Chapter 15: A Familiar Routine

"Hmm." Muria nodded at the words of the Golden Dragoness. He didn't know whether his father, Ansol, coming to see him only once was normal or abnormal for his current identity.

"Uh." Seeing Muria's lukewarm response, the Golden Dragoness found it rather boring. However, her golden eyes soon lit up when she saw the silver-blue metal block in her son's hand.

"What is this?" Standing in mid-air, the Golden Dragoness reached out her hand, and Muria felt an irresistible force acting on the orichalcum in his hand. He watched helplessly as the orichalcum flew out of his palm and landed in front of the Golden Dragoness.

With sparkling eyes and a delicate face, the Golden Dragoness looked at the piece of orichalcum, half the height of her human form, and her eyes smiled. She happily touched the orichalcum back and forth with her slender jade hands, laughing joyfully.

"Not bad, not bad. I didn't expect such a big find in my own castle."

"That's mine, mother," Muria quickly said when he saw the Golden Dragoness shamelessly trying to pocket the orichalcum.

"Yours?" The Golden Dragoness glanced at Muria. "You've never even left this island. Where did you get orichalcum? It must be from my castle."

"It was a gift from the Cloud Giant leader, Bolton, to forge a weapon exclusive to me," Muria tried to reclaim the legendary metal that belonged to him.

"Exclusive weapon?" The Golden Dragoness pondered for a moment. "You're too early for that, what's the rush?"

Then, the beautiful, blond-haired girl looked at Muria with a smile: "Besides, you're still young. Such a precious thing, don't accidentally lose it. So, I'll keep it safe for you until you grow up, then I'll give it back to you."

"Give it back when I grow up?" Muria clenched his teeth hard. This familiar routine, tricking a child, although he was physically large, he was indeed a cub. But his experience wasn't.

"That's settled." Seeing Muria's complexion darken slightly, the Golden Dragoness quickly picked up the block of orichalcum, opened a portal, and ran back to her room.

The Golden Dragoness, Atreus, who had just returned to her room and hadn't touched the portal, poked her head back out: "By the way, little Muria, here's a suggestion. Go to my library, find the spellbook on transformation, and learn how to transform into a human. You'll enjoy a lot of fun that way."

After saying that, the Golden Dragoness retracted her head, ready to touch the portal again, but she remembered something else and peeked out again, glancing at the six shivering young dragons: "Take good care of these six little dragons, you must not kill them. Anything else, go ahead."

After saying that, the portal edged with blue light collapsed and dissipated, scattering dots of spiritual light.

Muria lifted the hand that had just held the orichalcum, and started to space out: "The Golden Dragoness's greed was beyond my imagination. Damn it, she even snatched her own son's belongings."

"Master Muria," the head maid Sophia called softly, "Are you alright?"

Muria took a deep breath and then exhaled, nodding to the blond-haired maid: "I'm fine. It's just a piece of orichalcum, no big deal."

Though he said that, he still felt somewhat unbearable. He told Sophia: "I'm going to look for a book in the library. Please take care of these young dragons for now."

Saying so, Muria left the room and headed towards the Golden Dragoness's library. Since waking up from a sleep, Muria found his energy to be very abundant. He could jump around all day without feeling sleepy or fatigued.

"The amount of books here is really exaggerated." Standing at the entrance of the library, Muria looked at the endless shelves. Just as he was about to go in to find the book, he embarrassingly realized something.

"Being nearly a hundred meters in dragon form, why are the bookshelves spaced according to human standards?" Muria looked at the narrow passages between the shelves with a frustrated face; he couldn't fit through them at all.

"Sigh, no wonder she told me to learn transformation, to turn into a human. Speaking of which, transformation seems to be a natural spell for golden dragons. At a certain age, it comes naturally without needing deliberate learning," Muria muttered.

Without a choice, Muria left the library and had two dragonkin maids help him retrieve the spellbook related to transformation.

"Hmm, I really am blessed with innate spiritual power and magic flowing through my body. According to Erathia's standards, I'm now a Silver III, at this level, I can learn the fourth-ring transformation spell."

Muria, holding a spellbook only as big as his palm, proudly thought. However, his desire to learn transformation became even more urgent as he discovered another inconvenience of his large size.

The size of the books was too disproportionate to his current form. Most spellbooks were written by human mages, standardized for human size, so it was best to read them in human form.

"Using spiritual power to construct this transformation spell model, but this model is a bit complicated," Muria frowned as he looked at the three-dimensional spell model in the spellbook. If this was a fourth-ring spell, how complex would the models for ninth-ring or even legendary spells be?

Without much thought, Muria sat down cross-legged on the ground and attempted to enter a meditative state for the first time using the meditation methods from the golden dragon heritage. Although it took some time due to his agitation at first, he easily entered the meditative state once he calmed down.

Then, Muria, as an observer, "saw" his own form, a very peculiar sensation and one of the effects of spiritual power.

Next, Muria followed the various data recorded in the spellbook, condensing his spiritual power into nearly transparent threads, beginning to construct a three-dimensional spell model.

For the construction of the spell model, every thread of spiritual power's size, angle, and spatial distance had to be precisely accurate.

Perhaps because transformation was a spell golden dragons naturally possess, Muria found constructing the spell model easier than he had anticipated.

After several failures, Muria successfully constructed the transformation spell model, and a diamond-shaped transparent crystal appeared in his spiritual sea.

Muria curiously "looked" at this tiny crystal, suddenly feeling fortunate for his identity. He knew how human mages pondered deeply before daring to construct a spell model, as their spiritual power and the size of their spirit sea did not allow for recklessness.

Ordinary Silver mages daring to construct a spell model like Muria would end up crippling themselves, with no second outcome.

Muria, born with abundant spiritual power that grew with his age, unlike human mages who desperately meditated to increase their slight spiritual power, could afford to construct spell models after just a few readings of the spellbook. His abundant spiritual power meant a few failures were inconsequential; even a backfire would only cause him

 slight dizziness, then it was back to trying again.

"What do I look like in human form?" Muria began to channel spiritual power into the spell model, idly wondering as the spell model filled with spiritual power started to glow brightly. A portion of his magic was activated.

Brilliant spiritual light enveloped Muria, turning him into a large orb of light that quickly began to shrink: seven meters, five meters, three meters, one meter...

Muria looked around, feeling slightly confused at the familiar yet unfamiliar surroundings. Everything seemed to have grown larger; he felt like he had become a "small person" in a land of giants.

"I've shrunk." Muria lifted his seemingly unchanged hand and quickly realized he had successfully cast the transformation spell and turned into a human.

Muria touched his head, finding no dragon horns, and looked behind him to see his broad wings and slender tail had disappeared; he had indeed become a human.

"But, this isn't right." Extending his spiritual power, Muria immediately saw his appearance: a ridiculously small, yet incredibly cute black-haired, golden-eyed little boy.

"People would believe I haven't been weaned yet with this appearance!" Muria tugged at his fair little face, finding the touch pleasing.

"This is far from what I imagined." Muria had hoped to turn into a handsome youth, not a weaning little boy.

"Does the transformation spell's human appearance correspond to my actual age? As a dragon, I've just left the young dragon stage, corresponding to a just-weaned little boy in human terms."

Disheartened at becoming a tiny tot, Muria lost his patience to stay in the library. Under the gaze of two dragonkin maids about to turn into starry-eyed admirers, he left the library.

Muria walked back to his room, receiving many affectionate glances from the dragon maids along the way. No one mistook him; although his size had shrunk tens of times, his appearance hadn't changed.

"Master Muria has learned transformation? His appearance hasn't changed, but I think this tiny form is so cute!"

"Yes, yes, if not for respecting his identity, I'd rush up and cuddle him."

"I also really want to pinch his cheeks. They look so soft. Ah!"

...Muria heard such comments along the way, feeling fluttery inside. But upon returning to his room, he was immediately met with six pairs of crimson vertical pupils.

Seeing Muria in this form, Auston, who had just recovered, didn't think twice and pounced, leading the other young dragons to follow suit.