A Dragon Idol's Reincarnation Tale

Acquisition requirement fulfilled. [Stonecrafting Lv. 1] acquired

You have bought [Mental Corruption Resistance Lv. 1] [Mind Protection Lv. 1]. 800 SP spent. Your current SP is 4100

Multiple proficiency requirements fulfilled. [Silent Casting Lv. 7] [Stealth Lv. 10] [Presence Killer Lv. 10] [Prediction Lv. 10] [Handicraft Lv. 2] [Wood Working Lv. 3] gained

Skill requirement fulfilled. [Stealth Lv. 10] evolved into [Silence Lv. 1]

Skill requirement fulfilled. [Presence Killer Lv. 10] evolved into [Odorless Lv. 1]

Skill requirement fulfilled. [Prediction Lv. 10] evolved into [Foresight Lv. 1]

[Humanized (Major)] inflicted on [Young Spark Inferno Dragon, Hestia Atsuko]

Wild Swine

A beast with a voracious appetite with a very low ability to defend itself. A cautious creature that will run at the first sight of danger. Rank E

Urgh, I already miss those mushroom Skorr from Belzac forest…these boars are too small.

Sigh…Wind Blast.

Aiming a green magic circle in front of my finger at the boar, I shot out a concentrated ball of wind at its head, knocking it to the ground and stunning it. Casually walking towards it, I grabbed its head with both hands and with a snap, twisted and broke its neck.

Quick and painless…they are more like animals than combat-ready beasts. No need to be ruthless.

Three days have passed since we left the cave, our most recent dwelling. While I wanted to stay there a bit longer to fully dedicate my time to planning my first-ever idol concert, Saori and Tasianna made a good point that we couldn’t stay around one area for too long.

That is ‘cause after Saori showed how [Elemental Mana Weaving] worked, how she could produce colors depending on whose mana she borrowed, she wanted to fight against me. The reason was obvious: to prevent [Battle Frenzy] from appearing.

After thinking it over, I decided to not only buy the last two levels of [Humanization] but also the two mental protection skills [Mental Corruption Resistance] and [Mind Protection]. While I wasn’t sure if it really would help me, I bought then anyways purely to have peace of mind, that I was doing my best to control my primal urges.

I think I’ve made my point already, but I was gravely afraid of letting my inner beast out again. That bloody sight…it was an important reminder for me that I was dangerous if I couldn’t control my instincts and my ancestral blood.

I guess you could call the way I just dispatched this boar as a way for me to reassure myself…although, didn’t I just kill it without any guilt for ending life? Meh, better than getting an existential crisis every time I hunted for dinner. Now that would be a headache.

Anyway, as it was like last time, my fight against Saori and Tasianna was pretty intense, despite how much we all had to hold back to prevent causing a scene that would attract any unwanted spectators like those wyverns.

I won, of course, with the same rules as our previous spar but I could tell that Saori was getting better. Not technique-wise but her battle instincts. Maybe it was ‘cause she kept watching how I fought but her in-battle reactions and tactics have evolved, showing development.

Speaking of which, I still have to hunt a few more [Wild Swine] for dinner, so I might as well kill some time and review her status board.

Saori's Status Board

Due to Saori declining to rescue the lost lizardmen group with Tasianna and me, she has been staggering a bit behind us concerning experience gain. She managed to level up five times when we traveled with the lizardmen which is, well, normal?

The increased experience gain we get from our titles does make us level faster than normal so I guess only earning a few levels over two weeks should be above average…I think. I don't have a reference, ok?

Still, that didn’t mean that she neglected her training. Whether it was hunting, her daily training regimen, or our most recent spar, her skills are showing amazing growth.

The only thing that she still needed to figure out was how to fight me when I kept spamming spells. No matter how much she used [Shadow Dash] and [Dark Tendrils] to outmanoeuvre me, she couldn’t contest with me whether it was close-range, mid-range, or long-range.

“Hestia! We are here, how many have you caught?” speak of the devil, what woke me up from my thinking was Saori’s voice

Turning around, I responded while holding up the body of a boar with little to no effort, “I got seven.”

Taking out the other boar from my storage prompted Saori to do the same, "I got five, and Tasianna got two. We will not have to use any of our rations tonight. Good job.”

Showing a thumbs up to my friends, my attention was focused on Tasianna who looked quite troubled at something, “Tasianna!?”

Shit!

“I-I…I apologize, Lady Hestia!” Tasianna yelled out as she kneeled to the ground, diverting her head to not look at me. “But…I humbly ask you to change back to your dragonewt form…I apologize…please, Lady Hestia.”

Tasianna…sigh.

[Humanized (Moderate)] inflicted on [Young Spark Inferno Dragon, Hestia Atsuko]

After the mana cloud dispersed enough that my form became clear, Tasianna stood back up with an apologetic expression, “I am unforgivable. I will face the consequences on your commands, so please, Lady Hestia.”

"Enough, Tasianna!" I shouted with an exhausted tone. "As if I'll do anything to you…I should be the one to apologize. I was preoccupied with my thoughts so I didn’t notice you coming. I could have transformed back in time if I had.”

“No, no, you mustn’t apologize to me, Lady Hestia!” almost hysterical, Tasianna burst out in another shout, small beads of tears flowing down her elven face. “I’m just a mere servant! This is inexcusable for a maid like me! I should be serving you regardless of your circumstances and not feel…disgusted being in your presence! I’m an embarrassment! I shouldn’t feel these emotions towards my mistress, so please, I ask you t-”

Hearing a sharp clap, I flinched backward as I saw Saori having slapped Tasianna’s cheek, “Enough! It is far too early for us to shout at each other! Hestia, do not go anywhere, please. We will be back in a minute. Tasianna, we need to talk.”

As Saori pushed the still crying Tasianna deeper into the forest, I could only sigh in exasperation and take out a “chair” from my storage to sit on it, waiting for them to come back.

I say chair but it was just a log that had its side cut off to form a square. At the very least, I managed to make it smooth and comfortable to sit on using the knowledge that I gained from Casczur and the other artisan lizardmen.

That [Handicraft] that I got really has been useful. I even got [Stonecraft] after working with stone for a while. It’s nice to learn that some skills are easier to learn once you acquired a base one…

…Fuck.

“Arrgh, verdammte Scheiße!” I said as I scratched my head in frustration, irritating my scalp.

Humanization.

[Humanized (Major)] inflicted on [Young Spark Inferno Dragon, Hestia Atsuko]

No wings, no tails, no scales, no claws, no fangs, no horns…

Now that I was able to use [Humanization Lv. 10], I was finally able to completely transform back into a human while also being able to maintain my 15-year-old body with every transformation stage.

I was elated. Not only ‘cause I was 15 again but also ‘cause my status board showed the word [Human] as my Race. That was one of my goals crossed off. One of the first goals that I made during the first month of my second life.

And it was amazing. The feeling of having nothing weighing your head down and the lack of something swinging around your butt was nostalgic. Yes, my stats were reduced by 2/3rd ‘cause of [Humanized (Major)], which gimped my ability to fight but I didn't care. I felt normal, again. I felt like a normal teenage girl who could scratch her heads without worrying about cutting herself.

However,…in all my excitement, I never anticipated how intense Tasianna’s hatred for humans was. When we were still in the cave, as I was playing with my body, touching everything, I suddenly felt a cold chill emanating behind me, causing both my [Prediction] and [Danger Perception] to tingle. It even was enough for my [Prediction] to reach level ten and evolve into [Foresight].

It wasn’t a lot, but the little bit of hostile intent was enough for my reflexes to instantly cause my body to tense up and move into a fighting position. My parallel minds even had some spells ready to shoot out!

You should have seen how shocked I was to learn that it was Tasianna who showed all that hostility. When she finally realized what she was doing, she had the exact same reaction as just now.

She was calling for me to punish her for what she did. It was the most erratic behavior that I have ever seen from Tasianna, even more, impactful than that time when I told her to stop calling me "Princess Hestia" or when I told her to stop acting like a servant.

I knew what the humans did to her was terrible but was it naïve of me to think that her anger towards them was only limited to disgust? I mean, Tasianna at that moment was ready to attack! Me! Her friend!

While I was worrying about how abnormal I was and that I could hurt my friends one day, it didn’t come to my mind that we might have somebody that hated humans enough that she would shut her brain off at the mere sight of one.

For crying out loud, I technically wasn’t a human anymore! I am a dragon, aahhhh!

Who knew we had two people with mental problems…

…Which leaves us in a weird position. Frankly, I didn’t have to be in human form at all. I actually liked my dragonewt form better. My dragonewt form without wings was my favorite one to be in.

It was the right amount of feeling strong, due to my stats and claws, combined with the flexibility and cuteness of a humanoid’s body. There is also the fact that I can’t use any of my dragon abilities in human form.

I can’t create any sparks with my human nails and teeth, making it impossible to use any of [Spark Fire Dragon]’s abilities. My "Draconic" skills are also unusable as if they were sealed while I was human but they were still there in my status board.

If it wasn't obvious, being human fucking sucks. I’ve gotten used to scratching and biting while fighting up-close while using my tails for various attacks, which included choking, piercing, and strangling.

However, I still liked being a human. This was the problem that our party is currently having. Tasianna knew I was once a human and could easily accept that fact but seeing me as a human seemed to have awakened her trauma, causing her to feel unease around me and, therefore, guilt.

This isn’t something you can solve with a simple talk or snap of the finger…all I can do right now is to try to avoid showing my human form to her. Oh, speaking of the devil, humanization.

[Humanized (Moderate)] inflicted on [Young Spark Inferno Dragon, Hestia Atsuko]

Noticing two approaching signals with [Detection Sensor], I immediately changed back into a dragonewt. As my two companions came back into view, I could see that Tasianna’s eyes were quite puffy from tears while Saori looked mentally exhausted.

The first to speak was Tasianna, who bowed her torso in a 90 degrees angle, “Lady Hestia, I apologize so much for my inappropriate behavior. I-I have no excuses.”

For somebody with ice magic, you can be quite hot-headed, I thought to myself.

“It’s all good, Tasianna. I was careless at that moment, so you don’t need to worry about it. I know how you feel about humans,” I said with a wry smile.

"No! As your maid, I should be the one to-ouch!" Tasianna was about to go ballistic again with her apologies but Saori stopped her with a chop to the head.

“Tasianna, I believe we have spoken about this already,” Saori said as she kept a pleasant smile while exuding an aura of annoyance. “You are not making it better by continuously apologizing, in fact, it will have the opposite effect in this situation. We will let this rest for another time, alright?”

With a firm “yes”, Tasianna nodded to Saori scolding, ending this argument for today. However, as Saori said, we need to deal with this eventually.

“Do you have any ideas, yet, Saori?” I asked warily. “We already checked our surroundings and if Tasianna is correct then we should be in, well, in a human kingdom now.”

After we left the cave, our party scouted our surroundings as we needed to know where we should be going. As we stood up there at the peak of the trees, my eyes caught the sight of a massive mountain. If my memory was correct, Avitor Peaks was south of Belzac forest and considering how we couldn’t see the canyon anymore, we ha to assume that we were in a totally different area.

This meant only one thing and that was that we were finally outside the Belzac forest. However, that also made me remember a small detail that Tasianna once told us; that east of Belzac forest was a human kingdom.

Tasianna didn’t know the name of the place but it was irrefutable that we had to be in their lands. Of course, you could argue that we could be in another section of the forest, just like the rainforest and swamp, however, I have two facts that made me unable to believe that theory.

First, the lack of “monsters” in general. You’ve seen that [Wild Swine], yes? Its description was literally that of a wild boar on Earth, it even looked like one. In Belzac forest, I’ve seen creatures that I would call animals but they still had fantasy-looking ones like the [Mushroom Skorr] having mushrooms growing on its back.

Second, and probably the reason for the lack of “monsters”, was the amount of mana in the area. [Parshkey], the parsley look-a-like, and [Fulinoe], the plant with coffee-tasting tea leaves, are both plants that could only grow in soil with a high mana concentration. I haven’t found one yet in these past three days.

There is also my reduced mana regeneration. Mana regenerates in two ways, inside our bodies by turning food into mana and letting mana particles in the air into our bodies through the mana paths.

I’m still regenerating ridiculous amounts of mana every second, so it didn’t affect me that much but Saori’s natural regeneration was on the average side. Due to the lower mana concentration in the air, she can’t sustain any humanization forms above level 6. She recently got [Humanization Lv. 7] but she’s not able to stay in that form for an extended time, otherwise, she’ll use up all her mana.

I have no idea how there was so little amount of mana around, but I guess I can ask somebody around here when I get the chance. For now, our party only needed to know that we were in human territory and that we had to find a measure for Tasianna to stay calm. The last thing we needed was her to go berserk on the first human native that we meet.

“For now, I have suggested Tasianna to get used to your human form,” Saori responded. “It is unlikely that she would attack you even in that state and even in the worst case, you can defend yourself, yes?”

“…This is all so embarrassing and humiliating. I cannot believe I must do this,” Tasianna said with a pained face. “Lady Hestia, I swear that I will do my utmost to meet your expectations. As I have sworn to become stronger, I will also overcome my…displeasure.”

“Don’t push yourself too much, Tasianna. I can understand how traumas can affect you. I still haven’t gotten over my frog fear and I recently started to hate caves,” I said with worry. "Anyway, let us put that behind us for now. Let us continue traveling…oh, that's right! Did you two feel any difference when I made the experience share 50-50?"

Due to being at max level, any experience that I received would be wasted on myself. Being the leader of our party, I made it so that only Saori and Tasianna were able to receive the experience, even if I was the one who killed it.

I’ve said it already, but these Party Bracelets are amazing. Tasianna did mention that hers was the most recent version and there are some few interesting features that mine doesn’t have. I really wanted one now. I’ll buy our party new ones once we’re in a town that has them.

“Well, mine is made for fairies so I must still fight like one if I wish to gain the experience,” Tasianna said. “However, I believe everything is working correctly.”

I guess Tasianna’s bracelet is a bit too small for her elven body.

“We have not gained a level so we cannot tell you anything,” Saori reported.

After taking a break and eating lunch, we continued our travels in whatever direction we thought was correct. Saori explained that if we really were in a medieval setting, then we should look for a river or waterbed as villages or towns are usually close to them.

That made sense. Farm villages needed access to water for their crops while a town might need it for trade, or for a place to dump their wastes.

Regardless, that is currently our goal for now. Scouting above the trees was similar to how we did it in Belzac forest, as it was difficult to find a landmark within all these trees. I could jump into the sky with [Air Walk] but that would be idiotic, as the wyverns might find us.

I guess ‘cause this place was so close to the Belzac forest that some features are still the same despite the lower mana concentration.

As we continued onwards, we suddenly detected a few signals appearing. Agreeing that some more meat would go well with the mushrooms and fruits that we picked up, we hastily ran towards them.

Once there, we didn’t exactly find an animal nor a ferocious monster, nothing like that at all. Instead, what we found was not something that I expected to find this early, however, my attention wasn’t focused at it but at Tasianna.

“H-H-Huuuuuuuuuuuuummmmmmmmmaaaaaaaaaaaaan!”