Chapter 10: 010

The days went by as usual after Henry returned to the comforts of his abode, which greatly disturbed him. It shouldn’t have been like this. If he was in the haggard man’s shoes, he would want revenge. Henry passed the days going about the routine he had established for himself. The days were dull but filled with dread and paranoia. He remembered vividly the dire circumstances he left the haggard in. His constitution, in Henry’s eyes, was already weak and poor, coupled with his heavy injury of missing an arm. The haggard man neither appeared before Henry nor simply stalked him from afar again. The haggard man died from his injuries or while reciting his dangerous spells, or so Henry wanted to believe but he saw the tenacity in the man’s eyes. The haggard man would not expire so easily.

At the very least, Henry expected to encounter more of those demonic monsters like the bear but the most threatening monster he encountered was the crocodile with the bifurcated jaws in the lake. He was patrolling the perimeter at that time, scouring the lands around the lake, when the crocodile came to shore and saw him. Perhaps remembering Henry was the one that fed it the disgusting bear, it held a grudge. It attacked Henry but it eventually retreated back into the lake when their short-lived battle was led too far away from the lake. Though it was angry, it knew better than to tread far from its home. Henry never returned to the lake since, lest he encountered the crocodile again. Also, the crocodile bifurcated jaws reminded him of his own bifurcated jaws, which disconcerted him to no end.

Roughly two weeks had passed ever since he broke himself free of the egg and found himself had become a Dragon. It could even be three weeks. There were days where he felt like he had slept longer than a day and he had definitely slept for more than a day when he was undergoing his evolution. 

The stakes outside of the cave where he had the monsters’ heads impaled had done their job perfectly. There were times when he was busy cutting up his game, other monsters intruded upon him after catching the smell of dead prey. But the sight of heads impaled on the stakes instantly scared the monsters into running away. Those heads on stakes were the equivalent of scarecrows. They were even more effective than scarecrows. However, he was forced to take them down as the heads had rotten beyond recognition. The monsters were still terrified of them but the smell became too awful for Henry to bear. Speaking of awful smell, the stench of the excretions that came with the cave had long faded and been replaced by his own. But of course, he didn’t do it inside the cave but the areas outside. He didn’t like it but it was necessary. It prevented other predators from stealing his game in these woods.

It was during one morning that his routine finally took a huge detour. He was returning from his morning patrol and after he had his fill of water from the pond. He heard sounds that didn’t belong to the usual noises he would be hearing around this time. He heard the scurrying of many animals. Something foreign of this area had entered his territory. That “something” was most likely vile considering even the predators ran.

The first thing Henry did was take a good whiff of the air. Unfortunately, the winds weren’t favourable and didn’t carry the intruder’s scent to him. But nevertheless, he still managed to figure out where the threat was by simply following the animals’ path of retreat. Coincidentally and oddly enough, it was the direction of the ruined chapel. Henry tensed up and his mind began thinking of ways to combat the man’s trickery and scheme. The haggard man was resourceful and possessed plenty of tricks up his sleeves.

As Henry sprinted down west, the winds shifted and a peculiar scent was carried to his nose. It was the scent of a human but the haggard man’s. The scent had a heavy hint of fragrance and spices but not enough to mask the distinguishing human scent. The scent did not lead Henry as far as he expected. It was quite close. It was just around half a kilometre from his cave. The scent stopped at a small clearing with a pit in the centre. He peered into the pit carefully, prepared to unleash his blazing roar at any moment.

A girl?

Henry gasped, or so he assumed he did. A girl with short bob cut hair was lying in the pit. She was pale and breathing ruggedly. There was a terrible wound on her left leg, bleeding badly. Anyone could tell it was a wound caused by a beast or a monster. Her garbs told Henry she was part of the tribal people he had encountered before. However, the most striking factor wasn’t the girl’s wounds nor affiliation but her face. She looked awfully similar to the spear woman. The only difference was that the girl looked younger and her garbs were less revealing. Sisters, Henry surmised. In addition, he was surprised to see a pair of horns barely jutting out of her forehead. And her ears were pointed. 

Is she even a human?

A chance, he thought. This is his chance to establish some form of communication with a person. Since this girl didn’t have a weapon, he didn’t need to worry about her suddenly attacking him out of nowhere if he made a blunder in his attempts. The girl was currently gazing at her wound, clutching it tightly. She looked to be uncertain over the course of her action as she didn’t have anything to treat her wound. The urgency could be seen in her eyes. Henry growled to get her attention.

The girl froze, perhaps thinking a monster had found her. The girl slowly raised her glance up. Her eyes widened when she found Henry looking down at her from outside of the pit. The girl immediately started trembling uncontrollably. Her mouth was gaping open. Henry thought she would scream but no voice came out.

“I-impossible…” the girl managed to say. “A Drake… here?”

Henry remembered the man calling him a Drake too. Going by his knowledge of his former world, Drake was basically lesser Dragons or animals descended from true Dragons. I could be a Drake, that thought crossed Henry’s mind but for some reason, he didn’t believe it. He was a Dragon, not some lesser creature, that kind of resolution revolved around his mind whenever he had doubts of his current race. It could just be his vanity in denial. Putting aside that voice of denial, he was half-convinced he was no true Dragon as he didn’t have wings. 

As he was having a mild existential crisis, a ball of fire hit him square in the face. The heat did not harm him but there was quite a lot of force packed in that fireball. He went staggering but only a little. Apparently, the girl had cast a magic spell, the most generic spell, fireball.

For a moment there, Henry forgot about magic. Swords and daggers weren’t the only means of defence the people of this world had. Henry was unhurt, aside from the mild fatigue but not even a scratch was present. As Henry peered back into the pit, the girl was preparing another fireball but then, the fireball disappeared in a puff of smoke and she gasped.

“No way… Unhurt?” Even her lips were trembling now. “How’s that possible?”

It seems a Drake can be hurt by fire. Phew. So I’m not a Drake, then? 

“Is it not a Drake?” The girl had the same question. Realizing the futility of her fireball spell, lightning began to crackle in her palm. 

This lady…! Henry wanted to scream but he knew that would only scare the girl even more. Instead, he raised his fore limbs and shook them to indicate he meant her no harm. 

But the girl interpreted his intentions wrongly, evidently from her frown.

Damn it! How am I going to tell her of my harmless intention?

The crackling in the girl’s hand had grown into a ball of lightning.

Henry had no choice but to step away first to let the girl calm down by herself. However, the shift in the winds made him frown. He noticed the trail of blood the girl left before she fell into the pit. Following the trail with his eyes, he saw a monster fastly approaching. He made the monster out to be a giant rat with a pair of fangs in place of its buck teeth. A giant monster rat wouldn’t be enough to warrant his caution but the shadows coiling around it and the dark aura it exuded were more than enough reasons. Henry leapt over the pit to confront the giant rat. 

The girl gave a yelp but he ignored that.

Now that the giant rat was scampering closer, Henry could see the arrows lodged all over its body, but it was still moving vigorously. He saw the same madness in the rat’s eyes as he did in the bear’s. Once the giant rat was close enough, Henry unleashed his fire breath. The giant rat did not dodge or attempt any form of defence and simply charged through the flames.

What the…

The fire did not stop the giant rat’s charge. It was burning in the flames but it wasn’t fazed. Confused Henry might be, he didn’t let it cripple him. He punted the giant red aside when it lunged at him. The giant rat quickly got back up and lunged again. Henry caught it by its neck this time and slammed it into the ground. The giant rat struggled but it couldn’t even budge Henry’s grasp even though it was as large as him. He made a sour expression as he straightened his palm and thrust his claws into the giant rat’s body. The goo-like substance touching his hand made him retch but he held on to his bile. Gripping the giant rat’s beating heart tight, he yanked it out of its body. 

Well… damn it.

The giant rat shrieked painfully but it was still moving in spite of the large hole on its chest. It only seemed to feel pain if the injuries were internal. Moreover, the flames were still burning but it did not burn through its flesh. Upon a closer inspection, Henry could see the dark aura protecting the giant rat from being hurt by the fire but the dark aura didn’t protect it from the arrows. Magic protection, was Henry’s guess. That would mean his fire breath was classified as magic, but this was all just his assumptions.

The staple way it is.

Henry grabbed the giant rat’s head by its mouth and tightened his grip on its neck. He then pulled in different directions. Easier than he anticipated, he severed the rat’s head from its neck as the blood spurted in short bursts like a broken fountain. The giant rat stopped moving at once. It wasn’t a difficult fight but it was a gruesome one. He even got some of the rat’s rotten blood on his head. He thought about immediately washing himself in the pond; he banished that idea as he feared the entire pond would get tainted due to how filthy he considered this mess to be. He just grabbed some leaves from the ground and wiped himself of the blood. He retched again when the odour drifted into his nose as he was wiping himself.

The girl’s gasp reminded Henry of her presence and he turned her way. The girl had somehow managed to climb out of the pit but her leg was looking any better. Neither was her complexion. She was still sporting a wary look but a different kind of wariness from before.

“It’s wiping the blood off itself with the leaves…?” the girl muttered in puzzlement. At most, a cat would groom itself by licking its own fur but never had an animal, let alone a monster, clean itself using leaves.

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Henry did his best to smile. He didn’t know how it would look. He could only hope it wouldn’t be a horror sight. 

The girl seemed surprised at his smile but she wasn’t frightened.

Taking that as a positive sign, Henry approached the girl with small steps.

The girl swallowed a lump in her throat and put up her hand. “Don’t come any closer,” she said. There was no hint of threat in her voice. It was a request.

Henry complied and stopped moving.

The girl’s expression lit up with amazement but she still held some doubts. “Lie on your belly with your limbs straightened out,” she gave a complex instruction. 

Henry understood her intention and complied with her instruction.

The girl gasped. “You understand what I’m saying?” the girl asked.

Henry sighed exasperatedly and rolled his eyes before nodding. Couldn’t you have just asked that from the start? Henry wanted to tell her but that wasn’t possible.

But his gestures were enough to convey his thoughts. The girl cast her gaze down with a blush. “I should have led with that,” he muttered softly.

Henry chuckled. The girl was cute now that he had a good look at her and seeing such a cute girl becoming embarrassed was a treat. The girl looked to be around sixteen years old and her dark hair was braided into a ponytail. Her eyes were green, complementing her hair and skin tone well. Her smile was like flowers blooming in spring. He didn’t know if it was simply because had not interacted with other people for a long time but the girl in front of him might be the prettiest girl he had ever known, even with the horns and pointed ears. For someone like him, those were a plus. Though his memories were a blur, the girl was undoubtedly the type of beauty he had never had the pleasure of knowing.

The girl winced, bringing Henry back from his daydream. The girl was clutching her wound with a pained expression. “I have to treat this,” she said. “Or else, it would fester. Say, you wouldn’t happen to know anything about medicine?”

Henry gave her a weird look as he shook his head.

The girl chuckled softly. “Well… it was worth asking.” She tried to stand but she immediately gave into the pain and collapsed to her knee. “Accursed this. We have to keep moving before more of them come.”

Henry raised his brows.

“Yes, there are more of these wretched monsters. I was part of a hunting party with my sister and the others when these monsters attacked.”

So she is indeed your sister.

“These monsters are immune to magic and even physical attacks can’t kill them easily. They could still move even after having all of their limbs cut. Seems like decapitation is the surest way but you have already figured that out.”

As if right on cue, the foul scent of these monsters entered his nose. He growled in the direction he caught the scent from.

“They’re near?” the girl asked.

Henry nodded.

The girl grunted. “I don’t think I can walk and I don’t think I can ride you either. You’ll have to leave me.”

Henry shook his head.

“My blood attracts them. They will keep coming and there’s a lot of them. You can’t possibly fight all of them.”

Watch me. 

Henry turned his back to the girl and stared straight in the direction where the monsters were coming from. He started to hear the rustling and it was getting louder and louder fast. Soon, they came into his sight. There were five of them. They were all rats save for one of them, which was a tiger. 

He smacked his tail into the first rat that reached him. He plunged his claws into its throat and pulled it out, tearing its head off in the process. The second rat reached him and he punched it to the ground. He used aura blades to fell a tree to hold the others off while he dealt with the second rat. As it was getting to its feet. Henry pulverised its head with a few stomps. He refrained himself from throwing up his breakfast at the sight and smell of his kills. The stench was near-unbearable and it only served to increase his hatred for the haggard man.

“Behind you!” the girl shouted.

Henry didn’t turn around in time and the third rat managed to pounce on top of him. Though the rat wouldn’t be able to do much to him, he still wasn’t fond of having such a disgusting creature riding on top of him with its bodily fluids constantly dripping onto him. He grabbed the rat by its head and swung it to the ground. Trapping its head with both of his hands, he squeezed until the rat’s head burst like a balloon.

Henry quickly positioned himself upright to face the rest of the threat. The fourth was about to lunge when the tiger overtook it and trampled over the rat. The tiger was thrice his size. Rather, it was a Sabre Tooth and it did not bear a deathly appearance like the rats or the bear. There was no rotten flesh or wounds on its body. Henry used his fire breath but a translucent barrier formed around the tiger.

“A Mystic Beast?” Henry heard the girl mutter. 

 Henry instantly realised he was not the tiger’s opponent but he felt calm. He knew what to do. He spat into the tiger’s face and ran into the trees. The tiger roared ruggedly with bloodshot eyes and followed. The tiger knew pride and could be taunted. It was certainly unlike the others. The tiger was most likely the haggard man’s Familiar, Henry gathered. 

Henry heard the girl calling for him but he couldn’t afford to respond with the tiger on his tail. The girl's voice became smaller and smaller until she could no longer be heard. He prayed in his heart for the girl to be safe. He was not leading the tiger to the lake. He doubted he could. The crocodile would most likely eat him first before the tiger or eat him together with the tiger. He had a more suitable place in mind.

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