My head itches a little.
"Mm, Shi Qiu'er, stop licking me. Let me sleep a little longer."
Li Wei felt a cool sensation brush his head and grumbled in annoyance.
But as Li Wei's thoughts gradually cleared, he soon realized something was wrong...
It seemed... a little hot... Mm... almost like taking a bath...
And... Shi Qiu'er's tongue seemed way too big... and it stank.
This definitely wasn't my Shi Qiu'er!
Li Wei's eyes flew open.
A dog.
There was no doubt that a dog's face filled his vision, but it wasn't his own adorable Samoyed, Shi Qiu'er. This one even had a layer of dark brown scales growing on its skin. By then, half of Li Wei's worldview had already crumbled. And when his gaze continued downward and landed on those muscles, which seemed to radiate philosophical profundity, he froze completely.
"Kobolds?"
The word came instinctively to Li Wei's mind...
WTF?!
Li Wei quickly noticed something even more unsettling: the creatures he could only describe as kobolds were looking at him very strangely.
Like someone who'd been starving all day and had finally gotten the barbecue delivery that was hours late.
They wanted to eat him!
He'd fallen asleep and woken up as hot pot!
The discovery instantly cleared the last of the fog from Li Wei's mind, and he struggled on instinct.
But that movement sent him tumbling into even hotter broth. He gulped down a mouthful of liquid with a slightly bitter, mushroom-like taste, which choked back all the curses he'd been about to unleash in his foul mood.
As he bobbed and rolled, Li Wei finally got a clear look at himself in the rippling surface.
He was a silver-shining egg.
More precisely, an egg with a round lizard's head poking out of it.
A piece of the shell he'd cracked through clung to his head, stuck there by either egg white or broth. Combined with his dazed, existentially bewildered expression, he looked absurdly stupid and cute.
For a brief instant, his stunned mind seemed to wander for ages. But reality forced him to accept the fact that he'd transmigrated and become a lizard. There was no time to lounge in a warm nest and reminisce about his past life like the other transmigration veterans.
Perhaps they'd noticed the commotion in the pot. The kobolds around him, who had nearly been drooling over the meat broth, all howled and rushed forward. They used the short spears in their hands, seemingly carved from stalactites, to shove the silver lizard trying to flip out of the pot back inside.
They had no idea why the lizard egg they'd been boiling had turned into lizard soup, but meat soup was more filling than egg soup, wasn't it?
Salong, the old chieftain, watched the children, excited by this little surprise, with a fond but wistful expression. His thoughts turned to the worsening conditions in the Underdark, where tensions between Gershon City, ruled by the Shadow Matriarch, and a nearby Mind Flayer city had been steadily escalating.
The lizard egg they'd found in a sinkhole was one of the few decent things they'd managed to scavenge in recent days.
"Let them have their fun a little longer. If things really don't work out..."
Salong sighed at the thought. If they couldn't find somewhere to live with a reliable food supply, they might have no choice but to seek the protection of another powerful being.
That was how most declining species like theirs survived.
Most of the time, they became vassals and lost every last bit of their sovereignty.
They might even have to serve as emergency rations when their patron ran short on food, but any outcome was better than extinction.
"If only we could find a dragon to serve..."
Unfortunately, most of the Chromatic Dragons within their tribe's range already had powerful Retainers, and many had been drawn into the conflict stirred up by the Shadow Matriarch.
If they went to one of them now, they'd likely be sent to the front lines as cannon fodder—or chopped up on the spot and cured with Rock Salt into military jerky.
When Salong was young, his father had told him that one of their ancestors had been fortunate enough to serve a Red Dragon. After earning enough merit, the ancestor had even been granted a drop of dragon's blood, breaking the Talent Lock of his species and becoming a noble Dragon-Blooded Kobold!
Of course, nearly nine out of ten kobolds told similar tales about their ancestors, and other creatures often laughed at them for it.
But while the elderly kobold was pondering the fate of his people, the long-forgotten "lizard egg soup" in the distance erupted into a panic.
Hot, hot, hot, hot, hot!
Li Wei felt like he was about to cook!
No! If any other species had been put through what he was enduring, they would've been cooked through by now!
For some reason, this body seemed to have a remarkable tolerance—or should he say resistance—to the heat. A group of kobolds had held him in a boiling pot for so long, yet he was still kicking.
This seemed to shatter the worldviews of quite a few young kobolds, filling them with anger and alarm. They bared their teeth at Li Wei and snarled threateningly.
"You damn dogs!" Li Wei had gone from panicked despair to fidgety rage!
Well, anyone held down in a scalding, foul-smelling bathtub and kept from getting out would be furious.
In the world he'd come from, that sort of helpless rage was known online as...
"Raging impotently."
Li Wei was in exactly that awkward position.
On one hand, he was completely unused to this unfamiliar body. His claws were sharp, but his short forelegs made him misjudge distances all the time.
So whenever he tried to scramble out of the pot, several Stone Spears would jab into his claws and body.
His scales kept the attacks from being fatal, but they still hurt like hell.
Some of the softer scales had already been turned back, and blood was spreading through the broth.
On the other hand, as time passed, he began to feel hungry—a hunger that seemed to reach down to his bones!
Li Wei had never been this hungry. It felt as if his rebellious stomach would digest him from the inside if he didn't eat something soon.
And in fact, his weight really was dropping fast.
Just as Li Wei, weak from hunger, plunged headfirst into the pot again and swallowed some water, his spirits suddenly lifted!
Delicious!
The scene had started out as a brutal tale of nature's food chain, but the mood suddenly shifted...
After the silver lizard in the pot endured a few attacks from the kobolds, he'd seize the opening and gobble down a few bites of whatever was in the broth!
Some kind of root vegetable? Mm, tasted like potato!
A purple mushroom? Could be poisonous... Oh well, better than starving to death!
Some unknown jerky? At least it wasn't him!
In a short time, Li Wei had no choice but to devour nearly all the few ingredients that had been in the pot.
The kobolds watching him went frantic with rage!
That was all the food they'd managed to gather over the past few days! And now the monster they'd planned to eat as their main course had wolfed it all down!
The wails of the young kobolds finally caught the attention of several Adult Kobolds and Chieftain Salong. They grabbed their weapons and hurried over.
Li Wei was nearly mad with hunger. He didn't care about anything else; after a moment's hesitation, he turned his attention to the ground beneath him!
I'll eat my own eggshell!
Who said eggshells were good for calcium?
Crunch!
Li Wei chewed a few times, then gulped it down. His two originally oval, vertical blue pupils widened in shock!
It was hard to describe the taste, but it filled Li Wei with a satisfaction he'd never felt before. His mind even grew clearer. Compared with this, everything he'd eaten before was trash!
Li Wei devoured the rest of the eggshell as quickly as he could. Just as he was about to eat the piece still stuck to his head too—and figure out how to escape this mess—a sense of danger chilled him to the bone, tightening every scale.
He flapped his unfamiliar wings with all his might and twisted his body, but he was still a moment too slow.
With a sharp whistle, a long spear carved from a stone stalagmite smashed through the clay pot and pierced Li Wei's right wing, pinning him firmly to the ground. The hot, bloody broth spread across the dry earth.
An Adult Kobold had attacked!
Roar!
The pain was so intense it could drive a dragon mad. Li Wei let out a low growl, raised his head, and saw more than a dozen Kobold Monsters, each clearly much larger than the runt-like ones from before, rushing toward him from all sides with various old, battered, but still sharp weapons in hand.
Behind them stood an elderly kobold, thin and short but holding a Short Staff. He was scrutinizing Li Wei with a thoughtful expression.
Instinctively, Li Wei felt that this one was even more dangerous!
I'm screwed! Are there wizards among the kobolds too?
But Li Wei had imagined too much. The suspected wizard didn't even need to act. A notched, silver-glinting axe blade came hurtling toward him!
Pinned to the ground, Li Wei couldn't dodge the blow.
The kobold seemed to have already pictured the damn lizard's head splitting in two, followed by his companions tearing the body to pieces.
Li Wei thought so too.
But amid his unbearable resentment and fury, a vast stream of information finally burst through some invisible barrier and flooded into his mind. He instinctively felt he had to shout something out, or his head would burst.
"Tiberius. Sextus. Kinu. Levis!!!"
As Li Wei roared out the tongue-twisting string of words, a Cold Current of overwhelming power burst from his mouth.
Every kobold present felt the temperature around them plummet. Those in the direct path seemed to be facing a Winter Storm!
The kobold with the axe, about to strike Li Wei, felt his swift, powerful swing falter uncontrollably halfway through, then freeze in midair.
A gale whipped up ice crystals that tore gashes across his body. Before blood could seep out, the frost forming on him froze it in place. Then everything in his vision was covered in frost, and he sank into eternal darkness.
A majestic ice sculpture took shape.
Behind it, a jagged fan of ice stretched to the horizon.
The kobolds behind him hadn't been instantly killed by the sudden Frost Breath, but they were caught in its wake. Frost coated their bodies, and their feet were frozen to the ground.
Glittering ice crystals drifted down from the air.
In the Underdark, where the sun had not shone for tens of thousands of years, it seemed to be snowing...
All the kobolds were stunned by the sudden sight. The young ones were so terrified that they flattened themselves against the freezing ice, shivering and whimpering in fear.
Quite a few Adult Kobolds didn't know what to do. Some even dropped their weapons and prostrated themselves like hatchlings, as though worshipping a sacred being.
This was no opponent they could hope to defeat!
That, too, was the way of survival in the Underdark.
Be bold against the weak; cower before the strong.
Pride? Honor? They meant nothing when life was at stake!
Fear and despair spread uncontrollably through the tribe.
"Dragon True Name..."
Salong practically ground the words out through clenched teeth, staring at Li Wei, the one responsible, with an incredibly complicated expression.
Li Wei had thought he was about to die, and he hadn't expected to burst with power in the face of death.
Though the feeling had been more like having a glob of phlegm stuck in his throat that he couldn't spit out. The only difference was that this glob of phlegm had packed quite a punch. He also hadn't expected those damn Kobold Monsters to give up and bow down after a single attack.
"Was that a breath attack?"
"Did I transmigrate and become a dragon?"
Just as Li Wei was sure he'd survived his initial crisis and might even gain his first batch of underlings, like the protagonists in novels, the old voice spoke slowly, each word distinct:
"Children, I know this is sudden, but our tribe's very survival is at stake. Kill it! Now! Quickly! For the tribe! Anxilakusa!!!"
Before you continue