Nihility [ Isekai • Dragon Evolution ]

I spent the next few days messing around with my skills, testing their limits and what I could do with them. [Spell Planner] was the easiest. I could basically do anything I wanted with magic, as long as I designed the spell with it. On my second day in the village I found it had a basic and advanced setting. Switching the skill to the advanced setting gave me a headache just looking at how many options there were, and that was ignoring the fact that I had to draw the spell myself, instead of it just plotting down a pre-made part that I combined with others as the basic did. That is to say that I switched it back to basic, at least until I had a proper handle on what I was doing.

The other Skill I messed around with was [Appraisal]. I appraised everything I could, even going so far as giving myself a headache over it, and now it stood at level 3. It was low, yes, but considering I wasn't in an actual video-game, only in a world that had skills like games, I supposed the leveling speed was decent. Of course, I wouldn't actually know it, because I had no one to compare with, the kobolds weren't exactly the sharpest tool in the shed.

They began speaking with me, but I couldn't understand a thing, so naturally I had asked [Knowledge Library], which now is at level 2, to translate, but the response I was given was

[The Kobold species does not possess sentience, as such their language does not have a language skill associated with it, meaning it does not have a direct translation to any known language]

Then I had tried again, asking what the kobold had said to me, and it did the trick

[As the Kobold species does not have a language skill that encompasses their language due to the lack of sentience, the sentence the kobold has spoken can be best translated to "Dragon, sir, you let us use your pretty, big white scales to show we loyal to you?"]

Yeah, they didn't know how to properly talk, but it didn't bother me. As the question the old kobold, which I now knew was the "chief" of the village, had asked me? The answer was dangling on almost every kobold's neck, a white scale being held in place by a makeshift string. I will admit, it was a little uncomfortable with how much they were worshiping me, and now carrying my loose scales around their necks with pride.

Returning to the matter of my skills, [Magicule Detection] and [Magicule Manipulation] were at levels 3 and 2 respectively. When the [Magicule Detection] leveled up to 2, it felt as if my eyes were opened to a new world around me. I could see the flow of magic in the air and water, and of course it can be a bit distracting and overwhelming but I learned to tone it down to just feel it around me, not see with my eyes. When it leveled to 3, I began feeling (I did not try to see it with my eyes) on solid objects, even on plants and animals though in a minor way. The rest of my skills, [Elemental Breath], [Dragon Scales], [Passive Growth] and [Genetic Dysphoria] were still a mystery to me as they did exactly.

Back to the present, I was currently roasting meat the kobolds brought me after their hunter groups came back to the village. I learned pretty quickly that I could use heat directly and cook the meat perfectly instead of igniting a piece of wood to make a campfire. If I didn't know it was literally heat energy coming out of my paws roasting the meat, I would say it was a microwave power.

The first time the kobolds saw me roasting the meat they were curious as they didn't cook their food, something I realized after those bowls they offered me. Initially I thought they just offered me raw meat because I was a dragon and supposedly an apex predator, in other words, a creature that usually eat raw meat, but after observing them have their mutual feast I noticed that no meat or vegetable were properly prepared, they just cut the meat in edible chunks and mixed them with vegetables and ate them.

After I presented them roasted meat and roasted vegetables they immediately switched to eating those, literally, they stopped eating after the first kobold I gave it too made a sound of joy, some even spited the food back onto their bowls and came to me to prepare their food as well (the old kobold shouted at those who spit the food back and tried to give it to me).

I eventually grew tired of roasting food to the entire village and just showed them how to do it the usual way. I placed a pile of wood in a small hole I dug in the ground with magic and ignited it with a small flame, then roasted the meat using sticks as to not burn myself and was surprised that there was one kobold who could make a small flame to ignite the campfire and made one of their own, mimicking my movements as I rotated the skewers for it to cook evenly. Yeah, I taught some kobolds how to cook basic food, but I'm no Master Cheff, just using my own knowledge.

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Tomorrow would mark the first week since I arrived in this world. I couldn't stay in the kobold village forever… I mean, I could live in the kobold for how long I wanted to, they seemed to care for me and take care of my basic needs, but I needed to find my friends, wherever they are, and find a way to go home, but for both of my objectives I needed to know more about the world I was currently living, and my skill didn't had all the answers, or at least I couldn't give me the answers because it was too low level, meaning I had to leave this place and I was going to do it tomorrow.

I looked at the sky where the sun was about a quarter until it began setting. It was still early in the afternoon, but I went to sleep in one of the huts they gave me on the second day. I needed to leave in the dead of the night or else the kobolds wouldn't let me leave, I know because I had already tried, they stopped me with worried expressions and I returned by pure guilt pressure, I wouldn't let it stop me now.

I woke up in the dead of the night as planned. The moons were high in the sky, yes, moons. The first time I noticed there was more than one made me stop and stare. The bigger one had an iridescent quality to it, almost as if its color shifted as it orbited the planet, and the other one seemed much more like the moon I was familiar with, except it had a massive crater on it, probably a massive asteroid hit it, or the bigger moon, I didn't really know and my skill didn't spit any valuable information to me.

I slowly made my way out of the hut and looked around, trying to see if any of the kobolds were awake, but they seemed diurnal creatures and were all sleeping during the night, which, now that I thought about it, was a little unsettling as we were inside of a forest with dangerous creatures just there, and this village had no walls around it with the exception of some tower-like structure that was basically a mound of dirt in the shape of a tower with loose stones on top of it sitting precariously around it.

I stealthily made my way to the nearest patch of forest, passing by one of those tower-like structures on the way. As I passed it by, my feet caught something and a snapping sound was made, I hurriedly looked at the source of the sound to see the tower of dirt crumble and the stones above fall to the ground, making a bunch of noise. It had hit me, those towers weren't there for decoration, they were there as an rudimentary alarm system, and I had accidentally tripped it.

I ran.

I didn't want to deal with the kobolds guilt tripping me again. I know it will make them sad, because I was kind of feeling bad for them because I abused their goodwill towards me. I ate their food, slept in one of their houses and just like that I was leaving. It hadn't completely abused them as I taught them how to make a campfire and how to roast their food before eating, but I still felt like I was in the wrong, even though I shouldn't feel like that.

Because of the dense foliage of the part of the forest I chose to run into, I didn't see the ledge of a cliff before I suddenly ran over it. I was in the air for a few seconds before I managed to open my wings to turn my uncontrolled fall into a glide. I sighed in relief that I was a dragon and not a human, because if I was still human I would be dead right about now. The cliff I ran over was gigantic, probably around three hundred meters tall, but as I was now a dragon, with wings, I was now gliding through the air.

The scenery was something breathtaking. mountains of green run along a deep valley with a wide river in the middle. If it wasn't for the clear river dividing the trees, it would be an almost infinite sea of green with some red and blue patches over it, probably some kind of magical tree, considering magic was a thing. The moons were just above my view, illuminating the entire valley with a pale light making me wonder how the view would be once the sun rose to the sky.

My wings were starting to hurt after a while of gliding, I knew it was because they weren't fully prepared to sustain my body in the air and they were beginning to tire. I took the opportunity to observe my fully open wings, a thing I didn't have before. They were big, but not that big. My wingspan was probably the same length as I was long. My wings vibrated in the air as air passed through them, I was tempted to begin to flap my wings, but I knew deep inside that if I tried I would tire them even more, and I was still way high in the sky to do something as stupid as that.

I adjusted my angle and followed the river as I glided downwards. The only problem that I realized as I approached the tree lines, was that I didn't know how to land yet. I couldn't go to the river for a water landing because the currents were too strong to do it safely and there wasn't an open space for me to try to land there, I had to land on the trees and descend from there. Wishing myself luck I began circling a spot above a tree to lose speed and once I felt it was slow enough I made a beeline to the tree and extended my claws to stop myself.

Except, I was still too quick and hit the tree face first, and before I could recover I began falling again, hitting branch after branch, breaking them as I fell. I only stopped once I hit my belly on a big enough branch, it made the air rush out of me and I began gasping for a few moments as I recovered. I had made it!