But He Couldn't Beat Her

He took his eyes off the big little girl and turned back to the spellcasting ring before him, willing it to move.

The emerald glow on the spellcasting ring suddenly intensified, and tiny green motes settled onto the black soil like fireflies in the night.

[Crack, crack, crack~!]

The sound of growth came from underground. It was faint, but neither dragon hatchling missed it.

As the sound grew clearer, tiny shoots broke through the soil. They grew and rose at a frantic pace, soon becoming an emerald vine. A small bulge slowly formed at its tip.

The bulge kept swelling until it was roughly the size of an egg.

A thin line ran down the middle of the egg-sized bulge. As it slowly opened, an emerald eyeball emerged.

At the same time, Chaos's view changed.

In this new view, he and Agatha stood to either side in front of the vine.

It was strange, but novel. This was a third perspective.

That must have been what Perceptive Vines did.

"Is this a perception spell?"

"Yeah. I learned it after waking up from a nap. Just the thing for seeing what's down beneath this current."

After answering Agatha, he began channeling his mana.

The emerald spellcasting ring hovering before his dragon head glowed brighter.

[Crack, crack~]

The familiar sound of growth rang out again. This time, the vine grew even faster.

One meter, two meters.

Once it reached two meters, the vine could no longer stand upright and flopped onto the ground.

The fallen vine continued growing rapidly, extending toward the riverbank like an emerald snake.

As it stretched farther, it finally reached the bank of the underground river.

Without the slightest pause, the vine plunged headfirst into the river.

Darkness. Endless darkness.

That was what he saw through the third perspective.

As the vine kept descending, the darkness gradually began to fade. An ordinary caster using Perceptive Vines would have had to call it quits by now, but Chaos was different. His relationship with the elements was like that between a goddess and her devoted simp.

He only needed to cast the spell. The life element would handle the remaining minor problems for him.

For example, giving Perceptive Vines the ability to adapt to darkness when it originally had none.

[Splash~]

Compared with the raging water above, the current below was somewhat calmer.

That calm became increasingly apparent as the perceptive vine descended.

Fifty meters, sixty meters, a hundred meters.

At roughly a hundred meters, the water below barely moved at all. It was perfectly calm.

Schools of swimming fish also began to appear.

The fish were all huge. Even the smallest looked about a meter long, while the largest appeared to be five or six meters.

Scales covered their bodies, and they had two pairs of red fins, one behind their gills and the other on their tailbones. Their mouths were full of sharp teeth that protruded like buckteeth. One glance was enough to tell they weren't vegetarians.

[Kashi: Water-type magical beasts. Their preference for cold environments means they generally live in underground rivers or other cold waters. Aside from a mouthful of sharp teeth, their only distinguishing features are their abundant, delicious flesh. The largest can grow to ten meters. Pitiful, weak, low-tier magical beasts. Oh, right, they swim fast. Yes, very fast. They can also use mana to strengthen their bodies. Yes, that makes their meat even tastier-my favorite. Black Dragon: Maisade]

Underwater, a two-meter-long Kashi seemed to sense something. With a flick of its tail, it turned around in an instant.

The Kashi covered more than ten meters in a flash, opened its sharp-toothed mouth, and bit off the perceptive vine's entire eyeball.

Having lost its eyeball, the perceptive vine began to die.

Its stem was no longer emerald green, instead taking on a withered hue.

On the riverbank, Agatha looked at the perceptive vine, now withered rather than emerald green, and glanced sideways at Chaos beside her.

"What happened?"

"I ran into a Kashi Shoal. The vine got eaten."

As he spoke, Chaos spread his jaws in a grin. He was in a very good mood.

The vine had found a Kashi Shoal before even reaching the bottom. That alone suggested there was plenty of food down in the underground river. Otherwise, it couldn't support a Kashi Shoal.

Plenty of food.

That was definitely good news for their group of hatchlings.

They would just have to put some thought into how to hunt those Kashi.

Diving straight in would definitely be the least effective approach. Dragons didn't need to breathe, so being underwater wasn't a problem, but outswimming the native inhabitants was pretty much impossible.

"You're in a good mood?"

"Yeah. We found food, didn't we? Now we won't have to go hungry."

"But those Kashi won't be easy to catch."

"That's true..."

He gave the big little girl a perfunctory answer, then suddenly caught sight of the basin behind them out of the corner of his eye.

The more he looked at it, the more it seemed like a... fish pit!

A fish-pit trap they could use to catch fish.

All they needed to do was dig a channel through and fill the pool with water.

As for bait...

The greenery in the valley would do.

Kashi didn't eat plants, but other fish surely did. An underground river couldn't be full of nothing but carnivores. If it were, these Kashi would have starved long before he got the chance to scheme against them.

In the underground river, their group of hatchlings really couldn't do much about the Kashi. But if they confined them to a limited space, everything would change. The Kashi would become fish at the mercy of their hatchling claws.

Now that he had an idea, all he needed was someone to do the work...

Turning his dragon head, Chaos looked at the big little girl beside him.

Those powerful muscles, those broad, massive claws, that towering dragon body.

She looked born for manual labor!

Chaos made no attempt to hide his gaze. To a proud Chromatic Dragon, that look already bordered on an insult, but Agatha wasn't angry. She understood that he had come up with an idea.

"You have an idea?"

Her tone was certain.

"Yeah, I do."

"What do you think about digging through this pit and filling it with water?"

Agatha immediately understood what Chaos had in mind.

"You want to fill it with water to lure the Kashi inside."

"Exactly."

Chaos raised his dragon head and spread his jaws, looking immensely pleased with himself.

Watching the smug little dragon before her, Agatha reached out a claw almost without thinking. Her large red claw landed squarely on the forehead of his emerald dragon head.

She didn't know why. She had simply wanted to do it, so she reached out.

Chaos stiffened, his heart torn. What was this big little girl playing at?

He wanted to break free, but he couldn't beat her.

He wanted to demand an explanation, but he couldn't beat her.