As I ran back to where I was I could see Jana was looking at me and at the dungeon entrance with confusion in her eyes. When I got close enough to her she started to speak but was interrupted by the sound of a door being kicked open. Both of us looked in the direction of the sound and saw an old man with no hair and almost completely covered in scars.

“o-old sage…” Jana said with a mixed expression of both surprise and fear.

“Jana, I already told you to be quiet!” The man angrily said before going at a fast pace to the dungeon entrance and casting a light ball to properly see into the darkness that is the stairs leading to the dungeon.

“Jana, what did you do?” He said, his voice cold as ice and carrying a murderous intent that almost made [Instincts Overdrive] go berserk.

“N-no, I d-did Not-...” Jana tried to respond, but she was clearly in shock as the terrifying sensation the man in front of us was releasing basically froze her and made my heart beat faster.

Actually, thinking about it, I don’t feel only a heartbeat inside me but also I feel a core where energy and magicules flow from and towards it… I really like [Parallel Processing] as it allows me to think about this random stuff while also thinking about how this guy is releasing terrifying amounts of energy.

He slowly turned towards us, looking at Jana and then at me.

“So, it was the lizard next to you, I see” He said and in the next moment an explosion hit my face and I was sent flying, breaking trees wherever I passed through, only stopping after I broke dozens of trees and fell on the ground 50 meters away from them.

My back was hurting badly, but I could feel my scales didn’t break, meaning I was not actually hurt but only in pain. My face was incredibly hot, making me think that he used some sort of fire magic to kill me, thankfully the skill [Heat Immunity] made the damage from it be reduced to only the physical damage I took after being thrown like a truck hit me.

“Interesting, you’ve managed to survive. Unfortunately your luck ends now” The man suddenly appeared right in front of me with his finger lifted and a small red dot on top of it.

I could see with my eyes that small dot had so much heat that I don’t doubt it could evaporate an entire lake and I was the target for that attack.

I trusted my [Heat Immunity] skill, but didn’t want to push my luck so as soon as I saw how powerful that thing was I began to run as fast as I could. The trees became a blur as I ran. I’ve never run this fast in my past life but even so, I knew the guy behind me was faster than this.

Suddenly my back was set aflame together with all the trees between me and the old man and soon enough the heat was enough to ignite the very air around me. The heat was hundreds of degrees above what a normal living creature could withstand, the proof of this was that everything around me was burning, be that bugs, small creatures or the trees and plants, everything was burning to ashes… everything except me, that is.

I stopped after a while of being on fire, noticing that the extreme heat on my back wasn’t uncomfortable at all. Sure, it was still extremely hot, but not even close to the temperatures I feel my body become as a Solar Dragon. If I remember correctly, [Knowledge Library] said to me that the scales of Solar Dragons are one of the best thermal insulation that exist, meaning that even though my real body is hotter than the magic that old man cast, there isn’t this level of destruction because all that heat is trapped inside me.

I sighed in relief as I noticed the skill is the cheat skill I thought it to be. Though, I didn’t completely relax because I wasn’t out of danger yet, that guy is clearly stronger than me in every aspect and I’m sure I would be a pile of ash in the ground right now if it wasn’t for the cheat skill that is my [Heat Immunity] skill.

I took the moment where everything was covered in flames to deactivate my [True Mimic] skill and become a Solar Dragon once more. If I need to fight for my life I need to do it in a body I’m comfortable doing so.

The transformation took a few seconds as usual, but before I could do anything another explosion hit me right in the face and I was sent backwards again, but this time I hit the side of the mountain, creating a small crater in the stone wall where i hit my body, the pain was extreme, but it didn’t actually hurt me.

“You’re still alive. Color me impressed. I suppose you have some sort of resistance to fire and…” He appeared between the flames with a shield that repelled the fire away from him. “Your appearance changed, as did your race? Now I’m intrigued, but I think it makes some sort of sense as you’ve come here with her. Of course, why didn’t I think about this earlier? You’re her little pet” He said.

I kept quiet and tried to use [Appraisal] on him.

Name: Faroh

Age: 9.545

Race: Human

Lv. #@$

That was the only result that I could understand, the rest was basically an incomprehensible mess of random letters. The thing that caught my attention was his age. The guy is older than the modern society of my past life by almost 5 times over. Who the heck is a Human able to live this long? Wait, how many years does a Human live in this world?

[ Humans have, in general, a life expectancy of 100 years ]

Thanks, [Knowledge Library], now I know this guy is something clearly above the average.

I didn’t have anything to attack him with, and I only knew the [Fireball] spell, and he clearly won’t be stopped by that. I guess I could use the breath attack I used when I killed that Orc, but I don’t think I’ll have the time to properly charge it and attack him.

I did the only thing that came up in my mind, I casted a few [Fireballs] and shot them aiming at him as I ran away from him following the side of the mountain. I didn’t know where I was going, but I was sure wherever I ended up would be better than any place with that guy that wanted to kill me.

The explosion raised the dirt around him creating some sort of smokescreen that I used to run, but judging how he had found me two times already even though he thought I was dead proved he had some form of tracking or detection ability. and a few seconds later he proved me right as he appeared on my side, creating what looked like a blade made out of water, but I was already prepared, casting six more [Fireballs] and fired them.

He shot his water blade at the same time as me, and both spells hit each other, creating an explosion of steam that covered the entire area. I hadn’t been affected much by the steam obscuring my vision because my eyes could see the entire light spectrum, and some of the light wasn’t affected by the steam, but that didn’t help me much, because a sharp pain rose from my side. The water blade hadn’t completely evaporated by my [Fireballs] and it continued its path unaffected by everything and hit me right on my torso, almost toring my left wing off if it had hit a couple more centimeters above.

I didn’t know how to fly, but even if I knew that option was out of the window right now. It didn’t hit my wing, but it hit the muscles that made the wings function properly. Besides that, I had an open wound on my side that was leaking my plasma blood and setting aflame the air and everything that it touched.

I could see the dungeon entrance some distance away from where I was, and thought I could use his house that was next to the dungeon to somehow distract him. But all of that thought was shattered when he appeared between me and his house.

I quickly cast a few more [Fireballs] and shot towards him, but they all hit an invisible barrier and vanished without trace before reaching him.

“Fire magic is so easily countered by a simple vacuum shield that it becomes boring, but whatever. You’ll die now, Dragon” He said, casting another water blade above him, this time it was bigger, almost 20 times bigger than me.

I saw an opportunity as he was charging his attack and pushed all the magicules I could to the end of my throat, acting on instinct to use my breath attack. Thankfully he wasn’t emitting more of that murderous intent of before or else the [Instincts Overdrive] could have taken over my body again.

I felt the supercharged plasma going up my throat and I aimed directly at him, and then I opened my mouth, releasing such heated plasma that would make a fusion reactor jealous.

“Haven’t I just said that fire magic is countered by a vacuum shield? Your fire breath won’t do a thing…-” He began to say but stopped mid sentence as my breath attack hit his vacuum shield and easily passed through it, as plasma doesn’t need oxygen to burn it can pass through his vacuum shield like it would in space, where there is no air to begin with.

He quickly casted a water wall to stop the plasma, but it was evaporating the water faster than he could cast more. I was actually glad I could see a chance to win, but that emotion disappeared like a candle being blown as the water blade came from above, hitting my shoulder as I tried to evade it. My internal body temperature evaporated it before it could do fatal damage, but the damage was still extensive.

The pain made me lose my footing and I fell to the ground, it also made me stop using my breath attack. Right now I had two wounds on my body and was leaking blood plasma like a river, as I’m not dumb, I quickly used my [Regeneration] skill and the wounds began closing with an incredible speed, but before the could heal completely, another water blade came and hit my other shoulder, and then a water ball that felt more like a steel ball than water hit my face and I was sent flying backwards and hitting a tree with my back.

Looking at the man I saw that his clothes were almost completely burned, but his skin wasn’t, worse yet, his skin was actually healing at the same pace as my [Regeneration] skill could heal me. He looked at me and I felt his murderous intent rise so fast that almost looked like an explosion, and I felt my skill responding accordingly to him.