A draconian-looking human was standing on a stone platform jutting out from the side of a large mountain. Below him was a vast forest filled with life. In the distance, he could see more mountains even taller than the one he was standing on.

He looked to be slightly under two meters and had dark copper-colored reverse-slitted eyes as well as black hair. The hair was unkempt but matched him well. He wore a dirty white shirt and ragged brown shorts.

His arms and legs were half covered in dark copper scales and his fingers and toes were scaly with sharp claws. He didn’t have any shoes, but he didn’t need them. Both his scales and his skin were abnormally tough.

“Okay, I’m going now!”

Behind him, two huge dragons were standing. Their eyes looked proudly at him.

“Good luck Ithil!”, one of them said.

Ithil jumped up and morphed to his dragon form. His clothes disappeared into nothing and his body expanded to a seven meter long copper dragon juvenile.

Gliding away, he looked over his shoulder to see his family standing on the platform. He had been the first to leave home since his siblings were still training on their humanoid forms.

Ithil had decided to stay away from humans for the time being. He could very well run into someone very powerful who’s looking for a dragon trophy. And if such a person could see through his disguise, things would be bad for him.

Instead, he wanted to find a good place to train. The stronger he got, the more free he would become. And dragons didn’t like to be restrained.

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Ithil flew around the area near his home. He didn’t find anything of interest, which was okay for him because he wanted to explore further. After increasing his search area, Ithil found out something shocking. He was actually on a large island close to the mainland. From the given knowledge, he figured out the name of the island was the Distant Peaks. The name came from how it looked like a bunch of distant mountain peaks from the mainland.

After discovering this, Ithil immediately crossed the sea. It was no problem for him with his ability to fly, but it would be a very difficult journey for land creatures. Even with boats considering the giant waves.

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When he reached the mainland, he had arrived at a large ragged cliffside. The violent sea had eroded the bottom of it, creating an overhang. When Ithil took a closer look at the overhang, he spotted an underwater cave seemingly leading to a vast and dark expanse of water.

This gave Ithil an idea. Dragons could survive underwater. They had gills hidden under their scales and were born with the ability to swim. So he thought he could train underwater. The pressure would make it harder to move the lower he got. The harder it was for him to move, the more training he would get.

But before he went down there, he wanted to explore the surroundings a bit more.

Sadly, he didn’t find much. The cliff extended too far for him to see the end on both sides. Beyond the cliff, there was a small forest. The forest inhabited only weaker creatures, and Ithil took this chance to try killing his first prey.

It went quite well. He found multiple smaller creatures that were killed with ease due to his training. He felt that he could probably take on stronger creatures, but didn’t want to risk it.

Beyond the forest, he could see a smaller kingdom called the Voucan Kingdom. It was a kingdom known for being very peaceful and accepting all intelligent creatures. This was quite rare. He would have liked to explore it, but he still didn’t feel safe enough. Instead, he would train in the sea cave.

He planned to start high up, and when he felt very safe at a certain level he would descend around a hundred meters. This because he expected the more dangerous creature would be lower.

After eating enough to be able to last without food for a while, he headed for the underwater cave. He didn’t worry about drinking water, since dragons didn’t need to do that. They could absorb the water around them.

He arrived at the cave and went in, as prepared as he thought he could be.

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Entering the underwater cave, Ithil was met with a bottomless abyss. When he looked down, there was only darkness. He spread out his wings and slowly descended. He constantly scanned for a suitable place to rest on. He wanted to find somewhere safe for him to sleep when he got tired.

He had not much problem seeing, since dragons had excellent night vision.

Ithil could feel the pressure increase and it got harder to move. He was getting nervous that there was no place to rest. He decided to stop descending and instead find the cave walls. The cave was much bigger than he had anticipated and it took him a long time to find one.

Following the rocky and vertical cave wall, he finally spotted a smaller platform he could stand on. He swam over to it.

The platform was slightly bigger than him. It was covered with sand and smaller underwater plants. It seemed to be uninhabited, so Ithil decided to make it his temporary home.

He was tired from exploring the underwater cave all day, and decided to take a nap.

But first, he searched the surroundings for anything dangerous living close by. He hadn’t seen any sea creatures the whole time and was getting anxious. After finding nothing, he felt safe enough to lay down on the platform.

After a few minutes, he was asleep.