Born a Territory Lord’s Son

When Rowen drowsily awoke, he found himself in an uncomfortably confined space. He started to struggle subconsciously when he suddenly heard a cracking sound from the walls around him. It seemed like something was breaking. Rowen attempted to prop himself up but failed surprisingly.

“Uh?” Then, a sweet and wonderful aroma directly filled Rowen’s nostrils. He quickly looked around for the source of the aroma as he was a little bit hungry. But he could only find, lying scattered on the floor, something like pieces of eggshells but bigger than the common eggshells of chicken or duck.

Rowen was too starving to consider other things. He stretched out trying to pick a piece of the eggshells up. Next, he was bug—eyed in shock by what he saw: his hand was replaced by a claw full of scales. After repeated checking, Rowen finally accepted the fact that he was turned into a dragon—like monster, which baffled him completely.

Looking at the monsters around him: each had a skull head, sunken eyes, sharp teeth, horns in the head; skin absent at the root of the horns and around the cheeks. Looking down: black skin, a bulky figure, heavy limbs, a long neck, huge wings growing in the back, and also a long tail. Weren’t they dragons? Rowen then looked at himself. His body was too wet that he couldn’t tell the color of it. But, judging from his little lambs, gentle tail, and soft wings, he obviously belonged to the same species as the monsters around him.

That was undoubtedly a terrible shock to Rowen! It took him a long time to get over the shock. Thanks to Rowen’s long time hanging out in forums, he was optimistic and tolerant. After a long while being upset, Rowen accepted the fact that he had become a monster. Just then, there came a strange and gentle voice, which was slow and fantastically magical. After the voice died, Rowen was suddenly enlightened.

He really became a dragon! A black dragon! A powerful black dragon! The voice he just heard was the dragon family’s unique incantation for elementary knowledge enlightenment, the purpose of which was to teach the baby dragons languages, such as dragon language, heaven language, elf language and also the common language, and to impart general knowledge to baby dragons about the species they belonged to and the world they lived in. But, it was just a process of pouring knowledge into the baby dragons heads. The baby dragons still needed lots of time to absorb the knowledge.

All of a sudden, Rowen thought his situation was not so bad. After all, he was a dragon now, a living creature possessing such a strong power and such a great longevity. Thinking of that, Rowen was finally positive about his situation, what’s more, his heart was filled with a strong sense of happiness, which compelled him to thank God for granting him a chance to live an extraordinary life.

Hmmm, or, a dragon life. Rowen decided to seize the opportunity and enjoy his life as a dragon. As Rowen made up his mind to live a wonderful life, many past memories crowded in upon his mind. He remembered that in the movies of his former life, dragons, such as Dragon Slayers, Dragon Knights, and others. They all were synonyms for tools of heroes for obtaining experience and treasures; or roles such as mounts or familiars, they were all added in movies to make the heroes look good and powerful. No matter what kinds of dragons they were, they all ended up dead. Rowen felt enormous terror flooding over him. Rowen curled his lips, thinking he was really in a situation of half water and half flame.

Rowen was being worried about the unknown crisis when a noise of quarrelling came into his ears. It was his parents arguing about how to name Rowen. The father seemed to prefer a more powerful and aggressive name, while the mother insisted on a cute name for their baby. Which was weird to Rowen because he had learnt from the enlightening process that it took a long time for dragon eggs to be incubated, why the parents didn’t name their baby dragon until now? With curiosity, Rowen tried to search the answer from the knowledge just poured into his head. It turned out that with very low incubated rate, dragon parents only named their babies after the baby dragons successfully came out of the eggs.

Hopefully, they didn’t give their babies terrible and humble names in hope of their babies’ healthy growth according to customary practices like some remote areas in some countries. Think about it, a powerful and strong black dragon with a name of Kitty or Doggie or the likes. Perhaps there weren’t any cats or dogs in this world. But there may be some other similar little and weak creatures. A dragon couldn’t accept a name like that because his rivals might laugh loudly at his stupid name and would be in no mood for a serious fight before the starting of a fight.

“I think ‘Jason’ is a great name. Let’s take it.” Said a strong, mighty and powerful black dragon. Rowen knew he was the father at the first glance. But the beautiful female dragon standing next to him didn’t agree with him, she said that “Tom” was more popular than “Jason”.

Jason and Tom? Rowen found them both funny and annoying. He strongly expressed his opposition to both names. But as a new—born dragon, he hadn’t developed a vocal cord that was able to pronounce complex syllables. He could only make a simple and single sound, which was good enough to get the arguing parents’ notice. The beautiful female dragon, Rowen’s mother, quitted the argument and quickly ran to Rowen. She carefully and gently held Rowen in her arms, her face lighted up with maternal love. What a handsome little dragon!

Another dragon’s head later appeared, looked very funny in Rowen’s eyes. They obviously were dreadful dragons, not handsome at all. But this dragon nodded in agreement, and said, “How about ‘Rowen’? Rowen Jones. Hope he will grow into a handsome and mighty man like his father.”

Hearing that, Rowen almost laughed out. He was handsome? Rowen looked up and down at this self—praising black dragon: strong as he was, but he was not even close to handsome. He was just a black dragon with a frightening huge frame. Rowen made his comments from a human’s perspective, he certainly didn’t know if his father was handsome or not. But judging from the sweet and happy smile on his mother’s face, he was obviously wrong. “Hold on! Rowen? The same name as my old one?” Rowen was happy with the news.

Anyway, now that Rowen got a brand—new life, a wonderful opportunity to start over, he would definitely make it worth living. Rowen Jones had made up his mind that he would start learning and practicing to be a hero, or at least an indispensable costar that wouldn’t die any time anywhere. Rowen of course needed to make a long—term plan with a clear direction and so on. But till then, the first problem, which also was the most important one, he needed to solve was when he could have something to eat. Rowen was starving.

After the meal, Rowen found a place in his parent’s lair as his own bedroom. The food was all cooked, which was not bad. It seemed that dragons also knew how to use fire for cooking their food. Those black dragons were somewhat civilized. In his own bedroom, Rowen started exercising for his future development. Apparently, he had to begin with some basic training, such as pounce, bite, tail sweeping, wing fluttering, breathing, and the likes. Rowen felt it was very funny to do those things, but he had no other choice. He was a pure and simple animal now.

From the memories of his former life, Rowen knew that basis was fundamental to everything. Only with a solid basis could Rowen get enough opportunities for improvement. Only if Rowen was stronger, he would live a carefree life, yeah, as a dragon. In 12957 of the underground calendar, Rowen Jones was born. Every day after that day, he did physical exercise and meditation practice, in addition to which, he also made room for studying under his parents. Through study, Rowen had acquired a general knowledge of the branch of black dragons which Rowen and his parents were part of.

Originally, Rowen’s dragon ancients lived in moors on the ground, and they moved to underground over ten thousand years ago. Now there weren’t many records about the specific reason for the great migration. Rowen only knew it was something related to bad environment and the living conditions of black dragons. If Rowen wanted to know the details, he had to do some research all by himself.

The change of living environment led to species variation. The worst of all was the much lower birth rate in the underground world, a large number of dragon eggs even couldn’t be incubated. That resulted in a sharp decline in dragon population, meanwhile the powerful devils and monsters in the underground world was also one of the causes of dragons decreasing. Black dragons had to change their living style because of the decreasing population. Their contacts with each other were strengthened, even with those black dragons who lived in seclusion. In order to defend themselves against other species’ harassment, they didn’t hide their lairs and be completely isolated from each other all their lives anymore. For them, it was a beginning of changing from disorder to in order.

Most of them lived in the depths of the underground world, and they had got used to their current living environment now. Only a minority of them lived in seclusion somewhere. Rowen’s parents, for example, lived in somewhere near the earth’s surface, which was undoubtedly an opportunity for Rowen. As a baby dragon, Rowen’s life was supposed to be carefree, but the fear of future crisis forced Rowen to absorb all kinds of knowledge as much as possible. Rowen was a human in his former life, so he would think many things in advance and he also couldn’t sit there and do nothing about their living conditions.

During his study, Rowen found this was a fantastic world, in which living creatures were very intelligent. They had the ability to reproduce, which was obvious, and they also knew how to spend money and resources to buy things they wanted. What especially worthy of mention was that those resources were all summoned from special buildings. Only if humanoids were summoned, they may not have the initial occupations and equipment like they did in Heroes of Might and Magic. They would have to receive the special training to take a certain occupation.

But many occupations required a certain level of qualification. Even the creatures of the same species summoned from the same building would possess different qualifications, in short, it was a lottery. However, the building used for summoning creatures could be upgraded, the higher class the building was the greater qualification the summoned creatures will possess and also the more occupations they were qualified for. Taking castles that used to summon humans for example, humans summoned from 1st Class castles could only take up occupations such as peasants, miners, timber jacks and other occupations with low technique requirements, while humans summoned from 2nd Class castles could be warriors or carpenters or blacksmith. Only from 6th or above 6th Class castles could summon humans that possessed the qualification to be knights.

However, summoning creatures cost a huge number of money and resources. Furthermore, the summoned creatures needed to be trained before taking a battle. During the training period, which was a blank period, the summoned creatures must be provided with various living materials for their growth. The abovementioned factors apparently limited the number of creatures summoned, preventing them from flooding. Simply speaking, this world was like a combination of Dungeons and Dragons and Heroes of Might and Magic, a mysterious world with strange laws.

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