It is the following day and I feel refreshed. I managed to sleep well, by which I mean I spent my time in the library slowly marking down all the useful patterns of the sound rune. I had to take things slow, else I’d risk being startled awake by the ensuing headache that messing with my treasure trove of knowledge causes me, but I still managed. Now I get to practice just a bit more before I hear mother coming. I am still wary in case she tries to take us someplace else again, but so far she’s been good.

A short flight later and we are at the lake, where two ragged looking boars with bone spikes growing out of their skulls look just about ready to bolt. I notice mother submerging herself, only her head still out, like she usually does to let the animals calm down just a bit, then I prepare for the fight. I need to claim at least one of them, so I go ahead of my siblings. My target turns, squeals, and charges. I know boars are some crazy things, ready to kill themselves if only to make sure their aggressor is dead too. Thankfully I am not a simple aggressor.

I’ve been overthinking things when I tried to mimic my sibling’s defense. It was the one thing I wasn’t able to do while they could. Sure my toughness was improved by mana naturally and a bit of it was lost with each hit, but I wasn’t ever able to take a deadly hit and just ignore it. Bunnies, wolves, even deer would be able to hurt me, mildly, and I wouldn’t be able to use that block ability.

But I was dumb about it. My siblings aren’t geniuses, they’re slightly smarter animals at this point in time. They are led mainly by instinct, which means I should be able to do this instinctually. That’s still not exactly enough to make sense of it by myself. However I realized, just about when Spots got so drained that he was incredibly easy to wound, that the mana used for the rebuke is from within the scales and body, rather than from the lungs. So, it is mana that cannot really be controlled in the first place.

Which is why I am charging headfirst into a deadly situation without being afraid. Spots survived two goring attacks without a care. I can more than survive one now that I figured out how to overcharge my body with mana. I know the block will happen, because this is my mana and it’s job is to empower and protect me. So as I let the beast hit my side, I look with glee as a rainbow of energy explodes from my body. Note to self, have enough mana in you and instead of just stopping a beast, you’ll end up hurting it.

It was like the boar hit a wall of solid steel, the bones and tusks growing out of its face exploded into splinters and its face became bloody. Of course, it still stood. Boars are just built different after all, but this one’s too stunned to move as I bite it’s face and let lightning melt its brain. The other boar squeals and tries to run at me but my siblings leap at it and slowly kill it, bite by bite, flame by flame.

Really, I was merciful compared to them. Unlike them I don’t start eating, instead I sit on the corpse, spreading my body to cover most of it, then just sit like that, eyeing them to make sure they don’t try to sneak it. Already they will half respect my right to it since I took the beast down alone, but they might still try to get a bite if they are not full. I know I am feeling plenty hungry right now, but it is a fake feeling. it’s not the hunger of a living being, it is the hunger of a gluttonous creature. I ate yesterday, I can survive much longer than this without food.

This continues for a while, until mother cranes her large neck and pokes me with her snout, reminding me how small I still am. She seems… I don’t know? Curious? Worried? Annoyed at me and my antics? Either might be possible but it’s not like I care much. I am a difficult child and she’ll just have to live with that.

My siblings finish their meal, drink a bit of water from mother’s lake, then play a bit before falling asleep. I am of course still guarding the boar. Mother decides to collect them and when she gets to me I make sure to dig my claws in, making her lift the boar too. Huh, didn’t think I have this much strength in just my limbs… Ah, right, mana. Still got a lot more than my siblings packed in my cells. She shakes a bit, then noticing that I am still holding unto the thing for dear life, lets out a raspy sigh and takes off.

Once back on the pile of gold, now with a huge boar as a plushy, mother leaves and I begin my very slow walk. I am biting into the boar’s face, dragging it on the cave floor all the way to the humans. It is painfully slow, but I worry that I will end up ruining the carcass if I move too fast, or I might even injure myself if I am not strong enough, so I decide to err on the side of caution.

Once I finally reach them, I am met by sounds of surprise, or at least that’s my best guess. Most of them are too stunned to react properly, but at least the beast woman is pretty quick to enjoy a boon, so she approaches and starts biting into it. I realize quickly that she’s having trouble however, as it seems the fur and skin of the beast is a bit to hard for her fangs. Either she’s severely weakened or the animal was tougher than I thought. I remember that she’s the main reason why I decided to bring in extra meat, so I help her by ripping its chest, through the hardened rib cage and all the way to the core. I take it out and drop it in front of the woman who instantly devours it. Well, there’s clearly crystals in there but I am guessing she can eat them all the same. Maybe they’re useful even for people that don’t have a whole furnace in their gut.

I turn to look at the others but they seem… not happy? The girl with the burnt arm steps forward, tries, with great effort, to rip a strip of meat way, and when she managed to get a small chunk out, she uses her magic to set it on fire? Ah shit, cooking, I forgot humans do that. To be fair the beast woman had absolutely no problem eating flesh raw, but the others might not have her constitution… Also they can’t just rip the tough flesh from a mutant… Alright, time to do the opposite of a dumpster dive and try to find simple tools in a pile of riches.

I leave, after licking myself clean of blood since I don’t want to make too much of a mess, then I start looking around through the miscellaneous items we have. So, need at least a good knife and a grill. Or maybe some skewers? Bah, whatever, just something to hold the meat so it can cook even partially.

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

Sadly for me, there’s only one sharp thing in the entirety of our hoard: the fancy sword. It’s clearly magical in some way, since it has runes inscribed in gold on it, and it is sharp enough to easily cut through my scales (I couldn’t help but try it), so it should work. Thankfully, as I drag it with my tails, I realize it is quite.. well, not light, but it isn’t heavy. I was half afraid that weapons in this world would follow the fantasy trope of putting a slab of lead into a long, sharp shape, and calling it a weapon.

So, a bit unwieldy and overkill for a kitchen knife, but at least it will function. As for the grill? I got nothing. Most of what we have is coins, with a few random valuable items strewn about. Sadly nobody decided to make a grill, a pan, or even skewers out of gold or silver, so they’re not here. Plan B then. I go through the tunnel and stop just enough to drop the sword with them. Of course I hear gasps, but I don’t sit around to look at their surprised faces, I got some wood to collect. I run all the way out of the cave and straight into the woods close to the entrance. I don’t even need to look far to find some fallen branches, which I quickly toss to my tails, which I curl up to form a sort of basket.

A few dry branches later, and even a couple live ones that are just close enough to the ground for me to rip off, and I am running back. As I get close to the human room, I hear mother landing at the entrance.

What? Why? She doesn’t just come twice in a single day, not normally. So why?

I get my answer as I pass through the vines and see the beast woman and assassin lady out of their cuffs. Huh. They don’t look shattered, they look cut… You know, I should have realized that a magic sword can cut through magic chains. My bad. Currently the one with the sword is the beast woman, who is just cutting up the meat? No trying to escape, no threatening to attack my siblings with it, just cutting up meat from the boar.

She turns to me and makes that chuffing sound, which I repeat back, almost by instinct, with the sound rune that forms and disperses in moments. Alright, I’m getting better at that. Well, while mother stomps her way in, I drop the sticks and see her get the idea, as she starts sharpening the tougher looking branches. The old lady seems to have made a firepit by arranging rocks in the middle of the room, and the girl is now going through the drier bits of wood, probably to try and find the ones best used for a fire.

The beast woman is the first to pick up on the fact that mother is approaching… but that’s still slower than I expected. Guess I just knew even before I actually heard her… Oh well, mother reaches us swiftly and peeks her many eyes into the room. She’s not happy. She reached for me, making very uncomfortable eye contact as I was being lifted into the air, then she put me down and pushed me towards the nest. As I turn around she lets out a strong breath which peppers me with droplets of cold water.

I lay flat and look at her. She looks back. We keep eye contact until she seems to give up. She then sighs, turns to look at the humans and her communication rune forms into existence. This is worse than those “4d” shape simulations. There’s so many intricate parts, so many that shine in different colors, and even in different shades. I focus so much on trying to print it into my memory that I realize it vanishes and I didn’t hear what was said. Even with all this concentration I was barely able to memorize a quarter of it and I feel blood dripping down my nose. Mother turns to me in surprise and starts healing me, though it seems to just barely calm down the pain, rather than make everything better. Can somehow fix broken bones, can’t fix a headache, magic is weird.

Well, this time I can’t fight it, mother takes me back and I don’t really have the strength to fight back. Damn…I didn’t even manage to check if the others are alright..

Whatever… Too tired to think. I close my eyes and I am gone, once more stuck in my library, looking at the incomplete rune. I mean, hey, I managed to draw at least this much. Considering I am trying to make a mental drawing of what’s effectively an ever shifting, mind breaking, advanced geometrical simulation, run entirely on magic, I should be happy that I managed this in the few minutes I was allowed to look at it, but it still feels kind of bad to only have a fragment of such a useful tool.

Then again, looking at it now, I realize that there’s too many different mana types in this, and the form it needs to take and the way it has to flow… I don’t think I have the ability to make this thing even if I knew it in its entirety. Yeah, all the more reason to hurry up and grow, huh.

I open my eyes, as suddenly as ever, and stretch after a rather long sleep. That’s weird… it feels like I was away longer than normal, by a decent margin. Did I sleep away days? Possibly. I should’ve kept up the careful use of the memorization power I have. This is the kind of harm I get from just a minute or two of intense use, I can imagine it’ll only be worse if I were to try to use it for longer.

I shake my head, and focus on filling myself with mana, for the day ahead. After about two hours, I feel decently full, but not bloated, and start looking around. Most items are where they’re supposed to, the mirror shows that my scales are glossy like they were recently polished, and my siblings are play fighting more intensely than ever. I decide to go look at how the humans are doing and I find them better than ever. The young girl is speaking with the poisonous woman about… something? Is she getting magic lessons? It looks like she’s being much more careful with her fire, so maybe? The beast woman is positively thriving though. She seems just a bit bulkier, her spots of fur a lot more glossy, and even the bone and tooth spikes seem to be shinier and sharper. Guessing she fixed them up with a bit of the mana she had. Ah, she’s now actually using the crystals, as is the poison woman.

I am met with strained smiles, but my focus isn’t exactly on the people now. There’s still a few bones left of the boar, which I think the beast woman is using either for her magic, or as food, but I do not see the sword. It wasn’t in our piles either… Did mother take it away? Well, it was a weapon mainly meant for humans, that can cut through anti-magic chains and especially dragon scales. Nasty thing, now that I think about it…

She did leave behind an ornate dagger though, which I am guessing was used by everyone to cut up the meat. I can also see some lightly charred skewers made of wood. So at least they weren’t forced back into those chains and they still got to eat… Mother’s being awfully kind.

Ah, there she comes. She picks me up on the way, and then takes my siblings. We fly, and fly… and fly even further…

Mother, that’s not the lake. Oh damn… She’s going even further away than when she dropped us off at the forest. Ah rolling plains and hills. Exactly what the doctor prescribed…

Mother, why do you have to drop the ball the second I start liking you?