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<Sc'the>
(Picking up where it was previously (First Days of Redline's Two Embarrassing Days) 

It didn't take much longer for the other three to finish cooking, but it certainly felt like forever. I waited impatiently as the last minute ticked by and finally it turned 20:77pm and he reappeared in the training basement with the three carcasses floating behind him. I didn't even wait for him to set them all down and straight up tackled one straight out of the air. I swear I hoped I would never get used to the uniqueness the spices they used here, it would be such a shame when eating such a treat would become a norm. 

It took me a half hour* to eat the three of them, and thankfully Pops waited patiently for me to finish. "If you were any older I would keep you from eating just to level up your (Hunger Resistance), but since you are only a few days old it would most likely negatively impact your growth physically. No matter how unlimited your stamina seems to be it is still most likely a separate factor when compared to your physical growth." I pretended not to hear him: not being able to eat this...this heavenly meat because you wanted to train my (Hunger Resistance) was a crime. 

He was silent for most of the time I ate, only speaking up when I was halfway through the last carcass. "Since you are almost done, and most likely listening to me now. I'll explain the rest of what I want to have you doing for the next few days so I can get a proper gauge on your abilities." He paused, "I'm sure that you will have a different style to follow when you go to the Dragon Empire so I'll be just letting you figure out your own style of fighting for now, and pointing out things as they come.

"First I am going to have you going through all the motions I had Redline go through: running around the property until you show fatigue, then I'll be testing your physical stats and how much damage you can inflict and bear against. That will likely take the rest of the night, so tomorrow I'll be testing how much magic you have and how powerful of spells you can use as well as how many, if possible. Unless you are able to work through the night, which will give you fatigue resistance, as I'm sure you don't have that currently...though, in hindsight you might not get that at all from what I've seen of your stamina." 

That all sounded pretty normal...I felt like he was keeping a few things from me regarding the running and the durability training but it couldn't be that bad...right? He snapped a finger and what I had skipped over eating--mostly the fats and cartilage--turned to dust under me and he turned on his heel and started to walk towards the stairs. I followed after him, careful not to be too close, but also not too far lest he get mad at me. 

"I'm also going to have to do something about those claws of yours..." I heard him whispering under his breath but whatever he was thinking didn't really bother me--as long as I was still able to use my claws in a natural fashion I wasn't all too worried about having something to cover the more dangerous part of them...

We went from the front of the house to the edge of the yard, just behind the East wall and he stopped when we were right under it. "Alright, now I want you to run along this wall, around the entirety of this property until you get tired, and when you do...I want you to keep running." I tilted my head at him, he did this for Redline too? What a militaristic style of training...My attention was brought to the walls: they were a mix of stone and metal, with the metal sort of sticking out of the stone at places and I was sure that there were probably beams of it all throughout the structure. 

"What are you standing there for! Get on Running!!" His sudden yelling snapped me out of my curious staring and I set off running, "No Skills and you better be going full speed the entire time! I don't want to see you slow down a single second!" It was a little jarring hearing such authority from only a few lengths behind me at the time, but soon I was across the field and he was nowhere in sight. 

I looked back to see where he'd gone but there was no one there in the spot he'd been, "What are you looking around for! Keep running and stop looking around!" sound was coming from a disk I hadn't noticed above me. It was vibrating at the rate he was speaking without him actually being there, but that didn't make his yelling any scarier. I stopped thinking and focused my mind on running around the area. 

I decided to start counting the laps, with the anticipation of just getting to the next lap being the only thing driving me forwards. I hadn't even looked at the time since starting, but after getting past sixty I'd stopped counting and just focused on keeping my breathing steady and my legs moving...Pretty soon it turned into routine, just doing the motions allowed me to get used to the feeling and keep my breathing steady and that was when my mind started to wander again.

I decided not to look at the time since that might cause me to suddenly focus on how I was doing and instead focused on the other things around me: the metal disk that had been following me had stopped and turned into a metal ring of sorts that attached itself to my tail after lap fifty and I could feel that it had sort of spread up my back and was pressuring my back, but that didn't really make running all that harder...I just had to get used to the difference and adjust for how it screwed with me, and after around a lap or two of the pressure changing spots of getting larger or heightened in certain areas I wasn't having much trouble adjusting to it naturally.  

It made me wonder how he felt about that while messing with me...was he doing it on purpose to test my ability to adapt to different things? Was he just trying to slow me down or keep me from running as fast for as long as I had? How many laps was I at now? 120? More? This place wasn't small either, it was like running around a small town in the middle of no-where and that probably didn't even come close to the total distance. 

"Alright, Sc'the you may stop." I was only a quarter the way to my next lap! I wasn't going to stop until I finished my lap, no matter what happened. "I said you can stop now Sc'the. I've seen what I need to for this portion..." I only had, like, a little left to go! After he saw that I wasn't listening he audibly sighed through the strange disc, "Alright. When you get done with your lap I want you to meet me in the Training Area again and we'll continue there..." 

As I got closer and closer to finishing the realization that I'd gone against Pop's direct orders kept ringing in my mind and by the time I'd passed the 'finish line' I'd slowed down to a walk. I hadn't even passed the first exercise and I'd already gone against Pops direct orders! 

He was going to be so mad at me. I couldn't help but drag myself to the house and down the stairs to the Training Area, sulking and feeling guilty at what I'd just done. What was he going to make me do after this? I'd ignored him, just to finish a lap. He was surely going to put me in the area with the Dummies on the highest level, or maybe he was going to beat it into me himself... I looked behind me debating whether hiding was the better option at the moment?

I'd dragged a line through the house with my tail-blade!! I looked at the deep gouge in the floor and then at my tail and decided that enough had been done already, facing him would probably be better than hiding by this point...

I dragged myself over to the training area with the Dummies where I'd last met him at: thinking about how short a life this had been and how much I had yet to discover. I just got here! Sure there were plenty of moments I'd regretted it and almost wished that I'd died instead, but there were still plenty of moments that I wanted to hold onto. All the delicious meats I'd gotten to eat, the different kinds of people and creatures I'd seen, how strong things were here and the fact I could've gotten to such strength if I hadn't messed up so much...

"What's wrong with you?" Here it comes... "You haven't done anything wrong. So why are you sulking like that?" Wait, he was genuine about that? I wasn't going to be turned to dust or worse? He seemed to look at me, and then behind me, probably at the line I'd dug through the floor on my way here. 

"Don't worry about anything you've done right now. You're still young so it's expected if you do your own thing instead of listening sometimes." He smiled at me warmly, "Look I took you in, and Red likes you a lot already. I'm not going to just kick out or get rid of the one my daughter's grown so close to in such a short time just because you wanted to run a little more...or that you scratched a groove into the floor a few times. She did much worse when I first adopted her and took her into my home, even going as far as destroying three of the rooms upstairs before finally settling in and realizing I wasn't trying to keep her trapped here.

"Look you are only a few days old. It's amazing that you're able to adapt and learn as quickly as you have, and seeing you running full speed for the better part of four hours, even while I increased the pressure using (Telekinesis) is very impressive." He knelt down and gently lifted up my head--I didn't want to look him in the eyes, "I don't care how much of this house gets destroyed or how much fun you're having to the point of ignoring me. I told you I wasn't doing this to hurt you again and I certainly don't want to piss off Red by making you do something before you're ready to handle yourself." 

He stood back up and backed away a few lengths, "Take a few moments to calm down. If you want to take the night off and rest a little or go and do your own thing that is fine. I want you to want to get stronger, and I'm not going to punish you for wanting to do more than I'm telling you to." At that he disappeared and I sat there in the training room for a while it was then that I decided to take a look at the time: 

0:17am

He was right. I'd been running like that for a little over four hours...

That kind of stamina was something I'd have killed for previously: make I would've actually cared about doing good in any sport I played, and I wouldn't have had any trouble getting to school in the mornings...But I wasn't there. I needed to get past that life: this was something I was a part of now. I was a dragon now, sure I was still among humans...humanoids, there were still so many things that were different here that I would have no comparison to back on Earth. 

I mean, having two suns and three moons in the sky were definitely a good reminder of that.

It would be nice if I could just tell him what I was feeling dammit.
Now I had to go back upstairs just to get him to come back downstairs...

I was debating whether I wanted to end it here or not, but just over 2k words I decided that this was probably a good time to stop and I could continue in the next part decently fine without feeling like I needed to add more or being redundant. 
Also I'm sorry if having his (technical) dysphoria come up as a constant thing gets too annoying to read. I will be cutting down on it for the future, I just feel like it's important in the early stages of the book. 

Anyways, Thanks for reading and I'll see you next time!

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Patreon Support: Nicolae, sselraef, ShadowOfShadow, EstenLyrics, Conner, erik
(If you want a Patreon Shout out please consider joining The Eyes of Amber, in order to gloat about them to the world!)

*P.S. Just a reminder that Hours are 100 minutes long so half an hour is 50 minutes, not 30. 
--Also I never said anything about why I say Length and not a metric system so I'll say here that if Sc'the says lengths he's talking about the length of his tail compared to something at a distance. The other part of that will come later...

P. P. S. I also wanted to Sincerely apologize to erik for missing the Patreon shout out that they were promised upon joining. I am still in the middle of getting the house fixed up and moved in fully and this is the first time I've been able to even touch my computer. (This may sound like excuses, and I don't know what else to say if that's the case. I can't do it on my phone and I was too busy to be able to do anything on my computer, so I'm at a bit of an impasse there.