Chương 56: Reborn as the Dragon: — Chapter 56 - Harpy

Rock-Armored Crocodiles typically stored their eggs in the bushes near a stream. The more particular ones would dig a pit and bury them. What Su Nian found when he arrived at the scene was neither. The area was wrecked. Most of the eggs were already gone, leaving only seven or eight scattered survivors rolling forlornly through the dirt. The thieves had clearly been in a panic. Some eggs hadn't made it out intact, they lay cracked on the ground, yolk and egg white soaking into the soil.

"Bolikri, collect the broken eggs. Don't bother with whatever's already spilled — just save anything still inside the shells." Su Nian swallowed a mouthful of dragon saliva. He was planning to make his precious Anna an otherworld-style egg drop soup later. Not because he wanted any. These were his subordinates' children, unhatched, yes, but still. How could he possibly eat them? He was a kind-hearted variant Black Dragon.

Once Bolikri had gathered the salvageable eggs, Su Nian turned his attention to the scene itself. It didn't take long. Tucked inside one of the hatching pits was a single brown feather, roughly the size of an adult's palm. His bloodline spoke before his mind did. Harpy. Dragon blood only bothered to catalogue two kinds of creatures: things you could breed, and things you could eat. Harpies fell cleanly into the first category. Harpies were humanoid monsters of the chaotic evil alignment.

Their legends stretched back to elven antiquity, though most of what survived were baseless fairy tales that bards had invented out of thin air. They had beautiful singing voices and were among the cruelest hunters alive, fond of the kill, fonder still of prolonging it. Su Nian called over Grey Wolf, who knew Silvermoon Forest better than anyone.

"The thieves were harpies. Do you know if there's a nest nearby?" Grey Wolf turned the question over for a moment, mentally mapping the surrounding monster territories. Then he shook his head.

"Great... master. No harpy nests nearby. But... some time ago... a group of harpies came down from the Silvermoon Mountains. They should be... without a fixed home now."

"Without a fixed home." Su Nian scratched his chin and breathed out a lazy smoke ring, the sulfur scent drifting around him as he thought through what he knew about harpies. Treacherous. Vicious. Cowardly. Vindictive. Obsessed with shiny objects and corpse remains. Harpies didn't normally steal eggs. They were apex predators, more ferocious than gnolls. A clutch of crocodile eggs wouldn't even count as a snack. Which meant these harpies were either few in number, injured, or both.

Something had knocked them down far enough that they didn't dare go head-to-head with his minions. He could piece together the rest. Yesterday, while he'd been out searching for potatoes, Gray Brother and Banana Wolf had led a group of monsters to round up that herd of mountain sheep. The harpies lost their food source overnight. Out of spite or desperation, probably both, they crept near the Dragon's Nest looking for an easy score. Stolen novel; please report. Harpies never fought fair.

They wouldn't attack unless the odds were comfortably in their favor. The moment things turned, they'd cut and run, choosing hunger over risk. Classic ambush predators. So when they'd spotted the herds of herbivorous monsters — Rabbit Eight and the others — grazing right beside his Dragon's Nest, they hadn't dared get close. Instead, they'd settled for something dumber and lower-risk: raiding the Rock-Armored Crocodiles' eggs. Finding them wouldn't be hard.

The blunt approach: sweep the nearby cliffs until something turned up. The smart approach: bait and trap. And among his minions, was there anything better suited for bait than a Blaze Rabbit? A plan assembled itself quietly in Su Nian's mind.

Hana was, by nature, a happy harpy. Lately, happiness had been in short supply. Her tribe had lived well in the Silvermoon Mountains. Good hunting, enough to eat, the occasional raid on a female adventurer for the jewelry. Life had been simple and satisfying. Then the hippogriffs arrived. A herd that had been living perfectly fine in Silvermoon Forest had suddenly pushed up into the mountains and taken over. They had a particular hatred for humanoid creatures, which left Hana with no real options.

She'd fled with whoever was still breathing, abandoning the cliffs her tribe had held for years. More than half of them hadn't made it. The hippogriffs tore out hearts and ate them on the spot. With barely a dozen survivors, Hana couldn't take back the old territory or claim a new one. After a great deal of reluctant thinking, she led the remnants down the mountain and into Silvermoon Forest. They scraped by on a herd of mountain sheep living along a nearby cliff face. It wasn't much, but it kept them alive.

Then yesterday, Hana flew by that same cliff to hunt, and found a mob of mixed monsters working in coordinated chaos, knocking the sheep unconscious and hauling them away. Gnolls and kobolds and Blaze Rabbits, all moving together like they belonged in the same group. Hana had no idea how that had happened, and she didn't care. What she felt was fury. Losing their home to hippogriffs was one thing. Both sides could fly. If you weren't strong enough, you swallowed the loss.

But ground-dwelling monsters stealing their food? That was a different insult entirely. Hana came back to the temporary nest burning with outrage and gave the order. Under cover of night, the harpies would find those monsters and make them pay. She'd already planned out how it would go. The monsters would be sleeping. The harpies would swoop in, blind them first, then drag them back to the nest. After that: slow, deliberate torment. Dismemberment. The kind that stretched across hours.

Harpies believed prey tasted better when it had screamed. Even if a dragon was protecting them, Hana swore she would see this through. Then she arrived. And there was, in fact, a dragon. A variant Black Dragon, no less. Stronger than the standard kind. She genuinely could not process it. What was a creature like that doing in a patch of Silvermoon Forest? It made as much sense as finding a king squatting in a slum.

The dragon's presence hit them like a physical weight, deep, suffocating, pressing down through the dark until not one of them dared draw a full breath. Hana folded. All the harpies folded. But spite and sticky fingers are hard habits to shake. So instead of going home empty-handed, Hana led her tribe to raid the one group that couldn't fight back: the Rock-Armored Crocodiles.

They snatched the eggs, fled in every direction to throw off any pursuit, doubled back and circled until even Hana had lost count of the detours, and finally crawled into a cold, dark cave to hide. Not their temporary nest. They didn't dare go near it. A race that had once swept freely along the cliffs was now hunched in a damp hole in the ground, feathers matted and cold, stomachs empty. The eggs hadn't lasted. They never would have, there weren't enough of them. Hana lay in the dark and stewed.

Her stomach growled. Her feathers were sticky and wet and miserable. Maybe the dragon doesn't even care, she thought. It's not a crocodile. Why would it notice a few missing eggs? And anyway, legendary creatures like that only eat and sleep. Everyone knows that. It's not going to look after its minions. Hana made up her mind. No more hiding. She was going out to hunt. She wanted real meat.

Harpy Eye Wash ➤ Next: The True Hunter Often Appears in the Form of Prey