The Fairy Forest Dungeon.

[Welcome to the Fairy Forest dungeon.]

These six words told him more than he needed to know.

"This dungeon is player made, I remember hearing Giony talk about it during the surge, And wild guess, it's a fairy-based dungeon. The only thing is I don't know how fairies work in this game, hopefully, they aren't immune to physical damage."

Readying his spear, Smaug started to walk forward. When suddenly three balls of light showed up out of nowhere.

"Damn, let's see here."

[Sprites]

"Okay, they seem weak enough. I'll hit them with my spear and see if that does anything. If not, then I can always default on my breath weapon."

* whoosh *

Smaug swung his spear, and above the head of the sprite, a red "- 100" and dthe sprite immediately wavered and fell back while the other two sprites seemed to start charing smaller balls of light. But before they could get their attacks off, Smaug used his previous gaming experience to take out all three sprites with his spear swiftly. 

When the sprites turned into particles of light a message appeared 

[you killed level 1 sprite x3 you get 15XP]

"No drops? Eh, it's fine they are easy enough XP anyway."

Sometime later Smaug came across a few more sprites and even a couple of elementals that seemed to be like sprites but instead of whatever type of magic they did they now used an element ranging from fire, water, earth, air, light, and even darkness. But for most of them, he just used his fire breath and managed to get a couple of drops from the elementals. But most importantly he had almost leveled up. 

[Level: 5

XP: 450/500]

Now the drops he received seemed pretty special but they seemed to have an incredibly low drop rate 

[cystalizyed mana:

Mana so dense it has taken a crystalized form outside of the host's monster crystal, present usually in monsters that physically embody an element. 

You have:

1x light (bottom grade)

2x fire (bottom grade)

1x air (bottom grade)]

Looking at the crystallized mana, he felt like he was holding sugar crystals with how fragile they felt but looking at them they were all different colors. The light type one was pure white, while the two fire crystals were orangy-red. Lastly, the air crystal was a pale green. Smaug decided to keep these safely tucked away in his inventory until he found something to put them towards be it monsters or his strength. 

That's when he called out "Hey! I know this dungeon is a player, I am also a player come out now before I kill more of your monsters! Your weak sprites and elementals don't do much when they get two shots!"

Smaug had called out before, a few times in fact but this was the first time he had gotten a response. Just then from around the corner, a short woman with dragonfly wings that were shaped like that of a butterfly. "What do you want, and why shouldn't I kill you right now?" 

Smaug stared back at the small girl. He was a solid six foot and she was barely 4'10'', but he wanted allies, not enemies so he kept these thoughts to himself. 

"I am Smaug, and I want to team up with you. I am heading to the city as of right now to do some quests and I think having a party would help a ton."

The Fairy girl responded with a simple "Hmph, well if you want this to happen, I'm going to need those monsters you killed in coin so I can recoup the losses. They were worth over…. 2900 DP, so I'd be happy with 2 gold and 9 silver. 

"I don't even have that much money, that's insane. How about this, you come with me and you take all the quest rewards until I pay off my debt? It's either that or you get nothing at all, deal?" 

"Ugh, fine you have yourself a deal."

As the two headed out of the dungeon Smaug warned the Fairy girl of the wolves chasing him. but once they reached the entrance to [The Fairy Forest], the dire wolf pack was nowhere to be seen. Confused Smaug tried to explain himself.

"They must have moved on, maybe they thought I was as good as dead?"

"Makes sense, every once in a while, one of them wanders in here and I just send in a few of my stronger fairies. Those mutts tend not to take too kindly to small, nimble targets that use magic. I imagine they have horrible magic defense since almost 100% of the damage gets through. But I have no idea about their other stats, I never had a good chance to fully experiment."

"Well from personal experience, even the pups have fur as strong as metal." 

"That checks out, they ranged from level 10 to 30, they're bound to be strong physically if they are so weak magically."

"By the way, what's your name? In the game of course." Smaug asked out of curiosity.

"Rainha,"

[Would you like to start a party with the player: "Rainha"?]

"You already sent a party invitation? That was fast, I didn't even notice you do it."

"What? I thought you sent the invite?"

"Huh? If you didn't send the invite, and I didn't send it, then who did? The game itself?"

"Sounds crazy but if they can make NPCs as realistic as they are, I'm sure they can make an omnipotent helper AI just as smart and intelligent. I mean, we were going to form a party anyway so this just saves us some time." 

Confirming the party formation, in the corner of Smaug's eye, he could see a new health bar. When he focused on it, he expanded and gave a short info brief about Rainha. Showing her face to the left and name on top, he could see individual notches in her health bar now giving a more accurate measurement of her health than the minimized version offered. The functionality caused Smaug to think 'Whoah, that's pretty convenient.' 

Traveling through the forest, the party of two traveled together avoiding anything and everything that could potentially pose a threat. There was no telling if even the rabbit monsters could solo them, and they didn't want to find out. 

After some time they found the edge of the forest and in the distance was an extremely tall stone wall. On top of which Smaug could make out some guards patrolling, they were wearing some powerful-looking armor and all holding spears. On their shields, there were always two crests, one that was consistent, likely belonging to the local lord, and another that was unique from soldier to soldier, but he was too far away to make out any details.

"Hey Smaug, I found the entrance and, wait a minute, THERE WAS A ROAD THE ENTIRE TIME! WHAT WERE WE DOING WALKING IN THE WILDERNESS!"

As they were approaching the city entrance, above the gate was the same crest from before but now Smaug could decipher it. It was a golden lion standing on its hind legs while breathing fire. All while being on top of a blue and white striped background. Then below it were some words in a language Smaug couldn't read, luckily the system can translate.

[Family Flame Fang, Count.]

[City of Stone]

"They city of stone huh? Guess this is where we'll be starting, I wonder what kind of place it is."

Walking up to the front gate a guard stopped them. 

"ID?"

Smaug, expecting this much, got ready to enact his "get into town" plan.

"We uh… don't have any. I'm so-"

"Oh wait are you guys those new immortal warriors everyone has been talking about? We have known about you guys for months and have been waiting ever since. Don't worry the temple vouches for your first entree to a city, no entry fee or anything, but I do suggest going to the adventurers guild or something to get a fast and easy ID. While it doesn't grant you full citizenship, however, it still works and can partially waive the entry fee. To get in for free you'd need a government ID but that can take a while if you have no proof of residence. But a guild card also lets you take quests for easy money. Some quests can be finished in town and a valid quest that takes you out of the walls will waive the entree fees until the quest either expires or gets completed."

"Oh… Thanks, we'll keep that in mind."

Being let into town just like that, Smaug was a bit shocked. Then his mood quickly turned sour. 

"Yo Smaug, what's wrong?"

"I spent a good amount of mental energy planning to get inside, it included contingencies and blatant lies about where we come from to get around any problems that arise. If I knew we'd just be let in just like that, I wouldn't have bothered and probably taken a nap instead."