I woke up to birds chirping in the treetops around me.
This felt nice, I thought. Just me and the birds, no nightmarish monsters lurking around. I stretched where I lay, still groggy, and then opened my eyes.
And immediately froze.
Directly above me was a spider, that was at least twice my size!
I bolted upright in a panic, nearly flipping over. For a second, I thought the thing had lunged at me, it felt like it was clinging to my face. I almost screamed.
But then I realized... It was just a tiny spider.
I stared at it for a moment, feeling a little stupid that I had overreacted so much. It must have crawled on me while I was sleeping. I brushed the little guy off my face and headed down to the fire pit.
I brought one of the rats down with me, it's not like I had much else to eat right now. At the fire pit, I blew a small flame onto the logs to get them going again, then started cooking breakfast.
While the meat sizzled, I was thinking I really needed to do something about my food situation.
I couldn't just leave raw meat lying around for days without it going bad. It hadn't been an issue yet, but I needed to fix it, before it became one.
What I really needed was a refrigerator... but finding one out here in the middle of the forest?
That wasn't going to happen in a million years.
But there was another way to keep things cold, it was something people used long before refrigerators were a thing: a cellar. If I could dig deep enough, I could create a cool space. And I'd be able to store food without worrying about it spoiling.
Motivated by the thought of never having to smell rotting rat again, I quickly ate breakfast and got to planning.
If I wanted it to stay cool, I'd need to dig at least five feet deep.
That may not sound like much, but to me now? That was a huge hole. I'm only about two and a half feet tall after all.
Thankfully, I still had some bark rope left over, and I had an idea. I went by the river and found a flat, pointed rock. Then I cut off the strongest branch I could find. I took all three items and tried to create something that resembled a shovel.
It wasn't easy.
Tying everything together was a nightmare. I never learned all those fancy knots people teach kids at camps. After a whole lot of trial and error, I finally got it together…
...until one of my claws got stuck in the knot.
Sigh.
After that little mishap, I retied everything, and finally, I had something that vaguely resembled a shovel.
I found a good, shaded spot a short distance from the stream and started to dig.
I've never liked physical labor, but this was way harder than expected.
I shouldn't have been surprised though. The shovel was far from perfect, and these claws made everything twice as difficult.
Thankfully, the ground wasn't too hard, so I was making slow progress. I was about a foot and a half down when I noticed something strange. The deeper I dug the softer the ground became... and it was also looser?
I stuck my shovel into the ground one last time, and suddenly, the ground gave way.
Before I could react, I was falling. I think I dropped about six feet before I hit the bottom with a bunch of cracking and crunching sounds.
"What the heck did I land on?" I thought, trying to process what happened, "And why was there a hole down here?"
I was now covered in something sticky. I looked down and saw what looked like over a hundred eggs, almost all of them smashed beneath me.
I glanced around. I was in a small cavern that narrowed into a tunnel. It was damp and chilly; I had a bad feeling creeping up my spine.
This wasn't good. I stood up, thinking it was probably a really bad idea to stick around until whatever laid those eggs came back.
But it was too late.
I heard a rattling sound.
I turned my head and saw two glowing eyes emerging from the tunnel. Then I saw what they belonged to.
Slithering toward me was a massive snake, easily three times the size of the wolf I fought. It had a green and blue scale pattern, and it looked furious.
I scanned my surroundings. The cavern was about fifteen feet wide; there was barely any room to fight, this was going to be rough. And getting cornered would be deadly.
The snake entered the room, closing the distance fast.
It wasted no time. Clearly preparing to strike, it hissed, then lunged. I dropped to all fours to make myself a smaller target and to have a better chance of dodging.
Its head came flying at me, it was way faster than anything I'd fought before. I managed to dodge by a hair, but I knew I couldn't keep that up for long.
I rushed forward before it could recoil. It seemed like it had a sort of cool down between attacks, it needed time to recover.
I thought, there was no way it would be nearly as good at dodging attacks as me. I was careful to make sure that I wasn't going to be caught off guard by it and raised my claw to attack.
To my surprise it didn't even attempt to dodge. My claw cut into it, drawing blood, but the wound barely affected it. That strike would've killed a rat or seriously injured the wolf, but for this thing? It could take a dozen of those attacks to kill it.
I retreated quickly, rethinking how I should approach this fight.
The snake seemed aware my attacks couldn't hurt it much and it now was prepared to attack again.
It struck at me.
I thought I dodged it.
But I was wrong. Its head whipped past my left side, then coiled back around to my right, and in an instant, it had wrapped itself around me.
I panicked. It was going to crush me to death!
At first, I thought it was venomous. The rattle had fooled me. But now I realized, it was a constrictor.
I desperately thrashed and tried to claw it from the inside, but my limbs were pinned. I could barely move, let alone strike hard enough to hurt it.
The pressure increased. My bones felt like they were being pushed together.
But I wasn't done yet.
With what little space I had, I inhaled, then unleashed the biggest flame I could manage directly against its skin.
It didn't budge at first. It clearly wanted to kill me, no matter the cost.
But I kept burning it with my full effort.
I kept going, its flesh began to sizzle and blacken beneath my breath.
The pain was new too much for it and it finally, it released me.
I nearly collapsed from lightheadedness but caught myself.
The snake was not going to try to do that again, it looked at me with a hateful expression that I didn't think was possible for a snake. I understood why it was angry, I did crush its eggs, but I wasn't just going to let it eat me over it!
I went in for another attack. My body still ached, but I pushed through the pain. One slash. Then another. Then a third.
I was doing real damage now. And blood was spilling from the snake.
It began to recoil. At first, I thought it was retreating.
But instead. It had been preparing another strike.
The snake sprang at me at lightning speed. Even if I'd seen it coming, I wouldn't have dodged in time.
Its fangs clamped down on my arm and injected something into me.
No way. It was venomous too?!
I'd assumed it was only a constrictor after its last attack, in this world, I should have expected this. There were rare snakes back on Earth that had both traits. I should've known that a snake in the cursed forest would be like this.
Now I was paying the price. The snake released me, and I could already feel the numbness creeping up my arm. This was bad.
I'd been stupid. I shouldn't have assumed anything. My mind raced. No one was going to show up with antivenom. I was on my own.
Was I about to suffer a painful death?
I was running out of time. The numbness was spreading fast. My whole body felt heavier by the second.
Then, one last crazy idea came to me, I didn't have much faith in it, but it was all I could think of.
Snakes are naturally resistant to their own venom. If I could somehow get their antibodies into me and combine that with my high regeneration and some luck, I might have a chance.
The snake looked at me with a malicious grin on its face, apparently it thought the fight was already over, that was good. It meant that I might be able to catch it off guard.
I ran straight at it. It looked surprised. Maybe even amused. But that was good for me.
It began to coil again. "Yes!" I thought, "keep doing exactly that."
Adrenaline was pumping through me at a rate I had never experienced, my reflexes were heightened to their absolute limit.
As it struck with that same blinding speed, I was now able to track it, I raised my left arm baiting it.
Its fangs sank into me again. But this time, I moved.
I raised my arm and clamped down on its neck with my teeth.
I also had a deadly bite, and I was going to let the snake know it!
I bit down on the snake's neck with all the force I had. The snake released my arm and tried to fling me off, but I held tight. I would rather die than let go now.
I bit even harder. Blood was filling my mouth.
It swung and slammed its head into the side of the cave, smashing me into the wall with it but I didn't release it.
With every ounce of strength left in me, I bit through its neck, severing the head.
The blood I'd swallowed wasn't enough. My vision blurred, and my consciousness was fading.
I stumbled to the snake's corpse and started eating. Raw meat was the last thing I wanted… but this was a do or die situation.
I dug into the body, but I became more and more dizzy.
Then everything went black.
When I woke up, it was mid-afternoon. A few hours must have passed.
I stood up, still shaky and numb, but out of danger.
Looks like that insane plan of mine worked.
I had survived. And I had grown again from killing the snake.
I felt my strength coming back, so I picked up my shovel. The cave I fell into would make a perfect cellar. Now I just needed to dig a proper exit.
I still had the taste of raw meat and blood in my mouth. The thought of what I had to do to survive wasn't exactly appealing.
But worse was the fact that the taste of raw meat didn't even seem to bother me anymore.
I finished the cellar pretty quickly after that. I sealed the tunnel deeper in, I didn't want to know what else was down there and I wasn't looking to take any risks.
I used some sticks and leaves to cover up the entrance so that only I would know where it was. And with that I was finished. And I was a little proud of my achievement.
I went up, retrieved the remaining rats from the tree, and brought them down into the cellar. It was dark, but I could still see well with these new dragon eyes.
I also noticed that I'd missed some eggs when I fell. About twenty in total. I was happy to have so many left I could fry them for sure.
I took a few eggs and cut off a segment of snake meat. This might be a good meal!
I dropped off my ingredients at the cooking area, then went to wash off.
Okay, I'm noticing a pattern here and it's getting old fast, and I'm sick of it.
Washing monster blood off every day is mentally exhausting. But it's not like I have a choice; the last thing I want is to be stained by monster blood.
Besides the fact that it was already gross, if I did ever meet a human; blood stains would be a major turn off.
And being a dragon is already bad enough for first impressions.
I went to the fire pit and tried to fry an egg. But it cooked way faster than I expected, and I burned it.
I tried it to see if it was still edible, but it was awful. I'm not even sure one of those crazy rats would've eaten it.
I cracked another egg and watched it carefully this time.
When it was done, I set it aside and threw on some strips of snake meat. The meat smelled amazing, I was actually excited to try it.
Once everything was cooked, I plated it all on a rock. It looked almost like bacon and eggs! And it tasted just as good.
The eggs were rich, and the snake meat was perfectly balanced, not too lean, but not too fatty, and it had a nice salty taste. Everything was delicious.
The sun was already setting. I must have passed out longer than I thought.
I cleaned everything up and decided to go to bed a bit early.
As I lay there, I wondered if every day was going to be this wild.
But I thought that maybe it didn't have to be. Now that I had a safe place to sleep, plenty of food, and somewhere to store it.
Maybe tomorrow, I could just stick around here and take everything easy. A day without monsters sounded pretty good, actually.
That's the plan then.
I woke up the next morning looking forward to a peaceful breakfast.
But something caught my eye.
In the distance I saw a steady stream of smoke rising above the trees.
Could someone be having a fire?
Yes! There must be someone else in this forest.