I looked around with eyes still a little sleepy. A black bird and a panther lay limply a short distance from the furnace, dead or asleep, I couldn't tell. Mom was drinking tea at the tea table set up on one side of the lair. Seeing me get up, she smiled and spoke.
“Did you sleep well? You must've felt sleepy because it was warm? As you've probably seen, those are the black eagle and black panther. Hmm, we can put them in 3 hours from now. Anyway, you sleep as soundly as you did as a baby? Is it because you've used so much mental energy?”
Hmm, did I sleep that long? Oh dear, this isn't good, isn't good.
I stretched out fully. Molten iron was still bubbling in the furnace, but unlike the white smoke from earlier, the smoke was now sky blue. Perhaps my eyes were still sleepy and deceiving me, but it seemed to be turning a deeper blue.
Hmm, 3 more hours?
—3 hours later.
Three hours really do seem to pass in an instant. Anyway, the 3 hours slipped by easily. During that time, the furnace smoke gradually deepened in color, and now only intensely blue smoke was rising.
Mom dragged over the black panther's and black eagle's corpses—I'd wondered, but sure enough, they were corpses. I didn't know how she'd caught them, but they were perfectly intact, without a single wound.—and put them in the furnace.
Sssss...... Whooosh!
There was a sound like pork belly sizzling on a grill, and the flames flared up with a whoosh! before settling down. After that flare, the smoke that had been pouring out as though the furnace mouth were too narrow gradually dwindled.
Then Mom chanted an incantation toward the furnace.
“Steel within steel! Crystallization of all metals! Appear before me in the form you've now been given!”
Something shot out from inside and landed with great elegance before Mom and me.
It was...... A black panther. A fine, handsome black panther clad in black, velvetlike skin rather than metal.
Mom smiled in satisfaction, then nudged me forward and spoke.
“Now, Rainin! Make the contract. Just drip a few drops of blood onto it.”
Following her instructions, I let 2 or 3 drops of blood from a front toe—Owww!...... How many times do I have to do this?! It hurts! It stings!—fall onto the fellow's head. It shuddered as the blood touched it, then sat down quietly. I thought this would be a good time to give it a name. So I placed a front foot on its head and spoke.
“Your name's Steelsquall, and mine's Rainisis. You're a spirit bound to me.”
“Grrrr......”
The fellow gave a soft growl as though it understood, and I checked whether the contract had really taken effect.
“Hmm, turn into a black eagle!”
No sooner had I spoken than the fellow's body shrank and changed shape like the metal man I'd seen in Terminator 2, becoming a rather large black eagle. To give you an idea, it looked big enough to snatch up a lamb.
Oho...... It really worked?
I decided to give it another command.
“Fly around the lair once. Cry out once while you're at it.”
“SCREEEEEECH!”
With a cry you might hear in a movie, Steelsquall took off powerfully, made a wide circuit of the lair, and flew back before me. Oho, shall we try the middle form now?
“Good. Now the middle form!”
Its shape began changing again. After shifting and billowing, its final form was a black panther standing elegantly with wings sized to fit its body.
“Fly and give a loud cry.”
“RAAAAAOW!”
Steelsquall launched fiercely into the air with a sharp roar dripping with killing intent, rather than the commanding, resounding roar of a tiger or lion. Its flight was powerful, agile, and certainly not slow. All riiight! Veryyy good!
“Come down, Steelsquall! Well done!”
“Rrrow.”
Steelsquall came down and rubbed its head against my leg as though thanking me for the praise.
So this fellow's affectionate, too. It's like I've got a pet?
Shall I really throw myself into training in spirit arts now?
I plunged into spirit arts like a madman and spent about 200 years utterly absorbed in them. I trained with Psy using the experimental animals Mom caught—of course, those animals were my meals. Mom told me not to play with my food, but it was fun anyway.—and used Steelsquall to change the shape of steel, practice faster transformations, or simply play as though it were a pet.
I also combined fire, pressure, and different kinds of stone by using fire and earth spirits together with Steelsquall to make diamonds and other precious materials. Personally, I found this the most fun. Using Sylph's wind, I learned to hover without flapping my wings.—Though tremendous gales blew beneath me.
I used Undine to wash my face and bathe with ease—though she seemed terribly shy when bathing me. Hahaha, that's cute in its own way.—while the forest spirit was an excellent teacher, telling me the history the forest had accumulated, how its creatures lived in harmony, amusing events in various forests, and things happening around the world. The light spirit was a warm, comforting friend.
The lightning spirit Spark seemed suited to attacking in any situation, and appeared to have a serious personality defect, so I concentrated on reforming its mind and controlling its power.
Still, electrocuting animals and eating them electrically grilled(?) was a special delicacy in its own way, you might say?
But that fellow Spark had the strange trait of only producing good power when made to laugh, so on occasion I'd amplified its power several dozen times over with a lousy joke.
While learning spirit arts, I only managed to use Polymorph after turning 100, and regained a human form. Although it wasn't my old appearance, I was delighted just to look human and continued training in spirit arts.
Then, in the year I turned 202, 200 years after starting spirit arts, I finished learning them and brought a book out of Mom's study, finally encountering it.
Only now was my contact with this world's true civilization beginning.
#(4) Books and Magic, and an End That Would Become a Starting Point
I believe I said before that I'd spent 200 years learning spirit arts. Two hundred years...... Hmm, even I could hardly imagine such a stretch of time. Spending 10 times my human lifespan learning nothing but spirit arts had, in truth, come as an enormous shock. You could call it a kind of culture shock(Culture shock: the shock of encountering another culture), but I probably endured it without my mind collapsing because I'd used Polymorph.
Polymorph.
It was one of the various abilities dragons acquired as they aged, and the one they used most. With an average lifespan of about 10,000 years, dragons learned everything quickly, so they soon grew bored with life and sought more stimulating, more intense experiences.
Sometimes they simply did nothing and slept, but however you looked at it, wouldn't spending 10,000 years doing nothing but sleeping make being born utterly meaningless? So dragons often indulged in a pastime.
This pastime involved changing their bodies into those of other races, blending in, and enjoying the experience of living their lives.
For humans, meeting a dragon engaged in its pastime could be tremendously fortunate or unfortunate, but to dragons, it was merely ‘play’ that lasted an instant.
Yet despite being play, a pastime could be enjoyed continuously over a long period. The stimulation of meeting intelligent beings whose minds worked completely differently from dragons' was so powerful that it was something every dragon had to try. No, it was a kind of compulsory education that every adult dragon had to undertake.
I didn't know whether dragons had thought of the pastime after using Polymorph, or had thought of the pastime and then made Polymorph possible.
Perhaps the Divine Dragon would know?
Anyway, Polymorph was an ability like a toy that let dragons engage in their pastime. Above all, a dragon's immense body wasn't suited to narrow passages and attracted attention whenever it went out, so the ability also served to use space more efficiently by changing into another race.—Now that I've explained it, I've ended up rambling.
The age at which a dragon could use Polymorph was when its Dragon Heart settled into place and could channel a certain amount of mana. At exactly 100 years old, it could change its appearance at will.
When I turned 100, I was feeling a certain burden over an age I couldn't easily have reached as a human, and growing increasingly dissatisfied with my body.
It wasn't that I hadn't grown used to it. I could walk and fly without much difficulty, but wouldn't a human body still be more comfortable?
As they say, habits learned at 3 last until 80. I couldn't easily let go of my memories of being human. No, a dragon's brain, which knew no forgetting, stubbornly refused to shake off those memories.
That made things harder as the days went by. Seriously, from 90 to 100, I lived as though I was ready to give up spirit arts and everything else. I spent almost 10 years sleeping or lying down for more than half of each day, merely going over my human memories.
Then I turned 100, became able to use Polymorph, and regained my enthusiasm for life. Apparently, my mind preferred a human body to a dragon's.
My Polymorphed appearance was vastly different from my human face. Although you could change your form at will, facial features and physique were supposedly inborn and couldn't be altered during Polymorph. Still, I liked my new appearance better.
Why? Because it was waaay more handsome than my old face. Isn't that obvious? Wahahahaha! I've saved on plastic surgery!
Ahem! Cough, now I'll describe my appearance after Polymorph. First, as a Red Dragon, I inevitably had red hair. Well, I could change the color later, but I liked that blazing scarlet very much. Then my physique and face! I'd worried greatly about these. Why? In the various novels I'd read, slender men with pretty, pale faces were constantly mistaken for women, and there'd even been a strange period when that was considered the standard for a protagonist.
Of course, I could understand giving a handsome protagonist a feminine appearance, but I hated it. Surely a man should have features and a physique that showed he was a man, even if he wasn't burly? If that happened to me...... Aaaaah! I'd go crazy!
But that worry soon disappeared. My Polymorphed physique was a strong, solid male body with some muscle, although it wasn't burly, and I had a handsome, striking face that gave a sharp, clean impression.
Behold! This firm, magnificent body!
The muscles honed beneath my skin were like Bruce Lee's in old movies. They weren't bulging, but top-quality muscle built deep within. Apparently, people who practiced Muay Thai in Thailand had muscles like these?
Then there was a face that couldn't be mistaken for a woman's, yet was spotless, clean, and sharp.
You know how some men's faces look incredibly handsome even to other men? Handsome male faces that couldn't possibly be mistaken for women's. That was my face. It was almost perfect, capable of carrying any expression effortlessly. When I first used Polymorph and looked in a mirror, I let out a tremendous sigh of relief.
But there was a very big problem. I had muscles, and my face was undoubtedly masculine. But, but...... It was...... The appearance of a ‘teenager’!
At 100, a dragon was very young indeed. It was only old enough for someone to say, “Aww, that little one's going to be quite cute when he can Polymorph.”
It was so utterly natural that my Polymorphed face was a teenager's that its obviousness could pierce the sky, split the earth, fill the sea, and crush mountains. Still, fortunately, I'd apparently have the face of a 20-year-old man once I became an adult dragon. That was a relief. So the teenage face that had initially looked 15 had now changed into one that looked about 16—though you'd hardly see any difference!