Chương 13: Reborn as the Dragon: — Chapter 13 - Preparing Food for Anna

Seeing the pack of mountain wolves on the verge of wetting themselves, Su Nian didn't hesitate another second. What if they actually did? How was he supposed to eat them then? He exploded into motion. Wings snapping open, he swept down from the tree in a blur and slammed into the pack before they could even register what was happening. One wolf went flying on impact.

He tore the throat out of the next with a single claw, ripped through another right after, then twisted his long neck and clamped his jaws down on a fourth that was already trying to bolt. The corpse on the ground was the Grand Knight's, mostly eaten by the wolves at this point. Su Nian couldn't care less. He was only after the leg meat anyway. It barely mattered. Six wolves dead, six System Points earned. The rest finally broke from their paralysis and fled, whimpering, tails plastered between their legs.

Su Nian let them go. Kill them all and there'd be nothing left for next time. No point draining the pond. After a satisfying meal, his body recovered quickly under Basic Devour. His condition climbed past its usual ceiling, better than anything a Recovery Card had ever produced. Recovery Cards always felt like tonics, a burst of power with a hollow aftertaste. This was different. Clean. Full. Now that he was fed, it was time to sort out the little loli's situation.

Wolf meat was sour, stringy, and frankly unpleasant. He wasn't picky, but she was another matter. Given what he had to work with, he still wanted her to eat decently. In a forest, the answer was obvious: rabbit. Light, tender, flavorful. And given how little she'd need, one rabbit would be exactly right. Decision made. He was going hunting for a rabbit. What followed was one of the stranger sights the Silvermoon Forest had ever produced.

A Black Dragon, body length over four meters and wingspan seven to eight, was squatting at the entrance of a rabbit burrow with its rear end in the air, tail raised high, long neck craned through the opening as it peered around inside. This was a Tier 1 Fireflame Rabbit den. Warm and dry inside, humming with active fire elements. A whole colony of Fireflame Rabbits was currently huddled deep within, shaking. They could feel the pressure of something vast and predatory directly above them.

The bloodline suppression locked them in place. Not one of them could move. Su Nian, meanwhile, had a problem. The burrow was deep. Winding. He couldn't reach the rabbits, and digging the whole thing open by hand would take forever. Spraying dragon breath inside was out of the question, they'd be corroded into nothing. Even if one or two somehow ran through it, they'd come out covered in pits. Inedible. He found himself thinking: if only he knew magic. But he was still a Juvenile Dragon.

The draconic bloodline knowledge covering magic wouldn't unlock in his dreams until he matured into a Young Adult. He combed through what his draconic inheritance had given him and found quite a bit on Fireflame Rabbits specifically. Tier 1 magical beast. White bodies, red ears and tails. They knew exactly one spell their entire lives: Fireball. Their meat, however, was exceptional, rich and flavorful, and they were surprisingly large, a single one comparable to half a piglet.

More importantly: they despised moisture. They kept their dens bone-dry at all times, and to fight back against rising groundwater, they baked and reinforced their burrow walls every single day. Su Nian's eyes lit up. He looked around. There was a stream not far off. His dragon eyes narrowed, and a plan clicked into place. A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation. They wouldn't come out? Fine. He'd flood them out.

Never underestimate a dragon's drinking capacity. Never try to guess how much a dragon's stomach can hold. Even a Juvenile one. The Fireflame Rabbits had just started to wonder if the terrifying thing above them had finally left, when the draconic pressure slammed back down. Heavy footsteps. Getting closer. Su Nian waddled back from the direction of the stream. His belly had swollen to more than three times its original size. With every step, you could hear the water sloshing inside him.

He estimated he'd put away at least half a ton. More than enough. He positioned himself at the burrow entrance, pushed his snout inside, and triggered a precise, full-body contraction. Every muscle coordinated, stomach compressing in one controlled surge. A massive column of water blasted out of his mouth straight into the tunnel. Dragons don't experience nausea. They can control virtually any muscle in their bodies at will. Drinking a gut full of water and expelling it again is no more uncomfortable than exhaling.

Fortunately, Basic Devour had already processed the wolf meat long before this, converted cleanly into energy. Otherwise the situation might have gotten a bit unpleasant. The water thundered through every passage of the burrow at once. Under the pressure, a torrent of Fireflame Rabbits, big ones, small ones, entire families, came shooting out from the far exit with completely vacant expressions, briefly forming what could only be described as a rabbit fountain.

Su Nian looked at the soggy, trembling pile in front of him. He left the two adult rabbits alone. Instead, he selected two of the plumper kits, killed them cleanly, tied their long ears together, and hung them around his neck. Anna's lunch and dinner were sorted. And for fire-starting, that would be the third kit. His draconic senses had already flagged it: above-average talent. Three Fireball casts per day. Perfect lighter.

Two dead, one live Fireflame Rabbit kit hanging from his neck, Su Nian bid a polite farewell to the grateful Fireflame Rabbit parents. Then he snorted, started humming something vaguely tune-shaped, and headed back to the lair. He expected to find Anna where he'd left her. She wasn't there. He scanned the cave and found her in the far corner, knees pulled to her chest, back against the cold rock wall, curled into herself. Her face was a picture of quiet desolation. Her eyes were red.

There were still traces of tears at the corners.

"Ah — it's... it's Mr. Dragon." Her voice came out small.

"You're back?" The moment she saw him, something broke open across her face, relief, joy, all of it flooding through at once before she could stop it. She tried to push herself up and go to him. The shackles yanked her straight back down. They hit the rock with a sharp clatter. Anna let out a pained sound, small and involuntary.

She sat there rubbing her knee, but her eyes never left him, tracking him with the focused attention of someone who was terrified that if she looked away for even a second, he'd be gone again. He'd left without a word. She'd woken up alone in a strange cave and assumed the obvious: she'd been left behind. Dead weight, discarded. She wasn't wrong about being dead weight. But she'd still been hoping, in what time she had left, that there would be someone with her. Anyone. That was all she wanted, in the end.

Even if that someone was a Black Dragon. And he'd come back. Su Nian dropped the three kits — ears still knotted together, onto the cave floor. He moved to her side and lowered his head, gently nudging her back upright against the wall with his snout. He looked at the scrape on her knee. A thought surfaced from his draconic inheritance: dragon saliva accelerates wound healing. Without really thinking about it, he bent down and gave the scrape two careful licks.

"Ah, oh, Mr. Dragon, that's, that tickles —" Anna's hands flew to her skirt. Her face went red. She wasn't entirely sure why she felt embarrassed. It was a dragon. This was objectively a dragon doing this. [Anna Hathaway's Favorability +2. Current Favorability: 22 (Friendly).] Su Nian: (?????)????? He stared at the flushed elf girl for a long moment, then took two deliberate steps back. The saliva had already formed a thin film over the wound.

Per his inherited knowledge, it would heal completely within two hours. Skin and all. The two steps back weren't about that, though. He was looking at her shackles. He hadn't removed them yet, not because he was worried about her escaping, but because he hadn't found a safe way to do it. Every method he could think of came with serious problems. Brute force: his strength and claws could certainly break or cut through metal. But the shockwave would shatter her limbs along with it. And dragon claws weren't scalpels.

Fine control under those forces was nearly impossible. Acidic breath: out of the question. He couldn't control how it spread. And even if he could somehow force the acid out in liquid form directly from the glands that produced it, it still wouldn't work, he wasn't a syringe. Precision dosing wasn't something dragons did. It was like vomiting: you could produce more or less, but you couldn't vomit exactly five milliliters on command. A cobra can't precisely meter out its venom. A Black Dragon couldn't either.

But the shackles couldn't stay on her forever. The problem had to be solved. Su Nian sat with that, turning it over, not yet having an answer. ➤ Next: The Method to Open the Shackles