Chương 6: Reborn as the Dragon: — Chapter 6 - Basic Devour

Anna's consciousness didn't stay dim for long. Maybe it was because a medicinal herb like Baikal Skullcap had never existed in this world before. Or maybe it was because Anna's constitution was something else entirely. Either way, the herbs Su Nian had given her worked with startling speed. Her fever broke before long. Her body temperature crept back toward something normal. She was still weak, but at least her mind was her own again. Her limbs responded. Anna opened her eyes, blinking in confusion.

Her head still throbbed. But the burning that had consumed her whole body was gone, replaced by a warmth that felt almost gentle. Something was blocking her view. Her sluggish brain took a moment to catch up with her eyes. It was Mr. Dragon. Anna's eyes went wide. She was wrapped snugly beneath the Black Dragon's wing, and that warmth she'd felt was his body heat, radiating into her like a furnace through the dark. [Anna Hathaway's Favorability increased by 20. Current Favorability: -10 (Disbelief)] Her mouth was bitter. Herbs. Berries were scattered across the cave floor around her. That sweet taste she'd caught earlier, that would be them. The Black Dragon's snout rested beside her leg, and when she looked closely, she could see bits of crushed herb and berry still caught at the corner of its mouth. He'd fed her. Both the herbs and the berries. Anna didn't feel shy about it. She didn't feel disgusted, either. Just a strange, quiet feeling she couldn't quite name.

He was a dragon, not a person. That made embarrassment seem beside the point. What she felt instead was surprise, and something that sat heavier in her chest. Gratitude. [Anna Hathaway's Favorability increased by 20. Current Favorability: 10 (Friendly)] [Ding! Favorability has reached the first stage requirement. Congratulations, Host, on obtaining the ability Basic Devour. Congratulations, Host, on obtaining 2, 000 System Points.] [Basic Devour: Eating can rapidly restore stamina and generate a degree of self-healing ability. Correspondingly, appetite will also increase.] [Ding! Skill has been permanently acquired.] The System kept chiming away. Su Nian, deep in unconsciousness, heard none of it.

"Mr. Dragon?" Anna stretched out one soft hand with effort and gave him a gentle nudge. The Black Dragon didn't move. Didn't even twitch.

"Mr. Dragon. Wake up." She tried again, louder. Still nothing. Alarm moved through her. She looked him over and noticed the wounds, large, ugly, spread across his scales. Something tightened in her chest. Love what you're reading? Discover and support the author on the platform they originally published on. He had shielded her from the mages during the abduction. Kept her wrapped up while the spells hit him instead. Had the damage finally caught up with him? Was the Black Dragon dying right now?

He'd been fine just moments ago. How had it, Anna lay flat on the ground and crawled closer. Carefully, she pressed her ear to his chest. Thump. Thump. Faint. Barely there. She didn't know dragons. But she knew comparison. When he'd been active before, his heartbeat had filled the entire lair. A deep, steady percussion. You could feel it in your bones. Whatever this was now, this thin, stuttering pulse, it wasn't that. He had fallen into a coma. And his body was growing cold beneath her ear.

If she left him alone, he would probably die. On the other hand, this was the perfect moment to escape. Anna dismissed that thought without a second's hesitation. He had saved her life. And beyond that, with her illness, and these heavy shackles on her wrists and ankles, where would she even go? She couldn't run. She'd be dead before she reached anywhere worth reaching. Better to try to help him instead. Help him through whatever this was.

Even if she didn't have long left, she could at least do something that mattered. She pushed herself upright. Her temperature had mostly returned to normal, and she found she had a little strength back. The shackles were leaden on her limbs, but she could manage to move. Going outside wasn't an option, she couldn't walk that far, and the world out there would kill her faster than staying would. So she did the only thing she could. She gathered the berries from the cave floor, one by one.

Then she worked to lift the Black Dragon's jaw — straining with everything she had — and crushed each berry in her fist, letting the juice drip into his mouth. By the time she finished, she was done. Cold sweat had broken out across her skin. Her head was going fuzzy again.

"Mr. Dragon, I'm sorry." Her voice came out barely above a murmur.

"This is all Anna can do." She paused.

"You're so cold. Is that it? Are you cold?" She hugged his head into her arms. He was enormous, over four meters long, with a wingspan twice that, and holding his head was genuinely her limit, a small girl cradling something vast and heavy against her chest. She hoped it was enough to give him even a little warmth. COUGH, COUGH, The illness struck without warning. She coughed hard. Spots of blood fell onto her dress, bright and stark.

Her whole body shuddered and curled inward, pain driving through her organs like needles pushed in slow. When it finally eased, her lips had gone blue. Her face was the color of old funeral paper. She looked down at the Black Dragon's head, still resting against her. One soft hand drifted up and traced the two sharp horns, gentle. There was a small prayer in her heart. Then her vision went dark, and she sank away. This poor girl had barely been conscious for any time at all.

Feeding Su Nian those berries had taken everything she had left, and that effort had been all it took to trigger another episode. She crumpled where she sat, slipping back into unconsciousness before she could fall. Under normal circumstances, they both would have died in that cave. A handful of berries wasn't nearly enough to do anything for a dragon of his size. But Su Nian's caution had saved him. That, and the ability Anna had unknowingly provided. He'd eaten first, filled his stomach before anything else.

That decision mattered now. [Basic Devour] was already at work, breaking down the meat still in his stomach with rapid efficiency. His body had begun to heal. Thump. Thump. The heartbeat that had been barely a whisper grew stronger by degrees. The wounds across his scales started closing, scabbing over, filling in with new flesh, steadily, until all at once, it stopped. The food was gone. The self-healing stopped with it. Still, Su Nian had recovered most of the damage.

And dragons carried their own natural resilience. What remained wouldn't slow him down, wouldn't stop him from fighting. He was functional. Then the hunger hit him. It crashed through his sleeping mind like a flooding river. He jolted, snapped upright, and was awake.

"Holy — I'm starving. Didn't I just eat?" He felt like he hadn't had a meal in three days. A sound that could only be described as a roar echoed from somewhere deep in his stomach. Every part of him was screaming for food. And right there in front of him, delicious food. One fresh, tender little half-elf girl. Wouldn't you like a taste? The hunger pressed at him. The old dragon instincts rose with it, that primal, bloodthirsty pull that didn't negotiate or reason. He shoved it back down.

Poor Anna was still hugging his head. And her Favorability had climbed all the way to 12. He was not eating his own SSR. Attention, all units, interrupting your regularly scheduled program with an Anna update. ➤ Next: Modification: Basic Insight Technique