42 Boiled Dragon Eggs

When Bronson and Mike walked past the buried tunnel, John heard the stomping of the giant's feet and the murmuring of a somewhat familiar voice. Curious, John closed his eyes and created a doppelganger.

A couple minutes later, the doppelganger phased through the buried tunnel and appeared in the corridor. Looking around, he saw Mike and a giant boulder standing at the edge of the Chasm talking. Walking over, he touched Mike but got no response. He tried jumping up and down, waving his hands, spitting, yelling, Pulling down his pants and pissing... In the end, the giant and Mike turned around to see John sitting on the ground his head in his hands muttering to himself about how he needed to get stronger.

"John!" Mike exclaimed, "Why didn't you say anything?"

Hearing Mike talk, John stood up and put his hand through Mike's chest before pulling it back out.

"Oh, you're an illusion!" Mike said, remembering John talking about his new skill.

Nodding his head, John looked at the giant then turned back to Mike and pointed between the two.

"He's with me, I trust him." Mike said.

Nodding, John waved for them to follow him and pointed out the buried tunnel. Bronson made short work of it, and within a couple of minutes the tunnel and room had been expanded enough to fit the giant and Mike.

"Hey guys!" John said with a smile as he walked over to give Mike a hug. "You have no idea how good it is to see a friendly face."

"I bet!" Mike said with a laugh, "This is Bronson, he's a new friend."

"Nice to meet you!" John said with a giant smile on his face as carefully examined Bronson. "I know you're a Land Dragon, or at least part but I'm not sure about the rest."

"How did you know?" Bronson asked in surprise.

"John's crazy about taming, he studies everything he can get his hands on about monsters and beasts." Mike said with a wave of his hand.

"Guess that explains the Fire Viper." Bronson said, pointing a massive finger at Snakey who lay in a coma on John's shoulders.

As Mike walked past John into the room he finally got a look at Steven, the process of rebuilding his skin was about half over at this point but he was still convulsing and looked like he was in a ton of pain.

"What happened to him?" Mike asked, a worried look on his face.

"I think he got blasted by dragon fire." John said, "He created the tunnel and this room to escape and hide then passed out. I found him burnt from head to toe. Everything except the dimensional bag he had on him destroyed, I fed him a healing potion about 10 minutes ago and am just waiting for it to finish working."

As they were talking, Bronson was watching the interaction with interest. He hadn't even made it to Gallandwell High and he'd found two humans who weren't terrified of him on sight. Instead one appreciated his strength and the other seemed fascinated by him. This was just too much, and he was tired of standing so he went to sit down when John suddenly yelled, "NO, STOP!"

Nearly too late, Bronson caught himself with his hands before he sat and looked at John questioningly.

"Not there, sit on that side." John said, relief flooding from him as he pointed to the side near the entrance to the room. "That's where I'm stashing the dragon eggs."

"You already got some?" Mike asked in excitement.

Bronson moved surprisingly graceful away from where he was about to sit down and stared in amazement at the floor. Now that it'd been pointed out to him he could see at least 30 eggs. "How'd you get so many?" He asked

"My croc grabbed them for me, he's making another trip right now." John said with a proud grin on his face. "I'm going to give a couple to Steven, you guys need some?"

"Yeah!" Mike said happily, but then narrowed his eyes. "Since when have you been so generous?"

"Let's just say that Steven paid for the eggs I'm giving him." John said with a nasty grin on his face.

"What do you want in return?" Bronson asked.

"I'll give you each 1 for free." John said generously, "After that, I'll trade for level 3 or higher monster meat, Earth, Metal, Fire, or Poison. 5,000 credits worth each."

"No cores?" Mike asked in surprise.

"Well, if you have any rank 7 cores of those types then I'll be interested but cores below that are useless to me now." John said.

Opening up his dimensional bag, Bronson showed how many monsters they'd killed so far. "How much will that buy us?"

Looking inside, John gulped in shock. "More than I can give you." John said with a laugh, "How in the world did you kill so many monsters already?"

"Bronson basically doesn't get hurt by fire and earth elemental monsters, so he just wades into them and I can open fire without worrying about being found." Mike said with a grin on his face. "Easiest kills I've had in ages."

Looking at the stash of corpses, John frowned as he calculated. With so much meat he could raise both of his monsters to level 3 pretty quickly. "I can sell you guys 12 eggs on top of the 2 I'll give you for free."

The two looked at each other and turned back to nod at John. "Done!"

"Alright then." John walked over and picked out twelve of the eggs.

"Can I pick?" Bronson asked, saliva falling from his lips

"Why?" John asked in surprise.

"I want to eat them, and I'd prefer to get earth elemental eggs." Bronson said.

"Oh, that's easy." John said, he went through the eggs and picked out 14 earth elemental eggs and handed them over.

Within minutes, the three of them were sitting around a fire as Bronson pulled a massive cauldron out of his dimensional bag and filled it with water. 6 of his eggs and 2 of Mike's were thrown in the fire, John decided to put a couple in as well for him and Steven. Soon, the room was filled with the most delicous aroma any of them had ever smelt and Steven started stirring.

"What the?" He exclaimed upon seeing Bronson.

Bronson turned and gave Steven a massive smile which scared the shit out of him, but he managed to hold himself together when he noticed John and Mike in the cave with him. "How'd you guys find me?"

"Luck." John said as he scooped out an egg and handed it to Steven. "Try it, might help you recover faster."

Steven peeled the egg and bit into it, his eyes rolling back from the pure ecstasy of the taste. "What is that?"

"Boiled dragon egg." John said with a grin as he pulled another one out to eat, the others already digging into their own meal.

"WHAT?!?!" Steven yelled, jumping to his feet and looking for danger, "I can't believe that you dared to antagonize that monster!"

"Calm down, it's too busy killing the idiots several stories below us to worry about us." Mike said, waving his hand in dismissal of Steven's worries. "Plus the trial is going to end in half an hour."

The ground began to shake and the croc appeared again, this time with 10 eggs in his mouth. He sent an image of the Dragon going crazy after realizing so many eggs had been stolen and warned of danger. "Seal the tunnel as best you can and join us for some dinner, we have enough now." John said with a smile.

"So that's how you did it!" Mike yelled in surprise, nearly dropping his Dragon Egg.

"Impressive." Bronson said as continued to stir the eggs, adding in some chopped up green onion and parsnips before pulling out some monster meat and processing it so humans can eat it.

"What're you doing?" John asked.

"Cooking!" Bronson said with a happy smile, "The water the Dragon Eggs were boiled in contains a ton of energy and nutrients that'll help with cultivation so I'm going to make a stew and save it for later."

Thankfully, Steven had saved some clothes in his dimensional bag and so he was able to get changed. After sealing off the tunnel and the corridor leading to the center of the nest the croc came back and John had 3 more eggs cooked, giving them to the croc as a reward while sending him a message. "I already got the core, when we get back to the school I'll take you to the special evolution chamber and give it to you."