"AHHHHHHHHHHHHH"

"WHYYYYYYYY"

"NOOOOOOOO"

"IT HUUUUUURT AHHHH"

Running out of the castle, I could hear the screams of the people inside the castle, each screaming as they were burned alive, I heard the voices of friends, daily, loved ones, and everyone else that I held dear. But I still had to run, to stop would mean to lose any hope of revenge.

Even with tears falling off my eyes and the smoke hurting my lungs I ran, far away, far enough that the dragons who had slaughtered everything that I cared for wouldn't be able to find me.

"Huhuhuhhuhuh" I woke up as the nightmare ended, and clenched my chest to calm my breath.

"This nightmare again." that's right this wasn't the first time I had seen this nightmare, it had come to me every night since I had run away from the hell that the dragons bought about on the capital.

I ran and ran and ran as far as I could, up to the forbidden mountains of ultar, but the memories of that day still haunted me every day.

"Huuuh" I sighed as I got up out off my bed and walked to my wardrobe and changed out of my night gowns, that I had to sew myself into something more suitable for training.

It had been 40 years since that day and I had become 63 years old today, and each of the 14610 days I had spent in the mountains I had spent training. Training so that I would be able to get my revenge, training so that I won't have to experience that hell again, and training so that I could lop off the heads of those damned monsters.

I had given up on all other things, love, happiness, relaxation, none of that had mattered to me anymore, for all of that was something that I had already lost once in my life.

I could have completely given up on revenge and settled don on maybe another continent or maybe settled with the elves who actually had the capacity to hold back the dragons, and try to achieve some semblance of happiness, but maybe it was because I had lost everything once already I was too fearful to go for something like that.

The guilt of having been likely the only person that survived the massacre still haunted me to this day, and the thoughts of revenge, to get the blood of those beasts on my hand had completely filled my brain.

Shaking off the depressing thoughts of the massacre I got up from my bed and moved out to take a shower in the waterfall that I had settled next to.

I took off my clothes and got into the waterfall and looked at the wall that lay behind it. A wall is what I called it but in truth there was a small crease right along its center showing that it was a gate. What intrigued me was the runic on it more so than the actual gate itself, as if it was a normal gate, I would have been able to open it already, but since it had runes inscribed on it, opening it was impossible unless a certain condition was fulfilled.

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"*scoff* they called me the smartest man in the empire, a general, all for what? 40 years I have spent here, yet I do not know what civilization these gigantic gates carved into the mountain belonged to. I have barely even managed to understand the runic written on them".

Placing my hand on the runes [ᛚᚨᛋᛏ ᛋᛏᚨᚾᛞ] I said "last stand, is what it says but whose last stand is it?"

Agitated at the dead end of this venture I returned to my house and changed into an outfit more suited to training, ad picked up my spear.

While I had become a general in the empire it was only because of my strategies and intelligence, but my strength was beyond abysmal. This would have been okay if my enemies now here humans or even demi-humans, like elves, dwarves, demons, or merfolk, but the enemy now was dragons. And I had no one to rely on, but myself.

Years had passed, and I had realized that while it was easy for me to use the weapons and understand how to use them because of the vast number of books I had read, the same could not be said about my body. My physical talents were quite simply abhorrent, and I had clearly no aptitude for mana absorption either, for in the 40 years that I had spent in seclusion, I had barely managed to get to 4 stars established inside my core, for some context, someone at the age of 18 who has had no real support, and has simply trained by themselves can reach this stage with a bit of effort. Obviously going beyond this stage becomes exponentially harder the more stars one established, but still getting to the 4- star stage shouldn't take this long.

Discarding the useless thoughts out of my brain I stopped my weapon training for the day and decided to go for physical training, and started off by running back and forth to the peak of the mountain.

8 hours had passed, and I had just returned to my base to prepare lunch for myself after having completed my physical training, when I head sounds of wings flapping. At first, I had decided to ignore them as I thought it was just a random bird that had decided to come to the fresh water source of the waterfall.

But soon I remembered that this was the ultar mountain range, a place so secluded that aerial beasts would rarely be able to enter the insides of the mountain. And decided to check it out, as if a winged beast had truly managed to get in here it meant that it was going to be terrifyingly strong.

ROAAAR

I heard the creature roar, which made my even more curious as to the nature of the being, but I feel like I had subconsciously known what it was, maybe was just trying to subconsciously avoid the answer that I knew to be true. Picking up my spear and putting on my armor I walked out of my hut and headed towards the water fall where I heard a roar coming from.

I slowly stepped towards the waterfall trying to make as little noise as I could, in an attempt to make sure that the beast did not notice me.

Finally, after a few minutes I had arrived at the waterfall, and it turned out that my subconscious was right, and my fears were true, it was a dragon. A big red, winged dragon, with 2 horns, and sharp claws.

I walked towards the waterfall slowly, as I noticed that, while the dragon was big by human standards it seemed to have been a younger dragon, as it had developed only 2 of the usual 6 horns that the dragons tended to have.

Seeing the dragon had already made my rage barely controllable, and I had already decided to attack it regardless of the outcome, knowing that I had not much longer to live anyway, and taking one of these lizards down with me would be a mighty fine way to end my pathetic excuse of a life.

Ending my thoughts, I decided to give it my all and jumped at the dragon who had been distracted as it stared at the wall.

'Cowabunnnggggaaaaa' I screamed internally as I jumped as high as I could and lodged the spear on the dragon's leg.