Throughout the stitched dream realm, a once in a lifetime situation occurred. Many dragons discovered that some humans entered the lands through some strange method, and as such, it drew a fair bit of confusion. Not even accounting for the directly hostile dragons who attacked at first sight, but the humans turned out annoyingly powerful.

These lands existed as a rich land of rewards for young adult dragons after all, and most of them were just gold or mithril tiers, very few anomalies like Icy and Adret reached mithril tier so quickly. How exactly everyone showed off their equality differed though.

Korridan wrestled a massive dragon with grey scales to the ground, the mithril tier roughly equal in size to Icy’s full body. After the harmless battle, and an explanation, they travelled simply as one side needed a guide whilst the other’s physical body disgusted even this dragon.

It wasn’t like he wrestled a human, but rather a dragon who enhanced its physique.

Mala first shocked a dragon into submission through magic. The fact she understood Draconic well enough to translate its words helped far more though, she didn’t need to travel with a dragon but chose to as it avoided further conflicts precisely like this one. It gave her free reign to randomly cast spells the whole journey and take quite a few notes, the topics of which the dragon beside her considered ‘madness’.

Darak simply showed a divine spell and joined a group of three dragons, turns out that even across species any form of healing becomes appreciable. Furthermore, it sped up these dragons’ recovery if any trials injured them.

And Raccelline… That troublesome girl. She met up with a pair of dragons at mithril tier herself, the specifics of which came to light in the future.

All of them underwent a roughly similar result in the end, as the dragons they travelled with poured out discontent, shock, surprise, and confusion at the sight of humans within the trials or receiving those special products. However, they swallowed these complaints eventually, and scooped up whatever possible as often as possible.

However, their weaknesses all blockaded them by a rather harsh degree. All of them understood this land existed to help dragons develop their Mind palaces, but as humans, none possessed the sufficient mental space to create one. While direct reinforcement of one’s Mind certainly helped, at best it compared to a measly Apprentice Mind palace. In physical, skill, or magical trials they excelled, but so many of the best focused on the defences of a Mind palace.

And in this regard, Icy and Adret dominated. They met dozens of dragons across their days, but just continued between trials without a moment’s wait.

They passed four days like this, and in general, while the younger dragons lacked great communication skills like Icy years ago, they generally kept an open mind about things. Not innocent though, just intensely curious, many of them never even met a human in the flesh before. Slightly older ones, like Pritaslo, shielded herself with vigilance and immediately assumed the worst with the rules broken, but she hardly revealed a nasty attitude.

All the while, piles of resources grew in everyone’s dimensional storages, but the biggest winner appeared from the very start. At one point or another throughout those four days, all four adult humans muttered the same sentence.

“They’re going to be so pissed off when they find out.” And none of them bothered to explain what those words meant if overheard…

* * *

In the Dragonlands, several mithril tier dragons all flew in circles around a particular peak east of the central mountain. These dragons maintained a stable flight, however, when a single word echoed out from that mountain, they descended. Spoken in Draconic with authority, the elder said, “Enter.”

They landed on a large entrance on the mountain’s west-facing face which led inwards to the abode within. Already its luxury exceeded many other caves on the mountain as the halls here contained some decorations and fanciful objects.

Furthermore, the multiple layers of this abode contained numerous rooms dedicated to a number of crafts. Every elder practised these many as the accumulated years drew them to a myriad of interests.

Not long after they entered, a small meeting chamber housed enough room for all the dragons to comfortably stand and talk to the elder in front of them. A dragon with scales of emerald and peridot greens, horns of jade, but teeth and claws a fluorescent metal. It glowed, as one might guess, with a green light, but this elder suppressed the emission more often than not. It caused rather nasty cancerous growths if left unchecked.

“Elder Dreisetno, may we ask why you called us so suddenly?” One of the mithril tier dragons automatically took the lead, his frame slimmer and more refined as though he already completed his fourth growth phase. Meanwhile, the other dragons appeared to naturally lower themselves in his presence, but not in the way as one saw a leader.

“The dragonstone will likely be received in a day or two. In preparation for this, we decided to inform your generation of this matter in advance.”

Excitement flared up on this leading dragon’s face, eyes wide in anticipation and Dreisteno internally cursed at the words he knew would come soon. The delighted dragon asked, “They finally admitted that no one could exceed my results? Is it necessary for me to prove my results in front of the clan lord as well?” Even with this idea built up, he stuck to the rules, in no way looking to skirt them.

“That won’t be necessary,” Dreisetno earned a series of surprised faces with that, but the dragon’s enthusiasm alone remained. He shook his head and said, “You will not receive the dragonstone. It belongs to the young dragon who killed the self-proclaimed Demon elf progenitor.”

The dragon’s light brown scales, like dry earth, suddenly dimmed to that of dark, wet mud. “What do you mean elder? Did he actually surpass my position in the trial?”

“No, this is his reward. Provided he passes the trial.”

“HOW!? Elder, you’re just giving away the dragonstone after all these months? How can they allow this? How could you?!” The other dragons stepped back to stay out of this matter, but they empathised greatly with his shouts. For the right they fought for to be given away more or less annoyed them all.

“It was hardly my decision. Blame the fact his achievements far surpass your own. You may all leave now,” Dreisetno sent them off unhappily. Not because the young adult spoke so rudely, but because he deserved such backlash after he built up those aspirations with weighty expectations.

In response, their scales darkened once more to obsidian black, and even turned faintly transparent as though truly made of that volcanic glass, but even so, he snorted and turned around. The others followed suit with faces of similar confusion and anger. Just as the elder said, these dragons hardly appreciated the dragonstone’s use as a reward… But he spoke a white lie in one aspect.

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But before any left, Dreisetno mentioned off-handedly, “Kalmiktar, he’s still in the trial grounds, and may stay for another day or so.”

None of them stopped and pretended his words never reached them. But as those black scales swooped right into the central mountain’s teleportation array, the plans aligned fairly well.

“What a bunch of hypocrites,” the elder snorted with a glance towards the other mountain peaks. Dragons entered the teleportation array one after the other, all just minutes apart, and their destination all identical. “But now I can’t help but wonder… Who’s side are you even on?” With a gaze focused on the central mountain this time, he came up with several possibilities but no clear answers.

Given no explanation of the situation, and often forced to butt heads, many believed the First Elder put up with him most of the time. And yet, their friendship went back the longest amongst the elders.

* * *

As Jaren looked around the impressive space, he asked, “So this is the dragonstone trail?”

“Yes, this is also the stabilisation point of the whole realm, but you don’t need to worry about that. It just ensures the stone’s safety and reduces the likelihood of death within,” Pritaslo light-heartedly explained. After a few days, her temper calmed down in the wicked human’s presence as she realised that he played her for a fool.

Not to say she completely dismissed the grudge within, but it no longer sought to lash out directly.

“Are there usually so many dragons here too?” Jaren’s appearance alongside a dragon caught the eye of many here, but they ignored him soon after to talk amongst themselves or rest.

“You really took your time. Was starting to think I should have spent a couple more days outside,” Korridan came over at the same time, the two already noticed one another but kept silent until closer. Neither wanted to shout out loud in this place.

“There was a lot to collect. Is it just you, or did we get here too early then?” While he continued to speak, Jaren also now took in the sights around him a bit more.

Unfortunately, this place lacked life, much like the desert as a whole, those small oases a thankful bit of vibrancy, but uncommon and rather dangerous overall. Most of the trial grounds utilised some sort of ancient ruins, although, where the dragons obtained them from made no sense. He only said this as some of the runic languages within and carved images distinguished itself from Draconic.

As for these ruins, they actually appeared more interesting than old decrepit spaces with a trial to complete. Rather than greyed and weathered stone, he took in the sight of a palace of black and yellow. The central building, a mansion by all accounts, with dozens of buildings all around its periphery, some storehouses, others for servants, cooks, specialised arrays, and some dedicated to pets.

Of course, unused by the dragons, this palace stood empty. The mansion of black and yellow stood firm but quiet, more akin to a haunted reminder. What used to be a garden fell into disarray, overgrown with select alchemical ingredients but little else, and the numerous peripheral buildings lost all use centuries ago.

Jaren’s eyes saw most of these obvious parts at the castle’s front, but limitations in his ability gave no way to see through or behind it.

“I arrived a few hours ago, not much of a reason for me to go around trials. Can’t do anything in the stronger ones. No reason to waste time,” Korridan replied while he checked out the palace grounds, a statement he concluded as well over this time frame.

“Nothing much we can do. Even Mala’s mind is too weak to make a palace. How could we do it?” His rhetoric earned a small chuckle from the leader, who more than understood their strengths and weaknesses, but, more importantly, saw through Jaren’s joke.

So what if she lacked a palace?

Pritsalo’s sharp voice cut in between their conversation, “There are indeed too many dragons here… And Kalmiktar is here too. Did the elders gather them all?”

The two men nodded silently to the information but also bit their lips. Korridan already understood the situation, so his reaction came as a given, but Jaren’s only arrived because he travelled with this female dragon for days now. In the time, he learnt all that was needed about the trial as well, including those at the top spots.

Kalmiktar in first, and herself in third. Furthermore, it appeared that all top twenty dragons arrived here. They patiently waited for something too.

“I kind of wish he’d been right now,” Jaren said in mocked depression. The line made no sense to either two, and so he explained it a bit more, “I’d rather be shipwrecked than whatever the hell happens this next week.”

And to that, Korridan nodded. Not in agreement, nor disagreement, but because the last thing he wished for was to see the internal conflict as Icy opposed so many youths of his own race.

“Rather good timing I must have. Or did I arrive a bit late?” Both turned as another masculine voice came from the palace’s entrance. Darak entered behind three large dragons and called out to the two. While it appeared a bit coincidental, they soon discovered all three arrived today as their adjoined dragons reached the last day on their entry.

For some reason, quite a few of them all chose to come here on the same day. The reason was even simpler.

“The instability of this realm exists in an ebb and flow state, and they switch once every ten days. Most of us simply enter on the first day of its ebbing state to ensure we get a full week of stability. It’s not impossible to come during a flow, but the realm transforms into a hyperbolic space. You never know if one step forward will truly move you that far.”

The three received a concise answer from Pritsalo, not the simplest, but enough for the three to grasp. Not even a wizard liked to mess around with uncommon spacetime, even if they perfected their knowledge of it.

Mala arrived a few hours later beside another dragon, they glanced at the human wizard weirdly. Meanwhile, Icy and Adret followed along behind, clearly the two groups met up at some point Which just left a single one… She arrived about an hour after Mala and the two dragons of their group.

Jaren noticed her first, followed by Icy when he transformed his eyes into ghostly wisps, and both of their expressions distorted in the exact same way. Everyone naturally noticed this, and Mala joined in as she released a quick spell to see… All of their lips quivered with mouths half-open, their faces just unsure of where exactly they came.

The young girl, with the two dragons she joined, walked into the palace grounds through its main gate and appeared for all dragons within to see.

On the mithril tier dragon’s back, she calmly stood and waved to the group. Giving a few gentle pats on the navy blue dragon’s head, she leapt off to join her group. At the same time saying, “Thanks for the help!” The two dragons accepted her words with a nod and moved off to one side in preparation for this trial.

All the while, four humans, and more than just a handful of dragons, looked over as the last human of this group arrived in a fashion which made no sense. This illogical concept only doubled over as many of them recognised those two dragons, a pair of brothers who disliked company.

But now the elder brother allowed a human child to travel with them, and ride on his back!

Icy broke the group’s general shocked silence and said in near disbelief, “I can’t top that. How did she convince them even?” But his answer came a lot faster than expected.

“The Divine Blood?” One dragon’s shouted question drew attention from all over. And then another followed up with, “It’s indeed her!” What followed could only be called a strange but retrospectively obvious scene.

“We greet the human princess, Blood of Manus!” Tens of dragons all at once announced their formalities, and only now they mustered the actual reality of what happened.

They travelled with a princess, a literal one as well as a direct descendent of a top god, any race with diplomatic ties would have done the same in this situation. The dragons here all behaved within expectations. In fact, any human expert behaved precisely the same way if met with an elder of the Dragonlands.

None of the dragons acted odd; they simply never understood the status pertaining to Raccelline.

Even if she was a princess, they could only ever see her as that young girl who came to them in need of help. A child they half-raised with the help of a dragon. What a ridiculous reality.