Ryuu

When I was born, I realized something was off. My first memory is that of sitting in front of eight dragons, each easily the size of a three story building. Their scales, all of different colors, glittered about in the dim firelight that desperately tried to light up the hollowed out mountain.

The first words I’d heard were from Ault, my father, were, “Ryuu. I’m sorry, son, but I’m unable to raise you. Tradition dictates this and I do not have enough power to change this.”

He leaned in close, his head easily a few times the size of my body. He smirked, teeth the size of my torso showing as if baring fangs at an enemy. Dragons should not try to replicate human facial expressions if they plan to make friends with them.

“But I’ll do what I can.” Is what he whispered, his breath stirring my hair.

The next year was a blur. I faintly remember being dropped off in a forest and being told to survive, before I was left alone there.

After a moment of thought, I began to move. The place I was dropped off was a wonderful place to start, with water and different forms of berries easily accessible.

This was probably my father’s influence, since he was the one who dropped me off here.

It was a small clearing, so I decided to begin my survival game that was my life.

Hesitation could get me killed, but it could also save my life. So, I learned. When something in me said to run, I did so. But when something in me told me to eat, I would hesitate.

Poison berries were common in this area.

So, to test, I fed them to any docile animals I could. If they survived, then I would dictate them safe to eat.

Of course, this didn’t take into account the pain of eating them. Some of them induced heavy headaches, others had different debuffs.

In the end, out of all the berries there, there was a single one that didn’t have a bad effect.

But some of them counteracted. A berry that gave headaches could be counteracted by one that took away the headache but thinned the blood.

There was an order to all things. Eating them at once, I learned, was the easiest way to kill yourself.

When the berries are crushed, mixed together and then eaten as a paste, not only does it taste horrible, all the effects come at once, disappear a moment later, then reappear the next, then are gone again.

It’s torture, I must admit.

Once I had turned one year old, things changed. I’d only met docile animals until then, never venturing any further than I had to, but that changed.

A deerlike creature with red horns, dubbed ‘Ruby Elk’, was being mauled by a fox-like creature, with black fur and blood dripping out of its eyes.

I needed to think fast, so while I thought, I reached into my pocket. At the very least, they’d given me clothes before sending me out here, and I used them to the fullest.

I’d taken off my shirt and turned it into a pouch of sorts, knots in the right places and the sleeves wrapped correctly.

And in my left pocket, I kept poisonous berries. Reaching down in there, I didn’t have much in the way of choices, but I knew that all of these berries seemed to kill the docile animals instantly.

I believe one of them stopped breathing, one caused a chemical reaction with your stomach acid and you ended up melting your own body from the inside out.

Honestly, what are deadly things like this doing in the starter area?

The Ruby Elk had died, and the fox tore into it, blood coating its black fur. The sight disgusted me, but the situation excited me.

I was in front of a monster. This was the type of fantasy situation that I’d wanted for so long. The dragons didn’t really register in my mind as special, probably for the fact that I was one myself.

I now realize that I didn’t mention this before. I’m a dragon.

I’ll show it here when I deal with this little black fox.

I put one of the poisonous berries in my mouth but didn’t bite down.

“It’s time to die, beast.” (Lines I wanted to say, number 3)

The fox looked up. I shivered, feeling a deep sense of fear shake me. But that shiver changed, halfway through. Excitement.

Adrenaline ran through my veins. I took the berry out of my mouth, and rolled it in my fingers, feeling it mold like clay.

This berry was a bit special. When saliva touched it, it would slowly melt until it began to release its juice, which was a concentrated form of its poison.

“Let’s get this party started.” With these words, I felt something within me build. Energy of some form, like condensed emotions.

My mind raced through all the different things I could do at this moment.

A second passed, the fox staring me down, judging how dangerous I was. The berry continued to melt, my fingers twitching as they rolled it into the shape of a bullet. By now, the juice had all concentrated in the tip.

Then, like glass had shattered, we both rushed forward. I took a single step, and the fox had taken three, closing the distance in an instant.

I kicked off the ground with the foot I had just placed, leaping away from the beast while letting my hands swing forward, inertia helping me a little bit here.

A concentrated bullet of poison in my right hand, ready to fire. In my left, an open palm, coming around to stabilize my right.

The fox jumped for my throat, a smart move. But I’d expected it to be smart.

So I thought smarter.

I threw the berry at it, knowing that it wouldn’t do anything but distract it for a moment. I hadn’t left it in my mouth long enough for it to melt completely.

My position… was perfect for what I wanted next.

I brought my right knee up, and my right elbow down as hard as I could. The fox’s jaw was right between them.

I smiled.

The fox’s jaw was crushed. Normally, a one year old child wouldn’t have the strength to do that, but that’s where me being a dragon comes in.

The strength boost of the strongest reptile. Even a one year old dragon can crush bones. Call it a racial trait.

With the beast’s jaw crushed, its main attack, biting, was removed. The pain would also hinder its judgement.

Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

As such, it leapt at me again, claws bared. I simply grabbed it by those same paws and beat its throat with my knee over and over again.

Over the course of a minute, it was unable to breathe and therefore died.

I smiled over its corpse, feeling accomplished for my first monster kill.

After a minute, I felt a large gust of air try to push me into the ground, so I took cover under a nearby tree, pressing my back to it and straightening myself for the least wind resistance.

My father, Ault, landed in front of me. The emerald dragon was just as large as before, and super terrifying as he looked at my kill.

“It’s really dead… Without even a shred of dignity, though.” He sighed, as if disappointed. “You should kill your opponents quickly and cleanly. Dragons’ are supposed to be a prideful race, you know?”

I simply looked at him, carefully wording my answer.

“I think I have enough pride. I consider living another day quite the accomplishment. Running would have been worse, would it not have been?” I pointed out.

Ault took a second to think about it.

“I guess you have a point… I won’t congratulate you on such a messy kill, though. Surely there were other ways to kill it?”

I thought about it for a second.

“I guess after I broke it’s jaw, I could have forced a berry down it’s throat before letting it die off slowly, but compared to that, I think this was a mercy. Either way, I was a bit over excited, so I wasn’t thinking straight.”

That wasn’t a complete lie. I was over excited, but I was thinking just fine.

“Other than that, is there something you came to do?” I asked him.

“Well, I was going to reward you for your first Vepha kill. Most dragons couldn’t have killed that in their dragon form at a year old, much less in their human form… So I came to give you a reward. It’s not against the tradition, so please be greedy here.”

I thought for a moment, looking at my father towering over me.

“Then, teach me.”

And I smiled at him as I asked the greediest reward I could think of.

From then on, he gave me regular visits and taught me. I didn’t specify the subject, so he would have to teach me everything. I learned about the environment first, such as the berries, the animals, the topography, etc.

As much as I hated school, learning about these sorts of things while the lessons were flexible was fun. Hands-on activities were the worst, but that’s only because I wasn’t able to choose what to do.

I made poisons, learned different things that I could do with the plants around me, made tools, before I ended up finding some clay by the shore of the river that I got water from.

From there, I ended up making myself some bottles. Clay was super helpful if you knew how to work it and could fire it.

Since the vein of clay I found was fairly large, I actually ended up finding out that my father was a fire dragon, despite being green. With that knowledge and the large amount of clay that I had, I made a brick oven. Thinking it was too much effort, I made it all at once, and used a low heat blast of fire from Ault to fire it.

I loaded it up with fallen branches and whatnot to fire about 10 bottles at a time from then on.

In the end, I ended up a well educated dragon, capable of creating poison bombs that would shatter upon impact and could eventually soak through even a dragon’s scale to affect the insides of a creature and kill them.

There was also the effect of ending up as an ice dragon, so I was able to breathe out some frosty air when I wanted too. It made it a bit easier to handle the poisons, since I could freeze them and then hold them. I had to wash my hands off afterwards or else I could die, but that’s unimportant.

Ah! Almost forgot an important event.

At age three, I found something special. It looked like tree sap, even in the proper place (coming from a tree), but it was actually deadly. I saw a Ruby Elk (Amazingly, that actually was their name.) take a lick of it once, and it glowed golden, made a triumphant roar towards the sky, before exploding in a blast of blood and guts.

Don’t worry, it was probably twice as disgusting as you can imagine.

Afterwards, the tree moved forwards and absorbed the remains as if it was natural.

Like, really? A carnivorous tree? A scavenger, at that?

Terrifying. I like it.

So, of course, I decided to take some of the sap for myself. I returned a few days later with some bottles. (I thinned the top lip of them specifically for gathering the sap without letting it run down the sides.)

I easily gathered two full bottles of the stuff, before walking away. It seems that the tree wasn’t able to attack me for taking it.

At least, that’s what I assumed at the time. You’d never believe the nightmares I had after noticing that the tree followed me back to my camp. It didn’t attack, but I’m assuming that it was waiting for me to drink the sap, and die.

But, strangely enough, it didn’t act upon that even when I’d held myself back from drinking it for a week.

Just before the Ruby Elk died, it glowed golden. Then, when it roared, it seemed to be stronger than it was before. Which means, this sap managed to raise its strength in some way before it killed it.

“Should I dilute it? Would it be fine if I took a very small amount?” I muttered to myself.

I leaned up against my stalker tree, no longer scared of it. It seemed to scare off some of the bothersome animals, and when the bugs drank the small amount of sap they could and died, even the corpse was gone.

I used a killer tree as a bug killer.

So resourceful, aren’t I?

After another few days, I realized something strange. The tree hadn’t been producing as much sap. It wasn’t enough to collect, even though I hadn’t been collecting it recently.

Comparing the bottle’s contents with it, it was barely four drops.

“I wonder… Are you trying to kill me or tell me how much to drink?” I asked the tree.

To be honest, I half expected a response. Luckily, I didn’t get one.

I took another bottle, put about the same amount of sap in it, and filled it with water. Covering it with my hand, I shook it up.

I leaned up against the tree once more.

“I’m gambling here. If I die, feel free to eat me.”

The tree creaked, as if one of its branches changed positions. I wonder if it was nutrient deprived?

Shrugging, feeling the winds of my father descending, I took a sip of the potion I’d made.

A second passed. My father landed. I took another sip, uninterested in what he had to say about my gamble.

A burn began to settle in my heart. Flames rose, licking the sides of the organ with each beat. I choked for air, gasping against the golden glow that covered my body.

My blood coursed with power, a raging bonfire within my veins. It was so powerful. I was so powerful.

But I couldn’t contain it. I was a paper bag, trying to hold a flame.

My vision turned red as blood poured from my eyes, capillaries, veins, and arteries all opening, the pressure of the blood coursing through them pressing it out my skin.

My body tore itself apart from the inside, but my mind was calm. Or, more specifically, the part of my mind that didn’t need blood to operate.

My mana.

It circled around me, golden streaks of light sewing my wounds shut. It took something from me, and my body calmed. My heart’s beating seemed slow in my ears at that moment.

It was as if I experienced everything a bit slower, three seconds a second. Each streak of mana that curled about me was well defined, in high definition. The sound of my environment seemed slow to me.

My mana balled up in front of me, and I was beckoned towards it. The tree that I leaned upon was absorbing the massive amounts of blood that I had poured upon it as I reached forward, to take the mana.

I touched it with the tip of my finger, and I smiled as I felt the power flow back into me, but controlled.

My mana pool seemed significantly drained, about a third taken up, but I had become stronger.

Thanks, mana. With a final thought, I passed out.

Now, I awaken to a new sunrise, my mana pool reduced to a tenth of what it once was. Since my breath powers used mana, I obviously couldn’t use those as well as I should have been, but my physical body and my mind had been upgraded much past normal limits.

I could control that power inside me, slowly. Piece by piece, I was able to take my mana away from it, dealing with the pain of that raging fire through my veins for a while, before my body got used to it and I could continue with a bit more mana in my mana pool.

It was a slow and long process, but not without the fitting gains. That power slowly became mine. As it flowed through my veins, I could bring it to surface. It was the same color as my mana, but much more powerful.

But its true power laid within. I could bring it to my brain, and it enhanced it. It acted like an extension, but in a different way than my mana.

If my mana was like a flash drive, full of files similar to my brain, then this power was an empty flash drive used for ReadyBoost. It sped up my mind. A second would take up to fifteen, and that max was increased the more power I could contain.

Using ratios, the full power would allow me to live up to ten minutes in a second. 60,000% increase. 600 times what a normal person would experience.

That power, when used properly, is worth the pain I must experience to get it. Now, I’m no masochist, but the rewards excite me enough to let my devilish smile shine through when I feel the burning pain through my veins.

I’d learned from my father that the tree I’d gotten the sap from only lets it out a few thousand years, and I just happened to be in the right place at the right time. Although, from what I heard, the tree should not have let out the sap for three days in a row as it had.

I would have commented, but it was much easier to just take the verbal abuse and keep quiet. For all I know, this tree here may have a mind inside it. At the very least, it must have some form of power if it’s able to hold this sap inside it.

I quickly made these bottles my most protected possession.

And, as I grew from three to four years old, I’d learned everything there was to know about this place.

I’d killed a few more Vepha here and there, past that first fox, so I was allowed another favor.

“Then, let me go to school when I come of age. There shouldn’t be a problem with that, right? The tuition fees… I’m sure you have enough to pay for it, even if it is really expensive.”

“Well, I guess… I’m not sure how well the school will take it though, as a dragon hasn’t gone there in quite a few… decades? I can’t think of a dragon that’s gone to school in the past thirty years… It’s more difficult for some of us to retain our human forms, although you seem pretty accustomed to yours…”

He paused, thinking over his ‘tradition’, no doubt.

“Very well. Let’s send you off to school when you’re five. I’m sure they won’t mind having a dragon or two.”

“Or two? You have another planned?” I asked, half joking.

“Yes. Your sister.”

With that bombshell, I realized how little I knew of my family, and was tempted to immediately say something to that effect.

“No, I shall not ‘teach’ you about our family. You’ll talk to your sister when you get into School.”

I sighed, and stared up into the night sky.

“Then, I guess I’ll wait. There’s more than enough here to keep me company for a year, anyway.”

I chuckled to myself as I thought over the past few years, before deciding to just sleep, and think about such things tomorrow.