Trouble

By their third day after hatching, the wyrmlings could already run freely, bite and wrestle, and begin trying to hunt on their own.

All black dragons, regardless of age or strength, shared the same habits. When hunting, rather than actively pursuing and killing prey, they preferred ambushes, lurking in mud pools and rivers as they waited for prey to take the bait.

In a river thick with humus, the three wyrmlings lay silently hidden beneath the silt on the riverbed. Their dark scales provided perfect camouflage, blending them into the mud below. Only their vertical pupils remained exposed as they watched the fish swimming overhead like crocodiles, poised to strike.

Not far away, the black dragon mother concealed her presence and crouched amid the grass and ferns, watching her offspring's first hunt.

But the results did not seem promising. An entire afternoon passed, yet all three of the black dragon's children came up empty-handed. The wyrmlings were still too young to skillfully control their developing Ferocious Presence ability—the legendary dragon's might—so prey became wary from far away and refused to approach their ambush sites.

Meanwhile, fish and shrimp often passed by Caesar downstream. It was not because he possessed exceptional talent, but because he had not received the dragon inheritance and could not form spell-like abilities at all. Under such circumstances, the prey had no awareness of little Caesar lurking at the bottom of the silt.

Even so, he gained nothing. The fish of this otherworld were far more alert than Caesar had imagined. Whenever he prepared to move, they sensed something wrong from the disturbance in the mud or the movement of the river, scattering like startled birds. Before he could even spring from the riverbed, his prey had already fled completely.

The other two wyrmlings did not care much. Sooner or later, they would become Predators at the top of the food chain. To them, this sort of hunting was more like idle entertainment.

But Caesar was not having such an easy time. His failure to hunt brought him no small sense of frustration. When the little wyrmling crawled out of the riverbed and looked at his wet, filthy body, he could not help sighing.

"This feels awful!"

To make matters worse, as time passed, he gradually displayed more and more differences from the other two wyrmlings.

Most obviously, both wyrmlings had acquired Ferocious Presence and could already fly to a limited extent. With a light beat of their wings, they could rise from the ground.

Caesar, on the other hand, could not take off no matter how desperately he flapped his wings, even when he whipped up howling gusts.

To fly, one had to obey the laws of physics. There was a fixed relationship between weight, power, and wingspan. Caesar stared at the two wyrmlings. From an Earthling perspective, their wings—and even the black dragon mother's—were somewhat too small. The lift they generated should not have been enough to support a dragon in flight.

The ratio between their wings and body weight was severely unbalanced. Logically speaking, they were far too heavy to fly.

But dragons were magical creatures.

To dragons, wings were merely an aid. What truly let them soar through the skies was magic—their innate dragon abilities.

This was the greatest difference between Caesar and the other two wyrmlings. Without magic, things the other wyrmlings could do easily were an insurmountable gulf to him.

Still, Caesar had long prepared himself mentally and was not overly discouraged. He knew there was no point comparing himself with the other wyrmlings. His most urgent task now was to grow stronger as quickly as possible, gain some ability to protect himself in the Underdark, and then leave the black dragon mother's nest.

Black dragons were not known for their intelligence, and their black dragon mother could hardly be called wise, but her intellect was not much lower than that of an adult human. As the wyrmlings grew, she would eventually notice Caesar's differences.

As the most violent and vicious of dragonkind's evil breeds, black dragons were infamous for the cruelty of their world. They showed no mercy toward defective, degenerated specimens. Being driven out was already a mild outcome; when faced with a dragon beast that had deceived them, black dragons might kill it outright.

Caesar soon discovered that over the following days, his food portions began shrinking, reduced by a full thirty percent. Although the black dragon mother had not discovered the truth, she regarded him as an inferior wyrmling whose growth lagged behind the others. Under nature's rule of survival of the fittest, the mother dragon naturally neglected him.

"This won't do." Several days later, Caesar crawled out of his mother's swamp nest while the black dragons slept.

Newborn wyrmlings needed vast amounts of food to meet the demands of growth and development, but with their mother's lazy disposition, she was unwilling to spend even a trace of extra effort hunting for an inferior wyrmling. As a result, Caesar's food supply dwindled by the day, eventually reaching a harsh level.

As long as it doesn't starve to death. Besides, can't this hatchling eat dirt? This was the black dragon mother's thinking.

Caesar knew that if this continued, things would only get worse with time.

"I'll be toyed to death sooner or later." Though he had continued swallowing inorganic matter to fill his stomach, without enough nutritional supply, the wyrmling's growth had gradually begun to stagnate.

During this time, his younger brother and sister from the same clutch had already begun approaching, even surpassing, him in size.

But those two wyrmlings were pure true dragons, continuously gaining draconic knowledge and awakening spell abilities. He could not compare himself to them. Caesar did not care about being surpassed by the two wyrmlings; he only wanted to grow as much as possible and gain enough strength to defend himself.

"I can't rely on my birth mother anymore. I have to hunt for myself."

Caesar thought that if he remained muddleheaded and stayed here, the shrinking food supply would only worsen his condition. Sooner or later, he would lose the ability to keep growing. Once his vicious mother discovered that he was merely a defective, degenerated dragon beast, death would be his only path.

Under these circumstances, Caesar decided to take the risk and hunt alone.

The little wyrmling's tail swayed as he pushed aside the grass and ferns, then slipped into the dense brush. His long body vanished from sight.

For any wyrmling not long hatched, the jungle was a perilous land filled with danger. But he had no choice. He had to risk everything.

The little wyrmling carefully moved through dense weeds and thorny brambles, his heart pounding without pause. He knew he was a complete novice. One careless mistake, and he would change from Predator to prey.

At this moment, he had to be sufficiently careful and cautious if he wanted to survive in this terrifying Shadow Jungle.

Fortunately, Caesar had already made a detailed hunting plan. He had selected his prey: carnivorous mammals.

Unlike ordinary black dragons, who were picky eaters and insisted on fish, shrimp, and aquatic creatures, he considered those strong but non-magical ordinary animals his best food for now. They could provide him with ample fresh meat and nutrition.

The premise, however, was that he had to catch them first.

Like the fish of this otherworld, mammals possessed extremely keen hearing and senses of smell. Moreover, in the jungle, even the slightest movement in the wind or grass could put such creatures on alert.

Fortunately, as Predators at the top of the food chain, dragons had long evolved a series of organs highly adapted to their environment. The fleshy pads beneath his claws allowed him to walk silently through the forest.

Caesar's dragon wings were very small relative to his body weight, and without magic, they could not possibly carry him into the air. But the lift generated by a light flutter of his wings was enough to let him glide smoothly over the humus-covered ground, making his movements more concealed.

But that was still not enough.

Having failed at fishing before, Caesar knew that these advantages alone would not be enough to bring home a catch. He was undeniably strong, and his scales were hard, but speed had become this wyrmling's weakness. The little wyrmling was severely unbalanced in his abilities, sluggish and clumsy when it came to agility.

Trying to hunt through ordinary methods such as ambushes and pursuit was asking the impossible of Caesar. It was nearly impossible.

He had to use his body more cleverly.

Caesar crawled beneath a bush, dug through the hard earth, and used the black soil to conceal his body. Feeling the movement of the wind, he lay quietly in wait.

He was determining the wind direction and choosing the best position from which to hunt.

After waiting for quite some time, until the scent of the black dragon mother had mostly faded from his body, Caesar began to work his throat.

"Hrng, hrng..."

Hidden behind the thorns, the wyrmling made several pig-like grunts.