Bat Hunt!

The most obvious thing John could think of right now was that he needed to whittle down their numbers and separate them.

First, John flew straight upwards at top speed when he noticed the fire bats did not move with much strategy, fueled only by their hunger.

The fire bats chased at John's tail, literally, and eventually, they started to swarm together in a clump, not caring about bumping into each other so long as they could be the first to bite him.

That was when he had an idea.

John had seen shows and movies with jet fighter dogfights before, and one maneuver he saw flashed in his head. It involved a fighter jet unleashing a trail of flares behind it to blind and even damage jets chasing it to make up for the fact that it could not fire backwards with its guns or missiles.

Maybe John could do the same here. He had to waste time to turn around fire his breath, and that would give the bats time to dodge or swarm him, even if he took one out.

John waited until one of them, the fastest and strongest, was ahead of them, and then he shot out the Quill Fern throns on his tail.

The thorns hit the fire bat square in the face, digging into its nose and barely missing its eyes, and it squealed as it lost its balance in the air, causing it to tumble and crash into two more bats underneath it.

John could smell the scent of acrid ash emanating from the bats, and that was when he realized this was his scent identifying the power levels of threats. Judging from the intensity of the burnt ash smell, he could tell that the lead bat was about as strong as the Verdant Panther and the other bats slightly weaker.

Good, that meant this thorn spray maneuver took out the strongest one of them. The thorn spray might not kill the bat, but the paralyzing poison would leave it unable to properly fly. The bat crash also left two more needing to recover before they could chase John.

Three bats managed to evade the aerial dogpile, swerving to the sides, and these, John turned to face.

He opened his mouth and fired off a beam of light, his newly developed Elemental Breath, and what he would now dub as the Solar Beam, because that was one of his favorite moves from one of his favorite video games.

The solar beam, a great ray of golden, almost blinding sunlight, struck one of the bat's wings with searing impact, punching out a sizzling hole that made the bat no longer flight capable, sending it hurtling down to the ground and out of the fight.

Three bats managed to reach John and they circled around him, unleashing their flame breath on him and completely showering him in red hot waves of fire.

'Ahh, this feels nice,' thought John as he closed his eyes in bliss. The heat of the flames only felt like a warm bath to him because of his innate heat resistance, but now was not the time to be enjoying this surprise sauna.

He took this chance to fly through the flames and tackle into one of the bats.

John activated the Verdant Panther's tier 2 skill [Mana Blades], causing his claws and teeth to charge with green magical energy, and he bit down on the bat's neck while digging his claws into its stomach.

The rapidly rotating, sawblade like energy wreathing his teeth and claws slashed right through the bat, and soon enough, his teeth dug in enough to close around the bat's major neck arteries and end its life.

No time to rest, though, as John immediately felt the two other bats latch onto his back. They were not entirely dumb, and instead of uselessly breathing fire, they now bit into his scales.

'What the-,' John had figured his crab shell scales would have been strong enough to fend against their bites, and that was true. Their fangs only cracked the shell, and they were not large enough to pierce into his skin.

The issue was that the bats were draining his mana with their fangs just by contacting his scales.

They did not need to break through to suck his mana dry.

John immediately felt weaker, his muscles starting to lose strength and his vision faintly blurring. Even then, he still figured he had the strength to beat these two.

The issue was that on top of this, two more bats started to close in on John from below.

These were the bats that had lost their balance when John had shot out his thorns to send one of their companions crashing into them.

If they got to John, the energy drain would disable him in seconds. He panicked for a moment, figuring out what to do. The best thing he could think of was to let the bats all swarm him and then cast the [Drokynthis] Arcana to toast them all at once, but that would leave him extremely weak and depleted.

[Drokynthis] was a last resort option that John did not want to take, especially with 'weaker' enemies like the fire bats. Even with his level up to the Medial Mystic grade, he still did not have enough mana to reliably cast it.

He wanted to save that Arcana to surprise and take down enemies that punched above his weight class.

Thankfully, John watched a pleasant surprise unfold as the Gravship sped forwards underneath him, slamming into the two fire bats while they were distracted and blinded by their hunger, crashing into them like a speeding car making some roadkill.

John internally thanked Hemet and dealt with the two remaining fire bats on his back. He twisted his long neck back and snapped at one of the bat's necks, killing it.

The other one, he dealt with by firing a solar beam at its face, causing it to squeal and dislodge from his back with a horribly burnt face, wisps of smoke curling out from its charred and blackened skin. The burnt bat flew away, wanting no more part of this and listening to its survival instincts over its hunger.

"Yeah, you better run!" shouted John with a snarling roar, his lips curling up to bare sizable, sharp fangs sheathed in crackling green energy.

The taste of fresh blood in his mouth and teeth made his stomach grumble, and he became keenly aware of his hunger and at the bat lying limp in his claws as fresh meat when before it had been a living creature.

It was…a little odd.

John could tell that his more primal, dragon-like instincts had gotten stronger now that he was a Wyrmling. He never did have much of a reservation to hunting, but now, it felt way more natural.

Killing things and eating them was just what he did.

He wondered whether he would feel the same for another human.

When he thought about it, about eating another person, he did feel some queasiness in his stomach and heart.

But Mel's words rang in his head. He was not a human anymore, he looked like a dragon, and people would treat him like one.

He had to shape up and adapt to being one if he wanted to survive, because from what he could tell, everyone was out to hunt dragons in this world for some god forsaken reason.

Did that mean he was willing to end lives willy-nilly? No, but he knew when it came down to it, he would follow the motto he had always adhered to: Do the right thing when it counts, not when you can.

If John had to kill to give himself chances to do more good in the future, then so be it.

Regardless, this way too heavy of a topic to be pondering so early in the morning, and John was not much of a morning person.

John snapped up the dead bat in his jaws and started to fly back to the Gravship to enjoy his well earned breakfast.