I had always disliked the idea of a shell standing between me and what I was trying to eat. Whether it was peanuts, sunflower seeds, or the kind of crab legs that were served alongside tools to open them, the ratio of effort to payoff never seemed worth it. Now, however, I was faced with a shell considerably thicker than any nut I had ever encountered, and I was desperate to get to whatever meat lurked within.

I circled the massive lifeless tortoise shell, looking for any indications of a crack. The holes that served as openings for its neck and four legs seemed like a logical place to start. At best, I might be able to reach the tortoise’s fleshy insides through the holes. At worst, any hole would be the best place to start trying to find a small crack that I could work at turning into a big crack. Unfortunately, despite my best prodding, clawing, and scratching, trying to get at the tortoise’s remains through those holes proved to be a fruitless endeavor. I simply could not dig my claws deep enough into its shell to get at the tortoise itself. I was in an unfortunate “sour spot.” If were a smaller creature, I might have been able to squeeze a dexterous claw into one of the holes in its shell to pry its remains free, or fit my lower jaw into one of the leg holes and attempted to snap the shell with a bite. If I were a larger creature, I might crush the turtle’s shell under my weight, or wrap my jaws around it and attempt to swallow it whole, allowing whatever acids were in my digestive tract to do the work of breaking it down. But I was neither big enough nor small enough to easily get at this tortoise meat: I was in whatever the opposite of a “Goldilocks zone” was.

After several ill-fated attempts to dig into the shell or scratch it with my claws, I tried the less-precise approach: blunt force. I spun around, smacking the shell with my tail, and let out a yelp of pain. Note to self: hard things are hard, heavy things are heavy, and smacking your body into hard heavy objects is a pretty reliable way to experience pain. It was clear that if I pursued that line of attack further, I was at greater risk of breaking my own body than the shell I was attacking. For all the effort of my tail swing, the tortoise shell (and its contents) barely budged, skidding only a few inches before coming to a complete halt. This tortoise shell wasn’t going anywhere, not without considerable effort, at least.

It was, I supposed, no surprise that a baby dragon was having such trouble with hard foods. I was literally born yesterday. Even if I had teeth that were capable of tearing flesh, I clearly wasn’t cut out for this. I wistfully considered how my encounter with a tortoise might have gone differently if I were blessed with a larger body, briefly recalling a nature documentary about how some birds of prey had wings powerful to lift small turtles off the ground and drop them from a great height onto a rocky surface, letting gravity do the hard work of cracking the tough shell. That mental image -- of soaring hundreds of feet into the air carrying helpless prey -- seemed more fitting of the “life of power” I was supposedly destined to lead. Sadly, I didn’t have wings to lift my own body, let alone the wing strength that would be required to lift a tortoise of this size.

The deeply frustrating part of it was that I had succeeded in beating the tortoise. It was one thing to try and fail, but it was another thing to feel like I had won, only to be deprived of the reward I thought I had earned. I had managed to attack it in a way that bypassed its defenses. I had burned nearly all of my remaining SP in the attempt, and it was now “defeated,” according to the notification I had seen. I had gained “experience” from defeating it. But right now, I was much more in the mood for a meal. I was fairly certain that I could go days, weeks, or possibly a lifetime without “experience points,” but food seemed like a necessity, and it was the one thing that this tortoise’s shell was depriving me of: even in death, the tortoise’s natural defense mechanism was a hinderance to me.

I knew that there were some species of animals that, as a group survival strategy, made things unpleasant for predators even in death, like caterpillars that tasted terrible due to their milkweed diet. Leaving a bad taste in a bird’s mouth was little consolation to the critter who had just been eaten, but it did deter those predators from trying to munch on similar-looking caterpillars in the future, which meant that making life less pleasant for predators even from beyond the grave was a decent evolutionary survival strategy. But this was a designed world, not one of emergent order. To intentionally design a creature with that kind of “feature” seemed, well, needlessly cruel. If you were going to give the prey a defense mechanism, it seemed much kinder to give them the kind of defense mechanism that would prevent their death, rather than merely give predators a sense of regret for the attempted effort. Maybe the designer just got lazy and decided to copy designs from real life. Or, maybe the designer hadn’t counted on a dragon using its [noxious breath] to kill a tortoise when it had no way of cracking that creature’s shell. This was the same worldbuilder who had, before sending me to this world, explicitly warned me that “This world is not nice.” I supposed that meant I shouldn’t walk about with the expectation that things be easy.

I must have spent a bit too long sitting there feeling sorry for myself, because I didn’t even notice the first hyena approaching me. And because of my lack of noticing, it wasn’t just one hyena who was onto me, but several: a quick turn of my head that several others were approaching from different locations, closing in on me. How quickly I had forgotten that I wasn’t the only predator trapped in this valley.

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I had been no match for the hyenas the last time they had managed to get the drop on me, and though I had gained a single level since then, I was fairly certain that a single level-up wasn’t enough for me to turn the tables. Even worse, this time I was sitting at a paltry [1/11] SP -- sprinting my way out of this one wouldn’t be an option. But I did have one new tool at my disposal: that one remaining SP should be good for another use of my [noxious breath]. If it was good for killing prey, or scaring them away in the case of the ant I had faced earlier, then it might serve a good chance of deterring predators. At the very least, it would give me a sort of protective veil in a limited area of effect -- or so I hoped.

I began moving in the direction of the plateau, aware that the hyenas were slowly gathering, circling and forming a loose perimeter around me. That was alright. They were, I assumed, waiting until they had the largest possible advantage before they made a move to strike. Half a dozen hyenas were circling me, and I saw two that were standing directly at the base of the plateau, apparently having learned from yesterday what my most likely route of escape was, and taking proactive steps to cut me off from it.

As I moved, the hyenas seemed to move with me while keeping their distance, but slowly drawing closer as more and more of them -- now over a dozen -- were circling around me in an ever-tightening radius. Surprisingly, as I marched forward, the hyenas in front of me seemed to match my stride, as if to maintain the distance between us, even if it meant briefly backing away from me. It was probably sensible of them: I could have probably beaten any individual hyena in a fair fight, and their advantage was in their sheer numbers. Knowing that, maintaining their formation was probably essential to maintaining their advantage, even if it meant allowing me to get closer to my escape route.

I continued my march toward the plateau while constantly swiveling my head, keeping track of the group as best I could, preparing for the moment when they would strike. I grew closer to the plateau, the circle of hyenas around me gradually grow closer and closer, like a noose tightening around my neck. Even if I was getting closer to the plateau, they were growing denser in number -- and that, they probably presumed -- gave them more and more of an advantage.

Maybe that was why they were holding off from striking. If the odds -- and numbers -- were continuing to slide gradually more and more in their favor, then there was no pressure on them to make the first pounce or direct attack. Well, that was fine with me. I could let them continue to thicken their ranks. I knew that, once I used it, my [noxious breath] would give me a narrow window to act, and all I cared about was making sure I was close enough to home that I’d be up and out of their reach by the time the gas cloud dissipated.

At last, I stood with five hyenas standing directly between me and the plateau, with over a dozen more flanking me from the sides and behind. I wasn’t getting any closer than this without things getting physical. I opened my mouth and let the [noxious breath] spill forth.

The cloud quickly enveloped the five hyenas in front of me, which yelped first in surprise. Two of them fled, but one bared its fangs and lunged at me, biting me on the snout. I reared back in pain, but the hyena almost instantly released its grip on me, coughing and sputtering in the green cloud of [noxious breath] as it ran to get away.

None of the other hyenas made an attempt to enter the gas cloud to attack me, which was fortunate, considering that the previous bite had knocked me down to [11/22 HP]. Under the protection of my gas cloud, I leapt upward and gripped the edge of the plateau and immediately began climbing, with the gas cloud covering my retreat.

My progress upward was slow, as I didn’t have the stamina for a rapid climb, but I nonetheless managed to get high enough that I was comfortably out of reach of the hyenas by the time the gas cloud had dissipated. The fact that I had chosen the side of the plateau where the grade was the least steep certainly helped matters -- it was still far too steep for the hyenas to follow after me, but my young claws certainly had an easier time pulling me upward as I was able to flatten myself against the side of the climbing surface, allowing the friction of my belly against it to bear at least a small amount of my weight during the moments when I paused to reposition my grip.

Once I reached the top and pulled myself over the edge onto the plateau’s flat surface, I peered my head over the edge, looking down at the hyenas below. Surprisingly, they weren’t waiting expectantly below; instead, they seemed to have already given up on trying to catch me. Several of them seemed to have redirected their attention to the tortoise shell, swiping at it with their claws, poking at it with their snouts, and generally looking just as befuddled by it as I had been. Well, at least I wasn’t alone in being unable to crack that case. Though, as I thought about it, that wasn’t necessarily a good thing. If the hyenas had managed to find a way to crack the shell, then that would at least provide me with a possible solution I could mimic. As it was, the shell seemed impenetrable.

As I looked over the edge at the valley below, I let out a snort that was the baby dragon equivalent of a rueful sigh. Was this all my life was going to be? Venture down from my rocky home, find a little bit of food, and retreat back? Hopefully not. Today, I had taught the hyenas that I was not easy prey, even in situations where they had a huge numbers advantage -- while my [noxious breath] wouldn’t last forever, it seemed like a good enough defensive measure for me to not be constantly in a state of peril, so long as I kept a few SP in reserve, rather than allowing my stamina to dip dangerously low, as I had during my “battle” with the tortoise.

One day, I presumed, I would no longer be a “baby dragon,” but a mature dragon, with wings, the sort of dragon that wouldn’t have to run and hide from anything as lowly as a hyena. It seemed that if I was to become powerful, that power would be something I would have to earn, and I knew that those who wielded great power could come from humble origins. But at that moment, I found myself wishing that my present circumstances weren’t quite so humble.