As he regained consciousness he found himself focused on the minutia of life. Sensory information that would normally be delegated the title of background noise now occupied the forefront of his mind. Yes, the crashes of the waterfall were deafening, but somehow he still clearly heard the droplets of moisture smacking against the ground in other parts of the cave, or the scurrying footsteps of small creatures traveling through entryways and exits much too small for him to have otherwise noticed.
The cave, previously rather dim with only the soft glows of the magical crystals to illuminate it, was now lit up like a Christmas show. All of the Rainbow Quartz were much brighter, but the ones jutting out of the dragon’s spine were uncomfortably bright; to the point where he squinted and turned away.
As he scrunched his face and recoiled, he took in a deep breath and took note of just how sweet the air around him was. It was almost intoxicating. It was something akin to the scent of freshly baked bread, with a hint of honey to it as well. Had he taken in this smell at any other time, he would’ve been inclined to discover the source of it, but in this very moment? He couldn’t care any less.
This was all much too overwhelming for him. All of his senses had been heightened dramatically, and he couldn’t take all the stimulus at once.
“What’s going on?!” he called out to the dragon, only to result in cupping his own ears tightly in response to hearing his own voice booming in his eardrums. He had meant to do so gently, but even his muscle composition seemed to have been enhanced because he ended up clapping his own ears with intensity and knocking himself over to lay out across the rock he had been sitting on top of.
Within all of these, though, there was something that caught his attention a little later, but once he noticed it he couldn’t be bothered to focus on anything else. There was an almost eerie sensation coursing through his veins, he could feel it not only surging throughout the entirety of his person but in the air around him as if it were alive. From the dragon, he could even sense an abundance of this energy. His instincts and sensibilities told him the same thing: this was mana.
He could feel mana! It was crisp and clear. It felt natural, even though it was completely foreign to him beforehand. All of this had to be the effects of the new passive skills he had gained, which meant that he had successfully inherited the abilities. Even faced with the pain he had just experienced, he was simply overjoyed to know that he now had some type of leverage to keep himself alive in this world.
Continuing to focus on the mana, he found that there was a rather dense sphere just a few inches to the right of his heart. He reasoned that this was his core, but that answer only begot more questions. Would his core get bigger, or would the magic within it grow more potent? What was the most efficient way to draw out this energy? It seemed to pump mana through his pathways similar to the way his heart sent blood through his veins, but was that optimal just because it was natural?
He found that the mana already inside of him was a closed system. There was an intangible wall of sorts that separated his mana from the mana of the world around him, but all of the mana around him still seemed keen on trying to get through the wall. He even noticed differences in the types of mana. It presented itself in all kinds of colors and imparted different sensations upon contact with him. Some elements were calming, while others were electrifying; but they were all distinct and unique in their own ways.
You adapt quickly.
He had managed to reassume his upright sitting position while he focused on the mana to put the rest of his senses on the back burner. Once he was brought out of his mind and back into his body by the dragon’s observation, he found that it was much easier to keep his cool now.
“It’s not so bad after a while,” he said, speaking much softer than he normally did, which led his voice to sound deeper than it usually was. He wasn’t whispering, but he wasn’t that far away from it either.
Status. He thought. He hadn’t completely adjusted to his new senses, so he reasoned it wouldn’t hurt him to only speak when absolutely necessary for the time being.
‘Name: N/A
HP: 2,875/2,875
MP: 1,725/1,725
Level: 3
Title: Blessed One, True Dragon Hatchling
Race: Human
Class: Dungeon Master
Active Skills: Transcendent Eye(Max), Punch(LV1)
Passive Skills: Affinity(Max), Linguistics(Max), Dodge(LV1), TDP(LV1), TDH(LV1)
Strength: 24
Endurance: 23
Speed: 26
Dexterity: 24
Mana: 23’
He noticed that he had earned his first title. Upon further inspection, it told him quite a bit of new information.
‘True Dragon Hatchling: Every draconic being is born with both a physique and a heart that serve as the foundation for everything they develop in the future. The ranking of these skills determines the ultimate potential of the drake, regardless of the race that they were born as. True Dragons are considered to be the progenitors of all draconic beings and are known as the most powerful lineage to be a part of. +20 to all stats.’
The skills both gave him 1.5x EXP bonuses to all physical and magical skills trained, respectively.
As he glanced down at his stat values, he remembered that he honestly had no idea what they really meant. What exactly could he do with 24 strength? He got up from where he was sitting and began to stretch.
Can you let me out of here? I’m ready to start my quest.
The dragon returned him to where he originally stood in the cave and opened up the entrance he came in from once more.
By the way, since I’m a hatchling does that make you my parent now? Can I call you to come help me when I’m in a ton of trouble in the future?
A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.
I suppose that would make me your mother. If you survive this quest, I will allow you to carry my surname and all that comes with it. I can’t have any weak and useless children, after all.
Oh, you’re a woman? Cool.
You couldn’t recognize my beauty at first glance?
I’ll see you after school, Mom! Were the last thoughts transmitted between the two before he left the cave. He was tired of the banter and ready to begin solving the problems he had laid out before him.
He stepped out of the cave and into the waterfall area. The sun was hanging high in the air, making him wonder just how much time had passed since he entered the cave. It was high in the air when he entered. Had only a few moments passed, making that a dimension separate from time? Had he been there for multiple days? Were the days in this place just extremely long?
So many questions.
He figured the safest place to train was right in front of the waterfall. If he ran into something he couldn’t handle, he could just run back to the cave where he would either lose them due to the entrance’s hidden nature or bait them into the dragon’s lair where she would definitely kill them.
Hopefully.
He still didn’t know why she was in the cave while he was out in the forest completing her tasks. Was it just because he needed to have a quest for the game, or was this world so real that there was a canon reason for her behavior? Only time could really tell, so in the meantime, he decided to start off with a simple test.
He put his feet a shoulder’s length apart and leaned forward into his right foot as he sent a clean straight jab at the tree in front of him. It was a huge tree, so he wasn’t expecting to unroot it clean out of the ground and send it flying into other trees or anything. Still, he was surprised by the fact that he did visible damage on the very first strike. It didn’t even hurt his hand either, which was a plus. The wood where his knuckles connected chipped away a decent amount, but didn’t leave a full crater.
He tried it one more time, but this time around he activated his punch skill. When his fist broke three inches deep into the wood, and still didn’t hurt him, he almost wanted to scream with joy. He felt powerful!
Next, he removed the knife from his inventory and struck at the same spot with a slash. He only managed to cut an inch or so deep into the tree, and he only nicked out a chunk of bark as opposed to slicing clean through the trunk, but again he was happy that he was able to do this much on his first strike.
He sent the weapon back to his inventory and closed his eyes so that he could focus better. He shifted his attention to the mana in the air around him. It wasn’t as dense and palpable as the mana in the cave, but it only took a few seconds of uninterrupted meditation for him to find himself immersed in the energy around him. Some of it carried green tones, with mixtures of a wavy blue sprinkled throughout the green. But, to his surprise, most of the mana around him didn’t carry any color at all. It was clear, pure. It felt… raw.
He attempted to visualize the raw mana flowing into one spot, but he admittedly didn’t have the strongest mental images. He could sense and feel the mana, but moving it purely with his imagination was… challenging, to say the absolute least. The same thing happened when he tried to visualize the mana within his own body moving at his own will, leaving him a tad bit disheartened. Was he not a natural at this like he had been anticipating?
Maybe it could only be used through a skill?
He didn’t know any magical skills. But, he apparently didn’t need a skill book or a teacher to learn skills. He’d learned both punch and dodge on his own, so maybe he could learn any skill he could think of within reason?
It certainly didn’t hurt to try, so he decided to start small.
He thought Mana Ball to himself twice, once while channeling the mana of the outside world and once while using his own. It worked both times, creating an empty sphere of transparent mana in front of him. He opened his eyes both times to see how it looked with his pupils, and both times it was oddly solid despite the fact that it couldn’t even be called white. It was almost like a thick glass.
‘Active Skill Generated: Mana Ball!’
He lost 200MP after he was done, which meant that each activation only cost 100MP. Was the low cost because of the low utility of the skill? It was joy inducing for him to even be using magic in the first place, but after the initial wonder wore off he quickly realized that they were just what he called them: balls. He couldn’t exactly use them in battle as they currently were. So, he practiced.
There were so many things to test. When he attempted to grab a ball and squeeze it, he found that it was similar to a tennis ball. He found that he could harden them to feel more like a baseball or make them much softer. He could even make them bigger or smaller, depending on how much mana he chose to invest in it; but only when he did it manually instead of activating the skill.
He could mold the shape as he pleased before he formed it if he did it manually, and after it was made using his hands as well, but he couldn’t quite figure out how to launch the projectile to use it as an attack.
When he sharpened the edge so that it was something akin to a sharp stick, he found that it stabbed itself a few inches deep into the tree. It was the toughest weapon he had, but he couldn’t exactly get it into the shape of a blade. Simple shapes were all he could manage, so he decided he could make it into something akin to a needle whenever he needed to use it in combat.
He shifted his focus to exploring the forest. He had already made his own assumptions about how the forest was split up. The goblins from that time at the river had come from the same side of the river, near the West where he currently was, which is also where he had run into a purple goblin. This was where they were, and it made more sense for the blue ones to take the East since that was closer to their altar at the other waterfall.
He made minimal use of his minimap while he traveled the forest since he wanted to familiarize himself with exploring just in case he was ever without his minimap. He was mainly paying attention to his surroundings, but he also started his training. He needed to be able to create mana balls like it was second nature, in any shape or size with or without the skill. Luckily for him, his mana regenerated very quickly. It seemed as though the mana in the air loved him because as soon as he opened up the wall separating his body’s energy from the world’s, the latter rushed in. He was careful not to take in too much, though, because it seemed a little risky while he was outside of the cave. He did eventually want to see what would happen, though.
Eventually…
Eventually, he heard something other than the normal sounds of the forest. The leaves in the trees rustled, but not because of the wind. Something was traveling up there, he was sure of it. He was too weak earlier to get up there, but now he was sure he could jump that high.
He miscalculated his strength, though, and sent himself soaring past the low branch he intended to land on and crashing into a higher branch he hadn’t even accounted for. He grabbed the branch on instinct and hung himself over it as he rubbed his head, staring down at the ground he was just on a second ago. He had traveled so far in such a short amount of time!
When he looked forward, he found only blue leaves in his face. He was near the bottom of the canopy, so he couldn’t see much of anything besides the floor. He decided to climb up to the top of the tree, so he could get a decent lay of the land while learning the bounds of his new body. By the time he was at the top, he had leaves in his hair from miscalculating jumps here and there, but he had mostly figured it out.
What he hadn’t figured out was why there was a thin veil of mana atop the leaves that now served as his floor, or the sight before him once he made it to the top. He was deep within a valley, where the river flowed from the northern mountain range and through the southern one. Three suns all hung high in the sky, all of them creating a triangular shape while they baked the planet beneath them. Birds of varying shapes and sizes broke the blue canopy and soared through the air, making the world look more alien than fantastical. But, nothing about the terrain surprised him more than the two purple goblins standing on top of the same leaves he was, with their rudimentary spears pointed at him. There was nowhere to run or hide, seeing as their village behind him was the only thing on this second floor of the forest.
He put his hands up in defeat, showing he had no desire to fight.
“I’ve come to help you defeat the Blue Moon Tribe,” he said, hoping he could talk his way out of this. If he couldn’t, he was sure he could kill two goblins, but he wanted to play his hand as best as he could.