As bad as the ant’s insides smelled when raw, it wasn’t awful when cooking. The ant squealed, spinning around in a futile circle as the fire ate away its remaining health. It collapsed, the flames enveloping its body fizzling out.
Peacock let out a nervous chuckle. Hard to miss with fire breath, after all. Good thing it doesn’t burn the environment.
He blinked some of the blur out of his eyes and scanned the area, just in case. Despite the fire blast, the greenery remained as vibrant as ever. Damn good thing.
Peacock jumped as the ant’s body disintegrated into sparkles and vanished. After what he’d gone through in Zenith Flight’s caves, he’d forgotten how corpses were supposed to act. He growled. Just another way for Zenith Flight to twist the minds of their victims. This ant was the first kill as a free dragon, and his first step toward revenge.
Two items lay on the ground where the ant’s body had been, an odd-looking metallic plate the size of Peacock’s hand, and a similarly sized hunk of amorphous pink flesh. Peacock picked them up. The names of both popped into his mind. Bug meat and chitin.
Chitin sounded a lot like a crafting material, or vendor fodder. Bug meat, though….
Peacock pulled it from his inventory and watched as it appeared in his hand. Mercifully, no yellow slime stuck to it. Less mercifully, it jiggled and shone in the filtered sunlight like some sort of obscene gelatin. He put it back into his inventory as nausea welled up. He was hungry, but not that hungry. Not yet. Besides, after the amazing taste of fresh fish, he was hoping for something less gross. Speaking of which, he desperately needed to find a stream or something.
While the ant’s corpse had disintegrated, its slime still stuck to Peacock’s face, chest, and arms, radiating its potent scent. Not only was it hideous, anything in the jungle with a nose was going to know he was there. Too bad he hadn’t seen a body of water since the ravine.
Peacock’s gaze settled on the center of his fight with the ant. Vines, grasses, and moss lay scattered, uprooted, and torn. Sticky sap oozed from the broken vines. Maybe he didn’t need water after all.
He rolled in the plants and dirt with abandon, pausing only to grab a handful of vines to scrub his face with. The more he rolled and scrubbed, the more the eye-watering smell of ichor faded, replaced with the stringent, sharp scent of greenery.
Peacock sighed in relief. Much better. Of course, now a thick layer of sticky dirt and plant matter covered him. Peacock inspected his new look.
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His scales were barely visible, the shades of green and brown laid on top blending in well with the jungle floor.
Excellent. Got rid of the stink and gained a ghillie suit.
A loud thump brought Peacock back down into a low crouch.
In the distance, an umbrella-like red cap bobbed up and down above a dense clump of undergrowth, Level 20 hovering above it. The reverberations came in time with each bob. Footfalls.
Peacock slipped into undisturbed cover and moved away to find smaller prey.
*****
The snake Peacock found, or rather, the snake that found him, wasn’t as big as what he’d been running into. The snake’s widest point was thicker than his leg, though, and had put him in quite a bind when it wrapped itself around his torso.
Peacock wriggled out of the now slack coils. The snake fell to the ground and vanished, its still-sizzling head leaving heat trails. Once again, Peacock’s fire breath had saved him. He’d have to make sure to practice it, maybe see if he could unlock more attack skills. No need to be a one-trick dragon.
He flicked open his character screen.
LEVEL: 5 XP: 259 (2500)
Not bad for two kills. His fire breath had leveled up to two as well. Excellent.
He grabbed a snake fang, snakeskin, and snake meat from the ground before disappearing into cover. His path wove through the underbrush, back to the cave he’d found.
Despite a restoring nap within its cool interior, the fight with the Level 8 Anaconda had driven him below half health yet again. He really needed to figure out a better way of healing.
There were tons of plants, mosses, lichens, mushrooms, and who knew what else inside the small part of the cave he’d explored. At least one of them was bound to heal. On the other hand, there were probably plenty more that were poisonous, added other nasty status effect, or outright fatal. Eating unknown plants seemed a bad way to figure out which was which.
Peacock growled, tunneling under the thick cluster of vines that covered the mouth of the cave. Still, napping every one or two fights seemed awfully inefficient. At this rate, it would take him ages to get stronger. The longer he took to take his revenge on Zenith Flight, the more time it gave the bastards to do as they pleased.
Peacock’s claws clicked loudly against the cave floor. He tensed, his tail lashing as he stopped and breathed in the fresh, earthen smell of the cave’s cool air. His muscles loosened. Getting angry wouldn’t do anything. He needed a better plan.
A carpet of brown and green covered the rough stone walls and ceiling of his new abode. Black and brown puffballs dotted the ground in-between small patches of light green fuzz.
In other games, plant properties fell under the Alchemy skill. Alchemy meant grinding herbs, then mixing them to make tinctures and potions. Some games even told you plant properties while working with them, instead of having to eat it and see. The one game that required the player to try their potions to figure out their properties had left Peacock fatally poisoned. Peacock grimaced. Hopefully, M and M’s alchemy used the first system.
Slick stone made up most of the cave floor, but as he wandered farther inside, he found a thicker patch of light green moss, and claimed it as his bed. Sleep now. Poisoning later.