Black Dragon (Part 1)

Evan was dumbfounded. He never expected that Mr. Agate was the creator of Spirit Crystals. He had even suggested to his father to start using them. What Feldman doesn't know is that Evan was actually thankful to him for this. Without those crystals Evan wouldn't be here right now. If his parents weren't addicts Evias wouldn't have dehydrated and died. Then Evan wouldn't have had this body to transmigrate to. Sure, he might have been sent to this planet either way, but that's not a guarantee.

"As I have said before, you will always be my friend and my first master." Evan said while bowing deeply to show that this doesn't influence the way Evan feels about him.

"I'm glad to hear that." Feldman's eyes were once again teary, but this time out of gratefulness. He was grateful that Evan was able to look past the mistakes and see how remorseful he really was. "Now then, I am going to ask you one more question."

Evan was curious what else he could want to know. "Yes sir?"

"Will you please do the morning and afternoon chores for me? I am so tired. I was up all night worrying about how this conversation would go. I know I said you don't have to do chores anymore, so I am asking. As a friend of course." Feldman's words just fell out of his mouth. He was obviously at his breaking limit.

"Of course, but what should I do in between morning and afternoon chores?" Evan was hoping for some more free time. He wanted to try and make more spirit bead increase their speed and alignment.

"Practice refining of course. You're still my student. Oh, and breakfast is on the table, feel free to eat before you go out." Feldman said with a large smile.

'Damnit. I was hoping for some free time.' Evan thought, slightly irritated.

He ate his normal breakfast, which was basically oatmeal. It tasted like a blueberry maple syrup but wasn't sure what it was made out of. After his meal he quickly did his chores, which now only took a few minutes as his stats were much higher than they were a few days ago.

After he fed the Clucks and cleaned their stalls, he pulled out a few materials and started refining them. He found out that his Data tab would always state the previous and next rank of each material, which would be extremely helpful in the future. Evan focused on tempering and refining the materials that Feldman had asked him for the previous day. This was time consuming but turned out to be great practice. After he had finished with 5 of the Gum Weeds, he realized something. If he sent the Refinement Fire flame into the actual spirit pathway, he could control the flame to perfectly carve the pathways out. This made the pathways even stronger and eliminated all impurities at the same time.

When he attempted this, he directly changed a piece of Gum Grass directly into a piece of bark. When Evan used the Data Tab, he was shocked.

*Elastic Elm Bark- A Rank Material- Bark from Elastic Elm Tree. Tree and Bark are completely white. Use in creation- adds additional 12% elasticity in created treasure. *

'This is an A rank material.' Evan was astonished. The impurities in the pathways were completely eradicated and the pathways themselves were strengthened. This directly raised the rank 6 levels. Evan hid the material. He was afraid to show it to Feldman after his reaction yesterday. That was just 2 ranks.

He started to try and control the Refinement Fire to actually leave some impurities. This was crucial to ensure that he was only refining to an F rank material. Sure, a higher rank would create a higher graded elixir, but this would undoubtedly mess with the ratio of materials needed, or even give an undesired effect.

He had more difficulty leaving impurities in than taking them out. Removing impurities was easy with the Refinement Flame. He could feel when the flame was starting to degrade the pathways or freeze them, and speed wasn't an issue because he could move the flames with ease. Speed was only an issue for people who didn't have inner spirit flames. They would need to control an outside flame, which was unpredictable, and difficult to do with precision.

The problem was that in order to leave an impurity, he had to completely avoid the impurity. If the flame so much as touched the impurity it would almost instantly ignite, completely evaporating. He had nowhere near the amount of fine control needed to shrink the impurities and could only either remove them completely or leave them whole.

It took almost all morning, but he had finally refined a perfect Gum Weed. The area around him was nothing but crumbled dirt, all freshly turned. The stray pale green of Gum Grass was seen underneath pieces of fresh black soil.

Evan realized that the sun was almost directly over-head, meaning it was around noon. This means he needed to do the afternoon chores, which was to herd the Clucks out of the pen and into a fenced off grazing area. This is where he gained majority of his speed. Chasing the clucks was no easy feat. They may have been Weak F rank beasts, but they had high speed attributes.

They all ranged slightly in strength but the lowest out of all of their speed was still 30 points. He would have to let them graze in the meadow for at least half an hour. The grass wasn't something they ate for nutrients, just helped with their stomachs. After that he would take them back and refill their feeders.

He had just finished with the afternoon chores and was about to go back to his training when he heard Feldman yell for him from the house. He rushed back, he felt that he was ready to attempt the last step, and he knew that was what Feldman wanted to go over today.

It took Evan but a moment to rush back to the house, shocking Feldman with the speed. He was one of the unlucky few who was never able to advance his spirit to move fast enough to evolve physically. He made up for this by storing excess spirit in his pathways, otherwise he would have never been able to become a Master SS ranked alchemist. Evan was moving as fast as Feldman could back in his prime right now, which was basically the max without evolving to a Low F Rank.

"How did you get so fast?" Feldman asked suspiciously.

"Umm about that. I wanted to ask you a question. What are bloodlines?" Evan evaded the question with one of his own.

Feldman peered at Evan, squinting his eyes. He wasn't sure what Evan was getting at, but he was interested. "Bloodlines are the residual spirit energy passed down by beasts, there are myths of god bloodlines, but I've personally never seen anything like that. Why?"

"Well, I told you that I have been playing around with my inner spirit, right?" Evan was nervous to talk to Feldman about this. He wasn't sure how Feldman would react.

"Just spit it out already kid, the suspense is killing me." Feldman was too excited to play games.

"Last night when I went home, I was trying something new. It's hard to explain but I tried the tempering process on myself. Well after I finished, I felt a lot stronger. That's not all, I felt a strong heat burst out from within, and my skin changed." Evan was trying to explain everything without the influence of the system, which was harder than he thought it would be. "After everything stabilized, I had a vision of a giant black dragon spewing fire out of its mouth. The only thing that I could think of is a bloodline, but I don't know anything about bloodlines. So, I thought I should ask you."

"Interesting. This would explain your Refinement Fire. It is one of the 10 Great Fires, and to be honest it is really only between 2 flames for the strongest. But the Refinement Fire is exclusive to the Dragon Clan, and as far as the dragon you explain, those are the Dragons of myth. The Dragon Clan are supposed descendants of the great dragons you just described, but not many believe them. The look just like you or me other than the pupils of their eyes are slits." Feldman was intrigued by what Evan had described. "Can you show me the change to your skin? It appears the same as normal to me."

Evan activated his Dragon Skin Ability, this was an Innate Ability of the body, so it didn't take any spirit to activate. This meant he didn't need to upgrade to Level 11 to use it. His skin immediately shifted to the layered scale look. The scales were the exact same color as his skin but were hard to the touch. Evan's Defense stat immediately doubled to 40.

"That's impossible." Feldman's jaw dropped and turned pale upon seeing Evan. He could see a few things that Evan couldn't. 2 small, pointed, bright red lumps had grown out of his forehead and the whites of his eyes had turned black, his irises a fire red with gold lines moving through them and pure black vertical pupil. Evan looked terrifying.