Chapter 3: Notes
Amos found two books; a journal and a grimoire belonging to the same mage. It was a pity that the grimoire was destroyed in battle, but the diary was left intact.
From the journal, he learnt that the unlucky mage who came from the southern trading city of Nordhill continent was an escort mage for a large caravan of merchants. He was a Professional Level-9 mage, standing on the threshold of a High-Level Mage
In the world, the classes of power were segregated into two main parts: racial and professional levels.
Racial levels referred to the innate ability and power of an extraordinary creature. It would increase with their growth. For example, the current racial level of Amos was at a level 1 dragon. When he reaches adulthood, he would become a level 20 dragon and set foot in the legendary realm.
Professional rank, as implied, referred to the achievement level of a creature in a specific occupation, which would also be equivalent to a job title.
The recognized Professional levels are divided into:
Level 0-4 - Junior Professional
Level 5-9 - Intermediate Professional
Level 10-14 - Senior Professional
Level 15-19 - Master Professional
Level 20-24 - Legendary Professional
Level 25 and above: These are collectively referred to as High-Level Legends.
Ranks represented comprehensive power and each of the five levels was a tier. The fourth tier was known as the legendary tier or realm.
Amos pretended to be asleep and made contact with Salilina with his tail. He then received information on her:
[Name]: Salilina Aldridge
[Level]: Dragon (Level 22) / Priest (Level 12)
[Strength]: Legend
[Faction]: Evil
[Introduction]: A priest of Goddess Tiamat, and a rare sincere believer among the dragons. The lord of the North Wind Icefield has repeatedly robbed the Barbarian tribes and passing caravans; also known as the North Wind Disaster.
Amos was surprised. Apart from being a dragon lord, Mother was a high-ranking priest who believed in Tiamat.
Five-headed Dragon Queen Tiamat was the Goddess of dragons. She had five heads; red, blue, green, black and white. She was the direct ancestor of five-coloured dragon race and was therefore called the 'Mother of Evil Dragons'.
The five-coloured dragon race was the significant believer of Tiamat. It was common knowledge that the dragons with any of those five colours weren't from the righteous faction. Arrogance, greed, evil, selfish... almost all negative terms could be used to connote a dragon of five-coloured dragon race.
Who would expect such villainous beings to be so religious? Generally, evil dragons were partial believers of Tiamat, while some did not even give a damn about her. Only the dragons who were old or dying would temporarily devote their souls in order to enter 'her' divine kingdom.
As one of the oldest Gods, Tiamat was still considered weak for millions of years.
Inspired by his mother, Salilina, Amos began to think about his professional combat career.
A Soldier-type, Melee-type occupation?
As an adult, a dragon had more physical strength than most of the Legendary Warriors. So he crossed that out.
A Priest as a profession?
Amos was a great socialist youth who believed in Marxism. So that option was also crossed out.
After giving it much thought, Amos decided to become a mage. Dragons had excellent innate advantages in becoming a mage. Firstly, as a top magical creature, a dragon by nature, accumulates a great deal of mana in its body as it grows older, without the bitter meditation to acquire it.
Secondly, the powerful 'Dragon Inheritance' contained a lot of knowledge about magic. Every dragon would passively awaken magical attributes. So it could be said that every dragon was a natural-born mage.
However, only a few dragons had chosen to become mages throughout the ages; they found it unnecessary. The second reason being that this profession burned a lot of money. High-level research on magic could easily cost dozens of millions of gold coins.
For dragons, who viewed their wealth with equal weight and importance as their lives, they'd rather die than spend their hoards of wealth, given the choice.
Amos was not an indecisive Dragon. So he would do as he pleased.
Amos used his system combined with the knowledge of Dragon Inheritance to calculate the qualifications for his career as a mage.
Soon, the system concluded.
【Mage occupation qualifications】
1. Intellectual and mental faculties must be up to standards.
2. Should possess a physique with elemental affinity.
3. Have a meditation idea, meditate and absorb magical energy.
4. Memorise spell models.
For Amos, who had scored 148 on the Mensa test, intelligence was not a problem while the affinity of elements and magical energy also wasn't a problem for dragons.
{TL Note:- Mensa is the highest and oldest IQ society in the world}
It looks like the only trouble is the spell model.
Amos thought of the grimoire and began to rummage through it for valuable information.
Featherfall spell, Defective!
Ice Arrow, Defective!
...
Powerful lightning spell model! Nah, it's still incomplete!
'Invincible Body of Light' spell model? Nah, it's incomplete!
Amos frowned. He was disappointed to find that all the spell models in the grimoire were defective, and none of them could be used. Fortunately, he had an external function, which allowed the system to deduce the Ice Arrow spell model.
However, he saw the prompt on the total elapsed time, which had been marked 'unknown', and sighed. In case the deduction took decades to complete, it would all be pointless by then.
Amos glanced at Salilina's pile of treasure. Now he could only hope to find a complete grimoire in them.
The cub dived in the ocean of gold coins and swam proudly.
It sure does feel good.
But the next moment did not feel so good.
As Salilina, who had her sleep disrupted, was very angry with the cub. She grabbed the annoying cub and pressed him against the mountain of gold coins, then rubbed him back and forth.
As it turned out, in any world, the child who angered their mother had only one fate to look forward to.
"Ho!"
After warning the naughty boy to settle down, she placed him under her broad dragon wings, restrained him from moving, and started snoring again.
For dragons, raising their young ones was a racial obligation. If not for the tenet of the God Tiamat and the Platinum Dragon, which declared that the female dragon without a child would be barred from entering the Divine Kingdom after her death. If not for this rule, most dragons would've thrown away their eggs after they had laid them.
As such, the dragon gods couldn't help it. To ensure the continuity of their race, mother dragons were decreed to support their young ones until the dragon cub could ensure its survival on its own.
As for fathers... only God knew who they were.
Dragons did not have a concept of family. Usually, the male dragon in heat would go out in search of a mate. He'd mate by forcing himself on his partner, after he was done, he'd pull out his bird relentlessly and fly away without any lingering nostalgia.
Though it wasn't always the case, because dragons that were unlucky or not strong enough could only survive facing discontent and mate with other species, which was also the source of a myriad of those strange sub-dragons species.
While a female dragon would typically raise her cubs for five years from their hatching, they would all then be thrown out of the house.
There was no room for two tigers in one mountain, let alone dragons with a stronger sense of territoriality. If the cub kept relying on it, the mother dragon could even forget the relationship it shared with its cub.
A week after Amos broke his shell. His younger siblings were finally born.
Three of them called out their long list of true dragon names which no one but themselves could remember. They then nibbled on their eggshells. After predicting the time it would take for them to hatch, Salilina, the mother dragon, had prepared two yaks beforehand.
The cub who had failed to gain the Dragon Inheritance was thrown down the cliff by Salilina without hesitation. The scene had sent chills to his heart and he was secretly glad that he managed to successfully receive the inheritance.