Chp.1: Two months later

It had been almost two months since Haku and his brothers and sisters had left their mother's territory and started their journey into the outside world. It was a terrible difficult and extremely dangerous journey, but as the seventeen siblings had promised each other, they would have stuck together and they would have overcomed any adversity they encountered together.

The first few weeks had been the most problematic: many of his brothers and sisters had yet to get used to their new territory and some were still depressed by their mother's 'betrayal'. Haku had started wondering if maybe he should have warned them first about what would have happened once Neytiri's maternal instincts wore off, but when he thought about it he realized he didn't have much of a choice: at the time there had been no chance they would have believed him, he would have only risked passing for an ungrateful son in their eyes. They had to experience that first-hand.

Fortunately, all of them recovered quickly. Even now that they no longer had a mother, after all, they still had a family: themselves. Even though they no longer had the protection of their gigantic parent, they were still dragons and were very dangerous. Each of them measured over five meters and could already be defined as a predator at the top of the food chain. What's more, they worked together. Alone they were strong, but together they were unbeatable. There was no one in the Karbraland Great Forest who could stand up to them, except the newcomers. In particular, in that forest they had to deal with two very dangerous races, the fairies and the ogres. But Haku and his siblings had prepared for this and had prematurely provoked a conflict between the two peoples.

The war between fairies and ogres had begun almost two months ago and with it the dragons were able to move and hunt without problems, since the newcomers were now too distracted to notice their presence. Under Haku's leadership they had started killing large numbers of animals and keeping them in their dimensional bags. Obviously both the ogres and the fairies had noticed that the animals in the Karbraland Great Forest were dwindling, but as Haku had foreseen, each side blamed the other, and so no one investigated. Basically, the dragons were free to do as they pleased as long as they kept a low profile.

The dragons had taken all the necessary precautions. They didn't move in large groups and for most of the time they remained hidden in the cave, which they had carefully camouflaged so as not to make it visible using brushwood and shrubs. Often they used the night to be less noticeable (with their overdeveloped senses it was not a problem: for them it was like moving in broad daylight). In addition, they had littered the cave surroundings with the traps they had stolen. As for the unfortunate few people who had found them… well, it didn't end well for them. Dragons' supreme sense of smell allowed them to identify enemies from kilometers away, so when the fairies or ogres arrived the dragons had already set a trap and eliminated them quickly and leaving no survivors. Even in this case, fairies and ogres would have blamed the other side for the disappearance of their companions.

But hunting wasn't the only way Haku and his siblings got their food. There was another that a newcomer might have called macabre, but which was perfectly normal in the eyes of a dragon. The ogres and faeries periodically battled each other and this left many dead bodies on the battlefield. Many dead ogres and fairies meant a lot of meat. Meat that dragons could eat.

For dragons, eating another species with thinking or speaking abilities was no different than eating a bird or a cow or any other prey. Ogres and fairies, from the point of view of Haku and his siblings, could just be two things: enemies or food. There were no third options.

When the ogres or the fairies were still alive, Haku and his siblings thought twice before attacking them, and they did so only if they were absolutely sure of winning. After all, the newcomers were very dangerous. Therefore, Haku and his siblings generally avoided them, preferring to focus on animals, since they were easier to hunt. But when they were dead, then they had no reason to hold back: after all, the dead couldn't complain. The trick was to wait for the battle to be over and then rush to fetch the bodies before anyone came to fetch them. Again, after all, the two sides allegedly blamed each other for the disappearance of the bodies.

When Haku and his siblings left their mother's territory, they had 'only' gotten around 2,800 tons of food; which was a long way from their goal of 7,000 tons which served to sustain them until they grew big enough to grow wings and unlock their dominance, allowing them to set out to the ocean and go in search of an island far away where to settle safe from newcomers. Haku had been a bit disappointed by this result: he hoped to obtain at least 3,000 tons before leaving his mother's territory. But after all, he and his siblings had been busy doing other things besides hunting, so that delay was normal. But now, however, they had a chance to make up for lost time.

After each battle, the casualties between fairies and ogres were many. Generally, one of the two sides withdrew before a real massacre could take place, but still the dead were many. On the ogre side, they lost between 2,000 and 3,000 soldiers in each battle. Since each ogre weighed an average of 400 kilos, all those corpses equaled at least 800 tons of dragon food. Fairies normally suffered fewer casualties, since they were more organized and possessed better magical and medical skills, but still lost at least 1,000 soldiers per battle; given that each of them weighed an average of 50 kilos, there was talk of about 50 tons. Not many, but it was always a gain. Basically, with each fight of these people, the dragons obtained at least 850 tons of food, without even having to make an effort.

During those two months, the fairies and the ogres had only had three real battles: most of the clashes in fact were small skirmishes between the various patrol squads or sabotage on the opposing side. The two great armies, for the most part, merely glared at each other from afar. However, that didn't mean the dragons' gains had been paltry: three battles, each averaging 850 tons of food, equaled 2,550 tons of meat. Added to the 2,800 they already owned, that made 5,350 tons. But since they can also add all the animals that they had hunted during those two months, the total figure was even higher: even if, having to remain hidden, the dragons could not hunt effectively as they did in the territory of their mother, they had still gained a significant amount of hours. Two months into that operation, the dragons had already secured more than 6,000 tons. Which meant that they still need only other 1,000 tons to reach their goal.

And the dead bodies didn't just provide food: they also had many interesting objects on them. Stripping the corpses had now become a common practice for them. For Haku, this meant a large number of magical items and weapons. And even then, fairies and ogres would not have noticed their presence, because they would have blamed the others. He didn't expect, of course, that anyone would ever have asked questions... but by using his infiltrator, Sarpa, Haku had managed to dispel those doubts. In fact, Sarpa had spread a rumor in the ogre camp that the fairies stole the corpses to make fun of them, and so the ogres convinced themselves that they were the culprits; after which he had led some teams of ogres to steal the fairy corpses in secret, under the guise of responding to their taunt. The fairies had obviously seen them and so they too were convinced that the ogres were responsible. No one suspected the intervention of a third part, let alone the intervention of rare creatures like dragons.

Thanks to all the items he obtained, Haku had been able to exponentially improve his magical knowledge, and now he and his siblings were able, even if only partially, to use magic. They couldn't actually do it, since their bodies couldn't use mana until they unlocked their domain... but Haku had found a way to cheat the system a bit.

Credit for this went to Freyar, a fairy druid whom Haku had tortured for information about magic. Unfortunately, Haku hadn't been able to ask her all he wanted, since at the time he had to prepare to leave his mother's territory as soon as possible and he couldn't afford to take the fairy away. However, the knowledge he had obtained from her had still been extensive. Though Haku was sure it was just a limited view of reality, now he and his siblings had a way to use magic.

The runes and magical stones that the fairies placed on weapons or their magical items didn't necessarily require a user that fill them with mana. All they needed was actually just mana, not needing it to be provided by a living being. And from what Haku had discovered while interrogating Freyar, there were places where the mana was particularly numerous and where, in fact, even the newcomers went to stock up. One of them were the springs: for some reason the water that emerged from the rock was particularly rich in mana, so immersing an object with a rune engraved on it absorbed the energy. The mana ran out almost immediately once the water ran more than a few feet, but it was still possible to use it before that. Haku had theorized that mana was somehow connected to the earth: this explained why the water from the springs absorbed it or why magic stones existed.

Thanks to this discovery, now Haku and his siblings were able to do magic even if they didn't have their own domain yet! All they had to do was carve a rune into one of their scales and then bathe near a spring to charge it with mana. Since Haku now knew the meaning of the runes found on many magical items, it was enough to replicate them to obtain the same effect.

Of course, this wasn't without its obstacles however. First, the dragons had to stay immersed in water for at least an hour to be able to charge a single rune. This was clearly problematic, since they risked exposing themselves. Then that rune had just one use, since all the mana at its disposal erupted as soon as it was activated and the dragons had no way to stop it since they didn't know how to use it. Furthermore, due to the rapid regeneration of dragons, the scales on which the rune was engraved fell and grew back within a couple of days, thus limiting the time of use. And in the end since the dragons couldn't direct the flow of mana the summoned spell exploded without constraint, threatening to hit them too in the process.

Haku and his siblings had therefore had to limit themselves to using only the runes that directed the magic in only one direction. For example, the rune that Haku had used to burn the cockatrice contained a spell called forokata, which in fairy language could be translated as 'ball of fire': once activated, the rune formed a ball of fire in front of it and threw it into after you. Or to create the hole he had used a rune containing the spell erhiuntu, which translated meant 'hollow earth', which created a depression in the ground no more than a foot wide in a five meter ring around the rune.

In order not to get hurt or risk hurting others, Haku had to learn many runecrafting spells. Of course, before testing the runes on himself or one of his siblings, he always used another animal as a guinea pig. After all, magic was still a very dark territory for him and he had to be very careful when he used it. But in any case, his experiments had paid off: now all of them were able to use at least twenty different spells, even if only using that little rune trick.

By this point, Haku and his siblings had nearly completed the first part of their plan. With the next battle between fairies and ogres, they'd get the last 1,000 tons they needed and then they could have gone on their way. They just simply had to wait. Unfortunately, however, they still had a very important problem to solve...

"We don't have enough refrigerators yet"