"If you want me! Then you have to come and take me!" As she screamed, the draconic fire burning inside her ignited into a raging inferno, and what Arad could see in her shadow was a massive brown drakaina roaring at him.

Before even knowing it, he had already shifted back into his massive draconic form, and without wasting a moment, she rushed toward him at full speed. Why did he shift? Was it out of fear, worry? No, the woman facing him was a drakaina, and he had to show her some respect.

Seeing Arad take his draconic form, Noel’s mind flashed back to her past. She didn’t know who her parents were, and the first thing she woke up to in this life was the cold, lifeless beach she got washed into.

She was but a child, cold, hungry, naked, and alone in a massive land filled with harrowing monsters, large nightmares, and terrifying beings that even demons flee from. Using her nails and teeth, she had to survive on her own, spend countless nights hiding in terror, crying, and barely getting to eat once a week.

It took her a whole year to discover her own power, and before that, it was a miracle that she managed to survive with just the power of a human child. And the first of her earth powers was scouting ability. While walking barefoot on the ground, she could sense and detect vibrations from miles away, which allowed her to locate prey and avoid monsters that she couldn’t fathom.

When she had mastered that power, she could even travel freely at night and find springs to collect water. It was her sixth sense, and it was almost overpowered. But as it is with everything, she was soon proved wrong.

As she was trying to cross the deadly forest at night, making sure to avoid all of the predators, a large bird of prey, flying silently like an owl, swooped down. It was massive, terrifying, and it gouged her guts immediately with its beak. One moment, she was walking through the forest, and in the next, she was getting carried across the sky while struggling to prevent her guts from spilling out.

She cried, unable to endure the agonizing pain, and before she could even know it, she was dropped into a massive nest. The mother bird flew away, leaving Noel with the hungry chicks. Each of those chicks was at least three meters tall, monsters that looked more like a featherless dinosaur than anything else.

She tried to run away, but with seven chicks, she quickly got surrounded, pinned to the ground, and they started tearing her apart. By all means, this should’ve been her end, a painful, agonizing death. But her draconic blood wasn’t going to let mere birds take her life.

While getting eaten alive, her second ability was unlocked. Stone-hard scales started to appear on her skin, and soon, the chick’s beaks shattered against her body, unable to bite into her flesh as if she were made out of stone. But it didn’t end at that, her body started weighing a ton, as if she was made of stone. Even her wounds closed with mud, finally preventing her intestines from spilling out.

At this point, and after months of suffering alone in this monster-infested forest, pain, suffering, hunger, and rage were all but common emotions, things that had stopped bothering her long ago, since if they did, she would’ve just given up and died.

Using her massive weight and hardness, she tackled one of the birds by the leg, broke its knee, and dropped it out of the nest. Then one by one, she pummelled the rest to death as they tried to peck her to death and only ended up damaging their beaks further.

When the mother bird returned later, all of her chicks were gone, kicked out of the nest, and Noel was hiding there among the eggshells in ambush. As the mother bird pecked around the nest, trying to find her chicks, Noel jumped at her head and grabbed onto the feathers, quickly swinging a fist at the monster’s eye.

The mother bird roared and flew into the sky with Noel latched onto her head. She was at least twenty meters long and wings far wider than that, yet she couldn’t do anything about the tiny, heavy, and rock-hard girl latched onto her head and punching her eyes out.

When Noel managed to gouge the bird’s eyes out, the two of them fell from the sky and landed in the middle of the forest. The mother bird died instantly due to her size and hollow bones, but Noel survived thanks to being cushioned by the bird’s body and her stone durability.

Noel had survived another day, but barely. The next weeks were a struggle as she hid in a tiny hole waiting for her guts to heal, fighting off infections and pain with her draconic resilience alone. But thanks to hiding in a hole underground for several weeks, she unlocked another aspect of her power, the ability to control the earth.

Using that power, Noel could create tentacles from dirt and use them to capture and crush animals and monsters; she could create spikes, dig holes, and build shelter for herself. But such power consumed a lot of her mana, causing her to fall to the ground with a crushing headache if she overexerted herself.

Then one day, as she was asleep in her den, the ground around her shook, the trees burned to ash, and when she rushed in amidst the suffocating smoke, she saw it. A massive red dragon sniffing around her hideout. 𝘧𝓇ℯℯ𝑤ℯ𝘣𝓃ℴ𝓋𝑒𝑙.𝑐𝘰𝑚

The moment she moved, he spotted her with ease. "Hoo, a human with a bloodline, and I here thought it was some young earth drakaina..." He approached, and she slowly backed away. "You won’t make it for a mate, but it would be good to kill time until I find a real one."

But there was one problem: Noel didn’t understand speech. She never learned it, and so, could only sense the dragon’s malice through his eyes, and immediately knew that she had to either run or fight.

She lifted one hand, and in an instant, a wave of flames washed over her entire body, charring her black. "You’re too weak." He growled, "Don’t worry, I do have some healing items. I’ll get those burns sorted out."

But before he could move, earth tentacles wrapped around his entire body, pulled him down, and when he shattered them, Noel was already gone, having used her earth magic to slip underground and flee.

The dragon was furious; not once in his life had someone managed to trick him, but this elf had played him. What he thought were burns on her skin were nothing but soot covering her stone body.

As he raged and roared, Noel was hiding in a tiny cave deep underground, crying and shaking. She was terrified, in pain, and already reaching her breaking point. That dragon is out waiting for her, and with how much time dragons have, he would wait for years if he has to; they are that spiteful.

If she is to survive, she has to get rid of him, but with her current power, with her current small body, it is impossible. She had to survive in the cave for now, fight off starvation by hunting bugs and lizards, and try her best to scout the surface with her earth sense without the dragon noticing.

As she expected, the fire lizard outside was waiting for her, camping in the forest. Days became weeks, and weeks became months. Eventually, three whole years had passed, and the dragons didn’t move a single step away from the forest. To him, this was like a three-hour wait and nothing more.

Through all that time, Noel had stayed underground, crying and working tirelessly until her hands bled to perfect and master her earth magic, and when she was confident in herself, she decided to fight that dragon once more.

As the dragon was half-asleep with one eye closed and the other open, a massive stone claw burst from the ground around its neck, and tried to rip his head off. Of course, he managed to shake it off and jumped back like a surprised cat.

"What was that?" But then, the earth split apart, and what Noel had come up with came out. The entire forest shook, the trees burned, and earthquakes could be felt from miles away.

The wood elf kingdom was far away from that forest, once known as a death zone filled with nothing but terrifying monsters that not even veteran adventurers dared approach. They could see the clash. The entire forest got engulfed in dust and flames, the mountains nearby cracked, and the clash lasted a whole week, but in the end, the only thing that echoed in the air was the death throes of a red dragon, before his body exploded like a nuke of flames and ripped a massive chunk of the forest.

Of course, the kingdom didn’t sit still. After the clash, they sent their entire army to finish off whatever monster won. They were bound to be weak after all, and this was a good chance to get rare materials. But what they found was a naked wood elf little girl, munching on the corpse of an adult red dragon.

That was Noel’s first contact with people, and if those elves didn’t look like her, she would’ve killed them like any other monster. But, seeing them, she calmed down and went back with the soldiers. They looked like her after all, so she had finally found her kin.

That was in the past, and now, Arad was going to see whatever killed that dragon. Earth and stone rushed from the ground, engulfed Noel’s injured body, and in the blink of an eye, a shell in the form of a dragon as big as he was charged at him.

Arad blocked Noel’s tackle and was surprised to find out that this wasn’t a draconic form but just a body made out of dirt and stone, more akin to a golem than anything else, and Noel’s true body must be hiding inside it.

The Stone Dragon was as fast and agile as a real dragon, and detailed to the smallest of scales. But what was terrifying about it was that when Arad hit it with his claws and ripped a chunk out, it instantly regenerated from the ground.

As long as Noel has mana, and as long as she has access to the infinite ground, this dragon would never fall.