I learned a few things from killing that mountain goat. I learned that I, the thinking me, could kill if I had to. I learned that raw meat and blood actually tasted pretty good, at least to a dragon – I had no experience as a human to compare, not counting sushi. And I learned that I could eat what felt like my own weight in meat. Once I got started I just kept going. I think the dragon took over. I stripped one leg, then another, and then I got into the abdomen and I started tearing things out and bolting them down, no chewing or anything. There was still some meat left for the scavengers when I was so bloated that I physically couldn’t eat any more, but not much.

I also learned that one meal like that could last me a long time. After washing the gore off in the stream I made my way back towards my cave. I walked most of the way, feeling heavy and drowsy, and I had a terrible worry that I wouldn’t be able to fly. My belly was visibly distended to a worrying degree, and I might be too heavy for my wings to carry me. I made some attempts, and concluded that while taking off from the ground was not going to work, if I jumped off something I should be able to glide, so I risked it when I reached the cliff above my cave and made it down without incident. The landing was rough, but I was so blissfully stuffed that it didn’t bother me.

I was so tired and weighed down that I didn’t even go check on my hoard. I barely made it to my sleeping spot before lying down and curling up, and there I stayed for an uncertain number of days. I think I went into some kind of torpor while digesting my meal. I’d wake and see sunlight, and then it would be dark, and then sunlight again.

So it went.

The next time I woke fully my stomach was mostly back to its normal size. I had a powerful need to do what one does after eating thirty or forty kilos of meat, so I flew off a good distance from my cave and dealt with that. It was… an experience. What I left behind didn’t at all explain where all the mass and volume had gone, but I decided not to question it. Other than some lingering guilt about the mountain goat’s last moments, I felt great. I felt strong, alert, and healthy, ready to take on the world and find some treasure.

Of course that was the next step. All the while I was figuring out basic survival I had been thinking about how to get more gold, where to find it and how to make it mine. The dragon very unhelpfully suggested finding a village or town, laying waste to it, and taking anything shiny. The human didn’t want to hurt anyone, and wondered if there was some way I could earn some money. I didn’t have any expenses, so if I could get paid it would all go to the hoard. That idea, however, seemed difficult or impossible to put into practice. I was a terrifying vision of scales, teeth and claws, and I had no idea what the market for freelance work looked like in this place. Still, I could talk, so I didn’t reject the idea completely.

I briefly considered trying to just find some gold. This didn’t rely on interacting with people, and the fact that I could smell the stuff was a big advantage. Gold could be found lying around, even in my world. Maybe I could scour the mountains, trying to find it by smell? I was pretty sure that native gold was usually found in tiny pieces, though, and usually in streams or rivers. Panning for gold was an option, though a weak one since it needed equipment. Pans, probably. Again, I didn’t reject the idea.

Finally, I could take it from those who didn’t deserve it. The dragon was of the opinion that this included everyone but me, but I was thinking more about bandits and corrupt nobles. This was a mediaeval world as far as I could tell, and both in fantasy literature and in history that time period always sounded like it was full of bandits and corrupt nobles preying on the common folk. Why shouldn’t I make their ill-gotten gains mine? It would likely mean I’d have to fight for it, but this body was very capable, and I might be able to scare them off. I didn’t have a philosophical problem with hurting bad people, but I’d rather not risk getting hurt myself.

The other problem with this idea, beside the risk of violence and bodily harm, was that finding a bandit lair or a corrupt noble would probably be as hard as finding gold in the mountains. I’d need information.

Needing information meant that I needed to find people. I was wary of direct contact, but I could be sneaky if I needed to be, and my hearing was good. Since I was fed and feeling good about the near future I decided that some patient observation was in order. As I saw it, the safest place for this was the road. Judging by its size and state it was well trafficked, so I'd start there and see where it led me.

Since I knew that the road ran close to the lake I headed there first. The previous few desperate days had forced me to learn a lot about efficient flying, and after dropping off my ledge I managed to glide almost halfway there using only momentum and updrafts, which was very satisfying. Slower and less exhilarating, sure, but it also gave me more time to look around and think.

I figured that there would be more people moving near settlements. At night I could see villages in the dark, so I knew that there were quite a few dotted around the forest. I hadn't really memorised their locations, but I could find Pine Hill if I had to, and there had been a glow in the south-east that I thought to be a large town or city based on how much brighter it was than the villages. Logically there should be more traffic closer to a larger settlement, so I decided that I'd go south along the road until I reached a town or something interesting happened.

At the lake things were much the same as I’d left them. The smells of blood and death were fainter, but still there if you knew to search for them. It didn’t look like anyone had used the campsite since the battle. Of course, I didn’t know how commonly used this place was; I only assumed that it was an established campsite because it was a large, clear area, and the fire pit was lined with large stones that looked like they’d been there a while. Not wanting to waste time I didn’t look any closer, and instead followed the path that led away from the lake.

Like I’d guessed, it brought me to the road. I kept well into the trees, where I could still see and hear anyone on the road while staying hidden. As long as I was careful about my movements and kept to the shadows I should be fine, with my low profile and matte black scales. For the next several hours I slowly made my way south along the road, stopping whenever I picked up someone on the road by sight, smell or hearing. Mostly these were people travelling by foot or by horse, singly or in pairs. Many of them were transporting things. Most carts – the most advanced piece of technology I saw – seemed to be pulled by hand, which I found very impressive, but I also saw a few wagons drawn by horses or oxen.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

I got a pretty good idea about what the people here looked like during those hours. Everybody I saw was darker than I had been, with Lahnie’s somewhat asian features and wavy or curly hair being the norm. But while I didn’t see a single truly pale face or blonde head of hair, there was clearly some movement of people here. I saw one more person, a woman, with Guy’s somewhat lighter skin tone and sort of middle-eastern features, and a few people who were a little darker than most. Still, Lahnie and the people who had come to Guy’s rescue were by far the majority. When it came to dress it was a mix of ren-faire and Spartacus, with lots of tunics, vests, laced shirts and blouses, loose trousers, shorts and skirts, and dresses in different styles. And the people here loved their greens and yellows, that was clear enough. There were other colours, sure, but green and yellow were by far the most common when the clothes weren’t just made of undyed cloth.

The most interesting group that I saw were what I could only assume to be mercenaries or adventurers. The group of four men and one woman all carried arms and armour as well as large packs, and joined the road heading south from a smaller side road. I stayed with this group for a while, feeling a bit like a creep but enjoying just listening to them. The woman and one of the men were a couple, or were about to be, hanging back from the rest of the group and exchanging whispers and hidden smiles and glances. It was sickeningly sweet, and I envied them deeply. My last relationship had ended months ago, and I was out of the “happy to be single” phase and starting to think about dating again when it was suddenly not an option any more.

The group as a whole were in high spirits, laughing and joking constantly with each other. They carried a big, wet sack with them. Apparently they’d killed some dangerous beast in the woods and were expecting to get paid well for doing so. I’d have liked to know what exactly it was, but they just called it “the beast” or “the thing” and since they all knew exactly what they were talking about they never described it. Very inconsiderate of them, but I couldn’t exactly come out and ask.

Unfortunately, at one point I got careless in one way or another, and the one I’d come to think of as Lover Boy stopped the group.

“What is it?” Big Beardy called back.

“Quiet, please,” Lover Boy replied. “I heard something.”

“Yah, we scared a deer, is what I say,” said Short-and-Wide.

“We’ll put that on your tombstone,” said Awesome Curls. That was the woman. She had great hair. Like, shampoo commercial great. She had no business walking out of the forest with hair that lively and lustrous. “If Baran thinks he heard something he probably did.”

This decided things, and the group fell silent. I was pressed into the ground playing dead, keeping completely still and barely breathing. I could see them through a small break in the bush I was hidden behind. They had their hands on their weapons, and while the swords and spears were bad enough, Big Beardy had strung a bow that was bigger than anything I’d ever imagined. The damn thing must have been two metres long with the string on. He had a long, thick arrow with a broad head ready, and I really didn’t want to test if my scales could stop something like that.

Lover Boy, or Baran, I supposed, was scanning the forest along the road, though he seemed unwilling to go among the trees. After a while he slowly bent down and picked up a stone, which he threw into one of the bushes near me. When nothing happened he picked up another stone and picked another bush. I stayed still and silent, even when a rock like a small apple bounced off my shoulder. Finally Lover Boy ran out of bushes and got the group moving again, but now they were silent and wary, so there didn’t seem to be any point in following them anymore. I decided to stay where I was for a while and then call it quits.

That was the beginning of a new pattern for me. Hunger wasn’t an issue for a while and I could get by on drinking once in the morning and once in the evening, so I’d stay out all day, keeping an eye on the road and stalking interesting groups of people. I came across more armed groups, and decided that they came in two types. Adventurers, who were usually ragtag groups with whatever equipment they could get their hands on; and soldiers, who I later learned were actually mercenaries and who were much like the adventurers but wore some kind of uniform or distinguishing piece of equipment that showed that they belonged together. The mercenaries seemed to be patrolling the road rather than going somewhere, and if I stayed in one place long enough I’d see the same group going north in the morning and coming back in the evening.

Most of the people on the road, though, were travellers or farmers as well as occasional merchants, travelling between villages or to or from the city, usually for the sake of the market there. No matter who they were, I learned some interesting things from listening to their conversations. I learned that the city was called Karakan, and that it had a harbour and was home to at least a hundred thousand people, but possibly many more. There was a large band of bandits in the area, who robbed travellers and villagers and who had attacked a mercenary camp recently. Presumably Guy and his friends belonged to the mercenary company and it was his camp that people talked about. The bandits could operate here because there was talk of war, and most of the soldiers had been sent to the border with another country, or duchy, or something. That was also why the mercenaries were here; with the soldiers away, the mercenaries had been hired to keep the bandits in check.

The adventurers dealt with smaller, more localised problems. Apparently monsters were a thing, and when they got too close to a village or a road they needed killing. Adventurers would either be contracted to deal with a specific problem, or they would just go out and look for trouble and hope that whatever they killed had something valuable, or that someone would be willing to pay them for their trouble after the fact. The fact that this was a viable way to make a living suggested that monsters were a very real and very common problem, and from what I heard it had been getting worse the last couple of years. I thought back to the boar that I had saved Lahnie from. Was that a monster? It was certainly many times larger and more vicious-looking than any wild pig I had ever heard of. I wondered where it had gone, and hoped that Lahnie and Pine Hill were still okay.

There was no talk of a dragon being spotted in the area. That would have been a relief, if there wasn't a decent amount of talk about an unusually large wyvern, which I could only assume referred to me. I was less than pleased with that. The word ‘dragon’ had connotations of power, majesty, and cunning. Wyverns, from what I gathered, were stupid, cowardly beasts that stole small livestock, and might be a threat to particularly small children. The differences were stark. Adventurers as a group seemed ambivalent about the idea of hunting a wyvern; they were a pain to track down, while the reward was rarely more than decent.

I should have been relieved that no one was likely to be too enthusiastic about coming after me. Instead I was mostly offended, and my pride badly wounded.

At least it all gave me an idea. Could I hunt monsters? If they had treasure, I could take it. If you could get paid for killing them, and if no one would get paid much for killing me, perhaps I could create some kind of partnership with one or more people? I had friendly relationships with two people already, although both of those had sprung from special circumstances. Could it hurt to try again? And so, I began to hatch a plan.