Thump~!

Slumping down on the ground after running for a little over half an hour, Scaly could not help looking in the direction she had come from with a somewhat worried expression on her face.

Although she had not seen any of the humans or the mountain gnolls chasing after her when she had turned around to escape, she felt almost certain that they would come chasing after her. Not believing that they would simply give up on trying to kill her after seeing how she had killed the mutated dragon devouring slime and was now in an exhausted state following most of her mana being used on her lightning magic just now.

However, unknown to her, both the humans and mountain gnolls had never come chasing after her, but instead grew restless as they cautiously guarded against any attack, she might launch towards them.

The main reason for this being that both the mountain gnolls and humans had seen the power of her lightning magic, but more importantly, they had no idea that she was currently in an exhausted state and wouldn't be able to use her lightning magic for a second time due to the large mana consumption when it came to using it.

If they had known about this, they might have continued their fight without worrying about a possible ambush or maybe would have chased after her to try and eliminate her while she was still weak.

Luckily for Scaly, none of this happened, as both the mountain gnolls and humans thought she was far stronger than she actually was and decided to act cautiously and retreat instead of continuing to fight each other with such a powerful monster possibly lurking in the shadow waiting for a moment to strike.

As a few minutes passed by since she settled down and she slowly became sure that she hadn't been followed, Scaly decided to turn her attention towards her status. Feeling curious how much stronger she had grown after she killed off the mutated dragon devouring slime.

After all, outside of her normal increase in strength that happened every time her level increased, she should have also felt a similar transformation that she had experienced when her magic broke through the 100 points mark, but she hadn't felt that even though her magic should have grown to over a thousand at this point in time.

The main reason she had expected such a transform was not because her magic would have increased ten times since back then, but also because she for some reason realized that her magic wasn't increasing during her last level up, something she hadn't noticed earlier…

Name: Scaly

Race: Young Tempest Dragon

Dragon blood: 18% (Common)

Level: 18/30, 6% (700/10000)

STR: 487 |VIT: 787 | DEX: 459 | M: 999 (1062)

Magic: [Dragon Water Magic, lvl 5], [Ice Magic lvl 1], [Wind Magic, lvl 1], [Lightning Magic, lvl 1],

Skills: [Dragon Bloodline, lvl 4], [Dragon Flight, lvl 3], [Poison Resistance, lvl 3], [Dragon Claw Strike, lvl 6], [Dragon Breath (Water), lvl 3], [Corrosion Resistance, lvl 2], [Pain Resistance, lvl 2], [Swimming, lvl 2]

In the end, she soon looked over her status and everything seemed fine at first, with her dragon water magic even increasing to level 5, but she couldn't help herself from frowning when she noticed that her magic was stuck at 999, just below a thousand.

Not just that, but she could also clearly see the numbers 1062 behind it. Likely what her magic should currently be at, but it seemed like something was preventing her magic from increasing any further and she had absolutely no clue what it was.

So… With no better idea in mind, Scaly tried to inspect her magic stat to try and figure out more about the situation. Hoping that she would at least get some kind of clue about how to overcome her current situation and stop this little blockage that her magic seemed to have encountered.

[Magic]

[Description: The primary stat describing the amount of mana inside a living being. There are several major bottlenecks following the gathering of mana inside the body.]

Well… That didn't help her a lot, but it did give her some clues as to what was happening and causing her magic to not improve beyond 999.

If she was not wrong, she was stuck at one of these bottlenecks and in the past, the hundred mark should also have been one of these bottlenecks, it was just that she was far too awesome and had managed to breeze through it without any problems.

Thinking about it like this, Scaly could not help smirking happily to herself as she thought about how others might get stuck at a hundred magic, but she had managed to directly break through it without even realizing that it was some kind of bottleneck for others.

Also, knowing that it was some kind bottleneck did help her, as she now understood that it was some kind of thing she would have to overcome to improve further. The main problem was that she had no idea how to overcome this bottleneck and if it required her to do something specific that she wouldn't know about under normal circumstances.

And so, Scaly tried her best to try and think about everything she could when it came to mana she had learnt so far.

It was an energy of sorts that allowed her to use magic and… Well… She didn't really know much more than that about mana. Maybe it should be present in the air in some way considering how she had read descriptions of monsters that described mana rich environments.

Was the dungeon a mana rich environment? If so, why couldn't she sense this mana? But… If there was mana everywhere and she hadn't sensed it, did that just mean she couldn't sense the mana and thus wouldn't know if she was actually in a mana rich environment?

Feeling like her head was starting to hurt thinking about mana and what it actually was, Scaly slowly rolled around on the ground with a puzzled expression on her face.

It was far easier to just hunt down monsters and increase her strength that way... Now she actually had to do something other than hunt down monsters to increase her strength! It was simply far too much!

She didn't think she would be forced to use her head if she wanted to become a powerful dragon- Ahm! N-not that it matted! She was the smartest of all dragons! Yes, she is the smartest, so she could definitely figure something out!

Pouting a bit to herself as she thought about this, Scaly tried recalling anything she had encountered so far during her time inside the dungeon and then it hit her!

A dragon heart!

The heavenly lake serpents she had managed to kill not long ago and the one she had eaten in the past all had gestating dragon hearts inside their bodies and they were clearly important for their future evolution as they tried their best to imitate the strength and power of real dragons.

With that in mind, as a real dragon, why didn't she have a dragon heart like them? Or maybe she did, but didn't know about it.

After all, it was not like she intended to try, and rip open her own chest and take a bite out of her heart to try and see whether or not it was a dragon heart…

No matter, that wasn't important. Instead, the fact that she had no idea if she had one or not was more than enough to tell her that her heart was nowhere as strong as those heavenly lake serpents. After all, she had clearly noticed how powerful their hearts were and the fact that the dragon blood inside them was of a far higher quality than the rest of their bodies, something she hadn't noticed from feeling the dragon blood inside of herself.

So, with that in mind, Scaly became sure that she would have to strengthen her own heart and turn it into a true dragon heart like the heavenly lake serpents had been trying to do.

The only problem was that she had no idea to do this- Or not!

Her brilliant mind had already figured it out after she saw the limitations of her magic!

If she wanted to strengthen her heart and break through the bottleneck that her magic had encountered, she would have to pour mana into her heart and turn it into a dragon heart, that way, her magic should also be able to become stronger along with the dragon heart being born inside her body!

Whoosh-!

Feeling like her logic was flawless, Scaly quickly found a somewhat safe location to hide before proceeding to pour the little mana left inside her body into her heart filled with anticipation-

Huh? This familiar feeling…

However, what followed was a terrifying pain that was almost comparable to the one she experienced when going through her evolutions in the past. Only difference being that she was still awake, and it was centered around her heart-

Rooar~!

Forcing a small roar to escape from her, as she twisted violently under the terrifying pain suddenly coming from her heart…

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