The Dream Master

(The Dragon in the Full Shell)

***

Fifteen  years passed since I was reincarnated (25 totaled)

I had been experimenting with creating various things in dreams when it happened…

You have leveled up!

Your proficiency in stat: emotion/soul has increased

And then not long after:

A New Title has been unlocked!

[Dream Master]

+10000 soul/emotion

Your experience in empathy  has increased

Your Various Dream Skills have gone up 10 levels each.

Curious I allowed the title window to come up

Titles Title:Description:Effects:Gem Dragon PrincessYours is the blood of royalty+15 leadership

+100 attractiveness and charm

+10 to all other statsDream MasterA Title Given to One who has Mastered Dreams+10000 soul/emotion

Your Dream skills levels increase by 10

You learn dream skills and related skills 50% faster

This title had effects that would be very useful for me. Lately I had reached a bottle neck in that particular branch of skills so I had been having trouble leveling my dream skills any further, but now with this title my skills weren’t only automatically increased but also would now increase faster.

This would be particularly vital in the future. Although the most useful thing about Dream Walking was it gave visions in “real time” with Dream Traveling on the other hand its greatest usefulness was that you could use it to change the time-frame of the dream and allow years to pass in a single moment.

Although I didn’t have much use for it at this moment (being in an egg means I have nothing but time) when I do hatch. I will probably end up pretty busy in some way (I don’t change much) and such I will no longer have time to continue to do all of the training I am free to do right now. As such I will have to rely on my dream skills like dream travel and practice while I sleep.

Yes Dream master was a lot better title then my “Gem Dragon Princess” Although the +10 to all stats had been convenient the higher I level the less +10 affects me. Comparing the two titles got me to wondering about the mystery of where titles exactly come from.

Actually there isn’t much known of the process, but basically there are two ways. One is when after multiple people start calling you by a certain nickname if it describes something you did to make you famous or is descriptive of something unique about you. If enough people start referring to you by it, it becomes a title.

The other way was if you overcame a particularly hard challenge or reached a certain point in training of a skill or group of skills of the same type or ones that related to each other.

Supposedly the rarer it is the better. It was found that many of these rare titles gave various bonuses of extra stats, made it easier to perform certain actions or even gave skills.

As to the how and the why one was given titles it was not publicly known but there are some theories.

I’ve heard some say that both stats and titles comes from under the directory of a certain goddess, but to my knowledge she has never been named. (At least to mortals). I hadn’t heard of her at all in my past life and only a few of the many mages I have spied on have even hinted of her existence.

But supposedly it is her and her underlings that decide what the “new” windows will say, although the actual bestowal of such “gifts” seems to be an automated process. Apparently from what those rare wizards said they had performed many experiments in an attempt to find out more about this god.

Spending all their money in order to get the status cards and to buy the demi human slaves. Even after years of work they still only managed to find out relatively little. She was defiantly a goddess that existed, she was somewhat lazy and uncreative as one could tell from the way the words on the status screen was written. Most important and to the mages most disappointing she did not accept worshipers and she had never appeared before those who followed her unofficially.

Unlike the majority of the other gods I had found out about she didn’t even house a statue at one of the temples that served the whole pantheon rather than one god (my old life’s church being the latter). As there is so little about her I am immensely curious.

I then remembered something. Wait a second didn’t one of my opinions say I got the unlocked version of the status screen? Let me check…Oh yeah it did. I immediately attempt to look up information about this mysterious title bestowing goddess.

The goddess prudence or Prue is the high tier god that oversees the collecting and distribution of the various status windows of this world. She is also the head librarian of the gilded forest valley otherwise known as the library of the gods.

Although she is midlevel in beauty among the goddesses, she is also a lazy bookworm and data nerd that doesn’t care about her own appearance to the point of being slovenly.

Although she refuses to actively anoint any mortals as her clergy or servants Prue does have many unofficial followers and she has some popularity (mostly in hidden circles of scholars).

There are rumors that if a scholar reaches an extremely high level, or if one risks their life in order to obtain information for knowledge’s sake. That she may give a bonus to the next skill she gives you that offers higher access to the information in the status system as a reward.

This is extremely rare however, for the goddess much take a personal interest and permit the new higher access herself. And as said she is very lazy and does not often look over things personally. Added to that, she is very hard to impress. (ESPECIALLY IF YOU ARE HER SUBORDINATE!)

Further information is personal, and of high security risk, permitted only for other gods with high clearance levels. Do you wish to request more information anyway?

As I am not a god, and I definitely don’t have permission, I know what the answer will be, but out of curiosity I ask anyway.

[YOU DO NOT HAVE HIGH ENOUGH ACESS TO SEE MORE INFORMATION]

Sigh never mind…anyway what interests me the most about this information is the part where it mentions that she is also in charge of collecting and storing information. The library of the gods…I drool at the very thought of getting to read at a place like that…

That’s it! I have decided going to that library and reading there shall be one of my new life’s goals!

Wait a second. I paused in my excitement and then reread the information in the status window just a few times to be sure.

“There are rumors that if a scholar reaches an extremely high level, or if one risks their life in order to obtain information for knowledge’s sake. That she may give a bonus to the next skill she gives you that offers higher access to the information in the status system as a reward”

The way the words are written indicates that probably one of those “mysterious” underlings wrote it but the implications are obvious…at some point in time she somehow found out my illegal book learning as a peasant and put some sort of “blessing” on me.

I had no “official” skills as a peasant. One must fulfill several requirements to have skills, one is ability, and the other is knowledge. Abilities are easy to get but the knowledge is much stricter then it seems as it has many limitations that must be met for it to be fulfilled.

A few of the most important of these requirements, is one must have official schooling or training and even more important one must possess a status card or status looking ability.

Obviously I had neither of those…thus while I had skill I didn’t have any “skills”. The first skill I had ever received was after I died, and I received the “reincarnation” skill.

Apparently whatever she put on me was strong enough to survive after my death. (Or possibly she knew of my death) Either way I got this really rare prized and ultra-useful skill, that up until now I had just been taking for granted.

The idea of this goddess taking notice of my actions and liking my desire to learn enough that she even gave me a special gift that she rarely bestows, has really given me some admiration and a bit of respect for the goddess.

Being in charge of all these windows sounds like a daunting task, especially as I try to picture the amount of people that have them. Even if the underling that wrote the window called her lazy, the fact that she probably has seen his entry at least once and left it has only made me admire her more.

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

From what I have heard of the gods they are supposed to be very prideful, but she doesn’t sound like that at all. I don’t know her reasons for not appointing followers but they are probably good ones especially from the little said she sounds like a good person.

I don’t know about becoming an unofficial follower, but I think after reading this I have become an unofficial fan. I think that I would like to meet her someday, (even if she isn’t near to what I have pictured)

Thoughts of a god has led to you getting some faith for the first time congratulations!

+1 faith

This makes me smirk to see as I had never really thought about the gods much before, and had thought the only way to gain faith was to worship them and it turns out that all I needed to gain faith was think? You can be certain I will be doing a lot more thinking in the future. Especially now that I am a dragon not a peasant trying to rebel by refusing to pray to the gods.

After a bit more reflection which conveniently earns me a few more faith. I decide to get back to my training. I need to work hard if I want to reach my goal of reading at that awesome sounding library.

While so far to you my training has seemed very willful and erratic. Actually from the start I have been following a plan that I have created since the very beginning. (Shortly after I gained consciousness and realized what I was).

Basically rather than focusing on any one stat, I plan to have an even amount as possible for each stat. I don’t want to specialize, I want to be able to do anything. And as I don’t really have any preferences other than that of favoring the sword over most other weapons and magic over having no magic, specializing in generalizing seems like a good idea.

I especially covet the thought of one day when I am hatched and trained and thus truly possess completely freedom from others. I would be far less “enslaved” by myself, because I wouldn’t be limited in what I can do because of my stats.

Pleasantly my current race is like it was made to help me in this endeavor. Gem Dragons like I said have the racial traits of being good at magic and defense. While they are not as physically strong as most dragons, a dragon is still a dragon thus compared to most other races including demons they are very powerful.

And there are no potential penalties to receive when I start training. In fact As Gem Dragons are one of the few kinds of dragons that really do gain a lot through training my parents have been highly encouraging it as all the training was one of the main ways they had kept an advantage over the area.

Basically being a Gem Dragon is like having a class without having a class, substantial bonuses in almost every stat. When you add in all the other bonuses I am getting especially because of the ones I am getting from heroic water and reincarnation.  Then you can see why I don’t foresee much difficulty in getting what I want. No challenges except the ones I am creating for myself.

So I happily train, and with the thought of complete freedom in my mind. Everything becomes painless, even the training I do that is supposed to be painful.

***

Meanwhile in the outside world. My brother now has all the unhatched dragons under his control. While recently dragons have been having eggs almost yearly it was only a temporary thing caused by that somewhat recent victory and large male population loss. But now that the fertility rate seems to be slowing down back to normal, it looks like we will easily maintain control over all the new dragons.

Ordinarily a dragon tends to have a clutch of eggs only around every ten years or so, and if the dragon lives in a community like my people they all tend to have eggs around the same time. So around every ten years starting at the end of first ten years since gaining conscious.

My brother with my back up and the aid of his “friends” has been quickly contacting the infants as soon as they awaken to consciousness. Mostly they just comfort, but as soon as it seems they will be able to understand they start teaching them the language and various other things that I had shared with them.

I was particularly pleased when our new younger siblings (three of them) had been brought into our incubating room. One of them, (a younger sister) was a very powerful psychic, so after going out of my way to befriend her in a similar way (though less intensive) ,then our brother.A little sweet talk, and my new sister was soon most eager to help “us” by using her ability to see outside her egg and then share what she saw with the other infants. Thus giving me even more free time.

Soon after the second fifth and third years passed where my brother and I and all of the other eggs didn’t hatch the adults finally began to become concerned. They asked several of their mages capable of using mind magic to come and “check” on us.

However by that time I had recently developed a new subskill to [lead by example]

Subskill: underneath your wings

Share your magic defense with those following your example and offer them a place of security

[after hatching you will have the option of sharing your physical defense as well]

So other than being able to sense we were still alive all they came up with was blanks. After our healthy and stable status continued without incident the panic quickly quieted down for everyone except for a few of the more concerned parents.

Shortly after this incident I “took aside” in a sense my brother and the sister I was closer to (the psychic) and explained several things to them. Such as “our” need for secrecy (mainly to avoid any huge reactions) I emphasized particularly the need to keep myself a secret and had them promise to make sure the secret was kept even when they decided to hatch.

They easily gave their sworn oath and then proceeded to tell a similar version to their “friends”.  I cautioned they be careful in who they told and for insurance  I suggested this one guy who unlike me had natural instinctive defense against my brother being able to see him on the mental plane. IF even my brother couldn't see him, there shouldn't be many who could break through his defenses.

I had somewhat expected his gift to appear as, I had noticed it was a common trend if there was a dragon specializing in fire born if not around the same time then soon after an ice gem dragon would be born, the balance was always strangely maintained like that. More and more especially after comparing us to what I had learned about other dragons I realize that Gem Dragons are a very unique existence.

Most of the other dragons other than having similar population controls, their births are very random and seem to be decided mostly by genetics, while with Gem Dragons a balance is always maintained in various ways, naturally and effortlessly.

***

In the area I refer to as “my old life” hero had started to encourage his children to become Hero’s because of tradition. He had become very concerned after his father died and there was no one there to stress about tradition of their house…so being slightly more logical and much mellower in his later years he decided to take his father’s place.

Unfortunately to hero and his wife the only one interested in “hero work” was one of his daughters which offended both of their sensibilities as a noble lady she should not be doing the things she had been deciding to do on the sidelines.

However most of their other sons were very lazy and enjoyed the easy life. There was one that was a scholar you’d think might have been suitable as a mage hero or priest hero but although he was many times smarter than his father he was no genius, was weak in body and had zip in magic.

More importantly (as those things can be faked with a little effort excellent equipment and a strong companion to do most of the work) he had absolutely no desire for it and actually even hated the idea.

So the daughter had a chance and grasped it, she wore both her parents down with her persistence as well as because she was many times intelligent and cunning then even both her parents combined (and as her mother was still a wilily old vixen that was saying something)

So eventually she got her wish (begrudgingly) and her father to his credit surprisingly hired the best of the best trainers and instructors. The girl was only 14 when this happened.

Back among my former blood relatives there happened an interesting and unexpected side effect of using a flattered version of myself to help bring in more customers.

Some of my young nieces and nephews fell for it, and became inspired to become adventures (the closest they could come as commoners to being heroes) when these older kids left some of the adults did too, out of loneliness. (This was I think the first time since myself in memory that so many of my family left that area)

Finally, out of old age probably the pope died (or at least it seemed that way), ‘nuff said.

***

My hard work was rewarded and I gained several rank ups throughout these 15 years. I went from red to orange and then eventually I reach the metallic colors at silver.