That time I was reincarnated as a snake (Tensura)

After laughing along with Mira for a while, it was time for the follow-up.

I had to solve my current clothing problem immediately.

"I'm going into town to run some errands, do you want to come with me?" I asked Mira.

"Na, it's boring, go by yourself," she said without much enthusiasm.

I just nodded and walked away into the shadows. With my new strength and my greater control over the skill, it took me no time at all to reach the city.

I first looked for a specialist in adventurer clothing work, one who was not well known but was skilled at his work. After finding my target, using my magic, I induced him to close his shop and focus on a new project that he had inspiration for, inspiration that I planted in his head.

Starting with a grey shirt made of a light and breathable material such as cotton, slim fit, with long sleeves and tight cuffs, buttons on the front and on the cuffs, with a high collar, as well as comfortable underwear.

Iron bison leather pants, a rather strong monster with a skin very resistant to cuts and punctures, fitted to allow freedom of movement, with details such as straps, buckles and several side pockets, dark brown.

Gauntlets made of the same leather, capable of covering the hands and part of the forearms, fitted so as not to hinder delicate movements, with a solid but flexible structure, also dark brown in colour.

High leather boots, reaching mid-calf, with thick, non-slip soles, with metal reinforcements on the sole, toe and heel, with details such as straps and buckles, also in black. A thick, strong leather belt.

And finally, an imposing long leather trench coat, rugged in appearance, with a fluid drape to allow for quick movements, with pleats focused on practicality and style, a comfortable inner lining and, last but not least, with a large, deep hood to conceal identity, obviously in black.

Lacking a very notable artistic sense, I decided to have him use dark blue colors, as well as gray to give details to the set.

After hours of work, the result was to my complete satisfaction. In honor of his great work, I paid him a hundred gold coins and planted in his mind the desire to leave this city for another as far away as possible, where he would open his shop again together with any relatives he had, conveniently forgetting the set that belonged to me.

With those orders, by the time the effect wore off, he would be far away and wouldn't care much for this outfit upon discovering the gold I had given him. As extra insurance, I planted a seal similar to Phersu's on him; if he tried to talk about this, I would turn him into a vegetable.

After the man left the store, I took my human form within the shadows and appeared inside the store. Without wasting any time, I equipped myself with my new set of clothes.

Not to brag, but I look very handsome.

Since I was in town, I decided to get Operation Dragon Slayer underway.

Yes, it was time for the operation to hunt dragons and get their dragon factor.

The first step: locating them. It was time to use Phersu.

I went to Ronin's Tavern, Phersu's main headquarters in GreenRock. All it took was a shadow jump. In order to not stand out, I appeared in a dark alley nearby.

Inside I was taken by Clo to the upper floor, where I created a request.

The objective: the locations of all known dragons located in the western part of the continent, as well as relevant information about them.

The reward: two hundred gold coins per location.

Making use of the shadow storage, I discreetly took out of my trench coat a sack weighing more than twenty kilos full of gold coins.

It should be enough gold for at least ten locations. After leaving the reward, I left the cantina. Without wasting any time, moving at maximum speed with shadow movement, I went to the rest of the cities with a Phersu branch to leave the same request.

As for where I got all that money, it's simple: I wasn't just in the capital learning. A while ago I decided to rob a lot of people, mainly nobles and merchants; I stole a lot of gold from them, while the royal family was mainly robbed of many valuable resources that were rare or hard to find on the market, including the black market.

I don't understand Rimuru's behavior of working to earn money in things like hosting and export services, as well as allowing a bunch of weak guys to enter the dungeon, which I consider the best fortress in this world, for just a few measly coins.

If you have strength, just take what you want, of course, without provoking someone stronger than you.

With the requests done, it was time to return to my base of operations. Once there, I began the next step of the Dragon Slayer operation.

I first designated a fairly generous area of my base to serve as my workshop. Using earth magic, I was able to easily create rudimentary equipment to set up a forge, a gigantic furnace, as well as specific molds for a few shapes.

Inside the oven, using some magical materials, I set up a magic circle that would create more fire the more magicules I added to it; with it I would avoid the trouble of using any fuel such as coal or fire stones.

I put a large amount of iron, as well as the same amount of magisteel into the furnace and proceeded to melt it all down. This is where the knowledge I acquired this year comes in.

If magisteel has a melting point of ten thousand degrees Celsius, while normal iron has a melting point of fifteen hundred, how can you alloy them?

The key is magic. At temperatures as high as ten thousand degrees Celsius, iron ionizes, or in simple terms, iron loses the electrons in its nucleus. But that is not allowed if you want to alloy it with magisteel. This is where the magic comes in, literally. The process involves reinforcing the structure of the iron during the smelting process, preventing it from ionizing at those temperatures long enough for it to mix homogeneously with the magisteel.

While feeding magicules to the furnace's magic circle to raise the temperature, I made sure to keep the iron stable. To ensure a good alloy, I had to keep this process going for several hours, enough time for the iron to acquire certain properties of magisteel.

When I was sure that the process was carried out correctly, I poured the material into several arrow-shaped moulds that I had previously prepared, but not a common arrow. In this arrow, the tip was hollow inside, as well as having a completely metal body, including the nock and the feathers.

The reason for this: magisteel's properties to resist magic.

As for the hollow point, it should be remembered that dragons are resistant to magic as well as physical attacks, and have fast regeneration. So if someone wants to kill a dragon, they should do as much damage as possible in one go at a critical point.

I went to search for various things among the pile of crafting materials I stole. After a while I found what I was looking for: three special containers, one containing a dark green liquid, another that had a dark purple gas inside it, and the last one containing a stone the size of my palm that was a deep red color.

The dark green liquid is the venom of a three-headed snake, Mira's former subordinate, which has the effect of paralyzing to the point of killing whoever is poisoned by it, while the purple gas is the breath of a storm serpent, which is highly corrosive. He very kindly gave it to me when I asked for it, after I gave him a severe beating.

I took an arrowhead from its mold. Into it, carefully, I poured a good amount of three-headed snake venom. Then, with some auxiliary materials, I created a kind of transparent casing to isolate the poison. With the utmost care, I took the red stone out of its container inside a mini anti-magic barrier in which I had created a perfect air vacuum and with gentle blows I detached a small fragment, which I quickly protected completely inside a special transparent casing.

Finally, using air magic, I manipulated the Tempest Serpent's poisonous breath and inserted it into the arrowhead. To prevent it from escaping, I sealed the arrowhead with the red stone fragment in its casing.

"Ugh... a list, several dozen are missing."

I continued repeating the same process for each arrow. I only stopped after making a hundred of these special arrows.

If you're wondering what the function of that red stone is, well the answer is: a damn bomb.

Yes, the red stone known by a silly name as Blast Stone lives up to its name; its greatest ability is to explode. As for why I use it instead of other explosives, it has to do with the reason why, although very useful for creating weapons of war, humans rarely use it.

This stone is usually found deep underground, so finding it is the first challenge. As for the second, it is normally a fairly hard stone naturally, but something curious happens when it is exposed to air: the stone becomes brittle. In that state it begins to rapidly absorb a large amount of magicules from its surroundings, and when it reaches its capacity limit... Boom. It releases a powerful shockwave, without any heat as a residue, like other explosives would.

You should have already figured out how my special arrow works. The general idea is to give it to a skilled archer, who will use it on a careless dragon, preferably at critical points such as the heart or head. Thanks to its fifty percent magisteel structure, it will pierce through the dragon's scale defense, as well as avoid being destroyed if it were to be intercepted in flight by the dragon's breath. When the arrow impacts inside the body, the casings that separate the arrowhead's components will be destroyed. The previously prepared explosive stone fragment will become brittle and begin to rapidly absorb the magicules from the dragon's own body as fuel, then explode releasing a powerful shockwave damaging its body, while the two released poisons continuously affect its regeneration, ensuring the greatest possible damage. If placed at a critical point such as the eyes or inside the mouth, I can be sure that the dragon will die miserably.

These arrows are designed to deal multiple types of damage that overlap: physical damage from the shockwave, poisoning, corrosion, as well as the magisteel damage from the arrow when used as shrapnel fragments.

I'm sure these beauties can easily kill an average dragon. As for an ArchDragon, the following test will serve to find out.

I stripped off my clothes and, assuming my snake form, did not want to tear my new clothes. I proceeded to decisively cut off a large piece of my own tail with a water blade. Then I placed it on the sturdiest part of my base.

For extra security, I created another magical barrier around it, as well as large earthen walls outside the barrier. By the time I finished the preparations, my tail had already grown back.

Changing back into my human form, after putting my clothes back on, I grabbed a bow from the pile of stolen weapons and prepared to fire one of my arrows.

"Let's see how powerful you are, honey," I said as I loosened the bowstring.

The arrow flew rapidly through the air. After a few seconds, it hit its target. A few seconds after the arrow embedded itself in my tail...

*Boom*

An imposing explosion sounded throughout my base. The noise was so loud that it startled Mira, who was resting. My entire base was shaking continuously, wanting to collapse at any minute. Luckily, I had taken my time when I set up my base's defensive magic, enough to keep the structure stable and prevent the aftermath within it from spreading to the surface. It would be a nuisance if someone discovered me.

The barrier I placed around my target was completely destroyed, the strong earthen walls pulverized into dust. Even I was pushed back a little.

My gaze remained focused on the large piece of my tail that had served as the target. Inside a crater more than a dozen meters deep, seventy percent of it could be seen intact, while the remaining thirty percent, located where the arrow hit, had completely disappeared. In the damaged area, wisps of purple smoke could be seen, as well as traces of a greenish liquid.

As for the arrow, it seemed the explosion propelled it deeper into the flesh. After seeing the test results, I nodded.

"It was better than when I tried the explosive stone alone. As I speculated, by introducing it into a large mass of concentrated magicules such as a monster's body, the result is greatly enhanced."

"If placed on the head or chest of an ArchDragon, I should be able to kill it. I highly doubt they have better magical and physical resistance than me, who has been under a strict regime of continuous mutilation and regeneration for over nine months."

As for why it was so easy to cut my tail, it was because I learned to mitigate my natural resistances, something essential if I wanted to enjoy the effects of alcohol.

"Though I highly doubt they'll be of any use against elemental dragons, much less Dragon Lords. After all, they already have human-like intelligence, so they might have skills or magic to protect themselves from this level of damage. I have them in case someone tries to use these arrows against me."

Now it was just a matter of waiting for the dragons' locations. After that, I'll just look for the scapegoats that will do the dirty work for me.

As Kai worked in his workshop, in the Phersu branches spread across the western border of Jura Forest, after discovering the request Kai created, a huge commotion took hold of them. Each member who heard about it quickly searched through their intelligence channels for relevant information. Knowing the consequences of giving out wrong information, they took their time to ensure their intelligence was completely true and not outdated.

The power of thousands of merchants, adventurers, traffickers, even fallen nobles was united, all with the sole goal of obtaining the huge rewards. It was a race against time, as it had been mentioned in each branch that already claimed locations would not be accepted, so a dragon's location could only be claimed once per branch. This could allow the location of a single dragon to be repeated in all branches, but that did not matter to Kai. To him, even if more than ten locations were repeated in all branches, it would not be a waste of money, given that it would affirm the authenticity of the information.

Kai just wanted to quickly get the locations of as many dragons as he could in order to carry out the Dragon Slayer operation at the time of the start of the war between the kingdom of Eldoreth and Sarion. Hopefully, this event will attract the attention of most of the continent so that no one will pay attention to the disappearance of any dragon.

A week later...

I was in my living room inside my base, which featured many of the highest-end furniture that humans can currently produce, courtesy of various nobles' mansions.

While enjoying a nice grape wine, sitting on a comfortable sofa, I was reading through all the information collected by the Phersu members. After having discarded the repeated information, in my hand were five documents: two of them were about fire dragons, two about water dragons, and the last one about a wind dragon. The strength level of these dragons was not mentioned in the information, only the damage they caused since they left the Canaat Mountains.

If I were to use the damage caused by them as a reference average, I would say that only two were medium dragons, while the remaining three were at the ArchDragon level. That was the reason why they were still alive: they were too strong for humans, and since they didn't cause much chaos, the strong guys didn't bother with them.

Much to my dismay, a water dragon and a fire dragon were standing too close to the kingdom of Luberius. Yes, I said kingdom, not empire, because at this time Luminous has not accepted vassalage from other kingdoms; it would only do so much later, and it was only because other kingdoms wanted to be part of Luberius. Although they are not currently part of Luberius, in the two kingdoms where the dragons are located there is already the presence of the church, so I must act carefully so as not to attract their attention.

"According to recent news, the Eldoreth expedition force has left the capital a couple of days ago. According to my estimates, it will take them a little over two weeks to reach Sarion's borders. I don't think there will even be a war as such, more of a one-sided crushing. I can't count on Eldoreth holding out for more than a day, and that's only if Sarion doesn't take it seriously. The best I can do is take these two weeks to discreetly survey the dragons' dwelling places and create multiple adventurer teams. One for each dragon, to whom I will give a share of the arrows, as well as various magic items, and order them all to take action simultaneously on the day of the collision between Eldoreth and Sarion."