Chương 145: Reborn as the Dragon — Chapter 145 - Carbon-Grilled Monster Leg

Su Nian took the slice of Caimen Shield Pig thigh meat Anna handed him and didn't bother with ceremony. One roll of his tongue and the pork was gone, charred and fragrant on the outside, tender all the way through. Hm? Was that a little smear of grease on his treasure's pretty face? That was good stuff. As a diligent and thrifty dragon, wasting food simply wasn't an option. Slurp. Licked it right off.

"Hey... Brother, you definitely did that on purpose." Anna pouted her pink lips. Her soft finger tapped his big nose.

"All day long, all you ever do is take advantage of Anna~ Hmph, hmph~" Her words carried a hint of reproach. Her tone was soft and sticky as honey, like a girl playing at being scolded when she wasn't scolded at all. Her pink fox ears gave a small twitch. Behind her, the fluffy snow-white tail swayed left and right, a clear sign that Su Nian's little move had made her genuinely happy. Seeing the Black Dragon staring at her with the dazed, dopey look of a lovesick fool, Anna couldn't hold it together.

She let out a helpless "pfft," flew up to his ear, and lay there close, breathing warm, sweet air against him as she whispered:"If it's Brother... you can take advantage however you want~""Anyone else, and Anna burns them to charcoal with Dragon's Breath."

"Anna's advantages are only for Brother~" She waved her hand and clenched her fist, putting on her best fierce face. It didn't work. Her pink, soft, puffy cheeks made her look unbearably cute no matter what expression she tried. Su Nian couldn't help himself. Slurp. Again.

"Mmmph~ Brother... Brother, you're terrible! You can't even behave while eating!" Anna flapped her wings and steadied herself before she could topple over. She looked at the big, shameless dragon grinning his wicked grin, and she reached over and bit his nose. Gently. Just enough to make a point. Su Nian let out an exaggerated howl of pain and the two of them dissolved into play. Silvery laughter rang through the Dragon's Nest.......

Full and satisfied, Su Nian sprawled on the Bedrock Platform in complete comfort, belly round and content. Anna lay across his chest in her little apron, her soft hand tracing idle circles along the grooves between his black scales.

"Brother, was Anna's barbecue good~?" She tilted up her watery eyes. Her gaze was gentle, carrying the particular sweetness of a young girl in love, tender, trusting, a little dependent. Her thoughts wandered, and with the dragon heart's warmth soaking into her, they wandered further and further in increasingly dangerous directions. [Brother has really been getting worse lately. Why does he always want Anna to wear the little apron...] [At this rate, it might not be long before Anna gets... eaten... by Brother...] Unauthorized usage: this tale is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings. [But Brother's bad-boy face is so cute~ Anna likes it too much~ What is she supposed to do, wuwuwu... she simply can't... refuse... ying~] The more she thought about it, the warmer her face got. A rosy flush crept across her pretty cheeks. Thankfully, it was sweltering outside. And since the Dragon's Nest had already been closed to monsters coming and going as they pleased, Anna had just gone along with it.

Little apron it is. Brother likes it. She likes Brother. That settled that.

"Delicious, delicious~" Su Nian answered her happily. He wrapped his relatively soft wing around his little treasure and felt a deep, quiet joy settle through him. The scales there had parted open and she fit against him perfectly. In his previous life, all he'd ever hugged while sleeping was a body pillow. A warm, soft girlfriend? That had been a distant fantasy. He'd made it. The pig leg was genuinely good, too. He had no idea where she'd learned to cook like that.

By all accounts, elves were supposed to be vegetarians. Hearing his answer, Anna looked like everything she'd done today had been worth it a hundred times over. The happiness in her eyes deepened into something rich and sweet.

"If Brother likes it, Anna will make it every single day from now on. All kinds of different food, every way you can imagine. Anna will feed Brother until he's nice and chubby~""Then chubby Brother won't get lured away by some female dragon~""And then Brother will have no choice but to stay with Anna~ forever and ever and ever~" She lay there on his chest, spinning out her little fantasy with complete sincerity.

She hadn't stopped to consider that no dragon on the entire continent had ever lost its mating prospects by putting on weight. Dragons were serious body-management masters by nature. Their physiology handled excess fat automatically, keeping their forms essentially perfect. Dragons only starved to death. No dragon had ever eaten itself to death.

"You know," Su Nian said, patting her little head, "even if I never became a fat dragon, I wouldn't be going anywhere."

"That's not necessarily true!" Anna poked the scales on his chest with one soft finger, snorting indignantly.

"Brother hasn't even met a female dragon. Anna is only an elf. A real female dragon would be completely in Brother's ideal range, by any reasonable measure."

"So with Anna's current situation, there's no way she could compete with a female dragon. Anna... Anna absolutely has to fatten Brother up. There's no other way."

"All right." Su Nian didn't know whether to laugh or sigh.

"I'll wait for you to fatten me up. Once I'm too fat to move, I'll just camp here permanently. You can't complain later that you ended up with a fat dragon."

"Anna would never complain about Brother~" She pouted, her pretty face written all over with fondness and attachment. Her slender little hands spread as wide as they could go, trying to embrace the enormous creature before her, this one that filled her completely, in ways she didn't have words for.

"Anna doesn't even mind the barbs on Brother's body. What's a little extra weight?"

"Besides, Anna can't hold Brother when he's slim and she won't be able to hold him when he's fat either. There's basically no difference~ hehe~" Still talking, she climbed her way up toward his mouth. Her wings spread and she lifted off, both hands cradling his dragon head gently. The look in her eyes shifted, soft, dreamy, a little lost.

"Brother... Anna wants kisses~""So many kisses~ Like... like Brother is going to eat Anna up..." The Dragon's Nest was saturated with the sweet, syrupy scent of romance. Outside the Dragon's Nest, in a crumbling tile-roofed shack near the test fields, a different kind of smell saturated the air. A real one. All ten Sakura Players had regained consciousness. They had more or less recovered from the recent "poison gas experiment", recovered in the sense that they were technically awake and seated upright.

They stared ahead with blank, vacant eyes, looking like people who had just had their worldview fundamentally restructured against their will. The acrid stench, slow-roasted by the sun, had curdled into something sharper and stranger.

"This is... this is the trial of the shinobi's way..." Haruta Motono murmured to himself. He was staring out the window. His eyes were full of tears. He could still feel Orihime's vomit sitting somewhere in his stomach. But his stomach had been through so much by now that it had simply given up. There was nothing left to expel.

"You performed admirably. As promised — here is your reward. Charcoal-grilled monster legs!" Kobold Chieftain Bolikri's voice came from outside the door. The Sakura Players turned their dead eyes toward the sound. Two kobolds dragged a flatboard cart through the entrance. On it sat ten objects that were black, unidentifiable, and deeply unpromising.

"Charcoal-grilled spider legs. Chicken flavor. Good crunch. Eat up~" Bolikri surveyed the group of humans and offered a smile he believed to be warm and welcoming. Haruta Motono stared at the spider legs on the cart. The last fragile ember of hope inside him, the one that had somehow survived everything up to this point, guttered out like a candle in a downpour.

"Mom... Mooooom——! Wuwuwu..." He fell straight back onto the wooden plank bed. Calling for his mother. And then the calling gave way to sobbing, loud and unrestrained, pouring out of him with nothing held back. ➤ Next: Compensation