Chapter 2.2 (1/2)

Chapter 2: The dragon learns true kindness Part 2

On the morning of the next day I started hunting at sunrise.

The stomach was indeed at its limit already.

To begin with I hadn’t eaten anything for more than a week because of inheriting the knowledge.

Honestly, I could die from starving if I didn’t fill my stomach with something today.

For my great purpose (Mating), I can’t run out of energy in a place like this.

Spreading my wings, I ascend the sky.

The dragon’s fish-tank spread below my eyes. Easy prey here and there, I love it.

When 2 hours pa.s.sed after I started hunting, 10 prey were lying in front of my eyes.

My first time hunting after being born was disappointing because it was so easy.

The prey was supplemented with those from the sky, where I approached with the speed of sound and shot my dragon’s roar. With that alone all prey fainted.

I didn’t hunt much in this period of time because I had no interest in it besides sating my hunger, so I gathered only this many prey.

At the center of the island, I discovered a huge rocky mountain and it became a landmark and I placed my captured prey side by side at the foot of the mountain.

Ah, don’t misunderstand what I’m saying, I haven’t killed any prey before me yet.

I had arranged them like this, but I was unable to decide which prey to eat, because today commemorated my first meal in this world.

Of course the choice of eating all prey didn’t exist.

Too much food fattened not only the body but also the mind. A dragon had a body like steel but the mind must also be like steel.

I looked for a special one, so I glared at the demon beast one by one, it was effective and one stirred.

The one that woke up first was from a race called chimera. A lion and a snake, it was known as a ferocious monster that was composed of various animals.

However, now the mane of the lion stood on ends in fear, the hind legs of a goat were trembling GakuGaku.

It was no wonder because compared to a dragon the chimera was only ordinary prey.

Well, about the problem of taste, I could tell from the inherited knowledge, the body of the goat was delicious but the lion head and the snake tail weren’t eaten very much.

The preceding dragon seemed to have only eaten the part of the goat when it preyed on chimeras.

. . . Fumu.

“Miin” (TL: Leave)

The chimera heard my voice and ran away at full speed while winding up its snake tail.

Why didn’t I eat the chimera?

I had decided. I should not be impolite to the life I took and throw its body away after only eating part of it.

When taking the life of a creature, you had to hold grat.i.tude for every drop of blood you ate. A meal was the act of eating a life.

Furthermore, though it was a little digression, in this world the demon beast race didn’t have a language and the races that could speak language were phantom beast and demi-humans.

Originally it was impossible thing to hold a conversation with a monster such as the chimera, but it wasn’t difficult for me who was a dragon.

Because the soul of language dwelled in the words of a dragon and even if the other party was deaf, the intention can be delivered directly.

The next one to wake up was a race called cerberus.

It had a black body like darkness and 3 heads, it was a brutal demon beast renowned as the gatekeeper of h.e.l.l.

When the cerberus woke up it recognized my appearance,

“Kuun kuun”

and submitted by showing its belly.

. . . fumu, was it female . . . ?

Although I considered that it was waste, I decided to release the pitiful demon beast.

In the memory of the preceding dragon I knew that he didn’t eat them either because they weren’t very delicious. Besides, it wasn’t like that I had no other food and there was no reason to intentionally eat the dog which begged for its pitiful life.

When I told that it could leave, the Cerberus barked once and disappeared into the forest.

The next one to wake up was a race called harpy.

This was a race with limbs of a bird and the body of a woman, bird and human, the two of them added together was delicious.

It was the preceding dragon’s favorite dish, though he had to restrain himself to no hunt them completely, but it seemed that he had enjoyed the meat of a harpy once a month.

When the harpy woke up and saw me she raised a wordless scream.

Her family was the preceding one’s favorite dish and it knew what would happen when carried away by a dragon. While her face paled her mouth moved PakuPaku.

However, while her wings shook noisily I could see that the harpy girl didn’t utter a sound and a certain question floated in my head.

While she was so frightened by me I asked in a candid tone.

“Miin min min min?” (TL: By chance, are you unable to speak?)

The harpy girl shook her head up and down fearfully.

[Pitiful . . .] I muttered in my mind and stopped.

A harpy was originally a creature that that tempted its prey with its singing voice. A harpy who couldn’t utter a sound, I didn’t know if it could be called a harpy.

How on earth had she lived until now? She would have extraordinary hards.h.i.+ps to grow up here.

And when I noticed, I no longer thought of eating this very weak creature.

I tell her to return to her village.

Though the harpy girl blinked repeatedly, but before I changed my mind, it flew away in the direction of its village.

While flying away she occasionally looked back with a fearful impression.

The next one to wake up was a race called lamia. A lamia had the upper body was of a human and the lower body was of a snake and this food seemed to be also a fair delicacy.

The lamia that woke up trembled from my appearance, crouched down to hide its belly with both hands and threatened in a low voice.

I felt a sense of incongruity in its figure.

When I observed carefully, the belly of the lamia seem had a bulge but not from obesity.

(This, possibly . . .)

No, it surely is. There was only one reason why a creature like a lamia could behave courageously in front of a dragon.

“Miin min min min min” (TL: The brave and gentle mother. I want you to forgive me, I didn’t notice that you were pregnant. Be relieved. I do not intend to give you any more harm. . . . Now, go. And, give birth to a strong child.)

Were my spoken words so unexpected? The lamia stared at me with a blank expression. She bowed and left this place immediately.

I saw off the lamia with her dignified back.

Though the child was still in her belly, her back was already that of a mother.

Although the dragon’s roar may had given some bad influence on the child in her belly . . .

At the time of hunting, there was a reason why I didn’t notice that the lamia was pregnant.

The husband of a married lamia never leaves the side of the female when she was pregnant.

In this case, when I found the lamia and had recognized a male figure who was her husband, I wouldn’t have thought of hunting her as food.

However, when I found that lamia, there were no other creatures nearby. In other words . . .

For me, it was only possible to pray for that mother and child to live happily.

The next one to awaken was a race called lizardman.

It was a demi-human that looked like a lizard standing upright, it seemed like it was also one of the favorite dishes of the preceding dragon.

However, the lizardman was wearing unusual clothes. The knowledge of the dragon taught me that it was something called shrine maiden clothes. It also seemed to be a female, too.

As soon as the lizardman who wore the shrine maiden clothes woke up, she knelt down in front of my feet.

(Well, will it beg for its life . . . ?)

Faced with the trembling prey which bowed down on the ground, I lost my appet.i.te and tried telling it [You may leave too].

But the look of the lizardman that looked at me when she raised her head was contrary to my expectation; it was full of joy and delight.

To me who looked puzzled she began to talk sonorously.

According to her.

Her whole clan had symmetry of faith to the dragon

(彼女の一族は竜を信仰の対称にしていること)

They believed that the ones eaten by a dragon could attain absolute happiness after death.

Furthermore she was the shrine maiden who held the rituals of the dragon faith.

As a shrine maiden every day she would eagerly await for this day to come.

Her tail shook BunBun from side to side like a dog when the shrine maiden of the lizardman told me this.

Was faith such a dreadful thing?! To become food for the dragon, she did not fear instead she was delighted.

Well, I was certainly going to feed on her when I capture her. But, when I was urged to eat from the other side, the thing called human empathy would make me lose the intention to eat conversely.

Above all, I wanted you to stop approaching me with the look of a female mantis. At this rate I didn’t know which side was preyed on.

Even though I admonished that I was no longer hungry, she didn’t show signs to pull back at all and edged me on [Only the tail at least if the earlier was no good].

I who was perplexed made her faint again with a roar and made the garuda, who just had woken up take her back to the village of lizardman.

Though the garuda would incidentally also leave, but well there was no other way.

In fact because they actually resembled a crow I wasn’t inclined to eat the garuda.

Afterwards there siren, arachne, pegasus and a huge frog, though I was hungry I wasn’t able to get used to the idea of eating these at all, so after all I let go of a prey I had captured.

After I let them go I thought that once again I should hunt some different creature, but even if I caught some different creature I noticed that the same thing would repeat again, so I stopped.

My previous life was a cicada.

It was weak, I was a creature who always aimed to live, I may know too much about the weight of taking a life.

I looked down on this stout body of this world.

For example, if I a.s.sumed that I live for 1000 years, exactly how many corpses would pile up?

The purpose of this life, can I achieve it by doing so?

While holding my hunger to the limit, I suddenly remembered the taste of sap which I ate every day in those days as a cicada.

Now that I was on the verge of death, there was no need to lie to myself anymore, let’s be honest.

I like sap.

The sweet liquid flowing below the surface of every tree that quenched the severe thirst at midsummer and gave me the energy to live.

No, not only in summer. Even before I became an adult, since I was a totally white caterpillar, I lived from sipping the sap from the root of the trees.

A little spill I received from a big tree was my joy at the time I was a cicada.

Some might think that I would get tired of drinking sap every day, but that was ridiculous.

The taste of sap was completely different depending on the kind of tree. Rather, even the same kind of tree didn’t have the same taste at all.

The sap of a young tree showed its vitality and was pale and fresh.

The sap of a tree at its prime of life had a powerful sweetness that was fully soaked in the light of the sun.

The sap of an old tree ripens in the wood and turns into the taste like the finest of the wines.

My love and knowledge of sap, I may never tell all of it in the short time I had left.

The cicada that lived its whole life only on sap was a sommelier in the field of sap.

Sap

Sap

Ah, sap