Chương 1: Start Reading

Planet Earth. Romantic Heart Internet Cafe. The place was loud, reeking of instant noodles and stale air-conditioning. Su Nian hunched over his keyboard like every other gaming-addicted kid in the room, currently showcasing what could generously be called questionable decision-making.

"Malphite, where's your Q? USE YOUR Q! I'm telling you to Q, Q it, Q! I didn't tell you to ult!" The guy next to him was losing his mind at the Malphite player. Su Nian, meanwhile, was frantically working his mid-lane Zed, dodging the enemy's relentless pursuit:"Ghost Blade active, you can't see my footwork! I'll juke, I'll juke — ah, there's the wiggle~""And here comes the reverse grab!" Big mistake. The movement was too wide. His elbow caught the cup of water sitting next to the keyboard and sent it flying.

Water gurgled down through the tangle of cables and wiring beneath the desk. A split second of silence. Then — ZZZT. A bolt of electricity exploded out and slapped Su Nian clean across the face. His consciousness went with it. I could've outplayed this... I was so close. First blood... As his vision collapsed to black, Su Nian was still thinking about his first blood.... Hazy voices drifted through Su Nian's mind. But his brain was already dead, his soul sinking toward silence, unable to make out a single word.

Even if he could hear them, he wouldn't have understood the language. [How did we end up picking him?] [Ugh. He's too weak. Can't even control the lightning element. The human standing next to him had a far more brilliant destiny trajectory...] [Whatever. We work with what we have... Here's hoping...]... Time passed. How much, he couldn't say. Su Nian clawed his way back to something resembling consciousness. Cold. His entire body was cold and numb.

Before he could process that, tearing pain erupted across every inch of him. His eyes had barely opened before his vision went dark again, he nearly blacked out a second time right there.

"Roar-gurgle-roar-ANG?" [What the, did someone harvest my kidneys? Why does everything HURT?] Su Nian muttered reflexively and tried to stretch his body. Then he froze and slapped a hand over his mouth. What was that sound? Had that just come out of him? And what was this texture... Long. Cold. Hard. Sharp. Teeth. Those were teeth. Why were his hands so hard?

"Roar-ang?" [What the hell?] He was dreaming. He had to be dreaming. Su Nian scrambled to push himself off the ground, and discovered that his limbs, once perfectly coordinated, could only make him flop and roll across the floor. His body wasn't taking orders from his brain. Everything was wrong. He rolled. And rolled. And rolled right up to the edge of a puddle. A damp, mossy smell hit him. In the faint light filtering through the cave, Su Nian looked down at the water's surface.

A slender neck encased in pitch-black scales. Sharp fangs. Crimson eyes. A ferocious dragon's head staring back at him. What was reflected in that puddle was, without question, a black dragon, the kind that belonged in Western fantasy novels. If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation. A scrawny black dragon. He twisted his long neck, examining himself through the pain. Bat-like wings folded against his sides. A slender dragon tail.

His whole body was scored with wounds, and a faint smell of scorched flesh clung to his scales. He had actually turned into a dragon. A black dragon. One of the five chromatic evil dragons. And not even an impressive one, the swamp-dwelling, acid-spitting variety, which sat at the very bottom of the chromatic pecking order, just barely above white dragons. But why him? And what exactly had happened to this dragon? Su Nian swept his gaze around the cave. Dark, damp, oppressive. But he wasn't alone in it.

Not far away, beneath a stretch of rock wall blanketed in purple moss, a small girl was pressed against the stone. White hair. Fox ears. A fox tail curled tight around her legs. She was staring at him with pure terror on her face, round baby-fat cheeks soaked through with dried tears. Her snow-white hair pooled across the cave floor. Her eyes were deep red, like polished gemstones. Her skin was porcelain-pale and luminous, delicate as a doll that would shatter if you breathed on it wrong.

She wore a gorgeous princess dress. Dirty now, the hem singed in several places. The moment Su Nian looked at her, a spike of pain drove through his skull, and memories came crashing in, broken and relentless. [His name was Votrus. Twenty-two years old. A pureblooded juvenile swamp black dragon. Among the five chromatic dragons, his power ranked just barely above white dragons, a genuine bottom-tier weakling among his kind.] [This was a world of swords and magic. Votrus was born with his wings and forelimbs fused together, which marked him as deformed. He was driven out of the nest shortly after birth, and survived only through sheer luck and desperate scrambling, eventually clawing his way to the juvenile dragon stage, Tier 3 strength, the equivalent of Level 30.] [If Votrus had simply kept his head down and stayed low, he might have reached Tier 6 by adulthood. The problem was, he had a weakness for human storybooks.] [While other dragons hoarded gold, Votrus hoarded novels. He loved the stories. He idolized the powerful evil dragons who swept in and carried off princesses. As the saying goes, an evil dragon who doesn't want a princess isn't a proper evil dragon. So Votrus, swept up in hot-blooded foolishness, decided to act.] [He threatened the king of a small nation: deliver a beautiful princess, or he would raze the palace to rubble. The king agreed, promising to present the princess in three days. What the king actually did was send messengers to a stronger neighboring country and hire a powerful Tier 3 Grand Mage, because his own kingdom's soldiers topped out at Tier 1 or 2, useless against a dragon.] [Three days later, Votrus arrived at the offering altar. He found his "princess." He also walked directly into an ambush, royal soldiers and the Grand Mage, closing in from every angle. Votrus grabbed the "princess" and ran, took multiple Fireball hits in the process, and barely made it back to his cave before collapsing unconscious.] And while he was unconscious, his body had been taken over by Su Nian. An ordinary gaming addict from Earth. Su Nian had inherited Votrus's memories, and through some force he didn't understand, had consumed Votrus's soul entirely. That didn't mean he'd walked away clean.

Draconic traits were already bleeding into him, he would gain the dragon's bloodline inheritance in stages, and his thinking and instincts would gradually drift toward the draconic: a hunger for wealth, a pull toward laziness, a certain other kind of hunger too.

"Absolute idiot." Su Nian snarled, in Draconic, the words coming out as a rough, guttural sound he barely recognized as language. A princess. That king had sent him a princess. A human couldn't produce a child with fox ears and a fox tail. That wasn't how biology worked in any world. She wasn't a princess. She was bait. A sacrificial pawn tossed out to lure the dragon into being killed. Su Nian's gaze settled back on the girl. She looked fragile. Her color was wrong, too pale, too drawn.

Her condition was clearly bad. He started toward her, intending to at least make some kind of contact, and his muscles immediately betrayed him. A full-body cramp yanked him sideways and dropped him face-first into the cave floor. He cursed himself internally. Here he was, half-dead, still finding bandwidth to worry about someone else. Su Nian lay there for a moment, thinking. He'd already made peace with the fact that he'd been transmigrated. That was settled.

What wasn't settled was the immediate problem: he could barely move, he was injured, and the only other living creature in this cave was a terrified girl who looked at him like he was going to eat her. Was he supposed to ask her to go find medicine? He had no answer to that. Then three electronic chimes rang through his mind in quick succession.

"Ding! Hello, Host. The War Plunder System is at your service!"

"Ding! Hello, Host. The Evolution and Modification System is at your service!"

"Ding! Hello, Host. The Evil Villain System is at your service!"

"Ding! Multiple systems detected. Initiating ♂ fusion... Fusion ♂ in progress..."

(The comic adaptation is now live. Search in the comics section for: Crossing the Evil Dragon, Starting with the King Sacrificing the Princess. Daily updates started April 14, 2023.) [Female lead character design, image source: AI] Book settings for new readers: This is a devoted single-lead romance with farming, nurturing, and lord management elements. The early pacing is slower. The apparent suppression of the male lead's power is not what it seems, it's pseudo-suppression.

Other female characters are purely functional. No flirting, no development with them. The male lead likes only the female lead. That's the whole deal. Dragon size, age, and creature settings follow DnD conventions, look it up if you're unfamiliar.

The dragon isn't small by accident. Each tier jump is massive. As of chapter 597 (March 22), the male lead is Tier 6 adult, capable of fighting Tier 7 enemies. Lying flat: 50 meters tall. Body length: 100 meters. Wingspan: 200 meters. Juvenile dragons are just that size. The fused forelimbs and wings will be separated early on. The male lead's power path focuses on evolution and modification, close-quarters combat, and the giant beast style. Strength doesn't track with age. Magic is supplementary.

He shapeshifts to human form when needed — and can already do so — but stays in dragon form otherwise. Early story: slower, nurturing-focused. Later story: faster, more war and empire development. If you find the opening pace too slow, stick with it. It builds. (Can't write a book that pleases everyone. But a book is its author's child. If you like it, I'm glad. If you don't, you're free to leave, just please don't hurl dirt at her on the way out. She hasn't done anything wrong. Constructive criticism is always welcome, and I'm happy to adjust things that don't affect the core direction. Please be civil. Lots of images in this one, with more being added over time.) ➤ Next: Anna Hathaway — Level Up