I woke up to heat. My stomach still hurt, but I wasn’t sweating, and my vision wasn’t blurred anymore. As soon as I recognized that I was out of death’s reach, I felt an overwhelming sense of relief, and I exhaled.
I didn’t want to die, but this probably wouldn’t be the last near-death experience I had while I was here. That said, the outside was dangerous too. This world had children who exhibited monstrous strength. That meant there were probably adults with the potential to cause as much damage as natural disasters. Rather than searching for a way to escape into the unknown, I needed to stay and secure power for myself.
I would learn how to kill better than anyone so that I could avoid being killed myself. If anyone dared to threaten me before I was strong enough, I would instead use underhanded methods to trap and slaughter them.
I heard the cause of my restless sleep—the groaning against my ear. Her jaw was resting and grinding on my shoulder, and it hurt. Her fine silver hair was soft and downy. Add her warmth into the mix, and it was like I was sleeping next to a dog. Our hands were still clasped together and clammy with sweat, like we hadn’t let go since I first grabbed her to endure the pain. Her tail was curled around both of us in the same way it curled around her own body when she slept. It was no wonder I had woken up.
I pulled back from her a little to try to cool down, and the cold air blew in between us. I didn’t expect it to be so freezing that it instantly made me shiver. I pressed myself back against the dragon girl for warmth, our toes touching by accident. The tail around us seemed to stiffen for a split second before relaxing again. It must have been an illusion created by the haze of sleep over my mind. I let myself fall back into that comfortably uncomfortable slumber.
✦ ✦ ✦
The next day, I was turning over rocks on the ground. When I found one that was roundish in shape and came up to my knee, I rolled it over to our new base camp.
“Ow!” I had to go slowly like an old man, because an intense pain sparked through my body every time I twisted slightly.
I was planning to apply heat to this rock so I could cook meat on it like an iron griddle. It didn’t look like I would be able to hunt today, so I decided to prepare some things to improve our quality of life instead.
I thought back to what happened that morning.
“Why did you jump in front of me?”
“I’m sorry.”
A fist struck the side of my face.
“I didn’t tell you to apologize.”
Her golden eyes showed the depths to her violent fury. They wouldn’t even allow me to look away. She didn’t hit me directly. I guess she took pity on me because I was injured.
“I had to do it,” I explained. “I didn’t do it out of pity.”
She fell silent. The anger I felt from her lessened somewhat.
“I used you for my own purposes. You don’t owe me, and I don’t owe you.”
The question was whether she would accept that answer. Her glare, an expression that seemed to seek the veracity of my response, closed in on me.
“How dare you?” she sneered aggressively, bearing her fangs.
Anyway, as far as the dragon girl was concerned, pitying her was as unforgivable as being openly hostile. That was why she had reacted so intensely. I had responded only with the truth.
Poison didn’t work on her. She probably would have fought just as well as she did if Hieda stabbed her instead of me. Given the daily beatings she once suffered at the hands of our instructor, a gaping wound in her stomach wouldn’t have prevented her from winning either. However, there was a reason I had needed to take the blow despite all that.
✦ ✦ ✦
I drank water from a tube with a sealed bottom. Water was a vital resource when it came to survival, and the children were quick to overcome that particular challenge. There was a bamboo-like plant in the forest, and the nodes naturally collected water that was safe to drink. That was how the kids secured their water supply.
Personally, I was more interested in the plant’s shape than its ability to store water. I cut along it lengthways, splitting it in half. I cut it in half again and again until I had eight equal pieces, making each one into a board with a gentle curve. While I was at it, I cut the nodes from them. I lined them up next to each other, sheath-side up. When I laid them like that, alternating the direction they were facing, they formed a rectangle that was very pleasing to the eye. Next, I secured them with string that I also made from fine cuts of the bamboo. From a distance, the whole thing looked like a wide mat for rolling sushi.
I made several of these mats, and when I was done, I had a makeshift bed. I was worried about the danger of insect bites if I slept directly on the ground. The bamboo itself was too hard to be comfortable, so I cushioned it with some dry grass. If I took a few steps back, it looked like a bird’s nest. I could probably weave something out of the thinner pieces of bamboo if I really wanted to, but that seemed more trouble than it was worth. Perhaps later, if I had nothing better to do.
✦ ✦ ✦
Exploring our surroundings, I discovered that our instructor’s traps weren’t just limited to our starting area. Though there were fewer of them out here, they were laid out very particularly, so that you were likely to be caught in one if you let your guard down. I dismantled them, earning myself some wire and arrows for the trouble. At first, I’d thought the abundance of traps around our starting position was a nasty trick from our instructor. Now I realized they were meant to help, not hinder. They weren’t there to keep us in, but to protect us from invaders.
Traps were better when they were positioned in unlikely locations. Lumping so many together like that meant your enemy was going to be on their guard and rendered their attacks ineffective. Not to mention that they were all types that we children were familiar with. It probably would have been better to disarm only the traps that prevented us from going in and out of the camp and leaving the rest.
It was only now that I didn’t have that ring of traps protecting me that I realized how useful they were. Even if having them packed so densely together was a bit much, it would have been nice to have enough to restrict where a potential attacker would tread. Maybe I didn’t need traps to do that, though. I could connect some wire to a clapper made from bamboo that went off when something came into contact with it.
I hummed thoughtfully. This was all for the sake of my survival, but I couldn’t deny that I was enjoying the rush of ideas. Maybe I used to enjoy crafting things in my previous life.
“I’ll just have to try everything one by one.”