It was hard to accurately estimate the kobold numbers, especially in the beginning. But Marcel guessed it to be somewhere in the middle of six digits.

The dragon came to feast once a day, Marcel had no idea where he was or what he did in between. But every day, without pause, he snatched down multiple hundred, if not a thousand of the kobolds.

Marcel wasn’t a genius in biology. Nor was he very good in economics, all things being told, despite his position and experience as an accountant. But he somewhat realized that this system couldn’t continue to be self sustainable forever.

He started killing as many kobolds as he could. It had only been a few dozen in the beginning. Sometimes pushing a hundred when he had a good day, but that number had slowly started to build up until he was killing almost as many as the dragon was devouring each day.

His change of pace was showing quite nicely in his stats. And he expected them to take another leap once he was finished in this dungeon.

He had continued to doubt his theory for a while, but with every passing day it became more apparent. In whatever way the kobolds reproduced, it wasn’t enough to sustain two dragons worth of losses a day.

He had made sure of that.

Sometimes Marcel dreamt about the kobolds. Not in any typical way. He never talked with them, imagined himself in their place, or interacted in any meaningful way with them for that matter. He was simply and indiscriminately killing them. His trident continued to slide into and out of their lifeless bodies, leaving nothing but a trail of blood in his wake.

This was one of the things that had forced Marcel to stop at one point. He was worried that if he continued there was no going back for him. That his psyche would never truly recover. So he withdrew from killing kobolds.

He had watched their dwindling for quite some time, and since it became apparent that their birthrates weren’t able to catch up with the demand anymore, there was no real need for him to contribute anymore.

All in all the process had taken him longer than expected. He had spent what he guessed to be months going about and killing kobolds. Contant and daily bloodshed had become a habit for him.

One that he sharply withdrew from.

He had ventured far away through the caves, trying to put as much distance between him and the kobold city as possible. He wasn’t sure how the dragon would react when he was faced with the inevitable reality, but he didn’t want to be close for it.

Sometimes a small group or two of kobolds still stumbled upon him, but they got less and less. It had taken roughly another two months of Marcel sitting things out until he heard the wailing of terror.

Maddening roars of the dragon penetrated all the way through the dungeon. The walls reverberated in power and seemed to scream themselves. Even far away as he was, Marcel’s ears hurt. A faint trace of the fear he once felt was kicked up again, but he pushed it down immediately.

He couldn’t face the dragon directly, but he would still get it to its knees.

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It roared for three days on end. At first Marcel had thought it pure rage as realization dawned on the beast. Maybe anger at the kobolds for not being able to supply it anymore. But then he heard something else in the roars. Something he had felt in himself once. Very clearly even when he had first laid his eyes upon the beast.

Despair.

Marcel waited for another day after the roaring had died down until he ventured back out towards the kobold city. He had expected a lot of things, but what he saw caught him completely off guard.

There were hundreds of scorched corpses strewn around the cliffs that made up the den. All the stone walkways were littered with dead kobold bodies. It seemed the dragon had gone mad in rage at the end and had killed the remaining kobolds.

It seemed stupid in some ways, but in another it also made perfect sense to Marcel.

He didn’t need long to find the dragon.

The beasts laid collapsed on the big stone bridge it used to feast at. Its sides looked sunken and its whole appearance slimmer than Marcel remembered. Gone was the terrifying fire spitting killing machine. What was left seemed pathetic to say the least.

Marcel hadn’t expected such a steep decline that quickly. But then again, he supposed the energy needed to fuel a beast like that was immense. And that signs of energy lack started depicting themselves rather quickly.

He carefully ventured towards the dragon. He was aware that he might very well be walking into a trap. If the dragon had realized that something was wrong and that someone was sabotaging its servants, it would be easy for it to pretend its weakened state to lure the saboteur closer.

In the beginning Marcel had planned to simply stay and observe the dragon for a few days in this case. But the truth was, he was tired of this dungeon. The minute he laid his eyes upon the slumped down dragon, he didn’t want to wait. He wanted this to be over with.

He found the dragon cold to the touch. There was no sense of energy still circulating in this beast. It was hard to imagine it burning the whole kobold city just days prior. Was that what it had used its last flames for?

Only after observing for a few moments did Marcel notice the slow and hesitant rising of the dragon's side. Its breaths came raggard. There wasn’t even enough energy for the beast to react as Marcel scaled its head.

How could a mighty beast like this fall so much? Marcel still remembered the times the beast had shocked his primal instincts so much that it had sent him running like a child. There was a strange irony to the whole thing now.

Marcel took a deep breath and raised his trident. His eyes were fixed on a point directly on the monster's forehead. He activated [Thrust], [Heightening] and [Spear Proficiency] already running in the background. This is it, Marcel told himself.

With herculean effort Marcel brought down his weapon on top of the dragon's head. He used every point in Strength and Wisdom he had collected along the way, putting every bit of passion and suffering he had gone through behind it.

It was over rather anticlimactic. His trident sunk into the dragon's brains. One short shudder shocked the beast underneath him, then it was still.

A moment later a message popped up in front of Marcel and a huge amount of experience rushed at him. He didn’t have time to process all of it before the world started spinning around him though.

Marcel found himself back on the forest clearing. There was a brief moment of disorientation. A faint rustling of leaves, and a soft feeling of warmth tingling over his skin. Then Marcel broke out dancing.

Sunlight! That was real sunlight! He almost couldn’t believe it. Tears welled up on his eyes as he opened his arms towards heaven. Pleasant, mid morning sun rays danced over Marcel’s skin. He laughed out loud.

He spent gods knew how long simply enjoying being back in the real world. He smelled the scents of the forest, he bathed in the sunlight, and spent an extraordinary long amount of time simply laying on the grassy floor and enjoying the feeling. At one point he even kissed a tree.

When he made his way back to the city, his spirits continued to rise. The coldness that had slowly seeped in during his months in the dungeon, and that had taken home inside of Marcel was slowly being pushed away. Warmth, sunlight and joy were replacing it.

He didn’t relax fully though, because Marcel knew his mission wasn’t finished yet.