Chapter 20: Trial version

800 years ago, there lived a beautiful dragon named Preldriar.

Among all dragons in history, she was considered the most beautiful, and countless suitors pursued her.

But Preldriar had already chosen someone in her heart.

As a child, she had once been injured by accident, and a male dragon had healed her wounds.

Preldriar fell in love with him from that moment on.

When she reunited with the dragon who had stolen her heart like fate itself, she confessed her feelings and, after much affection, they vowed to be together.

Preldriar and her beloved shared a deep love and eventually brought a new life into the world by laying an egg.

All she wanted was to live happily for the rest of her life with the ones she loved.

It was a simple dream—yet one difficult to achieve.

Unfortunately, that time was an age of war.

Many dragons were called to the battlefield.

Preldriar’s husband was no exception; for the survival of his clan, he too had to go to war.

But they never had a second reunion.

Preldriar lost her husband to the battlefield.

The unexpected farewell tore Preldriar’s heart apart with unbearable pain.

She needed to overcome her grief quickly, but she couldn’t.

The aftermath of her sorrow even affected her egg.

A mother dragon must regularly provide mana to her egg, but Preldriar failed to do so.

As a result, her child was born weak and frail, and before even a year had passed, the baby left the world.

Having lost both her husband and her child, Preldriar’s world collapsed.

Everything appeared dark, as if clouds had swallowed the sky, and she wept endlessly, as if the rain itself had taken over her soul.

‘If only I had stopped him from going to the battlefield. If only I had overcome my grief and cared more for our child.’

Consumed by regret, Preldriar fell into deep depression.

Naturally, she began to long for death.

So, she headed to the battlefield—where her husband had vanished.

Preldriar fought without fear of dying.

Her once-beautiful scales were now covered in wounds.

She lost her right eye.

Her wings were shredded beyond recognition.

But she didn’t care.

She had vowed to fight until the day her life came to an end.

***

Then one day, Preldriar reached a turning point.

She passed through a human village that had been completely destroyed by demons.

Everyone had been mercilessly slaughtered.

But amidst the devastation, she heard a fierce, desperate cry.

From beneath a collapsed building, a newborn baby was crying—having survived alone to the very end.

With trembling hands, Preldriar cradled the baby and felt the pulse of life.

The infant’s tiny body, smaller than her claw, was warm.

The faint breath that escaped the child’s lips reached Preldriar through her torn scales.

That sensation—of holding new life—reminded her of the time she once embraced an egg.

“Kyauuu—!”

In that moment, the baby reached out to Preldriar and smiled.

Despite her terrifying size and appearance, the human child adored her.

Preldriar, overwhelmed with a forgotten sense of love, smiled through her tears.

This time, she vowed, she wouldn’t lose what she had found.

Leaving the battlefield behind, Preldriar took the baby to her own secluded nest—where no one else was allowed.

She had decided to become the mother of this child, who, like her, had lost all family.

She named him Jerome and showered him with affection.

Though they didn’t share blood and belonged to different species, Preldriar raised Jerome as if he were her own son.

“Kyahhh! My precious Jerome! Let’s live happily together forever, okay?”

“Ah-woo!”

She sometimes got a little carried away, releasing all the motherly affection she had repressed for so long—but even so, Preldriar was a wonderful mom.

Jerome grew up surrounded by that love, naturally accepting it without question.

However, for Tao—who was seeing and feeling all of this from within Jerome’s body—it was a strange experience.

‘This is insane. It’s like 4D VR…’

Tao had never imagined that breaking the seal of a book would lead to a full-blown, real-life experience.

[The world moves according to the contents of the journal.]

***

After witnessing Preldriar’s past, I entered Jerome’s body and began to experience the world through his memories.

I could feel everything vividly—but the body did not move according to my will.

Jerome’s body followed his life’s path, while his emotions flowed entirely into me.

That’s how I realized the truth: Jerome’s first love was his adoptive mother, Preldriar.

‘Well… it makes sense. She was the only woman he ever knew.’

To make things even more complicated, young Jerome believed he was a dragon.

He had always believed the overwhelming size difference between him and his mother was simply because he was still a child.

‘Now I understand why Jerome was able to become the one and only Dragon Knight.’

He had become the adopted son of a dragon and lived alongside one for a long time, so of course he would know a lot about dragons.

What’s more, Jerome’s mother, Preldriar, had become the Dragon Lord after her contributions in the last war.

He grew up nourished by rare elixirs and the mana of a Lord Dragon, all given to him by his mother.

From an early age, his background had been on a completely different level than everyone else’s.

He was, so to speak, a classic “dragon-spoon” prodigy.

‘I guess I’m a little jealous.’

After all, he was raised while feeding on a dragon’s breath pouch—something no human could possess.

‘Wait… What kind of thought was that?’

It felt like my brain had gone a little rotten from experiencing the childhood of this dragon freak.

I couldn’t shake the feeling that if I went through the entire contents of the journal, my sense of self might not survive.

But there was no way for me to leave Jerome’s body on my own.

‘Graaah! Let me out of your body, Jerome!’

Even as I screamed, the reality experience continued, and Jerome’s time flowed on without pause.

Before I knew it, Jerome’s childhood had ended, and his adolescence was beginning.

***

[Bring me Dragon’s True Blood if you want to see more!]

Suddenly, Jerome’s voice rang out directly inside my head.

At the same time, a flash of light burst, and I instinctively squeezed my eyes shut.

“…Bunny? Brother! Get a hold of yourself!”

“Hot!”

When I opened my eyes again, Preldriar’s nest had vanished, and the familiar sight of the library came into view.

Right in front of me, Azuki was shaking my body with a worried expression on her face.

My body was now moving according to my own will, which meant I had returned to myself—no longer Jerome.

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I’m fine.”

Because I had been so deeply immersed in the unbelievable experience, my body still felt a little foreign.

But since it was my original body, I figured I’d adjust quickly with a bit of time.

Internally, I kept reminding myself that I wasn’t Jerome, making sure I didn’t get consumed by his identity.

‘Who knew there would be this kind of side effect…?’

I started regretting unlocking the seal.

Just reading the contents alone would’ve been enough to get useful information for dealing with Karen.

But the seal on the ancient book had already been broken, and that meant reading the book again would drag me back into Jerome’s past.

Because of my petty curiosity and greed, I had made an irreversible decision.

“Sigh!”

There goes a valuable book, completely wasted.

As I clicked my tongue in regret, I noticed Azuki—who had been fussing over me earlier—was now uncharacteristically silent.

Thinking something might be wrong, I looked at her.

She had both her hands clamped tightly over her mouth.

“What’s wrong? You look like you saw something you weren’t supposed to.”

“Brother… your body…!”

“My body? What about it?”

A strange sense of unease crept in, and I quickly started patting myself down.

But from what I could feel, there was nothing different about how I looked.

Even when I checked my reflection in the library window, I didn’t notice any major changes.

“See? Nothing’s different. Why are you acting so freaked out?”

“No… Something’s definitely changed.”

“What exactly?”

I tilted my head and examined my reflection from different angles, but I still couldn’t find anything unusual.

I looked at Azuki as if demanding an explanation.

Then she finally said something completely unexpected.

“Your mana… it’s been corrupted into dragon mana!”

“What?”

“I don’t know how it happened, but I’m sensing the same kind of mana from you that I felt from Lady Katraren.”

Azuki was telling the truth.

Because I had been living as Jerome until just moments ago, I hadn’t noticed it right away—

—but now I could feel it clearly: the mana inside my body had definitely changed.

If it used to be like clear water, now it felt like thick, golden honey.

As I tried to release a bit of mana to feel it more clearly—

“W-Wait, Brother! Don’t move!”

Sensing something off, Azuki quickly reached into the inner pocket of her school uniform.

She pulled out a small hand mirror and held it up to my face.

When I saw my reflection, I finally realized what the obvious change in my body was.

“What the hell?!”

My round pupils had become narrow and elongated—like slits.

They looked exactly like dragon eyes.

I checked all over my body for any other changes, but thankfully, that was the only one.

Only my eyes and the nature of my mana had changed.

Even then, the eyes returned to normal when I suppressed the mana.

In other words, whenever I used mana, parts of my body would start to resemble that of a dragon.

Which meant… I could probably use Dragon Tongue magic now—something only dragons were said to be capable of.

And the only thing that could have caused this transformation was undoubtedly Jerome’s journal.

“Whoa. That’s insane.”