Chương 144: Reborn as the Dragon — Chapter 144 - Joy Shared is Joy Doubled

By the time Su Nian made it back near the Dragon's Nest, he finally remembered two things he'd forgotten to warn Banana Wolf about. First: Little Red was male. Second: Little Red was poisonous. Do not touch. Going back to mention it now was probably pointless. Whatever shouldn't have been touched had already been touched. Not that it mattered much, everyone out here had Dragon Ancestry running through them. A little venom wasn't going to kill anyone.

For the sake of Banana Wolf and Little Red's future happiness together, Su Nian decided to leave them alone. This was a delicate moment. Feelings were deepening. With enough exposure, Banana Wolf would develop antibodies on his own, and after that, their time together shouldn't cause any major issues. There was, however, one problem Su Nian couldn't ignore. The monsters under his command had recently developed a serious... trend.

Due to the critically low number of female monsters, many of the males had started forming attachments that crossed both species and gender lines. Su Nian was not, in principle, opposed to free love. But if this continued unchecked, the Dragon's Nest's overall monster population would inevitably decline. Two males in a relationship couldn't exactly produce little monsters. The trouble was he had no idea what to do about it. He couldn't restructure male monster biology.

He couldn't conjure female monsters out of thin air. He filed it away as an unsolved problem and kept walking. The smell hit him before he even reached the entrance, thick, rich, roasted meat. He knew immediately that Anna was back. He ducked inside and found a massive grill set up beneath the Bedrock Platform. Hanging over it was a Caimen Shield Pig bigger than a minivan. A proper third-tier monster, the Caimen Shield Pig was named for the shield-shaped carapace plating its joints and spine.

They were native to the Silvermoon Forest. They were also a pack species. Su Nian understood in an instant what had happened. Anna had gone hunting for him, deep into the Silvermoon Mountains.

"Anna!" His face went flat. He had half a mind to have a serious talk with this fox-eared girl about her habit of flying wherever she pleased now that she'd grown strong enough to do it. If she ever got too confident and wandered into the high peaks of the Silvermoon Mountains, there was no telling what she'd run into. He wasn't entirely sure himself what lived up there.

"Brother~ where did you just go~""Hmph! Didn't we agree you'd wait in the Dragon's Nest like a good girl? You're a sick dragon. How can you be running around everywhere?" He hadn't even gotten a word out before Anna struck first. She gave her wings a light flap and sailed right up to him, both hands planted on her hips, face set in an expression of genuine displeasure. She was wearing an apron. Just an apron.

A considerable amount of fair, smooth skin was on full display, and the apron itself only served to accentuate just how lovely her figure was. Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings. Su Nian's irritation evaporated. One fire went out. Another ignited. This was... this was really... Honestly, wearing it versus not wearing it didn't seem like a meaningful distinction.

That slender neck, those soft pink shoulders, the ivory curve of her legs, the delicate line of her waist. If anything, it was more dangerous than nothing at all. This was a test? For a dragon? What dragon could survive this kind of test? Su Nian certainly couldn't. PRPRPRPRPR~"Ah — brother, you're terrible!" Anna let out a startled yelp. She scrambled to press down the hem of her apron, slender legs crossing together, a deep flush blooming across her fair cheeks. Then her little nose twitched.

She leaned in, sniffed once, and her brow furrowed immediately.

"Brother. Did you go to Banana Wolf's place?" She sniffed again, more carefully this time. Her expression grew long-suffering.

"I knew it. Brother, don't visit Banana Wolf before meals. You come back smelling strange every time." She patted the black dragon's big head with a sigh. If this dragon weren't her absolute favorite, she would have chased him straight back out.

"Come on, be good. Go outside. Anna will wash you off again."

"Ew. Stinky."... Half an hour later, they came back inside. Su Nian licked his lips, looking thoroughly satisfied with life. Anna's face was still flushed bright red, her soft lower lip caught gently between her teeth. Even as she floated in the air, her legs hadn't quite stopped trembling. It turned out that making someone you cared about happy made you happy too, sometimes happier than if you'd done something for yourself. The satisfaction ran deep. Su Nian was living proof of this.

"Brother, could you maybe not..."

"No." He shook his head with great solemnity.

"That was compensation. For Anna helping me bathe. You can't just cancel compensation."

"It was a reward. A reward. Do you understand what that means?"

"And Anna was clearly having a very good time too." Anna looked at that shameless, utterly unrepentant dragon face and bit her lip. She sighed. Then she leaned close to his ear, her breath warm, and said in a voice that was not entirely steady:"What Anna actually meant was..."

"In the future, brother could be... a little more... unrestrained. You don't have to hold back so much."

"Anna won't ever dislike brother... ying~" She seemed to horrify herself. Before Su Nian could process what she'd just said, Anna's wings snapped open and she shot across the cave, hands pressed over her burning face, making straight for the grill like she could outfly the embarrassment. Su Nian stared after her. So that was what she meant. His dragon brain completely offline. Since she'd gotten a new heart, Anna had been getting increasingly... bold. At this rate, how much longer could he actually hold out?

He shook his head with great suffering, lifted a claw, and filled in the large fresh hole that had appeared in the Dragon's Nest floor. The kobolds' construction quality was genuinely getting worse. They had the nerve to make him, the master, patch his own walls. Unacceptable.

"Brother, come quick~" While he'd been staring at nothing, Anna had already wrestled the Caimen Shield Pig off the grill. Her strength was absurd now, a monster that weighed as much as a small car swung around in her hands like a plush toy. There were no dishes in the Dragon's Nest big enough to hold it, so she drove a long steel spit through the whole thing and propped it across the bedrock. Then she produced a gleaming kitchen knife from under her apron and went to work.

The blade caught the light, a flashing, spinning blur, and the sound was a rapid, rhythmic SWISH SWISH SWISH. In no time at all, an entire roasted leg had been cleanly separated from the carcass, golden-brown and crackling. She then cut it into slabs roughly the size of dinner plates, neat and even. Exactly right for Su Nian. Large enough that he could actually taste what he was eating. Small enough that he didn't have to gnaw through half a leg at once to feel full. His little treasure could cook like this?

Su Nian watched her — attentive, careful, genuinely pleased with what she was doing — and felt something warm and restless stir in his chest. Anna had leaned forward slightly to work, and that posture curved her silhouette into a soft, compact S. Not dramatic. Nothing overwhelming. Just a quiet, unguarded beauty that was somehow worse for being exactly that. BOOM! Su Nian already knew he'd be repairing the floor again before the night was over.

"Brother, stop standing there like a statue~" Anna caught the sound and glanced over at him. Her face went a shade pinker. She pressed her hand over her mouth to hide a smile she couldn't quite contain. Then she lifted a plate, floated over to him, and pinched up a slice of meat, fragrant, glistening, still steaming, and held it up to his mouth with both hands.

"Ah~ be good, brother. Anna will feed you." ➤ Next: Carbon-Grilled Monster Leg