“What?! You think I’m lovely?! I just massacred an entire village of humans.” Steel had used mind-reading on me again.

I sighed and interrupted him, “Steel, I need to talk to you about something. Can you stop using mind-reading on me?”

The boy pouted in protest and said reluctantly, “Fine. It’s not like I’m doing it on purpose. When I’m in human form, I instinctively use mind-reading as a defense mechanism. It never worked on you before, but now, for some reason, I can clearly hear your thoughts.”

Hearing Steel talk about massacring the village didn’t really affect me. Maybe he was right—perhaps I had lived for thousands of years and had become numb to many things.

We continued chatting until the harsh midday sun passed, and then I asked, “You said you didn’t know how to find your parents, so what are we going to do next?”

Steel replied, “Well, I should’ve been able to find them. Before I went into my last slumber, my father gave me a communication orb, but when I woke up, I couldn’t find it. I thought I left it at this treasure site, so I came here to look for it. Then I ran into you. I was going to ask you, but it turns out you’ve lost your memory.” He pulled a face like he’d just swallowed a fly. “My luck hasn’t been great since I woke up.”

Listening to Steel, I felt both helpless and a bit sad. Who could’ve predicted I’d lose my memory? But at least my body had recovered somewhat. Thinking of this, I asked him, “You mentioned my magic comes from fire. What did you mean by that?”

Steel said, “I’m not entirely sure, but you told me before that you can absorb energy from all sorts of sources and use it to recover. But you seem to prefer drawing energy from fire. I also overheard my parents saying your magic is unusual.”

“In what way?”

“Well, most ordinary mages who practice fire magic can only use fire-based spells. Even if they study other types of magic, they can’t reach high levels in them. But you’re different. You can use high-level spells from multiple schools. I know you can at least use fire, ice, and lightning magic. As for others, I’ve never seen you use them, but you probably can—you just don’t need to. And another difference between you and mages is that you can channel fire-based energy into other types of spells.” Steel paused and added, “Oh, and your wind magic must be pretty advanced too, because although I haven’t seen you use high-level wind spells, your flying speed is faster than mine at full power. That’s not possible without a deep mastery of wind magic.”

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

I thought about it for a moment. How could I not know how powerful I was?

Steel must have picked up on that thought because he was about to say something, but I shot him a warning look and said, “No more mind-reading.”

He sighed and raised his eyebrows, staying silent this time, just watching me.

I stretched and said, “I haven’t eaten in a day and a night. How about you? Are you hungry?” I was hoping he’d offer to get some food since I had nothing. When I’d dropped down from the tree after being tied up, I’d searched myself and found I didn’t have a single coin.

Steel said, “I ate a lot of lava in the Baha Mountain volcano yesterday, so I’m not hungry at all.”

I stared at him, feeling like I might die of frustration if we kept talking like this. I thought about going back to the village to scavenge some food, but it had been completely destroyed. Even though I didn’t feel particularly hungry, I was still human—or at least a powerful human—and I wanted to eat something.

“Come on, let’s go see your handiwork,” I said to Steel.

“There won’t be any survivors. I bombed the village to the ground,” Steel clearly didn’t want to go back.

“How do you know? Maybe someone survived by hiding in a cellar.”

“So what? I don’t care.”

“Maybe you don’t, but what about the treasure they dug up? Aren’t you going to take it back to your hoard?”

“I care even less about that. It’s just a bit of treasure, not worth the effort of hauling back.”

“Well, I want it! I don’t have any money, and without it, I can’t move forward.” I couldn’t hold back anymore. “If you’re not going, I’ll go by myself.”

“Fine,” the boy said. “I’ll go with you.” As he spoke, a low, rumbling growl escaped him, and within seconds, he transformed from a little boy into a giant black dragon. Seeing him up close like this was truly awe-inspiring.

His scales were a deep black that strangely seemed to shimmer, giving off an impression of invincibility. His entire body, including the tail, stretched over 20 meters long, with the tail alone accounting for at least 8 meters. The tip of his tail had diamond-shaped stabilizers with a gradient of dark red at the ends. These stabilizers not only helped with flight balance but could also be used as weapons, a distinctive feature of long-tailed black dragons. Most dragon tails were only about 5 meters long, and many dragons had weak tails that could be targeted with dragon-slaying arrows, causing them to lose balance and crash to the ground.

His wingspan, over 12 meters, was even more imposing—large enough to park three horse-drawn carts side by side.

Compared to him, I was like a small dog standing in front of a human. I tilted my head up to look at Steel’s massive dragon eyes and said coldly, “Are you planning to fly there? What about me? Don’t forget, I don’t know how to fly. Am I supposed to walk?”

“Heh heh, of course not.” Steel’s voice, now deep and resonant in his dragon form, was completely different from the boyish tone he had before. As he spoke, he tilted one of his massive wings toward me. “Climb on my back. It’s not far—I can carry you.”

Well, that was more like it. It was worth considering him a friend after all. I thought to myself. After all, I didn’t mind if he read my thoughts when they were positive.

Steel’s dragon eyes gleamed briefly, and it seemed he was happy to be my friend too.

His wide back was large enough that I could roll around on it ten times without falling off. But Steel still warned me, “Hold on tight. We haven’t formed a bond yet, so if you fall off, I won’t be able to save you.”

“Got it. Let’s go, kid.” Though I said that confidently, I still felt a bit nervous as I looked for a secure spot on his back. Luckily, there were several protruding scales, almost like iron armor, that I could grip onto.

It was as if Steel was playing a prank. The moment I grabbed hold of one of his scales, he suddenly flapped his wings and shot into the sky. Within seconds, we were dozens of meters off the ground, and the abrupt takeoff startled me. I didn’t hold on tight enough and ended up sitting hard on his back.

“Hold on! I’m going to pick up speed,” Steel called out, and with a powerful beat of his wings, he surged toward the village.

(To be continued)