blink, blink

Richard slowly opened his eyes as he slowly came to, aches present throughout his body, coming face to face with the worried faces of his familiars and sister Alexandria. Well, two of them. Atlas was trying to look worried, but was obviously distracted by chewing as he looked at him.

Panda's worried face quickly shifted to exasperation. "All right, the big dumb lizard is back up. Back to business everyone."

Richard rolled his eyes and came face-to-face with sister Alexandria, who still looked worried.

"Richard's, by any chance did evolving hurt a little?" She asked worriedly.

When Richard nodded, she frowned a bit.

And when Richard asked why:

"Evolution isn't meant to hurt in that kind of way. It hurts, sure, but more in that itching sort of way. I don't know why it hurts you so much." she admitted.

Sister Alexandria fretted a little, worrying about what could possibly be wrong with him.

Thankfully, the system already had an explanation.

[It's simple. Your soul was initially incompatible with your body. You must've noticed that the first evolution hurt a great deal, whereas the second evolution has hurt fairly less. As your soul and body become more in-sync, the pain will lessen for evolution.]

That made sense. Maybe. Richard didn't know souls, so maybe that made tons of sense, maybe it made no sense. Nonetheless, he felt better knowing this, and seeing sister Alexandria's face loosen up when she heard the explanation.

As for his new body...

Well, first off, there were a few clouds drifting around him.

Not huge ones, but small clouds were drifting around him, his feet, his tail, his wings.

His wings.

Richard's wings had grown larger, larger in proportion to the rest of the body. with the membrane now stretching to connect to his tail, with the webbing having streaks of red running through them, appearing suddenly and random, like watching lightning strike against the blue sky.

Red tints ran across his scales, as red crystals lined his spine, tiny but present.

His tail ended in a protruding fin, much like the one a fish may have, though Richard believed it lied somewhere more along what the skywhale had for a fin.

Richard hoped he could see one someday.

So what were his status.

[Storm dragon(juvenile)]

[Lvl 1/100]

[Health: 700]

[Spd:400]

[ATK: 310]

[Mana: 600]

[Def: 200]

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[Skills: Scratch, Glide, Screech, Appraisal(lvl 5), fireball, rock smash, splash, vine whip, shock, icicle, stealth, heal, wind slash, molten claws, charge, lightning pulse, static, frost fang, frost smash, book of oaths, shapeshifting, berserk rage, hyper sense, lightning spear, thunder spear volley, storm , blizzard, rockslide, flame thrower, head smash, cloud creation, storm cloud manipulation, divebomb, storm bank]

[Mana circles:0]

[Points: 3500]

[Skill Points:30]

[inventory]

[Gacha]

[Shop]

The stats seemed to have changed around. His speed now exceeded his strength, and his defense grew less than the others.

Looking at the extended webbing, Richard wondered if this was thanks to the increased delicacy, or perhaps his increased speed, now greater than strength was the trade he had made.

It wasn't the huge jump he had expected, but that was also expected. Though, the 100-level requirement was a 4x jump, versus the 2.5 multiplier he had in his first evolution.

[The bloodline was a factor in this, promising greater growth, but also increasing your limit, meaning you'll have further to go in order to evolve.]

That was fair. What about these clouds. Richard was staring at all the little clouds floating by, weirdly orbiting him.

Yeah, storm dragon, but he wasn't expecting little clouds to appear. The storm cloud manipulation skill was more along the lines of what he expected.

[The miniature clouds are related to the skill you have known as storm bank.]

Storm bank. The other skill. 'Alright, how does storm bank skill work then?'

[The skill storm bank allows the user to store lightning within the miniature clouds currently under his control to be utilized at another time and location. They do require manual charging on your own time, but you can store and absorb lightning for your own use without using mana. It's like an extra pool of resources to use.]

Well isn't that useful.

Staring at the clouds, Richard focused on the tiny little puff clouds, and as he did so he could feel a tug of mana, as his energy left his body.

The tiny clouds darkened ever so slightly as they started swirling with tiny red streaks of lightning.

Turning his attention to a nearby tree, he told it to fire, and it did so as if part of his body, as a strike of red lightning blasted out of the cloud and blew a hole clean through the tree!

A thumping sound could be heard, as sister Alexandria thumped on the ground with her tail, as if to give applause, which did make Richard feel a bit embarrassed, but also a bit happy.

Krackle was clapping with their tentacles while Atlas took some time to try to clap while Panda just rolled his eyes.

"Whatever."

Richard having confirmed the skill in fact, did work, was satisfied with what his new form was.

It looked like it had good potential, especially since he essentially had extra mana in a sense, though it was limited in what it could do.

But...

There was something that was bothering him.

A light...

There was something about it...

What was it he was forgetting?

"Sister Alexandria, do the dragons have a god?"

"Pardon?"

"Like, is there a god of dragons perhaps?"

She cocked her head in confusion. "What made you bring that up so suddenly?"

He didn't have a response, just a nagging feeling. When she saw he had nothing else to say she continued.

The wyrm waived her tail. "There are many dragons who have become gods, but no, there is no god of dragons. Did you see something?" she asked, narrowing her eyes.

Richard shook his head. "No, I just had a weird desire to ask that." he said, reaching for something that despite his effort, he couldn't remember what compelled him to ask.

Sister Alexandria nodded. "It's fine. Many young dragons feel themselves compelled to ask that question. After all, many other races of sapient monsters have a god that supposedly created them, and yet dragons do not." she laughed, though there was a tint of mockery in this laugh. "It's lead some dragons to believe themselves to be the greatest race, higher than all other races. Some even think of themselves as gods amongst lizards."

Richard had to cringe at any dragon believing that. Yeah, sure dragons are strong, but gods? That felt like pure arrogance. Richard was brought back from death by a god.

That didn't feel like something a dragon could do.

Whatever, the desire for an answer had already dissipated.

He'd evolved, so now it back to normal. Well, that, and time to conduct some experimentation with his new body.

----------------------------------------

It was turning out to be a weird day so far. A few weeks after evolving he hadn't managed to level up more than once. That was expected. New evolution likely meant slowed growth. Fine.

What he didn't expect was a flying octopus and a giant god crab that referred to itself in third person.

'Karkinos is no mere god crab! Karkinos is the god crab. Click Click Click.'

Do all dragons have such exciting lives or was he just lucky?