Chapter 3

I paced back and forth in front of the tree I had been sheltering in, puzzling over what had happened earlier today. Indeed, I was so deep in thought that I hadn’t even taken a bite out of the meat I had risked so much to obtain.

“It just didn’t make sense what happened. With my understanding of humans, the situation ought to have ended the worst way possible…and yet…“

I thought that I had succeeded, but just as I was about to bolt for the woods, I saw the human child, crouching not six feet away from me, holding a small blade. Because he wasn’t strong enough to be considered a threat didn’t register the child's presence. Even if he’d managed to stab me I doubted that his little knife could get through my scales.

As for the child itself, it wasn’t making any movements and the hand holding the knife was limp. Indeed, it looked quite shocked with its mouth agape and eyes wide. This was likely the first time it had ever seen a dragon.

I opened my mouth and crouched, preparing to pounce on the human. Though I couldn’t sense any hostility, and it was too weak to hurt me, I couldn’t allow it to live and give away my position. After all, it was a human and all a human could do was bring me calamity.

The child, now sobered up to the situation, dropped its knife and held its palms up, showing me that it meant no harm. It was unfortunate for the human that I couldn’t reciprocate the sentiment.

But just as I was about to jump and rip its throat out, the largest human shouted in our direction, no doubt inquiring after the child. Though scared the child looked at me, eyes pleading for me not to attack.

I was faced with a dilemma now. If I waited here indecisively for too long the adult humans would come wondering what was going on. If I killed the child, the humans would come wandering and organize a group of humans to kill the animal that took their child, and if I let the human go he would tell the adults that he saw me, resulting in the same situation as the previous scenario.

I was on the verge of just deciding to just run when the child took the initiative and stood up, notifying his parents to his location. He shouted something at them and then pointed in the direction farthest from the golden grass.

The adult humans shouted something at him and ran in the direction he pointed, away from here.

I was the one who was shocked and staring now, but the human simply pointed me away from the golden grass and made a shooing motion with its hands. It didn’t seem to have any intention of ratting me out which I found…suspect. Perhaps this human was broken?

Regardless, I didn’t need a human telling me when and how to escape the area, so I simply turned and ran back to my woods. Which leads me to now, pacing back and forth for the past several hours, pondering that humans actions. Why would he let me get away? What could he possibly have to gain from it?

Perhaps it was just too small to hunt me and wanted to save me for when it got bigger? It made sense since that was what I was doing too…but now was not the time to wonder. I had been found out- that much was clear. I would have to move on immediately.

“Tonight, I feast on my prize, and tomorrow I run away from this place.“ I thought, tucking in to the meat.

That was what I thought would happen.

But when I woke up in the morning and descended from the tree to stretch my legs I saw, standing a few feet away, the human child again. He was half hidden behind a tree, but I would have had to have been a moron not to spot him. In his arms he carried a basket of…something sweet smelling.

Obviously I was suspicious, but mostly I was incredulous. Did this human have a death wish? He was far away from home, far enough away that If I killed him it would take the humans days to find the body.

I was about to chase him away when the human stepped out from behind his tree. He walked a few steps toward me, making sure to move slowly and keep his palms visible.

I snarled at him, and bared my fangs and claws, but he quickly stopped and placed the basket slowly on the ground before retreating again behind his tree. He appeared to be offering me its contents as a gift.

Suspicious, I searched the contents of the basket and found some odd food items. There were several fruits that I had never seen before, including a bright red one that smelled delicious and a sweet smelling, brown, mushy thing.

Wary of poisoning I stepped back again and growled, but the human pulled another of the red fruits from his pants and took a bite out of it, saying something in the human tongue that I didn’t understand. His offer seemed genuine, and I didn’t fancy hunting rodents this early in the morning so, tentatively, I ate one of the red fruits.

It was delicious. I had never had something so sweet yet so flavorful at the same time! Its deliciousness rivaled even that of the pink fatty’s meat, but it’s flavor was completely different. Yet another treat the humans had cultivated, I had to have more!

I tore into the basket after that, devouring all of the fruit the human had brought me until nothing was left in the basket but the brown mush. My hunger not abated, I decided to try a lick of the mush and to my delight it surpassed both the fatty and the fruit in flavor. It was maddeningly tasty- sweet, soft yet crunchy and so so goooood!

I couldn’t contain my giddiness, after years of eating rodents and wolves I had finally discovered new wonders I could fill my belly with. It would be worth letting a few humans live if it meant treats like this could keep on existing. With that in mind I turned toward the boy, wanting to see if I could get any more food out of him, but when I saw him he was holding another fruit out, wiggling it as if to tempt me to come closer.

The sweet tastes from before suddenly soured the human sat there attempting to bait me like I was some wild animal. I wanted to insult him, to make him and his kind realize how much I hated the way they treated me.

Requirements met. New Skill Obtained

?!…A new skill? Already?

A skill granted to those who have met the required conditions.

-High cognitive and critical thinking abilities

-Intelligence stat is level is 50+

-Strong desire to communicate with others

This skill gives the user the power to communicate thoughts with other intelligent life forms. Increasing skill level increases range of thought communication and translates languages from unknown dialects.

Thought Communication

-Locked-

-Locked-

-Locked-

-Locked-

…I suspected that this is a fairly common skill, but beggars can’t be choosers and now I had a way to vent my rage at the human.

“Human! How dare you treat me like some common mongrel! I am a dragon, not some pathetic beast to come at your beck and call!” I mentally shouted.

The boy started, having heard a voice come from nowhere. He looked around, speaking the humans gobbledygook language, but couldn’t find the source of the shouting voice.

“Harumph! Over here, foolish human!” While I spoke, I punctuated my sentence with a growl.

The human's head snapped in my direction. He raised a finger and pointed at me.

“That’s right.” I said, nodding my head up and down, slowly so the human could understand it.

He looked in wonder at me, as if he hadn’t expected me to be able to speak. Like before he tried communicating with me using the human tongue, but I didn’t catch a word of it. After a while he stopped trying to talk with me and took on a pensive look. He seemed to be trying to think of a way to overcome this language barrier.

As if I cared about that. I just wanted him gone so he couldn’t tell anyone which direction I ran off in. I considered scaring him away but…perhaps this was a chance I could take advantage of. While the idea of it disgusted me there was definitely utility in learning the human language. Knowing what they were saying would make gathering information about them much easier, and if this child was naive enough to trust me, then surely I could trick him into teaching me their language.

I would have to postpone my exit for a while, but it’d be worth it ten times over for the glut of information I could get. And all I had to do was tolerate the humans presence for as long as it took for me to learn how the humans speak.

I was definitely weighing my options. But in the end…

I picked up a stick that was lying on the ground in my mouth and carried it over to the child, grabbing his attention. With a single long foreclaw I pointed at the stick and said “Stick”

I repeated myself until he pointed at the stick himself and said “Steeyick”

He mangled my language a bit, but I understood him. Next I pointed at him and then at the stick, trying to get him to tell me his word for it.

After a moment his lips moved and formed his word for stick, which I repeated until I memorized it. Then I brought him a rock and repeated the exercise. Then a leaf. Then a blade of grass. Then more and more objects until I could name everything in the forest using the human tongue.

Finally, when the sun had risen to its highest point in the sky the boy stood up. He pointed back to his dwelling and I understood it was time for him to go. But before he did, he had one last thing he wanted to teach me.

He pointed at himself this time and said “Rickard”. Then turned around and ran back toward his home.

Harumph. As if his name mattered to me, all I cared about was taking the information I desired from him and leaving. Today's first lesson had been a fruitful one, and while my distaste for the humans presence was strong it was easily defeated by my desire for knowledge.

We continued our lessons for several weeks. The boy brought delicious food to me in the morning, then we would exchange words with one another. It quickly became apparent that I picked up on his language far quicker than he was picking up on mine. Not that it was entirely easy for me either.

The hardest part of our communications was bridging the random words together into a sentence. The human was still young and he had a hard time communicating concepts like “the”, “and”, and “if” from his language, so a lot of the time I had to try and pick up on the repeating words he spoke when we weren’t learning.

After our lessons the human would oftentimes stay in the wood for a while, simply talking to me. Perhaps it was my imagination, but he seemed lonely. The place he lived at was called “farm” and apparently “farm” was pretty far away from a place called “town” where many humans lived together.

If I was being honest with myself, I would say I pitied the boy. I knew well what it was like to be alone, away from your own kind.

Regardless, with just that the boy had given me a lot of useful information about his kind, but I felt like I could get so much more if I could just grasp the intricacies of their language. It looked like it was going to be slow going for a while. Until the tenth day after we started.

After about an hour of us speaking simple sentences with each other in the human tongue (he had given up learning my language and was content just teaching me his) I suddenly got a notification from the voice of the world.

Skill Has leveled up to

Skill ability “Language Comprehension” unlocked.

Language comprehension? What on earth did that mean?

I must have been glassy eyed because the human asked “Hey, are you ok? You want to take a break or something?”

“I’m fine” I replied “I just got a notification that my telepathy skill leveled up”

The boy's eyes widened in surprise at my response. I didn’t realize why for a moment, but then I realized that I had replied to him in fluent…humanish? When before I could only carry the most basic conversations with him.

“You…why can you suddenly speak Estoran so well?” the boy asked, confused.

“I…like I said, my telepathy skill just leveled up. I gained an ability with it called Language Comprehension. It must have made it easier for me to understand…Estoran, was it?”

The human nodded his head. His confusion had changed to awe again when I told him about my skill.

“I can’t believe you have a skill though! The only other people I know with skills are my dad and my big brother, and he went away to become a soldier. I didn’t even know lizards could learn skills though…”

Though his tone was still light I sensed some bitterness when the human spoke about his brother. I myself was intrigued to learn that humans could use skills too. I never thought they couldn’t but this confirmed it.

“What types of skills could he use?”

“My brother? He learned a skill called after the town was attacked by a pack of wolves. We were there at the time and big brother jumped in to help the townsfolk ward them off. Things were going pretty well, but then a huge wolf showed up and everyone fighting suddenly stopped moving.” The boy stopped and frowned, as he remembered something unpleasant. But then he perked up and smiled.

“It got scary after that, but just when it looked like the wolves would eat us all big bro suddenly started glowing white! Everyone fighting started glowing too, and that’s not all! Whatever big bro was doing, it made everyone way stronger than they normally were. After that the fight was too easy for our side, and once all of the normal wolves were dead the big one ran away. My bro is a hero!” the boy finished proudly, puffing out his chest.

From the sound of it is a skill that immunizes the user to “debuffs”, just like But unlike Avenger, Protector of the Weak gives strength to everybody. I would have to be wary of that human, for now.

“So…um, do you have any other skills?” The boy asked, eyes lighting up. I saw no reason to tell him about Avenger…but perhaps I could reward the boy for his information.

“I have two others, which increases my attack power, and which makes hunting easier and shows me how strong my enemies are.”

“Wow! Three whole skills? My dad only has two and they’re both for farming. And I don’t even know a single skill…”

“Why do you want skills so badly? Do you desire power that much?”

But of course, I was not one to talk.

“Not really I just want…I just wish I could be like my brother. Everybody always praises him, and calls him an amazing hero. No one hardly even notices me, even my parents probably wouldn’t notice if I were gone for a few days since dad's skills let him do the farm work on his own.”

The boy's tone again turned sour as he finished, and his face fell into a frown. This must have been something he thought about a lot, as I’d never seen the boy so upset. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t feel some pity for him again, forced to live in the shadow of his sibling.

Gah, what was wrong with me? Feeling pity for a human? Yet as I sat there I felt a strange desire to comfort him. My hatred for humanity hadn’t abated any, it’s just that on a personal level I had come to understand his struggles and sympathize.

“Do you know how he learned that skill? Perhaps you could learn it as well? Or you could even learn other skills if you wanted.”

“Nuh uh, there’s no way anybody would ever teach a farmer's boy like me how to learn a skill. That’s the sort of information that would cost thousands of gold. Father only got his skills after his master passed away and left him the info on how to get them.”

“…well…would you like to know how to learn ?”

The boy jumped up with a beam on his face and shouted “Really? You’d really do that for me?”

“Harumph, don’t read into it or anything! I’m just paying you back for helping me learn the skill in the first place!”

But the boy didn’t seem to hear my protests, as he repeatedly thanked me for my graciousness. He was positively giddy as he sat down and I explained to him the requirements for the ability.

“That’s it?” he asked

“That’s it”

“That’s not too hard then but man, fifty intelligence, you’re stats must be pretty high, huh Mr. Lizard.”

“Harumph!” I said haughtily, though secretly I enjoyed being praised. “Well what is your intelligence ”Stat“ then?”

“I dunno. You’d need to ask someone with the skill, and they’ll usually charge ya for it, but it’s definitely not at fifty. Oh! I know, maybe big bro has learned that skill. I’ll ask him next time he comes to visit.”

Our conversation about skills ended there, but we continued talking farther into the evening than usual. He seemed overjoyed to have someone to talk to and I…I would be lying if I said I didn’t feel the same way. Though I couldn’t overlook the irony that my first real conversation was with a human of all things.

Only when the sun was two thirds of the way through the sky did the boy finally get up and leave.

“See ya Mr. Liz…come to think of it, you never told me your name…?”

“I uh, I don’t actually have a name…”

“What! But everybody needs a name! I can’t just call you Mr. Lizard forever, ya know? Hmm…let’s see, from now on I’ll call you…Illumen!”

Illumen in Estoran meant “One Of Light”, probably chosen because of my white scales.

“Oi! Don’t just go around naming others without their permission!” I said grumpily, but the boy had already taken off running towards his house.

Well…he could have picked a worse name. Might as well use it for now until I could come up with something a bit more suitable.

New name accepted. Future growth adjusted. Calibrating…

I suddenly felt a shiver race through my entire body, like a wave of ice from head to toe. It vanished instantaneously, but it’s effect left me feeling slightly dazed. I looked around, searching for an attacker, but neither my eyes nor my Predation picked up on any hostile presence. It wasn’t the boy either, as he was still visible running toward his house.

What had that been, if not an attack? Avenger would have protected me from a skill, and it had happened as soon as I accepted the name the boy had given me…could that have been the cause?

To verify I checked the description of my skill. I seemed to remember my name being ‘Unnamed Young Dragon’ in the skills description. Sure enough, when I looked at the bottom of the skill list I saw it.

All attempts to burn, poison, freeze, enervate, shock, or otherwise debuff (Young Dragon, Illumen) are doomed to fail.

It would appear that the voice had accepted the childs’ name as my new name. As if to echo my thoughts, the voice spoke again.

Calibrations finished. Growth adjusted for Named Dragon (Illumen). Future skills learned may be influenced by given name or (unknown) family name.

??? I had no idea what was going on. It seemed that the child had altered me without knowing it, but I couldn’t tell how. At the very least, my body felt fine and my skills were all working, so I decided not to worry too much about it and carried on with my day.

I had a decision to make, now that I could speak Estoran. I could either leave now and search for a place to call home…or stay and continue spending time with the boy. The obvious choice was to leave.

After all, I had already gotten information out of him about skills, food and his entire language. Not to mention every moment I stayed here was another chance for me to get caught-especially with him running back and forth here every day. And now that I knew his language I could get all the information I wanted out of any human I found In all, there was just no good reason to stay!………so why did I want to?

I knew the answer but didn’t want to admit it…I had grown fond of Rickurd. It left a bad taste in my mouth, but that human wasn’t like all the others had been. Perhaps it was because we were both young, but I also empathized with his desire to grow up and become strong.

From him I’ve learned an important lesson. Humans are capable of the worst cruelty, torture and murder but they were also able to be kind, and friendly. I’d never forget my grudge, and I’d never forgive the armored humans who stole my home, but maybe I could learn to tolerate the ones like him.

Maybe we could even be friends one day.