“How did you break that ruby? You’re incorporeal,” I grumbled for about the third time. A sigh echoed out from behind my crown of horns.
“I have my tricks,” she muttered.
“Not good enough. C’mon! You want me to trust you? Give a little to earn it!”
“Alright! I have a small, very small, reserve of mana I can spend to manifest physically for short periods. I can’t do it much, or very often, but it’s an emergency option I have at my disposal!”
My mind flicked back to how many times she had slapped me on my ear nub, the snout, or the neck.
“You’re so full of shit! You’ve used that power to bonk me on the nose and flick my earhole dozens of times! You clung to my neck with it when we went flying!” I accused as I stretched out my nose to touch the wooden hatch that led back to my home.
The hatch swung open, and I screeched as the light blinded me in one eye. I snatched the monocle off and threw it into the chamber above. My bloated body slithered over the lip of the hatch, and I looked around my home. The shiny glory of my now equally bloated horde called to me. I was glad the Core just spawned the gold in the best place imaginable; my shiny mattress. I flopped my way over to the comfiest bed I’d ever known and spread out. My tail curled out to catch any coins that rolled away.
“OK! It’s not something that’s terribly hard to do, but I can’t do much with it!” Kat held up her blistered right hand. “If I manifest, I’m fragile! If you die, I’m fine, albeit I’m in the shit with the bosses. If I die here, I go to the back of the divine intern pool again, and you’re on your own! I was a Lesser Jade Empress! I literally couldn’t die!” she snarled. I blinked slowly.
“How could you be immune to death and then still die?” I asked softly. The little woman was upset, and even the coldness of my reptilian mind couldn’t ignore the heat of her passion.
“I come from a different type of world than you knew. I was the daughter of a royal lineage, not a nouveau riche little parvenu like you were. Which is why I don’t mind you calling me princess, but Lesser Jade Empress isn’t a title. Well, it’s not a title like being the duke of whatever. It was my highest level of cultivation. I spent over a thousand years meditating and hoarding natural treasures. I was beyond mortal; old age was nothing to me. Mountains quaked when I farted!” I grimaced at her claim, but her voice dripped with anger and regret.
“OK, she who farts away the mountains. So how come you’re stuck as a Tinkerbell cosplayer with me?” I asked. She snorted and sat down cross-legged. I looked away. I needed to get her a skirt or a kilt or something.
“I died.”
“But–”
“I know! Let me finish the bloody story! Another cultivator betrayed me. This cultivator, a foul man following a dark path, found me while I was meditating in seclusion. One thing led to another, and—look, I really don’t want to talk about it. Suffice to say, he stole my immortality and killed me, but I’d been a good person; my Karmic balance made me look like Elon’s bank account compared to what you scraped together. So I missed out on joining the Woo by a gnat's testicle, and I ended up stuck here babysitting you as a trial to earn my place as a god.”
“Is it so bad?” I wondered aloud. As my belly settled onto my newly enhanced hoard, everything felt surprisingly right with the world.
“It’s… a bit of a let down, Bob. I’m sorry, but that’s how I feel.” She hung her head and fiddled with the hilt of her sword where she had laid it across her knees.
“Oh.” I snorted. Mammals! Hang on… I was going native, wasn’t I? Was Kat’s new situation affecting her in the same way? “Well, we’ve got our first floor cleared. I’ve got enough biomass for one, maybe two evolutions. Chin up, princess!”
“Thanks, Bob.” She sniffed, wiped a forearm across her nose, and looked up with slightly bloodshot eyes. “What do you want me to do with the floor?” Her voice became more businesslike as she stood up and brushed off her silvery Victoria’s Secret outfit.
“How much is it going to cost me?” My purple eyes narrowed in suspicion.
“Set me a budget, and I’ll let you know what I can do,” she said, leaning on her great sword. “With a thousand coins I can–” At the T word, my greed-demon flew into a rage.
“Get real, princess. You can have two hundred!” I snapped. Better to nip little Miss Spending-spree in the bud before she gets started.
“That’s a pittance! I can get a couple of minions, a single basic room, and a handful of lights for that! You have to spend money to make money, Bob!” she barked back at me defiantly.
My equine snout, noble and sleek, swept from side to side.
“What is my expected return on investment, and what kind of timescale are you talking about?” My wings curled over my hoard defensively, and my tail coiled, ready to prevent her from treating my bed like Daddy's credit card.
“If we get two workers, we can prep the place for renting in the next two weeks. They’re contractually obliged to defend the hoard, too, as long as we help them fight. Furthermore, a couple more workers can prospect the area for minerals and extract them. A lot of tenants will be more than happy to buy materials at good rates,” she raised a hand to her chin and stroked it thoughtfully. Cupping her elbow with her free hand, she assumed what was commonly referred to as the ‘thinking pose’.
The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
“How much, and how long?” I repeated, ignoring her posturing.
“Fine!” Her hands dropped to her sides, and she began pacing back and forth. “For five hundred, I think we can see a one hundred percent return on investment in three weeks, assuming we can recruit a tenant. Possibly much higher than that if we’re lucky and there are valuable minerals in the walls that spawned. We should easily double or triple the initial investment over two months.”
“Where the fuck am I going to find a tenant? Are there small ads in this world? Craigslist? Internet forums?” I asked. I curled my head down so my chin was resting on the superlatively comfortable gold.
“We can recruit!” she said happily, giving me a thumbs up and a wink, her red hair and metal-clad assets swaying with the movement.
“Where the hell can we recruit, you little… sprite?” I asked. I blew out a breath that sent her tumbling. Then my tongue flicked out, catching the taste of gold, and I burrowed my chin in deeper. Delicious.
“Would I have suggested it if it wasn’t possible?” she asked in a dangerously sweet tone. “There’s the Core market, and you can fly! Plenty of places won’t kill you on sight. Well, I can think of two. Or you can sit here and lick your gold?” She crossed her arms and glared at me.
I phased her out, nodding and blinking supportively as Kat paced up and down on the stone, waving her hands like a lunatic as she ranted about contractual obligations, mutual defense clauses, consequences for missing rental payments, necessary levels of maintenance and support for tenants, blah, blah, blah!
Biomass required for evolution: 30 KG.
Evolve: Y/N?
Oh god, yes! I could only hope it would shut out the noise while I went through the process.
Rolling for evolution choices…
Please select from the following six options:
- Corrosive Claws
- Reflective Scales
- Efficient Digestion
- Opposable Thumbs
- Acidic Rhinoplasty
- Latent Anti-Venom
I hemmed and hawed while I watched Kat pontificate and gesticulate about the joys of becoming a landlord and what a wise dragon I would be if I would only hand over two-thirds of my hoard to her. I had to admire her optimism, while at the same time despairing at her ability to read the room.
“Kat, I’m sure we can get into the contract law in more depth at another time.” Anytime after I die. “But I’ve got some evolution choices to choose from. What do reflective scales do?” I asked to cut her off. She had paused for breath, her miniature bosom heaving as she prepared to explain some nuance or another of running a lair for profit. Her arms dropped to her hips, and she glared at me.
“They allow you to reflect some magical attacks at the caster. What variant is it?” she snapped.
“It just says Reflective Scales, princess. How do I see if there’s a variant?”
“Huh. Too early to be thinking about variants, I suppose. It’s not a bad choice, but it's not much use to you at the moment. What else have you got?”
“There are two more I’m not sure about, the rest are pretty self-explanatory. Efficient digestion?”
“Increases Biomass stored per meal. And the other?” she grumbled, testy over being thrown off the rhythm of her lecture.
“Acidic Rhinoplasty. Is it going to melt my nose?” I wondered in confusion. She stared at me blankly for a second and started giggling. Then she bent down with her hands on her knees and roared with laughter.
“Pick– choose that one!” she guffawed. I scowled down at her, purple eyes narrowing in distrust. “I’m literally here to help you… You bloody great horse-faced lummox! Choose it!”
I had enough biomass for one more level if this was a wash, and she was playing some practical joke on me. I didn’t want to waste the materials, though.
“Oh, for Heaven’s sake! It’s a breath attack, you fool. Why do you think you’ve got nostrils?” she said as she saw me hesitating.
“All the better to smell you with, my child,” I muttered.
“I’m over a thousand years older than you, kiddo. Dragon nostrils aren’t for sniffing kids, you weirdo, or for breathing at all. They are a weapon. And that will give you your first breath attack. Take it!”
I considered it. An acid breath attack sounded risky. What would happen if I fired it into the wind and it blew back into my face? I glanced down and saw that Kat had crossed her arms and was tapping her foot impatiently.
I clicked on number five. Acidic Rhinoplasty it was. For a moment, nothing happened, then my snout began to itch. I reached up with a claw and scratched at it. I took a breath and slowly exhaled. Then I hiccupped, and then the pain began. It built up slowly, the itch gradually becoming a burning sensation that seemed to reach from just inside my nostrils, run up past my eyes, and then in twin lines down the back of my neck until it reached my chest and stopped somewhere between my prodigious flight muscles.
I went cross-eyed and lay down carefully on my bed of gold, both front claws covering my face as I shook with pain. After an interminable period, the pain faded as quickly as it had spread. I slowly raised myself to my feet and shook myself from tip to tail, like a dog shaking off the rain.
Kat had vanished, probably not looking to be involved as I vented my frustration at the agonising process she had recommended. I looked over at the wall and blew a strong breath out at it. Nothing. No jet of white hot dragon fire, no column of flame. No acid.
I waddled off my bed and moved towards the wall. I may need a target to be in range for it to work. I stopped about five metres from the wall and tried again. I blew a raspberry as the breath left my lungs this time, forked tongue flicking up and down, but no fire came forth. Kat’s head rose from my snout, and she laughed in my face.
“Wrong muscles. It’s a bit like flying. Your body knows how to do it, you’re getting in your own way! Just relax and do it!” she said before fading back down beneath my scales.
I thought about what she’d said, and I forced my body to relax. Instead of trying to use my lungs, I moved my chest muscles in a new way, as if I were working a bellows inside my torso.
My neck stretched out, and my nostrils flared as twin jets of lime green liquid shot out of my nose to splash against the wall. The stone began to smoke and dissolve as the acid washed over it; I backed away carefully. After thirty seconds, the liquid had stopped trying to eat its way down into my dungeon, and the scarified rock was left covered in a thin layer of runny-looking snot.
“Well I’ll be damned! My snot is a weapon!”