South of the city of Irinias, a row of mountains towered above the forest and everything in a radius of tens of kilometers.
Each year, these mountains will provide countless resources to Irina's city and its surrounding towns and allies, which is why these mountains go by the name' Golden Trove' in the merchant's conversations.
Not because they provided gold, but only cause the resources they mined out of them will provide even way more gold than a gold mine will supply in ten years.
Currently, different sounds of a beast feasting on its prey could be heard from one of the many caves existing on the peak of the tallest mountain; you will even come to hear a few words here and there, making it look like a human was taking shelter in this cave and not a beast.
Tasty!
Outstanding!
If someone were to follow the sound waves of this voice and trail after it inside the cave, they would quickly notice a black dragon the size of an adult lion crazily feasting on a huge brown bear.
The trench the cave gave was filled with blood, while gore was scattered all around the floor; it was a sight that every man and woman without cultivation would try to avoid at all costs.
" No wonder animals looked so excited whenever they were on the hunt, except for the hunger they needed to satisfy; just the mere taste of their prey would make them hunt on a daily basis, even if they weren't in need of it and could live without for a few more days."
Sam had a crazed look on his snake platinum-like eyes as he eagerly finished tearing the last bone of the bear, casually sending it inside of his mouth like a chocolate bar, not even bothered by its size or solidity, casually chewing on it, finishing it in a matter of seconds.
After finishing his dinner, the hatchling dragon stood up and went to nap at the door's entrance, amazed by the stars that filled the deep night and the lights that Illuminated the city of Irinas.
" No wonder dragons were beings that once ruled the world; with just a casual move of my claw, a bear was sliced into three halves, and not even a bit of resistance was felt out of his body and bones; it was almost like I was cutting water and not a fully grown brown bear."
Sam chuckled as he closed his eyes, ready to take a long nap before he started trying out cultivation at dawn.
A few days ago, after he swiftly escaped from Irina's city and took shelter on top of a tall tree branch for a few minutes, he didn't neglect the dragon god's words and kept moving forward to the mountains far away from Irinas.
Thanks to the eagle illusion that allowed him to blend with nature and fly free of risk, he quickly reached the mountains, amazed by how easy everything was going.
In the novels he has read, every main character, from the moment they reincarnate to their new world, will face countless troubles, make tons of enemies, and suffer bit by bit as they quickly get stronger after every fight.
However, compared to those main characters, Sam felt like he was a king living in a world meant to be under his rule.
He faced no problems whatsoever in the past few days.
No one was chasing him as he expected; he even felt that the king didn't notice his disappearance, or maybe he did so but had no way of tracking him down.
No beast was a threat to him in this range of mountains, as he was living the life of the king of the jungle, which is why he flew to the peak of the mountain.
If he got hungry, he would go hunt some animals to satisfy his hunger.
If he got bored, he would go out to try the several spells he received from his eggshell.
To his surprise, his breath was rather simple to use and didn't require any training; it felt like the first time he took flight; it was like an extinct and posed no trouble for him whatsoever in executing any basic dragon spell.
Except for his breath, which was pitch black instead of the usual red color, he received two more spells.
One was an illusory blue hand made purely of mana that helped him greatly in transporting the animals he killed to his cave, while the other one was a form of energy that he covered his claws with before he attacked anyone.
He knew that it was some kind of enhancing spell that made his attacks stronger and increased the defense of his claws, but he couldn't help to think that it had way more uses than that, and he was gonna try them out tomorrow morning.
The rays of the sun shone on the world, illuminating every spot that wasn't hidden by any hard object, providing warmth and light to every living being.
The entrance of the cave where Sam slept every day was quite wide since this was basically the peak of a mountain; it even spanned tens of meters from each direction, providing him with enough space to move around and do his things.
Since he was already used to his new home, he leisurely moved to the center of the mountain peak and began concentrating on the mana in his surroundings.
To cultivate and grow stronger, climbing the first realm and reaching the second, he deduced that he needed to keep circulating the mana inside of his body and strengthen every bit of it slowly till it grew stronger, and then he would automatically climb to the second realm.
Obviously, this was just a theory, and he honestly didn't know if that was the case, but from the novels, he always read, everyone had that first step; hence he wanted to try it out first.
It made him quite excited to learn everything by himself, but also annoying at the same time.
But this wasn't the time to think about that, as he focused on the mana in his surroundings to form a shield around his body instead of just his claw since he didn't have enough mana inside of his body yet to experiment with such things.
Sensing the mana wasn't difficult for Sam as he already got used to that really fast, thanks to his eggshell information, but controlling the mana to move as he pleased was something a bit troublesome.
Gradually, small blue dots of light started to gather around his chest, slowly forming a transparent barrier. However, just as they were about to expand, they suddenly scattered.
" Damn it; this is harder than I thought."
Sam cursed as he casually covered his claws with the same shield he just tried to use on his chest.
" This is hopeless, I should first cultivate and get stronger, then I'll try out different things; plus, the dragon god warned me about focusing too much on magic. Thus, I should forget about this for now."
Despite his earlier statement, he spent the next few hours attempting to cover his chest. Although he managed to expand the shield's size by a few centimeters, he was still far from achieving full coverage for his chest, let alone his entire body, which had been his ultimate goal.
Suddenly, Sam's body was stifled into a sculpture when he heard a cold voice not far from him.
He slowly shifted his gaze from his claws to the source of the voice, only to see a fully armored man with a skinless face gazing at him coldly; his face and the aura he felt emitting out of him was so frightening that Sam uncontrollably took a few steps back, his wings slowly spreading as he was ready to take flight and run for his life.
" Finally, I found you; took so long."