Chương 12: Reborn as the Dragon: — Chapter 12 - The Queen's Many Connections

"Master Mesent, His Majesty is willing to provide an additional five hundred Gold Lions for your use." The knight had already washed his face by the time he arrived at the Great Mage's quarters, delivering the king's decree.

"Five hundred Gold Lions?" A flash of greed crossed Mesent's eyes, but what followed was a loud complaint:"What am I supposed to do with five hundred Gold Lions? That barely covers the materials for the Tracking Array. What about my fee? And I'm still expected to personally go kill a Black Dragon?"

"Does your king not know that Lord Kashun, Erylan's border garrison commander, sent me here as a personal favor to your queen?" The knight stared at the greedy, red-nosed mage in front of him and went blank for a moment. What does any of this have to do with the Queen of Anlius? Wait. Actually... it might. His mind snapped back to last month, when the Queen had apparently traveled to Erylan to attend some court tea party hosted by the Erylan Queen. Which meant... HISS — the knight sucked in a sharp breath.

The amount of information packed into those two sentences was a lot to process. He was going to need to sit down with a few fellow knights and work through this together. Properly. And if the opportunity ever presented itself, he'd also love to ask the Queen of Anlius personally exactly how she'd managed to win over Erylan's border garrison commander. His pity for the king had officially reached its limit. But negotiations were negotiations.

"This is the last of His Majesty's savings," the knight said.

"If you ask for more, we walk away." Mesent's eyes rolled around in his head. That large, red, bulbous nose of his made the whole expression look vaguely absurd. He weighed things up for a moment, then adopted the tone of a man making a great sacrifice.

"Fine. For the Queen of Anlius's sake, five hundred Gold Lions it is. But I'll need your army to cooperate with me. I can't claim I'd take on that Black Dragon alone, even if it is just a whelp."

"Then I'll return and report." The knight gave a proper salute, handed over the five hundred Gold Lions, and left. He had a thousand Royal Guards to organize. First light tomorrow, once the Great Mage had the Tracking Array ready, the Guards would march out alongside him. But the whole way back, the knight kept turning it over in his head. The Queen of Anlius and the Great Mage. What was that about? HISS. He shook his head slowly, expression thoughtful.

He'd decided: he was going to visit the Queen a lot less often to discuss life and ambitions. He was young. He wasn't ready to catch whatever the Succubus was passing around.... Dawn came soft and slow. Pale light bled across the horizon, soaking through the light-blue canopy of sky. A gentle breeze moved through the trees, carrying a single leaf that drifted into the Dragon's Nest and settled, with perfect aim, directly on Su Nian's nose.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings. The tickle reached him before anything else. Then came his stomach, hollow and insistent. He'd wanted another hour of sleep. His body had other ideas. He started to roll over and stopped. Something was pressing down on his belly. Heavy. Warm. He looked down. He'd fallen asleep curled up.

Somewhere in the night he'd shifted onto his back, and now Anna Hathaway was sprawled across his stomach, her fox ears and tail drooping loose in sleep, her small body tucked under the shelter of his folded wing. Who else was it going to be? Su Nian stared at her for a moment, caught between helpless and amused. His belly was the warmest spot in the cave, that was probably all there was to it. The second half of the night got genuinely cold in here. Still. He was hungry.

"Mmhh... big dragon... candy..." A soft, drowsy murmur floated up from his stomach. She was talking in her sleep. Su Nian's mouth curved. Then he noticed something, a faint sweetness on his tongue. He pulled his claw back and looked. White Rabbit Creamy Candy. The one he'd given Anna yesterday. She'd eaten less than a quarter of it and given the rest back. Are all girls in this world like this? It reminded him of his nephew back home, who had smashed one of his figurines and felt exactly zero remorse.

In fact, the kid had looked him dead in the eye and asked for two more. An SSR handed to him at the start of the game. Truly a little treasure. Su Nian shook his head fondly. He needed to get her something real to eat. The system shop carried desserts, but a girl couldn't live on sweets. She was flat as a board and right in the middle of growing up, she needed meat. He carefully worked his wing underneath Anna's small body and scooped her up.

But the moment he lifted her, the shackles on her wrists and ankles pulled taut and bit in. He adjusted, balancing all four of the heavy iron loops across his four claws, his tail helping where it could. If he'd had any fewer limbs, it would have been impossible. He finally got her settled on the bear pelt and tucked in properly. He turned toward the cave entrance. Something caught his tail. He looked back. One of Anna's small hands had closed around the very tip of his tail.

Her brow was pinched in her sleep, her lips moving in a trembling mumble.

"Mr. Dragon... don't... don't go... Anna... Anna is scared..." Su Nian stared at her. Then he checked her panel. [Fast Asleep.] Not faking it. Actually asleep. On one side: a tiny fox-eared girl clinging to him in her dreams. On the other: the hollow, gnawing pull of an empty stomach. Su Nian made his decision. Half a minute later, a strangely shaped pink rubber stick occupied the space where his tail had been. Don't ask where it came from. The system's daily necessities shop, ten system points apiece.

It would probably hurt quite a bit if used to hit someone. He crept out of the cave on careful feet. Outside, the morning air was clean and cool, dew rising off the grass in thin wisps. The early bird gets the worm. The early Black Dragon goes looking for breakfast. He knew exactly where to look. Su Nian suppressed his dragon might and slipped quietly through the trees toward last night's corpse disposal site. Proper dragons almost never did things this way.

Whatever their personalities, every dragon shared one trait: pride. The bone-deep, unshakeable kind. The kind that wouldn't bend even if you knocked every tooth out of their head. Su Nian was built differently. In his previous life, he'd been the sneaky player in every game he'd ever touched. He never showed his hand until he could guarantee a stomp, and even then he made sure his teammates and underlings were in position before he moved. Total control, always.

Case in point: escaping Trundle's pursuit before he'd died had looked like a total disaster from the outside. But there'd been a Lee Sin sitting in the river bush the entire time... Su Nian shook his head, grinning to himself as he bounded from branch to branch through the canopy like an oversized monkey. It didn't take long. He spotted movement at the disposal site, a whole pack of mountain wolves, busy tearing into what he'd left behind.

[Mountain Wolf, Level 5 (Tier 1) — Existence: like an insect] Ordinary wolves they might be, but these were nothing like the wolves back on Earth. Each one was the size of a small elephant, haunches thick with muscle and meat. Su Nian's mouth watered looking at them. He eased silently through the branches until he was directly above the pack. Then he dropped his suppression. Dragon might flooded out in all directions. His roar split the morning air wide open.

"ROAAARRR, —!" The effect was instantaneous. Every wolf in the pack hit the ground at once, tails tucked, limbs flat, faces pressed into the dirt. Tier 1 magical beasts facing a dragon's full pressure didn't have the luxury of deciding whether to fight or flee. They forgot how legs worked entirely. ➤ Next: Preparing Food for Anna