Chapter 4: Chapter 3: Hatching

[White Fang Clan]

Somewhere on the Beast continents coast, a roar was heard that would have sent those that recognized it into a frenzies. Surrounded by tent and a large gathering of humanoids with wolf like ears, tail and some fur, a freshly hatched dragon let out this roar that didn't match its small stature.

It measured around 1,5 meter from its tail tip to its snout, completely decked in scales as pith black as the egg it hatched from. From its head protruded six horns, the two large of those starting atop its head slightly above and behind its red reptilian eyes. The four smaller horns started further downwards, seemingly growing backward out of the upper jaw and curving slightly outwards to the sides, seemingly protecting the part of the long neck closest to the head from the sides. The larger horns instead curved slightly upwards, streching for nearly half the necks length.

On its spine grew a row a row of boney, spike like protrusions that could be retracted at will. These continued up to the tails tip, with changing size, the largest being between the wings. These were unfurled widely, showing the membrane on its inner side, spanned between four bones. The outer of these four bones allowed the wingspan to reach far beyond what the muscular arm like appendage moving the wing would indicate. Due to these bones being flexible, the wingspan can range anywhere between nearly double the main arms length, to the bones connection with the arm being the most outward point. Opposite of this connection sits a single claw, curved towards the main body. All four of of these bones ended in spikes, similar to the one on the wings front, just pointing downwards instead of inwards. The wings outside are covered in scales, allowing them to be concealed quite well if placed flat on the side of the dragons body.

The dragons front and hint legs of the dragon held few similarities. The hind legs held more muscles and two joints, the top one allowing a bent backwards and the bottom one a bent forwards. The part of the leg between the body and first joint was positioned front and downwards, followed by the next part downwards and slightly back. The legs end went at a similar angle as the first part and ended in four talons, tipped with sharp claws.

The front two legs only had only one joint, transitioning from the upper leg, that was backwards, to the lower leg growing more forwards. The shoulder allowed for upper leg positioning from strait down to first going backwards nearly parallel to the body. In the first case, the forward body is higher than the back of the body while in the latter case the body is horizontal, when the lower leg is stretched straight down. The legs ended in a hand like limb, with five 'fingers', tipped with retractable claw, growing forward. These fingers were quite short in comparison to the palm and the inner most had limited abilities to function as a thumb.

(AN: Imagine the cover, just four extra horns, slightly longer neck and larger front legs.)

Afterward it started cleaning it self from the remains of the egg that still stuck to its pitch black scales and started to devour the remains of the egg, completely ignoring the armed wolf-kin around it. Only after a few minutes the dragon brought its attention to those surrounding it.

“You are in the presence of Darganth the dragon.” These words brought the tribe out of their shock. Lifting their weapons, the warriors stepped forwards. Looking around himself, Darganth let out a small laugh at the group that is currently surrounding him.

“Do you truly believe that a group of first class individuals can fight against even a freshly hatched high tier dragon?” He asked. Hearing these words the warriors looked at each other nervously. While he had already said that he is a dragon, a high tier dragon species is not something that any of them could fight.

While the tier of a dragon species is not based on their strength, most beings believe that to be the case. In truth, this ranking is base on the suppressive effect of the secondary effect that dragons fear has. While dragons are immune to dragons fear, when it comes from a higher tier species they are compelled to obey the orders of said dragon. While it is not a complete brainwashing, only few dragon can resist such an order as long as it doesn't harm them or there loved ones directly. Due to this looking like the dragon listening to the orders of a stronger dragon, many believe the tier's to be grouped by power. That is also the true to a large extend, but there are exceptions to this.

“While we may not stand a chance, as long as we can save our tribesmen our sacrifice would be worth it.” Speaking these words, Elstan stepped a bit closer before continuing, “Of course we would prefer if you would simply let us be.”

At those words Darganth grinned. While he didn't plan to fight them from the beginning as it would offer him no benefit, the thought of fanning their fear for a bit was not something that he could resist.

“Even if you tried to stop me, I could kill every single living being in this camp. Your first order warriors do not even have the power to pierce my scales, while even the second order ones would find trouble archiving it. Maybe you place your hopes in the twelve third order individuals among you, but while they could wound me reliably, you are still humanoids. A magician may have a way to deal with my breath, but an aura user below the peak of the third grade is one of the easiest enemys for a dragon.” During these words his smile grew with every words, while the surrounding tribesmen started taking more and more steps back. This was partially due to him using his dragons fear with growing intensity during this little speech.

Keeping this pressure on them Darganth inwardly smiled at their reaction.

Just when Elstan wanted to try taking Darganth by surprise and attack him, the pressure vanished. Irritated, the warriors eyed Darganth warily, while the rest of the tribe breathed out in relieve, with some even fainting.

“But you lot aren't worth that effort. But I promise you this, when the first of you acts against me, you will see that my words were true and that you can do nothing to stop it. Now where is the nearest treasure.” After saying these words, Darganth completely ignored the tribesmen. Unfurling his wings, only a slight jump and on beat of his wings were enough to reach a height of three meters. Gaining a few meters more of height, he looked towards the forest a few hundred meters away from their camp.

Looking towards it, he used his eyes to search for high concentration's of mana. While most beings could sense such concentrations, even over great distances after reaching higher ranks, dragons could see mana. This was because their eyes allowed them to not only see in great detail normally, they held the ability to see even energy. While most dragon species couldn't see every type of energy, with most having only the ability to see the elemental affinity's their species leans towards, they could all see mana. This vision also wasn't inhibited by physical obstructions, giving them near perfect detection.

When he found a strong source of mana he made his way over there. While natural treasures were rare and he doubted this was one, even a plant that carried a large amount of mana in it can help him. While few would use this ability due to its low efficiency, dragons could strengthen their own mana by consuming obects with a high mana density.

The reason he wanted to use it is that while normally the gain one would get was small in comparison to the consumed mana, the current him could use a larger percentage. The reason for this is that he not only grows his power, he recovers his old powers at the same time, leading to him growing stronger faster and absorbing more of the benefit of treasures or such high mana concentrations.

Landing, he found the dead body of a wolf beast lying there, with the mana signature coming from its heart. This was because most beings would store their mana in their heart, with only a few exceptions. These were mainly beings that had either no heart or many small hearts, as well as those that trained the path of a magician to its mythical stage or better known as Archmages.

While he found it somewhat weird that a beast had already reached this far into the area previously covered by his dragons fear, he didn't care. Using his claws he ripped open the wolfs ribcage, until he reached the heart which he ate. Not caring for the rest of the body, he once more took flight and continued his search for mana dense objects.

During the following two hours he fond about a handful such objects, with a large percentage of them being dead beast, which aroused his suspicion. While it was by no means rare that beast would die, whether it was due to other beasts, humanoids or monsters didn't matter much, the fact that their body's were still intact was suspicious enough.

While few beasts held ability’s that would strengthen them directly such as dragons could, the meat of those with large amounts of mana in their body was both tasty as well as helpful in mana cultivation, no matter if it was as an aura user, as a magician, or as a beast. Additionally beast would still require food and while hunting normal animals was easier, they were not above eating the meat of beasts.

This lead him to the conclusion that these beasts ran into the area his aura covered because they fled from something, while their pursuer didn't dare to continued following them. But now that his aura was gone, it was highly likely that this being would follow his preys tracks.

Deciding to first find himself a place to rest, Darganth took flight once more, this time towards the mountains nearby. While they were by no means large, especially for dragons as they would prefer their caves as high as possible, it had to be enough for now.

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Flying towards the highest peak he saw a multitude of different caves at the foot of the mountain, some even housing monsters. Despite being in the area of his dragons fear, they didn't abandon their caves, instead moving as deep as posible. Ignoring them, he found a good spot with a small ledge he could use to enjoy the suns warmth. Landing there, he used earth magic to create a small cave. While he didn't start progressing in either magic or aura yet, his mana pool and knowledge allowed him to already cast spells without trouble.

Finishing his temporary home, he used the last remnants of boosted dragons fear and infused it into his surroundings. While it would slowly degrade over time, this was the best possible use for this remnant of his past lives dragons fear. Having already used most of it during his time in the egg, he had only one last use left, that he believed to be better spend here.

Walking back outside, he looked down the mountain to see the reactions of those at the foot of the mountain. While the dragons fear he used was only at the third rank, it would still leave a lasting impression on them as the most powerful individual he had found was at the second rank. When there came no reaction beyond using a few spells to scout towards the peak he once again went inside.

Lying down, Darganth began to think on the path to regain parts of his power he should take for now. Before him were a multitude of options, with each of them having their own advantages and disadvantages. Deciding nearly instantly to only consider the first rank for now, he thought about the different advantages and disadvantages.

The easiest way was to simply wait here and train aura and magic by absorbing mana from the surrounding. Additionally he would grow stronger as he aged, but he wasn't sure about the exact pace. While dragons were ranked in the same system as beast by nearly all species, they could not evolve like beast did. Even mythical beast species would have jumps in physical power when they reached a new rank.

Dragons instead were classified by measuring their size and using it to guess their age. While the growth was different between low, intermediate and high tier dragon species and even in those tiers, it served as a rough outline. Normally a dragon would be classified as a second rank once their mana heart starts developing, one of the few things that happened around a similar age among all dragons.

While it would normally happen around the age of five, Darganths growth would not only consist of a normal dragons growth, but also his past powers returning. Thus he had no idea when this would happen and while he had the advantage of having all eternity to again reach his peak, he prefers a quicker way.

This leaves him with no choice than to hunt, but he still had to decide whether to focus on aura or magic. While the first rank of aura lacked any range options unless one used a ranged weapon, it would increase the strength of his already powerful body even more. Especially due to aura being mainly limited by the body's ability to endure the mana flowing inside, allowing him to increase his power by more than a humanoid or even beasts could.

Magic on the other hand is the signature of dragons nearly as much as their breath. Even though they were not beasts, they had both innate abilities and elemental control. While most beasts would only have one of the two, dragons had both as their breath counts as an innate ability and once the mana heart forms they could use elemental control better than nearly all beast, as most dragon species would have control over not just a few but all elements. Of course there were exceptions, but these were rare and nearly exclusively among low tier dragon species.

But there was a limiting factor on magic, to be precise it was the same that prevented him from using his breath to its full potential. This was his current lack of a mana heart, also called dragon heart by other species. While not being able to use elemental control was a loss for him, it paled in comparison to the hearts amplification effect as well as its mana production.

These abilities were a large part in the dragons dominance over other species, as spells they cast would be stronger while costing less mana. Even though it also effected aura, it mainly profited from the increase in strength because aura is rarely limited by the amount of mana someone possess, with mythical rank aura users being capable of fighting for weeks due to its low mana cost.

The mana production was another great effect that allowed dragons to be capable of refilling their mana pool even if the surrounding lacked mana or it was disturbed by something. Additionally a dragons scales prevented any form of mana jamming from affecting the dragons body nearly completely. This together with the dragon heart made it nearly impossible to keep a dragon captured as they could always regain their mana and use it inside their body.

Meanwhile, his current heart only had the ability to hold limitless mana. While this didn't mean that he could absorb as much mana as he wanted, it meant that he would never have to slow down the increase to his mana pool due to his heart not being able to endure the pressure. While it was a great ability, its true worth would only show at higher ranks.

These factors lead to a difficult decision for Darganth, with him having to choose between either spitting his focus and slowing his progress down as magic required more mana quantity, while aura required a higher mana quality, or picking one of the two. After a while he made his decision to split his focus, but while prioritiesing aura.

While he wouldn't benefit from the full advantage of magic to cover his current weakness of a lack of ranged options, it offered his at least some coverage. Closing his eyes, he adjusted the amount of effort he placed on absorbing mana to increase his mana pool and using this absorbed mana to increase his mana quality.

Once he was done with this, he focused on going through the techniques of the first, second and third order of an aura trainee. The advancement for aura and magic didn't work like in cultivation novels he had read on earth with someone gaining these abilities as soon as they reached the required energy level, instead they had to be learned. While there were also requirements for ones mana, these were made by different organizations to prevent their members from only focus on these techniques, slowing their progress once they reach those techniques that require mana of a certain level to be usable.

The techniques on the other hand imprint themselves on the heat as symbols of pure energy, easing their use and making it subconscious. This means that even if a fourth rank aura master lost his memories, he could still use these techniques despite no longer knowing his fighting style.

Due to his memories, Darganth knew exactly how to use them. Starting with aura, he moved the mana in his heart through his body in his aura circuit. The Term aura circuit refers to the part of the mana circuit every living being has, that is used in aura usage. Experts can separate these parts from the magic circuit, the parts used in the casting of spells, thus being able to use both simultaneously. Of course this was something Darganth had done as soon as he was reborn, with it requiring a mere thought to close the necessary connections.

Now that he used the first order ability, Darganth instantly noticed the symbol forming on his heart. Waiting for its effect to kick in, he continued circling his aura for nearly ten minutes. While he could have simply deactivated aura once the forming began, this sped up the process.

Once he noticed the aura to flow without him having to control it completely, he checked his body. Feeling the strength of it having increased, he smiled in satisfaction. The tempering of the body is something each rank and order advancement in aura offers and a large part of the reason why it is hard to fight above ones current level. A stronger body means that one is capable of using more aura at the same time, thus strengthening the body even more.

During the next hour, he regained the symbols for the first class in both aura and magic. For aura, this required him to let aura flow through and enhance an object for the second order and give his aura an elemental property for the third order.

Despite not increasing the mana cost, elemental aura is stronger than neutral aura due to the users affinity to the used element increasing its power. Additionally the different elements boost certain aspects stronger than neutral aura even if the affinity is discounted. Additionally they hold a slight passive effect when used, with the exact effect for both of these depending on the used element.

For magicians the first class consists of first projecting mana controlled out of ones body, followed by the ability to cast basic spells in the second order. To reach the third order, the magician has to cast advanced elemental application spells. These are spells that use the element beyond its most simple form, like creating explosions with the fire element.

Once he finished forming the symbols, Darganth made his way towards the cave's entrance. Looking over the forest, he found some of the faster species to have already reached this far. Picking his first prey, he flew back towards the forest.

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