“Where do we start?” Matemai mauled this over then brightened as only Matemai can. He clapped his hands and said, “I know, you might not want to hear this but hear me out.” He raised his hands as if to placate me and said, “lets find Jena and your lair. I mean, you do have a to talk to Jena at some point. I can answer some of your questions along the way.”

  I narrowed my eyes, I was on to him. “This is not by any chance you trying to see a dragon, Matemai?”

  He grinned,“Well, if I happen to see a dragon that will be a happy coincidence but really I think we need the dragon. And he needs you. Jena’s dragon was silver and if this is the same dragon then he still have some more manifestation to do. You said he is here but not here, right?” I nodded. “There you go,” he said, “I won’t even see him.”

  “Sounds like you know him. Did you ever met him?”

  “I am old but not that old.” Shook his head regretfully.

  “Really, how old are you? When did Jena die?” Matemai was a walking mage cliché with his flowing white hair, parchment skin and a walking stick. I could tell the stick was more for effect than for walking. Even though he had white hair and parchment skin, he looked timeless. He had laugh lines when he smiled, which was always, otherwise his face smooth. He had to be young but older than Zuruvi and maNyoni.

  “One hundred and seventy one on my last birthday.”

  “One – ,”I trailed off. Stared at him in incredulously. That couldn’t be real. He had to be joking. Because if he wasn’t… then next to Matemai, I was practically a teenager.The idea felt absurd. Me — young?And that meant the system hadn’t changed my body arbitrarily. This… was simply what I was meant to look like at my age.. Something settled deep inside me. I wasn't just being randomly magically transformed, I was adapting to this new world. I wondered then if my emotions which has been all over the place since I got here, were also experiencing the same adaption.

  “Your guards?” I asked. It seems I can’t tell anyone’s age by looking at them.

  “Mhazi is ninety-eight. I don't about the other two. They are his new apprentices. I never asked.” He smiled. Being younger than the people around me felt deeply unfamiliar. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d felt that way. Back home, I had been among the oldest.

  “You don’t know how old your guards are?”

  “Age is not really important here, what I need to know is what they can do. Besides they work for Mhazi not me.” It made a strange kind of sense. Back home, age defined experience. But here, with the system guiding growth — and people living far longer than I was used to — age didn’t seem to matter much at all.

  “Do you know how old Zuruvi and maNyoni?” I still wanted to know people’s ages because that is how my mind had worked for a long time. Maybe with time that will change, if I am still around here.

  “Who? Oh, your farmer friends. I don’t know but I am guessing well over sixty.”

  No wonder I couldn’t figure out their age, they were old but looked young. “How is this possible? You do not age?” I asked.

  “What do you mean? Of course we age.” Matemai was puzzled.

  “No, I mean does your body stop growing at some point?”

  “I see. After your body reaches an optimal age we start to age very slowly. Are you telling me you age fast in your world? Where you really different from yourself in the other world? I know you said you changed but you couldn’t have changed that much, surely.”

  “I walked with a stick! I was old. I would have been lucky to live another 10 years or so.”

  “Really? And you want to go back there? Why?” Matemai looked genuinely puzzled. Put that way it sounds strange. Why would anyone willingly go back to looking old and frail? Yet I couldn’t help wondering — if I ever returned, would I keep this body? Being young again would feel nice… at least for a while. But the thought of outliving everyone I knew, even my children, would take the joy out of it.

  I laughed, trying to shake off the sadness settling over me. “It’s my home! I very much want to go back.”“Anyways we are off topic. What do you know about Jena?”

  “Jena is very honorable and powerful.” Powerful I agree but I wasn’t so sure about him being honorable at the moment. “His legendary breath is a blue fire.” Matemai was saying. “Just like any dragon he is immune to most magic. He can shape-shift into whatever form he likes. I do not know why he or any of the dragons binds themself to humans.” Anesu knew but didn’t think it was her secret to share. “There are many stories about the heroic deeds of Jena and his dragon. I’ll tell you the ones I know. If you ever make it to the capital, there’s a library there. There might even be one here in the village — I’m not entirely sure.But for now, you have more important things to focus on… like learning how to use your magic — and Jena’s.So what do you say? Shall we go find Jena?”

  “We can go and find Jena and the lair but I don’t think getting the magic is an emergency, at least for me. Jena might disagree. In fact I know he will. He is so upset by how he looks. I think he looks cute. But that is beside the point. What I want is to live in the village. I want to have a normal life in the village. Back in my world I was on retirement. I want to continue with that. And I want to find a way to un-summon myself.”

  Matemai looked like he was about to protest but thought better of it. In this world, magic was the be-all and end-all. Maybe it was like electricity and electronics in our world — we’ve grown so attached to them that living without either feels like a real hardship. That’s what these people were experiencing: not enough magic users. They wouldn’t understand why I don’t mind lacking magic, especially when I have a good chance of gaining it.

  “What is retirement?” He asked instead. It made sense that they didn’t have a concept of retirement here. If you age slowly, its possible retirement might not be a thing. So what happens to people? They never die? I wondered. “Retirement," tried to explain a simple concept and found it hard but tried anyways, "is the stage of your life when your working years are done. In my world, people get old and are unable to continue to work. It also possible to retire before you get old. Some people retire because they are tired and they want to do something different. Others, retire because they have saved up enough.”

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  “Retirement is when you stop working for whatever reason. Then what do you after that?”

  “Nothing, you do whatever you like.”

  “Before you retire you do stuff you don’t like then you do stuff you like after retirement? Maybe it makes sense for those who can’t work anymore but for everyone else I don’t understand. Why don’t you just do what you like all the time?”

  “For most people, we do what we can to earn a living not what we like.”

  “Why not?” He asked.

  “Many reasons,” I said. He was right. Why did we do stuff we didn’t like? It was so strange to think of life back home like that. “I could be wrong but I think one of the main reason is we choose a career when we are too young to know what we really like. Sometimes, what we like doesn’t earn us enough to make a living.”

  “It sounds to me there are lots of people spending half of their life unhappy. Why do you want to go back to that?”

  “My children are there.” I said simply. I didn’t think he would understand. I wondered if he was married or had children.

  “Do they need you? I mean, if they knew the kind of life you have here do you think they would insist that you come back?” That was a new way to look at it and I was starting to feel uncomfortable with the direction the conversation was going. I suspect its because I knew deep down he might be right. My children, worried about me a lot because they all lived far away. What would they think about my life here?

  “Off topic again,” I evaded the question. “We were discussing my wanting to live in the village.”

  “Do you know what you want to do here? Unlike in your world you don’t have to do anything you don’t like to – you are dragon kin. You know what, lets worry about that later. First, lets find Jena. Also just to be clear, I have never heard of an ‘unsummoning’ but I promise to help any way I can even though I don’t understand why you want to go back. ”

  “Thank you. Let's go find Jena.” I reluctantly agreed because I knew he wasn’t going to let the issue rest until we found Jena. I needed to talk with Jena, anyways.

  In no time, a Matemai had organized out travel. A wooden carriage was brought to the mouth of the tent. At first glance it was ordinary looking but on closer inspection, I could see faint runes etched on it. I didn’t have long to wonder what they did because as soon as were underway, it was like we were flying. The ride was so smooth. I couldn’t feel the galloping of the horses or the bumps of a dusty road.

  Mhazi, Matemai’s warrior, followed behind with one of his two apprentices while the other drove the carriage. They didn’t look as mean as I had first imagined. Or had they truly changed in the way they treated me? They still weren’t friendly, though. For people who spent so much time with the most jovial man I had ever met, they were surprisingly gloomy. Something about them felt… off. Where Matemai was light and bright, they carried something less bright — a hazy sort of aura. Now that I thought about it, Zuruvi and maNyoni had the same heaviness about them. Even the air was different from what it felt like in Matemai’s tent. I had this unsettling sense that something was wrong — the one I first felt in their fields — was everywhere. I couldn’t name it, couldn’t explain it, not even to myself.

  On the way, I papered Matemai with questions about the system. He admitted that my system was very different to any he has encountered. Before anyone get a class, they can not access the system. He agreed with Jena’s assessment that I needed certain attributes to be able to fully bond with him. He speculated that while the physical were important the mental ones were the most important.

  Dragons, according to lore, are very bloodthirsty. Controlling that hunger takes a lot of mental fortitude. That not to say the physical attributes were not necessary. The toil the dragon magics takes no the body can be mitigated by higher physical attributes. Of course you can easy acquire those faster once you are bonded with the dragon. It seems Jena and me had misunderstood the system or Matemai didn’t know how weak I had been. We were friendly but I didn’t think it was yet a good idea to tell my Matemai my attributes yet especially with listening eyes. Inside his tent he had a silence ward but he hadn’t activated it for the carriage.

  Matemai, for all his knowledge, had no idea how I could gain mental XP. What he did know was how to help me build my core. Apparently, that was something children here learned as soon as they could walk. Everyone had one — it just became accessible after class allocation. Since I already had system access, he wanted to see if I could reach mine early.

  The method? Drawing in ambient magic — mana, as he called it.

  To me, it sounded suspiciously like mystical breathing and good intentions. Very woo-woo.

  I mean, there were no step-by-step instructions. You were just supposed to know, the way you know how to breathe. If you had a core and focused inward, you would find it — and somehow immediately know what to do.

  Focus inward? What did that even mean?

  Matemai was eager for me to try it right then and there, but I hesitated. I didn’t want to look foolish in front of strangers. And what if I failed? What then?

  No… I would try when I was alone.

  By the time we passed Zuruvi and maNyoni’s fields, we still hadn’t seen a single person — neither on the road nor working in the fields. Where was everyone? It was midday, and the sun was harsh. Maybe people had retreated back to the village. But the road… the road should have had someone. Anyone. This place feeling more and more strange. Did I still want to live here? What choice did I have?

  When we reached the forest’s edge, we had to leave the carriage with the two apprentices and walk. I couldn’t remember the path clearly enough to lead us so I conceded the role to Mhazi who, according to Matemai, was a great tracker. He didn’t need directions — he read the ground like a story, tracing my footprints back to where I had last seen Jena. We walked for what felt like ages. If Matemai hadn’t trusted Mhazi’s tracking, we probably would have given up and turned back. Apparently, I had traveled much farther than I’d realized. Matemai said the distance was about the same as from his campsite to the forest’s edge.That morning, it hadn’t felt nearly so far.

  When we arrived, it took me a while to confirm the place. The deer were, of course, gone. Mhazi said there was evidence that the had been a herd of deer recently. So we sat and waited.

  We didn’t have long to wait. Suddenly, both Matemai and Mhazi froze where they were sitting. Only their eyes could move.

  “Matemai, talk to me!” I could see he could. I tried to reach out and shake him but I could get near them. It was like they were in an invisible container. There was a force field around them .

  “Well, well! You thought you could trick me? Explain yourself or die!” Jena’s voice boomed.

  I signed with relief. Matemai and Mhazi pale even more. “Enough Jena. We both know you won’t kill them. They are friends.”

  “ I might not be able to kill them but I have my ways of making them suffer. They are not my friends! They are not your friends, either! They are mind controlling you.” I shivered slightly. Jena didn’t know how close to the truth he got.

  “Seriously? That’s what you are going with. Mind control? Do you feel any mind magic around? I know what you are doing. You are deflecting. This won’t help you. Free them now or –”

  “Or what? You run away again?! Fine! Have it your way!” Before I could see what Jena planned the force field disappear and so did I.

  “For goodness’ sake, Jena.” I groaned as I realized too late what he had done.