"If we're going to end up fighting, can we at least move outside the town first?" I asked. "It wouldn't be fair for everyone to get caught up in it."

"Fighting?" asked the dragon, his maw curling into a smirk a bus could fit into, teeth on full display. "You think that if I wanted you to die, there would be a 'fight'. I see you possess the usual human levels of arrogance."

I thought back to the interactions I'd had with humans, but I couldn't really point at any as particularly arrogant. Craig, perhaps, but he was the exception.

Sometimes I wished I could... I dunno, do some xianxia thing. Blanket the area in killing intent, whatever the heck killing intent was supposed to be. Flare out my mana? Just some way of showing off how strong I was that wouldn't involve melting the street or being overtly aggressive.

"Then humour me," I answered.

The dragon snorted, the resulting wind ripping cobblestones from the paved road and launching them at the temple, then took back off into the air. I spread my wings and followed, a tiny speck next to the monstrous mass of the dragon.

He smashed down a safe distance from the town, in an open grassy field, the plant-life around him blackening and starting to smoke.

"It's nice to see one of you things care about my creations. You even promised to protect the children. If not for your... mutilation of yourself, perhaps I could have been convinced to let you stay. You would, of course, need to be marked first."

The dragon sniggered, as if that was some sort of low-key joke.

"Look, I haven't mutilated myself," I responded, before thinking about my various resistance training escapades and realising what an enormous lie that was. "At least, not in the way you're thinking," I added, in case he had a truth sense of his own.

The dragon ceased his snigger, before shifting his head inches away from my own, leaving me staring at a wall of red scale, smelling faintly of brimstone. "Then tell me. Why do I share a link with you? Explain, and out of respect for your behaviour towards my pets, I'll ensure your death is painless."

"From what I remember, none of the times you've killed me have hurt. Maybe the second one, a bit, but that was my fault. Anyway, it's a blessing from the Goddess. It doesn't make sense, so just roll with it."

"Despite the claims of the humans, the Goddess does not share her power," he laughed, not even commenting on my claims of being killed by him before. "If you're going to lie, at least come up with something believable. But at least I'll credit you for being entertaining."

His mouth opened wide, the telltale sign he was about to lance me with flame, so I stripped myself of my armour. Even if I was fireproof, it wasn't.

Heat absorption advanced to level 43

The tide of flame washed over me, and I felt the ground melting beneath my feet, but my health bar remained full. I owed the Goddess an apology for ever complaining that skills didn't offer full protection whatever level I got them to. While it was ongoing, I pondered his reaction. The Goddess didn't share her power? But the humans had said every summoned hero got a blessing, and that in the past there were locals with blessings too.

Unfortunately, by the time the breath finished, I'd sunk into the ground up to my ankles.

"Sheesh, lava sticks something awful," I muttered once the fire cut out, trying to kick the red-hot globs of molten soil off me. Was lava the right word for molten soil? It hadn't been something that came up in my Earth life, with its boring lack of dragons.

The dragon stared down for a few seconds, apparently taking a while to comprehend that I was unharmed, before roaring and lashing out with a claw.

I dodged upward, leaping over the swipe with a flap of my wings. "What did you say about this not being a fight?" I goaded, before lancing him with my ice breath.

My previous description of the dragon's response to me surviving its flame breath as a 'roar' had been mistaken. It was, at best, merely a mild expression of annoyance. Now the dragon roared, the noise shattering the ground and raising clouds of dust. My ears bled and my vision blurred. My olfactory perception, which frankly seemed far more reliable than my squishy eyeballs, warned me of another claw swipe, which I nimbly dodged.

"Are we really doing this?" I shouted, my own voice sounding strange to me with my ruptured ears. "I didn't come here to fight, but I will defend myself."

The only answer was another roar, thankfully dulled by my ear damage, followed by another lance of flame, no more effective than the first. The dragon charged me, so I took to the air. He followed, attacking with claws, teeth, or simply trying to ram me, but I was too small and agile. My speed was no greater than his, but he couldn't swing his claws fast enough to hit me. How far I'd come from that first flight session, where I'd broken most of the bones in my body.

Meanwhile, unlike him, I had a long range attack that worked. I hit him with an acid breath, the corrosive cloud sticking to his scales, slowly but surely eating into them. A blast of ice to a wing cost him some mobility, rendering him slower than me and costing him any chance of catching me. A burst of fire did nothing whatsoever, but it had been worth a try.

He was big. Big enough that even if he remained still and let me freeze him, it would take ages to work my way along his full length, but it was obvious I was winning. I could hit him, and he couldn't hit me. I was doing damage, while he wasn't. I had plentiful mana. A battle of attrition was mine to take.

The dragon turned and fled.

Straight towards the fox-kin town.

I lanced him with ice, and this time I didn't stop. His straight flight made him an easy target, and I kept up the breath until my mana hit half, then a quarter, pausing only to inhale more air. Still the dragon kept flying, yet he was losing altitude. An entire leg had turned blue. His tail was stiff and no longer moving. One wing was coated in ice. Was I going to make it in time?

The dragon dropped from the sky, crashing into a field below. A potato field, if I remembered my leaves correctly. The walls of the town were in sight, but he hadn't made it, thank goodness. Whether he was on his way to find reinforcements, or whether he was going to take advantage of them as meat-shields, I couldn't say. I'd made a foolish error there; I'd told myself that I couldn't let the dragons know I wanted to protect the fox-kin, lest they use that against me, and yet I'd given myself away immediately. Admittedly, I didn't know he could watch me through their eyes, but even so, my behaviour had been a mistake.

And that was when I saw the figure in the field, stood in front of the dragon. A hulking great pillar of meat, that was nevertheless dwarfed by the monster. Sru'taklin, the dungeon's warrior commander. And in his arms...

The dragon reached out and grabbed what the warrior was carrying, pinning it between a pair of claws before thrusting it between me and him. I looked into the face of Ancora, who wasn't looking at all panicked or fearful, or even angry, but perfectly peaceful.

"Hold still, or I will kill the child," growled the dragon.

"It's okay," said Ancora, looking straight at me with the same peaceful expression. "I know you aren't going to let me die."

"Coward!" I shouted, as the dragon thrust at me with a claw, piercing my torso. With the width of the claw, even though it was only the tip that had run me through, the wound ran from my navel almost to my neck.

"Thank you," said Ancora as I fell from the air.

Really, I wasn't too disappointed. While a casual observer might disagree, I considered that my win. I'd had trigger respawn active, so was going to die anyway. I'd be back at full power in one hour, while the dragon almost certainly would not. My last burst of ice, followed by his heavy landing, had shattered both his tail and one rear leg. One wing looked the worse for wear, with the rear half iced up and acid eating into a wide patch of the scales that coated the membrane. If it made it through, the dragon would likely be grounded. More acid was eating into his side. On top of that, would he suffer divine punishment for killing me, like the humans had?

I crashed into the field, my blunt damage immunity absorbing the impact, but given that I was missing the vast majority of my internal organs, it bought me only a few seconds of life at most. I watched my health bar tick down as the dragon threw the girl back at Sru'taklin, who thankfully caught her, just before my world went black.

For sacrificing yourself to save a child of the vulpes sagax, you now have a fluffy, cuddly tail of your very own.

There was, as with the last time I'd woken up, a fuss. I stood up and stretched, looking around at the castle remains, which had now been cleaned up further, and ignored the fleeing workers. Hopefully, the next respawn point I unlocked would be somewhere isolated, so I wouldn't need to deal with spectators.

The remaining standing section of the castle wall had been demolished, yet for some reason the altar was unmoved, still standing on its pristine dais. Fine by me, since I imagined removing it would disable the respawn point.

There also seemed to be a few guards around it, which was a new addition.

"Katie?" asked one, looking at my butt in mild confusion. "Lord Grelingham asked that we take you straight to him, should you reappear."

Who? Oh, Ortho. It probably wasn't normal to refer to these people by their first names.

Fair enough. There were witnesses the last time around, and he must have heard about my respawn, neatly solving his mystery of how I got back here so fast. But I had something more important I needed to deal with first.

"Two seconds. I just need to check something."

I was back in my nighty, which was rather more filled in at the back than it had thus far been. I lifted it up, having lost any sense of modesty long ago, and sure enough, I now had a thick, fluffy tail jutting out from the base of my spine. It did a reasonable job of hiding my spinneret, which was positioned directly below it. Also, it was fluffy. That immediately made it a hundred times more welcome than the unwanted spider bump.

It started off narrow, then gradually widened until about a metre out, where it reached about double the width of my fist, all coated in a light burgundy fur. Then it narrowed again to a point after ten centimetres more, the fur darkening until the tip was almost black. It was long enough to drag along the floor, but with some effort I could raise it. I felt it could move in other directions, too, but, like my wings, it would take some practice to get it under control. With some concentration, I managed to swish it from side to side, before the temptation became too much and I grabbed hold of it, pulled it in front of me, and buried my face into my own luxurious fur.

Forget dragon breath, scales, or whatever else I had. This was my new favourite body mod. So what if it served no practical purpose whatsoever? I didn't care!

A guard coughed politely, reminding me that I was in company. With only slight embarrassment, I swung my new tail back around behind me and gave them a nod.

"Sorry, did you want to fluff my new tail too?"