f..l..a.p…

Trying to control the strange new wing muscles that grew out of my body, I was barely able to make a slow wing flap that didn't really even raise me off the ground.

Naturally, that was to be expected, not to mention the fact that I was the same as a new baby when it came to handling these new 'limbs', flying was never just about having wings, otherwise flying humans would be all over the place back in reality.

However, considering the weird description of 'Dragon Wings' and the whole aspect of anything related to dragons being far deeper than it looked, I was still trying to figure out the actual mechanism of the wings.

The first step was obviously to get used to handling the wings, which proved to be the easiest part, it only took about half an hour to be able to handle them as well as my hands, which was mostly thanks to my monstrous dexterity… but…

'Weird…'

It was only when I finally got the hang of it that I realized that the change that took place during the creepy horror scene wasn't limited to the addition of just two new wings, connected muscles seemed to have also been affected…

Of course, since I didn't exactly know what changed and only noticed that the muscles seemed to have awkward responses, I could only do a full mental energy scan to figure out the difference.

'...'

While it wasn't very obvious, a thorough mental energy scan that was especially focused on my upper body parts allowed me to find the changed part. It wasn't exactly a connected muscle like my back muscle that had changed the most, it was actually my chest muscle.

They were now semi-automated to go along with the moving of my wings, which basically made me...

'Half a bird…?'

I first believed that it had something to do with passive wind elements, which seemed to have the greatest potential for being a zero energy consumption flight method. After all, as long as the consumption came from atmospheric elements that are half-linked to one's own element through 'dragon magic' or something like that, it would indeed fit the bill, but the actual method seemed to be completely down to earth in comparison…

Though it was indeed a somewhat automated ability like I expected it to be, it instead worked on the muscles instead of something otherworldly like elements, but even that was still quite impressive in its way, in fact even more so than the believable elemental theory that I had…

'I guess that's the difference of an upgraded 'Dragonization'...'

While I did wonder regarding the massive change that made the whole process of putting on 'Dragon Scales' and 'Dragon Wings' so troublesome, it seemed like it had something to do with the upgrade of the whole ability that required further changing of my body. In that order, activating just one of its branches made it possible for a body upgrade to take place, which made sense as all the branch abilities did have their own change.

As the rank of the 'Dragonization' ability got higher, it allowed severe body modification like giving me the abilities of a half-bird, once again proving the point that 'Innate Abilities' aren't to be looked down on.

'Ok… let's give it a real try now!'

After flapping each wing on its own for a dozen of times and understanding how the automated muscle movement worked and comparing it for reference with the 'aves' biology books that I read, I was finally confident enough to try and do my first flight!

'It needs a proper taking off stage…'

"Long, another tree please!"

[Right… up?]

Even though that the steps of slowly learning that spreading the wings would lessen the fall, as well as the fact that flapping the wings the fall from even taking place, aren't as well known, It's somewhat of a common knowledge that newborn birds are known to first take flight after falling from their nests for a few times. As such, I wanted to have the same experience to congratulate myself for partially becoming a new leaf on the bird family tree!

Of course, I hoped there would be fewer falls in comparison to the most common experience...

'Here we go!'

After climbing the tree normally, I stood at the very top of the tree and jumped!

The stage of spreading the wings worked out smoothly without trouble as I felt like I was floating in the air, which made me optimistically flap my wings and rise up just before I was about to hit the ground.

'I'm doing it!'

Or so I thought…

`~~`~~`~~`

'I'm finally doing it… I think?'

After 5 falls and another 10 semi-falls, I was finally able to stay a bit in the air and land before I fell.

At first, I thought it was easy since the stage of staying in the air by gliding was easy, but the difficult part proved to be in balancing myself after each flap, which was hard to do using automated muscle function that you only had a basic understanding of…

However, I was quite lucky to get the hang of it easily due to the nature of this place!

Normally, even well-practiced birds wouldn't be able to fly when the wind flow is upsetting or changing too quickly, but the system space was all under control, the wind flow was not only at a minimum but it was practically static, which made it so it only took me 10 minutes to get used to small-time flying.

The wind flow being one of the main factors that could make flight harder being put at a static rate allowed me to easily learn the other aspects that included taking off, landing, and staying in the air without trouble, I could even take off from the ground with the involvement of wind elements!

Naturally, I still needed to learn the wind flow adaptation part, and considering the nature of this place that could change its rules as long as I asked Long, this place was even more perfect for learning that part of flying, but I still stopped myself from indulging in flight training for the moment. After all, I still had three more things on my to-do list that hadn't been ticked off...