"Man, life sucks!" This luck really messes with a dragon's mentality!
David took a deep breath as he looked up at the sky, gesturing with a flick of his tail.
Drow immediately scuttled off with that brown-noser, as well as their freshly acquired, joy-inducing High Elf remote-controlled puppet, retreating first.
Meanwhile, David paced back and forth on the deck under the concerned gaze of his sister Tania.
An army several times the size of this one, coming from a High Elf lord.
It was as if he could already see an adult Silver Dragon, several times larger than Tania, plummeting from the sky, poised to plunk down on his head in a couple of weeks—the pressure was immense.
Fighting was certainly not an option.
After all, David was just a little Red Dragon whelp who had only hatched two years ago, not a grown Red Dragon ready to wreak havoc far and wide.
So then... escape?
Being a lone dragon, with no fixed lair or property of his own in Katjana, he could just pack up the little loot he'd just acquired and cheerfully wave goodbye to the High Elves who hadn't yet managed to sail from the new continent.
Yeah! If I can't beat them, I can at least avoid them, right?
Find a feng shui sweet spot to lie low and develop first; come back in a hundred years to take care of these long-eared nuisances that bother the dragon's heart.
Anyway, we're all part of the Long-lived Race with plenty of time; no need to worry about oversleeping and finding out the other party has peacefully passed away in their twilight years—how awkward that would be.
Let's just stall together for now.
Even though this idea still somewhat went against his instincts and he somewhat resisted the notion of fleeing another potentially looming thought, at that moment David still felt it was bearable. After pondering, he looked at his heaven-sent 'sister' Dragon with some Hope, and sincerely extended an invitation, saying,
"Tania, come with me."
"Let's leave this land of strife together."
"As long as we rely on each other, no matter where we go, we're sure to live well."
For some reason, in these two lives combined, he had never felt such a need for a... companion, someone like Tania with whom he could talk openly without any taboo.
He had the feeling that if he continued living alone as he had for the past five years, his mind might become more and more 'Red Dragon', more and more 'abnormal', under the influence of his body's ongoing development.
It was a deeply contradictory sensation.
So much so that when he thought back on the past few years, it still felt incredibly surreal.
It was like a bizarre dream.
In that dream, he had shed the facade of civility and become capable of eating raw flesh and drinking blood for survival, of killing without a shred of moral guilt in a fit of Wrath.
It was like he was a Monster rooted in his thoughts, devouring any corrupt sustenance he could get, breaking out of his cocoon, morphing, growing rampantly.
He didn't know what continued existence would turn him into, something strange and unrecognizable.
But at that time, he didn't want to think about it or care.
Having suppressed himself for half a lifetime, he only wanted to act recklessly in a world without explicit restrictions, to do whatever he wanted.
Even if it led to disaster one day, he would have lived a thrilling life, and that would not be in vain.
Until, he met Tania.
Her arrival was like a bright and warm light, shining into his increasingly indifferent and frenzied heart.
Like a stable anchor, allowing him to find his true self—a self coiled up in the corner of his mind, indifferent to everything he did—amidst the countless wild thoughts that erupted every second.
It enabled him, even when his mind was troubled, to make decisions that faced his true nature.
Rather than letting whimsy completely release the steering wheel of dragon life, and letting himself wildly descend into the boundless Abyss, sinking, sinking, sinking without end.
But this time, David's enthusiasm hit an iceberg beneath the North Ocean's deep waters.
All he got was the silence of the Silver Dragon, Tania.
And so, David fell silent too.
"I understand. Sorry, I was a bit abrupt. After all, we've only known each other for a few days."
But just as David smiled faintly, disappointment and loneliness seeping in as he prepared to turn and leave alone, a tense Tania suddenly grabbed his tail, which drooped towards the ground. Yanking him back, she pleaded,
"Don't be like that, David, don't! It would make me sad. If possible, I'd want to go with you too."
At Tania's words, a thread of hope kindled within David. He turned back to take hold of her somewhat cold claws, saying with some excitement,
"Then why not? Look at this wretched place, what's so good about it? It's cold and barren, and one can't even enjoy a beef buffet without getting chased down... How about we..."
He hadn't even finished persuading her when he saw Tania shake her head, saying with force and determination,
"No, at least I can't. You understand the reason... If I leave, Mother, she would get angry."
And Tania's words were like a blade cutting through the fog, laying bare the nightmare that David had always been resisting right before him.
It was a Crimson Dragon that always hovered overhead, its nostrils exhaling wandering wisps of mist, its face twisted with savagery and madness, as if it could swallow him whole at any moment.
A monster that always lurked in his nightmares.
It was his mother in this world.
The Crimson Calamity so called by the High Elves—Lai Lieduona Pafila Lufudoluo Sed Ponga.
And when this Dragon Mother became angry, it could mean the loss of two lives.
Yet David reacted as if his tail had been stepped on, bursting out in Wrath,
"Who cares what she does? Can she really chase us to the far end of the planet, catch both of us, and push us into a volcano for a parent-child dragon meat hot pot?"
"No, you might be misunderstanding her. Mother isn't that kind of dragon. She actually... is quite good to us," Tania couldn't help but defend her mother.
This "us" seemed to hit David right in his swollen sense of justice.
"Quite, good, to you?"
"Stupid!"
"Naive!"
"Utterly unreasonable!"
He stared fiercely at Tania, trying to wake her from her illusion.
"Do you even know what the hell your mother is?"
"The chief among the Five-Color Evil Dragons!"
"A Red Dragon!!!"
"A Red Dragon, just like me, with the same Pride, the same violent temper, slothful, and apt to burn, kill, rob, and do all kinds of evil!"
"And what about you, don't you even know what you are?"
"A Silver Dragon, bragging about how a Red Dragon is 'quite good' to you? Huh?"
"The day she sells you out, you'll still be praising her 'goodness'!"
"How pathetic!"
"Ridiculous!!!"
David's completely uncontrolled outburst, driven by all the emotions he had suppressed in the depths of his heart for five years, finally made young Tania break down. Crying, she retorted,
"And what about you?"
"Aren't you a Red Dragon too?"
"Are you just wearing a mask to deceive me, just so that one day..."
"You can sell me for a good price?"