Chương 76: Reborn as the Dragon — Chapter 76 - More Laborers

"Gougouzi!" Watching the girl he liked get reduced to ash by a single breath, Weimons roared with pure despair. What a wonderful girl. Just killed like that. By this dragon.

"Unforgivable! You damnable beast, you will pay for every drop of blood you've spilled!" He planted his longsword in the ground, pushed himself upright, and stood. Hatred burned in his eyes. Tears and snot streaked freely down his face.

"You?" Su Nian turned his head. His pale golden eyes glinted with something cold and cruel.

"You are very powerful," Weimons said. He gripped his sword and staggered forward, closing the distance one lurching step at a time.

"We humans have no great lifespan. No exceptional gifts. But we cannot be killed off. We cannot be exterminated."

"Emperor Shivi built his age of racial equality, and then what? A thousand years have passed. Humanity endures. Humanity prevails. Humanity is the master of this world."

"And one day, your heart, your hide, your bones, they will sit in a human auction house, laid out on a table for people to browse at their leisure." His voice was low and venomous. The worst curse he could think of. He spat every word at the Black Dragon's face, and then he charged.

"Pathetic." This world was already being invaded by players. Already being used as a game board, a gambling table, a stage for someone else's entertainment. And here this man stood, chest full of fire and conviction. This is what they mean by fools rushing in. Su Nian's eyes went cold. He raised a claw and swept it at Weimons. And Weimons, unlike the wholly inexperienced Mei Magogoko, actually knew how to fight.

He caught the claw on his blade, redirected the force, rolled with it, and came up close, right beside Su Nian's head. [The dragon just used its breath. It's spent now.] [If I can get my sword into its eye, I turn this whole fight around. And even if I can't, I blind it. A blind dragon won't last long. Either way, I win.] He was confident. Very confident. Then he saw it. The Black Dragon's throat lit up. Swelled.

"HISSS, ""Burp." One breath reduced Weimons to ash. Su Nian exhaled a lazy smoke ring and watched it drift. Even without having heard Weimons's thoughts, the outcome would have been exactly the same. There's always someone who talks himself back into confidence. Someone who decides, against all evidence, that this time he's got it figured out. He tilted his head back toward Anna.

"Anna, you okay?" His neck had been shortened in the transformation, so he could only just barely twist far enough to see her, specifically, her fair little feet. Those three Fire Burst spells had been aimed at him, but the blasts had caught Anna too.

"I'm fine, brother. But your wing..." If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation. Anna stared at the dragon wing scorched black by the explosions, and her chest ached with it. All that guilt, heavy and relentless. If only I could actually help him. If only I weren't completely useless. She lowered her head. Wrapped her arms around her own knees.

The sour feeling spread through her chest, shame and self-loathing both, rising at once, and then the tears came, large and steady, rolling down her soft pink cheeks one after another, dropping onto the dragon's back like broken beads off a snapped string. She was just a burden. A useless, selfish burden who still wanted to stay by his side anyway. If she hadn't come today, he wouldn't have needed to shield her with his wing. He wouldn't be hurt right now. What right does she even have...

"Because I like you."

"Huh?" Anna's eyes flew open. She stared at the dragon in front of her, or rather, at the back of his neck, which was all she could see from here, with an expression of pure, stunned disbelief. But that voice had definitely been his.

"Brother, you... what did you just say?" Her lips trembled. Her face had gone crimson. Her eyes were glassy with tears that hadn't quite fallen. Something moved through her heart, like a feather, brushing slow and soft, back and forth, sweeping the shame away, sweeping the self-blame away, and leaving behind a warm, buzzing anticipation she didn't know what to do with.

"Because I like you." Su Nian lifted his head and banked toward his minions, repeating the words without any particular ceremony.

"Ah — th-that — why would you suddenly — brother, why did you say that..." She pressed both hands over her face. Her voice had gone shaky. She was stammering. A tiny gap between her fingers was the only thing she'd allow herself to peek through. His words had crashed into her like a startled fawn charging headlong into a room, and now that fawn was still there, bouncing around at the very center of her chest, making her so flushed and flustered she could barely breathe.

"Felt like saying it." Su Nian's tone was easy. Offhand. Like it was nothing. Anna's brain stopped working. She sat there with her wide, wet eyes and stared at nothing in particular. Her body temperature had climbed so high she was beginning to think her thoughts might just melt. How had he known what she was thinking? Was it a coincidence? She turned that question over, and then quietly decided she wasn't going to ask. She couldn't bear the electric feeling already crackling through her chest.

She was terrified of hearing one more thing that would shatter whatever composure she had left. What she wanted, right now, was a hug. A warm, tight hug. And to be held close. The wanting was so strong it actually hurt, a sweet, unbearable ache she couldn't do anything about. Obviously that wasn't happening at the moment. So Anna simply curled into her spot on his back and lay down, spreading her small soft hands flat, pressing as much of herself as she could against the broad expanse of scales beneath her.

She breathed in deep. Even her burning cheek pressed against the black scales, cool and smooth and solid. I wish it could be like this forever... Lying here against the dragon she liked, wrapped in that feeling, safe, grounded, whole, Anna's heart slowly settled. The ache didn't fully leave. The feather-light brush of it came and went. But she felt better. Quietly, steadily better.... Su Nian had no idea what Anna was thinking at that particular moment.

The heart-listening ability worked exactly the way the system had described: one second you could hear everything, the next second, nothing. But he could still feel the heat radiating off the small body on his back. Shy and pleasantly overwhelmed, he guessed. Probably both at once. They clearly liked each other, and neither of them had ever said a word about it. He could piece together what that must have felt like from her side. Always uncertain. Always a little lost.

Maybe she'd even convinced herself she was just his pet. This kind of thing needs the man to say it first. That's just how it is. And the timing had worked out perfectly. When Anna was deep in that spiral of guilt and self-blame, nothing he could have said by way of comfort would have reached her. But a declaration like that, blunt, out of nowhere, with force behind it, cut straight through. It scrambled her thoughts completely. The sadness had nowhere left to stand.

And then she'd tumbled headfirst into the feeling instead, with no room to think about anything else. Besides. Three simple words, I like you, are more useful than any comfort in the world. Because they aren't comfort. They're a fact. They're an answer.... Herded deliberately by the monsters, the surviving human soldiers were running, all of them, in a loose panicked mass, toward the trap. Their Archmage was dead. Their Knight Commander was dead. The monsters surrounding them showed no sign of thinning.

Whatever fighting spirit these men had brought into the forest had long since evaporated. They had parents at home. Children. Some had lovers waiting for them. Dying pointlessly under monster claws wasn't in the plan. Soldier A had been telling himself exactly that. Then he and his comrades burst out of the undergrowth and saw open ground ahead, and for one bright second he thought they were free. The ground dropped out from under them. BOOM. The earth caved in all at once.

Several hundred soldiers barely had time to scream before they plunged into the enormous pit below. When the noise settled, a ring of monsters stood along the edges, peering down. They looked at the wailing soldiers packed into the pit. They grinned, slow, cruel, ugly grins.

"Heh-heh-heh..." The kobolds had dug this one specially. Built for capturing soldiers wholesale, not killing them. The smaller individual traps scattered across the forest, those had been one-shot kills. Step, and gone. In a grim sort of way, the soldiers in the pit might have been the lucky ones. Or the unlucky ones. Hard to say. What wasn't hard to say at all: The monsters now had significantly more laborers to help dig pits and plant potatoes. ➤ Next: Hehe Hehehe