet there was undoubtable joy penetrating the wyverns' eyes.

Its wings had grown, its tail lengthening, growing a scorpion tip at the end, and its head grew more horn crests, and soon, what stood before them was not a wyvern. It was a dragon.

The creature, clearly excited by its new form, glances at the humans, almost as if contemplating killing the humans, before glancing at the first person it had encountered. With its newfound intelligence (and the killing intent directed at it), it decides to retreat rather than bother with these measly humans.

As the dragon fled, Natalie looked on in wonder while Dain looked dazed, if not a bit worried. One, assured of their safety as well as their lovers, the other more worried about the new dragon on the loose.

"You made a dragon!" Natalie excitedly states, while Dain worriedly asked, "Won't that be a problem?" He worried.

Grant shook his head, "not really no. There's like 50 other dragons lurking in the nearby forest, and 5 more won't change anything. Besides, after their newfound sapience, and the beating they just received, they'll stay away from the human cities for the next few centuries. If they're not killed first, of course."

Dain nodded, before realizing something else.

"Wait, five more?"

"Well, I saw 4 more wyverns during this journey, but this time the wyvern managed to make some noise before I caught it huh."

Dain suddenly felt a headache coming on, while Natalie seemed more impressed than anything else. Seeing Dain's face, Grant clapped him on the back. "Don't worry" he assured Dain as the boy looked back up.

"All my students feel the same way." Not assuring.

After the long journey they finally arrived at the outpost. And the outpost looked just about as Grant expected. The walls were not completely constructed, some of which were stone, others were wood, and even more were just planks. It very much looked barely in construction. Which made sense to him. This place was a basic outpost, judged to be relatively safe for new adventurers to try out their mettle.

Of course, Grant could sense at least 50 dragons nearby, as well as countless dangerous things that would easily cause someone to reconsider making this a place for new adventurers to study, but considering that everywhere has this level of issues, that makes sense.

There is no such thing as truly safe. Even the tamest of villages are tame because something huge once happened, with such quiet places being the results of such large conflicts.

And since no one else was going to collect, this would serve as a nice past time for his retirement.

The line of carts and stuff were about as long as one would expect, to no surprise.

About when it was almost their turn though, a commotion burst out.

While the rest of the group was content to wait, Grant decided to go take a look.

At the front of the line a beastman dressed in rags, begging the guards to let him through, while the guards looked on, with one looking on grim, the other with just a trace of vile amusement present in his eyes.

That was enough for Grant.

He walked up, gliding between the adventurers and merchants, bystanders and audience alike, before asking.

"What seems to be the problem gentleman?"

Grant was always willing to take some time out of his day to screw with troublemakers.