Chương 26: Reborn as the Dragon: — Chapter 26 - Who Is Playing with Life?

Dark green blood splattered across the ground and sprayed across the faces of the Ettercaps still struggling beneath the dragon's claws. They went rigid all at once.

"I'll give you two choices. Submit to my rule."

"Or become a pile of pulped meat." The words came from Su Nian's throat in a low, rasping growl of Draconic, a language that scraped like rough paper dragged across stone. Among magical beasts, that tongue carried a kind of universal authority. Even those who couldn't parse the words could feel the meaning underneath. The three Ettercaps understood instantly. They nodded with furious desperation, limbs clawing and scraping at the ground until their sharp nails snapped off at the roots.

"Master, I doubt these Ettercaps will submit so easily." Bolikri studied the creatures sprawled flat like dead dogs, their eyes still burning with hostility.

"They're neutral evil alignment. Following orders isn't exactly in their nature."

"Then chop off their limbs, lock them in cages, and put them to work raising giant spiders." Su Nian's voice didn't waver.

"The organ they use to control the spiders, cut it out. You'll find it in their mouthparts." As he spoke, he raised one claw and tapped it lightly against Bolikri's kobold skull. A thread of shared bloodline carried the knowledge through, detailed anatomical information about Ettercap organs, flowing directly into the kobold chieftain's brain.

"Your greatness is as visible as the sun and moon, Your Majesty!" Bolikri's eyes lit up as he threw himself prostrate on the ground. The stronger and more ruthless the Black Dragon was, the deeper their worship ran. At Bolikri's signal, a pack of kobolds swarmed the three Ettercaps with rope, trussed them tight, and slung them from two tree trunks like pigs headed to market. Everyone was turning to leave when Su Nian felt it. A pressure that reached straight into his chest."

Hmmm —" A vast will descended, blanketing the entire world. Rows of golden text blazed into existence inside his mind. The kobolds around him showed no reaction whatsoever, they couldn't see any of it.

[THE WAGER BEGINS] [Notice: All living beings in this world will be semi-datafied] [Beings of this world will gradually level up by hunting Chosen Ones] [Chosen Ones will be deployed across all Starter Villages in the Material Plane] [World quest generating, Starter Villages generating, Chosen Ones arrival countdown: 3 days] The text vanished as quickly as it had come. The pressure receded like a tide pulling back from shore. Su Nian stood motionless, eyes fixed on the sky. His pupils had gone very small.

The players were coming....

"Anna, did you see anything?" Inside the mine cave, Su Nian turned his head after a long moment of silence. Anna was perched contentedly on his back, right where she always settled. He asked the question carefully, testing the water.

"Nope~ Mr. Dragon, did something happen?" Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences. Anna tilted her head, her wide peach-blossom eyes blinking up at him with open curiosity. She reached out both small hands, clearly intending to wrap them around the Black Dragon's head again, but her arms were simply too short. She came up well short of her goal. Then a flash of gold swept across the continent, passing through every living thing in a single instant.

When Su Nian looked at Anna again, something new was there. A green health bar, hovering above her, the most familiar sight in the world to him. Five hundred hit points. Four hundred and fifty of them were gray, wound through with crimson thorns that pulsed like something alive. The remaining fifty weren't even full. As he watched, the bar ticked down by one more point. Before today, the System had shown him Anna's information through a datafied interface. That much was nothing new. But this was different.

Something fundamental had changed. He hadn't dwelled on it much before the datafication began. It was abstract, a thing he knew rather than felt. But now, watching the health bar float above Anna's head, watching the same bars appear above every kobold standing around him, the anger came up fast and hard, and with it something raw and protective that had no clean name. Who was playing with lives? Had this world just been made into a game? But it was real. This world was real. By what right?

Fire smoldered deep in Su Nian's dragon eyes. His hostility toward the players had been building for a while. What he felt toward whatever existed behind them had just reached a ceiling.

"Anna, you —""What's wrong?" Anna's brow creased.

"Mr. Dragon, you look unhappy." She was already climbing out from where she'd been resting, moving toward him. Her body was still fragile. Even that small effort brought a fine sheen of cold sweat to her forehead. She wrapped her arms around his head anyway. Her expression was all quiet worry, all tenderness. Her small face pressed gently against his scales, the hard, ridged armor that covered his jaw, and her voice came out soft.

"Mr. Dragon, don't be unhappy. Anna will always be here with you." [Until Anna dies, she will always,]"..."

"It's nothing." Su Nian kept his voice even.

"Thank you, Anna. I feel better now. I just... thought about something unpleasant for a moment." He managed a smile. On a dragon's face it came out mostly as a display of teeth, jagged, scarred, and somewhat terrifying. But Anna had a way of reading past the surface, and she didn't flinch.

"Unpleasant things?" She gave him a soft look.

"Whenever Mr. Dragon feels like talking about it, Anna will listen." Her smile came with two small dimples, shallow as a breath, sweet enough to make your head swim. They sat in her cheeks like something brewed, warmth and mischief in equal measure, quietly intoxicating.

"My name is Su Nian," he said.

"Call me that from now on. Su Nian... Su Nian Waterhouse Patunak."

"Okay~ Hehe." Anna's expression shifted to something shyer.

"Anna knows she looks young, but she really is an adult! Still, you're probably older than Anna, so... so..." Color flooded her face. Her fair skin went pink from her cheeks all the way down her slender neck. Her small ears twitched. She lowered her head and twisted her fingers together, voice dropping to something barely above a murmur.

"... Can Anna call you Brother Su Nian? Or just... just brother...? Or something like that."

"Of course."

"Then — then... brother?" She peeked up at him from under her lashes. Her eyes were bright.

"Mm. I'm here."

"Hehe." A small, radiant sound." Bro, brother~"" Brother~ Brother~ Brother~" Anna's voice echoed through the cave, soft and buoyant, bouncing off the stone walls with something that sounded a lot like joy. She had family again. The happiness was simple and real. Bolikri and the assembled kobolds said absolutely nothing. None of them could quite name the feeling. They hadn't eaten a single thing before coming to the mine. And yet, somehow, inexplicably, every one of them felt bloated.

SSSSS, the Ettercaps still pinned beneath Su Nian's claws twitched feebly. They had no idea what was happening around them. What they did know was that if the pressure didn't let up soon, they were not going to survive it.... Ettercaps have no interest in silver ore. The reason they'd taken over this lair in the first place was simple: it was large, and the kobold tribe that used to live here had made it comfortable. The surrounding terrain suited them well enough, and kobolds, as a rule, were easy to push around.

That was the full extent of their reasoning. So the silver vein was untouched, and the System had registered over a thousand points from the encounter. By any measure, this should have been a clean victory. Su Nian felt none of it. He sat on the raised platform at the far end of the hall, originally an altar where the kobold chieftain had made offerings to their god Kurtulmak, and now his temporary throne. His mind was elsewhere entirely. Three days. The Chosen Ones, players, would arrive in three days.

Of every native living in this world, he was almost certainly the only one who knew. Probably the only one who had felt the shift, who understood that the world had been semi-datafied, quietly converted into something that played by a game's rules. He suspected his System was part of why. He'd been pulled from Earth and dropped into this dragon's body, made into something singular and strange. That didn't happen without purpose. There was no more time to take things slow. He fixed his gaze on Bolikri.

"Tell me everything you know about the monster factions in the surrounding area." His tone carried no room for hesitation.

"Draw a map, a rough one is fine. I want to consolidate them." ➤ Next: Monster Fitness Plan