Sunlight filtered through the forest canopy and spilled across the vast swamp below.
A thin layer of mist drifted over the damp water. The air carried a strange mixture of rotting leaves, mud, and acid.
The still surface suddenly rippled.
Splash!
A round little black head popped out of the water.
Evelyn shook herself vigorously, sending droplets flying from her glossy black scales. She hooked both front claws over a dead log jutting above the surface and looked around with curious golden eyes.
“So this is the outside world?”
This was the first time Evelyn had truly left the dragon lair since hatching.
An enormous swamp stretched before her as far as she could see. Mats of rotting vegetation floated across the murky water, and every so often, strange aquatic creatures darted beneath the surface.
Farther away stood a dense primeval forest, its canopy so thick that it nearly blocked out the sky.
Most of the trees were unusually dark.
Deep green.
Dark brown.
Some were almost completely black.
Vines and thorny shrubs tangled together beneath the trees. Here and there, flowers and fruits in unnaturally vivid colors peeked out from between the leaves.
Evelyn only had to glance at them before the Draconic Inheritance supplied the answers.
Poisonous.
That one too.
The one beside it...
Even worse.
And that entire patch of flowers in the distance?
Best not to touch those at all.
“...”
Evelyn fell silent for a moment.
Just what she would expect from a place inhabited by a black dragon.
Even a random weed might be more dangerous than an ordinary magical beast.
It wasn’t because her mother had deliberately chosen a swamp filled with poisonous life.
Quite the opposite.
In a sense, the environment had become this way precisely because an adult black dragon had lived here for so long.
Black dragons possessed a natural affinity for acid, decay, and swamps.
Over many years, a powerful adult black dragon would gradually influence the environment around its lair.
The water would become increasingly acidic.
The ground would turn into deeper and deeper mud.
The scent of decay would grow stronger.
Ordinary plants and animals would struggle to survive.
Eventually, only creatures with exceptional resistance to poison, acid, and harsh conditions would remain.
Everything else...
Had already died off.
Evelyn was very pleased with that.
At least the area was safe.
Normal humans probably weren’t going to wander into a place like this for an afternoon stroll.
She searched through the Draconic Inheritance again and soon found information about her current location.
“Blackbriar Forest...”
Evelyn quietly repeated the name.
Blackbriar Forest was one of the largest primeval forests in eastern Aersk, stretching for thousands of miles from east to west.
Countless magical beasts and intelligent creatures lived within it.
Common animals shared the forest with goblins, gnolls, and countless other creatures. Deeper inside were even powerful magical beasts capable of threatening an adult dragon.
Even human adventurers rarely dared venture too far into its depths.
And beyond Blackbriar Forest to the east...
Lay the Eastern Kingdoms, a collection of nations founded by humans.
Evelyn instinctively turned her gaze eastward.
Of course, she couldn’t see anything through the endless forest.
The Draconic Inheritance, however, contained plenty of scattered information about human civilization.
Cities.
Merchant caravans.
Nobles.
Churches.
Complicated systems of professions and supernatural paths.
And...
Food.
Evelyn’s expression slowly changed.
Steak.
Roast chicken.
Honey bread.
Stew.
Sausages.
Cheese.
All kinds of food prepared with spices and sauces...
The Draconic Inheritance didn’t contain much detail about human cooking.
Most dragons simply didn’t care how humans prepared their meals.
To an adult chromatic dragon, humans, cattle, sheep, and magical beasts were all basically food.
The main difference was flavor.
Evelyn, however, was different.
She had been human in her previous life.
She knew what properly cooked food tasted like.
Many details from her old life had faded, but apparently her memories of good food were remarkably stubborn.
The thought of spending her entire new life chewing raw meat made Evelyn feel that being a dragon had suddenly lost some of its charm.
“No.”
She shook her head seriously.
Dragons lived for an absurdly long time.
Spending all those years doing nothing but sleeping and eating raw meat would be a terrible waste.
Once she became strong enough...
She would claim a territory of her own.
Better yet, she would get herself a city.
Then she could gather a whole group of cooks and have them make something different every day.
Evelyn’s eyes grew brighter the more she thought about it.
Would cooks really be willing to work for a black dragon?
That wasn’t a problem.
She just had to make sure she didn’t eat them.
Right.
At the very least, anyone who could cook well was off the menu.
Evelyn carefully revised the evil thought that had just crossed her mind.
Good cooks were valuable resources.
Wasting them would be stupid.
She could always eat something else.
“Perfect. Another goal for the future.”
Get stronger.
Claim her own territory.
Fill it with treasure.
Then find a whole bunch of people who knew how to cook.
Now that sounded like a good dragon life.
Evelyn was just beginning to imagine the possibilities when a wave of heavy drowsiness suddenly rose from deep inside her body.
“Hm?”
She yawned.
Her eyelids began to droop.
Evelyn quickly realized what was happening.
The Draconic Inheritance had already warned her about this.
After eating their eggshells, newly hatched dragons would soon experience their first true Growth Sleep.
For ordinary creatures, sleep was mostly a way to restore energy and recover from exhaustion.
For dragons, one of the world’s most powerful magical lifeforms, sleep itself was part of growing.
This was especially true during their early years.
During each period of deep sleep, hatchlings absorbed the nutrients and magic stored within their bodies.
Their scales hardened.
Their bones grew.
Their organs developed.
They could even awaken innate abilities hidden within their bloodline.
Considering how much eggshell Evelyn had just eaten, all that nutrition and residual magic was clearly beginning to take effect.
“Already...?”
Evelyn looked reluctantly at the world around her.
How long had she even been outside?
She hadn’t gotten the chance to properly explore the area, and her body was already demanding that she go back to sleep.
Still, she didn’t force herself to stay awake.
Her previous life had taught her something important.
There was no point fighting against her own body.
Especially when she knew almost nothing about how dragons developed.
If the Draconic Inheritance said a hatchling’s first Growth Sleep was important, then she was going to sleep.
The outside world wasn’t going anywhere.
Evelyn took one last look into the distance.
Then she released the log.
Splash!
She slipped back beneath the swamp water.
Her long tail swayed behind her as she followed the submerged passage back toward the dragon lair hidden deep beneath the swamp.
Her mother was still sprawled across the treasure hoard.
As far as Evelyn could tell, she had barely changed position since Evelyn had left.
Darrien was already asleep.
His entire body had curled into a ball, with the tip of his tail resting near his snout. Every so often, it gave a tiny twitch.
Evelyn looked around and eventually found a relatively dry spot beside him.
She lay down and curled her tail around herself.
The moment she closed her eyes, the overwhelming drowsiness swallowed her consciousness.
...
A hatchling’s first Growth Sleep usually didn’t last very long.
Sometimes it was only a few hours.
At most, it might last two or three days.
But for a dragon, even such a short sleep could produce noticeable changes.
Most intelligent races had to study for years if they wanted to learn magic.
They had to understand magical structures.
Sense the elements.
Memorize spells.
Practice casting them.
A slightly more complicated spell might take years to truly master.
Dragons had no such problem.
They were magical creatures by nature.
As they aged and passed through one Growth Sleep after another, the knowledge and abilities hidden within their bloodlines would awaken naturally.
It was one of the many things other races envied about dragons.
No teachers.
No spellbooks.
Not even any particularly grueling training.
They simply had to eat.
Sleep.
Grow.
And somehow, they became stronger.
It really wasn’t fair.
...
The next day, Evelyn slowly opened her eyes.
She was still a little groggy when she woke, but it didn’t take long for her to notice something different about her body.
“Hm?”
Evelyn stretched her neck.
There was a strange new sensation inside her throat.
Something...
Had developed there.
She closed her eyes and focused on it.
The Draconic Inheritance soon provided the answer.
The fundamentum.
It was a specialized organ found only in dragons and certain creatures with draconic blood.
The fundamentum connected directly to a dragon’s magic and bloodline power.
And in a black dragon...
Its most immediate function was to produce highly corrosive acid.
Evelyn instantly became wide awake.
Which meant...
Dragon Breath?
She could already use Dragon Breath?
Evelyn sprang to her feet.
After looking around the cavern, she picked a patch of bare mud some distance away from both the treasure hoard and anything else important.
She took a deep breath.
Following the instincts provided by the Draconic Inheritance, Evelyn reached for the unfamiliar power inside her body.
Her throat began to warm.