Ultimate Dragon System: Grinding my way to the Top-Chapter 157: I’m a dragon

Here’s the expanded version at 1200 words:

A few hours after the mission, Jelo, Mira, and Atlas sat inside Tongen’s apartment, laughing and replaying moments from earlier.

Tongen wasn’t laughing.

He stood quietly, watching Jelo.

Something about him was off.

Jelo was a student. If Tongen was going to draw out his full potential, he needed to know exactly what kind of power he was guiding. And right now, he didn’t.

Jelo was hiding something.

Tongen stepped forward.

"Jelo. Come with me. I want to talk."

The room went silent.

Atlas glanced at Mira. Mira looked confused.

Atlas wasn’t.

Tongen was a hybrid super. Experienced. When someone had power beyond their rank, he could feel it. He didn’t need to see a full display. A small fluctuation was enough.

And Jelo’s energy fluctuated.

Outside, the night air was calm. The kind of calm that felt deliberate — like the city itself had exhaled and decided to hold its breath. The streetlights cast long orange lines across the pavement. Somewhere in the distance, a car hummed past, headlights sweeping briefly over the road before disappearing around a corner.

They walked side by side.

Neither of them spoke for a moment. The silence between them wasn’t comfortable. It was the silence of two people circling something neither had said yet.

"Being a super is great, isn’t it?" Tongen asked.

"I guess," Jelo replied.

Small talk. Awkward.

Jelo kept his eyes ahead. His hands were relaxed at his sides, but something in his posture was tighter than usual. Like he already knew where this conversation was going and was bracing for it quietly, internally, the way someone does when they’ve been waiting for a particular moment to arrive for a long time.

Tongen stopped walking.

He turned slowly.

"I know you’re hiding something."

Jelo froze.

A bead of sweat traced down his cheek.

"What do you mean?"

Tongen’s eyes sharpened. Not with accusation. With focus. The same focus he used during combat assessments, during field analysis, during moments where reading someone correctly was the difference between a good outcome and a catastrophic one.

"Your aura isn’t stable."

"Your reflexes spike at random."

"And during the mission... for a split second... I felt something ancient."

Silence.

Streetlights hummed softly above them.

"That wasn’t an F-rank presence," Tongen said quietly.

Jelo clenched his fists. The movement was small — barely noticeable — but Tongen caught it. The air around Jelo shifted too, not violently, not like an explosion building beneath the surface, but enough. Enough for the wind to change direction. Enough for the temperature to drop by a fraction. Enough for Tongen to know he was right.

"I didn’t want anyone to find out."

Tongen didn’t react. He didn’t step back. He didn’t cross his arms. He simply waited, giving the silence room to breathe.

"Find out what?"

Jelo lifted his head.

His eyes weren’t glowing. They weren’t flashy. There was no dramatic visual shift, no surge of visible energy crawling across his skin. They were calm. Steady. The kind of calm that didn’t come from having nothing to fear — it came from having already accepted something long ago.

Too calm.

Tongen stared at him carefully. He had trained under difficult people. He had stood in front of supers who radiated enough pressure to make lesser men collapse at the knees. He had felt power before. Real power. The kind that didn’t need to announce itself.

What he felt standing in front of Jelo right now wasn’t loud.

But it was deep.

"For me to help you grow," Tongen said slowly, "for me to bring out your full potential... I need to know what I’m dealing with."

He wasn’t good at emotional conversations. He knew that about himself. His words came out firm, structured, precise — not because he lacked warmth, but because warmth was harder for him to show than strength. Still, he tried.

"I’m not against you. I’m here for you. I’m here to support you. To build you. To strengthen you. But I need the truth."

The streetlight above them flickered once, then steadied.

Silence stretched between them.

"Tell me what you know."

Jelo looked straight into his eyes.

"I’m a dragon."

Tongen blinked once.

"...I’m sorry?"

"I’m a dragon," Jelo repeated calmly. "You heard me."

Tongen’s expression hardened slightly — not with disbelief, but with the particular seriousness of a man recalibrating everything he thought he understood about the situation in front of him.

"Explain."

Jelo inhaled slowly. He looked down at his hand for a moment, then back up.

"I’m not fully a dragon. I’m half-human, half-dragon. I have dragon-related abilities." He flexed his fingers slightly, a quiet, almost habitual gesture, like someone checking that something is still there. "My skin can harden into scales — I call it Scaled Guard. I can form Dragon Claws. I can manipulate fire... not perfectly yet. And I grow stronger over time. Not just with training. Naturally. Like something inside me is still waking up."

Tongen’s eyes narrowed.

"So what I sensed during the mission... that surge..."

"Yes," Jelo nodded. "You were right."

Tongen took a step closer. Not threatening. Assessing.

"Is there more?"

Jelo hesitated this time. A real hesitation — not the kind built from reluctance to share, but from genuine uncertainty. The kind a person carries when they’re still learning the edges of something vast.

"Honestly... I don’t fully understand myself. Every day I discover something new. I don’t know my limit. I don’t know how strong I can become." His voice lowered slightly. "All I know... is that I’m a dragon."

The night felt heavier after that statement. The kind of heavy that comes not from dread, but from weight — from significance pressing itself quietly into the air around two people.

Tongen went quiet.

It had been a long time since a dragon-type super had existed. Information about them was classified. Rare. Difficult to access even for someone with his clearance level. What little he had seen — fragments of old records, redacted reports, conversations that stopped abruptly when certain ranks entered the room — had always pointed to the same conclusion.

Dragon-types weren’t just powerful.

They were a different category entirely.

A new one appearing now, at this point in time, in the form of a young student standing under a flickering streetlight?

That wasn’t small.

"Does anyone else know?" Tongen asked.

"Yes. Ken. John. Mira. Atlas. And Master Olmo."

"That’s all?"

"Yes."

Tongen nodded slowly.

"Good." His tone became serious in a different way now — less like an instructor and more like someone who understood exactly what kind of world they were both standing in. "You need to keep this secret. Your type is extremely rare. If the wrong people find out, you won’t just attract attention." He paused. "You’ll become a target."

Jelo swallowed. But he nodded firmly.

"I understand."

Tongen placed a hand on his shoulder. Brief. Solid.

"You’re not alone in this. From now on, we train properly. If you’re a dragon... then we refine that power." He paused. "But controlled. No reckless displays. Not unless I’m there."

Jelo gave a small nod. "Understood." 𝗳𝚛𝗲𝕖𝕨𝕖𝗯𝚗𝚘𝕧𝕖𝗹.𝗰𝗼𝕞

Tongen looked at the dark sky above them for a moment longer than necessary. His jaw was set. His thoughts were elsewhere — somewhere behind his eyes, running calculations he hadn’t been asked to make yet.

"It’s getting late. Let’s head back. You should start making your way home soon."

They began walking back.

But in Tongen’s mind, one thought remained —

If a dragon has appeared again...

Then something bigger is coming.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​