After a few days of flight east of the continent, we arrived at the Draconic Isles. I had wanted to upgrade my race and class right away, but Mom and Aunt Ighir said I should wait until we see the Life Dragon first. Apparently, it’s something about Rank D species being just right for us to create the next generation of dragons with - as higher ranks would be too difficult to reproduce at scale and lower ranks would be unfit for a dragon.
Interestingly, the Draconic Isles were entirely dragon-made; each isle designed to fit the denizens of its element, and they were arranged symmetrically in the same manner as the attribute chart.
To the southeast, a hilly and rugged island with innumerable caves and mineral veins stood, no sign of an easy entrance to the island as the lowest cliff stood hundreds of meters tall. To the northeast, a massive glacier stood just as imposingly as the Earth Island, though I suspect it is an ice island whose roots reach the seabed rather than a floating mass. There were certainly entrances to the interior of the glacier, but none of the ones on the surface were visible to me.
To the southwest, a massive Volcano dominated the Fire Island. Given that the air above the lava at its peak was bending the light passing through it like a mirage, I suspected that even getting close to it would probably be a little too toasty for me to attempt at the moment. Just north of the Fire Island stood the Wind Island, with its massive, sky piercing mountain that towered above the rest of the islands. The mountain was roughly similar to a massive wall, as the noise of the ocean winds crashing into it and moving upwards in a powerful draft was audible from this far if you paid close enough attention.
Directly to the North was the Arcane Island, or islands, if you could even call them that. Rather than a single body like the rest of the islands, the Arcane Islands were all much smaller than the other islands, but their collective surface areas was likely the same as the rest. That was relevant because the even the lowest of the islands were all floating above sea level by hundreds of meters, with some of the islands hovering even further above others. Interestingly, each of the islands possessed structures on all of its sides, even upside-down buildings at the bottom of the floating juggernauts. In one of those islands laid our destination; the island belonging to the Life Dragon. A quick glance at the Atypical Island directly below us revealed a rather barren island with many signs of damage on its surface, and no one to inhabit the scarred plains.
Curious, I flew closer to mom to ask about it.
“Mom, why isn’t there anyone on the Atypical Island? And why does it look like monsters from the seventh layer fought on it?”
“The Atypical Island was a regular, plain island, since there is nothing that ties the magic of the Atypical Attributed together besides the fact that they do not belong to the rest of the attributes. Given the eccentricity of these dragons and their small number, I am not surprised that none of them are currently present. They are most likely roaming the world, delving into the abyss, or even pretending to live like a normal peasant among humans.” She shrugged.
“Knowing that, it’s no surprise that they haven’t bothered to tidy up their island after their magic practice and sparring. For now, leave the island and its owners be, as we’ll come back later when a certain dragon comes back. He’s likely to be of relevant use to you, but we have no clue when he’ll be back.”
We flew over the Atypical Island and made our way to one of the hovering islands that was surrounded by the rest. Apparently, this is where the Life Dragon lives.
As we landed, our magic wings glimmered lightly then vanished, the motes of attributed mana rushing back to the two magic anchors on our backs to replenish the minor cost that forming them took. I still had trouble getting used to the idea that I can just summon magic limbs like that, but apparently it was rather standard for dragons.
Aunt Ighir removed the tether between her and Durreg that let her drag him through the air. The reason that was necessary was that Earth Dragons can’t generate lift with earth magic and that the attribute’s distance from the fire and arcane attributes made it difficult for them to be used efficiently. Normally it isn’t an issue since they can simply launch themselves off the Earth with terrifying speed and gliding a long distance before repeating the process, but it has by far the slowest flight speed among the rest of the attributes, who can use their magic or that of an adjacent attribute to generate both lift and thrust. To make matters worse, young earth dragons are not capable of launching themselves far due to their low rank, and even if they could, there was only water for a long distance between Kengir and the Draconic Isles.
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After that, mom and auntie cast the transformation spell on us, as dragon bodies were too large and inconvenient for using tools and entering buildings. I had a feeling that they cast it on me as well so that I don’t feel left out, as I was already capable of these things due to being a special bipedal, humanoid dragon variant.
***
As we walked through the gardens, we saw plenty of flora and fauna around, with none of them attacking each other. Even predators and prey coexisted peacefully, making for unusual scenery. In the center of the island was a large, ancient tree that stood nearly 200 meters tall, almost as tall as the whole island, and its roots were likely deeply embedded in the soil and rock. How did this tree not strangle every last resource from the island and starve itself and the rest of the plants? The thought passed through my mind as we approached the foot of the tree, and we saw a man who seemed to be in his early thirties carrying wooden boxes of equipment along in a hurry. He laid eyes on us, then stopped to greet us.
“Hey there, Ighir! Azoth! Kids! Give me one moment and I’ll be right there with you!” he said, then rushed to put away the box in front of an array of tables with other wooden boxes stacked near them.
“Did you tell him we were coming beforehand?” Ighir asked mom.
“Yes. I had a feeling that both Kiara and him would love to get this meeting over with as quickly as possible so that they can get to work.”
Soon, the Life Dragon was coming back to us with a few pieces of equipment in his arm.
“HellomynameisDimriPleaseputadropofyourbloodinthisvial.” The Life Dragon (I think he said his name is Dimri?) rattled before I could blink.
“Settle down, Dimri. She’s not going anywhere, explain things properly.” Mom said, causing him to grumble a bit.
“Alright. Sorry about that. My name is Dimri, better known as the Life Dragon. Azoth filled me in on the details, with you being a new species of dragon who can help with the issue of low fertility amongst dragons and the blessing you got from Aanat. Put simply, I am going to analyze and usurp her blessing to create dragon eggs of your species for the rest of us to raise, and I’d like some of your blood in these tubes to aid me with that.” He said, though his fidgeting foot was a sign of his impatience.
“Won’t that anger her at us?” I asked worriedly.
“Not really, since she gave us the pretext to get it done by saying she just wants to see more dragons like you. She knows we wouldn’t trust her with a task of this magnitude if we didn’t have to, so she likely had that in consideration when she gave you her blessing. Even if this somehow infuriated all of the gods, and not just her, this is as close as an opportunity gets to justifying starting another celestial war. Now, please sit down and give me your arm.” He said, dragging a chair and pulling out a white tube with a thin needle on it from a nearby box.
I looked towards mom, and she nodded at me. I walked to the chair and sat down as rubbed a cool piece of damp cloth on my elbow.
“Take a deep breath and try not to move; this will feel like a flyquito bite.” He said, as he injected the needle into my arm.
I didn’t feel anything as the white tube slowly filled up with red. Dimri then gently pulled the needle out and put a cotton bandage over my elbow as he began to inject the blood into a number of tubes.
“Thanks for coming. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a few thousand eggs to create.” He said, turning his attention away from us to continue his work.
“I promise he’s usually a lot nicer and more polite than this, but he’s probably the most excited amongst all the dragons for this opportunity we have.” Azoth said.
“Think of it like someone offering you the chance to rank up from rank D to rank S in an instant; though the opportunity ahead of us is far better than even that.” Aunt Ighir added helpfully.
“Sure, whatever, but I want to get to evolving and getting a class now!” I whined.
“Not here, Kiara. We shouldn’t disturb Dimri. Let’s go to my home on the Water Island to do that; we’ll have some privacy too.” Mom said placatingly.
“I am surprised that a loose canon like this girl can listen to you at all, Aunt Azoth. You are truly as extraordinary as I have always believed.” Durreg said with an infuriating smile.
Any thoughts of actually going through with it immediately regardless of their pestering disappeared as the desire to wipe off Durreg’s smirk off his face and not give him an inch overpowered my impatience to power up.
“Who are you calling a loose cannon, you stick in the mud?! You would never even wipe your rear if someone didn’t tell you to do that!” I yelled at him.
We ended up hurling insults at each other all the way to the doorstep of Azoth’s home.