A Dragon Idol’s Reincarnation Tale

Man, I slept like a baby…well, I kinda was one. It surprised me every time, but I really had gotten used to sleeping on the cold ground. Weren't it for my size, I would look like an ancient dragon sleeping in her lair. Ha!

I should stand up and...ow! Urgh, my body feels like… it's so stiff!

Parallel mind #3 informed me that I'd been soundly sleeping for a very, very long time now. She couldn't guess how many days, but that was understandable as we are inside a cave with no access to the sun.

Frankly, I thought this felt familiar to the morning I woke up after getting chased by the garms and falling into a hole. If I remembered correctly, I was affected by [Exhaustion (Major)] back then. Oof, I really was bad at managing my Stamina…

My whole body, from tail to my wings to my neck, was completely inflexible and ached a lot even at the slightest movement. I couldn't begin this day like this!

With my bones cracking up like a storm, killing off the silence of the cave, I felt so much better after stretching that much. I felt free. No longer stiff like a rock.

With my body renewed, I decided to collect the orc corpses. Call it sentimentality, but I wasn’t doing it to eat them but to give them a proper burial. No way was I eating them when I had fish in my storage. They acted way too much like humans, making the thought of eating them awkward.

Two of the orcs were burned to death while the tracker was just a bit further away, slightly charred but still relatively recognizable. The two other orcs were in the maze-like hallways. I could smell them, kinda, due to the blood, but with how far away they were, I decided to take it slow. My parallel minds were generous enough to appraise everything while I was stretching, and were ready to brief me with their findings.

Ha, I felt like a boss having her workers do the tedious job for her. It did save me the time to sort it all out myself though.

Now, if you guys are ready, then I'm ready for the information dump!

‘Oh, is that what you thought of us? Your secretaries? Wow, so nice of you.’

That was parallel mind #2. She seemed to have some “tsun” inside her, considering she was rather curt with how she talked to everybody, despite being the most cautious of us all. It would be endearing… were it not for the fact that she was me. I felt a bit weird to admit I had something like that inside me, but, whatever.

I’ll just apologize a bit and ignore her for now.

Hehe, sorry? Anyways, Manager Mind, would you please?

‘You actually called me that?! Oh my gosh…’

Parallel mind #1, who I would now call Manager Mind, seems quite displeased about it. I mean, was it that weird though? At the end of the day, all these parallel minds were parts of me, specifically, certain parts of my emotions to better differentiate ourselves. It made it less obvious I was talking with myself, and instead, made me feel they were separate individuals… kinda.

‘Now, now, everybody. Let’s just stop with the joking, ‘kay? There is so much we gotta work through that we just don’t have the time for the procrastination! Well, we kinda do, but you know what I mean.’

And that was parallel mind #3, the last of my more developed parallel minds when it came to speaking. I gained a fourth during the orc battle, but from the looks of it, she was trying to find an emotion to cosplay at. But, honestly, three dominant people speaking inside my head was enough, anyways.

‘Oi, I can hear you, Original Mind!’

Yeah, sorry about that, but too many voices. I’m already weirded out by this.

With peace regained inside my mind, we all began sorting through the information the parallel minds gathered. To start, Manager Mind began relaying [Identify Lv. 10]’s new description of [Primal Magics] to me.

Ah, so many skills.

This probably was the first skill where it was made up from multiple lesser ones. I quickly assumed all those merged skills were applying simultaneously with the mother skill, which my parallel minds confirmed pretty quickly. In fact, they got pretty angry I wasn't reacting even more.

‘Jeez, not really the reaction I envisioned. Whatever. I guess you can’t figure it out if you don’t experience it yourself’ #2 suddenly commented about it.

Hmm? What do you mean by that? I asked, prompting Manager Mind to explain.

‘Alright, let me explain it. You know what [Mana Stress] is, right?’

Yep. It happened after using up my mana during the garm chase. I also got a big headache whenever I tried using a spell.

‘[Mana Stress] is essentially that. Remember when you appraised the Mana stat in our profile and how it mentioned we couldn’t recover mana once it fell down to zero. Exactly, that is the status ailment’s name. During that garm chase, I tried using spells to help you, where I noticed once your Mana drops to zero, you actually suck in the mana from the air. It stresses your body out, causing that headache.’

#3 then began wriggling a mental towel to demonstrate it visually. Water at first was drained like a waterfall, before it only dripped like a small rain until there was no more water. She kept twisting the now dry towel desperately, shouting “I need it! I need it!” as #2 poured small amounts of water into the towel. Although #3 could siphon off some more water from it, it left her completely exhausted.

‘This is what we think is happening when you have [Mana Stress]. There are also four stages you need to be mindful of.’

As my eyes widened in surprise, having not thought of appraising the (Minor) and (Moderate) I’ve seen before, Manager Mind continued, ‘I used [Identify] on Mana to open its description to then use it on [Mana Stress]. If we ever reach the Major stage, our mind would have collapsed.’

A collapse of the mind?! Do you mean I would have lost my sanity?

‘Not your real “mind”, your arcane mind would collapse. You will temporarily lose your ability to use mana until you recover fully, but that depends on the circumstances. If you were crazy enough to let it reach Critical, then, oh boy, you probably could have killed us, girl.’

‘…’ I was baffled. Without saying another word, I quickly made a mental note to take care of my mana consumption no matter what. A mage had to learn how to do it, after all, especially since my life depended on it!

Noticing this, #3 quickly attempted to calm me down with another explanation, ‘Wait, wait! Calm down. Don’t worry. It sounded worse than it should have been. We’re relatively safe, since we have skills like [Arcane Mind] and [Arcane Corruption Resistance].’

‘Yeah, so stop crying about it,’ #2 nodded. ‘Aside from allowing us the ability to learn spells, [Arcane Mind] also reduces the effects of all mana-related problems. It slows down the deterioration, you could say.’

‘Especially [Arcane Corruption Resistance]. Since that is our main protection against [Arcane Fever],’ Manager Mind added.

Arcane corruption was essentially the feedback of using mana, similar to how breathing oxygen would produce carbon dioxide. But unlike the respiratory cycle, arcane corruption stayed within our body and mind, slowly dissipating through our body over time. Sadly, they couldn’t learn more through the descriptions on it.

However, we did learn more about [Arcane Fever]. The parallel minds felt it during the orc fight with how we overused our spells. With [Arcane Corruption Resistance Lv. 10], we were highly resistant against it, but if we were to be afflicted by it, our Health would slowly fall, similar to bleeding out or being poisoned. This would only happen if we went over our body’s capacity to hold the corruption, so the larger we became, the less we had to worry about it.

Dragon body grow big and strong, please.

To summarize, [Arcane Corruption Resistance] lowered [Arcane Fever] problems whilst [Arcane Mind] reduced [Mana Fever]’s effect on me. The former could be felt, so my parallel minds could tell me when I was at my limits, while I just had to make sure my Mana never reached zero with the latter.

Easier said than done, really.

Praise being a dragon! Dragons are amazing!

I celebrated the fact I had [Primal Magics] as my racial skill. Looking through all this information, I gotta admit I had vastly underestimated how hard it was to use magic with all these things to remember. I’ve been able to do all the crazy stunts in my magical life only ‘cause of this skill I got at my birth. I couldn’t imagine how difficult it must be to become a mage as a normal person.

‘Yep. [Mana Control] is needed to control mana in your body and to move it to your mind. It’s not needed for abilities but without it, we wouldn’t be able to use spells.’ Manager Mind wrote a checklist of what skills were needed to become a magician.

‘[Arcane Mind] is needed to store the spells we learn from skills and protect us from the after effects. Without it, we couldn't have learned a single spell and [Mana Stress] or [Arcane Fever] would have killed us eventually.’

#2 also mentioned our available spell slots were running out and that we should buy a specific skill to solve that. But that could wait for later.

‘[Arcane Corruption Resistance] is needed for us to use multiple spells and our dragon abilities. Without it, [Arcane Fever] would come more frequently,’ #3 answered before handing me the responsibility for the last bullet point.

Finally, [Chant Revocation]’s existence meant that, generally, spells needed to be chanted for them to work. I don’t think I ever had to chant before, but it wasn’t like I had a manual for that. Hold on, doesn’t this mean saying the name of the spell was unnecessary, too?

A revelation. The tradition of calling out your super powerful and amazing spells and attacks weren’t valid in this world. Oh no, did that mean, whenever I shouted these names out like this, I was making myself look like an idiot?

Life has no meaning anymore… Well, at least, that meant I could hide my attacks and spells. And, besides, calling the stuff inside my head isn’t really a problem. It helped me envision it better, and from the looks of it, being able to imagine my spell better made it easier to materialize the spells.

In any case, this information would help me grow as a mage. If I had a master, this would probably be the first thing I learned. Regardless, better late than never.

With that magical information done, my parallel minds drew my attention over to my titles. Oooh, titles! Probably the more interesting part about my beginning skills and boons. I wondered how much more details were unlocked with my [Identify Lv. 10].

Let’s find out!