Alpha Realm (OP.MC.|Harem|NSFW)

Name: Aizel Kadashi | Age: 19 | Level: 1

SE: 0 | HP: 100 | MP: 840

Race: Were-Dragon

Aizel's vision alternated between blue skies and the ground below; the roaring of wind going past him as he fell was deafening. Deez Nerd wasn't joking at all. He teleported him to what was probably the max a skydiver could survive without High-altitude equipment.

After a couple of flips, he managed to stabilize himself and turn to face the ground. His eyes hurt a little from the wind pressure assaulting them, but he could see clearly—given how this body was supposed to be part dragon. It made sense that they were resilient to it. Thankfully, he was still clasping the scroll thingy in his left hand; he just hoped that it would not tear and become useless. It felt like a thick piece of leather, so it would probably be fine.

The ground was fast approaching, and he was in his human form. He could see two diamond-shaped scales, the size of credit cards, on the back of his hands, and remembered how the avatar looked when it was in this form. There should be two very large ones on his back where the wings should come from. How would he release them? He did not know.

He neglected to ask Deez Nerd about it; he neglected to ask a lot of stuff, but it was not like he was given much of a choice, seeing how he was thrown here as soon as he accepted the 'Job.' He tried flexing his back, moving his shoulders around, and flapping his arms, but it was in vain. Aizel even shouted "Dragon-form!" at one point, but that only made him swallow a fistful of air.

For the imminent danger of becoming mist against the ground a second time, he did not actually feel fear—if anything, he felt happy—the rush from free-falling was intoxicating; he had never entertained the idea of skydiving before, so it was probably his new body speaking.

When he was getting dangerously close to the ground, and the adrenaline hit a peak, the world slowed down.

〔 System: Basic Active/Passive Skill (Focus) acquired. 〕

A sudden message popped into his mind, and he could see how his MP was decreasing at a steady rate, about once every second—or, given how his time perception was slowed—one point for each perceptual second. He glanced to the side and could see the wind slowly crashing against his skin, sending ripples that waved around his arm. He felt like he was moving on water rather than falling through the sky.

'Huh, seems op… I wonder if this is a Were-Dragon thing, or if it is adrenaline-related… My mind is at ease, even if well…'

He was about to crash into the ground; if anything, it would probably mean that he would actually feel the crash before dying.

As the ground got closer and closer, a sudden noise or itch rippled behind him, from the shoulder blades to his back, like a limb that has just woken up and is begging to be stretched. He gave in to this feeling and 'stretched.'

His MP fell immediately to 540. Two huge wings that were each about twice his height sprawled from his back; it felt as if a new pair of arms suddenly grew from his back. This was accompanied by a long and thick tail growing from his lower back, as if his spine decided to grow a huge finger or an entire arm from one of its vertebrae.

Once his wings were unfolded, the effect was instant; the breaking force strained his new muscles, and even pulled him out of the slower perception by stopping the (Focus) skill. It was a little painful, but nothing compared to the aches of old age; this pain felt good, like a good workout.

He was now gliding down from around 300 meters high, or 1k ft. in eagle units, from his uneducated estimate at least.

His MP had fallen to 480. 'I guess the transformation or shifting uses MP but does not consume anything over time. I actually used a lot more than I thought with the (Focus) skill, huh.'

Aizel wanted to try out this new skill some more, but remembered that Deez Nerd said that he needed to use the scroll ASAP.

He tried to beat his wings to see if he could gain altitude, but all he accomplished was to lose altitude and stability as they fought the air; they acted more like a hang glider than bird wings.

Seeing how he still had a lot of horizontal velocity, he started to look for a clearing in the forest below to try to land. Controlling the glide was not hard and came naturally to him; he could feel the air going across all the membranes, and little adjustments were all he needed to change his glide profile. He could pitch upward, converting speed into a short climb. Turning was a little more challenging because he could only do it slowly and in wide turns with his current level of control, as he had never gone hang gliding on Earth.

Soon, he spotted a clearing in the distance and slowly turned towards it. Once he was close to it, he turned from his horizontal glide to a standing position.

Breaking was much more aggressive than he expected, straining the new shoulder muscles that came with the wings even more. He also failed to correctly measure how high he was, so he suddenly fell on his back from around twice his height.

With a loud thump! He met the ground; his tail and wings absorbed most of the impact. "~Ouch… At least nothing broke, I think." He was a little sore from the impact, but he broke nothing, and there were no visible bruises or cuts.

Using his tail and wings to stand up was a little challenging at first due to their size, but eventually he managed to stand; however, walking was another story. 'Definitely not made to walk around.' He folded his wings—which behaved more like large extra arms—and that made moving around more manageable, but it was still awkward, like trying to move around with a huge tent folded on his back. It was not heavy; either the bones in the wings were lighter, or his strength was high, probably a mix of both.

Reflexively, he folded the wings even more and was pleasantly surprised. They started shrinking! He took a look at his MP and saw that the more he shrank the wings, the more his MP returned. Once the wings were the same size as his human arms, he hit a threshold where the total MP cost was 50 points. Shrinking them more made them turn into some kind of thick iridescent vapor that turned into two large scales over his shoulder blades, just like when he first came here, returning the remaining 50 points to his MP. 'Huh, Neat!'

'Your turn.' He looked at his massive tail, which was more like a snake attached to his back than any tail that he had ever seen on Earth, very flexible and responsive, like a mix between the mobility of a tongue and the dexterity of a hand.

His tail worked similarly; it could shrink until it only used 10 total mana points. Shrinking it more made it turn back into iridescent vapor before turning back into a large scale on his lower back. He was about to continue playing around with himself when he remembered the thing that Deez Nerd told him to do once he landed.

He unfolded the leather scroll and began to look through it. Short story, it was a mess. A mess of random symbols, alien words, and even some drawings were thrown in seemingly at random, as if someone took a few pages from the newspaper, got them wet, and did a collage with them.

'Newspaper?, fuck I'm old… "Was" old?'

Looking at it from different angles, he realized that he could not even tell what side was up and what was down. Not until he found a small drawing of a tree no larger than a coin. 'I guess this side goes up'

He extended it and held it at eye level, flexed his arms, shook it a little, but nothing seemed to work.

"Open sesame!… Abracadabra!… Chinga tu madre!…"

'How the fuck am I supposed to activate this?…' He even gave it a little lick for good measure. 'Did it break on the way down? What did the Nerd guy say? Push my mana through it? No. I think he said Infuse…'

His adrenaline was going down, and he realized that the extra senses of the Were-Dragon race were slowly coming into his awareness.

First was smell. It started as a nostalgic feeling; it had been so long since the last time he breathed the clean air coming from a forest that was not burning or withering. But then more smells came in; he could smell the grass, the trees, the insects all around him, even some kind of animal smell in the distance. He closed his eyes and just enjoyed the experience; he could even smell water and what direction it came from.

Then came his hearing. He could hear the howling in the wind, a river in the distance, and if he focused enough, birds nesting in the trees, insects buzzing over flowers nearby, and some kind of rodent underground.

Then touch, but before he could start appreciating feeling through a younger skin, he opened his eyes and looked down, and he was barefoot. The novelty of the grass under his feet passed really quickly and was replaced with annoyance at Deez Nerd. 'Seriously, not even a pair of sandals?'

He looked around, and slowly, more information was being delivered by his eyes; he could not suddenly see more colors, but there was now a layering to them. Having seen Thermal images and Ultraviolet filters before, he quickly realized what these new layers were. By flexing the muscles in his Eyes, he had control over their zooming in and field of view.

Using all of this, he quickly could see a small rodent hiding behind some tall grass nearing the end of the clearing. He saw it as if he was standing right in front of it and not over thirty meters away; he could even pick up the small temperature changes left by its breath.

But as he was focusing on the little rodent, something new happened. He could see a small wave of energy move inside the rabbit just before the little animal moved. By focusing on that, he also saw other animals around, even some that were hiding behind trees. He also felt that same phenomenon coming from all around him; it was the small electrical impulses generated by living things.

He was about to question how he could sense that from such a distance, but then remembered that he had just grown wings and put him off his mind, returning to the task of using the scroll.

Lifting it once again and trying to use all of his senses to pick up anything from it, and surprisingly, it worked. There was a faint siphoning created by the scroll; it was not drawing in the wind, but rather a very faint vapor-like substance that did not react to the wind, almost like it existed on a different wavelength or state, like how light is not really affected by the breeze.

Focusing on that vapor, he could distinguish yet another layer above all the others he was already perceiving, and he looked to be oozing this viscous and thick iridescent vapor himself. It was the only thing that he had no real explanation for, so he assumed that this was the magic, or mana.

He got his hand closer to the scroll, and it started to siphon in a small amount of it, but it was not really being infused by it. He focused on his 'stats' to see if he could find something to help him, but there was nothing really new.

Name: Aizel Kadashi | Age: 19 | Level: 1

SE: 0 | HP: 100/100 | MP: 689/840

Skills: (Focus)

'MP seems to be slowly recharging'

He continued trying to infuse his mana into the scroll; he blew on it, but the vapor seemed to be completely independent of his breath.

'It should not be that hard to do if Mr. Nerd assumed I could do it before starving to death.'

His stomach seemed to wake at that thought and started growling. He ignored it for now and kept trying to move his mana around. After a few minutes of failed attempts, he took a break and sat on the grass. His mana looked to be recovering at a rate of around a point per minute, around fourteen hours for a full recovery from zero points'

Extending and releasing his tail and wings a few times also proved to not give him much insight on how to control mana, it did look like the mana was released from the large scales in his upper and lower back and then condensate into their shape, but this was an automatic process that he had no real control over, like moving a limb, you can choose to move it but not the blood inside of it.

He looked around once again, and it seemed that most rodents and birds around also oozed mana, but in a lesser capacity than him, and they were also not controlling this release rate or using it for anything.

A few minutes went by, and he was now lying on the ground facing the sky, holding his right hand up and trying other ways to control this mana, flexing his hand, flapping it around, making signs, and even saying nonsense out loud. 'What did he say again?. The higher you go on the realms, the more the mind has control over matter… And it is called Mind Power, not mana points…'

Suddenly, it hit him. He had not tried the one thing that is most common in this kind of scenario; Deez Nerd even hinted at it. And for someone like Aizel, this should really have been the first thing he should have tried, but in the excitement of being young again and feeling stronger than even in his prime, he forgot to try his actual specialty, the skill that allowed him to keep working even after hitting one hundred.

'Simple, visualization, imagination…'

He extended his hand and imagined the vapor blowing out of it. Nothing happened, but he felt the same itch, the white noise feeling he felt before being able to release his wings, before willing them to manifest.

This time, he not only clearly visualized what he wanted to happen, an easy task for an ex-designer with a borderline absurd hyperphantasia—or visualization skill.

The vapor around his hand moved just as he imagined it. He chuckled and stood up. He held the scroll in front of him once again and willed his vapor to infuse it.

〔 System: Basic Active Skill (Infuse) acquired. 〕

His MP fell a few points from the testing and actual infusion, but before he could process the new skill or pay much attention to its mana usage, the scroll siphoned the mana vapor he released and infused into it, and the words and symbols on it began glowing.

His attention was immediately drawn towards the center of the scroll; he could not move or look away as words began to burn. As the word burned, a new concept was seared into his mind; all the semantics, meanings, pronunciation, and enunciation of the word were associated with other concepts already present in his mind.

One by one, the words began to burn, and their knowledge began to be associated with concepts he already knew. His eyes moved from word to word and from words to symbols. At an increasing rate, the scroll was rapidly burning away, and with it, his own mind.

His eyes hurt even more than when he was falling at terminal velocity; his brain started to swell inside his skull, and the mother of all headaches assaulted him. He tried to look away, to make it stop, but it was in vain.

Suddenly, it stopped; the scroll was nothing but ashes carried by the wind. Aizel fell to his knees, then to his face, and blacked out for a few seconds.

He lay face down for a few minutes without moving, just waiting for the headache to recede. When the headache was manageable, we turned him on his back. His mind felt as if it had been crunched for days for a thesis defense.

The knowledge of Geas language was now inside his mind; it was not as deep as his native tongue, but it felt as if he had been practicing it for years. This was technically his fourth language, but it felt as if it were his second.

"Fuck. You. Deez Nerd. Fuck you…"

— — —

Aizel spent around half an hour recovering from getting his brain into the blender disguised as a scroll. He guessed the time based on his Mana Points recovery. He stood up and finally began to test the rest of his new body.

The tail was really strong and could lift his whole body on its own; it also had a good explosive movement, but it was tiring to use it too much. His wings were like two extra arms with a soft skin membrane that came from their fingers, while the wing-thumbs had a large karambit-like dagger claw each. It was a little awkward to use them as a main weapon, but they could be used for a stabbing movement with a longer reach than his human arms.

Next up were his body scales, like the wings and tail; he could release them independently by limb, each area costing 50 total MP, for a total of 300 points needed to cover most of his body. The scales covered his forearms like gauntlets, his chest, back, and part of his neck, and the outside of his legs. They were quite sturdy and would probably stop a sword or knife, but not a bullet or a blunt force weapon. They could also be partially released or materialized like the wings and tail, but instead of shrinking, they covered less and less area, with the minimum being 1 total mana point for small patches of scales.

The most vulnerable areas left uncovered by the scales were the center of the neck, the inside of the legs, the shoulders, and armpits.

Finally, it was the horns and claws, which came for 10 points each, for a total of 100 points. The claws were about an inch long and very sharp. The horns were most curious; they came from his temples and were swept back, so their offensive capabilities were almost non-existent, or not obvious, and they needed 200 Total MP to be released.

Adding it all up—200 for wings, 100 for tail, 300 for scales, 100 for claws, and 200 for the horns—the final total MP was… 900.

'~The fuck?… I'm still MP short for a full transformation, or release.'

Aizel concluded that maybe releasing all of a Were-Dragon's features was not something they were born with. Given how the base MP 'stat' was supposed to be 10 at level 1, they could release a single claw at most, or a micro tail. 'Heh, micro tail…'

But he needed more information to even begin to understand how it all worked. He was told by the Nerd to only go into town once he hit Level 10, and to hunt in the meantime. This forest is supposed to have prey that should not give him much trouble.

'The only thing left to do is try to fly…'

After doing a couple of stretches, he released his wings to their max size and his tail to half its max size. 'Alright, here goes nothing!' "—Huh!~" He jumped with the added aid of his tail, and while flexing his wings downwards as if trying to do a swimming stroke but in the air.

And he achieved nothing but a larger-than-average 'jump' followed by falling flat on his face because his tail never even fully left the ground, even if the rest of his body rose to about two meters in the air.

"Not even close…" Aizel said to no one in particular.

'For he was alone…'

He dusted himself off and checked for injuries, but he was fine. His HP was still maxed, so he proceeded to sit down cross-legged with his tail doing a coil around him and his wings lazily lying at his sides.

'In retrospect, I should've known that I can't fly just by flapping my wings, given how I lost altitude last time. But the description clearly said that this race could fly, not glide, but fly… If this world is indeed based on the many media from Earth, and then some, then flight should work similarly to those references… With magic… Or I was scammed, and the Nerd interface was also in alpha.'

Aizel started to deliberately feel through his wings, focusing on the air currents that surrounded them. The wings were clearly not meant for flapping, so there had to be a way to make the air itself move through them.

He tried to use the (Infuse) skill directly on his wings. At first, he felt nothing, but then he started to feel the mana around them and all over his body; it was like a permanent field that extended about two feet around him—or three chihuahuas.

'Maybe infusing the Air itself?'

He began imagining how air moved around an airplane wing, how it produced lift. Then he pictured how his wings would do the same, how it would feel to have the air rush through them, how it should move.

With a clear image in mind, he took a deep breath and used the (Infuse) skill again, but both on himself and the surrounding air. A rush of wind passed through his wings, but then stopped.

He took a glance at his MP. That little stunt cost him 10 MP, 10 minutes… 'But I'm close; I was too aggressive. Even if it had worked, all I would have achieved was to jump in the air. I need a continuous flow of air, not a single rush.'

Next, he did slight movements with his wings instead of leaving them stationary, moving large volumes of air with each slow flap. It was nowhere near enough to produce any lift, but that is how it should feel.

'A continuous stream of air moving through my wings… be the air.'

He used (Infuse) again, but this time he was gentler with it, slowly guiding the air through the wings. With each lazy flap, he gathered more and more air, and fed just enough mana into the air through the skill. The mana consumption dropped significantly, slowly going down one point at a time instead of a single rush.

Reducing the size of his tail by half to not rely on it when trying to lift off or have it weigh him down too much. Little by little, he did small hops that slowly increased the time it took him to come back to the floor.

Slowly, he started to jump higher and higher, letting his wings do most of the job, landing softly in between jumps.

He began hopping around as if he was on the surface of a very low-gravity world, jumping up to a school bus length in the air, letting himself fall without using (Infuse), unless necessary to not break his legs at landing. Then he jumped up to a football field in the air, gliding a little and breaking the fall at the last moment.

Feeling confident, he returned his tail to its full length. Using his legs and wings, he launched himself into the air.

After that short jump, he finally achieved flight, positioning his body horizontally. He soon found an efficient rhythm, gliding for a bit, then diving and rushing upwards with (Infuse); just a slight movement with his wings was enough to maneuver himself.

It was exhilarating, addictive even. After a few decades of being a prisoner of weakness in his late life, where even getting up to the bathroom was a small torture, the feeling was intoxicating. A rush better than a roller coaster, even better than racing a motorcycle…

'This. This is true freedom…'

He looped in the sky, retracting his wings during dives like a bird of prey to accelerate, extending them and twisting in the air with forces that strained his body. He flew close to the treetops and high in the sky, his (Focus) even activating by itself at times.

Shrinking the wings made him even more maneuverable, but the MP consumption to gain altitude grew the shorter he made them, so he kept them at their maximum size most of the time.

His MP continued to drain constantly, but he found a good rhythm. Using (Infuse) efficiently.

Still, his mana was steadily decreasing, and he was getting tired, so it was clear that this was not something that he could do all day, and the sun was getting lower. So he continued flying, but this time he used his other senses to hunt.

And it did not take him long to find his dinner.

— — —

There is a reason why thermal cameras were so sought after in Earth's armed conflicts—they simply made hunting mundane.

Aizel found a deer-like creature lazily walking above a small hill. It glowed like a flare on his thermal vision, similarly to how a standard camera can't really ever compare to the human eye; no thermal technology on Earth came even close to the level of detail that his eyes provided. You would need to combine a high-speed camera, a thermal camera, multiple prisms and mirrors with telescopic lenses to even compete.

'Some military probably has that kind of thing, but I have two of them jacked directly into my brain.'

He climbed up and aligned himself for a quick kill.

Diving at high speed, not even thinking about the consequences of crashing into the ground, or into his prey.

Once he was a school-bus distance away from the creature, he activated (Focus). The world slowed down; he could see how the deer-like creature slowly turned towards him, but it was too late for it.

In that fragment of time, he debated whether to extend his hand and use his claws, or to use the karambit-like dagger at the tip of the wing-thumb. But once he got closer, it was a non-issue; his wing was perfectly aligned for the kill.

He retracted his wings and delivered the deadliest thumbs-up to the creature with his folded wing. He severed its neck; it gave almost no resistance, but he felt the visceral sensation of flesh, muscle, cartilage, and even some bone being sliced. He was not using a knife, but his own claw, and even if it happened in an instant, (Focus) forced him to extend his perception of time and his own sensations.

As soon as he was clear of the creature, he unfolded his wings again and rose in the sky while circling his prey. The creature managed to step twice before falling.

Aizel slowed down and landed gracefully beside the body, not even thinking too much about his movements anymore.

He retracted his wings and tail and glanced at his mana pool to assess his expenditure after his Draconian features were back in his mana pool.

〔 MP: 511/840 〕

That little stunt was really trying. The adrenaline rush combined with the physical and mental exertion left him a little more drained than he expected.

He got close to the creature and was pleasantly surprised.

The sudden loss of blood pressure probably made it pass out on the spot before it could drown in its own blood.

The creature was a quadruped, a lot larger than he previously thought, probably as large as a moose, but it was slender and looked like a deer. The color of its hide appeared to be shifting, but upon closer inspection, he realized that it was not shifting, it was the normal brown color of a deer, except its coloration seemed different in polarized light and UV light, its thermal signature was slowly receding, draining with blood that appeared to shine in his eyes, like a river or fluorescent light flowing down the small hill.

To human eyes, this would probably just look like a huge deer bleeding out, but to his new senses, the scene was magical.

He rolled up his jeans to not get them dirty, and extended his right index and thumb claw, using 20 total MP for what he was now calling 'materialization.'

Aizel had never hunted, skinned, or gutted game before. But he had gone hunting with his father and seen a lot of videos over the years, a guilty pleasure of his when social media algorithms took him down hunting content rabbit holes.

Careful not to get his only set of clothes too dirty, he began to prepare the creature.

— — —

With no fire or patience to cook the meat, he began to think if eating it raw would be a bad idea.

It would be fitting for him to die from bacteria just after being given another chance at life, but then he remembered Deez Nerd's words.

'He said to use (Purify) for monster meat. I do not think this large deer qualifies as a monster, but if it can clean monster meat, I suppose it doesn't hurt to try?'

Aizel extended his hand over the cut meat and said out loud, "Purify!…" and nothing happened.

'Hmm… It did not hurt to try. He did say that the skill evolved from (Clean), but I do not know how to cast or acquire that one… so far, (Focus) I acquired by chance, but (Infuse) did take me some trial and error. Is it also just a matter of visualization?'

He began visualizing what the (Clean) skill would do; he visualized how the thick, iridescent vapor that is mana washed over the meat, how it would remove the dirt and grime from it.

He went a step beyond that and imagined the mana acting as water that seeped into it, removing all blood but leaving the proteins, fibers, and myoglobin intact.

Once he had a clear image in his mind, he used (Infuse) similarly to when he used it to achieve flight.

A slow and gentle iridescent vapor of mana left his raised hand and seeped into a rough cut of giant deer meat; he could almost taste the meat through it, but that was probably only his hunger amplifying his already obnoxious sense of smell.

〔 System: Active Skill (Clean) acquired. 〕

〔 Notice: Advanced knowledge detected.

► Basic Active Skill (Clean) evolved.

► Advanced Active Skill (Cleanse) acquired. 〕

〔 Notice: Superior knowledge detected.

► Advanced Active Skill (Cleanse) evolved.

► Superior Active/Passive Skill Active (Purify) acquired. 〕

'What the fuck?'

'The skill acquisition went from "Visualize this and hope for the best" to "Automatic" in the blink of an eye… Or there isn't a "Fly" skill'

'Is this how it is supposed to work?… how far can I push this Infuse skill?'

Driven by hunger and curiosity, he tried something else. He began picturing the now-clean piece of meat being cooked, how the molecules would be excited uniformly all over the piece of meat, just at a slightly higher temperature, and molecule excitement at the edges to induce a Maillard reaction, how the meat would look afterward, even how it would smell and taste.

'I wanted to try and create a "fire" or "ember" skill. But let's see if this works… (Infuse), (Clean), and even (Focus) have clear concepts behind them; maybe "Cook"?'

With everything he wanted from the skill envisioned, he used (Infuse) over the meat, keeping the 'Cook' concept and all the other visualizations clearly in mind.

Something was happening to the meat; it was not cooking, but it felt different. 'Maybe it needs more energy, fuel, mana?' Little by little, he increased the amount of mana that (Infuse) was using; the draining rate became the same as what he imagined (Focus) would look like in real time, which was a lot.

But it was working; slowly, the meat began to release an almost divine smell, and the outside layer started to acquire a nice crust. The mana usage started to grow larger and larger, but Aizel was in a trance. He only stopped once he was satisfied with the color of the meat.

He bit into it, juices flowed out of the meat, and the taste was even better than the smell; it was cooked perfectly.

〔 System: Basic Active Skill (Cook) acquired. 〕

He glanced at the system prompt, 'I wonder what its limits are? Well, I suppose that is why I am here'

Then he glanced at his stats.

〔 MP: 100/840 〕

"Damn!~ Fucking thing… Is more expensive than flying around!"

He was not paying attention to the mana usage, so he did not know how much mana (Cook) or evolving (Clean) to (Purify) used, but he assumed that (Cook) took most of his mana points.

'I guess I will have to cook the old-fashioned way; that mana usage is just… Atrocious'