Chương 14: Reborn as the Dragon: — Chapter 14 - The Method to Open the Shackles

These shackles were custom-made. The king had used extraordinarily dense materials specifically to keep him grounded, and compared to ordinary restraints, the ones locked around Anna's limbs were brutally heavy. How much could Anna possibly weigh? Sixty jin at most. But with the shackles added, when she'd been lying across his belly, he'd felt at least ninety. That meant the shackles alone weighed nearly half as much as Anna did.

It wasn't hard to imagine just how vicious a scheme the king had cooked up to drag down a dragon's flight speed. And right now, it was Anna who paid the price. Forget moving freely. In those things, even lifting an arm or a leg was torture. He was slow to piece it together, but it clicked now — why Anna's lifespan had been down to a single day when she'd woken up after he used the Recovery Card.

She must have been fighting against these shackles the whole time, straining herself to find some way to save him, and run herself straight into the ground. The thought made his chest ache. He studied the shackles more carefully and found keyholes. Keyholes meant they could be picked. The mechanical craftsmanship of this world was still primitive. A lock like this wouldn't be anything complicated. Su Nian was an advanced soul reincarnated from Earth.

He'd never picked a lock himself, but he'd seen it done plenty of times. The Elder Scrolls V, Dying Light, Fallout, dozens of games had lockpicking mechanics baked in. And the keyholes on Anna's shackles looked almost identical to the ones in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. Now he just needed the tools. Any other dragon would probably be raging uselessly by now, or have given up and gone to sleep. But Su Nian wasn't any other dragon. He had the Self-Modification System. He pulled it up and got to work.

One claw on his left paw he reshaped into a flat, thin rod, the tension wrench, to hold the pins in place. One claw on his right paw he tapered into a needle, the pick, to rotate the core.

"System, how many system points does reshaping my claws like this cost?" [Ding! Calculating free modification... Dragon deviation: 80%. This modification requires 500 system points.]"Yikes." Su Nian clicked his tongue. Fair enough, turning claws into lockpicks was pretty extreme. There was nothing remotely dragon-like about the result no matter how you looked at it.

"What if it's temporary? Can I get a discount?" [Ding! Temporary solidification costs 10% of the total modification fee per minute.] He looked at his remaining 153 system points and winced. But then he looked at Anna, small and miserable in her chains, and bit down on the hesitation. If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

"Temporary solidification. Do it." [Ding! Temporary solidification complete. Modification complete. Timer started.] A phantom countdown materialized in front of his eyes. Three minutes. That was how long he had before his system points ran dry. No time to waste.

He moved to Anna, nudged her left-hand shackle into position with his snout under her puzzled gaze, slid the flat rod into the keyhole to press against the pins, and inserted the needle pick alongside it, angling it as close to the bisector as he could manage. He started working the pick, slow, deliberate rotations. The moment he felt any resistance, he micro-adjusted the angle. Several tries. Then the keyhole turned a full half-rotation, and the shackle snapped open with a clean click. Thirty seconds gone.

Under Anna's wide-eyed stare, he moved to the right hand. First lock down, his fingers knew the feel of it now. A few adjustments and it opened just as cleanly. Right ankle. Left ankle. All four shackles off. One minute and eighteen seconds.

"Cancel the temporary modification!" [Temporary solidification canceled. 59 system points deducted.]"Not bad at all — hehehe~" Su Nian bared his teeth in a wide, smug dragon grin and let out a thunderous string of triumphant rumbles. Anna flexed her limbs like she couldn't quite believe they were free. Three or four days in those shackles had left her wrists and ankles bruised deep purple, the skin mottled with marks, a dull ache that had become her constant companion.

None of that touched the wave of admiration and gratitude she felt looking up at the black dragon.

"Mr. Dragon, you — you actually opened them? How did you even do that? That's incredible!" Su Nian lifted his head at once. Chest out, tail straight up, the picture of insufferable smugness. Even a non-dragon could read that. Anna let out a helpless little laugh, pressing her hand over her mouth. And in that single unguarded moment, something bloomed across her face, two soft dimples appearing and disappearing on her delicate cheeks, peach-blossom eyes warm and unblinking as they looked up at him.

The makings of something devastating were already there. Su Nian went completely still. Two drops of dragon saliva hit the floor. Somewhere deep in his reptilian instincts, something ancient and territorial began to stir. [Anna Hathaway's favorability increased by 10 points. Current favorability: 32 (Friendly).] The notification yanked him back to himself. He'd been staring. Anna had noticed.

The fox-eared elf had her head dipped low now, color rising in her cheeks, her bruised hands folded in front of her stomach, pale fingers twisting against each other in quiet embarrassment. A hot jet of white steam shot from Su Nian's nostrils, internal heat, venting. He was a black dragon. He had no business running this close to red dragon territory. He reined it in. Reason won. He leaned down and gently picked Anna up, setting her onto his back. His earlier estimate had been off.

She probably didn't even reach sixty jin, lighter than he'd thought. However much she'd suffered, her body showed it. Anna startled at the sudden movement but didn't pull away. She settled carefully onto the black dragon's broad back, and her small hands found his neck almost on instinct, gripping tight. She was afraid of falling. The fear turned out to be unnecessary. Su Nian's back barely shifted as he moved, each step measured and steady, as if he was thinking about her with every footfall.

It was a strange new feeling. But what it gave Anna, more than anything, was safety. She knew now that he wasn't going to leave her behind. Dragons were proud creatures. Riding one was ten times harder than killing one, a hundred times, for the stubborn ones. Some dragons would sooner die under torment than allow someone on their back. What Su Nian had just done was a form of acceptance, even if Anna had no idea why she'd earned it. Then she noticed what he was doing with his claws. The two Blaze Rabbit carcasses.

He was cleaning them, methodically, efficiently, and now threading the meat onto skewers of branch. He was going to cook. Anna stared, round-eyed and baffled, lying flat across his back. If this were a fully grown dragon who'd already mastered shapeshifting, she might not have been surprised. Adult dragons had minds that matched or outstripped most humans. But Mr. Dragon, by his size, was barely past juvenile stage. Juvenile dragons didn't bother with any of this. Raw meat, fresh blood, that was what they ate.

That was what they were.... Dropped Anna x2 ➤ Next: Kobold Bolikri