I was alone in the dark world, but at the same time I saw everything that was going on. Exidium was using magic to kill everyone that was present. As soon as he said Broken Stars information flooded my brain. It used magic to form a small star above my hand, then he crushed it, causing a mini supernova, killing everything it came in contact with. The scariest part was the star could grow at least a thousand times bigger, which means the supernova could be that many times more destructive. It could level the entire city by itself. That being said I couldn’t let that happen. Too many innocents would die.

As soon as the shockwave was about to come in contact with the princess, I blurted out something unnecessary, “Leave her, she isn’t like the rest of them.” With those words the energy died on the spot, and she was fine.

Exidium then walked up to her, whispered something into her ear, which I couldn’t quite understand. He then imbued some magic into her body to cause her consciousness to be overloaded and made her pass out.

He made his way towards the exit, and once he made it there, he moved faster than I could comprehend. Before I realized what was happening wings came out of my back, which hurt a lot even though I wasn’t in control of my body. He then flew us away from the city. No doubt it was to escape from the country’s entire army after the commotion that was raised by me. After an hour or so we came upon a mountain range that I had never come across before in my life. It wasn’t that surprising though, considering I never really left the city in the first place.

This mountain range was known as the Lost Mountains, according to Exidium. No human has come here in a very long time. I would be safe from the kingdom here. However, it was crawling with mythical beasts. Some beasts would never bow their head to a human and would rather live in the wild than in the realm of spirits. Both weak and strong beasts were in this range.

We landed and I left the black world, and was once again in control of my own body. I felt tired and sore all over. And barely made it to a nearby cave that Exidium told me was empty before collapsing from exhaustion.

When I awoke, I felt energized, and better than I ever had before. Actually I was extremely hungry. I went outside of the cave and was about to collect something to eat before I was told “It’s time to learn how to use your magic by hunting.”

“Isn’t that a bit much?” I was convinced that if I had used the magic to hunt, that I wouldn’t even have prey to eat.

“Boy, if you learn how to control my magic, then you could gauge how much strength you need to use, effectively killing only what you want to kill. No matter how much power you have it’s meaningless if you cannot control it. You’re more likely to hurt yourself rather than others.”

And so my training under the dragon began by hunting. He wasn’t going to teach me how to use his magic, only how to control it without killing myself. I would have to come up with the spells on my own and how to use them effectively. The first spell I came up with for hunting was Dark Flame. I tried to use it on a deer beast. Let’s just say it didn’t work out to well and I had to move to a different part of the mountain, and went hungry that day.

Next I tried to condense the magic further and created Dark Spine. This spell took a small amount of magic and condensed it into a needle shape. I first tried to shoot it at a tree. It went straight through it’s trunk but didn’t cause a fire. I found a rabbit beast and shot Dark Spine through it’s heart. Or at least I tried because I missed miserably.

I then tried to hunt another deer beast. I didn’t miss the heart this time as the deer collapsed on the spot. A painless death. I dragged it back to the new cave and then made the preparations to eat it.

Once the day had passed I fell into a deep sleep, with a stomach full of food. Instead of having a dream, I appeared once again in the starless world. There a man clad in black armor and with dragon wings that spanned around 10 feet stood there in silence. The crimson eyes peered out from his helmet and I knew that this was Exidium. The black armor was imposing to say the least. There were spines that stuck out of the arms and legs, and the helmet had a slight dragonic feeling to it.

“From now on you will not know the luxury of sleep. You will still wake up feeling rested, but instead of sleeping, you will come here and learn how to fight as well as control the dragon blood that is now running through you. During the day you will strengthen your body and control your magic and during the night you will be here.” The calm deep voice that could only belong to him told me, but I didn’t have any room to complain, since this is the path that I chose and I wanted to become stronger for the sake of the new world. And with that my 4 years of hellish training began.