Chapter 12

Ray woke up in a panic. Out of breath… Sweating… He felt as if he died and had just returned to life. At least again anyway. Everything that happened felt like a nightmare. It was worse than when he was still the dragon. Back then, at least he had the power to fight back. He never felt so defenceless and hopeless before. Raising his upper body he looked around to see where he was. It seemed that he had been taken into his room. His chest and face, wrapped with thick bandages. There was still a slight pain in his chest, but the swelling on his face had come down a lot. When looking to his side he could see his?mother had fallen asleep right beside him. An inexplicable smile appeared on his lips. 'How could humans be so sweet, yet so cruel to another? ' The slight movement of Ray's hand woke her up. As she opened her eyes, they gradually became to water as tears formed on her eyelids. "Ray… I can't believe it… You??re finally awake!" Scarlett cried out loud. Her voice was so loud that Ray's father came crashing into the room a few moments later. "You're awake… Don't do such a reckless thing again, Ray… We thought that you'd never wake up." Jack said. Ray furrowed his eyebrows. Hadn't it only been a day? Why are they making such a fuss? "How long was I asleep for?" he asked. "You've been out cold for an entire week now. Your mother called me and I rushed back as fast as I could." Jack let out a sigh. 'A week? How was that possible?' Even though Ray knew that he was badly injured, a week of unconsciousness was just too much. No wonder his parents were so worried. Ray set the thought aside and decided to ask about Bob and Kyle instead. When his parents heard his question, the two of them turned pale. It turned out that after a few days of extensive searching, they still didn't manage to find Bob and Kyle. In the end, the only conclusion that they could draw upon was that they were dead. The women of the village decided to place all the blame onto Ray even though his parents had explained to all of them as to what exactly had happened in the forest. Even Gary had said his piece and told everyone that it was his idea to go into the forest. Unfortunately, no one believed him. The stigma of the red hair was just too strong for him to counter. It took Jack his entire strength to convince Scarlett so that she wouldn't beat these village women to their deaths. Ray could only shake his head regarding the deaths of Bob and Kyle. He wasn't blaming himself for he knew that he needed to make a choice and at that time, he did what he could do. The only thing that Ray was happy to hear about were stories related to Amy. His parents told him that Amy only received trivial injuries from the wolf. Gary had done a good job of protecting her. The doctor said that she merely fainted from shock. Jack and Scarlett explained everything that Ray needed to know before they decided to leave the room in order to let him recuperate from his wounds properly. They also needed some sleep, after being worried sick for so long. Now that they knew that their son wasn't in immediate danger anymore.

They could finally relax. There was one thing that had been bothering Ray ever since he woke up. He remembered seeing a transparent status window appear right before him at that time, but he was just too preoccupied to pay any attention to it. The last time he thought about the transparent status window, it reappeared. Ray assumed that the window would probably appear if he thought about it, and so… He did. To his surprise, his theory worked. 'What is this strange system? Does every human have a system like this?' The only person that could possibly ease Ray's doubts was his mother, but he was unsure how she would react if she heard about something like this. Ray thought hard and long and then decided that there should be no harm trying to activate the skill. With a will, he activated the skill and his vision changed into wireframe view. The walls and the bed had become a white wireframe showing the buildings blocks of it all. Ray looked towards the right and he could see his mother and father from beyond the wall. Their bodies seemed to be giving off a golden glow. It was difficult to explain, but Ray could see more than his regular eyesight. The glow from his parents' bodies even told him everything that he needed such as their heartbeats and information related to their bodies like their muscle fibres. The vision didn't surprise Ray that much for he had something like this back when he was still a dragon. The skill sure was handy for it enabled him to see through obstacles. For example, if there was someone hiding behind a tree, then he would be able to see that person with a glance. Ray deactivated the skill and looked at the status window in front of him once more. Even though using the skill wasn't that tiring, it still strained his eyes. On the status bar, there was a little transparent tab with a word inscribed on it that said, "Skills". Opening it, a row of question marks appeared. Only one skill was shown to be unlocked, it was the Blessing of the Dragon Eyes. At the very top of the list were the numbers 1/1000. Ray made a quick guess and surmised that these numbers should be the number of skills that he had as a dragon. But he actually had no idea how many skills he had back when he was still a dragon. After all, he wasn't the type to experiment back then and he only used skills which were convenient. In short, there was no way to confirm Ray's thoughts other than to unlock more skills. But the problem was that what was needed to unlock skills? He remembered that the skill was unlocked when he defeated the Intermediate Tiered beast wolf. Was the condition just to kill a beast, or does it have to be a new undefeated beast every time? If that's the case, then wouldn't it be too easy? There were so many creatures in the entire continent no one could probably count them all. Thinking about all of these made Ray remember that a second status window had appeared back then. This… Ray had no idea what a beast crystal was. With no knowledge related to a so-called beast crystal, Ray decided to set it aside for now.