Announcement: Hello, my friends!
I've just released my new novel on Royal Road, Heretic' Legacy: The Strongest Blood Mage of Hell.
I'd really appreciate it if you gave it a look. I think you'll enjoy it.
Your support during these early stages means a lot to me and helps the story reach more readers.
Thank you!
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The sky had fallen into a purplish darkness, the pulsing aurora spreading across it in broken waves of light as always. But beneath that glow, the scene was far from calm. The massive corpse of the snake still lay on the ground, its torn flesh and dried blood leaving a heavy scent in the air. This victory was not clean. It had a cost.
Alexander and the young lay scattered beside the carcass. Hours had passed since the brutal struggle, and they had consumed nearly half of the snake's flesh. This was not a feast. It was necessity. Every bite had been taken to pay the price of survival.
Alexander lay on his side, avoiding pressure on his injured right shoulder. The dull ache still pulsed through his muscles with every movement. But his injury was insignificant. The Drone had suffered far worse.
Its front left limb… was no longer what it had been. Most of the bones were broken, some completely shattered. Considering the crushing force of the snake's coils, the fact that the limb hadn't been reduced to pulp was already a small mercy. Even so, the damage was severe.
The Drone was still groaning.
A sound of pain that would not stop, could not be suppressed.
Alexander looked toward it. There was nothing he could do to intervene. The only thing he could do was balance the cost of the battle in another way. That was why he had made sure it ate until it was completely full. Right now, it needed biomass more than any of them.
Adaptive Regrowth had already begun its work. Between the shattered bones, fibrous, flexible cartilage-like structures were starting to form. They were not as strong as true bone yet—under the slightest strain, they could break again. But the process had begun.
And that was enough.
The night passed like this.
There was no silence. The Drone's constant groans echoed through the darkness without end. It disturbed all of them, but no one reacted. Because that sound was the cost of victory.
And costs were not something to complain about.
When Alexander woke, the sun had already risen. Light spread across the hill, pushing the night away. The swarm was still asleep, the exhaustion of the previous night weighing heavily on them. He looked at them, but did not wake them. They needed the rest.
He rose to his feet.
Slowly, he stretched, loosening his muscles. Every movement was measured. Then he tried to take a few steps.
Pain came with the first step. Sharper with the second. The throbbing in his front shoulder was a clear warning.
Alexander stopped.
He stood still for a moment, then let out a slow breath.
"Looks like I need proper rest as well," he thought.
Being careful not to strain his shoulder, he took a short walk, then approached the snake's corpse. The torn body still lay sprawled on the ground. At a glance, it looked about two meters long, but his gaze shifted to the rock pinning down its tail. He found himself wondering how much more of its body still lay inside the hollow beyond it.
Taking care not to aggravate his injury, he pushed against the rock. It was heavy—its weight had completely crushed the snake's tail when it fell. Still, after some effort, he managed to shove it aside.
What he saw inside made his eyes widen in surprise.
But only for a few seconds.
Then a wide grin spread across his face.
What had caught his attention wasn't the extra length of the snake's tail—though that was there too, nearly half a meter of it still inside the hollow. The real surprise, the real reward, was something else entirely.
Eggs.
A lot of them.
There had to be at least thirty, maybe forty.
He sank his teeth into the tail first and dragged the rest of the corpse out of the hollow. Then he reached inside, trying to pull the eggs out with one forelimb.
It didn't work.
The hollow was too deep and too narrow for him. His claws brushed against the eggs, but he couldn't get a proper grip. He decided not to force it—he might crush them by accident.
Instead, he sent a sharp pulse through the mental link, waking the swarm.
The young stirred, looking at him in confusion.
He didn't wait.
Taking control of one of them, he used its smaller body to reach inside. Carefully, one by one, the eggs were pulled out. They were clustered together, pressed against each other, and touching them felt slightly sticky.
It took him nearly twenty minutes to retrieve them all.
But it was worth it.
There were exactly thirty-three eggs, creamy white in color, each slightly larger than a chicken egg.
Without hesitation, he picked up the first one and swallowed it whole. The shell felt softer, more leathery compared to the bird eggs he had eaten before.
He liked that.
He didn't even wait—he initiated the analysis immediately.
From that point on, for Alexander, it turned into little more than a series of egg-eating sessions whenever there was space left in his stomach. The injured Drone did the same, feeding on the snake's flesh. As for the rest of the swarm, Alexander wanted to send them out to explore again, but in his current condition, he found it too risky to send them unprotected into the deeper parts of the forest. So instead, they stayed nearby, observing the clearing and passing the time by feeding on the surrounding vegetation.
He had decided that all of the remaining meat would go to the injured Drone. Finding more meat in the mountains was uncertain, and edible plants were not exactly abundant either.
As the hours passed, Alexander grew tired of lying still. He knew he needed to rest his shoulder, so instead of getting up himself, he took control of one of the Drones wandering in the clearing and joined the exploration through it.
He carefully checked beneath the rocks in the clearing but found no other burrows or dens. He continued his exploration for hours. His mind grew increasingly fatigued during the process, but thanks to the Cerebral Recovery Node, he managed to keep going with brief moments of rest.
He had pushed all the way to the edge of the forest, reaching a steep, cliff-lined section of the mountain. He was nearing the limit of his Drone control range, so he decided to take one last look around before turning back.
From the forest side, there was nothing but the soft rustling of leaves. To his sides and behind him, there were only sparse, grassy hills. When he looked ahead, he noticed the rocky slopes of another mountain nearby. He tilted his head up and down, examining it. The slope was extremely steep, but farther out he could make out a flatter area leading up to that mountain. It looked completely barren.
He dismissed the idea. Reaching it would be unnecessary and troublesome. Their next route after this hill would have to be somewhere else.
He looked down from the cliff and estimated he was nearly sixty meters up. Below, between two mountains, he spotted a small, promising stretch of land covered in grass.
As he considered the possibility of descending there if food became scarce in the mountains, a vast sound suddenly echoed across the sky.
A sound he had never forgotten, one that shook him to his core, made his fur bristle, and scraped against his ears.
The piercing cry of the bird that had snatched one of his Drones weeks ago.
His head snapped upward, scanning the sky. He saw it—the bird with yellow neck and wings, its body covered in dark feathers. It resembled an eagle, but its head was larger, its beak strangely shaped. In their previous encounter, he hadn't been able to fully understand its appearance. It was massive—for a bird, nearly twice the size of a Drone.
A surge of unease ran through him. He looked around for somewhere to hide and dashed behind the nearest tree. By the time he reached cover and checked behind him, the bird had already passed him by. It glided toward the steep mountainside and landed on a small rocky outcrop.
Alexander's eyes widened.
On that outcrop sat a small nest, built from dry brown branches.