“Kyu.”
Imugi looked at Christina and solemnly nodded his head once more.
Though he was still small and young, seeing the resolve in his eyes, Christina steeled her heart as well.
***A few days later, deep underground.
It was a place where even magic did not work, inaccessible by movement magic.
Christina had made her true body smaller and was flying down with Imugi.
*Thud.*
Along with a heavy sound, a bit of dust was swept away by the air pressure.
The golden dragon flapped her thin membranes as she looked back at the black hatchling descending.
The hatchling flapped its small wings and landed softly on the floor, let out a “Kyu” sound, and looked up at Christina.
Her body was gently enveloped in golden light, then changed into a humanoid form.
“This way.”
A place where a massive arch-shaped opening was carved.
Unlike other areas of the Lair, the original roughness of the structure was palpable.
‘It feels like ancient ruins.’
The peculiar unfamiliarity felt in this place allowed him to sense, indirectly, the passage of time here.
How long had they walked?
*Hum!*
Something with condensed, powerful energy was throbbing rhythmically, emitting magical power.
The vast space was so large its end could not be seen, making it difficult to gauge the distance with the eye.
A magic circle was drawn on the floor, and characters mixed with the divine and ancient tongues were engraved into the ground with magical power.
So powerful was it that even though they were still quite far away, Imugi’s entire body prickled.
His black scales stood on end with a clatter from tension.
Noticing this, Christina reached out and picked Imugi up.
“It’s alright, baby. Don’t be so tense.”
Entering the center of the magic circle, she quietly murmured words he could not understand.
She looked as though she were praying for something, yet also as if she were commanding it.
The Lair’s magical power began to resonate with the magic circle.
Christina placed Imugi in the center of the magic circle, took a deep breath, and began to recite an incantation.
“Under the name of Christina El Arcadia. I shall bequeath my life and memories unto this child.”
‘So it begins.’
Several strands of light, like ribbons, spread out from Christina’s body and began to wrap around Imugi.
Each beam of light was the knowledge, magic, culture, and abilities Christina possessed.
“Kku, kyuuut!”
‘Ugh!’
Imugi clutched his splitting, throbbing head with his two front paws and thrashed about.
It felt as if his brain was being toyed with, torn apart and crammed full—a sensation like being subjected to direct electrocution of the mind.
And yet, the sensation of vast knowledge being systematically constructed made his head clearer and clearer.
‘It’s coming! The languages of this world!’
Golden letters flowed across Imugi’s red eyes.
Christina’s reciting voice transformed into something like a song, riding the flow of mana and filling the hall.
Imugi writhed and convulsed under the ceaseless onslaught of knowledge and the sensation of his nerves fraying, with no room to breathe.
“Kuhuk. Ugh!”
‘It hurts, but just a little more. Just a little more and…!’
He bit down hard on his not-yet-fully-grown baby teeth, veins bulging on his forehead.
‘I’ll endure! If I can absorb all of these, the abilities and knowledge of this world will all be mine!’
He endured purely through the will to swallow everything that came riding on the light, to the point where his vision whited out.
“Kak!”
‘Come!’
Along with a deathly scream, the incantation and magical power that had filled the hall were all forced into Imugi’s body.
*Thud.*
The light vanished completely, and Christina staggered slightly.
Imugi slumped down right where he was.
“Baby!”
Christina steadied herself with effort and approached.
“Kkeuk.”
Though his body was originally black, having received too much mana made him feel as if he’d been struck by lightning.
“Are you alright? Baby, come to your senses.”
“Kyu… kekek.”
The young hatchling twitched his stubby fingers and opened his eyes with great effort.
[Christina.]
It was high-tier magic, ‘Telepathy’.
Is Chapter 13 a bit unusual?
At those groaning words, Christina felt a surge of emotion she couldn’t hide and broke into a bright smile.
“Thank goodness. You endured it so well.”
“Kkyuuung….”
‘I almost died. If I’d had hair, it probably would’ve all turned white.’
He had pushed himself to the point of cold sweat, but as time passed, he felt refreshed instead.
The satisfaction of finally having the knowledge and power of this world in his hands filled his chest.
He dragged his exhausted body and returned to his room with Christina.
And he looked at the meal laid out before him with gloomy eyes.
“It’s a special meal. Water boiled with medicinal herbs good for the body.”
“…….”
“If you eat it all, I’ll give you a sweet apple candy.”
Imugi briefly cast his gaze toward Christina.
But she simply offered the meal again with a beaming smile.
He had desperately asked to at least eat it with some proper food, but the answer came back that other food would interfere with the medicine’s effects.
‘Right. I’m not really a child. I even ate that poisonous mandrake. What’s this compared to that.’
He chewed and swallowed the herbs said to be good for recovery.
“Kkweek.”
[Bitter.]
“You still have to eat it.”
“Kkyuuu.”
‘Could this be… revenge for eating the mandrake?’
It tasted so foul that it wasn’t even a joke—he seriously thought it might be.
After barely swallowing even the medicinal roots, his body trembled.
‘Ugh. Seriously… it tastes awful.’
His face was full of displeasure as he shivered from the bitter taste, but Christina simply smiled as if he were cute.
Beside him, a white chick chirped and pecked at some cookie crumbs that had been set aside for it.
He had to eat a plate full of bitter grass, and seeing the bird eating sweet, tasty cookies made him feel indignant.
‘Tch.’
“Here, this is for dessert.”
Perhaps to comfort him, Christina gave him a sweet, rainbow-shining candy.
His tongue was already numb from the bitter taste, so he quickly took it and popped it into his mouth.
‘It’s like taffy. But it’s good.’
The sweet taste soothed the senses that had been tormented by the bitterness.
He chewed, puffing out one cheek, and savored the taste of the candy for a while.
Seeing that, Christina felt relieved.
‘I was worried that I might have misjudged this child… Thank goodness.’
Even she, who was versed in magic, could not relax, for it was magic she was performing for the first time, and the subject was the precious child of the Dark Race, unique in all the world.
Seeing the child relaxed and enjoying the candy, she could finally let out a sigh of relief.
“You really endured it well. You have no idea how amazing you are.”
“Kkyung.”
“You’re a hatchling barely over a month old, yet you perfectly accepted the inheritance. You’re not even fully awakened yet, and you’re already using Telepathy.”
“Kyuu.”
Telepathy—speaking directly into another’s mind.
Though this magic, also called ‘telepathy,’ was classified as quite high-tier, after receiving Christina’s knowledge, he could use it as if he had always known it.
Ironically, he couldn’t perform the ordinary “speech” that anyone could do, but it couldn’t be helped.
Before his oral structure was fully developed, it was impossible to fluently speak sentences even with linguistic knowledge.
In any case, communication had become more convenient, which was a relief.
‘I can slowly try out the other knowledge later.’
For now, the priority was to eat well, absorb power, and reach a state where he could digest what had been passed down through the inheritance.
‘But this inheritance… I couldn’t do it twice even if you killed me. I nearly went to the other side.’
The stamina and magical power expended to receive the power were so enormous that he wouldn’t have been able to endure without eating something.
“Oh, and we’ll have a guest soon. Don’t reveal your power too much to that child.”
“Kkyu?”
‘That child… Could it be another hatchling?’
He looked at Christina with questioning eyes, guessing the identity of the one referred to, and she gave him the necessary information.
“He is called Ferdikion, the successor to the elder of the Red Dragon clan. Though still a hatchling, he wielded powerful flame from a young age.”
‘Aha.’
At that moment, knowledge organized by the inheritance magic appeared before his eyes, written on a translucent window.
In short, it looked like this.
Name: Ferdikion
Species: Red Dragon Hatchling
Attribute: Fire
Age: 745 years old
Special notes: The sole successor to the Red Dragon elder. After one of the two heirs died, he has honed his qualifications to be a perfect elder. He is called the Cold Flame for restraining his innate emotions.
‘Are other inheritance magics like this too?’
The answer ‘no’ immediately came to mind.
Along with the explanation that, by the nature of conceptual magic, it had manifested in a way that suited Imugi.
‘It’s intuitive and easy to understand, which is nice.’
While reading the information, he endlessly swallowed the remaining phoenix egg and milk, as well as the medicinal herbs, precious elixirs, and food that Christina gave him.
‘It was hard, but thanks to that, I’ve gained knowledge and can now wield magical power freely.’
He smirked at the thought of enjoying to the fullest the rewards he had gained by enduring the pain.
“Kkyu.”
Imugi puffed out his cheeks as he finished the bread with elven herbal honey, then tapped his belly with his hand.
As he lightly waved his hand to create droplets of water in the air and gulped them down, Christina spoke.
“Well, then… It’s a bit early, but you should start thinking about your name.”
‘My name.’
A name. A word that refers to a single entity.
In some cases, it was inherited from parents, but in the world of dragons, it was a little different.
Peculiarly, dragons could decide their own names.
‘So it has to be decided by oneself because it’s like the activation word for incantation magic. Divine beasts were the same, but things are pretty strict here too.’
For dragons, promises or words made by ‘staking one’s name’ all carried the binding force of an ‘incantation.’
‘For using my name here, is the pronunciation too unusual?’
His original name was ‘I Muk.’
Somehow, using that name as it was felt too foreign.
‘It is a name I’ve grown somewhat attached to, though.’
It had been so long that he couldn’t remember who it was, but the words of the one who had given him the name came to mind.
“You look like the color of ink, like a scorched hue, so let your name be Muk. My surname is I, so I Muk! How about it?”
He vaguely recalled someone who had said that an Imugi would become a dragon after a thousand years and tower over the world, and that they too would achieve their dreams and ambitions like that, but it was so long ago that he couldn’t remember.
At the time, he had been nothing more than a pitch-black salamander.
As time passed, he grew into a divine beast, and from some point onward, began to be called Imugi.
‘I brushed it off at the time, but looking back, the guy who gave a divine beast’s name to a mere salamander was quite a funny fellow.’
The name had been given with the meaning that though he was small, he should become a being that rules the world rather than a worthless creature. It was funny, but he quite liked it.
Imugi seemed to ponder for a moment, then nodded.
[I’ll decide on one. Christina.]
“Alright. By the way, for Telepathy to come across this clearly… It’s rather amazing. Isn’t it difficult?”
[Well, it’s manageable. I almost couldn’t speak at all, so it’s a relief.]
It was a limitation of his oral structure, so this was only natural as long as he was in a hatchling’s form.
“It’s high-tier magic, so one would expect it to be difficult, but your adaptation is astonishingly fast.”
“Kkuk.”
Nodding to express his thanks, Imugi looked at the white baby chick.
‘I should give this guy a name soon too.’
Just then, Christina raised her head as if sensing something and spoke.
“They’ve arrived at just the right time.”
What Christina, the master of the Lair, had sensed was movement magic.
Already knowing who was coming, she smiled faintly and moved.
“I must go greet Ferdikion. He’s faster than I thought.”
“Kkyuuu.”
When Imugi stood up, the white baby chick quickly climbed onto his head.
“Are you two coming with me?”