Part 1

As it turns out, I did not find any dragons, simply by going to the mountain range.

That said, I did smell something that felt like dragons.

A small group of them. But I my lack of experience meant I didn’t know how old the scent was, or where it came from.

Well, either way, I decided to investigate the area.

But I didn’t find anything I wanted—I’m not exactly a detective, so even the clues I found were wasted on me.

So I did nothing. I found a nice area in the shade, and just laid down for a while.

Truly, lazy is best…

—But magic is pretty cool to.

With that affirmation, I put myself to work.

I looked for an area in the mountains that had very few life, and when I was content with an ideal location, I began to practice.

Practice breathing fire of course.

From the moment I was born into this world, I instinctively knew how to use fire magic. Sort of. More specifically, I knew how to breath fire on command.

There were two forms my breath could take:

The first was what I did earlier; I create a ball of fire and shoot it forward.

The second is more like a flame thrower, with a large spread.

For me, it’s like smiling; you don’t really think of all the muscles that go into it—you just do it.

But this was my first time consciously using fire, and after some experimenting, I learned I could break down the “muscles” I use.

Basically, I can see the inner workings of my magic. I learned that I could break down the construction process, and was able to freely control wind even.

With a bit of tweaking, I even got my flame to come out light blue—the sign of a clean flame according to my science teacher.

The hell is this kind of cheat? Do all dragons have this kind of power over magic?

Hell, a bit more tweaking, and I can control both Earth and Water. Shooting fireballs isn’t enough—I can guide them as long as I’m conscious of them.

This magic stuff is rather convenient. And my reserves of magic power seem to be huge.

But then, shouldn’t a full-grown dragon be able to do this much?

…

…

Why aren’t Dragons ruling the world?

Part 2

As I was experimenting with trying to make my fire stronger, I felt something. Dragons, actually.

While I was melting various boulders, it seemed some dragons had gathered nearby.

No, that wasn’t it. I felt magic used by a dragon. A lot of it.

Rather than gathering nearby, it seems like they were further up north, and their use of magic let me sense them.

So out of curiosity I headed north.

When I got there, I saw two dragons fighting, with several others watching. Or rather, only a few were watching, while others were minding their own business.

There seems to be something like a Dragon camp, atop a very high plateau. Looking at the surrounding terrain, it didn’t feel like humans would have an easy time reaching this place.

The structure of the camp seems to show there’s some kind of hierarchy among dragons, now that I look closely.

Looking from above, it seems like the larger dragons are towards the center, and smaller ones are towards the edge. However, dragons smaller than me look to be scattered through-out.

In total, I spot about 70 dragons, not including the younger ones.

Is this a hierarchy based on age? Well, there are some dragons whose size don’t match the area they’re in, so maybe it’s about strength? So the leader of this group has his rest area at the center, and everyone else is made to spread out. around him.

As for the two dragons that were fighting, they were each the size of a 1 floor house. Holy shit they’re huge. They were exchanging slashes and trying to get a good hold on their enemy so they can bite down on them. Often, one of them will use their fire-breath attack, but because a Dragon’s scales are practically fire-proof, it only serves as a distraction or warning.

Still, it looks like fire still feels hot to them, so it’s not like it’s completely useless.

Are they fighting for control of this group? Ah, whatever.

I decided to land, and investigate, being sure to land around the Dragons that best fit my size, to be safe.

It doesn’t seem like any of them care though, and only take a few glances in my direction, before moving along. It seems my size is the “average” among the dragons here, with about 50 of them being my size or smaller. I don’t know how old they are, but I assume that for Dragons, they’re pretty young. Possibly at the earliest stages of adulthood.

As I wander the camp, a feeling washes over me. Something like an intent?

I look towards the source of it, and there’s a dragon staring back at me. She looks at me with a bit of interest, and makes her way to something that looks like a nest.

How do I know it’s a her?

Instinct I guess.

Ah, and this “feeling” seems to be her intent to mate.

Eh? Doesn’t the man usually broadcast their desire to “mate”…?

Well I guess Dragons don’t care about such things.

「Not interested,」 Seemed to flow from my mind naturally. Well, I kinda imitated what this dragon did to me. It seems she sent her thoughts and feelings at me via a pulse of magic, so I did the same—except that I ended up attaching words to my thoughts.

She replied in disappointment, and just began to look for another mate.

What’s this?

—It seems I had a misconception about the Dragons in this world.

I had assumed I was a standard. I thought perhaps dragons were sentient like me. It made sense to me. My mind hasn’t deteriorated or anything, so this brain of mine can clearly hold conscious thought.

The dragons around me seem to be the same kind as me too. My magic power seems to dwarf the average Dragon, but that’s probably thanks to the summoning. The dragons up the chain look like their mana is even larger.

And now that I notice it, within the dual of the two dragons, the two are only using their firebreath. No other kind of magic.

Is it that they can’t feel and reconstruct magic the same way I can?

Or perhaps they don’t have the ego and forethought to do so.

In either case, it seems the dragons here interact like animals, and don’t have a concept of planning and such. Not long-term anyways.

Well, I decided to stay here for the time being, and went up to a dragon to speak with him. Or rather, I “asked” about the “group”, and the “young”. Those seem to be the only thoughts he cared for, and my other words were unneeded fluff.

So he politely explained to the best of his understanding. The way he expressed it to me was through memories and conceptual ideas. But the idea seemed pretty rough, and unfocused.

In no particular order, this is what I came to understand:

As I thought, I’m a rather young dragon. About the same age as my human body—Dragons sure do grow up fast.

I’m right at the point before I reach a steep drop in my growth. I’ll probably grow another another foot in height over the next year, before my growth becomes a crawl. Still, a Dragon’s fully mature height is about 10 meters, 5 times my current size. But that’s not until I’m in my triple digits. This is just my guess anyways; these dragons don’t have a concept of numbers, so measuring time with them is a guestimation.

It also seems that until you reach about 30 to 50, you have a high chance at dying. While Dragons are strong, they still have enemies like Griffins and Phoenixes, on top of the regular subjugations that Humans perform.

Phoenixes are pretty rare though, and are typically alone, but are extremely powerful. It seems they hate Dragons for one reason or another, and don’t hesitate to kill them given the chance. The larger dragons tend to be able to survive this kind of punishment, but it typically ends with those among my age receiving high deaths.

Griffins are more common, but not as powerful. They hunt as a pack (or was it a pride?) so they’re able to capture careless dragons while they’re out hunting. It seems Dragons have a bigger hate for Griffin's than Phoenixes.

Like I predicted, the arrangement of the camp is by hierarchy, and that’s based on power. Because older dragons are more experienced, and stronger, they’re naturally at the top. However, I figured I could probably reach there pretty soon, if I practice my magic and fighting a bit more.

That said, the young that are still nursed by their parents are allowed to stay with them—yeah, I was pretty surprised that Dragons cared for their young into adulthood.

Were they really just animals, I wonder?

Part 3

That answer I found was “kind of.”

Ah, before that, it’s been a week since I found the Dragon camp. They really do just live here peacefully. They occasionally go out to hunt food, but not too often.

The younger dragons usually go out hunting in groups though, because of the Griffins.

I’ve gone out hunting a few times, and we encountered Griffins. There, I showed off my great battle ability, by using magic that the other Dragons hardly understood. I’m able to one-shot Griffins by creating a rapidly spinning blue fireball, that’s able to pierce right through them. The other dragons have tried imitating me, and it’s scary that they managed to actually do it. Though, they haven’t learned how to make their fire blue—I’ll keep that one to myself. Despite their behaviour, they’re scary smart.

Incidentally, I ranked up through this society of dragons.

What I’ve learned in the last week is that the dragons can learn quickly. But their thought processes are only at the level of a child, even among the older dragons.

I learned there was a reason for that too.

But I’m unable to do anything about that, and really, I’m scared of what will happen if I try.

Even so, Dragons are pretty social creatures it seems. The reason I didn’t feel a need to protect a territory, was because individual dragons aren’t territorial, but they are as a flock. There is the occasionally greedy solo dragon, but generally, between allies they’re very sharing, but outside of that, they’ll rip your throat out for taking their gold.

The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

Oh, and it seems we do like shiny things.

I guess I didn’t realize it until I saw the decorative equipment they looted from the corpses of adventurers and soldiers, and stashed within a hidden cavern, on the cliff-side.

It’s really pretty, how could I not like it?

On a completely unrelated note—

Dragon sex is awkward.

I was kind of depressed when I saw I didn’t have a dick, but it seems Dragons in this world have it hidden inside themselves until they need it. Technically it’s not a dick, and doesn’t look like a human’s at all, but it sure felt like one.

Anyways, my aversion to mating with dragons disappeared after a day or two, it seems. But it was still weird as all hell. Especially trying to convince my mate to not just do it openly with everyone around.

I still have these thoughts about getting with human girls, but like this it’s impossible, huh? Well… maybe not physically impossible, anyways. Still, I’m quite sated after just a couple… interactions.

Well anyways, Dragons seem to be polyamorous. That’s to say, they have more than one partner. But most male dragons try to keep it under 5 partners, because they’re still expected to care for their young, and any more is too hard for them to keep track of.

Now, one might look at me and think I’ve committed something like beastiality, but can you really blame me in this situation? It’s not like it’s easy to ignore this need to mate. Now that I’ve done it though, I don’t think I’ll be going around randomly anymore.

I thought about leaving, but where would I go exactly? Dragons in this world seem no smarter than the griffins, who themselves are like any other animal. I would be an abnormality in this world, and few humans would actually give me assistance.

Well, I didn’t mind. Learning about the dragons was interesting enough, and so was practicing my magic.

My patience seems to have sky-rocketed in this new body of mind.

Well anyways, currently I was hunting with a group of 3 other dragons my age.

In the last two days I hadn’t encountered a single Griffin, so I was a bit relaxed. We were searching the area for the various wild life available, and sheeps seemed to be the most common source of food.

It’s pretty tasty actually.

We quickly managed to pluck 1 sheep each from a herd as we swooped down for our capture. Honestly, it’s more like fishing than hunting.

One sheep was good enough for several dragons. If we were attacked by Griffins, it was possible to kill and take them instead, seeing how they can feed even more.

Ultimately I prefer the taste of sheep, but Griffin isn’t bad either, and has a nice satisfying sensation when I consume their mana.

I wonder what human tastes like~

Ah, no no! Bad thoughts, bad!

—Maybe if they piss me off.

Anyways, the meat isn’t for us (even I’ve taken a bite or two). It’s for the children you see? Well, I don’t have any yet, but you see, Dragons don’t have to eat much, other than to grow. Beyond that, our mana acts as a source of food and we can probably go ages without a bite to eat. But we won’t grow in size, and our physical strength won’t increase much either, without the needed protein.

As such, it seems that when a dragon reaches the age of 10, their appetite seems to all but vanish, and eating is almost superficial.

That’s probably also why a lot of the dragons in this camp are close to the same size. So rather than saying we take a long time to grow after this size, it’s more accurate to say that we lose the need to grow.

…

Hmm? There’s some peculiar magic being used in this area of the woods—

As I investigate, I realize that it seems to be some kind of space magic.

Oh?

Using my magic sense, I notice the existence of some sort of shape-shifting creature. A slime? A Mimic slime? What a bizarre creature. It’s using magic to change its cells into that of an insects. What’s more, its real body is a hundred times the insect’s size—

Interesting.

The slime has something like an inventory that it stuffs the rest of its body into, huh?

Quite the camouflage.

While I can understand the concept, it’s difficult for me to actually perform the transformation. It’s like asking me if I can understand a large math problem, and then telling me to solve it without looking, or writing.

Now multiply that a few times over in difficulty.

And even if I did, changing back would be close to impossible. Actually, I think that copying the Slime’s magic would hurt excruciatingly. The Mimic Slime is built for this kind of magic, the same way Dragons are built for fire-magic. But the reverse is not true; A dragon is not build for transformation magic, the same way a slime is not built for fire magic.

Well, creating the pocket-dimension was within my ability though. Funny how that works. This will come in handy. The rest, I’ll think of an alternative later.

If I’m still interested.

The rest of the trip back to the camp was uneventful.

Later, when I tried teaching a couple of the more keen dragons the pocket-dimension magic, it didn’t seem they could understand some of my abstract thoughts.

Or rather, they didn’t understand the need for this kind of magic, so they only half-heartedly “listened”.

Well that’s fine. I managed to bind the pocket-dimension to my magic power, and like that I gained a personal inventory.

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Author Notes:

This probably betrayed a lot of your expectations. I'm aware a lot of you expected dragons to be sentient from the start.

This point that Dragons were animal-like was decided when I first wrote the Prologue. The reason for them being like that was also decided. Yes, there's a reason.

Sailos Kingdom summoned a Dragon, because they expected a beast that they could tame. They didn't predict it would escape, because they didn't think a Dragon would even know how a door looked like. So it crashing through the door was outside their expectation. If it were to stay and fight, they would have been able to subdue the dragon, and use the control collars.

Anyways, I already have Chapter 3 written, but will probably hold off on posting until tomorrow, to get an idea of how people take this chapter.

Jason is already OP, thanks to the fact that Dragons in this world have full control of magic, and his knowledge of chemistry and physics—even if it's at a middle school level. On top of that are the enhancements granted to him by the Hero summoning.

As always, feedback and suggestions are always appreciated.

Here's an general explanation on how magic works as a whole. (posted on page 3)

Spoiler :

Magic Energy, or mana in this world is a source of energy that on its own doesn't do a thing. It needs magic or some kind of special event for it to do anything. It ultimately can transform into any other energy, and alter space and time as a whole. Magic itself is omnipotent, and could do anything. The limitation is if your body can use magic in a certain way.

I like to compare things to computers, so I'm going to be using a few computer-related terms to describe it.

Humans, Demi-Humans, and animals have a different "interface" in how they interact with magic. Their bodies naturally contain mana, and there's magic active inside their bodies to use it, but the "mechanisms" and "programs" that use it are all subtly different. You can even think of some of these mechanisms like Drivers to use certain devices.

The "programs" Humans have access to are "Elements". These Elemental systems let them use certain types of magic, without them needing to know how that magic actually affects the universe. Their magic allows them to use the Four Classical elements, Fire, Air, Water, and Earth. However, magic diagrams can be drawn up with special ink that has traces "Magic Stone" dissolved into it. These Magic Diagrams can then be used to perform virtually any kind of magic, including those outside of the four elements, so long as you can draw the right patterns and symbols, and fuel your own magic into the diagram. These diagrams can be drawn on scrolls, or more commonly "Magic Items".

Many other creatures are different.

Some creatures only have access to one or two elements, or they can only use magic a certain way. Like the Mimic slime in this chapter is only able to use its inventory to store its own body inside of, or Phoenixes can control fire at will, and automatically use their mana to repair their bodies, even after death, but can't use magic for anything else (unless they use a Magic Diagram/Circle.

Dragons however are even more different from even that.

By default, a Dragon's "Magic Interface" is built to shoot fire from its mouth, and this is entwined in their instincts. But they're also able to perceive magic like any other sense (other creatures can as well, some even better than dragons) and can freely use their mana to perform any kind of magic, as long as they understand it.

Ultimagely, Magic is omnipotent, but it has rules and limitations, because people who use it are not omniscient, and can't understand how magic works. For instance, it's possible to "conjure" water, in one of three ways; either directly converting mana into matter, gather existing water from the area, or alter reality and probability so that the universe assumes there was always water to begin with.

The first option would destroy the world in an instant, because directly creating matter also creates anti-matter, and would also take more mana than any one person has.

The second option will probably be the most used, but it requires there to be enough water to begin with.

The third option would technically be best, but then you have to understand how quantum mechanics work.