POV Tanya:
Tanya walked down steep dark stairs, her steps echoing in the darkness. Her senses could already hear breathing and heartbeats somewhere at the bottom of the staircase. She didn’t even care as she had already passed by multiple monsters serving her master.
Finally, she spotted the bright light of magical crystals at the bottom, her heart beating loudly, expecting to find some secret.
She held her breath and stepped into the light, her eyes quickly getting used to it after an hour of wandering in absolute darkness.
“Ohh, who are you?” an angry, childish voice spoke to her, causing her expectations to break.
She quickly looked around at multiple people hunching over vials and tables. All of them were turned towards her, frowning as if she interrupted them in mids of having fun.
She especially stopped with her eyes on a young-looking horned elven girl who was glaring at her with heterochromatic eyes, one of them being that of a dragon, with visible anger. She reeked with the aura of her master, so it meant that she was likely an ally.
Tanya cleared her throat and spoke with a clear, noble tone that spoke of her high upbringing. She decided against lying, knowing that the elves disdained scheming. She also knew she could likely trust her as her fellow minion, “I also serve our master, but they are gone, and I am in huge trouble!”
“Ohh, ok…” the small elf just looked at her with her big eyes. She looked disinterested in her trouble.
Tanya didn’t know what she should think. On the one hand, she felt threatened by her master’s second minion, feeling she was her direct competitor. On the other hand, she couldn’t help but feel her heartbeat up faster when looking at the small horned girl, almost as if she were looking at a small sister.
‘Well, we are relatives in some twisted way…’
Finally, she felt like she could freely speak out in the cave without any ears listening. She just wanted to speak of her trouble to someone she could trust.
Without any self-control, she started to spit out all of her trouble with the small girl just looking at her in surprise.
“They are all scheming against me! They want to take away my title. I need to get stronger to keep it, but I am too weak!”
The elf suddenly interrupted her, “I don’t see where the problem is. You are a dragonkin?! Do you even realise how powerful you are now just with the amount of magical energy flowing through your veins? You may lack elegance and knowledge of old mages, but you can simply brute force it!”
“Uhhh?”
“Just pump so much mana into a regular fireball that it will turn into a massive sphere of fire. I know it will be inefficient and eat a ton of mana, but it will awe and trick everyone around you.”
She hated that idea, her mind feeling pained just thinking about it as it went against all she knew. It was highly inefficient, and it felt to her like an insult to her hard work. It went against what she knew about magic.
“I want to turn my magic into more effective, not the opposite. It is like taking a step back.”
The elf finally erupted like a volcano. “Ohhh my, you are no longer an inferior human! So stop thinking like one! You don’t need to work hard to save every tiny bit of mana when you have so much of it that it would shame even some of the most talented humans.”
She knew that it was true as it was no secret that humans weren’t exactly the most potent magic users with their limited supply of mana, making their research and mages focus on making everything most efficient.
In comparison, what the elf told her was such a brute way that it felt like plain cheating.
‘Maybe she is right? What was I expecting here? To find tomes of hidden knowledge that would give me the knowledge to cast insane spells? I have my path right in front of me! I was so wrong thinking about magic like a human when I am no longer one and can simply cheat it!’
She looked one last time at her small kin and stormed back up the stairs, grinning as she imagined the shock of everyone with her breaking their schemes with just a pure force.
POV ???:
Someone walked through the heavy snow, his whole body trembling with his lips turning blue. Ice shards grew from his nose and eyebrows. He couldn’t even feel his fingers, only walking forwards, hoping to find some settlement.
‘Damn it, where is my cheat? Where is my system? And most importantly, where is my harem?’
Bill fumed with anger, feeling like he was scammed. He still remembered how he walked down a path in the park, and then suddenly, he just popped out here in the middle of a freezing wilderness.
‘I was isekaid, so where is my bonus?’
The lights suddenly appeared in the distance, obscured by a thick hail of snow, making it impossible for him to discern their origin.
“I am over here! Please save me!” he waved his hand and shouted into the distance, his hope returning to him, ‘It is not all lost. Cheats and systems often don’t awaken right at the beginning. Maybe I just need to wait. And now, with someone to save me, I can survive long enough to awaken them!’
The light kept getting closer as he waved his arms in the air. Then he froze as the lights got close enough for him to distinguish them. His heart sank, seeing the terrifying scale-covered monsters and terrifying red lowing wolves running towards him. Their eyes glowed, all of them looking straight at him.
They were opening their mouth filled with sharp teeth that sent shivers down his spine. They were shouting something in rough voices, but he couldn’t understand them.
‘They must be friendly monsters. Right!? Right!?’
POV Priest:
The priest trembled in pain, kneeling in ash, vomiting while looking at his hands. They were red, covered in burns, even though it was impossible. He simply couldn’t understand what had happened.
It was already months since he started his frantic search for the angel blood. However, no matter where he looked, he couldn’t find even a single drop. Originally he wanted to avoid it, but he felt like he had to risk it for his master and contact the wyrm.
A bright white glow radiated out of his whole body as he prayed, his hands returning to their healthy states with the nauseating feeling vanishing.
He shook his head, knowing that his state would deteriorate again.
Finally, he stood up, his hair long and his chin already growing a dirty beard, “Let’s go. We will return to the town.”
He was tired. He needed some rest and resupply. He also knew that it was a suicide entering a wyrms tower without an invitation. He needed to find a way to contact the wyrm without angering them by trespassing into their lair.
𝒪𝓥xt.𝑶
POV Vesuvius:
The dragon was submerged in boiling magma that was constantly rising with its temperature increasing. His thought drifted into darkness, his conception of time distorting as he enjoyed the energy constantly circulating between him and the volcano.
The day changed to night and back many times, but he became oblivious to it as the lava bubbled around him with clouds of ash obscuring the sky.
He stirred, his building-size body sending waves of magma splashing against the volcano’s walls.
Suddenly his stomach growled, and the dragon opened his brightly glowing eyes, which looked as if they burned in flames. He still felt drowsy, wanting to close his eye again and continue sleeping, yet he felt unsurpassable hunger.
He stood up, his body rising out of the magma with hot fluid flowing down his body as he stretched his wings. He felt like everything around him was smaller. He even felt that his pool of mana grew.
He immediately realised what it meant, ‘Is it possible that living in a compatible biome speeds up my growth?’ Still feeling the warm energy flowing into his body, he knew it was likely a truth. Even the words of the wyrm now made sense to him about him needing to find a volcano.
He flapped his wings, sending droplets of lava in all directions like a dog that was drying itself up. His body slowly rose from the caldera, flaps of his wings sending ripples in the lava under him.
His stomach growled again, his eyes shining as he felt immense hunger. He burst into flight, turning into a blur of fire and smoke as he vanished into the horizon, ready to feast.
Dragons normally could live without any food, subsiding only on magic. But if they wanted to keep growing faster, they needed to eat, and a lot, to fuel the growth of their bodies.