What were such people doing up here?

He had yet to learn any human tongues, and as a result only heard gibberish from their words. But from their shivering, and holding a strange metal torch near their bodies, he assumed them freezing in the temperatures up here.

Both of them wore thick fur coats for warmth while tall leather boots with sharp studs allowed for great grip on snow and ice. But what caught his eye were the swords at their waist. Not because he wanted a sharp object to cut with, but because he sensed it!

Those swords absolutely contained mana! And no small amount either, he might die instantly from a single hit from such things. And remaining absolutely still, he only watched as they walked past.

Every single moment felt slow, the crunching of snow, a faint crackle from their metal torch, and every heavy exhaust from each breath. They continued past him, but he remained silent until…

One of them stopped, his face impossible to see from the current angle.

Instantly, his eyes locked with the hatchlings and there was nowhere to run nor hide. The man walked over and grabbed his neck, pulling up his soft body and looking at the strange hatchling.

His life flashed through his eyes. Is this where he died?

At this distance, he also clearly saw that both individuals carried a slightly magical net on their back, previously tough to make out just from his mana sensing alone. Almost in an instant he switched his hopes to just being captured.

He could escape from the latter, but death was a done deal.

But as he remained held in the air, the man turned around to his partner and said, “Look at this thing! I think it’s made of ice-cream, would Sir Augusticus want it?”, laughing a bit as well.

He only knew a few words from human languages, the basic things like ‘Hello’, ‘Goodbye’, and ‘Thank you’.

But he also knew one more. Dragon.

And the other man replied in a perfectly clear manner, "Stop screwing around with some mishap. We’re already a week late, that dragon’s already in its growth phase.”

With that he immediately began to fear for his life. But at the same time, the man dropped him and began walking away. Still laughing at the gently shaking hatchling, thinking that they roughed the thing up too much. They left him there, and once the light from their strange torch began to fade he really questioned if he escaped so easily.

Did they not realise he was a dragon? Sure, he looked like a lizard… but so does every other hatchling. How could it be so hard to realise the mana within him was extraordinary?

It made no sense to him.

He escaped so easily this time though, but more people would come, he knew that much. In which case he either had to run or hide, the former being near impossible with his power. But a few ideas stuck around, but first he had to return to his cave and make some preparations.

* * *

With a quick journey back, where he neither cast magic nor made a noise, the fact those two humans left finally settled in properly. He needed to learn more languages, but that had to wait until he felt safe enough to simply live.

Those two humans’ mana actually matched his, but with such weapons and dexterity he knew that crushing an ice-cream dragon was pitifully easy. The same could be said for any humans capable of coming up here to hunt.

Camouflage incantation? It only blended him with the background, and the colouration was only so accurate. Not to mention his mana remained visible to anyone who could sense it…

The mana fog incantation existed, which simply created a mana-filled fog to cloud the area. Normally it was used to obscure vision but the book did mention that it impaired mana sensing. But what sort of idiot wouldn’t immediately go look for the source of such a fog?

He needed to quickly grow and use True spells!

[You have now entered your growth stage. Moving towards Youngling dragon]

He almost burst out laughing at the sudden appearance of this prompt, but a question took its place, “That’s great timing… Why did it take so long to enter my growth stage?”

[Each evolution not only drains built up bloodline power, but your natural life force. This is not harmful for the time being, however, each evolutions drew away part of the life force dedicated to growth]

“One moment. Did you say for the time being? How much of my life would my 50th evolution take, for example?” Concern immediately appeared, his emotions already in flux from the prior event.

[Unknown. Due to a lack of data it may either be anywhere from a few hundred years to ~100,000 years]

He said the only fair response in his mind, “I’ll get more data.” Having then settled near immediately from that reality shock. Can dragons live for that long? Maybe if you’re the dragon god, but in his memories even the most ancient dragons are only 10,000 years of age while on their deathbeds.

“I’m in my growth phase at least. As long as I can survive the next year… I can do it for one year.” Finding the benefit of this whole mess in the end, he realised the most important thing remained clear. To grow strong as fast as possible and evolve more often.

In the meantime, he planned on avoiding those two humans and going after plants from now on. He wanted to complete their somewhat stronger bloodlines, and not eating meat fit this body’s reality.

A being of ice-cream drew a lot of attention, and those capable of identifying a dragon would find out soon enough. With that in mind, he immediately focused on learning another complex spell!

While seeming rather backwards, he knew that Flame bolt’s power lacked a bit in front of the stronger creatures. Not due to the flames lacking power but instead the spell’s direct use.

It instantly exploded on impact, which meant surface level damage in most cases. Those soldier ants proved his point effectively, so he picked the nine word incantation, Explosive bolt, an advanced form of Flame and Earth bolts.

This version of the spell utilised a shell of rock which contained the Flame bolt. Like this, it first penetrated a target before detonating, burning and further damaging them at the same time. Thin shards of rock are a lot sharper than given credit for.

Few dragons learnt the spell on account of difficulty and being unable to justify it when compared to physical strikes and simpler spells combined. However, at his degree of pronunciation it was easy to first memorise all nine words and begin stringing them together.

Already knowing more than half the spell helped as well!

By that evening he already triggered mana reactions, and formed the earth shell of the spell. All that remained was triggering the storage of a Flame bolt within, and then a new weapon entered his arsenal.

But the day long since turned to night, and he really just wanted to rest. While rather concerned about something taking him while asleep, those gently melted away as tiredness filled his mind by the minute.

He hadn’t felt such natural tiredness since his first few nights being born, but it was too hard to care…

That night, some roars and screeches echoed throughout the mountains but none roused him from sleep. After some hours the noises stopped, even then he slept in for a while, only waking once the sun sat firmly above the horizon but not yet overhead.

When awake, he indeed found it strange that such extreme tiredness came to him, and his first thought was the growth phase. Although none of the books for hatchlings mentioned tiredness being an early symptom, such things normally occur a few months into this phase.

“Nexus, is my growth phase causing some strange effect which made me so tired last night?”

[No such effect has been noticed]

In that case, his growth certainly wasn’t at fault. He had to wonder what caused it then, almost immediately his mind leapt to the two humans he saw, but seconds later the concern died down. What would they gain by letting him go and drugging him?

Perhaps they just casually wore some sort of perfume which induced sleep in creatures, but that felt like a stretch as well. He then thought of the plants he consumed, a few of them did have interesting names but he forgot to look deeper into their effects last night.

Fortunately, enough books on alchemic materials existed in his mind, and a few of the plants turned up quickly.

Ice-mind berries, which sharpened his mind temporarily, were used exactly as expected. Some low-level medicines to calm one’s mind and increase focus. Meanwhile Earth-frost carrots were either used to make delicious meals or their juice refined into a liquid catalyst for a few potions. The field root also had its own uses when ground into a powder, but he barely cared.

It was the coniferous eternity fern which interested him most. Its name came from the fact that the plant could live indefinitely, this proved to be a very big ‘could’ as herbivores ate it quite often.

However, a major effect of digesting it is one’s body expending excessive energy to digest the plant. Needless to say, it took a few hours for such effects to become noticeable.

At the very least he just knew to avoid eating the plants early in the day.

With a mystery solved, he returned to learning Explosive bolt, quickly lining up the last couple words and just needing a few more hours to finish learning this spell. It was hard to understate just how efficient his mouth control became these past few days.

But even more so, this recent evolution raised his control the most. Almost every part of his body felt nimble and usable, although this meant little as his whole body lacked any meaningful physical abilities.

Soon after noon he already completed the spell and watched as the sharp cone of stone formed in mid-air and rotated to point at his target, just a normal mound of snow opposite his cave. Mana left his body to flow into the stone, a sudden heat bursting out, almost threatening to burst this thin shell, but somehow holding together for the moment.

And finally, it fired! As fast as an Ice bolt, his eyes only barely kept track as it hit the snow a distance away, easily boring so deep within that he no longer saw the stone. Not that it mattered…

An eruption of fire and stone blew from the hole, flames rushed out with shards of sharply cut rock raining down all over. If just a single spell of such power hit him, he’d be lucky to have a relatively intact body.

There was no need to be optimistic. The attack power of this spell was insane, and he never planned on using it for food. Rather annoyingly, it took 30% of his mana to cast just once!

With his MP recently doubling from that evolution, it was an amazement that such a spell actually fell into incantation territory. But he did feel quite a bit safer with access to it, at least he had a way to kill some of the tougher things around here.

A rumble sounded out, and he looked back and forth between the cave and outside to the snowy field. It wouldn’t be too bad to eat some of the snow gibbon before leaving, right?

He was in his growth phase after all… And that is why he stored the meat…

Unable to convince himself otherwise, he roasted and enjoyed a large slab of the snow gibbon before setting off. Although he still felt hungry, such gluttony had some limits!