A Benevolent Evil Dragon

"In my defense, he was a veritable ass and a bandit hiding behind daddy's noble title. They all were but that one doubled and tripled down. Maybe that will make them think twice before trying this again." Edith looks at me flatly for a moment, then bursts out laughing.

I ended up taking her back to our things so she could take the horse before it decided to run away. I would have done it myself if not for the fact that I know how skittish the bastards are and I am pretty sure a five eyed massive lizard with glowy bits is not in its portfolio of tolerable existences. Once there she noticed the patch of blood and I had to confess to my aiming issues. At least with that done we're walking back towards the lake because it's clear she wants her relaxation and so do I. Plus, the lake has ambiental mana I very much need and I still need to shift through our recent earnings. Checking the lake itself out would also not be bad.

"Hah, so this is more like you, huh?"

I tilt my head, then realize that I managed to slip a bit more casual in my tone! It was for all of one word, but it is progress. I feel a bit wrong having done it, however, so I worry that this is more than I thought initially. Rather than just being a result of having only spoken draconic with my meaty bits until now, it might be that my body only wants to speak draconic in the first place, so in lieu of the many words I am missing, I am instead translating my thoughts into a structure that would fit my native tongue in this world, with my body rejecting the other, lesser languages. It feels like another effect of my inflated sense of pride. Again, this is all conjecture, but an important thing to juggle.

"Well, it's nice. And don't worry, I get it, I would do the same if I could… Imagine being a knight's son and still trying to steal from some common girl just minding her business. Leeches, I tell you." I rub against her side in agreement, both of us stumbling as a result. Right, she's still got a muscle fever and is running on adrenaline, while I'm out of mana and running on fumes, hopes and dreams.

I would normally go back to sleep by now, but we finally have some much needed resources. I should prepare what I can and rest by my new, humble hoard. With the lake coming into view, I waste no time and jump straight into the water, feeling as the mana that was mostly trapped under the surface seeps into my body, pulled in by the now practiced motion of mental osmosis.

"You're weird." The bluntness surprises me. I tilt my head in reply, but she strips down and slips into the water. "You're scary, terrifying even, but you're also very silly. I hope this isn't an insult for you, but I kind of like that about you. Makes it easier to not feel like you'll eat my still warm body…"

My eyes get distracted halfway through her talking, the reaction between the mana in the water and her own mana being an entire spectacle, especially from the way it pulled a thin strand of chaos from below the normal types. Chaos and death weave together, slipping into her arm, making its veins glow in shaded colors, but her words do give me pause before I lose myself in the sight.

"I…" I could rebuke her, be affronted by her thoughts, but a quick look back makes me realize that my survival mode is to literally kill and eat anything that moves. Technically, this will be the first time I am sated. The first time I reach the full capacity of my new body in terms of mana. My stomach has been mostly empty for the past… week or two? I already lost track of time. "I see."

She notices my mood dropping and reaches a hand over. Warm, soft touch. Something other dragons would be unlikely to be capable of, yet still something soothing in spite of that. Which "me" actually enjoys it is a question for the ages. Regardless, I shake my head and move to rest it on the grass by the shore. Edith, in return, seems to feel down as a result.

"Sorry, I didn't mean it like that… I am just…" Her words get choked up, causing her to lower herself almost all the way. In the silence she starts washing her hair, fidgeting enough that I get lost observing every tiny move. I think a few minutes pass before I speak up.

"You are scared." She nods, with some reluctance. "You are weak and lost in an unfamiliar place. You are at the mercy of the stronger, monstrous creature that exists around you. You have faced more danger in the past month or so than you have faced in your entire life. You've been threatened, attacked, had to kill just to survive. You miss your suffocating, broken home, because it was at least a safe place, a spot where you could be warm, in bed, in a house, instead of being stuck out here dealing with undead monsters. You fear that any day might be your last, or the last day that you are someone that would be recognized as yourself."

Every sentence twists her expression more and more. Her sadness, her anxiety, her everything is revealed in that admittedly honest face. However, she is not the only honest person around. Halfway through, I slip up and she notices. Water ripples as my air sacks tremble, my voice goes from deep and growly to a higher pitch muddled by gasps for air. Again I feel that dissonance between my mind and my body. My thoughts sync up easily, my control, especially in dangerous situations, is almost perfect. However the second emotions, biological needs and whatever cocktail of hormones my body experiences are added into the mix, lapses form, gaps between my intentions and my actions become evident and the writing on the wall shines like it's under a blacklight lamp.

"I am terrified. I've been since the moment I opened my eyes in this world."

Suddenly the sounds of droplets dripping down on the lake and wind swishing slowly through the leaves are the only things that disturb the still world. It is an uncomfortable silence, but one we let fill the void in our conversation. At least for a while.

"I am too… I am terrified." Edith chokes out an incredulous laugh, mana focusing on the fingertips of her burnt arm, boiling the water on contact as she plays with the surface of the lake. "Fucking terrified…"

I close my eyes and settle in the calm left behind now that it was just us two. I don't let myself collapse, much as I would love to do just that. Instead I stay in the moment, alternating between trying to put a dent in all the postponed emotions and focusing on absorbing the mana around me.

"I cannot believe I became an oil baron…" Edith, positively shining after her body mended itself from the effects of the water, looks at me with more confusion than usual. Which is funny, because I confuse her a lot.

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

"I think you're starting to make up words. And expressions. How are you more confusing than when you turn a simple sentence into a whole speech?"

Morning came in a weird way. I ended up sleeping in the lake, like some kind of gator, while Edith went back to the wagon to not sleep on the ground again. It would have been smart to not split up, but my body genuinely refused to move from here, and for good reason. I absorbed a lot of mana before feeling the familiar wall that was the limit of my storage. My capacity increased by an absurd amount, but my ability to absorb consciously had only improved minimally. I apparently neglected that when I did my upgrades, as did the chaos mana. Either way, not only did I genuinely absorb enough to feel full, but during the night I even managed to slowly chisel away at my limit, increasing it by a tiny bit, improving something in the depths of my body to store up a bit more mana… And I turned a lake brimming with mana into a lake with some mana in it.

"I mean to say that I have exploited natural resources that likely took a long time to form, only for a bit of momentary, selfish gain. It was very much needed, but I think most of the lake's positive properties are gone now."

It took her a bit to wrap her head around the idea, but after she realized what I meant she tried to do a few things to the water, things I did not really understand until she spoke up.

"Huh… I didn't expect you to be that starved… but yes this feels a lot less… Actually, don't mind it. I think it's for the better." I tilt my head and she continues, now more used to my nonverbal cues. "Right, well, songstress didn't become like that because of her own mana, you know?" No, I did not know. "I mean, it was her own vengeance that made her come back eventually, but without some mana around in the first place? It doesn't really happen. Actually, if she was a strong sorceress or witch, maybe she'd come back by herself, but it's less likely."

Thinking for a bit, it brings me back to the chaos crystal. The closer to it, the stranger both fauna and flora became. Same thing applies here. The water was freshest because of the mana, the plants around are bigger, the corpse in the water was livelier. Makes sense to me. Actually, speaking of corpses…

"And since you did that, the others are less likely to become some kind of vengeful undead." I was thinking of that. There was talk of the monster, and talk of the monster usually happens after the monster kills someone, especially when it's a mind afflicting ambush predator like this one.

"I need to swim with the corpses, it seems." It is my turn to answer the implied request to elaborate. "Mana didn't come here from nowhere for no reason. There's likely something around here that made the mana and the lake simply held it in. I've noticed here back at mother's lake. The difference between the water and the air above the water is large, the mana dissipating into the air with a lot more ease once it already reaches said air."

"So, more riches? Who knows, at this rate you might end up with a hoard just from what we got these past few days!"

Her excitement brings a smile to my lips, but I shake my head. "I partially dried up the place in one sitting. I doubt there's a lot here. Certainly there's not enough to handle my needs… But it is a step in the right direction. While I search, can you handle checking what we got from the mercenary bandits? We should know what we have, after all."

She nods and we part ways, temporarily. Not having fur means that getting wet is not that bad, and now that I have mana other than chaos I can afford to use up at least a bit of it to make things easier for myself. Putting a watery twist in my flight rune turns my somewhat awkward body into that of a veritable fish, at least as far as functionality goes. I comb through the lake, going back up for air rather often, but make record time in checking the entire place up.

By the end I stumbled across seven bodies, four of which were in so many pieces I couldn't tell head from tail, two that only had a chunk of their throat ripped out but otherwise were left alone, and a final one which only had scar tissue left showcasing wounds clearly made by a monster, but the body itself was similarly monstrous. It looked like a partial mutation between a woman and the undead nixie, which clearly meant that this one was close to becoming like it, or at least it was before. Now, it was rapidly rotting, becoming similar to the woman from before.

Magic has some kind of preserving effect usually. Now that I thought about it, nothing ever got to the point of rotting back home. Sure, most things were eaten the second they were in sight, but I do not remember even one instance of a fruit going bad, even those that were so ripe they fell to the floor and splattered all over. When that happened it became either food for me or my siblings, or food for some scavenger critter like those giant bugs. There's still mana around, but it's a lot rarer and now it flows in clumps, so it no longer covers the entire body and almost like it was waiting for this, the body decomposes visibly. A month passes in a day, probably an effect of the death mana, the only one that is especially drawn to the corpse.

Cool visual, still disturbing how many people fell prey to the damn thing. Well, maybe I shouldn't insult the songstress, as Edith calls her, too much. Going by the torn up old dress I found, she was indeed a human before being that. The dress was stuck, wrapped up in algae right above a small, old chest. There was a suspiciously knife-shaped hole in the back of the piece of clothing, which explained at least a bit of what happened.

As for the chest, it was locked up, but my fifth eye told me exactly what I needed to know. Aside from the tiniest fragments which were spread about all over, likely flakes of precious metals, this chest was the only thing that had actual mana bundled up and emanating from it. Even the corpses, seemingly plenty old, didn't have any worthwhile mana in their cores. With the key nowhere in sight, I decided to pull the chest out of the water, which was not too bad considering all the limbs I had to spare.

It was very old and overgrown, whatever paint and engraving it might have had, being already washed by the water. Opening it was also pretty easy, I just pulled on the lid until its rusty hinges broke. Inside was about what I'd expect, coins of silver and a few golds, the latter of which were actually a mix of two different currencies going by the appearance, but no gems. Or at least, there were no gems until I emptied out the chest. The bottom of it was actually a book. A completely ruined book that had a bad vibe about it, vibe that came mostly from the death mana crystal embedded in its front cover. I skimmed through it, but the writing, if there was any, was gone and the pages themselves simply broke away at my touch, mostly dissolved by the water. There was a story here, but not one I could even guess at. Ultimately I carefully carved the gem out, then threw away the book. There was already some trash in the lake, a ruined book would not be strange to go along with the rest.

"Whoa, that's a lot!" Edith sounded excited as she approached, eyeing the glittering coins. "You know, we almost have more than what my entire village had. To think it was just here, waiting to be claimed. I wonder who left it around…"

"Considering how much mana seeped into the water just from this small amount of coin? this thing has been here for tens to hundreds of years. Whomever left it laying around likely doesn't need it anymore. Or need anything else ever again."

I look at Edith's expression and a bit of worry fills my heart. "What?" is the only thing I manage to voice out.

"Well… if they're a strong sorcerer… Well, mom said that strong sorcerers live a long time… Like that Duke that tried to kill us. Apparently he's been around for a century and a bit. Old folk back home talked about how bad things were after each time he attacked The Mistress… so that person could still be around."

"Edith."

"Yes?"

"You jinxed it."