Reincarnated: A Dragon's Tale

Extra 01: Secrets that Will Never Be Known 01

 Dragons. The most powerful living creatures in the world, the end of the line for humanity if only they wished for it, and the only existence that whole kingdoms, empires, and tribes alike avoid at all costs.

 They are said to be so superior to any other species that if only half of them decided to attack the rest of sapiens beings, all of them would meet an abrupt end. However, in reality, it would take only one or two of the eldest of these beings to drive the rest of intelligent life to extinction.

 Luckily for the rest of sapiens, the world was wise and, in exchange for such great power, made dragons lacking in many aspects compared to other species.

 First of all, at least a century is needed for most dragon races to develop real intelligence, making young dragons nothing but wild beasts—not so different from savage wolves. Besides, although dragons can live practically for eternity in the right circumstances, their birthrate is the lowest in the world, surpassing even the elves.

 But that wasn't all, only a few newborn dragons tasted the privilege of outliving their childhood and youngster days into adulthood. After all, most dragon races were territorial and overly aggressive against their own, not hesitating to take down even hatchlings sometimes. In other words, dragons lack that sense of belonging and community mentality all other intelligent beings possess.

 This is a blessing to other rational species since it makes it seemingly impossible for dragons to cooperate. Nonetheless, individual dragons are a menace by themselves. Young dragons are aggressive and dangerous, but they can be brought down with numbers at the cost of several lives, and although adult dragons are impossible to defeat, they rarely abandon their territories. This leaves one last concern: Ancient Dragons.

 There are different dragon races and—although humans deem some of these races superior to others—the truth is that the power of an individual dragon is more dependent on its age than on its race. The older a dragon the more experienced, smarter, wiser, and powerful it becomes.

 This led to the existence of a selected few who have lived for at least a thousand years, becoming something akin to deities. They are known as Ancient Dragons. These beings outlived most empires, nations, and kingdoms; dragons so ancient, so big, and so powerful that no sane mortal would dare face them.

 The only reason such powerful ancient beings didn't try to conquer the world yet was because most of them were wise peaceful dragons, while the minority was vain enough to be fine with just being worshipped. Nevertheless, nothing stopped the possibility of a great evil dragon reaching the status of an ancient one in the future.

 However powerful they were, the truth remained that it took these Ancient Dragons at least one thousand years to achieve their status. But what would happen if a hatchling were to be born with intelligence on par with those of adult dragons? An intelligence that would usually take a normal dragon hundreds of years to achieve? Such an anomaly did come to be.

 This exception was born into Fire Dragons—originally named like that for their red scales. A couple from this race flew away from their original area, the Inferno Canyon, and settled in a forest near Estrella Town, in the kingdom of Sylvaria.

 This behavior wasn't abnormal for their kind. Once pregnant, females tended to leave their territory to raise their hatchlings in a safer environment, otherwise, the kid would most likely fall prey to another Fire Dragon.

 Sometimes, females raise their offspring on their own, but not always. Before they mate, the couple of Fire Dragons fight each other to decide on this. If the male wins, he usually leaves the female behind in her vulnerable pregnancy state, lowering the chances of survival of the to-be-born dragon. However, if the female wins, the male stays with her as long as necessary until the hatchling is big enough to fend for itself.