The Three Great Cities

"You're here early. You don't usually call until 11:59. And hurry it up, you know when you're in here all time outside stops and I wanna get back to watching my other shows.

I know you're angry about having a limit to your abilities, but me giving you 100 control of this tamer skill was already pretty incredible. With this amount of control, you could've tamed a Sage Dragon.

You just didn't know about this cap because you didn't read the full description and that's your own fault. You also never asked me so I never mentioned it. I'm not here to serve you, I only gave you that skill because I wanted to talk to you, not help you."

"A Sage Dragon? The strongest beings of this world?" he had heard about Sage Dragons from one of his chats with god and they sounded impressive.

"Yes. Though, naturally, for a mere human like you to control a sage dragon, you would either have to supply it about 100 sacrifices a day, or tame one as an egg and teach it to obey you without sacrifices.

But now that information is useless since you used up all your control."

'Should I enrage them on purpose to get out? No, that would be suicidal, and really not worth the small chance I get a Sage Dragon egg. I guess I will keep the slimes then. Damnit, I had such an ability and I used it all on those stupid slimes! The weakest of all creatures!'

"Hah. Child, I wouldn't be so mad about having slimes. One hundred of them under complete control of an intelligent being can do wonders."

"Like what, bounce a dragon to death? Shoot water at a Sage Dragon in hopes of killing it?"

"Hohoho, just watch. I already told you, they absorb magic and mana like a sponge. No, wait, more like a vacuum in a world like this."

"Yeah, I know they can absorb mana really fast but why does that matter. They can just rejuvenate me with mana quickly?"

"You're misunderstanding me, but telling you any more would be giving you too many hints. You'll have to figure it out yourself."

'Okay, well now I have about 19 minutes of this call. I want to know more about the humans of this place.'

"I was waiting for that question."

So according to god, the humans here have also gone through an evolutionary change from the mana just like every other living thing.

Every person on a whole had been improved. The humans here are generally on a higher level in every aspect compared to the humans on Earth.

Also, just as everyone on Earth had their own skill and talents, the people of this world have their own talents too. It's just that with mana they were able to enhance those skills and bring them to a whole other level. Some of them were enhanced to the point that they became skills or abilities.

Almost all humans at this point can use magic. Even infants. Before the disaster, if a baby knew magic they would be considered a genius but now they were being born all the time because the strong keep making babies with each other due to natural selection.

After the dragons came and destroyed everything, most of the survivors were really strong. Nobility at that point didn't matter. It was everyone for themselves. Overwhelming strength became the new "sexy" so the strong bred with the strength to make super babies and the weak are left alone to breed with other weaker humans.

Most of the humans alive now were on the stronger side because the weak were killed.

And since it was mostly strong that survived the Apocalypse this meant a strong person was more likely to meet another.

This happened to all creatures, not just humans. This was even more so in the animal kingdom. Creatures don't usually have a sense of camaraderie. After so many creatures had died, many of the monsters fought for food and now only the seriously strong monsters stayed.

Thirty years ago when the dragons had only run rampant for one year they have destroyed about 75% of all human civilization and 95% of all humans died. Dragons had the desire to destroy anything with life, not the structures. If they didn't detect any humans they left the structures mostly intact.

At the time there were almost no humans with the ability to kill dragons, at best they could harm them and stop their advance. One legendary hero was able to cut a whole arm off a python dragon by herself and became known worldwide.

Their largest standing city currently, Arthon, was not too far from this place. Even before the Dragon Apocolypse, this was the third-largest city and the largest military base. The strong defense and the overwhelming number of soldiers and weapons inside allowed it to stay alive in the one year of Dragon's Invasion.

The largest city in the world before the invasion was a commercial city and had normal people and average guards. Millions and possibly billions of cash went through there every day. People traded anything, artifacts, clothes, armor, weapons, slimes, and even other people.

The second-largest city during the time of human reign was a giant scientific laboratory. They studied anything and everything there was to study. The place was limited to only the brightest scientists.

For many commoners, it was their dream to get accepted there since their status as a poor commoner outside didn't matter, your social ranking was based on your intelligence and knowledge. If you were dumber and had contributed less to this world, then you have no right to argue and fight back against someone who did more.

For many people, it was their dream to live there so that they may look down on those who had looked down on them their entire lives. Heritage, connections, or physical strength had no power here. You would only rise up through the ranks through your personal mental strengths and contributions to the world.

Both the largest and the second-largest cities have been completely destroyed. Some buildings stayed intact but not many. Maybe some unpopulated outer region that doesn't matter much.

He asked where all of these places were but god just laughed and said that would be too much of a hint and that his luck would help him find it, so don't worry.

After talking a bit more with god to fill up the twenty minutes, Zeeth set out to explore. He had no real objective in mind except to maybe find some other humans to cure his loneliness and find more memory stones.

He traveled into the forest that was right next to him when he first teleported there and started wandering around. Two days went by and he started seeing many more creatures. Some were docile pigs with a flower on their head and some sort of liquid in the cup-shaped flower others had a menacing back but an adorable face.

Zeeth tried to dip his finger in the liquid but the happy-looking pig suddenly turned beet red and kicked at Zeeth so hard he flew against a tree and the pig ran away as it slowly turned back to pink.

Thank goodness he had a slime come in between him and the pig's feet or he would be coughing up blood right about now.

From then on he always had a bunch of slimes just hanging off his body as clothing and armor. Two wrapped around his shoulder and came down like a sleeve. One wrapped around his neck, one around his stomach, one on his waist, and some more slapped around his body and woven into each other to keep them from falling.

And of course, Al was still on his head.

With this many slimes blended together, his body couldn't even be seen anymore. But it actually seemed like some sort of blue armor since Zeeth kept it all symmetrical. He just likes it that way. He probably has OCD.

Two weeks passed with just him walking around the forest. He was still stuck in it and didn't see any end of the forest in sight But he saw many more strange creatures. He named them exactly as they seemed to him.

Giant Fly. Target Bellied Penguin. Centipede Snake. Heart Flower. He started collecting these flowers in hopes that they may have some kind of regeneration ability if used right.

He didn't have anywhere to hold it so he curved the top of a slime into the shape of a basket and threw the flowers in there and had the slime follow him. He called it Porta-Basket.

"That sounds like portapotty. Or portalotty. Hehe portalotty. Porta- porta. What would that be? A portable portable."

Yep, he is definitely going kind of insane.

And another two weeks passed like that again. He collected many more plants that he thought would be cool and now had about 13 slimes filled to the brim with plants and had other slimes carry them like kings.

He even figured out how to ride a giant fly for ten minutes before getting thrown off. Actually, it wasn't riding. He had no control over the fly so it was more like crazily being thrown around until he finally slipped off.

He got thrown off one more giant fly and landed on a Zeeth-sized slime and laid there for a bit to rest. He tilted his head back a bit to get comfortable and saw this strange black rock. It was dark but it was also sparkly and Zeeth felt a strange urge to grab it.

He walked around to scout if it was a trap of any monster he had never seen before and used one of his newfound skills: Search.

By having a slime sit there and concentrate it could feel the water and moisture around it and feel the shapes the water outlined and relay the info to Zeeth.

The most a slime could sense right now was two feet around it. Although with so many slimes, that was still a lot of space.

He didn't sense anything like a trap and walked over to pick up the rock, but the moment he touched it his pupils turned grey, his body froze in that position, and from his view, everything had changed.

It was from his point of view as a five-year-old. He had just come out of a building and was happily running towards a woman. He had no clue who this lady was but he felt warmth from her entire body and the strong urge to hug her.

It was like a dream, he had no control over his body and he had no clue this was a memory, but he could think for himself. When he jumped into her embrace he felt happiness overflow and thought, 'This is so nice. She smells… like memories.'

He soon came out of her embrace and while he thought 'No, hug her longer.' The boy let go and held her hand instead. They walked together to some strange house and-

That's where the memory ended. He snapped back to reality and while that memory would have taken a few minutes, less than a second passed since he crouched down.

He felt tears well up in his eyes and a tightness in his chest but had no clue why. He brushed away that painful feeling and got up. He decided to keep the stone and tucked it away in his slime suit.

He sat there for a bit thinking about what he just saw. It was so strange. He was sure that the woman was his mother and that house... well, he wasn't sure what that was but the woman was someone he could trust wholeheartedly and without a doubt.

He decided there was no use thinking too much about it when the time came he would get more information so he just got up and started walking again.

Then he tilted his head back and he saw a house.

"Ooh, that is quite a nice house. Alright, let's head ou-. Wait. A HOUSE?!?! DOES THAT MEAN THERE IS PEOPLE NEARBY? FINALLY, SOMETHING OTHER THAN DUMB MONSTERS! YAHOOOOO!!" He happily jumped around at the thought of another person to talk to.

"Hello there, boy." A kind old man's voice came from behind him. When Zeeth turned around he saw a grey, long-haired man wearing nothing. His face was kind of long and his skin was nearly pale white. He was lean and fit, as Zeeth could clearly see.

But to Zeeth what he was holding was more surprising than his bare junk. In the left hand, he was holding a chicken winged lion and in the other a giant human-handed centipede.

Zeeth knew how strong both of these was because he almost died to the chicken winged lion once. It couldn't fly but it could glide incredibly fast and it was very strong.

He has never fought the giant human handed centipede because of how gross it seemed but he saw its speed when it was crawling away. It was so fast and used the hands so well Zeeths eyes almost couldn't catch up.

"Whoa, how did you catch those guys? They're both so op. You must be really strong, huh?"

"Ah, so you speak Zelian. Yeah, I'd say I'm pretty strong. I'm a Sage Dragon after all."

"Wait, what? No way you're a dragon. From what I heard Dragons are all bloodthirsty beasts. You're too calm lookin' for that."

The naked man grimaced slightly and he was clearly annoyed. "Child, I will forgive you because you for that comment since you are new here, but that's like saying all humans are selfish and greedy."

"Huh? Really? So dragons are more like humans than I thought."

"You really accepted the fact that I was a dragon that easily?"

"Yeah, why not. What do you have to lose if I assume you're a dragon? It doesn't matter what race you are, you just seem super strong and nice."

The naked man looked at him with interest. "So I take it that you're not from around here? Your mindset is like that of a newborn child. Uncaring and accepting. Haven't met a person like you in ages, it's a nice change of pace."

"Hehe, thank you. It's my first time getting a compliment from a dragon. But my attitude is probably because my memory was wiped."