<Repel>
At the spell’s activation, a deep-violet, translucent orb shimmered into existence above the lake. The water beneath it buckled inward, forming a shallow depression as invisible force pressed down from above.
“Hm… barely half a foot.”
Five years had passed since Dareth’s departure.
Most of that time had been spent training—pushing myself until my body throbbed from overexertion, then collapsing into rest when I could no longer maintain control. Days dissolved into a relentless cycle of refinement and recovery.
Sometimes, distant tremors rippled faintly from the mainland—subtle explosions carried in the wind. They were more than noise; they were warnings—omens of power shifting across the continent.
My progress with gravity runes had been… slow.
Unlike water—an attribute innate to me, whose runes felt intuitive—gravity felt foreign. Learning it was like deciphering a new language with no teacher, no grammar, no reference point.
Progress came one rune at a time.
Name: Muzafir Varkun
Species: Dragon
Attributes: Water, Gravity
Age: 336
Mana: 221.45
Aura: 197.80
Prana: 102.05
Even my reserves crawled upward at a miserable pace.
Mana. Aura. Prana.
Each advanced in increments so small they were almost insulting.
Without external resources, growth stagnates.
But that was the price of peace.
And I had chosen peace.
Sometimes, in idle moments, I wondered what life might have been had I been born as another race.
Then I remembered—
When I was human, dragons were myth. Majestic. Untouchable.
Reality proved harsher than fiction.
A faint hiss echoed from the cave’s entrance, breaking the quiet.
I turned my head.
A ribbon of amber slid into view.
A desert snake—nearly twelve feet long—its scales polished like burnished glass beneath the sunlight. Its forked tongue flicked lazily, eyes cold yet alert. It stopped at the cave’s threshold and released a measured hiss.
“Hiss… hiss…”
Its voice was low, strangely measured.
“Looks like another uneventful day,” I muttered, easily gleaning meaning from the cadence of his hisses.
The snake had wandered into my territory few years ago. Unlike most creatures that roamed this wasteland, he possessed an unusual clarity of thought—having only recently awakened to true awareness. He had sensed the oasis… and, for reasons known only to him, chosen to remain.
He posed no threat.
And I had no inclination to slaughter intelligent beings without cause.
Besides, his presence—quiet, watchful, unobtrusive—broke the monotony of endless solitude.
In time, I even granted him a name.
Name: Strata
Species: Snake
Attributes: Fire
Age: 7
Mana: 25
Aura: 0
Prana: 0
His abysmal attributes were almost nostalgic.
A reminder of my own frail beginnings—days I had no desire to relive.
“Here.”
I flicked a red fruit toward Strata.
He snapped it from the air with surprising precision. For a fleeting moment, something lit within his hollow eyes.
The fruit aided low-level monsters in accumulating mana. Beyond thirty points, however, it became little more than flavored pulp.
“Hiss… hiss…”
“No. I don’t have any tasks for you right now.”
Recently, his hisses have started making sense to me. Does that mean I can eventually add snake language to my mastered linguistic group?
“Go rest for now.”
I submerged myself fully into the lake while Strata slithered toward the cave’s exit.
I should check out the last tremor that I felt from the mainland.
<Clairvoyance>
A spell I created for peeping remote regions.
Darkness swallowed my vision for a heartbeat.
Then—
A lush forest stretched before me, vibrant and alive—its emerald canopy rippling in the wind, birds scattering between ancient trunks.
Yet beneath that vitality lay ruin.
Massive craters scarred the landscape, gouged deep into the earth. Trees were flattened, soil overturned, roots exposed like torn veins. Wisps of lingering mana shimmered faintly above the devastation, distorting the air.
This was the region from which the earlier mana disturbance had erupted across the continent.
I shifted the anchor, sweeping across the canopy in search of its origin.
BOOM.
The sky convulsed.
The tremor rattled the very structure of the spell. My vision flickered as though reality itself had been struck.
I tilted upward.
Two dragons tore through the sky.
One black and another white.
Their breaths collided midair—darkness and light annihilating one another in violent detonations. Shockwaves cascaded outward, disrupting even my distant observation.
So that was the source.
I cast Inspect.
Name: ???
Species: Dragon
Attributes: Darkness
Age: 800
Mana: 780
Aura: 0
Prana: 0
Name: ???
Species: Dragon
Attributes: Light
Age: 900
Mana: 788
Aura: 0
Prana: 0
The spell could not provide precise values when used on other beings—least of all creatures of this magnitude—but its estimations were reliably close to the truth.
Judging by their mana alone, both dragons stood firmly within the Ancient threshold.
In this world, dragons are not measured by age, but by the quantity and refinement of Mana, Aura, or Prana they possess.
By mana standards, these two were undeniably Ancient.
Wyrmling (1–200) → Conduit (201–500) → Dominion (501–700) → Ancient (701–800) → Elder (800–900) → Lord (900+)
At the Wyrmling stage, a dragon can scarcely manipulate mana. Even rudimentary spells are taxing. Aura is nearly unattainable, and Prana may as well not exist. Their internal energy is scattered and unstable, lacking any true core.
Upon reaching Conduit, a dragon undergoes its first genuine evolution.
The formation of a Mana Heart.
A crystallized core that functions as both reservoir and regulator, compressing raw mana into a stable, circulating system. With it, control becomes instinctive rather than forced.
At Dominion, the dragon transcends mere flesh. Mana starts mixing with blood and tissue, binding the physical body directly to the Mana Heart.
At Ancient, a mana-specialized dragon manifests a Domain—an externalization of the self that bends the surrounding environment to align with its attribute. Within it, they are divine.
Beyond that lie Elder and Lord—realms my bloodline has never touched.
There are parallel evolutions for Aura and Prana. But dragons traditionally disdain Aura, as it is most commonly wielded by lower lifeforms, and the awakening of Prana demands conditions so extreme that none tries it.
In any case, I had only recently stepped into Conduit.
Such heights were not mine to contemplate.
As I continued observing, the clash between the two calamities ceased abruptly. Both dragons descended toward the forest below.
Oh… is it ending already?
Just as I considered severing the connection—
“!!!”
The world inverted.
White and black devoured everything.
They had opened their Domains.
A Domain clash was a spectacle few ever witnessed. Unfortunately, from my vantage point, it amounted to blindness. Light and void collided and intertwined, erasing detail, leaving only shifting gradients of white, black, and lifeless gray.
The pressure alone began corroding the anchor of my Clairvoyance spell.
The Domains were not targeting me.
Their mere existence was enough.
“Hm?”
Should I sever the link… or endure?
For a fleeting moment, curiosity won.
Then—
The colliding Domains imploded.
Not shattered.
Collapsed.
They folded inward like dying stars, compressing into a singular point before vanishing entirely.
Silence followed.
I redirected my vision toward the sky.
Name: ???
Species: Dragon
Attributes: ???
Age: 2,800
Mana: 899
Aura: 500
Prana: 0
There stood a new dragon—its massive claws wrapped around the throats of the white and black dragons, their colossal bodies writhing uselessly in its grip.
To call it large would have been laughable.
The black and white dragons were already titans—dozens of meters from horn to tail, wings vast enough to swallow the horizon.
This newcomer, crimson from scale to horn, towered at more than twice their height. Its presence alone bent the air. Space trembled around it as though reality itself strained beneath its weight.
An Elder dragon… entering the conflict this early?
I had anticipated skirmishes. Probing clashes between Ancients at most.
Not this.
As I contemplated the continent’s inevitable ruin, the crimson dragon’s head turned.
Slowly.
Deliberately.
Its gaze aligned with the exact coordinates of my observation.
“A vermin…”
The word did not echo.
It did not travel.
It simply was—imprinted directly upon existence.
That was my cue.
The instant I sensed foreign mana infiltrating my spell—I severed the connection without hesitation.
Another anchor destroyed.
I opened my eyes.
Pain greeted me first.
My vision blurred before settling on the lake surrounding my submerged body. The once-clear water had begun to bloom gold, thin streams of blood spiraling outward through mana-dense currents.
“For now… I should know my place and stick to peeking below Ancient,” I muttered through the pain.
All from a single sentence.
Not a spell.
Not an attack.
A sentence—compressed with tyrannical will and refined mana.
Half-step Lord.
Even without crossing the 900 threshold, it had already touched that realm.
And I—
A mere Conduit-class dragon.
Bled.
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