My Bird Bro

Hot.

Scorching.

The blazing sun mercilessly roasted everything below, and the rising heat made the air near the ground ripple and warp.

If you tossed a piece of meat onto the ground under the sun, it probably wouldn't take more than ten minutes to cook through.

This was a wasteland with barely any greenery. All it had were stretches of enormous stone pillars, as though something had shoved them up from underground, one after another.

Only in the cracks and shadows between the rocks could you just barely spot traces of plants. They seemed to be doing their best to sustain the wasteland's most basic food chain, keeping this region, seemingly forgotten by life, from falling too far behind its neighbors.

Of course, to Xingyan, the life in this wasteland seemed a little too abundant.

In terms of danger, that is.

Thump!

A heavy footfall seemed to signal the start of the chaos. It grew closer and clearer, though the occasional misstep revealed how panicked its owner was.

That was only natural, considering the lone set of footsteps in front was followed by a jumble of pounding feet. Just imagining the sounds was enough to picture a comical scene of one person running ahead while a whole crowd chased after them.

The only difference was that neither the pursuers nor the pursued were people.

Xingyan wasn't surprised. If anything, he was used to this sort of thing by now.

This had nothing to do with people.

It was dragons.

He poked his head out from beside a rock at the edge of the cave. Well, he did his best to poke it out just a little, anyway, and could already see what was happening outside.

A long-tailed, birdlike dragon covered in yellow scales was running over the wasteland's loose stones, cradling an enormous egg. It had a long, thick, blunt beak, and a bright tuft of red-orange feathers on its head.

Chasing behind the bird dragon was a group of dragons that ran on all fours, their backs covered in turtle-like shells.

The case was clear. The bird dragon in front had stolen an egg from the shelled dragons behind it, and now the angry victims were chasing after it.

It was also clear that this fleeing bird dragon was a repeat offender. Don't let the fact that it was the one running fool you—it knew its escape route like the back of its hand.

Its seemingly frantic steps never actually slowed it down. It deftly dodged protruding rocks, uneven slopes, and pits in the ground, and sometimes even used them to obstruct its pursuers.

The cunning little thief would even twist its body as it leaped over pits, doing its best to reflect the midday sun off its yellow scales and blind any unlucky pursuers behind it.

Practiced.

"Gurururu... Gah!!"

The bird dragon visibly relaxed when it spotted the cave up ahead. Its steps grew lighter, and it let out a loud cry, as if urging someone on.

"You're just too despicable."

Hearing the urgent call, Xingyan couldn't help sighing inwardly.

Thump!!

As the pursuer and the pursued passed through the cave, open at both ends, Xingyan leaped straight down from a high stone ledge. He lowered his front body and bent his long, massive tail as high as he could.

"Roar!!!"

Dragon's Roar!

At a speed visible to the naked eye, the shelled dragons across from him fell into disarray. Their instincts urged them to flee, and they were willing to put aside even the grudge over the stolen egg.

As Xingyan watched with satisfaction, the poor creatures rushed over in a hurry, then hurriedly fled again after a brief moment of confusion.

Before long, all that remained outside the cave was a cloud of dust, still hanging in the air.

The egg thief was safe, but only for the time being.

With that in mind, Xingyan turned to look at the little thief who'd stolen the egg—from a rather upward angle.

That's right. For a dragon, this egg thief was even bigger than he was. But unlike Xingyan, the bird dragon looked anything but imposing. Instead, it seemed downright pitiful as it stood before him.

It was hard to imagine that a narrow, scaly Bird Wyvern face with hardly any muscles could show such a pained expression. Though every part of it seemed to protest, the egg thief still tremblingly stretched out its pair of foreclaws, holding the egg out to Xingyan.

The eye turned toward him kept sneaking glances his way, as if hoping for some miracle.

That wasn't going to happen.

Xingyan ate quickly.

It was only an Aptonoth egg. It took just a few bites. The only reason he didn't eat faster was to avoid wasting the nutritious egg liquid.

It wasn't enough—or rather, for Xingyan as he was now, eggs like this shouldn't have been part of his diet at all. He needed something more nutritious or harder. But what could he do? When he woke up in this world and cracked out of his egg, there had been nothing around him.

That's right, Xingyan was a transmigrator. He'd bought a copy of Monster Hunter: Wilds as soon as it came out, only to find his 3080 couldn't even run the game. Well, technically, it could—but everything from the grass to the rocks to the sky kept flickering, making the game unplayable.

What he found even harder to accept was discovering, while watching videos, that someone else was playing Wilds smoothly on a 1080. Anyway, after cursing out Capcom, Xingyan closed his eyes. When he opened them again, he was inside an egg.

He was no longer in the peaceful, safe society where he'd lived for over twenty years. He was in the world of a game he'd loved dearly.

And it was the New World.

The New World, but in some unknown era.

He was no longer human, either. He was a dragon—one that could even eat ore raw.

Going from a familiar, safe environment to the dangerous wilderness was already enough to make anyone... any dragon despair. But what made Xingyan despair even more was that in this cruel world, where everything ate or was eaten, he'd been born a hatchling without any elders to care for him through his infancy.

When he broke out of his egg and emerged from a dark underground cave, all he could see was a desolate desert and termite mounds of every size.

Those familiar landmarks, and the sight of his reflection in an underground river moments later, made it painfully clear what had happened to him.

He was a dragon now—a Glavenus, known as the Scorching Blade, and nicknamed the Long Sword swordsman among dragons.

As the leader of the Fated Four on the cover of Monster Hunter Generations, Glavenus was incredibly popular with players, from its appearance to its fighting style. It was considered the coolest dragon... the most Long Sword-like dragon.

Xingyan had long since memorized all sorts of information about Glavenus and the New World. The problem was that all the fun belonged to adult Glavenus. What did it have to do with a little thing like him, who hadn't even had a female dragon around to care for him until his tail hardened?

A newly hatched Glavenus had a soft tail. And because it hadn't yet eaten a lot of ore, a young Glavenus's tail hadn't secreted and hardened into the mineral-rich blade that gave the species its name. Add in a hatchling's pitiful bite strength, and the only things it could bully were harmless creatures like Aptonoth.

He couldn't even breathe fire.

To Xingyan, that meant he might already be far behind the other Glavenus hatchlings. He had no mother to feed him enough to ensure his body grew strong, and no steady supply of ore to help him forge his peerless blade.

And in the cruel wilderness, such disadvantages were often fatal. They could even affect a dragon's whole life.

That was exactly why Xingyan had been reduced to teaming up with a Kulu-Ya-Ku, a thief that stole eggs from other dragons, and becoming its accomplice. A dragon had to eat, after all!

There was nothing shameful about filling your stomach.

Well, all right. Maybe it was a little shameful.

Whenever his stomach rumbled, Xingyan couldn't help sighing. He looked down at his body, but all he could see were his tiny, adorable, chicken-like forelimbs and a pair of legs that were unusually sturdy for his size.

And, of course, his long, slender sword tail... Though it wasn't much of a sword tail yet, Xingyan had high hopes for it. It made up almost half his body length, after all.

Cool!

"Slurp, gulp gulp, slurp!"

The noisy, messy eating beside him interrupted Xingyan's memories. He turned his head and saw that the Kulu-Ya-Ku who'd brought him the egg had already started chowing down.

Three intact eggs were piled in the corner of the cave. They were all ones the Kulu-Ya-Ku had stolen earlier, and now it was eating, too. Xingyan narrowed his eyes as he watched it extend its tongue, which had a special structure and barbs on its surface to keep the egg liquid from flowing back.

"Slurp!"

The sound grew louder.

That was Kulu-Ya-Ku, Xingyan's brother for life. It had used the eggs it stole to keep Xingyan fed through the hardest days after he hatched—well, all right, even if he hadn't exactly had a choice.

Back then, Xingyan had been so hungry he was seeing stars. When he spotted a living creature about his size, he sprang out and startled the Kulu-Ya-Ku, who was fleeing with an egg. It dropped the egg and ran for its life, and Xingyan got his first meal in this world.

After that, they fell into a routine. Strangely enough, perhaps because it was so used to its usual escape route, the Kulu-Ya-Ku kept taking the same path even after Xingyan robbed it of an egg once. It did it a second time, and even a third.

And every time, its egg got stolen.

But perhaps because Xingyan had once jumped out and scared away the Aptonoth chasing the Kulu-Ya-Ku, the clever bird dragon seemed to have figured something out.

Normally, a Kulu-Ya-Ku stole three or four eggs a day. But from then on, this one brought back at least seven or eight eggs every day. The cave it passed through while fleeing, open at both ends, became the two dragons' hideout. Over time, things settled into how they were now.

If a program ran reliably and worked for everyone, don't change it—and especially don't take risks by doing anything unnecessary... Xingyan knew this principle well.

But one thing was worth mentioning: the two dragons had already grown comfortable facing each other before Xingyan realized that the creature who'd abandoned its egg and run at their first meeting was even bigger than him.

An adult Kulu-Ya-Ku was more than nine meters long and between three and four meters tall—far bigger than a hatchling like him. But in the natural world, where creatures judged their enemies by comparing their sizes, the larger Kulu-Ya-Ku had been the one to run away.

That was just its nature, he supposed.

At least it had worked out well for Xingyan back then.

"Guh-ji?"

When Xingyan suddenly came over, the Kulu-Ya-Ku tilted its birdlike head in confusion.

"Roar! Roar, roar, roar!"

Xingyan roared again and again. More or less, he meant:

Brother! Keep stealing eggs and raising me for now. Once I'm grown, you won't have to steal eggs anymore. I'll take them out, and you can eat eggs openly!

Well, something like that. Xingyan didn't know if the Kulu-Ya-Ku could understand him, but he'd already decided it was his brother!!

"Gah-gah! Guh-ji-ji!"

He had no idea what it was saying, but the Kulu-Ya-Ku did hold out its foreclaws, the way it had when offering an egg.

The yolk was gone, leaving only the whites.

"Roar? Roar, roar, roar!" (You sure know how to eat, huh?)

Xingyan was almost speechless at his Kulu-Ya-Ku brother's pickiness. The creature only ate the yolks of the eggs it stole. It wouldn't even touch the whites, as if it were some kind of food connoisseur.

Before meeting Xingyan, his Kulu-Ya-Ku brother would toss away eggs once it had eaten the yolks. But now they didn't go to waste.

Xingyan wasn't picky. He took them and ate them.

He wouldn't let a single scrap of food that could give his body energy go to waste. He even licked the Ant Workers that passed by on the ground. He did it for no other reason than to help his body grow as fast as possible.

Eggs from the New World—eggs laid by creatures living in the New World—were indeed nutritious. The ample Ley Line Energy in them was enough to nourish creatures higher up the food chain. That was the point of the food chain: Ley Line Energy kept circulating and accumulating through the cycle of eating and being eaten.

Compared to the days right after he hatched, Xingyan felt his body was growing quickly.

The muscles in his legs were rapidly expanding. Their development was vital to supporting a Glavenus's huge body as it moved at unimaginable speeds. The armor on his body was also rapidly turning dull and hard. At least it wasn't like when he'd just hatched, when some of his armor was still translucent.

Wild animals in nature generally grew up quickly after birth. Their earliest days were when they grew the fastest.

Watching his tail swing back and forth, Xingyan decided he'd eat some extra dirt today. It'd be even better if he found a mineral vein.

He longed for a real hunt.

Not the pathetic kind he was doing now, living off stolen eggs like a Kulu-Ya-Ku, but a true hunt befitting a carnivorous Beast Dragon Species—a hunt worthy of a flagship monster.

It was both pride and instinct.

His instincts were calling to Xingyan—to eat meat!