Table of Contents

Color Gallery

Table of Contents Page

Title Page

Copyright and Credits

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Epilogue

Report: Cohort 452 Year 1, Term 1

Newsletter

Prologue

WITHIN THE CHURCH stood about a dozen young children and several adults with hoods pulled low over their faces. Clad in black clothing with crests embroidered on them, the children wore anxious expressions. Their numbers had been dwindling—one by one they had been escorted to a separate room. The boy suspected that he would be next. The dragon girl he had been raised in the same chamber with had been taken away mere moments before.

Finally, after the longest wait so far, the boy was called by a robed man.

“Come.”

Despite the oppressive air about the man, one which evoked a sense of fear, the boy stepped forward. They left the main church hall and continued down a long hallway. The boy had spent his days in one room without laying eyes on much else, so the sights outside captivated him.

“Keep up. Don’t tarry.”

The boy’s curiosity was quashed by the man’s quietly spoken orders. It was only then that he realized how far he had fallen behind. He nodded, forced his short legs into a dash and, once he caught up, endeavored to keep pace. The man did not slow down for him. Their trek through the corridor ended in descending a set of stairs leading underground, only illuminated by candles.

The man did not enter the first door, which was battered and crumbling, but the one next to it instead. The boy followed. Inside were several other robed adults; only one of them had their face uncovered. The boy realized that he had seen that face several times before. The adults called him the Priest. The boy’s guide moved to one side of the room and leaned back against the wall in silence. Before the boy could ask any questions, another man descended upon him. Alarm bells began to ring in his head.

“Stop!” he cried, but the man held on to his arms regardless. The Priest stepped forward. This didn’t seem right. “Stop!”

“Bring him before the altar,” the Priest said.

The man obeyed, dragging the boy farther into the room.

“Don’t! Stop!”

The priest grabbed the boy’s jaw. “Open your mouth.”

“Mmph!”

The Priest forced a liquid past the boy’s lips. The substance was ice cold and tasted uncomfortably artificial as it slid down his throat. It was like drinking iron or a substance that shouldn’t be consumed. The boy forced himself to cough the liquid up, splattering the spit-laced concoction all over the face of the Priest before him.

“Why, you!” The Priest scowled as he wiped the liquid away and struck the boy with full force.

With the other man holding him in place, there was no bracing against the blow. The boy’s vision flickered. Pain pushed him to the brink of tears, but it was too late to prevent his body’s transformation. He groaned, the liquid he had failed to spit out beginning to take effect. A haze fell over his mind. Words stopped forming in his head.

“Quickly, Father,” urged the man leaning against the wall.

“I know.” The Priest turned to grab the warped knife on the altar. He unsheathed it, revealing a beautiful white blade. Holding it tightly, he began to recite a prayer. “Do not doubt He who cannot be seen.”

“Do not doubt He who cannot be seen.”

“Do not doubt He who cannot be seen.”

The other men in the room chanted with him.

“Do...” the boy groaned.

His mind was fuzzy, the words sinking in easily.

“Do not rebel against He who is all merciful.”

“Do not rebel against He who is all merciful.”

“Do not rebel against He who is all merciful.”

“Do...not...”

The man restraining him rolled up the sleeve on the boy’s right arm and offered the limb to the Priest.

“Do not want from He who is most exalted.”

“Do not want from He who is most exalted.”

“Do not want from He who is most exalted.”

“...most...ex...”

The Priest’s lip curled ever so slightly, his spirits lifted. However, the pitiful sight of the boy did not evoke a shred of emotion from him.

“As He blesses us, so too does He deprive.”

The Priest himself recited the remaining words.

“Here, in this moment, life is bestowed upon you. You are hereby given your true name.” He raised the knife, then spoke once more.

A name was engraved into the boy, something he had never possessed before. With that, his mind yielded to darkness.

Prologue: The Baptism

Chapter 1

I WOKE UP with a gasp.

“Where— Ow!”

A sharp pain, like that from an oozing wound, spiked through my arm. Wherever I was—presumably a room—it was so dark that even my hands weren’t visible when in front of me. I didn’t have time to investigate anything before the memories belonging to whoever owned my body came pouring in. Said memories were incredibly shaky, for the roughly five-year-old boy had never seen the outside world before. He had spent his whole life living in a space the adults called a “chamber” with other children. He had never even seen the church before, despite it being immediately next door. As the memories flooded me, I tried to recall my own from my previous life.

I can’t remember anything...

That wasn’t strictly true, I could remember something. The most impactful moment of that life—the moment it ended. Just bringing that memory to mind had me gasping for air and clutching at my chest. It felt like that blade was digging into my heart all over again. I didn’t know what led to my death. However, the warmth seeping from my very core, rendering it like ice, and the terror of my life spilling out of my hands... Those sensations were carved deep into my soul. My body started shaking like a leaf. I fell from the bed, ending up face first on the stone floor on all fours.

“I’m fine; I’m alive,” I told myself, gasping between my words. “I’m alive. I don’t want to die.”

Tears warped my vision. There wasn’t enough oxygen in my lungs. I gasped and panted, only managing one more word.

“Help...”

***

I woke up again. I didn’t know the length of time for which I’d been unconscious, but my hunger hadn’t gotten worse. It probably hadn’t been long at all. I needed to be more vigilant and not delve too deeply into that memory. If I wasn’t careful, the memories I had of this life would also splinter into nothingness. I suspected that those from my previous one had been obliterated by the intensity of my final moments. Though I could recall my old language and knowledge, everything related to experience and emotion seemed to be out of reach.

I sighed. There was no point trying to recall things that didn’t want to be remembered. Instead, I focused on what was in front of me.

“I can’t see a thing.”

I couldn’t hear anything either. Not even the tiniest particle of light penetrated this room. I used my hands to feel around me, and they brushed against an even surface with fabric on it.

“A bed, I guess.”

The bed I had just fallen from. At its end, there was a stone wall. Placing my right hand on the wall, I stretched out my left in front of me and began to explore the room slowly.

It was circular in shape and contained nothing but a bed and a hole for relieving myself. Simply put, it was a prison cell. My inspection revealed no exits. I must have been thrown in here while I was asleep. I couldn’t even begin to guess which part of the building I was in.

What I could guess was why I had been placed here. I wagered that every child gathered in the church yesterday was marked with that knife and thrown into a dark cell like mine.

However, as I had no intention of killing anyone, I decided to sleep to preserve my energy.

***

I went through three cycles of sleeping and waking up. The third time I awoke, I stretched my hand out toward the ceiling from where I lay in bed and realized something.

“That’s weird. I can see.”

The silhouette of my hand was visible, even though there still wasn’t any light coming into the room. I closed my eyes. I could still see the outline, as if I could sense beyond the scope of my vision.

Leaping out of bed, I looked down at myself. Just like my hand, I could see the silhouette of my body against the darkness, everything from the chest down. When I glanced at my bed, there was a faint outline of my small figure where I had just been lying on it.

I could see heat, much like a snake; I must’ve had a pit organ. In other words, a natural form of thermography. This was something that a human being had no business being able to do. Therefore, I must not have been human. To be more specific, I wasn’t Homo sapiens. Maybe humans in this world could see sources of heat, but it seemed more likely that I was a different humanoid species unique to this reality.

Among those who had shared the chamber with me were a girl with a thick, dragon-like tail and a boy with unusually long ears. I could remember the dragon girl grabbing my own tail from time to time like she was trying to crush it.

My own tail?

I reached for my tailbone. There was something soft and scaly there. It was a snake’s tail and so prominent that it was a wonder that I hadn’t noticed it before.

Long and thin. A tail. As though realizing it was there had laid a network of nerves running through it, now I became fully aware of it. When I tried to move it, I found that I could do so more precisely than I had expected. I could feel with it too; it was about as sensitive as the backs of my hands. It could wrap around my torso three or four times, so it was probably about the same length as my whole body.

As for its thickness and strength, it seemed meatier than my arms, but not broader than my legs, though stronger than the latter and weaker than the former. I didn’t know if it would grow as I did, but it would probably get in the way if it got too long. I hoped it would stay in line with my proportions.

Once I finished examining my tail and pit organ, I coiled up and went back to sleep.

***

I woke up from my fifth sleep cycle, unable to bear not eating any longer. Though I still had the energy to move, I didn’t want to waste it. I glared at the ceiling, invisible through regular vision, before closing my eyes again.

***

My sixth awakening. An unsettling thought came to mind: Perhaps no one knew I was here. I gnawed at my nails. It went a small way toward distracting me from my hunger.

***

My tenth—no, ninth—awakening. I had been dreaming about eating a steak, and now I felt horrendously ill. I spat out the pebble that I had been chewing on in my sleep. There was an odd smell in the room, though I might have been imagining it. I was thirsty too. I didn’t want to think.

***

I couldn’t tell the difference between being awake and being asleep anymore. I was horribly afraid of death. That sensation of endless falling into a bottomless void, cold and alone...

That memory was back. I couldn’t breathe. I tried to keep calm, but I couldn’t get enough oxygen. My eyes filled with tears. I was cold and afraid. Would nobody come to save me?

Beyond my hazy consciousness, I heard...something. Something was standing before me. I couldn’t make out its color, its size, or even if it was human. But I was certain there was something there.

“Do...” My bone-dry mouth opened by itself. “Do not...”

I kept speaking, though I gasped for breath as I did. “Do not...doubt...He who...cannot be seen...”

I didn’t know why I was saying those words. However, the moment I recited them, it was as if a warmth embraced my heart.

“Do not...rebel against...He who is...all merciful.”

The presence before me seemed to come closer. I couldn’t see or hear it, but I knew He was there.

“Do not...want from...He who is...most exalted.”

The presence and its warmth were slowly melting my fear away. By the time I finished reciting every word, my mind had regained its peace.

I let out a sob, my tears stemming from gratitude this time. I threw myself on the ground before Him—a show of reverence. I eventually lost consciousness, though still surrounded by that warmth.

***

“Let us give thanks for His compassion.”

Sister put her hands together. The other children and I followed suit, offering Him our prayers. When Sister ended her devotion and began to eat, we immediately picked up our spoons and started shoveling food into our mouths.

I had been taken out of my room the moment I’d collapsed. Whatever I had seen at the end, I was sure it had been a hallucination. My memories were hazy, but I did remember that strange smell. There had probably been a drug released into the air.

They wanted to brainwash children. Knowing that gave me confidence that I would be eventually let out of that room, but the extreme situation I was in still sapped my mind of its resistance. I learned, painfully and clearly, that the human mind was not robust at all. The children here had been prepared to embrace the other side. It was too much to expect an adult to retain their sanity in the face of darkness and hunger, let alone a young child.

Among these children were faces that appeared in the memories of the boy I was possessing. They were likely going through the exact same process as me. The next stage was probably education. Now that our brains were malleable, they could instill any beliefs they wanted in us and use that to make us do all kinds of dirty work. It was the most natural conclusion I came up with.

I describe the owner of this body as “the boy,” because he had no name. The true name he was given as part of the ritual just before my awakening might have sufficed, but I also felt that that “true name” shouldn’t be uttered so freely. Besides, whenever I tried to remember what it was, a haze came over my mind and I couldn’t. I didn’t know why he wasn’t given a name, despite the inconvenience. It might have been for religious reasons or because the adults felt it was better that way.

***

The children were gathered in a circular room, with the light of the southern sun streaming in. We must have been released from our dark rooms at different times, because some of the kids were staring at their surroundings in wonder, as though they were seeing them for the first time.

“It is now time for your endurance training. Pick up your wooden knives,” a robed man commanded in a low voice. At his feet was a box containing more wooden knives than there were children.

We were probably being trained to be assassins or something similar. I waited for the throng of kids to disperse a bit before going to fetch my own knife. As I did, my eyes met those of the man in the robe.

“Don’t dawdle,” he said. I recognized his voice. I was sure he was the surly man who had escorted me to the ritual.

I nodded and went back to join the other children.

“Line up. Then we will start practice.”

I copied those who had clearly done this before and stood on an empty space. The man then showed us how to swing the knife.

“You must either keep your left hand behind you or placed on your chest. Otherwise, it will get in the way. This is your basic stance when using a knife. Use an overhand grip with your right hand and keep your elbow bent so that you’re ready to strike at any time. Whether you are swinging or stabbing, start and end with this stance.”

Taking on that stance with perfect form, the man demonstrated stabbing, downward slashing, deflecting, and attacking from several different angles.

“Start with the basic stab.”

“Yes, sir!”

I was as obedient as the rest, and so I began to stab at the empty space in front of me. A search through the memories of my previous life came up with nothing for this kind of thing—I’d probably only ever held a kitchen knife. Thus, I continued to practice, trying to keep in mind the man’s example strikes. I worked on keeping my arm as straight as possible when I stabbed.

My breath came out in a steady rhythm. There was a real flow to my movements, even though I was only pushing my arm forward. It must have been because of the lightness I felt in my body. Having a tail meant that my sense of balance differed from what I was used to from my previous life. When I started taking its movement into account, the stabbing got easier. But it also meant that I was moving too precisely, which affected my speed.

The wooden knives were light and perfectly sized for our hands. However, that meant there wasn’t much power behind our strikes. Nevertheless, practicing over and over gradually led to exhaustion.

I heard an “Oh!” as the boy next to me dropped his weapon. It had flown out of his hand as he stabbed at the air, cutting through the sand on the ground, sending up a cloud of dust.

“What do you think you’re doing?”

“I dropped it, that’s all—”

The man kicked the boy before he could finish his excuse, sending him sprawling. “Pick it up.”

“Yes, sir,” the boy managed to grunt, his body caked in sand. He did as he was told.

“Take your stance.”

“Yes, sir.” He readied the knife. There were tears in his eyes.

“You are holding it too tightly. That makes you tire very quickly. When you hold it, keep your focus only on your ring and little fingers. You only need to tighten your grip when you stab or slash.”

“Yes, sir,” the boy responded. There was a hint of confusion to his tone. Evidently, he had been expecting a scolding.

“Show me.”

“Like this?”

“Be more precise with how much strength goes into your grip.”

“Yes, sir!”

The boy practiced his stabs over and over, adjusting each attempt in accordance with the man’s instructions. The excess tension in his grip was soon gone, the light returning to his eyes when he realized he had improved.

“Do not drop your knife. Not even if you die.”

“Yes, sir!”

Whatever the reason, it seemed that dropping our weapons was a surefire way to incur the man’s wrath. The man nodded at the boy’s response before moving on. I incorporated what I had overheard from his instruction and found that I was able to use my knife more effectively with a slightly looser grip.

I continued to practice wholeheartedly. Soon I heard the man’s footsteps stop behind me.

What does he want?

Stab, exhale, stab, exhale. The man remained silent. Normally, I would pause and ask him outright what he needed or at least glance at him to glean what I could. Unfortunately, this was no ordinary environment. I was certain he would strike me and send me flying if I stopped. Should he punch this fragile body of mine at full strength, a few fractures would be the least of my worries.

Stab, exhale, stab, exhale. As frightened as I was on the inside, I continued my training. Eventually, the footsteps retreated.

A few seconds later, I saw a child tumbling to the floor in my peripheral vision. This world was twisted. I had been considering investigating what was outside this place, but I realized that I would likely be killed on the spot if I tried to leave without permission.

We were made to practice for a long, long time. Once our endurance training was finally over, we put our knives back in the box.

“You there. The snakeborn with the dark hair.”

I didn’t know who he meant at first, but he was clearly looking in my direction. He must have been referring to me.

“Yes, sir?” I stammered.

Snakeborn. Presumably a race of people with serpentine features. There were other children here with scales on their faces and arms and others with tails. However, I was the only one with a snake tail and black woven through my hair. The man rummaged through the chest area of his robe, and I heard the clink of metal.

“Hold out your hands.”

I paused. “Yes, sir.”

I cupped my hands in front of me, and he dropped a coin into my palms. “Give that to Sister at dinner. You will get meat.”

A reward. I placed it in my pocket. I could hear whispers around me, about it being “him today.” These coins were given out daily, it seemed. I put my hand in my pocket and felt its surface. There was something carved into it—numbers maybe, denoting its value or perhaps a series of complex characters. I had a thought that the man might have made it himself, and I imagined him engraving the word “meat” into it. I had to suppress my laughter.

“Next, you will be having essence training in the meditation room.”

The man’s work seemed to be over, because with those words, he left the grounds.

I didn’t know what “essence training” was, but it elicited delight from the children around me.

An older boy appeared behind us. “I will now lead you to the meditation room.”

He seemed to be fourteen, perhaps fifteen years old. I was only five or so, so he looked huge to me. He wasn’t human either, but something like a deer. He had antlers, though what was more conspicuous were his arms. Or lack thereof. Where his right one should’ve been, there was nothing. Perhaps he was now working odd jobs here, since he was no longer able to fight.

As we followed him, another group of boys passed by, who looked to be a couple of years older than us. They were heading in the opposite direction, toward the training grounds we had just left. The teenager’s eyes seemed to follow them for just a moment before he collected himself and faced forward again.

There was something wistful about that gaze.

***

The room we came to was a little gloomy. The windows were fitted with shutters, blocking out any direct sunlight. That said, it was bright enough for us to make out each other’s faces. Inside, a man appeared to be awaiting our arrival.

“Welcome to the meditation room. Shall we get started with your essence training?”

This man was also wearing a robe, but, unlike the others, his hood was pulled back enough to reveal his face. He might as well not have had it up at all. He had slitted pupils and scales on his cheeks. Likely snakeborn.

“Take a seat wherever you like.” The man pointed toward a collection of round tables, each with four chairs. It was like we were in a restaurant or café. Instead of food, however, the tables were laden with candles.

We each sat down on the nearest seats to us. I shared my table with a cat-eared boy, a dog-eared girl, and a boy with elongated human ears. The last boy resembled an elf.

The man went around lighting the candles in front of us. I kept a close eye on the faces of my tablemates. It seemed they weren’t sure what we would be expected to do either.

“Essence training is all about drawing out the power of essence. I want you to watch the candle’s light closely while trying to feel the flow of power within you,” the man explained patiently. “Rest your fists on your lap, but do not clench them. Sit as comfortably as you can. Inhale, then exhale... Inhale, exhale... Yes, good. Now redirect your focus to within your body.”

I ignored what he was saying and sharpened my senses. I needed to concentrate. As I did so, everything that I could see and hear—everything I experienced externally—became meaningless static that seemed to wash over my mind. Now that my brain was immune to that surplus information, my senses became keener.

Is this it? No, that’s my heartbeat...

I burrowed deeper, much deeper. But I couldn’t find any “essence.” Everything seemed slightly misaligned, like shirt buttons that were all off one notch. An anxious thought struck me—I just might not have it. I didn’t even know what essence was. I had assumed it was something like magic, something that hadn’t existed in my previous life. Maybe I was wrong, and it was more like a supernatural, religious energy. And now I was questioning everything about it.

Caught at a dead end, I released my focus, allowing me to perceive the information from my surroundings once more. Without moving my head, I forced my gaze to see past the flickering flames so that I could study the elf boy across me. His eyes were half-lidded as they stared at the wavering candle before him. The air around him seemed clearer somehow, like time had come to a halt in his vicinity.

A mysterious tension trapped my breath in my throat. I understood then why it was called essence and not magic.

“Can you see how he emits his essence?” the snakeborn man suddenly said, his hand resting on my shoulder. There was a hint of amusement to his tone.

How could I not see it? I couldn’t ignore it even if I wanted to. The auras of both the elf boy and the teacher himself had noticeably changed.

“He has a natural aptitude for it.” The man smiled, his eyes crinkling. It was a difficult expression to read, but I had the sense that he was mocking those who didn’t have the gift for manipulating essence. I managed a vague smile back. “Maybe it’s a bit too soon for you to understand.”

Removing the hand from my shoulder, he used it to give my head a gentle pat before turning on his heel and walking away.

***

“That’s enough for today,” the man said after making sure most of our candles were out. And so, our essence training came to a close.

In the end, I failed to work out what essence was. The frustrating thing was that I didn’t think I was lacking. It felt more like I was overlooking something.

“You have received today’s honors.” The man gave his coin to the elf boy. I couldn’t contest his choice. I had witnessed the boy’s supernatural aura for myself. The man clapped his hands. “Off you go for dinner.”

Surprise colored the children’s faces, mine included. It felt like it had only been two hours since lunch, but his words meant that it must have been six. Now that I realized it, I was hungry. I stood up from my seat, only for dizziness to crowd my head, causing me to wobble. It had been six hours.

I rolled my tense shoulders—a habit from my previous life, perhaps—as I made my way to the dining hall, the coin that I could give to Sister in exchange for meat coming back to mind. I was grateful for that; I was sure I needed to put some weight on after that period of fasting. I was sure, too, that the world beyond these walls was dangerous enough that I would need all the strength I could get. Skill, technique, those were things that I could constantly work on, but the foundation for all that—a robust body—wasn’t something that I could build overnight. I decided I would strive to be at the top of the class as much as possible. No compromises.

***

After dinner, we wiped ourselves down with damp cloths. There seemed to be a river nearby, so it wasn’t like there was a shortage of water, but apparently the adults didn’t want to indulge us too much. Each room was given a bucket of water for us to share among ourselves. It gave me a chance to study my body. I noted that my tail grew out from around my coccyx, and that there were scales on my sides too.

“You were in a reflection room before yesterday, right?”

My male roommate addressed me as I was wiping down the scales on my tail. It felt nice to gently trace the gaps between them.

“Hm? Right.”

There were three of us sharing this room. The one who had spoken was a small boy with horns. The other was a girl with cat ears. I spent last night in what I assumed was a sick bay, so this was my first time sleeping in a communal space since my baptism. The cat girl was already asleep and purring. I didn’t blame her—the physical training had been exhausting. It was a wonder we didn’t all fall asleep during meditation.

“I’m impressed you survived in the dark for that long. I only lasted two days.”

“Really?” I wondered whether the difference was because I had worked to preserve my strength or if there was something more to it than that.

“I guess having a bigger tail lets you last longer.”

“It’s probably more to do with being beastborn.”

“Beastborn” referred to any race that was part-human and part-animal. That included me, a snakeborn, and the catborn girl sleeping nearby. What were “humans” in my previous life were called manborn here. In this world, the term “humans” was a general term referring to all humanoids, including beastborn, who lived as typical people did. This boy’s horns didn’t resemble any animal but looked like what I would associate with demons. That likely made him demonborn. He didn’t say anything to contradict me when I implied he wasn’t beastborn, so I was probably right.

“You think? But that girl with the huge tail, she’s still in her reflection room, right?”

I twitched. “I didn’t know.”

That instinctive reaction hadn’t come from me, but from the boy who this body belonged to. Apparently, the girl in question had caused him some trauma. When I searched through his memories, I could see why. They’d shared the same chamber before our baptisms, and because they had slightly similar appearances, they were often paired together. However, as much as they looked similar, the truth was that they were completely different. As different as a snake was to a mythical dragon.

***

Three days passed. I woke up before sunrise and put my bedding away before roll call. Every day had this routine: breakfast, then endurance training until the early afternoon, then essence or long-distance training until the evening. Long-distance training meant running as hard as we could. At first, it would just be going around the training grounds, but then they started adding more obstacles. Eventually they would probably have us run through the forest or something.

Endurance training progressed from striking the air to practicing with partners, though our knives weren’t allowed to make contact. It was like watching real fights in action. I must have been good at copying the teacher’s form, because I managed to secure a second coin for myself.

Essence training was a different story altogether. Though I told myself I would pick it up eventually, I had yet to sense whatever it was lying deep inside me. The number of children awakening to their essence was gradually increasing—now around a third of the class. Most of them were elves. Theirs must have been a race proficient at handling spiritual energy. Conversely, beastborn made up the fewest of the successful children. While they were suited to physical labor, they struggled with the more delicate task of manipulating essence. Though I was beastborn myself, my physical prowess was only a little better than average. I supposed the existence of my third eye, the pit organ, was meant to make up for it.

Regular humans, the manborn, were in the middle when it came to both physical and spiritual practices. In short, I had yet to find a race that defied my expectations when it came to their talents. Incidentally, the elves were also known as forestborn and were part of a wider category called fae. So, just like how I was a snakeborn, which was under the umbrella of beastborn, the elf boy was a forestborn, which was under the umbrella of fae. Also, among those I referred to as “elves,” some of them were not, strictly speaking, forestborn. I was confident that those with darker—or even green—skin were of a separate race. Perhaps it would be best to just understand that those with long ears were fae.

And then there were those who didn’t fit into the other categories: magicborn. For example, the demonborn boy I shared a room with. Magicborn was a miscellaneous category, and it could be tricky to remember that the races that fit into it, such as demonborn and vampires, had no real relation to each other.

The girl before us also fit into that category. Right now, she was roaring.

“What an utter savage.” Our endurance instructor dragged the dragonborn girl along with him. This was the child who had terrorized my other self.

She raged whenever she wanted to and slept only when she grew tired. Her energy quickly came back, and then she would rampage once more. For whatever reason, I was always the one who bore the brunt of it.

She had her feet planted firmly into the ground to resist, but the instructor dragged her away with superhuman strength. They moved at normal walking speed, though she left cracks in the dirt behind her.

“Just like yesterday, you will be having practice battles with the knives,” said the instructor, speaking as though nothing was amiss once he had thrust the girl in front of us.

Naturally, she was unwilling to let things proceed. Feeling ignored, she let out a roar. She had a real sense of pride, after all. A great force that had no business coming from a girl that size shook the ground, fracturing it. Her essence was pouring out from every inch of her body, even though she didn’t take part in that training. Even I could tell what it was, and I hadn’t yet managed to recognize my own. Harnessing that excess power, she used it to launch herself toward the instructor.

The instructor exhaled once. In that same beat, I saw a flash of claws and fists between them. The girl’s growl was cut short—the instructor’s elbow had hit her square in the solar plexus. She staggered back, her face twisted in agony. When she hit the wall, she vanished altogether. The instructor’s fist shot out, and her face reappeared where it landed. She choked at the impact.

“A beast that possesses nothing but raw strength is not worth fearing.”

This time, he grabbed her wrist so that she couldn’t escape him again. He struck her tiny body with a chop, his elbow, and his knee, all in a single second. She choked again. The tension drained from her limbs. She was in too much pain to maintain it.

“Tired? It’s not bedtime yet.” He sounded bored.

Her eyes flew open, and she glared at him while trying to catch her breath. Sensing danger, I quickly covered my ears. That was when she let out a mighty bellow. The kids who didn’t react as quickly fell to the ground, some bleeding from their ears. Perforated eardrums. Those who hadn’t been standing close but had more sensitive hearing, looked noticeably unwell and had to sit down.

As for the instructor, who bore the full brunt of the noise, he merely frowned slightly and clicked his tongue. A strike to the girl’s throat, and her roar was cut short. He forced her to the ground and straddled her so that she couldn’t get up again. She struggled against him, but his superior weight and technique made it futile. The instructor predicted her next move when she tried to use her powerful dragon tail to knock him away, dodging it effortlessly and retaliating by bringing his fist down on her.

Every act of resistance earned her another merciless strike that knocked the breath from her lungs. Her face was swollen and bleeding, and still, he didn’t seem to want to stop. She had passed out at this point.

“Get up.” The instructor pulled her cheeks to rouse her.

The adults had a job to do, which was to break her spirit and mold her into a tool that would do their bidding. She likely hadn’t made a peep during her time in the reflection room. Her sense of self remained indomitable, even in the face of darkness and drugs. The adults must have decided to give up on keeping her there and subdue her using a level of violence that even she wasn’t capable of.

How absurd. I laughed quietly to myself.

We were all utterly ridiculous. Me, whose spirit was inferior to that of a five-year-old girl’s. The adults, who were so desperate to dominate her. And her, whose reign of terror would no doubt be quashed by their violence. Perhaps most laughable of all was the other me, the boy within me, who seemed to believe that the girl would manage to hold out against the grown-ups. Sure, she might continue to resist today, but what about tomorrow? What about a month from now? Her rebellious streak wouldn’t last forever. It would break eventually.

It would be for the best. I needed her spirit to break. If it didn’t, then I would be the weak one.

In the end, she kept resisting within an inch of her life. She looked like a dirty, worn rag when she was finally taken away. We started our practice bouts, keeping a safe distance from the spots where her blood stained the ground. While the other children seemed frightened of the sheer violence they had witnessed from the instructor, the boy inside me was relieved that the girl’s tyranny had been punished. He must have built up quite a grudge against her.

The day’s coin of honor went to a tigerborn boy whose physique was far superior to that of anyone else in the class. I went up against him once, and he showed me that body weight made all the difference at our age. My body was growing at an average rate. Simply average. The key to turning things around could therefore be found in something nonphysical: essence.

We had long-distance training that afternoon. After dinner, my two roommates fell face-down on their beds and were out like lights. Until I’d started washing myself, I’d felt like I was about to conk out at any moment. For some reason, by the time I lay down, all the lethargy left me. As the night wore on, and with the sound of steady breathing on either side of me, I began to meditate quietly.

***

The next day, the dragon girl once again suffered a thorough beating at the hands of the endurance instructor before being taken off the training grounds. As she resisted, she caught the man’s robe, and his hood fell back to reveal his face. He was a manborn with blond hair and blue eyes. That surprised me somewhat. From his immense strength I had expected him to be demonborn or similar. He must have been using essence to reinforce what he lacked physically.

While the children were initially horrified at seeing the girl beaten so violently day after day, they gradually got used to it as part of their routine. At the very least, they realized that they could avoid the same fate simply by obeying the adults. That was exactly what the adults had been waiting for. The children had learned that obeying their elders meant an easier life. I spurned that line of thinking. I was not like them. Whenever I found the time, I would meditate and continue to look inward.

***

At last, I found some success with channeling essence. It happened during endurance training when I was in a bout with another child, a snakeborn girl.

“Take this! And this! And this!” Her knife and purple hair were a flurry of movements, her expression oozing a sense of superiority. She had little skill in brandishing her weapon, but her raw physical strength fed into her speed, limiting my ability to fight back.

This girl had awoken her essence, seemingly using it to make herself faster. Though I was able to dodge her strikes, I struggled to find an opportunity to go on the offensive. We kept changing positions over and over for close to a minute. Suddenly, she fell out of her stance. I didn’t want to miss my chance, and I jumped in, closing the gap between us, thrusting my knife into her chest.

“Okay, you got me. I lose. Congratulations.” Though she threw her hands up in a show of surrender, she didn’t seem especially frustrated by her loss. Checking to see what had caused her to lose her balance, she looked down at her feet. “Ugh, lizard blood! Gross...”

She had slipped on a puddle of the dragon girl’s blood that had been left behind during the daily beating. The snakeborn’s disgust seemed to be targeted toward the dragon girl herself rather than the fluid on the ground. She scooped up some sand and used it to scrub away the blood that had stuck to her body. Only when all traces of it were gone did she ready her knife again.

“Well, that was disgusting.” She sighed. “C’mon, let’s go again.”

I didn’t reply. I readied my own knife and studied her. It was then that the strange misalignment I felt whenever I sat and meditated clicked into place.

“Oh.”

It was like my field of vision had expanded, a bit like when I noticed the existence of my pit organ. Up until this point, I had understood essence to be an invisible sixth sense. Now, it blended with my other five senses, becoming something I could see and hear. My essence was visible when I looked at myself, seeping out around me and flickering like the flame of a candle. When I looked at the snakeborn girl, I could see her essence too; it was more plentiful than mine. Hers wasn’t wavering much either. She must have been controlling it consciously. If my essence was a torch, hers was the fire of a gas burner. The difference was stark.

The snakeborn girl dominated me for the rest of our bouts. I wasn’t used to the newfound sensation within me, and it dragged me down. I didn’t mind, though. It was the starting point that allowed me to familiarize myself with essence.

***

The problem reared its head during the next day’s essence training. Just being aware of your essence was of no use in combat. It was meaningless until you were able to draw it out from yourself or fill your entire body with it. In training, we learned that to bring your essence out of yourself was to release it, and to allow it to wrap around your entire body was to charge it.

Releasing your essence only increased your strength by a tiny bit, but practicing this technique allowed you to get used to controlling it. Charging essence powered up your body and was the secondary step to releasing it. Ordinary people constantly emitted essence without doing anything. I was the same. Releasing essence meant purposefully increasing the amount you discharged, but I found that difficult. I looked on envious of the kids who went straight from recognizing their essence to being able to release it.

Frustratingly enough, I found it easy to reduce the amount of essence I emitted. Apparently, that required a different sort of skill, one we were told we didn’t need to know about yet. I probably would have had an easier time if I had struggled with both increasing and reducing essence. Then I would have decided that controlling essence was beyond me and given up.

As I could purposely tone my essence down, it made no sense that I couldn’t do the opposite. I kept quiet about my struggles as I practiced, doubting I would get out of here alive if the adults discovered I was useless.

***

Sometimes, I remembered that trials came when they were least wanted. The deeper your suffering, the colder other people seem to treat you. And it’s when you are drowning that they seem the least inclined to help you. Though I didn’t have any specific examples in my memories to back up these thoughts, I certainly felt them to be true.

If the boy were a god, he would be the most extreme of misanthropes or certainly a sadist.

I sought a quiet environment to practice releasing essence. If there wasn’t any, I would have liked somewhere that had a consistent noise. However, that was taken from me, and it was the fault of the children in the other rooms. There were those who complained loudly about the rooms they had been allocated, and so roommates were reshuffled. I thought that the adults decided who stayed in which room, but they only determined which cohort occupied which part of the building. Who slept where was up to the children. That led some to some rooms having more occupants than others.

Though I didn’t realize it at the time, the kids who were released from their reflection rooms first all took different rooms and then decided where to place those who were let out later. While it warmed me to think that my roommates had chosen me specifically, it only made parting from them all the more painful.

It was only after I moved rooms, as suggested by those very same roommates, that I realized they had tricked me. I wanted to break the demonborn’s horns and rip off the catborn’s tail. It wasn’t because they found a three-person room too crowded that they had asked me to move.

“Thanks a lot, guys...”

It seemed I was to be the dragon girl’s new caretaker.

The room was a wreck. The bedding had been torn to pieces, straw and feathers scattered all over the floor. As if that weren’t shocking enough, I turned to the walls to see diagonal markings in them: scratches left there by sets of four claws. It felt like I had entered a bear’s den. Even among all my memories of the dragon girl, I couldn’t remember her lashing out in such a way to cause this amount of damage. It was probably her releasing her anger from being punished by the instructor. She must have had extraordinary recovery powers to be beaten within an inch of her life every day and still return ready to fight back each time.

I sighed quietly, finally letting my gaze settle on the presence in the center of the room, the thing that had been begging for my attention since I arrived.

Her silent eyes were fixated on me. Everything, from her silver scales to her golden pupils, and especially the horns protruding from her temples, screamed dragon. Her tail, thicker and more impressive than mine, was swishing from side to side. She had been lying on her back on the bed at the far side of the room. Only her eyes were focused on me, peering out from the beneath hair the same shade of silver as her scales. She was probably trying to work out whether I would do anything to upset her. I realized then that she had forgotten who I was. While part of me was relieved, I also felt oddly frustrated.

However, I had learned how to deal with her, and so I knew better than to ask whether she remembered me or not. A proverb best summed up how my memories said I should treat her: Let sleeping dogs lie.

To put it kindly, she had a strong sense of pride. To put it less kindly, she was conceited. There was nothing she loathed more than having her ego damaged. For example, should I steal her pillow, she would go berserk. She wouldn’t be able to stand the idea that someone thought it acceptable to steal from her. If she had no pillow and I offered her one, she would go nuts as well. She wouldn’t be able to stomach that someone felt sorry for her.

If I had a menu in front of me with options to talk, fight, or run, all three of those would result in a game over. The correct answer was to put the controller down and wait for the menu to vanish completely while trembling from head to toe.

Fortunately, she seemed to be in a good mood—or so declared the boy inside me. It still looked like she was glaring at me. I dipped my head slightly, hoping to convey respect. If I didn’t, she would feel I was ignoring her and snap. Bowing to her felt very natural, indeed. Apparently, the boy had mastered the gesture.

I looked around for an undamaged mattress. When I saw that she was lying on four of them, any lingering affection I might have had for my former roommates vanished. I gathered up the scattered straw and feathers and stuffed them back into a torn duvet. After that, I tied up the torn opening securely so that none of the contents could fall out again and then lay down with that makeshift body pillow.

I stopped feeling her eyes on me at some point. It seemed I had passed the trial.

Her pride was as strong as ever. She did not flatter, concede, or reflect. Her disposition was spikier than a hedgehog. I found myself wondering how long she would remain stubborn as my physical and mental exhaustion lulled me to sleep.

***

When I arrived in the dining hall the next day, the demonborn boy was wearing a guilty expression. If his conscience was going to bother him, perhaps he would have been better off not throwing me to the dogs in the first place. I narrowed my eyes in a display of quiet rage before averting my gaze. It had been a sneaky move on his part. If I didn’t let him see my anger, he might have felt emboldened to slight me again. My roommates had always had the option of discussing the move with me first—not that I would have accepted, of course. I decided that I would be getting revenge one way or another.

***

At some point, endurance training was rebranded as “combat training.” We were no longer required to keep our strikes from hitting our partners.

“You’re mad. Aren’t you?”

“What do you think?” I thrust out with my knife. He dodged it.

I stabbed at him again, but it was a feint. I drove my foot into his thigh instead, and when his head came down, I held my knife to his throat.

He clicked his tongue. “You win.”

“Again.”

“You don’t know when to quit,” he said with a sigh.

I won every bout with the demonborn that day and also earned myself the session’s coin of honor.

***

“How strange,” hummed the snakeborn instructor as he massaged my shoulder.

It seemed like it was odd for someone not to be able to release their essence while being capable of drawing it in. The instructor often came up behind me when I meditated during training, placing a hand on my shoulder like this.

“A true believer of Him should not be struggling like this...” His hand stopped. It moved an inch closer to my neck.

If I reacted in a way he didn’t like, I would be killed. I could smell it.

I believe in Him. I believe in Him. I believe in Him. I believe in Him. I believe in Him. I believe in Him. I believe in Him. I believe in Him. I believe in Him. I believe in Him. I believe in Him. I believe in Him.

“I see. Can you think of any other reason I might be struggling?” I asked. “I want to learn to release my essence as soon as possible.”

“Hmm, let me think.” The instructor stared at me with pity in his eyes before his gaze fell away. He looked pensive as he searched through his memories.

It seemed I was out of danger for now. In the end, however, he was unable to give me any decent advice.

***

A powerful roar greeted me when I returned from dinner. The dragonborn was in high spirits again and was doing exactly what I thought she would be. Incidentally, she had so many wounds from our morning sessions that she had yet to take part in the afternoon essence or long-distance training. Her routine seemed to involve spending the morning being beaten in front of the other children by the endurance instructor, then being escorted back to her room once she recovered.

But she hadn’t recuperated enough; she was still bleeding. The bedding in the room was dyed red. No wonder her former roommates complained. Who wanted to sleep under a duvet sodden with blood?

“What are you looking at?”

Whoops.

“I got a bucket and some towels. Want them?”

She slowly got to her feet. Her body was covered in painful-looking wounds. “Get out, snake boy.”

“Sure.”

As usual, she had insulted me in her childish tone. Not wanting to be the thing that set her off, I did as I was told. I left the bucket and towels in the room, then closed the door behind me.

“It’s been a while since I’ve heard her speak.”

I had heard her scream in rage and give earsplitting roars, but this was the first time I heard her form actual words since I had woken up in this body.

I decided to ask the room next door if I could borrow their bucket of water. I imagined that by the time the dragon girl was done with ours, it would be saturated with blood. The kids were reluctant at first but quickly changed their tune when I subtly threatened to set an enraged dragon on them. It wasn’t a total bluff. If I took something of hers and threw it in their room, she would probably give all of us an ear-piercing roar at close quarters. I let them deal with my dirty water afterward since I had the dragonborn’s water to clear away.

When I returned to our room, I found her fixing the hem of her jacket. As expected, the water in the bucket was bright red.

It was still too early to go to bed. I didn’t often get sleepy at night, probably because I was a snakeborn. Maybe I was nocturnal. Normally, I would get under the covers and meditate, but I feared I would only get distracted in my current environment. It smelled of blood and probably wasn’t especially hygienic. I decided to replace the water in the bucket and do some cleaning.

***

“Every room gets one bucket of water to bathe with,” Sister told me as she denied my request for more. “No more.”

In this community, every round of baptized children was assigned a group of adults to take care of them. My cohort—or was it class?—had three adults in charge: our two training instructors and this Sister, who oversaw our practical needs. She also saw to any minor injuries we had, so she must have been aware of the dragon girl’s current state.

“My roommate—the dragonborn girl—her blood’s all over the room. I was hoping to clean it.” I blinked up at the Sister, making as much use as I could of my childish cuteness.

“Oh yes, I know. I told them to get rid of her,” she spat icily, without so much as a glance in my direction.

I should have asked someone else. I thought she would be fond of children.

“Very well. But draw it yourself. I’m going to bed.”

I did so, taking the fresh bucketful of water back to my room. I arrived to the sight of a boy collapsed along the wall outside it—the tigerborn from the next room. He was covered in blood. With a sigh, I asked the kids next door to come and fetch him, and then I went into my room.

When the dragon girl’s eyes alighted on the bucket of water in my hand, a suspicious frown came over her. As I noticed that the number of bloodstains around the room had increased, I grimaced. I started to clean, trying not to let her presence bother me. Although the boy inside me wasn’t especially fussy when it came to cleanliness, I found that I rather enjoyed the process. It was satisfying to see the marks fade away as a result of my efforts. Besides, I knew for a fact that a clean environment was important for maintaining your health. This place was quick when it came to healing physical wounds, but I wasn’t sure if the same could be said for illnesses. I found it quite motivating when I justified to myself that good hygiene was part of my efforts to ward off death.

Death scared me; it filled me with immobilizing terror. I would happily dedicate my entire life, throw every scrap of pride I had, to avoid it. Cleaning up a room that someone else had dirtied was one hundred percent worth it. It wasn’t as though asking the dragonborn to do it herself would result in anything. She was the type to die rather than take orders from anybody.

This didn’t mean I was a fool, however. I decided to start leaving buckets of water in the room so that she could clean up when she was injured. That way, maybe I could sleep on something that didn’t have blood on it.

***

When I returned to my room the next day, I found a bucket of bloody water. It seemed she had indeed decided to clean her wounded body. As a result, the bedding was spotless. I would have rather she took care of the used bucket herself, but maybe that was asking too much of someone who got a beating every morning. I nodded to myself, quietly satisfied.

CHAPTER 1: THE TYRANT’S AWAKENING

Chapter 2

AT TODAY’S LONG-DISTANCE training, we were taught different kinds of movement. As usual, the snakeborn instructor took the session. Though he looked younger than the manborn or the Sister, he was perceptive, and it paid to be more vigilant around him than the other two, especially with how he’d had me in a cold sweat the other day when he’d tried to get me to admit I didn’t believe in Him.

When I say he was teaching us about movement, I meant that he was teaching us how to run. The technique was called the split step and consisted of reaching maximum running speed in an instant by simply changing the stance you kicked off from.

It wasn’t the only named technique of its kind either. Since most of the kids were learning to release their essence already, I probably would have an easier time studying these physical skills with those who were struggling like I was. Either way, I was grateful that these abilities existed to help me overcome my physical inferiorities too.

***

After dinner, I knocked on the door of the room next door. The dragonborn had done something to the tigerborn boy while I was away, and it had triggered something in my mind that I found quite concerning. I was worried that the children in this room didn’t fully understand how dangerous she was. It wasn’t that I minded them picking fights with her; they were free to do that to their hearts’ content. The problem was that I knew I would end up getting dragged into any quarrel they might have. I was the one sharing a room with her, after all.

It wasn’t the tigerborn but a gnome boy who answered my knock. Gnomes were a small-statured, dark-skinned race who apparently kept their youthful appearance even as they grew.

“You again?” He clicked his tongue. “We’ve already taken our bucket back.”

“I got one from another room.”

I wanted to avoid driving people to complain again if I could help it, so I tried not to ask the same rooms over and over. I had permission from Sister to draw extra water for cleaning. If the kids went to her claiming I used that water for bathing, she would probably beat me.

The gnome was frowning at me suspiciously, so I quickly got to the point. “I want to ask you to stop picking fights with her.”

“I’m not—”

“You must’ve that one time. The tigerborn, at least... Wait, has he moved rooms?”

“No, he’s still here.” The gnome sighed, apparently having given up on getting me to leave, and looked over his shoulder. “Tiger! He wants to talk to you.”

“I’m sleepy. Get him outta here, Pipsqueak.”

It made sense that they had nicknames for each other, given they shared a room. That also made the room’s power dynamics painfully obvious. Not that I could talk, since I was “snake boy.”

I quietly pushed past “Pipsqueak,” ignoring his protests, and marched into the room.

“You’re Tiger, right? I want to ask you to leave my roommate alone.”

“Huh? Who even are you? Leave.”

Right, I hadn’t been in the room when he’d picked on the dragon girl, so he didn’t recognize me.

“I’m head of the room with the dragonborn in it,” I said.

“Huh. And?”

“I want you to stop picking on—”

“I can pick on whoever I want,” he said sharply, cutting me off. “Leave.”

Apparently, being beaten up by her once had taught him nothing.

“It’s a pain having to pick up the pieces,” I argued.

“And I have to listen to you why exactly?” Tiger let out a scornful laugh. It sounded less like he was set on beating the dragonborn and more like he just didn’t want me to boss him around. That meant all of this was entirely unnecessary.

“Okay, I get it,” I said.

“Then get outta here already,” he responded, his tone mocking.

I had come prepared for an argument, but it was obvious that I wasn’t going to achieve anything. I decided to leave quietly.

“Look at the li’l wimp, leaving with his tail between his legs,” Tiger scoffed.

“Stop it, Tiger,” Pipsqueak urged.

I ignored their exchange, already on my way out. Tiger probably wouldn’t try anything with the dragon girl again. As long as he remembered the pain she inflicted on him, that was. After all, he had already succumbed to the adults’ brainwashing.

***

“How can you look like that?” The dragon girl scowled at me when I returned to our room.

I should’ve expected this.

That said, this was the first time I was experiencing this variety of anger from her. Her question really meant: You’ve got some nerve dragging yourself home without a fight. They were making a fool of you, and you just left?! As my servant, you’re making me look pathetic!

This side of her caught me off guard, because this was my first time getting into a quarrel with an acquaintance. I took a moment to figure out how to justify my actions.

I could tell her that they might have thought me pathetic and that they were still scared of her. But then she would accuse me of contradicting her and get mad. If I told her I didn’t think it was a big deal, she would say: I wasn’t asking your opinion, snake boy!

My thoughtful silence seemed to irritate her further, her tail twisting in the air. Essence was rolling off her in waves, making her even more intimidating. I sighed inwardly.

“I don’t care what they think. That’s why I didn’t say anything back to them.” I told her the truth. It was probably smarter than staying silent.

“I wasn’t asking your opinion, snake boy!”

Something flashed, and I put my arms up in front of my eyes to defend myself. Her tail slammed me into the wall like I was a ping-pong ball. The heavy impact on my back knocked the wind out of me. She had gotten stronger. She must have held back because I wasn’t bleeding, but I would definitely have lost consciousness if I hadn’t braced in time for the blow.

The dragon girl clicked her tongue, pulled herself to her feet, and left the room.

“Ow...” I muttered, rubbing my back. As angry as I was at her, there was some nostalgia welling up inside me. Like I found her endearing. Those emotions must have belonged to the boy. Suffering from violence made him happy. He was nuts.

The dragon girl returned almost immediately with blood on her tail. The punishment had been lighter than last time, then. Her arms would have been sticky and red otherwise. It was probably because Tiger hadn’t insulted her directly. I offered her a wrung towel.

“You’re going to get blood on your bedding,” I said. I didn’t explicitly tell her to clean herself up, because she would snap if I ordered her around. It was best to use indirect communication if you wanted her to do something.

“Tch.”

And by that she meant: Obviously I know that. You make me sick, sticking your nose in everywhere.

I had just about managed to avoid setting her off again.

She folded her arms and turned her back to me. Apparently, I was to wipe her down, since I was the one who suggested it. Her tail was rippling gently. I placed a hand on it and started wiping the dirtiest side with the towel. While we both had tails, I could spot several differences between them when I observed hers up close.

The most obvious one was the thickness. While my tail’s width was somewhere between my arm and thigh, hers was comfortably the same size as her thigh, and it likely held a strength proportional to that. It could probably do just as much damage as a kick, essence notwithstanding. Beneath her tail’s surface, which felt plump in my hand, I could feel the suppleness of thick muscle. Along its spine, hair grew much like a horse’s mane. I found this especially interesting because it was something snakes didn’t have.

Each of her scales was big, probably because of the overall thickness of her tail. They didn’t just sit flush to the flesh either. Whenever she lashed the appendage like a whip, they pushed up into a shape that would gouge out skin.

I gently traced the edges of her scales with the towel. They were fairly solid. She made a small noise, and I remembered how sensitive my own skin was between my scales. In a panic, I pulled the towel away. She turned to me, and I threw my hands up in a show of innocence. Her eyes glinted with doubt, like she suspected me of messing with her tail on purpose. It then seemed like she had enough, and she scooped up the towel with the tip of her tail and tossed it into the bucket. With that, she went straight to her bed and lay down.

I searched for the body pillow I had constructed before. It turned out she had taken it for herself, and so I found an abandoned duvet of hers instead. She didn’t like taking without giving in return. I supposed this was her way of offering a trade.

As was often the case, I had less time to meditate because of issues relating to the dragon girl. It seemed like I was going to have even less tomorrow. Sister was getting fed up with her rebellion, and our combat instructor was still trying to obliterate her spirit. More than anything else, the children were starting to become aware of the adults’ intentions. The time was soon approaching for us to begin working together.

***

The day’s combat training was different, but it wasn’t due to the content of the lesson itself. There was a restlessness in the air before we started. When the instructor showed up, he had the dragon girl in one hand, as usual, but in his other, he held a thick wooden sword. A handful of the kids figured out what that meant, and their excitement was palpable.

“Yesterday, this girl conducted a vicious attack. I would like the victims to step forward.”

As expected, the tigerborn boy came forward. What was surprising was that the gnome did so as well. Purposefully or accidentally, he must have gotten in the way when the dragon girl was punishing the tigerborn. It was now the dragon girl’s turn to answer for her actions.

“Yesterday, this girl came to your room and suddenly started assaulting you. Is that correct?”

“Yes, sir!” the tigerborn responded confidently.

“Yes, sir.” The gnome’s voice cracked. He must have been afraid of retaliation from the dragon girl.

“In that case, I will allow you to strike her ten times with this sword.”

The dragon girl let out an enraged roar, but the instructor leveraged his weight onto her, shoving his knee into her back to pin her to the ground, rendering her defenseless. It was only then I realized that her hands were cuffed behind her. As powerful as she was, even she would struggle to break free from her restraints in that position. She glowered up at the boys, her face inches from the ground.

Tiger let out a laugh. It was a message—I’m not afraid of you.

Then he heaved the sword upward. In that moment, his presence seemed to expand. He had learned to charge his essence at some point. Tiger was amazingly strong to start with, but now he used his essence to push his power to its limits. It was in that state that he swung the sword down.

“One!”

The dragon girl snarled.

Tiger laughed. “Two!”

She growled.

“Three! Four! Five!”

Barked.

“What’s the matter? Not gonna fight back?!”

Gasped.

“Six!”

Rumbled.

“Seven!”

Coughed.

“Eight!”

Gurgled.

“Nine!”

Stayed silent.

“Ten!”

Grunted.

The wooden sword clattered to the ground as Tiger tossed it to one side. He had struck the dragon girl’s head over and over, leaving her face bloody where it had crashed against the ground. Had this happened in my previous life, I would have expected her to suffer some serious lasting effects from how intensely he had beaten her skull.

Tiger wrung out the numbness from his hands and pretended to stumble, only for his foot to land on the girl’s head. “Oh, whoops! Look like I slipped!”

“That is quite enough,” said the instructor. “The punishment was to strike her ten times.”

“Sorry, sir. I’ll get back in line!”

“Fine.” He sighed. “Next.”

It seemed that Tiger had escaped any consequences for taking things too far.

“Yes, sir,” the gnome stammered.

He didn’t use essence to strengthen his strikes, each one as reserved as the last. Once he was done, the dragon girl began to rage again, leading to the instructor beating her until she could no longer make a sound. Then, he dragged her away from the training grounds.

***

The usual energized roaring welcomed me back to my room that day. Except, the moment the dragon girl saw me, she rushed out the door at an incredible speed. Then came a series of powerful vibrations from the next room. It didn’t seem like I would get a chance to practice releasing my essence tonight either.

***

The next day, three children stepped forward to enact her punishment. They were, of course, those who occupied the room next door. Out of all of them, Tiger’s face bore the worst scars. It was clear that the dragon girl had carried out a very thorough retaliation. He was clenching his teeth—he must have been livid. It was like he hadn’t expected her to go after him following the beating he gave her, despite having seen how she snapped at the instructor day after day.

“The tigerborn may give her twenty strikes. The others, ten.”

The number had gone up.

Tiger brought the sword down repeatedly, utterly enraged. “Hmph! Take that! Hah!”

The dragon girl endured it, apparently not in the mood to be making any noise today. She merely glared at him in silence. Her golden eyes simmered with a rage powerful enough to explode at any moment. For a second, that seemed to frighten Tiger. But allowing his fear to show would have been far too shameful, so he let out a roar and replaced it with anger, bringing the sword down once more.

***

She howled, flying from the room as soon as I entered. This was turning into a test of endurance between them. The dragon girl didn’t come back until it was quite late. My guess was that Tiger had moved to a different room. It still didn’t seem like I would be able to meditate. I was growing impatient and frustrated.

***

Ten children stepped forward this time for the dragon girl’s punishment. Among them were my former roommates: the demonborn and the catborn. To me, it confirmed that Tiger and the gnome had changed rooms in an attempt to defend themselves. She must have assaulted anyone she could find when she went around in search of them, hence the increase in victims.

Thus, the spectacle took even longer.

As for essence training, pretty much all of the children had now learned how to charge it. Anxious to learn as quickly as possible, I meditated every day...to zero effect.

***

The next day, the punishers also numbered ten. They weren’t exactly the same as before, however. It seemed she was starting to forget faces.

***

The next day it was eleven.

***

Then it was thirteen.

***

Then twelve.

***

Fifteen.

***

Twenty.

***

On and on it went until one day I returned to the room to find her quiet. The room was filled with the cloying stench of blood, making me gag and cover my mouth. The bucket I had filled for her the day before was more blood than water. She was curled in the center of the room, her body covered in wounds. She seemed to be sleeping to recover. It looked like Sister had stopped bothering to tend to her injuries altogether. I went to empty the bloody bucket.

On my way, I ran into Tiger. He was walking toward me, surrounded by four or five others. When he saw me, his lips twisted into a scowl before twisting further into a crude smirk. He intentionally knocked his shoulder into mine as he passed.

Following him, his entourage muttered, “Hardhead.”

That was what people had been calling me recently. I knew full well that it wasn’t an affectionate nickname.

In the end, the dragon girl remained asleep the whole day.

***

The next day, fifteen children stepped forward to punish her. She hadn’t attacked a single person last night. She had just curled up in her bed, unable to move. I realized then what was happening. How clever.

The root of her confidence was her raw strength. By breaking that, the adults hoped her pride would be crushed in turn. But she had continued to fight back. And so, in order to instill in her the idea that she was no better than the other children, they encouraged the kids to take revenge on her.

Or so I once thought.

In truth, the adults had designated her as a slave to this kingdom of children. She was there for the infantile citizenry to vent their resentment. Her extraordinary resilience made her the perfect sandbag in the grown-ups’ eyes. Her toughness, the speed at which she recuperated, and her lofty pride just made her seem all the more wretched.

She was no longer an enemy of the elite. She was their tool.

***

I had started meditating in the mornings before roll call. I had become more of an early bird and now was able to wake up before sunrise. At long last, I was the only kid unable to charge my essence. I was winning fewer and fewer bouts during combat training as a result. That said, there were lots of times when I won using purely physical techniques, so I had around a fifty-fifty win rate. If I stopped winning altogether, I would probably find myself without a place here anymore. It would be one thing if they banished me, but if they decided I needed to be “dealt with” to stop me from talking, I wouldn’t have the means to fight back. That was yet another reason I needed to learn to charge my essence.

As I finished up my meditation, I picked up the breathing of someone else in the room. I could see her curled up in the middle of her mattress as she slept.

***

After roll call, the children went to the dining hall to shovel down their food. This community ran on two meals a day: breakfast and dinner. The purpose of the former was to give us all the energy we needed until the evening. Sister took her meals with us too, but she was afforded a much fancier plate; it was loaded with meat. This was probably meant as another reminder that the adults were our superiors. These obvious differences in treatment acted as subliminal messages meant to instill a sense of inferiority within us.

***

After breakfast came the dragon girl’s punishment at the training grounds. She took it silently now, having suffered through it every day for an entire month. It wasn’t that she chose to stay quiet; she simply wasn’t capable of making a sound. During one of the sessions, she had let out a roar that pierced the eardrums of all who surrounded her. Every morning since then, she had been made to drink a powerful acid that burned her throat. Not only that, but the instructor had stripped her fingers of every claw. When they grew back, he pulled them off again—for “safety’s sake.”

***

Around twenty children took part in the daily punishment. By now, most of our cohort probably had a turn. At first, only the boys swung the sword, but now it felt like mostly girls were doing so. There might have been an ugly jealousy there, a desire to destroy something beautiful.

I never once participated. Not out of any sense of morality, but rather for the sake of self-preservation. We shared a room. She knew who I was. One wrong step and I would end up getting beaten worse than Tiger. That was why, if the adults ordered me to, I would swing that sword as hard as I could to save my life. I wouldn’t even hesitate.

With her burned throat and her missing claws, she looked more wretched than ever.

***

I wiped myself down in my room after that day’s long-distance training. While I had been borrowing buckets from other rooms up to this point, my association with the dragon girl meant people were no longer willing to lend. The daily punishments were strengthening their feelings of fellowship, it seemed. It reminded me of how medieval aristocrats took part in hunting as a leisure activity. It would probably do me some good to learn how to form such bonds for myself, just like the others. They likely weren’t far off from using force against me, as someone who wasn’t part of their group. I still couldn’t charge my essence. They only needed to send a small group to overpower me—or simply just one child at Tiger’s level.

Even if they attacked me and I went to the adults, I doubted they would be subject to the same punishment as the dragon girl. Her beating was more of a ritual, a meeting of minds between the grown-ups who wanted to break her spirit and the children who disliked her. It would probably come to an end if she decided to obey the adults.

Hm...

I heard the rustling of cloth behind me and turned to see that the dragon girl was awake. She had been recuperating from that day’s wounds.

She was unusually quiet today. That didn’t bode well. I went to put my towel back in the bucket, and I had barely moved when her fingers closed around my windpipe. I groaned as my head hit the floorboards. She had pinned me to the floor before I could react.

“What are you—” I began but stopped when her face came into view. My eyes widened. Her expression was a mix of anger on the brink of explosion and a very keen sense of weakness. I felt the boy’s heart freeze instantly.

“She’s already cracking,” he said.

That moment was all it took for his opinion of her to fall to the same level as Tiger and the others. She was no longer interesting. He was disappointed.

“Could you let go of me?” I asked coldly, despite knowing the request would only stoke the flames of her anger.

“Why...” She could sense that I was no longer afraid of her. Her eyebrows furrowed. She felt hurt, betrayed. Then, her face flashed red. Her teeth clenched, and she tightened her grip around my neck.

She was strangling me. Though I knew she lacked the courage to kill me, my body started struggling without my input. Her fingers only loosened when their tightness around my arteries had my vision narrowing. I was left with tears in my eyes and gasping for air. Her head slumped forward, her hair falling over her face and hiding her expression.

“I don’t want to lose to you...” she said, as if it were already a forgone conclusion.

Had she already accepted that she would never seize victory over the adults? She was forced to struggle between her ego and reality. Her pride towered above her, and this was probably the first time she was letting it crumble.

“I don’t want to feel this way. I’d rather die.”

What?

What did she just say?

She would rather die? Die?

She didn’t know what death was. How dare she speak about it so thoughtlessly?

“Shut. Up!” I roared.

My essence spiraled out of my body in waves. I tossed her into the air with nothing but my tail. Total shock shot over her face—she had never seen such raw power and fury from me.

If she would rather die, I was happy to make it happen. I would bury her along with that worthless pride of hers. I kicked her out of the air and right into the wall. The whole room shook.

It wasn’t enough.

She howled back at me. I had ignited her anger. An arm flashed out in front of me, and then my world began to spin. Rather, she had sent me whirling through the air.

“Your ego’s the only impressive thing about you, lizard girl!” I spat out all my built-up resentment as I landed against the wall. I looked up. The dragon was roaring.

“Silence, snake boy!” Her claws sank into the wall, but I was no longer there. She clicked her tongue in frustration. “Where’d you go?!”

“Over here, stupid.” I had gotten behind her using a split step. I grabbed her face and slammed her to the floor. Then I kicked her in the stomach and sent her flying. “Surprised that I can actually keep up with you?”

The dragon girl pulled herself up. Though she was more enraged than ever, she paused to listen to me. I may have had a better grasp of my essence now, but in terms of that and physical ability, she was superior in every way. The reason she wasn’t winning was purely because of the sheer amount of work I had put in. That, and I had been observing her this entire time. I knew what made her mad, how she fought, and why she hadn’t run away.

“It’s ’cause of how stupid you are! I know every move you’ll make before you make it! Idiot!”

Not that I was going to tell her any of that. Instead, I just riled her up with ridiculously simple taunts. It worked beautifully against her in her current state.

“How dare you?!”

The floor split into two, and she vanished. I didn’t bother trying to keep her in my sights and instead went totally limp.

“There she is...” I murmured. I had misjudged her, and her claws ended up in my hand. My face contorted in agony. It hurt, but it was nothing like dying. “Don’t underestimate me.”

I’d rather feel this way than die.

I ignored the excruciating pain and grabbed her hand, filling my body with the last of my essence. I gathered my strength and pulled her clear off the floor with nothing but my back to support her. Then, I threw her over my shoulder and drove her into the ground.

“Get screwed!”

I slumped down right in front of her. She was too dizzy to respond.

***

The dragonborn girl would pull the snakeborn boy around that cramped room and play make-believe with him. That memory was from the chamber before his baptism. She would always take the lead and force him to be a supporting character, but he didn’t seem to mind all that much. One of the adults who saw us remarked that she acted like a queen, presumably making light of her tyrannical behavior. She didn’t know what a queen was, and when she asked, the adult hesitated before replying:

“The most important person of all and who is loved by everyone.”

She nodded, satisfied with that explanation. I admired her for the pride she had in herself. I found I couldn’t rid myself of that admiration, even if the alternative was death.

***

“You awake?”

“Snake boy...” she spat, mere moments after regaining consciousness. But then, she fell silent. Losing to me must have been quite a shock.

After tending to my wounds, I sat quietly to recover. While resting, I worked on releasing my essence over and over. I could do it; what I couldn’t do was discharge it at the same levels I had during our spat. My overwhelming fury must have been the trigger. I wondered whether she would pick up on that and try to kill me in my sleep. The boy reassured me that she wouldn’t.

“You want to die?” I asked.

“No.”

She didn’t seek death—she just found living impossible. That was what I gathered from her expression, anyway. I felt myself more able to read it just then. Maybe it was because she wasn’t forcing herself into a state of aggression.

“Are you going to hold a grudge against me for winning?”

She didn’t respond. She didn’t nod either, but it was definitely a yes. She was currently in a position where she couldn’t even fight back against other children. Well, to be fair, she could. It was just that she was punished tenfold for it because of a system implemented by a greater power. That she couldn’t win against the adults was another thing that she couldn’t abide. Torn to shreds as she was, she just couldn’t accept it.

“Do you know how pathetic you appear right now? It’s making me want to look away.”

I heard her teeth grinding. Her golden eyes flashed open, and she glowered at me. While I had nothing left to give, her body was still brimming with the same levels of essence as before she passed out, if not more.

I smiled at her faintly. “What? You’re mad? Give it up. I beat you.”

“Shut up!” Without warning, she grabbed me by the collar and slammed me into the wall. She wrenched the fabric around my neck and started strangling me with it. “How dare you make fun of my pride?!”

“I-It’s not,” I choked, clutching desperately at my splintering consciousness. “It’s not...pride!”

She slammed me hard against the wall again. The boy had something he wanted—needed—to tell her.

I inhaled as best I could. “What you’re...clinging to isn’t...pride... It’s...arrogance!”

The hands holding me up loosened.

“You think it’s pride?” I continued. “You don’t think much of me, do you? If it’s pride, why did you lose to me? Why are you still losing in your resistance against the adults? What have you done to try to win? What’s your strategy?”

I never had any pride nor shame. I didn’t care about winning or losing. If I had to put it in those terms, winning was survival and losing was death. I didn’t see how anything could be more critical than that.

“I don’t know much about pride, but how can you have it when you haven’t done anything to work toward it?”

As far as I knew, pride wasn’t about how others saw you. Rather, it was the conviction that came from bracing discipline, honing your strength, and the results of that. A little girl like her had no business possessing such a thing. I removed her hands from my throat.

“Have you ever tried poison? A sneak attack? Driving a wedge between one adult and another? You know Sister’s faith is stronger than the instructors’, right? Have you ever thought about using that to break things down between them?”

She didn’t answer.

“What about stealing their tricks and using them for yourself? They’re even teaching them to us and very carefully too. Haven’t you realized? All you need to do is watch and learn. It’s easier than dying.” This wasn’t my idea of revenge or anything. I was just stating the truth.

I slammed her against the wall. “It doesn’t matter how strong or talented you are or how much you develop those things. That ‘instructor,’ the masses of kids made up of brats just like that tigerborn... They shouldn’t stand a chance against someone with your strength and talents, especially if you work on developing those things.”

The boy, who had been watching her more closely than anyone else, knew that well. The queen he had looked up to in that tiny room had the potential to grow stronger than anyone. He recognized that she had the power to eventually balance her arrogance with humility.

I suspected the boy was clinging to a myth of sorts, something born from his narrow worldview and shallow life experience. One thing was for certain: She had a stronger mentality than I did.

“You haven’t lost,” I said.

“What are you talking about?”

The children may have been excited when enacting their adult-sanctioned punishment, but lock them in darkness and take away their food, and you could transform them into quivering, whiny cowards. Myself included.

“You never broke down in your reflection room. The adults tried to crush your spirit, but they failed. Think of it like that, and you’ve already scored one victory off them.” Assuming her feud with them was still ongoing, the score right now was tied at one each.

“Are you messing with me?” Perhaps she thought I was trying to console her.

“All you have to do is get stronger, and then you can kill whoever you don’t like, right? You can’t say you’ve lost to them, then.”

She didn’t say anything, but I took that to mean she understood what I was conveying. I figured it was a good idea to close this conversation with something meaningful. The boy took the initiative, leaning in to her as closely as he could.

“You have to be serious about it. I mean it. Learn your enemy. Sight, sound, smell, taste, everything. Think about them so much that you don’t have time to sleep. I’m not about to let you wallow in your pride anymore. If you want victory, you dedicate every facet of your life to it. Identify every one of your enemy’s weaknesses and strengths, and leave no room for defeat. You need to win, don’t you? Then you can’t waste a single second. Or are you gonna keep letting those shitty adults walk all over you forever? I didn’t think you were that lazy. Am I wrong about you? No? Then turn things around. Quickly.

“How long are you gonna let that tigerborn and those other kids push you around? Show them what you’re capable of so that they can never sleep at night again. Why are you acting all docile like you’re some regular kid? I know that’s not who you are. I’ve been watching you this whole time. Remember how you used to boss me around like you were more important, better, than everyone else? When are you gonna get it together?”

The boy clenched the fingers he had wrapped over her shoulders. “How long are you gonna keep me waiting? How long am I supposed to hold back the rage I feel whenever people make an idiot out of my queen?”

I was surprised by the maelstrom of emotions swirling in his stomach. I had taken him to be an ordinary young boy, but I was wrong. He didn’t just admire her. This was a twisted form of jealousy, perhaps an inferiority complex stemming from what they shared physically: tails and scales. How would she react having witnessed every ugly thought he held inside?

“Don’t tell me what to do!” she growled.

He gave a dry laugh. She had rejected his most earnest wish with nothing but a thorny remark. It was so inconsiderate, and most of all, arrogant. He loved it. This was who she really was, he thought, and I confirmed that he truly was twisted.

The dragon girl glared when he inadvertently laughed. “You think I’m a fool!”

“No, I’m happy. Because you said—” He grunted and doubled over. She had just driven her fist into his solar plexus. “What was that for?”

“You’re smirking at me!”

Again, he laughed. The last thing I remembered from that day was her fist coming right at my face.

***

When I woke up the next day, my breathing was labored. I touched my nose. There was dried blood caked on it. I remembered the dragon girl’s anger exploded yesterday, and we fought. I also remembered coming out with some strange opinions indeed, courtesy of the other me.

I sighed. Having my surroundings controlled was bad enough, but now my own words and actions were being manipulated. I had naively thought that I could get away with honing my body and physical techniques, but maybe I needed to train my mind too. If the other me tried to interfere in the middle of a fight, I would die.

That said, I couldn’t think of any other way to train the mind than to go stand under a waterfall, and even then, I wasn’t sure how effective that was. Was the mind something that could be trained?

Reality was grim, so I decided to ignore it and practice releasing my essence like I had managed yesterday, working on getting a real feel for it. Releasing essence was something like riding a bicycle, and, once you learned, it was easy to intuit how to control the amount you let out. However, there did seem to be an upper limit to how much you could discharge. It was like a faucet—you could open it more to increase the amount in a controlled manner, but no more essence would come out once you were past a certain point. Like water, the more you let out, the higher the consumption.

It seemed that, when in a fight, it was necessary to conserve essence and increase the amount you released when the situation called for it. Watching the instructors fight, though, it looked like there was something more to it than that. It was like the essence visibly surrounding them didn’t account for the strength on display. I would have liked to be able to observe them properly, but I doubted they would willingly spar at a speed we could watch. Not to mention the question of who their opponent would be.

I returned my thoughts to the present and uncrossed my legs.

***

When I arrived at the dining hall, the children’s eyes turned to us. Their gazes were filled with curiosity, doubt, loathing, and a slight anxiety. There was little I could be optimistic about right now. Even Sister, who was at the center of the hall, looked somewhat surprised. The eyes moved to the dragon girl behind me once and then again before turning away again. At last, they realized just who it was that they had been punishing.

A hellishly cold air filled the hall as we had our breakfast. I think I preferred it; it was quiet, and it gave me a chance to focus on eating. I saw Sister finish her last bite with a gulp, faster than the children, and leave the room. I followed her with my eyes as I bit off another hard piece of bread and swallowed. The only people saying anything were Tiger and his group.

***

“We shall commence our combat training in just a moment.” The instructor glared at the dragon girl. “Is there anyone who suffered violence at the hands of the dragonborn yesterday?”

“Yes, sir. Me.” As usual, Tiger grinned and raised his hand.

Next came Pipsqueak. “Me too...”

“I did too!” one girl announced—a snakeborn like me.

Her confidence seemed to encourage some others.

“And me.”

“Same here.”

“Me too.”

“And me.”

I could guess why that first girl had stepped forward, but I wanted to confirm whether she was hoping to unite the other girls in using the dragonborn as a common enemy or whether she merely held a personal grudge. In other words, I wanted to know if the snakeborn girl was liable to become my enemy too.

Tiger stepped forward in high spirits. He waved his wooden sword around and surrounded his body with essence. The way he charged it up was really something; the previous bouts of punishment must have been good training for him. There was little technique required simply to release essence, but to charge it, you needed enough control to hold it on your body’s surface.

After learning to release my essence, I had practiced charging it. It seemed I was almost there, and I understood why it wasn’t that much of a step up from releasing. That said, I wasn’t confident that I would ever catch up to Tiger. While I continued to improve, so would the others.

“You may strike her ten times.”

Essence still primed, Tiger swung the sword down. “One!”

The dragon girl, pinned down, let it strike her head. She gave a quiet groan but made no other sound. Or so I thought...

“One...”

She was counting. It was like she was echoing Tiger’s voice. Her eyes were beyond enraged; they were frosty. It was like she didn’t consider the boy before her to be a fellow human.

“T-two!” Tiger continued.

“Two...” she repeated through gritted teeth.

“Three!”

“Th-three.”

“Four!”

A beat. “Four.”

Her gaze never wavered. Tiger looked like he was losing the mental battle, despite being the one with the sword. Eventually, he gave up on counting altogether.

“Tch! Dammit! Take that! And this! Scumbag!”

“Five...six...seven...eight...”

Tiger let out a roar.

“Ten...”

The dragon girl’s silver hair was stained red, yet she didn’t show the slightest sign of agitation. The aggressor was shaken. The victim was not. The boy within me was watching with a curious sense of elation. Tiger was gasping and cursing. He tried to swing the sword again, but the instructor took it from him.

“I believe I said ten strikes. Who’s next?”

“What? But... Fine.”

Pipsqueak had already raised his hand, ridding Tiger of his chance to protest. The gnome exhaled with exertion as he delivered each strike.

“One... Two... Three... Four...” the dragon girl chanted.

On noticing that oppressive golden glare staring up at him inches above the ground, Pipsqueak no longer felt safe. Tears sprang to his eyes.

“Ten.”

Pipsqueak let the sword clatter to the ground. The punishment continued as normal with one child beating the girl after another. Never once did she look away.

“Ten.”

“Ten.”

“Ten.”

“Ten...”

Once the children were finished, the instructor went to work using his fists to rid her of her consciousness. She used her tail to deflect them, and he grunted in surprise.

“You said...I had to...join training...” She stood up, holding her pounding head. Apparently, she had decided to participate despite the state she was in.

“Are you planning to retaliate against the children?”

“Only if you...want me to...” She must have been aware that the instructor was perfectly capable of stopping her if she tried.

Our teacher didn’t seem the least bit angry at the dragon girl’s display of resistance. He just looked at her steadily. “You may take part. However...”

He struck out with his fist. She blocked it. The next thing I knew, she was spinning sideways through the air. I had missed his follow-up attack. She immediately stood up, and I saw a fist-shaped imprint on her cheek.

“You will stop with the attitude.”

At first, I thought she was overcome with rage, but then I realized she was staring at the instructor as if committing his movements to memory.

I doubted that the instructor would pair her up with anyone who had taken part in her punishment. There were probably a fair number of children who now wished they had beaten her that day.

***

To cut a long story short, every kid she was paired up against surrendered after she went for their throats. Me included—I had a nice set of fingermarks on my neck to show for it. I had managed to dodge her first attack, but then she knocked my weapon from my hand with her tail before throwing me over her shoulder. She was probably getting back at me for yesterday, but she did so beautifully. It impressed rather than frustrated me.

I walked away from combat training that day being aware of my weakness. At least it was something I could improve on. I wasn’t using my body to its full potential yet. It seemed, without realizing it, I was moving like this body was the same as the one from my previous life. This was most obvious when it came to my tail. It was a new part for me, and I found it awkward to control.

Since it had the thickness of an arm, if I used it right, I should be able to launch myself forward or use it in combat like the dragon girl had. I was sure I could do more than that with it too. I knew how frustrating it was when an opponent of a different race used their physically superior body against you. The dragon girl taught me that.

A fight was not won with raw essence alone. If it was, this building would have been filled with nothing but dragonborns. I decided to refine my strategy for dealing with the dragon girl. Unlike the boy, I regarded her as a potential enemy. As far as I was concerned, she was the next greatest threat after the instructors.

***

The children who had made an enemy of the dragon girl must have found the news that she was joining training rather upsetting. The former slave-slash-punching-bag was suddenly their equal. I doubted they would let it slide; it made their position less secure. They would become aggressive.

Humans were always watching to see what was below. Rarely did they overlook anyone climbing up to their level. I pondered the philosophy of society’s cruelty—filtered through the experiences of my previous life—as I filled my bucket with water and returned to my room.

Drawing water would continue to be my job. I couldn’t see things ending peacefully by any stretch of the imagination if I sent the dragon girl to go do it. That said, though I didn’t know what part of the boy’s speech had inspired her, she had obviously changed. I suppose you could say she mellowed out. And I was more frightened of her than ever.

I used to fear one simple thing: her anger exploding at any moment. Now, it was like the beast that used to only be aggressive had learned to conceal itself. That was what terrified me. Hopefully, I would never end up at the wrong end of its fangs. My only means of avoiding that right now was to go to sleep after her and wake up before her.

It wasn’t long ago that I might have managed to trade rooms, but these days everyone saw me as the dragon girl’s follower. I couldn’t envision much of a future for myself outside of everyone walking on eggshells around me and being shunned in the same way people avoided venomous cobras. That made me think of scorpions and how I had yet to see a race that resembled one...

***

I collected water for us to wipe ourselves down and opened the door to my room. What greeted me was an overwhelming pressure weighing on my whole body, rendering me breathless. The dragon girl slept as far as possible from the entrance, whereas my bedding was closer to the door than the room’s center. Usually, she would either be relaxing on her stately pile of mattresses, or she would be punching the wall in an intense bout of anger.

This time, she was on her mattresses. But she was sitting quietly with her legs crossed, just like I did every morning. She noticed me coming in, and one of her lightly closed eyelids cracked open to glance at me. She was clearly trying to copy my form, which left hers slightly imperfect, but it seemed that she understood what I was trying to achieve when I sat like that. Her essence was quietly roiling off and floating around her. Now I understood why the adults were so desperate to control her. She was in a completely different league to the other children.

Even when the instructor beat her in the mornings, even though his movements were visible only to her when he punished her, it was obvious to us that she was superior.

After a short spell of meditating, the suffocating atmosphere vanished, and she took a towel from the bucket I was holding. “What are you staring at?”

Her question pulled me from my stunned silence. I wrung out my own towel and turned my back to her. As I wiped away a day’s worth of exhaustion and dirt, I went through what I had seen over and over in my mind. The dragon girl was probably aware that her essence differed from that of the instructor’s. That was why she had chosen to emulate me to improve her handling of it. Not that she would admit to following my example.

I started to clean the length of my tail gently. It had been itchy lately, indicating that I probably wasn’t taking enough care of it.

I was cleaning it a bit more firmly when a towel landed in the bucket. I heard the rustling of cloth and then the dragon girl lying down. I looked over my shoulder. Her tail was coiled around her, creating a wall between us.

I put my towel back in the bucket and left the room to return it.

***

“What sort of ideas has Konji been putting into your little head?”

Along the way, I was apprehended by Sister, who escorted me to a nearby room. It was similar to the meditation room—curtains were drawn over the windows, blocking any light from coming in.

“Where are we?” I asked.

“You don’t need to know.”

As I studied her, I paid close attention to what my third eye could see. There was something cold, sharp, and metallic under her clothing. I pretended to be unaware of it. “What’s ‘Konji’?”

She paused. “The name of your combat instructor. He went to your room, didn’t he?”

“No.”

The adults had names after all, then. This was the first time I had heard any of them use them to refer to one another. Sister probably let it slip by accident. Her right hand was restless, twitching toward the concealed knife and back again. This could be bad. Though I didn’t understand her intentions, it seemed like she wasn’t the dragon girl’s biggest fan. It sounded like she believed that the girl’s transformation had something to do with our combat instructor, that Konji had allied himself with the dragon girl. I had no idea if that was true or not.

Did that mean there were factions within this organization? If so, it would have made more sense if the adults in charge of the same children banded together.

Sister’s hand stopped wavering and slowly found a resting place on the knife handle. I had learned the name of one of our instructors, and that was bad news. She was now inclined to kill me. Goose bumps sprang up over my flesh. I needed to say something, anything to distract her.

“You’re going to...leave the punishment to me?” I asked.

“What’s that?”

Her emotions were running high. I could see it. Her body temperature rose just a touch.

“You’re here to ask me to punish her. The girl who’s been giving the instructors attitude.”

Sister was afraid of me figuring out her true intentions. All I needed to do was to behave like my IQ was a few points lower than it really was.

“Yes... Yes, that’s right. Really, I came to ask you to monitor her.”

“Oh, monitor her. Anyway, about your question. As far as I know, she’s not in contact with the combat instructor.”

Another pause. “I see. I thought that they... Hmm.” Sister regarded me with her hand resting on her lips, her composure regained. She was no longer touching the knife, nor did she seem agitated anymore. Either she had decided that a child wouldn’t be a threat after all, or the act of killing a child presented a weighty risk. In any case, it looked like I would get out of here with my life. “That’s all. Go back to your room.”

“Wait, so do I need to punish her?”

“Forget about that for now. Just wait for the right time, okay?” She was back to behaving like the kindly Sister I was used to. It seemed forced.

The act came too late. I already knew her true nature. I put my hand on the door, keenly aware that she was still watching me.

I’m going to use you until I’ve squeezed every last drop of value from you.

Till then, I hoped she would keep thinking I was just some dumb kid.

***

Fewer children were participating in the punishment now. It was usually Tiger, the roommates he persuaded now and then, and occasionally the snakeborn girl. I always spent training wondering where they found the courage to beat the dragon girl when she glowered at them like that.

***

“Ah.”

I was wiping my tail down in my room that day when I felt something break off. A thin piece of skin came away from the surface. I was shedding. I guessed that explained why my tail had been feeling itchy lately. I did have memories of shedding, but I couldn’t remember what happened before or after, so I never made the connection. My memories also informed me that, if I was shedding, so was somebody else...

The dragon girl was scraping her tail over the ground and trying to tear the skin off. It made a grating sound. Hers was thicker than mine, and so was the skin that shed. That made it a real ordeal for her.

“Let me get it for you.” Leaving my flaking tail be, I picked hers up instead. It flinched out of my grip, and I thought she was about to protest, but then she let it rest in my hands again.

I soaked her skin with a sodden towel and started peeling away the surface. Underneath were glossy scales that shone as vibrantly as platinum. Her back proved more difficult because of the fur there, but after working at it with the towel, I managed to start removing the old skin. I became highly focused on what my hands were doing—it was like trying to peel a sticker from furniture.

That was when I felt something rub along my back.

I let out a yelp. I didn’t have time to parse what was going on before I saw my own tail in her hands. She pressed her tiny palms against its surface as she worked slowly to remove my shedding skin. I wasn’t sure what to make of the sensation. It wasn’t something I ever experienced in my previous life.

It seemed that snakes shed easier than dragons; she held a large layer of my tail skin before I even finished with hers. It felt like someone had just pulled a thick sock off me. She must have had nothing better to do after that, because she picked up a wet towel and started wiping the few remaining flakes from my tail. Given its current state, it was sensitive and ticklish, and I couldn’t help whimpering at the sensation. When she started trying to scratch away a half-loose scale with her claws, an especially loud cry escaped me, and I threw my hands to my mouth. I looked over at her to check if she had noticed.

She was glaring at me suspiciously. She then turned her back on me and sat, apparently bored of cleaning my tail. So, I finished peeling away her old skin and started on the remaining scales just like she had. They were stuck tight—friction wasn’t going to be enough. I resigned myself to scratching them off with my nails.

Now and then she would squirm. Her freshly shed tail was just as sensitive as mine. Feeling guilty, I finished as quickly as I could.

I only realized later that it probably would have been better to get the last scales off by myself.

***

I was face-to-face with Sister in the meditation room. In between us was my shed skin.

“Is that one the dragonborn’s too?” Sister asked.

“No, it’s mine.”

“Oh. Then I will return it to you.”

I had been looking for a place to dispose of both our skins when she found me and brought me here. Sister took the gleaming silver scales in her hand and studied them from every angle.

“Can you use that for anything?” I asked.

“Mm-hmm.”

No wonder. She didn’t seem the type to appreciate an object for its beauty alone. Compared to Konji, who was adept at direct combat, Sister struck me as someone who killed using less direct methods.

“Poison. Medicine. Maybe an arcane tool.”

I wasn’t sure what that last thing she mentioned was. Sister quickly pulled out her trusty knife.

“This is an arcane tool. Try holding it.”

I reached out for it, but she pushed it forward and left a small incision in my fingertip.

“Ow! What was that f—” I collapsed before I could finish my sentence.

I couldn’t feel my limbs. The air around me felt thin, like I had just finished running a marathon. I gasped for breath.

“This knife has the power to exhaust whoever it cuts. That’s the intent I imbued it with.”

In other words, she’d probably made the knife herself.

“You’ll be learning about them soon enough, so it’s not a problem if you hear about it from me.”

It didn’t take long to figure out what paranormal power gave rise to such weapons: essence. Essence could imbue objects with certain effects. Whether that happened during production or once the item was complete wasn’t yet clear.

“Would I be able to make one too?” I gasped.

“In theory, though it won’t be anything impressive with how little essence you have. All you need to do is imbue your essence into it.”

Imbue my essence, my intent. Sister didn’t explain any further. My best guess was that she released her essence into the knife while intending for it to become a weapon that physically weakened whoever it cut. I couldn’t see where the dragon girl’s scales played a role in it, but I doubted I would have been able to draw the answer out from Sister. Her specialty might lay more in offensive uses for poisons and medicines, since those were what she mentioned first. I decided that, from now on, I would change where I sat in the dining hall for every meal.

I left the meditation room and returned to my own. Along the way, I ran my finger over the scale I had hidden in my clothing. Sister could keep the rest as thanks for sharing such interesting information with me.

***

For once, I didn’t fall asleep easily that night. I stared at the ceiling, focusing on my pit organ. Eventually, my eyes grew accustomed to the darkness, and I began to see colors against the monochrome. That wasn’t to say that the darkness disappeared. I was still in a room surrounded by heavyset walls. Though I could see temperatures, it was more like they were fuzzy patches layered over my vision. Doing anything with my eyes closed was still impossible. That was how this organ worked. In the wild, it probably helped snakes to seek out mammals’ hiding spots.

I could see the shape of the ceiling’s structure, probably because it was made with more than one material. It looked transparent, but that might just have been a result of the difference in temperature making it through the surface. I decided to focus on my other senses besides those provided by my eyes and pit organ.

I worked to lower the amount of essence I was emitting. As I did so, the volume of essence I could sense around me steadily increased. At first, I thought that suppressing it was pointless, but I learned that it actually made you more sensitive to other sources. It might be similar to how a sniper could turn their heartbeat into background noise or how shouting deafened you to other sounds around you. Just like sound, you could sense essence through walls. If I really wanted to, I could scope it out from the next room over, even with the level my abilities were at now.

I tossed around in my bed and turned to gaze at the wall. There were three kids beyond it. I couldn’t pick up much essence, so they were probably all asleep. They didn’t seem like they were Tiger’s lot. I was fairly sure that group was occupying a different room. What with all their punishing of the dragon girl, they’d have needed nerves of steel to sleep so close to her. They weren’t that brave.

When you had a pit organ, you learned that humans had a lower body temperature when they slept. I knew that before, but I could physically see it now. In the corner of my vision, I could also see how the dragon girl’s body temperature was increasing. It seemed my suppression of essence hadn’t escaped her notice. The reclining beast flipped over and shot a glance in my direction. I returned my essence to its baseline level and lay down on my back again. Dragonborns might have had a particular organ for perceiving essence, much like my pit organ for temperature.

***

“This is the prayer room. No talking, for you are in His presence.”

One day after dinner, the snakeborn instructor took us to a large, magnificently decorated hall. I peered at its conical structure from where we stood by the entrance. At its center was a box-shaped altar with a familiar warped knife in prime position. That was the blade they used to carve my true name into me. The marks had mysteriously vanished by the time I left the reflection room the first time.

There were chairs placed around the altar in a circular fashion, apparently meant for those who wished to sit and show respect. A few of them were occupied by other children praying fervently. The instructor led us over to them and had us sit in a group. We mimicked how he held his hands together and started to pray. I only pretended to, instead turning my attention to the several small rooms that lined the wall. They were more like small boxes or confessionals, big enough for only one person to fit inside. And what were those windows? They were tiny and fitted into each box. Something about them seemed to draw my attention, and I squinted at them.

For a split second, my eyes met with those of whoever was inside. I regretted giving in to my curiosity and slowly looked away, pretending to focus on praying again. I could feel the presence of people in every one of those rooms. Something incredibly unpleasant came over me, like scaly fingers caressing my back.

I turned my gaze in the opposite direction. My cohort was passionately delivering their prayers. They had all encountered Him before...bar one. To them, He was less akin to a dubious ghost and closer to a grand being whose existence was unquestionable.

One step behind the children and standing on her hands was our dragon girl. Instead of the altar, she was looking at the walkway that ran around the whole prayer room. That gaze was purposeful as it mapped the path. I concentrated on my senses so I could work out what she was looking at.

My vision said it was just a floor. For my hearing, I tapped it lightly with my toes. It didn’t sound like metal. It didn’t make much of a sound at all, so it wasn’t hollow. For touch, I focused on the soles of my feet. It wasn’t cold—it was made of a poor conductor. I tried my nose. There was a faint scent like something I had smelled before in the reflection room. As for taste... I wasn’t about to try that here. Even with my pit organ, I couldn’t sense anything out of the ordinary.

Finally, I focused on my essence and what I could pick up through that. Bringing the essence around me to the fore and suppressing it made my own presence weaker. I imagined I was walking in darkness and feeling out my surroundings with my hands, narrowing my field of exploration to heighten my sensitivity.

I detected a small current of essence flowing beneath my feet. There were small amounts of it coming from the praying children, but the majority was emanating from the boxes. I realized that was what the dragon girl was observing. I cracked my eyes open slightly and found them locking with the instructor’s. He was staring at me, a gentle and reassuring smile on his face. I really couldn’t let my guard down.

“From now on, you will be permitted to pray during your free time.”

Free time came before breakfast as well as between dinner and bedtime. The latter didn’t last long, because we had to wipe ourselves down in that time too.

The instructor led us to exit the prayer room. We passed close to the boxes, and when we did, I realized they were exactly that: boxes. Not rooms but boxes. They had no doors. I immediately knew why. From far away, the people inside looked like they had their hands together in prayer. The truth was that the skin of their hands had been stuck together.

This was a giant battery. One that provided essence instead of electricity. Batteries didn’t need lids to take out what was inside. When they were used up, they were disposed of, contents and all. These boxes were the same. They were built with people inside them. There was no need for a door to let them in and out. All that was needed was a window that allowed them to breathe and see the altar. Though the man inside this one was withering away like dead wood, he made no attempt to stop praying. It was as if he lived for nothing else.

Terror reared its head within me. What if I made a fatal error and they warped my heart and mind so that I became a living battery, praying until I died? I clapped my hands to my mouth, bile rising from the depths of my stomach. I didn’t want to die.

Ice shocked my body.

“He... He who is all merciful...”

I could feel Him standing behind me. That faint warmth began to pull the cold from me, little by little.

“He who cannot be seen.”

I couldn’t see, touch, or hear Him, but I could feel Him. He was nowhere and everywhere. He was also behind me. My breathing settled.

“He who—” I started on the next line. A thick tail slammed into me from behind.

“You’re in the way. Move,” the tail’s owner commanded. Pure arrogance.

“Sorry,” I stammered, moving over to the wall. She glared at me for a moment before stalking past.

I exhaled, able to breathe normally again. I knew He wasn’t real. But if He took away the cold, I didn’t care who He was. Only one who transcended death could negate the terror of it. I secretly mocked the children who genuinely believed in Him and scorned the adults who manipulated those children by instilling such faith in them. Foolish children and repulsive adults.

Then there was me.

“Please. Save me.”

I wanted so desperately for Him to exist. I needed Him.

***

“How often does she shed?” Sister asked, her eyes shining hungrily as she studied what the dragon girl had produced. As usual, it was before bedtime, and we were in the usual meditation room.

“I’m not sure. I think I remember her shedding three times so far.”

“Probably once a year, then.”

I wasn’t sure about that either. There were no calendars when we had been locked in the chamber, and we had no way of knowing when the sun rose either. How many days did a year even have?

I had a million questions, but I figured she would grow suspicious if I asked them all, so I narrowed them down to things related to what she was asking me about.

“What kind of medicine did you make with the scales I gave you before?” I really wanted to ask if she made poison from them, but again, I didn’t want to give her a reason to be wary.

“I looked into it afterward. Apparently, blood’s better than scales for making medicine.”

I had heard that the blood of horseshoe crabs could be used in medicine. Not that it was relevant right now.

“It’s not fair for me to be taking these things without giving you anything in return, is it? I hear you’ve been having trouble releasing your essence.”

“That’s right,” I replied. It had taken me a long time to even find a starting point, and I hadn’t made rapid progress since. I was definitely in the lower rungs of my cohort.

“Why don’t you show me now, given we’re already in a meditation room?”

I didn’t respond right away. Sister walked toward me slowly, took one of the nearby chairs, and spun it around so it was facing me. A smile was plastered over her face, though it was impossible to tell what it meant.

“Take a seat.”

“Thank you.”

After I sat down, Sister fetched a number of jars and a candle from a shelf. She opened the jars and used a spoon to scoop out the powder inside each, which she put onto a plate. Each type of powder seemed to necessitate a different amount. She wasn’t just portioning them out randomly.

Once she’d gone through all the jars, she shook the plate and mixed them together. When the powders had become homogenous, she held it out to me.

“Sorry, but what is it?” I asked.

“Noctisbane powder. It calms the mind.”

Given it ended in “-bane,” it seemed to be something a bit more dangerous than that.

“Ingest too much and you’ll enter a sleep you’ll never wake from.”

Just as I thought.

“There are eclipsera berries mixed in there too. They facilitate the use of essence.”

I waited for the catch.

“Take too many and your organs will melt into nothing.”

Just as I thought.

“With that, we have dried limosroot. It makes sure the toxins from the other ingredients aren’t absorbed by the body.”

That made sense.

“Have too much and it weakens your digestive organs, starving you.”

Probably should have expected that.

“They are all normally regarded as poisonous plants, but the way I see it, there’s a thin line between poison and medicine. Medicine can be toxic to the healthy and even to the sick in high doses. There is nothing to be excessively frightened of. Be afraid only of turning your back and remaining in ignorance.”

“I agree with you completely,” I said. I couldn’t say anything else. Her logic had me trapped.

I lifted the plate and tipped the powder into my mouth. The taste was indescribable. Steeling my resolve, I swallowed. The fear that I had just ingested poison made me feel sick. As I grappled with the powder, Sister lit the candle in front of me.

“Try releasing your essence,” she said.

“Yes, ma’am.”

I let the tension drain from my body and redirected most of my attention to controlling my essence. It probably didn’t take that much concentration, but since I was receiving one-to-one tutelage, I didn’t want to go about this half-heartedly. Besides, there was no need to hide the extent of my abilities. Not now, at least.

“Yes, you’re not that good at outputting, are you? Can you charge?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

I started doing just that, demonstrating the newest of my skills. I held my essence over the surface of my body, where it would enhance my physical ability if I wanted.

“You’re better at controlling it than you are releasing it. Can you focus it on your hands or legs?”

“Focus it?”

So far, I had only sent my essence out from the center of my body. Releasing meant pushing it out as far as possible. Charging meant keeping it closer than if you were releasing. I was hounded by a quiet regret: I wasn’t a child. I should have thought to experiment more.

“Best to start with your hands if it’s your first time.” Sister took my hand and lightly pressed her fingertip into the join between my thumb and my palm. “You have an aperture here. Try to focus your essence on this spot.”

Focusing my essence. I figured that meant limiting where I was releasing it or perhaps redirecting where my charged essence went. It flickered around my body like the candle’s flame. When I tried to move it, I felt it warp ever so slightly.

Toward my right hand...

Try as I might, my essence didn’t move. It only twisted in shape.

“Maybe we need to do this in steps. Try charging your essence everywhere but in your right hand.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

It did seem much simpler to make the hand an exception instead of a focus point. I pushed my essence away from my hand. It felt like squeezing a bag full of water to shift the liquid around. Focusing my essence would probably require something quite different.

“Well done. Can you limit where your essence reaches even more than that?” Sister asked.

“I’ll try.”

I was already close to my limit, but I wanted to get used to moving my essence around as soon as possible. Though it took some effort, I managed to manipulate it further. It felt like I was able to focus on it more than usual. It must have been the herbs.

“That’s it. Let go of some more of that tension in your body.” Sister placed her hands on my shoulders and started tapping in regular intervals.

Tap, tap, tap.

I was able to focus better on controlling my essence.

Tap, tap, tap.

I couldn’t remember the shape of my body. It was like I was nothing but essence. I was able to move it just like I would my limbs.

In this world, I was nothing more than an infant. I couldn’t even move my body—my essence—properly. Feeling impatient, I tried and tried again, fine-tuning my approach each time.

“Can you hear my voice?” Sister asked.

“Yes,” I responded unconsciously, unable to take my eyes from the candle.

“Have you ever seen your combat instructor and the dragonborn girl talking in secret?”

“No.” My mouth was forming words by itself. It was like I had lost control over my own body. I couldn’t even turn my gaze. Sister was completely out of my line of sight. My focus was still concentrated solely on manipulating my essence.

“Have you ever spoken to the combat instructor?”

“Just once.”

“What did you speak about?”

“It was when I got the coin of honor. He told me how to use it.”

“I see. Have you ever spoken to the snakeborn instructor?”

“Yes.”

“What did you speak to him about?”

“I asked him about...manipulating essence.”

“Do you truly intend... Do you truly intend to kill the girl?”

“I do.”

Sister lowered her head, falling into thought. After questioning me for at least another ten minutes, she pulled me back from my hyperfocused state.

“Thank you,” I said. “I can see the potential for improvement in my handling of essence now.”

“I’ll be happy to take another look if you get stuck. You’ll want to concentrate on your efforts more so that you can manipulate your essence more expertly than the others.” Sister turned around casually, as if nothing untoward had happened at all.

She had asked me questions, and I had answered them. Why would I think there was anything amiss? However, I recognized she made me spout truths I had no intention of sharing. Perhaps the noctisbane or whatever it was not only calmed me but chipped away at my mental faculties, preventing me from coming up with the idea of lying to her. It was similar to a truth serum.

Fortunately, she didn’t get anything earth-shattering out of me. It felt more like she was trying to confirm if what I told her before was true or not. As I made my way back to my room, I ground my teeth. This incident meant that I couldn’t be careless about lying to her going forward.

I opened the door, mulling over how I could escape Sister’s questioning in the future. The dragon girl was breathing steadily on the other side of the room, engaged in her daily meditation. Her concentration was growing stronger by the day, to the extent that she was so deeply focused that my coming and going made no difference to her. The room was so tranquil that my heartbeat seemed to roar, so thick with essence that I struggled to breathe.

The intensity of the pressure made my knees feel like they were going to buckle at any moment. If I tried to fight back with my own essence, I would fail to muster enough and be swept away. Essence repelled other essence. Even if I did learn how to output enough to resist her, it would become a test of stamina. I would be swept away all the same.

With that being the case, I needed to consider a different perspective. I restricted the amount of essence in my body. When I did, the pressure in the room stopped pushing against me and instead flowed past and behind me. I could breathe again. I had learned to suppress my essence without the aid of an instructor, so this was a relatively easy state to maintain.

I went to sit on my bed, which was just a little bit closer to hers than before, and crossed my legs. I needed to train whenever she did. Otherwise, I really would fall too far behind to ever catch up. Sister’s instruction had changed my views. Changing the way I approached things had helped me to overcome one obstacle. I was sure now that trying to force my skills to improve with no direction wasn’t going to cut it. I had to fill every second of my time and work every corner of my mind.

Test out every single idea and stuff every card I can up my sleeve.

I needed to think. How much of myself would I have to peel away to have any power over her life?

***

The morning started with long-distance training. It wasn’t the snakeborn instructor supervising this time but Konji. He led us down a route we didn’t usually take, which ended with us outside. Unlike the training grounds, there were no walls. Just a forest, spread out before us.

“Today, I will be teaching you the art of tracking.”

The children grew restless at the prospect of learning a new technique. I was curious about how easily they were riled up by excitement over tension, but more than that, I wanted to know whether this forest—a place I hadn’t yet encountered in my current life—was safe.

“Beasts dwell within this forest. Keep your wits about you as you walk.” That was all the instructor said as he set off between the trees.

Though the other children each pushed to be the first to follow him, I trailed after them. That was when I noticed something felt off. Perhaps it was because the vegetation here differed from the forests in my previous life. If I had been educated enough, maybe I could have carried out an in-depth analysis, but it seemed I had never studied plants in my last incarnation. At the very least, I couldn’t spot any plants with man-eating fangs, any grasses with pink leaves, or any trees that used their roots to walk. It looked like an ordinary forest.

“Rabbit prints are symmetrical. Study them and commit them to memory. This is the way it went.” The instructor didn’t criticize the children for being distracted by their new surroundings. Instead, he just continued to feed us knowledge.

Now that I thought of it, these children were more familiar with races that sprouted leaves from their heads than trees that took root in the ground.

“Broken branches can tell you about the creature’s size. Here, below your knees.” The instructor pointed at a snapped twig. “Once you get used to identifying footprints, you can start inferring weight from their depth and the ground’s hardness. Ah, and see how the right print is deeper than the left here? The creature changed direction. Perhaps it sensed a predator and fled. Eventually, you will learn to glean such information for yourselves.”

He turned back to the kids. “Everything that’s alive leaves traces. Sound, weight, consumption, and essence. Process all that information, and use it to hunt them down. The opposite holds true when you need to hide. Think about what your enemy is using to track you and conceal yourself accordingly.”

As interesting as the instructor’s lecture was, I was distracted by the realization of why he was taking over our training today instead of the usual teacher. Thanks to my pit organ, I had spotted the rabbit prints before he started explaining. By the subtle change in heat where the animal had brushed past the leafy branch, I could figure out that it was big enough for me to hold in both arms.

A snake’s senses were too good at tracking, enough that I didn’t need any instructions to hunt down a rabbit in this forest. Presumably, the same was true for the snakeborn teacher but not necessarily for my diverse cohort. No instructor in the world could teach what was given by senses that one didn’t possess. That was why Konji, whose race was as average as they came, was teaching us how to track. I nodded quietly to myself.

It was then that realized that I had let my guard down, all because we were in the presence of an adult. I had forgotten that this man was not to be trusted.

A cry sounded as a predator which had been chasing the rabbit bared its teeth at its newfound prey: one of the children. It was a wolf-shaped creature surrounded by what seemed to be a black mist. The tall beast towered above us, its fangs lodged in the dogborn girl’s neck.

The other kids screamed. The wolf shook its head from side to side, tightening its grip. Eventually, the girl breathed her last, the tension leaving her limbs.

“I did say to keep your wits about you.” In one swift movement, the instructor pierced the wolf’s head with a multitude of knives.

The beast didn’t have time to yelp before it flopped to the ground, the dogborn girl falling from its jaws. The mist faded like dirt being washed away by water, leaving it looking exactly like the wolves I was familiar with. The instructor did not explain what this creature was, nor why the mist disappeared when it died.

I finally realized what threw me off about this forest. There was no birdsong, although I didn’t think that meant there were no birds. Rather, they were staying quiet, because they sensed the presence of a predator.

The instructor pulled his knives out from the top of the wolf’s head. “Take this to the treatment room.”

“Yes, sir.”

He had spoken over the children’s heads, and the response came from a group of men standing behind us, wearing the same black robes as he was. The voice sounded young. The instructor left them to deal with the dead and continued to teach us how to track. Not one of the children seemed excited anymore.

I was more interested in the hidden men than the fact that one of our members was dead. My serpentine senses failed to notice them, yet they were close enough to hear Konji’s command, which hadn’t been especially loud.

As a snakeborn, I wasn’t unique here, meaning they must have known how to avoid pit organ detection. I should have been doing more to understand the abilities of different races. The lack of available information was frustrating. What if there was a race that no one could see or hear? Should one choose to kill me, I could do nothing to fight back.

***

The lecture went on for another few hours, after which we left the forest and began something called special training. It was led by Sister.

“In this training, you will learn about the body’s structure, vital points, and weaknesses, with the intention that you will put this knowledge to use in your combat and long-distance classes.”

Behind her was a dead body. “We are lucky enough to have a specimen the same size and age as yourselves to dissect.”

Some of the kids clapped their hands to their mouths. They recognized the body lying on the table. Now that I thought about it, it really didn’t make sense. There was no way that Konji would have missed the wolf’s approach. I thought he might have overlooked it to punish the children for letting their guards down, but that didn’t seem to be the case. It was clear, both from the routine punishment and this latest incident, that he wasn’t overly concerned with keeping us alive. I had the sense that he valued life even less than Sister, who had almost pulled a knife on me.

“Before we begin, please make sure you keep your essence charged. Dead bodies give off miasma. Touch them, and you’ll begin to rot. Worst case, you end up with necrosis. This one should be fine, since it’s freshly dead, but if you come into contact with any bodies going forward, charge your essence or keep small amounts of it released.”

Here was yet more knowledge that contradicted what I knew from my previous life. From the gravity of Sister’s tone, it sounded like this miasma phenomenon differed from the simple concept of corpses being unhygienic. I charged up my essence a little more than I otherwise might have and took a step toward the body.

The first thing Sister did was peel away the skin, revealing muscle and white sinew. “These are the muscles that grant people movement. These white ‘fibers’ are tendons. They transfer power between muscles. See what happens when I pull the tendon that runs through the wrist? The fingers move. Human motion can be described as a driving force supported by bones, muscles, and tendons.

“In dogborns, the ear canal bends partway like so, and from there it connects to the middle ear. However, they have the same inner ears as manborns. Here, we have the semicircular canal. Shaking someone’s head can throw off their sense of balance.”

Sister went on. “There are several parts of the human body that arteries run through. Neck, thighs, heart. The heart is protected by the ribs, so you’re better off going for the side of the neck or the inner thigh. The neck is easier, because you can target it from the outside. Take a look.”

She sank her surgical knife into the corpse like it was nothing. Ignoring how grotesque the sight before us was, her lesson was thorough and incredibly easy to follow. It was valuable too—we were learning how our own bodies functioned and how to break those belonging to others. I might have felt differently if I held any attachment to the dogborn girl lying on the table. The children who had shared her room seemed to convulse every time Sister started a new sentence, which I doubted did anything for their focus.

Eventually, her lesson on dissection came to a close. No one seemed to have much of an appetite at dinner that evening. In the following days, the number making use of the prayer room increased.

CHAPTER 2: EVERYTHING NOURISHES

Chapter 3

WE WERE NOW occasionally going into the forest to learn how to track in place of our usual long-distance training. While there weren’t any more deaths beyond the first, there were frequent injuries. It was the beasts who roamed there that we had to thank for that. The instructors consistently did nothing to protect the children from any creature attacking. At first, I thought it was to give us more specimens for our dissection classes, but I soon realized it was probably to teach us to be more vigilant when in the forest.

During these classes, I took great pains to spot the adults I guessed were watching us from the trees. Sometimes I detected a presence, a lingering scent, but they weren’t enough to spot a silhouette.

Several kinds of beasts lived in the forest. There were wolves, like the one we saw on the first day. The instructor caught a horned rabbit the next day, and then there were the boars which crackled with something like lightning. All of them were warped versions of the creatures I’d known in my previous life. The wolves were just like regular wolves—only a few possessed great strength, and I saw some jumping from tree to tree like flying squirrels. My guess was that this was variance within their species. That said, I had yet to witness any wolf exactly identical to another. There were even differences between the more muscular ones. Some had these strong muscles running throughout their bodies, while others had a particularly large lower half.

It was strange to see these discrepancies in such limited scope. If all these wolves had the same feeding habits, those with similar traits and characteristics should have been competing, leaving just the one variety with the most genetic advantages to flourish. That was why I believed their differences weren’t a matter of them being unique species, but of variation within their skills. If I was right, that meant all these wolves had taught themselves these abilities. And I knew that essence, the biggest difference between my two lives, was the key.

In other words, if you used essence well, you could learn the beasts’ abilities for yourself.

***

“Pick up a needle.”

Sister had the floor for our special training today. Although this room was laid out like a meditation room, the way the desks were arranged reminded me of my previous life’s classrooms. We sat wherever we liked. On each desk was a box of needles; they were just a bit bigger than those used for sewing.

“I will be having you make arcane tools today.”

That knife she showed me that exhausted people—I would be learning the secret behind it at last.

“An arcane tool is one to which a special effect has been applied using essence. Allow me to show you one.” Sister produced three needles just like the ones in the boxes. “These are ordinary needles.”

She threw one. It bounced off the wall.

“Now this needle is an arcane tool.”

The second needle embedded itself halfway into the wall.

“You can’t do much more than that with just a regular needle, but it’s still enough to threaten an enemy’s weak point.”

That was all it took to capture the children’s interest.

“The method is simple. All you need to do is imbue the needle with essence while wishing for it to ‘penetrate.’”

The children glared at their needles, activating their essence one after another. I followed Sister’s instructions too, picking out a needle for myself. Her words intrigued me.

“You can’t do much more than that with just a regular needle.”

In other words, a “regular” needle was all you needed to form an arcane tool. Therefore, most things could be turned into arcane tools. And if you didn’t just have a regular needle, but something more specialized? Then you should be able to do “much more” with it. Take, for example, a dragonborn’s scales...

Despite being distracted by these thoughts, I tried to focus my essence. Before I knew it, the tip of my needle had snapped, and it was rolling around on the desk.

“Your mind is wandering,” Sister warned. “I said all you need to do is imbue your essence and wish for the needle to penetrate.”

“Sorry, ma’am.”

I picked up the needle and tried applying pressure. It broke easily. It had become brittle, perhaps hollow. Distraction hindered the production of arcane tools. When imbuing failed, your object became brittle and broke. I had hoped to be able to create at least one successful tool to start with.

***

There were three needles stabbed into my desk. I had turned them all into arcane tools. I also had more than ten broken needles, all failures. That gave me a success rate of about 10 or 20 percent. My focus was starting to fray, and I was running out of essence. Although one needle didn’t require much to transform, I’d used plenty on the failed attempts, so it was no wonder I was tired.

I looked around me. Surprisingly, there weren’t that many children who had found success. The sticking point for them at this age was probably their inability to focus.

There were some with outstanding results, the elf boy in particular. He was a top student when it came to essence training too, scoring excellent results again and again. More than ten needles were sticking up vertically on the desk in front of him. He had broken just one. His first failure had been his last, and he went on to create perfect arcane tools one after another. Truly, manipulating essence was his forte.

As for the dragon girl, her desk was covered in countless vertical needles and many more broken ones. She was determined to dissuade anyone from believing that other children might have more essence than herself. While she might not have had as much control over it as the elf boy, she was still far ahead of everyone else. An accurate ranking was hard to envision, since making arcane tools required focus as well as essence, but it was probably safe to say that these two were leagues beyond the rest of the cohort.

Though I originally thought that three successful needles were a measly result, it actually put me near the top of the class.

Sister stopped beside a beastborn boy who resembled a monkey. “You don’t understand what ‘penetrate’ means, do you?”

His desk was littered with splintered needles, and he had yet to make a single one stand upright. Sister snatched his hand and pushed the point of a needle through the flesh between his index and middle fingers until it emerged on the other side.

“Ow! St-stop!” he howled.

She held him down so that he couldn’t flail too much before grabbing his cheek. Her disgust was evident from her gaze. “That is what ‘to penetrate’ means! Look at it!”

The boy could only whimper. Sister pushed his hand into his face. He was forced to continue the lesson with the needle in his flesh, not allowed to so much as writhe. Ten other children who had failed to produce an arcane tool were subject to the same fate. However, strangely enough, she seemed to overlook the manborn children in the room. I gleaned that she despised all other races but them. It was fortunate that I succeeded and escaped punishment. While others were suppressing their screams around me, I devoted the rest of the time to learning what I could about arcane tools and their nature.

***

We started learning two new skills as part of our long-distance training: trapping and perceiving.

“No, it’s best to tie your rope like this,” the gnome grumbled, adjusting what we’d just set up.

Trapping was, as the name implied, about setting traps. Perceiving was being able to spot traps. The skills came as a pair. The more you knew about setting traps, the better you were at detecting them. The opposite was true too. The snakeborn instructor decided it would be effective to turn our training into a competition: Half of us set traps for the other half to perceive. Our group was practicing the former skill, following the teacher’s instructions as we assembled our snare in the designated area. Naturally, we adapted our traps so that they weren’t lethal. They could harm, but they wouldn’t kill. There were types of traps that could cause some real damage, and I foresaw this training gradually becoming tougher.

Pipsqueak, Tiger’s hanger-on, had displayed a surprisingly high level of skill. It was probably thanks to his race. The gnomes and dwarves were proving themselves excellent and adept. Tiger was in a different group, and I was slightly taken aback by how assertive Pipsqueak was being without him.

While both gnomes and dwarves were small, the latter were broader-framed and physically stronger. The differences might become more obvious as we grew older, but currently both races seemed to be equal when it came to perceiving traps.

Unfortunately, there was no way of detecting oddities in temperature from something that wasn’t alive, so I only had my regular senses and knowledge to rely on, unlike some others. A batborn might be able to discern what was on the other side of a door without even touching it and perceive any traps beyond, for example. However, we didn’t have anyone like that where we were. I doubted it was because they didn’t exist in this world. Rather, it was probably because winged races would have an easier time escaping this place.

I observed that, throughout all the training we did, most races seemed to excel at one skill in particular. The exception were the manborns due to their averageness. A higher degree of specialism meant that there was a more glaring weakness. In the case of gnomes and dwarves, their small fingers allowed for excellent dexterity, but they also had smaller frames. As for me, I may have had a tail and the ability to sense heat, but... Well, from what I knew about reptiles, I was probably vulnerable to the cold. I decided it would be wise to learn more about snakeborn characteristics.

***

After training that day I returned to my room, where I rolled a wood chip around my palm. It was as small as the pad of my finger. I gripped it tightly and slowly let my essence flow into it. I willed it to become hard, as hard as possible. I filled my head with thoughts of nothing but that.

When I felt my essence exceed the chip’s limits, I squeezed it firmly between my forefinger and thumb. Eventually I spotted a crack, which was when the whole thing snapped and clinked to the floor. It had become as hard as I hoped.

I learned to slow down when imbuing things with my essence, allowing me a greater degree of accuracy. When I went too fast, my focus would splinter and my success rate would fail with it. At this point, I could reliably create an arcane tool from tiny objects like this wood chip. As for where I got them, I either tore them from the walls or picked them up in the forest.

It seemed that the strength of the effect you bestowed on an arcane tool varied depending on what the item was. The wood chips couldn’t hold as much essence as a nail, and any potential effect was weaker as a result. In fact, the arcane tools I made never got hard enough to survive the pressure of my fingers.

A broken arcane tool gradually lost its effect. Once it wore off, my wood chips were indistinguishable from any other. Similarly, if you stopped releasing essence halfway through the transformation, the item would not become brittle and break in the same way a failed article did. In general, it took five minutes to turn a single wood chip into an arcane tool. Today, I practiced on nine chips and had zero failures. It might have been time for me to focus on improving my speed.

After that, I wanted to make arcane tools with the dragon girl’s scale I had hidden, but I wasn’t sure what effect I should go for. Needles suited an increase in penetration power. With the wood chips, I had made different ones harder, heavier, and lighter, for example. What could I do with the scale?

While experimenting with arcane tools, I learned that you could apply almost any effect you wanted on an object. For instance, you could raise the penetration power of a wood chip. That said, while you could use your essence to sense the transformation of an object, that was it. I hadn’t actually checked if the wood chip did have more penetrating power afterward.

The degree of effect changed with the object too. For example, I tried imbuing a wood chip with the power to exhaust someone, but I didn’t feel the least bit tired no matter how much I touched it. If you failed to imbue something with an effect, there was no trying again. That was why I wanted to give the scale the best effect possible without going beyond its scope and rendering it ineffectual. I only had one, so I would have to choose very carefully indeed.

“You’re done.” The dragon girl declared my training over.

“Already?”

Although we shared this room, I wanted to practice making arcane tools here and nowhere else. When she released her essence here, the recoil ended up throwing me outside. That was no other environment to perform such a delicate task. That was why I struck a deal with her. For half our daily free time, she would refrain from doing any training that required releasing essence. When I was done, I told her she was free to do whatever else she wanted. She agreed.

Sometimes she watched me making my arcane tools, and other times, she left the room and wandered off somewhere. During our free time, we were only allowed to be in our rooms or in the prayer room, so if she wasn’t here, that was where I assumed she was going. That said, she didn’t look like a particularly devout believer. I thought about asking her and wondered whether she’d explain, but she seemed more likely to react with suspicion.

When her essence started to fill the room, I suppressed my own as much as possible. My aura became as thin as the essence around a transformed wood chip. The dragon girl glanced at me as if checking where I was before closing her eyes.

In my head, I mulled over the sensation of creating an arcane tool. I imagined a wood chip in my hand, then let the sensation resurface. If I was right, arcane tools would become the most valuable ace up my sleeve. Making them required being able to manipulate essence and a strong degree of focus. In terms of the latter, I had a slight advantage over my cohort because I was more mentally mature, and I intended to make use of that. I would learn to create arcane tools that did what I wanted them to, and I would do it before anyone else. That was my first objective.

***

“I surrender!” I sputtered.

“No way! You can keep going!”

We were now learning how to use weapons as part of our combat training. Unfortunately, I was paired up with Tiger, and he wasn’t in the best mood. He kicked me right in the stomach, and my surrender only served to put a smile on his face as he continued his assault. Just like his race’s namesake, he possessed mind-boggling agility. What was even more terrifying was that he had the beast-like reflexes to match. He was earning himself the coin of honor more and more often in these sessions.

As I first thought, the carnivore beastborn children tended to excel physically. Surprisingly, the same held true for snakeborns. The other one in our cohort displayed lightning-quick reflexes, and her muscle strength was nothing to be scoffed at either. If only I could say the same about myself. Unfortunately, my physical prowess was decidedly average when compared to the other children. However, it seemed that the other snakeborn lacked a pit organ.

I’d thought that all snakeborns had one, but when I observed her during tracking, I took note of her behavior. The way she moved her eyes didn’t align with one who could sense heat. It taught me that even members of the same race could have different abilities. Tiger was probably exceptionally powerful even among other tigerborn.

He flashed his sharp canines at me in an aggressive grin and stabbed his wooden knife into my shoulder, making me grunt. Obviously, it didn’t pierce through anything, but that didn’t mean it didn’t hurt. It was perfectly capable of injuring, regardless. Also, everyone was now using their essence to its full extent during these sessions, upping the risk in turn.

Tiger was eager to keep sparring. I looked deep into his eyes, reading his movements and habits.

Got it...

The moment he swung his knife, I swiftly leaned over to the right. I knew that his eyes had lost me in that split second, and he was now full of openings. I brought the edge of my blade toward his neck.

“Too slow!” His left hand grabbed my right and dug into it, pulling me to the ground. I could do nothing to resist. He turned his threatening glare on me. “What did you just do, Hardhead?!”

“What did I do when?” I wasn’t about to reveal my hand.

We glared at each other for a few more seconds, then Tiger clicked his tongue.

“Again.”

“Again,” I agreed.

Just as we were about to start over, the snakeborn girl crash-landed beside us with as much force as if she had been hit by a car.

“Twelve,” came the merciless count as a silver tail twisted in the air. The dragon girl’s eyes were unfeeling as she looked down at the snakeborn like a mere insect.

The snakeborn cowered on the ground and started howling, unable to stand her opponent’s arrogant stare.

“Get up,” the dragon girl commanded, a quiet irritation woven into her tone.

“You’re still no...match for our...instructor!”

The dragon girl fell silent. The wooden knife in her hand answered instead, giving out a loud crack.

“Ha! That hurt, did it? You just pick on everyone weaker than you!”

The wooden knife splintered. She tossed it to one side, then approached the snakeborn with solemn steps. It didn’t discourage the latter from taunting her.

“You’re a coward! A loser! Dumb lizard!”

The dragon girl grabbed the snakeborn’s collar and filled her own lungs with air.

“Hey!” she protested. “Let go!”

The dragon girl roared at point-blank range. Blood trickling from her ears, the snakeborn passed out. The dragon girl threw her limp body onto the ground, like she had lost all worth.

“Thirteen.”

Up went the revenge count. The snakeborn had taken part in almost twenty bouts of punishment. Hopefully her final moments were peaceful. Meanwhile, the tigerborn in front of me had turned pale. Hopefully he would weather the upcoming storm okay.

By my count, Tiger had punished the dragon girl about two hundred times.

***

“We will now begin with our escape training,” Konji announced, as if the huge club he held in one hand was of no consequence.

I wondered why we were in a different forest than our usual one—it was a new type of training. Konji lifted the club like it weighed nothing and pointed it beyond the trees.

“Run to the top of that mountain.” A straightforward command, easy to understand. Given where we were, though, it would be less easy to follow. “There are traps on the way, but I’m sure you can deal with them.”

He added that like it was no big deal. In any case, it looked like we would be running through a forest laden with traps. I still had questions. My most pressing one concerned the club.

“I’ll give a thrashing with this to anyone who is too slow.”

None of the children seemed surprised. They were used to unreasonable instructors and their lives being constantly at risk. Even then, I couldn’t quite believe the cruelty the adults were capable of. For starters, it was pouring down, a great rush of torrential rain, like buckets were being upturned from above. The “mountain” Konji had pointed to was completely obscured by this rainy weather.

From the group of children, I felt a pair of eyes on me. I turned and locked gazes with the snakeborn girl. She wasn’t trying to disguise her hostility. I guessed she’d been irritated by the dragon girl’s point-blank roar. Even before she’d stopped rebelling and joined us in training, the snakeborn girl had hated her. She probably feared that her spot as the center of our cohort was at risk of being usurped. Also—and this was the same for me—because snakeborns and dragonborns had so many similarities, people tended to compare us. In reality, there was a world of difference between our abilities, and the result was that we were reminded of our inferiority. Maybe the snakeborn’s hostility was also part envy.

She started whispering into the ear of the boy next to her. I didn’t like the looks of that, so I tried to eavesdrop. The rain drowned out everything except the odd syllable. However, I did know what they were probably thinking. I quietly stepped away from them.

“Begin!” Konji commanded in a low voice, accompanied by a downward swing of his club.

A booming vibration spread out under our feet as it hit the ground. Spurred onward by our instructor’s direction, we began to run.

***

It was almost an hour into our escape training. As I had learned from our long-distance training, carnivore beastborn were faster than other races, regardless of distance. There was no hope of catching up with the tiger- or pantherborns. The dragon girl was the one exception. At the very start of the race, she pulled ahead of the leaders and vanished into the rain. It would probably do me good mentally to just consider her an outlier.

Snakeborns were not easy to classify compared to other beastborns, and I was currently keeping an average pace in relation to the cohort. There were several children running alongside me. As for the traps, by following the paths of those ahead who had avoided them, I wouldn’t have to look out for every single one. They were only a concern for those at the front and those isolated at the back. Now and then, I did see children trigger one and collapse. Exhaustion must have been clouding their judgment.

I heard panting from behind me, and when I looked over my shoulder, I saw a group of four, maybe five, children closing in. I moved to let them pass. As they did so, one of them barged into my shoulder, pushing me off-balance. I fell face first into the mud.

They laughed at me. When I raised my face from the ground, I was unsurprised to see that I recognized them. The deerborn (or perhaps reindeerborn) boy at their center was the same kid who was whispering with the snakeborn girl.

“I don’t remember doing anything to you,” I said. “Care to fill me in?”

The children exchanged a glance before laughing again.

“Hieda told us to mess with you, so we are,” the boy said without a hint of shame.

Hieda was the snakeborn girl. I had heard the other kids calling her that in the dining hall. From what I knew about her, this was probably revenge against the dragon girl. She wasn’t powerful enough to retaliate directly, so she instead sought satisfaction by bringing the dragon girl’s “follower” down a peg. I couldn’t understand the mentality behind strategizing this childish bullying during a potentially lethal training exercise. Didn’t she have any hobbies?

I didn’t immediately respond to the boy.

“Wanna make him take another trip?”

“Yeah. Hieda’ll be happy if we beat him up! But let’s not kill him!”

“Right!”

The kids openly discussed the violence they would inflict on me. None of them had grown past the point of lisping. From the dragon girl’s punishment, I’d learned that the innocence of children made it easier to provoke them to savagery and violence.

I studied the kids’ positions and the terrain around us. Then, surrounding my body with essence, I kicked off the ground, right toward the boy blocking my immediate path.

“Hey, what are—”

The sole of my foot buried itself into his face before he could finish his sentence. I gathered even more power in my leg to send him flying. With that, I darted through the newly open gap in the ring of children surrounding me and started to run.

There were four left. All of them were beastborn, types that were superior in speed. They would catch up with me in no time if all I did was run. Instead, I jumped up a tree off to the side, kicked off its trunk, and twisted back toward the way I had come.

From right behind me, the deerborn widened his eyes as he watched. “Wh-What?!”

The jump gave me some height, allowing me to drive my knee into his jaw.

Sputtering, he shouted, “You’re not getting away!”

He snatched the hem of my clothing. Blood was streaming from his chin, but he was still grinning. I delivered a backhanded blow to the side of his skull. He let out a short laugh, not releasing me even as he staggered. I tried to twist his arm, but the other three kids caught up.

Using the deerborn boy as a shield, I continued moving so that they couldn’t surround me, and then I kicked him forward as far as I could. His companions caught him before he hit the ground.

In the pouring rain, the least fun game of tag I had ever been in began.

***

I ran for another hour, encountering my fair share of obstacles. When I looked behind me, I saw that my four pursuers had become five. The newcomer was Hieda. That confirmed that she wasn’t running ahead. Thanks to the interference from these kids, I had veered away a fair bit from my original standing in the race, and I was all but bringing up the rear now. Not only that, but I was more exhausted than they were.

They all seemed overjoyed to see me suffer, especially Hieda. I tried to turn my focus away from her unrelenting smile and toward the road ahead, but when I did so, they flung stones and kicked at me. My only choice was to continue running while keeping one eye on the scene behind me.

When I looked over my shoulder for the umpteenth time, I noticed that they had lost their foolish smiles. I wondered why, and it was then that I heard the foreboding sound of rapidly flowing water. Snapping back forward, I was met with the sight of the forest opening to a muddy torrent. It was probably a gentle stream under normal conditions, but the torrential rain had transformed it into rough ocher rapids that offered no chance of resurfacing.

“What the...” I heard Hieda mutter.

This was probably their first time seeing something like this. Maybe they thought pouring rain was a good thing, a chance to shower in the open air. I looked downstream, searching for any rocks that might act as stepping stones.

“What now?” one kid asked.

“We need to cross as soon as we can.”

They weren’t attacking me anymore. They must have known the situation superseded that. I considered going upstream and trying to find a way around when I realized I was forgetting something.

“Six? That’s a lot.”

The deep voice that spoke did not belong to a child but to an adult. Something slammed into me like a moving vehicle, propelling my body into the air. As my vision spun, I spotted Konji’s blond hair. He was standing right behind where I’d been seconds ago. The other children had been knocked into the air by his club too. All of us fell into the filthy water.

It was colder, quieter, darker than I had imagined. It brought to mind my most loathed memory: my moment of death. Air escaped through my mouth as I swam for the surface. I broke it for a second, spluttered, and then the current swallowed me once more. I needed to stop myself on the wall of the bank, otherwise I would have no chance of drawing another breath. An even more powerful current caught me then, flinging me around until I had no idea which way was up. I slammed against rock after rock, like I had become a plaything for giants.

My fingers brushed against a rock above the surface; it was too slippery, and my grip slid right off. It happened again. I couldn’t fail this time. I didn’t have the oxygen for it. I focused my essence on my hand just as Sister had taught me. Despite how poorly I performed when I practiced, I somehow managed a much better attempt this time. Blinded by the flow of the water, I waited for my chance.

Now.

I screamed inwardly—I was pulling up my entire weight with the tips of my fingers. Water turned my clothes to lead. I didn’t have the means to predict if the rock would break suddenly. I just wanted to breathe.

My left hand found another rock. I climbed, bit by bit, keeping my essence focused in my fingertips.

I gasped. One of the rocks had fallen free, leaving me dangling by one hand. Though my whole body was out of the water now, the ocher rapids were right beneath me. I needed to keep my cool and keep climbing. I exhaled quietly and tried to reposition. That was when a kid’s hand shot out of the water and grabbed my ankle.

It was the deerborn boy. He looked desperate. I could feel my bones protesting under his fingers, an iron grip born of the urgent need to avoid death.

“Let go!” I demanded in my own desperation.

“Don’t move, or I can’t climb up!”

I tried to shake him free, but his grip only tightened. He wouldn’t budge. We would both end up in the water again at this rate.

It wasn’t fair. I shouldn’t have to die. I wanted to live, and he was trying to take that from me!

“I’m the only one who gets to survive here,” I said.

Maybe if we cooperated, we could have climbed up together. But I couldn’t justify letting my chances of survival slip by even one percent. I grabbed a fragment of detached rock with my tail. It had become as thin and sharp as a thorn. Just what I needed it to be.

“That’s right. Don’t move.” The deerborn sounded satisfied. He looked up, and that was when he noticed my tail.

By the time he let out a gasp, the fragment was sinking deep, deep into his eye socket. His grip around my ankle loosened rapidly. I saw the light of his eyes go out, which was when his hand finally let go completely. His body fell back, his arm still outstretched as if asking for help, before the rapids swallowed him, and he vanished. I heard the splash distinctly, despite the deafening roar of the water.

My obstacle was gone. I waited for another moment before making to climb up onto a jutting piece of the cliff. A sharp pain ran through my ankle.

“Ow!”

My body tensed reflexively, which only made the pain worse. I didn’t have any strength in my muscles. I swallowed the complaints I wanted to spit out about the deerborn boy who’d inflicted this pain on me. With no other choice, I climbed the cliff relying on just my arms and my good leg. Now and then, I used my tail for balance, and while it wasn’t easy, I managed to make steady progress.

I heard an unwelcome sound under my foot. “Not again...”

My foothold vanished. I tried to hold on with my fingertips to stop myself from falling, but the rain had made the rockface weak, and it looked like it was about to crumble.

“Watch out!”

A hand reached out from over the cliff and grabbed my wrist. I couldn’t fight back as it pulled me up, and my body slid in a heap onto solid ground, my face pressing into the wet mud.

I immediately looked up at the boy who helped me. I recognized him—it was the elf, the one who ran circles around the rest of us with his grades in essence training and arcane tool crafting. His light blue hair was always partly curtaining his eyes, like he was afraid of others looking at him. Right now, he regarded me with pity. I guess he had been trying to save me.

“A-are you okay?” he stuttered. “Your leg...”

There was something wrong with him, I realized. It was unusual to encounter anyone in this environment, in this world, who spared a thought for others like he did. The adults encouraged competition, instilling in us a deep suspicion of those who could adapt to our situation. To put it in the terms from my previous life, we were being taught an unorthodox set of morals that meant we would not hesitate to kill.

“I’m fine,” I said. “Don’t worry about me.”

I didn’t know what he was thinking, and I wanted to get away. However, my painful ankle prevented me.

“I-I am worried,” he pressed.

“I’m fine.”

He paused. “Okay...”

The boy turned, walked toward the barely visible mountain top, and disappeared into the woods. I let out a quiet sigh of relief and stood up. I followed in the same direction, dragging my ankle behind me.

I could sense more movement in the forest than before. The beast population grew denser the closer I got to the mountain peak. At least, nothing would hear me dragging my foot thanks to the sound of the rain.

My stomach rumbled. It was still too early for dinner, but it seemed that running in this exhausting weather had sapped a lot of my energy. As I searched for something to stave off the hunger, a few red berries fell onto the ground in front of me. I gathered them and looked up the hill, finding a tree that bore the same fruit.

“What are you doing?”

“U-um... Nothing,” the elf boy said, even though he had rolled the berries my way. Guilt flashed over his face before he hid himself in the bushes.

I looked down at the berries. They were shaped like apples but were a size smaller. I split one in half and licked the inside. It wasn’t bitter, and my tongue didn’t go numb. I recognized the taste from the dishes served in the dining hall. Satisfied that it wasn’t poisonous, I tossed the fruit into my mouth.

When I finished my light meal, I started walking again. I sensed a child nearby. I had no doubt that it was the elf boy. He was more stubborn than I realized. He was walking right ahead of me, neither too close nor too far. While he kept himself hidden at first, he stopped bothering after he realized I wasn’t calling him out. When he found some strawberry-like fruits growing in a thicket, he picked a few, then turned to me.

“I’m not hungry anymore,” I said.

“O-oh, sorry,” he said quietly, still stuttering. He ate the berries himself.

The elf boy didn’t say anything else, the conversation between us dying quickly. I’d already resigned myself to the fact that I wasn’t getting rid of him, but I didn’t want to waste my energy needlessly by talking to him.

“I know about you,” he stammered.

I didn’t respond.

“You got a c-coin...right at the start, didn’t you?”

“Yeah.”

Back when combat training was still endurance training, I did a good job of mimicking the proper form. I remembered the elf boy from the very first session. He stuck out especially vividly in my memory for showing he was superior compared to the rest of us.

“And your—” he began.

“Quiet.”

My pit organ picked up a mass of warmth a small distance away, partially obscured by the rain. From its size, I guessed it was a somewhat large wolf. I held my breath and flattened myself to the ground, trying to hide myself from its line of sight. The elf boy noticed the wolf too and did the same. I focused hard on snuffing out all traces of myself, as if I were ready for my heart to stop beating if the need arose. Eventually, the wolf vanished. I gave a sigh of relief.

“Do you think it’s gone?” the boy stammered. He stood up, his eyes darting this way and that about the trees.

I walked ahead of him. A wolf’s pained howl came from the trees in front of us, followed by the woefully unconcealed sound of footsteps running off into the distance. The elf boy and I stiffened. I picked up a stone as I stayed on the ground. I closed my fingers around it, lying in wait. Something was approaching, and it wasn’t long before we discovered what.

The bushes parted to reveal a boy with the cautionary colors of yellow and black on his swaying tail.

“Oh, it’s you,” Tiger said. His ears were perked like he was searching for something, but the sight of us clearly disappointed him.

Predictably, his handmaid, Pipsqueak, appeared behind him. “Isn’t this enough, Tiger? The instructor will catch up to us if we don’t hurry.”

“Shut up. You don’t hafta tell me a million times.”

Tiger glared at us, and I raised my guard. I knew he didn’t view me particularly favorably. If he decided to attack now, I would have no chance of escape.

“I didn’t realize Hardhead was here.” Pipsqueak’s hostility flashed my way for a moment, then vanished.

Tiger, meanwhile, sneered as he walked up to me. He was already much larger than the rest of the cohort, and he looked even bigger up close. My body stiffened automatically when he came within reach.

“C’mon, don’t be scared.” He laughed at my wariness, probably mocking me. “What, she’s not around, so you gotta get Monk to protect you?”

Monk was the elf boy, then.

I didn’t say anything.

“Cat got your tongue, Hardhead?” Though his mouth curved, his eyes weren’t smiling. I didn’t lower my guard. “Whatever. C’mon, Pipsqueak.”

“R-right.”

Again, Tiger seemed disappointed as he and the gnome disappeared from sight.

“T-Tiger’s usually n-nicer than that,” Monk stammered thoughtlessly.

That implied that he was especially nasty to me. I would rather not have been “special” in that case. I would’ve happily surrendered to him, if he’d let me.

By the time we reached the top of the mountain, the violent rain had come to a miraculous stop, the morning sun visible beyond the clouds. I hadn’t realized that we had already entered the next day. The exhaustion I felt was nothing like I had experienced from any other training session, probably because I’d climbed a whole mountain mostly on the strength of one foot.

Most of the children were already here, including Hieda. The dragon girl was there too, but she didn’t spare me a glance. I was finally free from the elf boy. I sat down on a rock and let out a deep sigh of relief.

***

An empty hour or so passed. Several more children joined us, and I was surprised to see anyone who took longer than I did. None of them looked injured, so it was probably the traps in the forest that held them up. As we waited for the instructor, a few kids looked at the other side of the mountain, their attention captured by something. As far as I knew, there was nothing but a cliff there.

I heard the quiet sound of footsteps and looked over for myself. A huge shadow jumped up from the cliff and over our heads. It twisted in midair and landed silently among us.

“Is this everyone?” Konji made no bravado of his spectacular performance but simply stood there looking over us with that club in his hand. “Three. Fewer than I thought.”

No doubt he was referring to the number of missing children. We had never lost so many to one training session before. It showed how dangerous this task was. The pay-off was that we had dramatically improved our ability to conceal our presence and perceive traps by walking through a forest teeming with beasts and snares with no guarantee that we would make it out alive. As much as it pained me to admit it, the training was far from a waste of time.

Once he counted us, Konji tossed his club aside. “That concludes today’s training. Go back and get something to eat. First come, first served.”

With that, he threw himself off the cliff and vanished. The kids exchanged several glances before they started climbing down the mountain themselves.

Then there was me, at a loss. It should have been obvious, but since we had come all the way up, we would have to go all the way down again too.

***

“Finally...”

By the time I made it home, the sun had set, and the moon was starting its ascent. The weather was fine, but because my foot was anything but, the journey took even more out of me than the training itself. Focusing my essence around it disguised my injury and actually allowed me to walk.

I ignored my body, despite it begging me for food, and went to the medical office instead. I hadn’t been here since my time in the reflection room pushed me close to starvation.

“Here, what’s the matter?” a middle-aged man asked as I entered. Manborn.

“I hurt my foot.”

Last time I was here, a woman had seen to me. There were probably a number of adults who took turns staffing this office. The man wore the same black robe as the instructors.

“Would you be so kind as to show me?”

“Sure.”

Trying not to let his patronizing tone get to me, I showed him my ankle. It was horribly swollen and worse than when I last checked, probably because I forced myself to walk on it. On top of that, it was purple, suggesting internal bleeding.

“Oh yes, I see.” The man nodded to himself, put his forefinger and thumb together like he was going to pinch me, then pointed them toward my ankle. There was a needle between them.

I noticed him imbuing the needle with essence, but before I could react, he had stabbed it into the swelling. Strangely, though, it didn’t hurt. It must have been like acupuncture from my previous life.

“Yes, yes. Yes, I see...” The man continued sticking needles into me.

I could only stare blankly at my ankle, which was starting to look more like a cactus with each passing moment.

The man hummed with satisfaction. “That should do it.”

He took the sole of my foot in his hand and started rotating it in firm circles. I groaned as electrifying pain zapped through me. After smirking at my attempts to bear the pain, he set about removing all the needles.

“I bet it doesn’t hurt anymore, does it?” he asked.

I paused. “It doesn’t, no.”

Strictly speaking, it still hurt a bit, but it was more like a receding muscular pain, which wasn’t something I would take any notice of. It also felt like the swelling was going down.

“We can repair almost any injury you can think of, so never worry your little head. Just be careful you don’t lose anything, because we won’t be able to bring it back.”

In other words, if I had missing body parts, I was out of luck. I remembered the one-armed boy who had shown us around. I wondered if they would be able to at least reattach the limbs if they had them on hand.

As I tested out my stiff, less-swollen ankle, I thought of Hieda. I could have died because of her meddling today. I was sure she wouldn’t stop there either. And I didn’t know if I could survive another round.

I decided to go with my only option: getting rid of her.

***

The next morning was the first time there was no punishment for the dragon girl. She wasn’t making any attempt to get along with the other kids, as usual. The children she once had quarrels with were now pressing themselves against the walls when they met her in the hallway, content just to let her pass. No one scorned her anymore. Fighting skills were prized in this environment, and now the kids who had never been involved with her were envious of her.

Those who were hostile to her avoided her at all costs. Those who hadn’t hated her so much kept their distance, but I occasionally spotted them regarding her with interest.

While she filled the room with her cloying essence, I was there chewing on some random grass I’d picked up in the forest. Sister had used medicine before to forcibly draw information from me. I was lucky that she didn’t get anything critical. If she had, I might well have been killed.

I decided to come up with a plan in case the same thing happened again. I picked a variety of different plants in the forest and ate them one by one. I took note of what they did to me physically, and those with a similar effect to Sister’s drugs, I ate more often to get my body used to them. Right now, I was chewing on a leaf with a sedative effect. I wasn’t sure if my efforts would actually prove effective, but I had to try, even if the chances were slim. The same held true for what I was planning to do next.

I swallowed the poison leaf, which I had yet to even chew into mush, stood up from my bed, and went to the door.

***

I didn’t really like the prayer room. It was painfully obvious how much finer it was than the lounge space given to us children. I hated having to look at those boxes. The sight of them filled me with a dread that I couldn’t shake. Normally I wouldn’t come here even if someone asked me, but right now I didn’t have a choice.

Most of the children in the prayer room were between my age and perhaps fourteen or fifteen. My guess was that we would stop being allowed in once we were older than that. For the wide diversity of races here, there were many more of some than others. A great number of the instructors and the older cohorts were manborns. That was what I learned by observing those coming into the prayer room.

I walked around the prayer room, trying to look as natural as possible while keeping the members of my own cohort within sight. There were adults present too, though not many. Luckily, I was able to spot the person I was looking for. I sat nearby, put my hands together, and pretended to pray. I spent the time absentmindedly observing the curious flow of essence beneath my feet. Eventually, the adult next to me put down his hands.

“What do you want?” Konji asked quietly.

“You’re the one who brought the dragonborn child here, aren’t you?”

“You—” He swung his gaze to me. I kept my hands together in faux prayer.

This was something of a gamble. He was the one responsible for punishing the dragon girl. At first, I’d thought it just a method to quash her rebellious spirit. But this place wasn’t normal.

Konji’s actions made it clear that he was indifferent to us dying. And yet, the dragon girl was still alive. I’d first thought that the adults kept her here because of her immense power, but then Sister revealed that she would rather be rid of the girl. The adults held ultimate power here. Sister was perfectly capable of killing her if she really wanted to. Therefore, there had to be an adult who insisted that she stay alive. And a hunch told me it was Konji. If the amount of effort exerted on any one person was equivalent to their interest in them, that meant he had more interest in the dragon girl than anyone else.

No one else here had the same dragon-like features as her. At first, I thought it was because dragonborns were a special race. Konji might have kidnapped her as a newborn, or perhaps she was his own daughter. Either way, his seemingly levelheaded obsession with her spoke of a connection of some sort.

“Are you the one who tamed her?” Konji asked.

“We just had a little quarrel.”

He must have wondered why she suddenly decided to take part in training. It wasn’t my intention to force her to change at the time; I was just taking out my irritation on her.

It was time to get down to business. “I need your help.”

“I am not here to be your friend.”

“Good. Then you don’t need me either, supposing you really mean that.” I was partly being sarcastic, but he probably knew what I was getting at.

Though he might have been making a point about separating duties from personal feelings, the truth was that our lives were threatened by the adults who failed to do that. It was one thing for this system of education to destroy us, but it was another for us to be destroyed by something outside that system. It was perhaps deemed unacceptable. Education was the entire point of the home, after all.

“What are you?” he pressed.

“You should know better than I do.”

The eyes that looked down on me were colored with wariness. “Are you trying to read my mind? Flower fae can’t read anything deeper than surface thoughts.”

Flower fae? Could it be that I wasn’t pure snakeborn?

Though Konji noticed my doubtful expression, he didn’t elaborate. For some time, there was silence between us. Someone left the prayer room, then someone else. Konji only spoke again when it was getting close to lights out.

“I have my professional duties to fulfill. I will do no more and no less than that.”

I was waiting for him to say that.

“I can draw out more of her power,” I said, making an extra push to entice him.

“You?”

I hadn’t noticed that he had put his hand on my shoulder. It would’ve looked innocent enough to any onlookers, but I could see the knife in his grip.

“Your words hold no substance. You are too young to be trying to sound like your instructors.” Konji slipped the knife back into his sleeve like a magician.

Maybe it was too soon for this. It now seemed a bad idea to try to contradict him when I didn’t have any track record to back me up. That said, he didn’t look angry. He must have intended for this to be a gentle rebuke.

“It is time for lights out. I make a habit of coming here once every five days.” He went past me, heading to the walkway.

“No substance, huh?”

Konji was right in that I had failed to figure him out. But he wasn’t about to completely figure me out either.

CHAPTER 3: FRIEND OR FOE

Chapter 4

KONJI MENTIONED “FLOWER fae.” I was reminded of the girl with leaves growing from her head. I believed she was part of Hieda’s group, which also meant she had contributed to the dragon girl’s revenge count. I didn’t know her race, so I always assumed it was something related to plants. I now realized she must have been a fae, just like the elves. I never really noticed her before, so my only impression was that she didn’t stand out much. She always hid behind someone else.

***

“Beginning tomorrow, you will be starting your long-term survival training, so you will each be given a real knife today. There will be no replacements if you lose it before the training.”

That morning, we were informed about a new type of training. Its name gave us a good idea of what it might entail. I guessed that our frequent trips into the forest were to get us used to that environment. We had also learned to stay on guard when there were beasts about. The question was how long we could hold that high level of attentiveness.

I also noticed something strange about the latter half of the instructor’s speech. If we wouldn’t get a new knife if we lost ours, why distribute them now? My guess was that he was giving us implicit permission to turn them into arcane tools. In doing so, we ran the risk of failing and destroying them, and we would have to undergo survival training unarmed.

We were all handed a knife of the same size. I expected the weight to throw me off because we had only used wooden blades so far, but it felt surprisingly comfortable in my grip. It wasn’t that much heavier. It probably wasn’t that the knives were lighter, but that our wooden blades had added heft. I gave it a few test swings. My movements were awkward because I feared hurting myself. I was grateful we had them the day before our training started. If we’d been given them without warning, I might have ended up dropping it carelessly at a critical moment.

I swung my knife several times during training that day, getting used to the feeling of bearing the metal weapon.

***

Once training was done, the children went to compare their sheathed knives in a flurry of excitement. The elf boy, Monk, was already turning his into an arcane tool. We had undergone several more special training sessions with Sister, but that didn’t change the fact that it was harder to make an arcane tool from an unfamiliar object than one you were used to. Monk’s courage impressed me, even though he was probably only doing it because he was confident he would succeed.

The other children seemed just as impressed, their voices hushed as they gathered around him.

“There...” he murmured, and it was only then that he seemed to notice the eyes on him. He shrank back. “Wh-what are you all looking at?”

“That’s really something, Monk!” said one of the girls.

I had looked into where the nickname came from. It was originally meant to be teasing because he always came top in essence training. He didn’t seem to realize that though, instead taking it as a compliment and being secretly pleased about it.

“I’m really scared of our training tomorrow. It’d be cool if you could transform my knife for me!” the same girl said.

“M-me?” Monk stammered. “Are you sure?”

“I’m sure.” Her eyes sparkled, and her words dripped honey as she flattered him. “I’d really love an arcane knife...”

“Me too!”

“And me...”

“Same here.”

A bandwagon formed, with the kids who weren’t confident in their essence skills all passing their knives to Monk.

“I-I might mess up,” he said.

“You’ll be fine!”

“Yup!”

“We all believe in you!”

He had to have some confidence in his skills, or he wouldn’t have taken the greater risk of transforming his own knife. They must have recognized this. While he sometimes failed when working with a new object during special training, once he made a successful tool from something, he never made the mistake again. The children who had seen this were completely certain that he wouldn’t break their knives. Those who hadn’t probably saw his timidness and were confident they could take his knife for themselves as way of “apology” if he failed with theirs.

I watched as the children piled him with their requests of what effects they wanted on their knives. I was a little uncertain myself. Should I ask him too, or should I do the work myself? If I did the latter, I would simply make it sharper. I didn’t want to do anything too crazy to it, in case we were required to give them back later. This would also be my first time transforming a knife, so I wasn’t confident I would succeed. On the other hand, asking Monk might mean I would owe him a favor down the line. There was also the slim possibility that he would fail on purpose and I would lose my weapon. I would have no recourse then.

It was down to what I wanted to place my trust in: his character or my ability to create arcane tools. Putting it like that, there was only one answer.

I decided to have faith in my own skills. I couldn’t trust anyone else.

As I couldn’t focus here, I sheathed my knife and left.

***

I spotted the snakeborn girl in the prayer room that evening. The chairs around her were empty. She was facing the altar, praying intently, and muttering under her breath.

“Her...please...”

The dragon girl would take her revenge on the snakeborn every day at combat training, beating her until the latter either passed out or vomited blood. It was the snakeborn’s own fault, but she didn’t seem to realize it. She had been more than happy to lie and claim the dragon girl had attacked her just so she could join the punishment shortly after the system was established. Envy was her motivation.

“Kill her, kill her, kill her, kill the lizard bitch. Kill her now, right now, kill her no matter what.” She spewed out ghastly curses one after another. She did seem to realize that it was best no one overheard her, though, because whenever someone passed by, she would lower her voice.

That said, she wasn’t brave enough to say these curses to the dragon girl directly. She preferred acting from the dark and damp shadows—a true snakeborn through and through.

Once the room started to empty and she was coming to the end of her daily “prayers,” someone sat down beside her. She tried to get up, but the figure put a hand up to stop her. Her eyes widened with a questioning look. The figure pulled out a round wooden container from its breast and showed it to her.

***

I was done turning my knife into an arcane tool. As I munched thoughtfully on a poisonous plant, I absentmindedly watched the dragon girl work on her weapon.

There were some combinations of poison herbs that canceled each other’s effects. It was similar to the relationship between blowfish and wolfsbane from my previous life. I had heard that their effects were the total opposite of each other and ingesting them simultaneously made them counteract, extending the time before death. A similar principle seemed to exist in this world. Consuming a poison that elevated essence output and one that lowered it at the same time resulted in no change to the output whatsoever.

I kept chewing. The reason I knew this was because I once ate too much of a certain plant by accident. I kept vomiting, and I feared I would die. My symptoms only receded when I ate a flower with a conflicting effect. Of course, it was rare for an herb to have a perfect counterpart, so I had been especially careful with my doses ever since.

Chewing, chewing, chewing. The dragon girl clicked her tongue.

It was by accident that I learned how poison and medicine were two sides of the same coin. The body had several parameters: temperature, fluids, nutrient levels, and more. Fever medicine lowered temperature, while drinking water increased fluids. Take caffeine, a diuretic. When the body’s fluid levels were high, it could be considered a medicine that flushed out toxins. However, when fluids were low, it could be a “poison” that caused dehydration. There was a thin line between medicine and poison, and what you called a substance depended on how you used it.

Chew, chew, chew, chew...

“Quit it.”

Chew.

“Seriously?!” The dragon girl took my jaw in her iron hold. “Do that again, and I’ll tear your chin off.”

I would rather she didn’t.

“You got it?”

I gave a series of rapid nods, then forced myself to swallow the leaves in my mouth. They could’ve been chewed a bit more; they felt like needles scraping my throat as they went down. I endured it. They weren’t nearly as piercing as the golden eyes right in front of me.

Once she was sure my mouth was empty, she let go. She returned to her original position and went back to working on her knife. I was now without my snack, an incredibly useful way of killing time, and had nothing to do. It was past lights out, so I couldn’t leave the room. Sister would question me if she found me wandering around. Meditating was the only beneficial thing I could think of, but the dragon girl was using her essence to transform her knife. Releasing or charging my own would interfere.

I decided to exercise my tail. I still felt I wasn’t using it to its full potential. I especially tended to forget about it at instances that called for snap decisions. In a sense, that was where the memories of my previous life gave me a disadvantage. Right now, my tail was nothing more than deadweight. If I could, I wanted to be able to manipulate it with the same dexterity as my arms.

Glaring at the tip of my tail, I tried to use it to scoop up some wood chips that were scattered on the floor. It was as frustrating as trying to write with my left hand and took almost ten times as long compared to just picking them up normally. I eventually managed to curl my tail around them. I brought the appendage toward myself and dropped the chips into my hand.

This time, I tried the opposite: picking the chips out of my palm and putting them back on the floor some distance away. It was like I had gone back to infancy and was playing with wooden blocks again.

Just as I decided to practice piling the chips up, the dragon girl completed her arcane tool. Given her abilities, she took a long time, but I figured she was trying to be as accurate as possible. It was impossible to tell what effect she added to her knife just by looking at it. Some children made theirs glow or flicker with flames, but it seemed she hadn’t chosen anything as impractical as that. Practicality aside, though, it wasn’t fair how downright awesome fire knives looked. I was close to letting that compelling thought lead me astray, so I forced it from my mind.

Survival training started tomorrow. I doubted it would only go for a single day. I slipped under the covers and closed my eyes.

It was the last night before the greatest trial of my new life.

***

The next morning, we found ourselves in the forest. I woke up to trees in every direction. They must have carried us here in our sleep. I hadn’t noticed a thing. Maybe they used gas or something, like they had in the reflection rooms.

Children were waking up around me one after another. I felt around my body for my knife. There was one sheathed on the ground nearby, and I picked it up. Taking it out from the sheath, I checked that it was mine before tucking it away inside my shirt. I glanced around—there was nothing but the dense forest, and yet strangely the trees in the area we lay in had been cleared.

“What are we meant to do?”

“Don’t...yet...”

“Get...of here?”

Each group of children seemed to be deliberating on how to proceed. The survival training had probably already started. We didn’t know how long it would last or whether there were any specific conditions to fulfill beyond not dying. However, we were familiar with this forest; it was a dark, dangerous environment where beasts roamed. The children still had the image of the dissected dogborn girl on the surgical table etched into their minds. Although we all got through escape training, waking up in the forest without warning had the trauma resurfacing for some of the kids.

“No! No, I can’t do this!” a girl cried, running off at once to try to get back home.

She had shared a room with the dogborn girl, and that proximity must have made the memory of the wolf mauling her roommate settle deeper in her psyche. She didn’t have the composure to determine which direction to go. The moment she ran past the other children and into the forest, a bear trap clamped its spikes into her leg. She screamed and pitched forward, and her head came into contact with a wire. Her hands touched the ground, and a weighty mass slid from her body. The other children suppressed their screams as they watched it roll.

Looking away from the corpse and focusing on our surroundings, I saw that the trees that stretched away from the clearing had a few of those same wires, some more visible than others. Someone had taken great care turning them into arcane tools and setting them, someone who was obviously hungry for blood.

The children had yet to get over their agitation. We would all be sitting around for hours at this rate. I got to my feet, drawing their attention.

“Our instructor called this survival training. That means we’ll have to gather food and survive. We’ll have to go into the forest for that. Anyone who’s good with their hands should start disarming the surrounding traps.”

I didn’t know how many traps we were dealing with, but I doubted they would be this concentrated throughout the whole forest. It would have taken too much effort.

I was confident in what I said. However, just because I was right didn’t mean everyone else would accept it.

“Who the heck put you in charge, Hardhead?” The most physically impressive of all the children stood up. Tiger thought himself a leader. That was why he couldn’t stand it when he felt I was taking over his role.

The kids who’d started following my directions by heading into the forest stopped. The ones who had been too stunned to move before came back to their senses and gathered around Tiger.

“You disarm the traps,” he went on. “Unless you only told everyone else to do it ’cause you didn’t wanna risk getting hurt.”

That much should have been obvious. I preferred that any risky work go to someone else over myself if possible. Tiger had to feel the same way, or he wouldn’t be trying to get me to do it now. It meant he didn’t have to risk one of his pawns.

“I’m the leader here. You don’t wanna obey me, you can get lost,” he said.

“Fine, I’ll do it.”

I didn’t see any advantage in having everyone turn against me. Besides, all the traps seemed to be types we had seen in previous training. I was confident I could seek out any new traps too, as long as I kept my guard up.

I decided to be obedient and step among the trees. As I was disarming the densely laden traps one by one, Monk took a seat next to me and started doing the same. I glanced at him once before looking back at my hands.

“It’s not fair if only you have to do it,” he said with his stammer, sincerely answering the question on my mind that I hadn’t voiced.

He was about as good at perceiving traps as I was, and I wasn’t sure of myself at times. I wouldn’t have made the choice to help anyone with the task.

“You’re coming hunting with me, Monk. Leave the rest of the traps to him,” Tiger said, apparently not liking the elf boy’s decision. The larger kid must have been hoping that Monk would be an asset when it came to fighting. His fantastic command of essence meant he excelled in combat training too.

Monk tried to carry on. “Oh, um, okay. But w-we need to do something about these traps, or we can’t go into the forest.”

Tiger clicked his tongue. “Not listening to me, huh?”

“I-I promise to come hunting with you in a minute,” Monk stuttered, not yielding to the tigerborn’s threatening attitude.

With another click of his tongue, Tiger called for Pipsqueak. “Take Monk’s place and deal with these traps.”

“Sure thing,” Pipsqueak said with a sigh. Knife in hand, he set about the task.

“You too, dwarf kid. And you. And you, catborn.”

The chosen children accompanied Pipsqueak, proceeding in different directions as they started disarming traps. They would probably all finish way faster than me. I decided to slow down a tiny bit and slack off.

***

“We should be able to go into the forest now, Tiger,” Pipsqueak said. Several hours had passed, and one concentrated area of the traps surrounding us were now disarmed.

Tiger nodded. “Everyone who can fight, go out into the forest. Everyone else, make us somewhere to sleep or something. Anyone who hasn’t done anything by the time we’re back doesn’t get to eat.”

It sounded like he wasn’t prepared to share whatever he hunted for free. I was considering going out to hunt myself when Tiger looked at me.

“You’re not going anywhere till you’re done with those traps,” he spat before leading his troupe of kids out into the forest.

He must have seen through my laziness. I’d started to stand but once again lowered myself to the ground. I doubted I would finish with these traps today regardless of my pace. I picked some grass at my feet, knowing I needed to keep my strength up. It was the same grass I had seen during our tracking training. It was edible but far from tasty. I couldn’t remember eating anything other than the roots before. Appearance-wise, it looked like a withered radish. I chewed it in lieu of meat as I continued working.

“Ah.”

I felt myself step on something, then came the whooshing sound of a loosed arrow. I leaped out of the way, the sharp weapon lodging itself into the tree behind me.

“That was close...”

I was sweating. Just as I thought, disarming traps for long periods of time risked accidents because of waning focus. I turned around toward the clearing, hoping to get someone to help me, but they were all too busy setting up camp to even look my way. As dangerous as it was, I figured I might as well try to spring the traps by tossing stones.

I heard a sleepy mumble from behind me. I turned to see the dragon girl, sitting up and looking around with a drowsy expression on her face. From that look, I gathered she was trying to remember what she was doing in this forest. She turned to the right and saw the children working to build a base. They turned their backs to her as if avoiding her gaze. After she swept her gaze over them, she glanced skyward, seemingly wondering where the children on hunting duty had gone. Her eyes finally opened to full wakefulness. Glaring at me, she jumped to her feet and walked straight toward me through the center of the children.

“This way?” she asked, her voice a little hoarse from just waking up.

“Huh? Oh, yeah.” I nodded, not sure what the question was exactly.

She walked ahead of me, exuding vast quantities of essence.

“There are traps,” I warned.

“I know.”

She stepped on something, and an arrow came flying toward her. Turning, she knocked it out of the air. Apparently, I didn’t need to be worried.

She tore down thin wires, stepped through bear traps without consequence, and knocked down every arrow that came her way. Her innate talents were so insane that she was charging through this minefield unbothered. Off she went into the forest. I couldn’t stem my hollow laughter.

I managed to finish disarming my traps, so there was no issue in going out and finding some beasts to hunt for today’s food. It would be a good opportunity to explore the forest too.

***

Our tracking and escape training must have been to prepare us for this. Without the skills we learned, we would all starve to death out here. If survival training was meant to teach us to feed ourselves, it was probably going to last a long time.

It would be dangerous to face a deer or boar alone. Not only could their antlers or fangs be fatal, I doubted I was fit enough to escape since they might be faster than what I was used to. Rabbits were probably a safer bet. In a scenario where weapons weren’t a factor, body weight could be one of the greatest advantages at your disposal. Though they were quick, they struggled to hide from my third eye.

I steadied my breathing and suppressed my essence as much as I could, now able to clearly perceive other presences in the forest. A group of them was moving slowly through the trees. Most likely, they were the kids who went out hunting. Farther out was something larger, stalking our way as if drawn in our direction. A wolf. Other smaller presences were scattered around me. These were rabbits.

I picked out one of those smaller presences and used my pit organ to track it. I followed the trail of warm footprints it left behind until they became more vivid, and I eventually found their owner. I quietly concealed myself.

The rabbit jumped out of the bushes and surveyed its surroundings cautiously, ears pricked and nose twitching. Judging that there were no threats about, it twittered happily and started chewing on the grass.

The moment it was totally absorbed in its meal, I stabbed through the top of its head with my knife. Unfurling my tail from where it gripped the branch of a tree, I landed effortlessly on the ground.

Because I had been watching the rabbit eat its meal while hanging upside down, the blood had rushed to my head. I massaged my face with both hands and waited for my circulation to return to normal before picking the creature up by the ears and returning to our base camp.

***

I came back to find several kids glaring at each other. An argument must have broken out while I was away. It seemed one group had chased down a rabbit that the other group then slaughtered. The former claimed the prey was theirs, since they were the ones to corner it, while the latter claimed that the other group were at fault because they let it escape.

It wasn’t my problem, so I ignored them and went to prepare my meal. I then realized we had no fire. All the meat I had encountered so far had been properly cooked. We children were never fed anything raw, presumably because it would make us sick. At worst, it would kill us.

Relying on the knowledge from my previous life, I started gathering withered twigs. Once I had some of the perfect size, I used my knife to cut through the knots. The woodchips that came off, I turned into kindling. What resulted was a good, old-fashioned fire drill. Finally, I formed a fireboard, and my preparations were complete.

To increase the frictional force, I tried to turn my rod into an arcane tool by imbuing it with the intent of making it more flammable, but it gave me a strange sensation and ultimately failed. There were still so many mysteries when it came to making arcane tools. I charged my essence to strengthen my muscles as much as possible before working to light the fire.

The small size of my hands meant I couldn’t move them very quickly and wasn’t creating much heat. I was panting a little rapidly by the time smoke started forming. The splintered rod was scratching my palms, but stopping meant wasting the effort I had already put in. So, I persevered. As the smoke grew thicker, I picked up some brittle dead leaves and moved the kindling into them. I shook them about so they would catch the wind, feeling them heat up in my hand. They caught fire at last.

Biting back my excitement, I moved the burning bundle in my hand toward a large twig. Meat was on the menu! I turned to prepare my rabbit carcass for cooking, only to see the dragon girl chewing on some raw flesh. Fortunately, she was eating something she caught herself, but that didn’t make me any less worried that she was going to make herself sick.

Our special training came in handy in dissecting the rabbit. I replayed Sister’s lecture in my head as I skinned it, scraped out its guts, and transformed it into a mass of usable meat. I speared the pieces onto a stick and stuck it on the ground near my bonfire. The flames were dazzling against the darkness of the forest in the early evening. The children who’d been arguing earlier were now staring hungrily at my cooking, distracted by the smell of meat. However, knowing that I was Tiger’s enemy, none of them asked to share my fire. Some of them were even risking having their meat raw.

I was wondering how they would start a fire of their own when one kid pulled out his red-hot knife, transformed into an arcane tool by essence.

Wouldn’t carrying that around cause burns?

I dismissed the thought, watching as he thrust the knife into a pile of dry grass and set it alight. Now it was my turn to look on with envy, wishing I had one of those knives for myself.

I suddenly remembered the corpse left in the forest and glanced at it. Sister had warned us about miasma during our special training, so I went over to check. A strong metallic smell greeted me. I moved my face closer to inspect it and felt an unfamiliar reaction from my charged essence. It felt like the essence I had gathered around my feet was melting or being scraped away.

I leaped back reflexively like I had been burned, then checked my legs. The skin had turned gray. I watched it for a bit to see what would happen, noticing that it quickly returned to its normal color. The plant life around the body was darker than my shin and rotting away. When Sister mentioned miasma during her lecture, I assumed it was how this world referred to unsanitary air, but there was something coming off that body, and miasma was the only word I could think of to describe it. It interfered with essence, dissolved it... Chipped away at it? Or perhaps “extinguished” was the proper term.

I pondered over how strangely my essence reacted. This time, I released a fair amount of it and approached the corpse. I felt my essence and the miasma scraping against each other very keenly. The draining force between them was not one-sided—by letting out more essence than was being eroded, it was possible to keep the miasma’s interference in check. Right now, the miasma emanated at a one-meter circumference around the body. It would be bad news if it spread any further. I moved the corpse as far as I could before returning to my campfire.

***

After the children ate, there was nothing left to do but sleep. They huddled together under the roof they made from the wood they gathered and settled down. Naturally, I wasn’t allowed to join them, so I slept on the open ground. I decided to be satisfied with the fact that I didn’t have to worry about anyone bothering me and lay down beside my fire while the dragon girl slept leaning against a nearby tree.

A shadow approached her. The moment it brandished its knife, her eyes flew open, and her tail knocked the weapon from its hand. Another figure leaped at her from the side, but she was too drowsy to avoid it. Another knife flew toward her. I pushed her out of the way, the blade sinking into my stomach.

“What?!” the perpetrator, Hieda, cried out in surprise. She clearly didn’t expect me to protect the dragon girl.

I grabbed the wrist of her stabbing hand and, with the knife in my other hand, I cut open her throat. Blood gushed from the wound and her mouth, choking her. Her body pulled me down as she fell limp, and my knees hit the ground. I looked over my shoulder to see the dragon girl rampaging against several other children. My gaze returned to my own body.

“Great,” I muttered. Blood was seeping out from my abdomen.

I held the knife firmly in place where it pierced my clothing and looked at the dragon girl again. Seven kids were attacking her—one had been the snakeborn girl. The others were the snakeborn’s female roommate and some boys she was close to.

“Hieda!” one of the boys shouted when he saw her on the ground, blood flowing from her neck. The essence around his body flared and increased in volume. He wanted revenge.

Unfortunately for him, the dragon girl was now fully awake, and he was no match for her. The children were taking her blows one after another, their movements slowing. She didn’t have a knife. Someone must have stolen it from her before the attack. It meant her swipes weren’t lethal, and it was taking a while for her to thin out her assailants.

I touched my fingertips to the surface of the blade in my stomach. It felt slimy. A light green liquid, not blood, was dripping from it. The realization sank in, and with it came an increase in pain that made me gasp.

“Hardhead’s out for the count,” said one of the attackers. “The poison’s working.”

The dragon girl reacted, though she shouldn’t have. The kids had figured out that I was more than just a meat shield to her. Their eyes fell on me. I tried to ready my knife and prepare to fight back, but my essence was running wild, making it impossible to control.

The poison acted on essence. That meant it probably caused organ damage too. A poison that worked on the dragon girl, one that interfered with essence, the source of her strength, would be the most effective choice.

The blade was still lodged in my stomach. Unable to use my essence to mitigate anything, I fell to my knees again. The attackers came at me. They brandished their knives, but just as I saw my own face reflected in them, a series of powerful shock waves washed over us. Then came the roar.

The dragon girl’s roar had always been her most powerful and troublesome weapon. Now it was strong enough to unleash a physical wave that battered into our attackers. It pierced their eardrums and rendered some of them unconscious, their ears bleeding. But the others were still able to fight. Rather than chipping away at their numbers, the sound had woken up the other children. I sincerely doubted the newcomers would take our side. We would have even more enemies now than before the dragon girl unleashed her roar.

Most of the kids lived in fear of reprisal from the former punching bag. Even if they wouldn’t attack us unprompted, it was highly likely that they would jump on the bandwagon. Realizing this, the dragon girl moved before she could be pinned down by their numbers. Picking me up by the scruff of my neck, she followed the trap-free path into the forest. They couldn’t follow us. They hadn’t seen the work we had been doing, so they had no guarantee that we had removed all the traps.

The dragon girl jumped up into a tree, adjusted her grip so she was now carrying me under one arm, then moved onto the neighboring branches. Though her earlier roar disoriented my sense of balance, I tried to focus on our surroundings. It was a good thing I had explored this area in daylight.

“That way...” Making sure she could see me, I pointed toward a place we could set up a decent camp.

She clicked her tongue at being ordered about before running in the direction I’d indicated. We arrived in no time. A lone large tree was growing among the thick shrubbery of the forest. At its base was a cavity about the size of a small igloo that I’d noted earlier would make a good temporary shelter. It also placed us far away from the other children.

The dragon girl squeezed herself in that space with me still under her arm. While we didn’t need to worry about our attackers anymore, I still had an open wound in my stomach, and it was making breathing more difficult.

“Snake boy.” The dragon girl looked at my injury and frowned. The time was perhaps inappropriate, but it struck me that I had never seen her make that expression before. “Snake boy...” Her gaze wavered. She kept looking at the wound and away over and over, dabbing at it now and then.

There was only one answer of who supplied the snakeborn girl with poison. I also knew the nature of the toxin—it greatly enhanced the power of essence while inflicting major organ damage. High doses led to essence rising to uncontrollable levels, organ failure, and, in the worst cases, death. That said, if it was administered orally along with an herb that hindered its absorption, its effects could be suppressed.

Though I had a poisonous plant that could counter it, it was back at the original camp. I was facing the worst-case scenario, feeling the clock ticking toward my death. My thoughts were on the verge of running in circles. To anchor myself, I grabbed the tiny hand that was reaching toward my wound.

I was gasping now and covered in a cold sweat. It couldn’t end here. I needed to remember everything that had happened up till now, every last detail. I needed to squeeze it from my brain, even if it turned out there was nothing there that could save me. The waves of my memory crashed over me, images flashing nonstop before my eyes. The altar. My first glimpse of the sky. Forest. People. Every single word exchanged in every single conversation.

“What kind of medicine did you make with the scales I gave you before?”

The discussion I had with Sister. I asked her about the scales the dragon girl had shed. As I recalled, she replied, “I looked into it afterward. Apparently, blood’s better than scales for making medicine.”

What could you use scales for, then?

That didn’t matter right now.

“You think? But that girl with the huge tail, she’s still in her reflection room, right?”

The demonborn I used to share a room with. As it turned out, the dragon girl had rebelled to the point of near death.

I went back further, recalling the room where the memories of my previous life resurfaced.

There was an odd smell in the room, though I might have been imagining it.

In all likelihood, the reflection rooms had been filled with a drug-based gas that caused hallucinations. I wondered why it hadn’t worked on the dragon girl.

“Blood...” I said.

She gave me a questioning look.

“Your blood... Medicine...”

I had no idea if this would work, but my memories told me that her blood had an antidotal effect.

She picked up the knife, cut a line into her palm, formed a fist, and then squeezed it over my wound. The blood dripped through her fingers. The lukewarm liquid stung horribly as it came into contact with my injury, and I groaned in pain.

What if we don’t have the same blood type? Does the concept of blood types even exist in this world? I endured the agony as my head spouted nonsense.

“Snake boy. Open your mouth.”

I obeyed with a grunt. Her freshly squeezed blood dripped down my throat. Who knew if taking it orally would have an effect on an external wound? I was willing to try anything, so I forced myself to swallow the drops of blood.

It felt like I was being burned from the inside out. At the same time, I was freezing. I gripped the dragon girl’s wrist with enough force to snap it. It was the only thing that kept me conscious.

***

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.”

***

I harvested some foliage to hide the opening of our new base from view. As I was setting it in place, the clapper sounded.

“Hmph?”

“Welcome back,” I mumbled around my mouthful of grass.

She had a rabbit in her hands. She must have already worked out the reason for the clapper, because she didn’t trample on the wire or try to break it. She looked a little confused as she surveyed our camp, though I couldn’t blame her. The fire was roaring in my makeshift stone oven, atop which sat a bamboo cup filled with boiling water. Behind it were two bamboo beds which, while shoddy, would be much better than sleeping huddled together. I had managed to improve our quality of life in terms of food and shelter.

I swallowed the grass in my mouth before she could tear my jaw off. “I’ll prepare that,” I said, pointing to the rabbit.

“Hmph.”

I took it from her while she was still taking everything in and butchered it in no time. It was my second time gutting a rabbit to be eaten, and I was getting used to it. As far as I knew, tanning the pelt required a special liquid, so that was beyond me. I had no choice but to dispose of it along with the organs.

I cooked the rest of the rabbit on top of the flame-heated stone. As the moisture evaporated, the air was filled with steam and an appetizing fragrance. The primary reason for not cooking it with an open flame was to avoid the light alerting others to our presence. This method reminded me of grilled meat, which made the rabbit look even more delicious.

I tossed some of the cooked meat into a container I had made from half a bamboo stick and offered it to her. I added a utensil with sharp points that I fashioned after a fork.

She eyed the food with a grunt but began to wolf it down. While she was capable of eating meat raw, it looked like she preferred it cooked. She watched me eat the food she hunted with a murderous glare but otherwise permitted me to continue without saying anything.

I was sure my cooking skills impressed her. I ate half of the rabbit, my reward for preparing it and making the cookware. I wasn’t going to let her complain. Whatever was left went in the cup of boiling water to make a stock. I added the more palatable of the leaves I had come across to make soup. Taking it from the heat, I waited until it was cool enough to eat, then offered it to her.

“Here.”

She took it from me, puzzled. “Hmph.”

It wasn’t as tasty as the food the adults gave us, but it was pretty impressive given I had made it in the middle of a forest. That said, in terms of nutrition, I would rather have had pure carbohydrates for energy.

“Food’s better when it’s cooked, right?” I asked.

“Hmph.”

That was all she had said since she got back. Still, it looked like she now saw the value in cooking, so that was my job done. It also meant I didn’t have to be a burden because of my injury.

***

The sound of snapping twigs filled the air while she went to meditate a short distance away. She wasn’t exuding vast amounts of essence like she usually did, probably to avoid attracting any beasts. I was carving bamboo with my knife by the light of the bonfire, gently blowing away the shavings. Now and then I held it up to the light of the flames to study my progress. There was a comfortable silence over our camp. Maybe it was my human instincts, but watching the flickering campfire soothed my soul.

She must have felt the same way, giving herself over to the crackling of the flames, a tranquil expression on her face. I raised my head to give my face a break from the heat. When I caught sight of the star-studded sky above, I couldn’t help but hum in amazement. It was so gorgeous that I was willing to accept it as the sole compensation for being forced to live in this cruel world where death was assured. I was sure I had never felt such deep emotion in my previous life. The rational part of my mind recognized it was because, back then, the city lights prevented me from seeing the stars so clearly. However, the reason didn’t really matter to me.

Right now, I just wanted to take in the view as best I could. Human memory was fragile and unreliable, fleeting enough to be otherworldly, blank. But I was determined not to forget this moment, even if death claimed me again. I was sure I wouldn’t.

I looked over and saw she was gazing at the sky too. She was born in a chamber with no windows, and even after we started training, she was never allowed anywhere but the prayer room or the bedroom after sunset. This must have been her first time seeing the stars. The dragon girl narrowed her eyes, as if the vast expanse of twinkling lights was too dazzling for her.

***

I hung from a branch with my tail, stretched out my arms, and looked around. It’d been two days since I closed up my wound and secured it with some wire, and it’d healed completely. The process might have been accelerated because I went about my days with my essence charged.

Wrapping some cooked rabbit meat in a leaf to take it with me, I left our new base. I was off to do some reconnaissance on our old campmates.

***

“Mostly looks the same.” I watched them from beyond the wall of traps, staying as far away as possible.

The kids who attacked the dragon girl went about their business without a hint of guilt on their faces. I’d thought they would be ostracized for attacking a peer, but they must have pinned all the blame on us.

The camp was now far more developed than ours, especially compared to its first days. I wasn’t surprised. Not only were some of them better with their hands than me, but they had way more manpower.

There was an isolated patch of black, withered grass on the ground, probably a result of the miasma emitted by the snakeborn girl’s corpse. Her companions were still among the children, meaning they considered the dragon girl and me as the enemy.

I carefully concealed any signs I was ever there. The kids would only raise their guard if they realized how close I had been. I took as much of a detour as I could before heading toward our own camp, careful not to let it get so long that I ended up lost. It was easy in the forest, where visibility was poor. I also made sure not to let my essence go out any further than it could handle, but I otherwise pushed it to its limits.

As I went the long way around, I came across a river. I didn’t know if the water was drinkable or not; it was the fish that intrigued me.

“It’s freezing!”

I hadn’t considered temperature with all the thick greenery around, but it had gotten significantly colder since the training started. Perhaps winter was approaching. I reached out, waiting for one of the salmon-shaped objects to slip between my feet. Just when I felt one against my fingers, it spewed out a jet of water and zoomed away over the river’s surface like a sideways bottle rocket.

“Figures.”

I couldn’t underestimate anything in this forest. While our instructors gave us meat, we never had fish, so the sight of one after so long lowered my guard. I should’ve remembered that none of the creatures in this world were normal. Then again, I wasn’t a normal kid either.

The temperature of the river current got in the way of my pit organ, but I could still detect essence to pinpoint where there was life.

“Come on.”

Still soaking wet, I pushed my fingers below the water’s surface, then suppressed my essence as much as possible. It dropped close to zero, blending me in with my surroundings. That was when I spotted wriggling masses of essence pushing forward amid the current. They were swimming against it, going upstream. Now and then, one would collide with a rock. I kept my vacant eyes on the surface. When I felt scales against my ankles, I charged my essence to its limits, hooked my fingers into the fish’s eye sockets, and flung it ashore.

The impact knocked it out. I speared it with a stick, ready to take it home. That was when I heard a distant howling. I snapped my head up to see that the sun was already setting.

“Uh-oh.”

The forest at night was the perfect hunting ground for wolves, who could see well in the dark. While they had prowled around aimlessly at a distance before, it was now time for them to make a move. Their presence among the trees grew heavier. I quickened my pace, anxious to get back to camp. I could feel the beasts behind me, sticking closely. And there wasn’t just two or three of them—from the pack emerged a smaller presence that ran ahead of me and blocked my path.

The wolf growled. It was a type that produced currents of air; I could feel its wind blowing in my direction. I was trapped. They had probably been waiting to catch me out on my own. It would explain why they seemed to predict my movements. I was going to have to fight my way out of this situation with nothing but an extra-sharp knife.

“And after I just got over that hole in my stomach too,” I grumbled, pulling out my secret weapon: the dragon girl’s shed scale.

I had turned it into an arcane tool. With my current skills, I was only able to enhance a quality inherent to the object already. I could make needles pointier, wood chips harder, and knives sharper. Dragonborn scales had the ability to store essence.

I crushed the scale in my grip, and the essence stored within it overflowed. It was mine, so I should be able to control it. With no guarantee it would work, I drew it around my body.

The wind wolf blocking my path growled warily as the other wolves caught up at last. I was pincered by the creatures from the front and behind. I kept every one of them in sight as I jumped to the side, making use of split step to reach top speed immediately. The wind wolf was the only one that didn’t lose sight of me, racing after me.

Got it.

The moment it started running, I caught a nearby tree trunk with my tail and flipped onto my back so that I slid under the wolf. I thrust my knife upward, slitting the beast open from the neck down through the torso. The extra sharpness glided right through its thick pelt, dealing a lethal blow by sinking into the animal’s stomach. I rotated to land safely on the ground, then started my escape in earnest.

Though I concentrated my essence in my legs as I ran, the pursuing wolves were also getting faster. Now and then, I would remember the traps and try to use them as a shield, but the beasts seemed like they could see them and avoided them with ease. I jumped up onto a branch, but I could feel the masses of essence approaching from behind at high speed.

I gasped as the moonlight revealed black thorns reaching up toward me from the ground. I went to jump, only for the thorns to snap the branch—which was as thick as my torso—with ease. Despite the glow of the moon, I couldn’t make out the creature itself. Only when it growled quietly was I able to pinpoint its essence and confirm it was there in the first place.

In my mind, I dubbed it a shadow wolf. The shadow launched its thorns at me a second time—they lined up like fangs set in a large jaw, blocking off my escape route. They may have looked like thorns, but the fact they severed that branch told me they had the cutting power of a metal blade. Their blackness made it difficult to judge their distance as well.

“Great.”

I tried to jump to another tree, only for another wolf to tackle it and send it falling. This one had grotesquely bulging muscles, and I understood how it felled the tree through raw strength.

Just as I accepted my fate, the black thorns froze mere inches from my face, as if there were a glass wall between us.

“It really is a shadow,” I said in realization.

The thorns didn’t extend into the patch of moonlight in front of me. I surmised that light rendered the shadow wolf powerless. The muscular wolf—the “power wolf”—had inadvertently saved me. Not only that, but it seemed speed wasn’t its forte, as expected from its appearance. I ran through the moonlight, increasing the distance between me and the wolves.

Another howl resounded in the distance. This time, it was so chilling that it seemed to zap my skin with electricity.

“Dammit,” I gasped.

They knew where I was. The shadow wolf’s nature probably aligned with its abilities. It was devious and persistent.

I ran back in the direction of our camp, trying to think of a way to bring my pursuers into contact with the dragon girl.

“I had to abandon my salmon too,” I sighed. “This sucks.”

That might have been what upset me more than anything else. I sheathed my knife with another sigh, then sneezed. It was likely due to the combination of my soaking body and the night wind cooling it down.

***

“I guess I’ve got a cold,” I said to myself as I shivered, holding my hands up to the fire.

Having lost my salmon to the ordeal of my escape, I had begged the dragon girl for something to eat. Eventually, she let me have a single rabbit paw. More accurately, I managed to swipe it from her pile of leftovers. Once my stomach was full, I rummaged through my pockets then remembered that the scale was no more.

As things stood, the dragon girl’s talent for manipulating essence far surpassed that of the other children. While her own skills might have played a role, there was no denying that the secret to the amount of essence she possessed lay within her draconic biology. Her scales had the innate ability to store essence, supporting how she was able to exude vast quantities of the stuff. That said, storage was all they could do. They couldn’t increase the essence she was able to draw out of herself, though the essence she gave out during one meditation session far surpassed what I produced in a whole day. Dragonborns couldn’t just store essence; the amount they expelled was abnormally high too.

“The wolves are trying to figure out our movements,” I said, intending to continue with a warning to be careful until I realized the dragon girl looked totally disinterested. She could probably figure out what that meant for herself.

I picked up my knife and a piece of bamboo and carried on crafting. The extra-sharp blade shaved away at the plant’s surface with ease. My knife-handling skills were visibly improving as I continued doing this work daily. My rule for this life was to give my all to everything I did. Crafting seemed like a time-killer, but I was sure the practice would come in handy one day.

I turned the crafted bamboo into an arcane tool with increased durability, and I was now able to do that with fewer and fewer hiccups too. When it was done, I rubbed it down with oil from these walnut-like nuts. I placed my finished work on the log next to the dragon girl like it was an offering.

“A comb,” I explained.

She looked at it in confusion and then back at me, as if to ask, “So what?”

Actually, she probably didn’t know what a comb was in the first place. I’d made it so we could brush out the bugs that clung to our hair. In this environment, the physical and psychological harm that bugs could cause were potentially lethal but particularly the latter. Even the discomfort they caused that led to sleeplessness could put your life in danger when it came to survival. Or so I heard anyway.

I picked up the comb and walked around behind her as she watched me warily all the while. Taking one tuft of her shiny, moonlight hair, I ran the comb through it slowly. Her hair was a mess—we didn’t have much time for personal grooming during survival training—but it only took a few runs to make the strands neat.

That silver hair that grew just beyond her shoulders, her golden reptilian eyes that seemed to hint toward a curious strength, and her youth all came together to make her whole existence exude mystique. Maybe a part of her otherworldly appearance made the boy within me all but worship her. Maybe the reason I didn’t hold the same blind devotion was because of her savagery and ill manners.

Once I finished combing her hair, I gave the tool over to her and got back to scraping bamboo. I tore off a long, rectangular strip of bamboo and sharpened it to a point. I was making an awl, which I would imbue with extra penetrative power. Given the base material, there was a limit to how much I could improve it, but it should be good enough to stab through an eye or to kill a human who wasn’t defending themselves with essence. It also had use as a tool for disarming traps.

As I carved, she meditated, combed the fur of her tail, and eventually settled to sleep.

***

The morning sun cast its light over the thick green of the forest. A girl raced through the vegetation, keeping close to the ground. Her footsteps barely made a sound, the result of her commitment to training. Perhaps the most striking aspect of her appearance was the bouquet of flowering plants atop her head. They weren’t just placed there but were actually growing. It made one sympathize with an adult male flower fae whom such a feature might not suit.

For some reason, the flower fae girl was snooping about our surroundings. I used a silent walking technique more effective than hers to sneak up behind her. Though my steps made no sound, she seemed to detect me when I was inches away and turned around.

She was still too slow.

Shoving her to the ground so she was face-down, I looped some wire around her neck like the reins of a horse. They were from the traps I’d disarmed.

“Don’t move. No essence.” I only needed to cross my hands for the metal to dig into her neck. With a bit more force, it would slice clean through to the other side. “You realize I can have your head off if you even twitch, don’t you?”

She froze. I understood completely—she didn’t want to die, and neither did I.

“You’re allowed to talk, but that’s it. Got it?”

“Yes,” she replied after a gulp, accepting her place. She was what every kid should aspire to be.

“You’re after the dragonborn, aren’t you?”

She paused. “Yes.”

Her tone was too even for me to be sure if she was telling the truth or not. She was adept in these kinds of situations compared to the other children. Her behavior reflected the most human parts of Sister intensified. In short, she was incredibly devout. She was also one of the kids who had punished the dragon girl. I needed to be on guard. Maybe killing her was the best option.

“I came to negotiate,” she said, as though sensing where my thoughts were headed.

Given she had also sensed my approach, she was showing curious perceptiveness. I remembered Konji mentioning that flower fae were able to read minds, so maybe that was it. Maybe that was also why she was so much more impertinent than the other kids our age.

“Negotiate what?” I asked.

“The dispatch of that arrogant dragonborn. He wants her dead too. As do you.”

She was completely clueless.

“You’re constantly regarding her with murderous intent. Fear not, you are not alone. We have a great power on our side,” she continued.

I guessed she was referring to Sister. Also, that the murderous intent she sensed did not come from me but the boy. This conjecture lined up with what Konji said—that flower fae could only read what was on the mind’s surface. She could tell the size of a stone by the ripples it sent through the lake but not its color. It wasn’t within her capabilities to perceive the source of my emotions. The only thing visible to her was my maddening envy, not what caused it. She had no reference for that, so she compartmentalized it as the closest thing she understood: murderous intent.

I knew what she was after. I bet she had come expecting her mind-reading abilities would give her the upper hand in this “negotiation.” She was probably here alone so she wouldn’t be seen as a threat and because she was confident she could sway me. We were enemies. Chances were high that her side would come after the dragon girl and me once this training session was over. Here, I had a prime opportunity to kill her.

I would do it. The question was how. I had to make effective use of the life before me for the sake of my survival. I would absorb the marrow from her bones, her soul, to sustain my own life. Perhaps that urge came from the all-too-familiar philosophy from my previous life: Finish what was on my plate. Waste not, want not. I was sure of it.

The flower fae’s mind-reading ability was incredibly annoying. It made it difficult to catch her by surprise. Then there was the fact that I was probably part flower fae myself. I might have been using the same abilities without even realizing it. I wanted to know more.

I swung my knife into her ankle, cutting through her Achilles tendon. She cried out and started thrashing, so I tied her wrists with the wire. That was enough to render a child powerless, with very few exceptions.

I marked her body with several shallow cuts. There were already tears in her eyes, probably from fear and rage. She squirmed and writhed like a caterpillar as she tried to escape me. Giving her a small smile, I dangled my knife in front of her to deepen her despair. Now and then, I took an exaggerated step that made me look like a clown.

She whimpered, and I whistled a tune to add to my performance. It wasn’t that I was enjoying myself, but if I wanted to practice reading minds, it would help to heighten her emotions as much as possible for my first attempts. Hopefully she would start wanting me to learn too before her dignity crumbled completely. I would certainly be giving it my all.

More whimpering. I raised the knife.

***

The forest’s wolf population increased, most of them wind wolves. Then came the ones whose bodies crackled with lightning and the muscular types. However, I never encountered another shadow wolf. The population was so dense that it was impossible to think they had been here all this time. That said, they tended to move alone rather than in groups, allowing me to defeat them without the dragon girl’s help. In all likelihood, they had been removed from their original packs and released into these woods. It wasn’t hard to conclude it was the instructors’ doing.

As I thought, the wolves had a vast range of unique abilities, though the differences could be subtle. One wind wolf might create a tailwind to assist with acceleration, while another might negate wind resistance to increase its top speed.

What gave me more grief than the wolves was, surprisingly, a much smaller creature: the salmon. The first one I encountered had sprayed water to increase its speed. The next time, one sparked with electricity. I was standing in the water with my essence suppressed when I received a sudden shock. The lack of essence meant I was totally defenseless; my body seized up, and I almost drowned. I could still remember the immense panic.

***

The wolf growled at me as it charged like a boar. I dodged it with light movements, tracing its face with the tip of my blade. My opponent was one of the muscular ones. The annoying thing about these types was that if you stabbed too deeply while dodging, your knife could get lodged in its dense muscle and become trapped. A way to avoid this was to keep your strikes shallow.

Facing these wolves always turned into a battle of attrition. In these, their muscular frames became a disadvantage; they ended up exhausted and staggering. Most of the fights ended with a final stab through their skulls.

The wolf in front of me was already starting to look panicked. My newly awakened flower fae ability didn’t just work on humans. Now that I was more in control of it, I realized I had been using it unconsciously this whole time, mostly on the dragon girl. It was why I was weirdly good at reading her emotions. I ought to be grateful to the flower fae for her contribution to unlocking this skill. While she was nowhere near fully intact, she probably considered herself lucky to have even one limb left when she woke up.

Shaking off the harsh realities of life, I stuck a bamboo needle into the weakening wolf’s eye. With the sole of my sandal, I shoved it deeper. The wolf twitched once before collapsing.