You'd think I'd get bored of doing nothing but flying around hunting, sleeping, and chastising the humans for being dumb.

  But I don't. When I'm bored, I sleep, when I'm hungry, I hunt, when the humans do something stupid, I tell them so. This cycle has progressed for months, and I've found myself doing the latter a lot more as the settlement built around my sphere of influence becomes bigger and bigger and as they turn my lair into a place of pilgrimage.

  I glanced at the self proclaimed Dragon Priestess.

  Truth be told, I've not paid overly much attention to the humans, it's strange to think to myself the only one I could recognize at a glance is this woman. Trying to focus on her features before they slip from my mind, I can tell that she is somewhat on the short side, she has cut her hair short after getting a little too close to my flames, and she tends to dress in robes that are a little too big, which make her look even smaller.

  But of course...

  They all look tiny to me.

  Now I know she has told me her name at least a dozen times, maybe more, but it's never really managed to stay in my brain, and why should it? She's an ant, an ephemeral existence, tiny in the face of my greatness, her years will come and go and I will stay and remain, I will live to see her civilization rise and then crumble to dust to be forgotten.

  Maybe I'm just looking for justifications to not pay attention.

  I decided to try to pay attention to what was going on, and focused my mind on it. There she stood, the Dragon Priestess, having carved a dragon head that absolutely did not resemble me at all into the top of her staff, waving it about, as she explained to what I think are children, they're smaller than her so they have to be, about...

  Math?

  She's teaching kids math?

  "The Silver One cares not for fools who cannot add up numbers at least three digits big, and all those who cannot do their multiplications whet his appetite!" she shouted, raising her staff. "But we all must start small! Repeat after me here we go, and-"

  I resisted the urge to burn her ass for that. Seriously, what is with these idiots and thinking I eat people? I've never eaten people! I mean, probably wouldn't be any different from one of those gorillas, a lot less filling for sure, but just because I can doesn't mean I will, for fuck's sake!

  "Three times three is nine! Four times four is sixteen! Five times five is twenty five!"

  The small, er, smaller, humans repeated after the Priestess as she carried them through the multiplications table.

  I grumbled. "That's not how you do it you fools..!" I grumbled. "Go through the full table horizontally!"

  There was a moment's pause.

  "What does 'horizontally' mean, teacher?" one of the kids asked.

  "Ask your parents!" someone shouted.

  Right. I don't actually speak their language, I forgot about that, sometimes words can translate weirdly through whatever magic is doing the translating for us.

  I moved one of my claws. Am I bigger? I feel like I might be bigger. Either way, I drew a quick line across the soil just outside the giant cushion that had been put at the center of my lair, drawing a vertical line, and then horizontal lines perpendicular to it, until I'd created a rough table.

  Thinking about it, I figured, it was easier to just make the dirt do it for me than carve it with my claw, so with an application of my will and using magic I still don't really understand, I told the world to carve the numbers, and after doing so, I realized that I had made them face me, being therefore upside down, so I did it again, this time facing the Dragon Priestess who had approached to see what I was doing.

  "Read these," I grumbled, my voice rolling like thunder and making them waver as they approached the table I had drawn, with the numbers on both the left and top lines guiding them. "Start with the two, then read towards your right hand side," I instructed.

  "Ooo great one! You have bestowed such great wisdom upon us!"

  Something hit me.

  "But I have no idea what any of these symbols mean!"

  Of course. Of fucking course. I'm a goddamn idiot, I should've realized before I began that they wouldn't use the same numbers I do. But fuck it. I'm the Dragon, I do what I want. "Henceforth these symbols will represent quantity. This symbol," I said, gesturing with the tip of my claw, "stands for one, this one," and I continued.

  It took...

  Much longer than I would've hoped. Should've been a couple minutes. It stretched past an hour, I'm pretty sure. Hard to tell without clocks but, by the time I finished explaining not just the numbers, but also symbols representing certain functions, I was more than a bit tired of dealing with tribal children.

  I did have to admit, they had far greater knowledge of mathematics than I expected a bunch of tribals to have.

  "Yes..! With this knowledge that the Great One has shared upon us," the Priestess called, raising her hands towards the sky, "we will no longer be dependent on foreigners to teach us of their numbers and their words! It shall be us, who teach them of numbers and words!"

  Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

  Oh, right. Trade. The... six, I hadn't even counted them, kids that were there must be kids who were in the middle of preparing to deal with traders and peddlers and such. Naturally, they'd need to know at least a little bit of math. I'm surprised the priestess knew math, however.

  Either way, as the day came to the end and the tops of the trees started to hide the sun, the humans retreated, singing the praises of their lord, and of course, I paid little to no attention to that, and instead, settled to sleep, after having been interrupted.

  I thought, maybe, just maybe, it might be worth paying attention to the humans to see how they grew.

  ...

  I woke with a start. A half forgotten memory of a time when I too was once human coursed through me. This is the perfect time, as soon as I start to actually somewhat care about the humans, for the world to suddenly present a situation where I lose them and become one of those brooding loners that wants to stay away from everyone else so as to not get hurt.

  Instead, I decided to wake up and, while fighting the urge to go back to sleep, check just in case.

  Is it that time already? I raised to my full height. The sun wasn't up, but I could see clear as day anyway. My wings beat, and I rose over the forest and, yep, there it was, a small army approaching the settlement at the edge of the forest that was my territory. Of course this would happen...

  I debated getting involved one final time.

  Humans and their affairs shouldn't be something I became overly concerned with... but then again, if humans can keep ant farms, why couldn't a dragon keep a village? It's basically the same thing anyway. With a second beat of my wings, I cancelled the grip the world had on me with my will, and lifted into the air.

  Raising my head, turning it to the sky, I broke the silence of the night with a roar as powerful and loud as I could manage it, and then turned back to where the army was coming. Dozens were on the ground, there were at least two hundred people, armed and armored, approaching the village that I could see... though 'armed' and 'armored' were relative.

  Basically reinforced leathers and weapons of wood and stone, rough and poorly made. I wasn't about to share any advanced techniques, as I had none of that to offer, but I'm pretty sure even I could make something better... huh, actually, I suppose I could catapult the tribe into the iron age.

  Oh, right, I'm getting distracted.

  I rushed forward, past the settlement, and landed in front of the advancing army.

  Terror greeted me. They sought to attack under the cover of the night, no doubt some of the people who had traveled and visited the village had learned that I tended to sleep for days if not weeks at a time. What, exactly, they were hoping to achieve was beyond me, and quite frankly, I could not bring myself to care.

  For a moment, I wondered.

  Should I kill humans?

  Was it an alright thing to do? As a former human, as an intelligent being, was it okay for me to kill other intelligent beings?

  Eh. They were assaulting a peaceful tribe during the night to do who knows what to their people, at best, they would kill them, at worst, subject them to a fate worse than death. I am well aware that ancient peoples tended to slaughter the men and take women and children as slaves.

  I wasn't about to participate in that, even if by inaction, so...

  Fuck it.

  I opened my mouth and blasted my wrath upon the fools encroaching into my territory bearing arms and with ill intent. I bathed the frontlines and those who were still reeling from my initial roar in dragonfire, and the tall grasses, bushes and trees they were using as cover were reduced to smoldering ashes along with the would be invaders.

  Oh.

  Shit.

  Wildfire.

  Taking in a deep breath, I followed my first attack with a second one, breathing heat-sapping air into the burning glassy crater that I had just blasted with my fire breath, and with that, I caused the entire area to freeze over, putting out the flame and I'm sure this won't cause any sort of adverse meteorological and climatic issue.

  Probably.

  Spreading my wings again, I took flight into the sky, and made a lap just under the cloud cover high above, scanning my eyes along the ruined area that had been a marching... well not an army because it was just like two hundred people but, still, where the enemy had been. No movement beyond the cracking of ice and breaking of stone.

  Satisfied, I turned around back to my lair, and laid down to sleep.

  By the time I woke up about a week after that, the humans had once again gathered before me. Apparently while I slept they discovered what had happened, and somehow, they tracked down the tribe that had attacked them and, after a very short war considering their entire fighting force had been eliminated, they had captured the tribal chief of their attackers and they woke me up with the noisy procession they made as they brought the guy to me tied to a stick.

  "Ooooh Silver One, Great Dragon, we've brought you the treacherous viper that dared rise its head and bare its fangs at your chosen people so that he may be a sacrifice to your-"

  I slammed my claws against the ground and growled. "I said no human sacrifices, dammit."

  The priestess recoiled. "Uh. Uhm. I, uh, damn, we had this whole song and dance number prepared too... are you sure you don't want to eat him? At least a little?"

  Not for the first time, I wished I could facepalm. "Yes, I'm very sure."

  "... shit, what do we do with the prisoners now?" she asked. "We can't really take in that many slaves..."

  "Okay, full stop, slavery is not okay."

  I'm putting my foot down on that one.

  "Take this as my command. People should not own people."

  There was a moment's pause. "But Great Dragon, what are we to do with the slaves that already exist?"

  "I dunno, free them," I said. "Send them back to their homes or whatever I don't care."

  "Does that include the criminals, or just the ones that had to be sold into slavery due to financial troubles?" asked the priestess, waving her staff.

  Riiiight, they wouldn't really have facilities to keep prisoners who did something that didn't rate a bigger punishment, that was a bit of an issue.

  "Okay, so, we're going to start work on a reform of your legal system because this just isn't acceptable," I demanded. I'm starting to think I might actually be the dumb one here considering I keep telling myself that I shouldn't get involved and then I decide to get even more involved. "Peel your ears and open your minds because I'm about to teach you about this wonderful concept called a legal code. First, I will explain to you the concept of proportional punishment..."

  In hindsight, after many hours of teaching the basics of a simplistic moral system to the Priestess so that she could relay my words to everyone else, I really should've told someone to untie the other tribe's chief at some point.

  Then again he did order his people to attack my people in the dead of the night, and no doubt he intended to take my people's survivors as slaves, maybe he even thought that he could attack me in my sleep and slay me.

  So he got what he deserved.

  We don't have the legal code yet, I'll have the humans come up with fitting punishments for their own people... luckily, since they still saw me as something of a God, a divine existence, they just did what I told them to do and took my words as the divine will that they should follow unquestioningly.

  Now, normally, some would wonder if I was so arrogant as to think that I could play god, that I could impose my will over so many people, and tell them what was right and what was wrong, and that my ideas, thoughts and desires should take precedence over what their cultural norms were, what they themselves considered wrong or right.

  Yes. Yes I am.