Paryl walked through the viridescent forest. The region in which he had landed was mountainous, evergreen forests taking it over like an infection. His socks were soaked from the mud he walked through. They made wet squelching noises at every step. He felt goosebumps rise on his skin.
'Seems like it rained yesterday.'
Not that he could have known any of that before he escaped, as the facility had no windows, relying only on a complex ventilation system. There was only one outside area, situated in the heart of the complex. Unfortunately, he hadn't been allowed to leave his room for the last 4 days of his stay.
'Why am I not cold?'
By all rights, Paryl should have been shivering. But he just felt a pleasant, subtle cold wind on his skin.
The reason for this was a subconscious use of advanced fire magic, producing a small heat bubble around himself. It was considered advanced, as it didn't conjure flames itself.
Paryl shouldn't have been able to use it, but he and the dragon shared a mind. All the memories of the dragon are located within his mind, even if he can't access all of them. Fire magic usage was one of them.
There was just one issue: his underdeveloped mana core.
When the creature took over, it was using mana from an external source. Paryl didn't know what that source was, but he felt it. It was something akin to a faint connection to something distant. Since his last transformation, the source felt much less subtle and orders of magnitude more tangible.
Whenever he'd really focus, he'd see a faint trace of mana leading north, but he couldn't see more than 10 meters of it at any one moment, so he wasn't aware of how distant the source was.
With that external source of mana, the creature could use incredibly taxing forms of magic. For example, Inferno, which was an evolution of fire, and for that reason expended at least 1 gigamana per second. The large-scale earth magic was also very costly.
However, Paryl's trick to heat himself up wasn't using that connection. He was using his small, underdeveloped mana core. Well, it wasn't underdeveloped when compared to his peers.
An average human would only start to form a core when reaching puberty, which would grow by emptying and refilling it. Paryl not only had a core at the age of eight, but it was roughly 7 times larger than that of an average human who wasn't trained for magic.
[A non-mana-trained person's core is on average 832 megamana per census of the Democratic Republic of Humanity, Dormalia, dated to the year 3177.]
Paryl's core was 5.81 gigamana, growing each day due to circumstances he hadn't understood yet. Humans had the biggest cores when compared to other non-extinct species, only rivaled by the beast folk. In the middle of the board were elves, and at the bottom were dwarves.
This was not counting mana beasts, who didn't have truly developed cores but simply sucked mana out of the air. They didn't bother filtering it and transforming it into a more efficient fuel for magic.
His core was not built to sustain such advanced and technical use of magic for more than an hour and a half. He had to reach a settlement by then, or his wet, cold clothes would drain his body heat rapidly, leaving him to die a slow and painful hypothermic death.
Paryl was unaware of this fact. He was only scared of the people searching for him.
Since his last transformation, he had clearer memories of his time as the beast. Any instincts about mana use the dragon held were also shared with Paryl.
That was why he could see the mana connection the dragon fed off. He intuitively forced mana into his eyes, making any mana used for spells visible.
One of those instincts was sensing large mana sources, and he felt four around him. Two of them were rapidly approaching him. Paryl started panicking. Mana use was reliant on emotion, so his heat bubble grew unstable, consuming more and more of the young child's mana.
Paryl started running in the muddy terrain. He didn't have a habit of exercising, as he wasn't allowed to most of the time. After just a few hundred meters, he started panting like a dog in the heat, stopping to catch his breath.
'Phew...They're going in the wrong direction...'
Paryl used a tree to support himself. He waited a few seconds, catching his breath.
He felt a cluster of thousands upon thousands of small mana signatures east. That was the small town he saw while flying. To the west there were two people, and they were going further westward. The other group of two was heading south from him.
An involuntary sigh of relief escaped his lips. The town was very near, so he could relax.
Paryl took a step forward, then stumbled.
He felt a sharp pain bite into his elbow. Something as black as the night itself moved rapidly, swiping at his arm. Blood started to pour from the open wound.
The being was unbelievably quick, jumping around him at unfathomable speeds. Worse yet, his eyes couldn't see it, blending into the black background. He instinctively summoned a small flame, illuminating the mana beast.
It was a small monkey with fur as black as the darkest abyss. Its limbs were long and spindly; long, curved claws were protruding from its paws like sickles. Sharp teeth stuck out of its jaws, jutting out like large razors. The creature's small eyes were sunken, the pupils almost taking up the whole iris.
It was jumping around, swiping at Paryl. It sliced his arms open. The wounds weren't large, but they hurt. Paryl was a child, so he had a drastically lower pain tolerance than an adult. He shrieked and suppressed the urge to cry. He didn't know what to do.
He ran. He couldn't run far, and the creature was fast as lightning. It was a black blur. It sliced his leg, making Paryl stumble, then fall directly into a large patch of mud. A hiss came out of him the moment the bloody wounds interacted with the filthy water stuck in the soft earth.
His world was spinning. He couldn't see much of anything in the darkness before, but now tears clouded his eyes; everything was blurry. The flame in his hand wavered.
The creature was jumping around, waiting for Paryl to expose his Achilles tendons while lying down. It wanted to devour his mana core while he was still alive.
Paryl knew he couldn't run. He was scared but bottled down the feeling, gritting his teeth at the pain.
He won't let that thing be his demise! He will kill it first! He will roast it alive and eat its damn flesh!
The fire emboldened, rising in bursts, spreading around his arm. He shot a small fireball at the creature. It simply pushed itself off the ground, moving so quickly the fire seemed to be as slow as molasses.
It landed a couple of feet back, ceasing its movements. The beast was wary of its prey.
Paryl knew he couldn't sustain the flame around his hand for much longer. He never practiced with mana in the facility, as he wasn't allowed to, but it was an instinct. It was akin to knowing when you were running out of oxygen when diving underwater.
He shot out more fireballs, the thing dodging them with ease. It was mocking him, letting its spiked white tongue loll out.
Paryl knew that the being couldn't be conquered just by his fire. He needed to use the dragon's powers. But how could he? If he did and lost control, he'd wake up in an unknown place, manaless. The weak boy would die by the elements or a different, scarier beast.
He felt his back warm up.
'No! No, you bastard! I'm not letting you out! I'm not! You're a part of me, not the other way around! You're my power! I won't let you control me!'
The warmth spread further.
'No! No, I won't! You're mine! Stop! Stop!'
Paryl sent out a pillar of flame at the creature. It dodged easily, noticing the flame was barely holding on. The human was out of mana. It jumped, deciding to slash his jugular, eating his core when unconsciousness took him.
'Give me your power, now!'
The vile beast went for his neck, airborne. The calculations were perfect; in just a few seconds the tiny human would be on the floor, bleeding out. However, all of that relied too much on what it had already seen out of Paryl.
That's why it couldn't dodge when a crimson, club-like tail slammed into its back. The impact broke the imp's spine in twain like a twig. The beast slammed into the mud, alive but paralyzed.
The dragon had reacted to his base desire. It let him borrow its power—Paryl's locked power—at the command. Paryl panted, his small frame shaking. He was bleeding, a lot. All the cuts had stacked up. He touched one of the wounds, which was now full of mud from his fall, wincing.
Paryl gathered what little mana he had and formed a large fire around his hand. After using mana so consciously, he gathered a basic understanding of the small heat bubble he instinctively created. He couldn't explain how he was doing it, nor could he do it on command, but if nothing changed he could keep himself warm for at least 8 more minutes.
Paryl was sure of that.
He didn't care. The incandescent aura-like flames forming around his arm grew larger, and then, pointing his hand at the creature, he released them. It screeched as it burned alive. The nauseating smell of burning fur made him gag.
Paryl smiled, then grimaced. Everything hurt. He slowly started feeling the cold. His wet clothing was sticking to his skin, and the dried mud and dust created by the fire found its way onto his face. It had long spoiled his usually jet-black hair, making it seem light brown.
Worse yet, he had been completely preoccupied by the attacker and used mana at an unreasonable pace. While his core was so small the people searching for him couldn't feel it, they could see the light of the fire through the dark forest. That alerted his pursuers about his position, and they were rapidly closing in.
His legs hurt. He had run more in the last half hour than ever before in his short life. The oxygen in the mountains was thin too; he was feeling dizzy. That wasn't even mentioning the large bleeding cuts sullying his legs.
Paryl took a step, then fell onto a patch of grass. This was it. He was about to be taken back into the facility. The imprint warmed up at the thought, but he didn't allow it to spread. If he transformed, there was a large chance of dying afterwards. He lay down, facing the sky.
Now that he looked at them again, the stars were stunning. He never saw them in the facility; however, he had a few memories of his life before it. One of them was a night sky. He exhaled, taking in their beauty.
All four signatures were about to reach him. He had less than a minute left.
He sighed. Usually he'd be scared or mad, but now he was just disappointed. He just escaped and was already about to be taken back in.
He felt the mana sources approach. This was it.
He closed his eyes. He heard something drop into the mud, along with a rustling of scales. Confused, he opened his eyes, seeing a stunning man with vertical pupils mere centimeters from him, their noses almost touching.
The lines of his face were almost as sharp as his teeth, which seemed like those of an apex predator. His irises and hair were the same scarlet as the thing his dragon form was made out of. The man had a very long head of hair, cascading past his shoulders and reaching to the middle of his back. He was dressed in weird clothing.
The boy had never seen fabrics such as those, nor was such a weirdly embroidered purple coat a familiar sight. Underneath it he was dressed in a plain long-sleeved white shirt.
Paryl saw the man; however, he was unable to feel any mana emanating from him. It was like the scarlet-eyed man lacked a core.
An average person would believe he was a weakling; however, every instinct Paryl had was screaming a singular sentence.
'Run. I need to run before this monster kills me.'
The man spoke. The sound was soothing and dignified but carried an edge of mischievousness and relatability.
"Hey there, replica. Need a hand?"