Chapter 3: 3 – Experiments

[Inspect] and [Breathe Fire] didn’t come as a surprise. The confirmation of the second was nice. She could breathe fire; she just had to figure out how. The ability burned in her chest, still, a pulsing heat deep in her core, but she hadn’t experimented with it. She suspected it wouldn’t be difficult to figure out.

[Dominate], though. That was unexpected. ‘Dominate a lesser creature’s will’? Unsettling. She was getting more and more of a feeling that dragons weren’t pleasant creatures. She guessed even back on Earth, most dragons had been portrayed as vain, greedy, violent predators. Some cultures had them as wiser, friendlier beings, but that wasn’t the standard for the world Sable had arrived to, from what she’d seen.

What did [Thrall] mean? It was emphasized inside her head, as if she could [Inspect] it. And sure enough, the attempt worked.

***

[Thrall] - The active collection of minds that the skill-user has dominated. Dominated minds have telepathic links to skill-user to sufficiently convey information. Thralls must obey enthraller’s commands when coerced to do so. Domination can be broken, but will alert the skill-user. {0 of 5 thralls have been dominated}.

***

Yikes. What did ‘lesser creature’ mean, if she could dominate people and force them to obey? Did that include humans and other sapient races? Even snarling monsters, like that mountain troll, would feel weird enthralling. Unethical. Maybe she could use the skill responsibly?

It said she could make a ‘telepathic link’ between her and a dominated mind, which implied meaningful communication could take place. That might be the easiest way for Sable to learn about the world she’d appeared in. So she would have to use it.

It might even be her highest priority, after she oriented herself. She was learning more about how the world worked, but having a resource in the form of a local—even a monster—would do wonders for getting her feet under her.

Next up was [Arcana Specialty: Frostfire]. She would’ve appreciated a more thorough description, because as it stood, she hadn’t a clue how to use it. Her [Inspect] skill wasn’t infinite. It provided no information as to what ‘key-rune’ might mean, or how Sable was supposed to go about ‘casting spells’, much less with a ‘key-rune of frostfire’. She could make some assumptions, she guessed. By the sounds of it, a ‘key-rune’ could be an ‘identifying symbol’ for spells, a ‘symbol of power’ the rest of the spell was built around. Did spells require drawing arcane diagrams? She had no clue.

Experimentation would be the path forward, there. She’d have to try and see what happened, following her instincts. If that didn’t work, then she’d have to find a way to learn more—maybe from dominating a monster that could cast spells and asking them.

For now, fire-breathing. She was a dragon. That ought to come naturally.

For the next several minutes, Sable cough-wheezed into the air, trying her darndest to manifest the burning glow in her chest into a gout of fire. If someone had been present to spectate her, it would’ve been quite the show. Seeing someone cough-wheeze for several minutes would’ve been amusing in any right, much less a majestic creature like a dragon. Fortunately, she practiced with privacy. Embarrassment washed over her at the initial failures, and she felt ridiculous, but nobody watched the debacle happen, at least.

Eventually, the wheezing showed promise. A spark built in her throat—a precursor to what she was trying to accomplish. Minutes later, the spark grew, and a warmth suffused her entire body, rather than pulsing deep in her chest.

Finally, the first small gout of white-blue fire burst from her mouth. The sensation was weird.

To be fair, everything so far was weird. Her new body, the bizarre RPG principles the world worked on, and reincarnation in general. Why had she been given a second chance at life—albeit not on Earth? Why had she kept her memories? Was that normal, here? Would everyone in this afterlife be a reincarnated individual, or was Sable a fluke? If so, why?

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Sable continued to experiment. Eventually, she could summon gouts of flame—a white-blue fire that burned hot enough it scalded the gray rock black and turned snow into steam. A useful weapon. She wouldn’t be wholly defenseless the next time a troll charged her … though maybe fleeing was the safer option until she understood how difficult a ‘Lv ??’ monster was to kill.

Breathing fire expended mana, but not at a horrible rate—or maybe she had an enormous mana pool. As with her health, ‘1,500’ didn’t seem like a normal starting amount. She was down to ‘1,422’, now. The problem was, it didn’t seem to be regenerating. Would it do so when she slept? Some other way? There was still so much to discover.

Next up, she tried spell-casting. Unfortunately, that wasn’t half as intuitive as breathing fire. She made no strides at all. No amount of pleading with [Inspect] led to further information. She’d have to find a tutor, then.

Which meant it was time to venture out. She had claws, teeth, a powerful body, and the ability to breathe fire. Being able to cast spells would’ve been nice, but maybe not necessary.

Time to, uh, ‘subjugate lesser minds’. Just for a short while! She was a monster, now, in the literal sense, but that didn’t mean she had to be a monster. But she did need information, and couldn’t talk without a telepathic link.

So. [Domination] time.

~

Learning to fly was a bit of an ordeal, and she was sore from her crash-landing escape from the mountain troll. That said, she figured things out. Before long, not only had she gotten a grasp on gliding, but she could take off and land, control her speed, and maneuver in the air. It wasn’t pretty, sure, and she wouldn’t awe anyone with her deftness of movement, but she could get from point A to point B without making an embarrassment of herself.

That figured out, she started her slow, steady descent down the stretching mountain slope. The lush green forest in the distance looked much more hospitable than her icy spawning point, and more importantly, would hopefully have a low-level target for enthrallment. Or more mundane sorts of hunting targets. Strangely, a deer sounded mighty appetizing right about now.

The idea of feasting on raw meat should have been disgusting, but instead, Sable’s stomach growled at the idea. Her instincts didn’t carry over only to her ability to control her body, apparently, but in more animalistic ways, too.

The trip down—feeling the wind fly past her and experiencing the wonder of free-form flight—was the first instance she considered that maybe reincarnation wasn’t all bad. She wasn’t remotely over—or had even digested—the whole ‘dying’ part, but getting to soar through the air and explore a pristine, breathtaking fantasy world? If nothing else, it was an experience.

From high in the air, she surveyed her surroundings with more scrutiny than before. She couldn’t identify any settlements, but at the same time, she could only see so far. If she coasted along for a few dozen miles, maybe she would. For the short term, though, none. Maybe that was a good thing. Though she had a Notoriety stat to be working on, she’d rather do so deliberately and carefully. For all she knew, dragons were popular hunting targets, and as a newborn—barely larger than a deer was tall, if several times longer, from her appraisal—she would be vulnerable.

Speaking of hunting, she did some herself. And it was—as a continuing trend—weird. She let her instincts guide her and zoned out for most of the gory event. The good news was, she felt much better with a full stomach, and a quick reference to her [HP] resource meant food was one possible way to recover on that front. Her [MP] stayed where it was, though, only having ticked up a few points. It regenerated, but at an excruciating pace. At a guess, there was another, more efficient way to regenerate mana. Or maybe her crippling stat reduction was causing the slow recuperation?

Her meal taken care of, it was time to actually set her plans in motion. She needed to find a mind—at least halfway intelligent, unlike the fauna—to subjugate, then pry for information.

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