The shattered clearing beneath the cliffs remained buried beneath silence after the Roc Python Queen’s death.
Cold wind drifted through the ruined battlefield while broken stone and collapsed sections of cliffside stretched across the clearing around the serpent lair entrance.
Deep grooves melted into the rock where venom had splashed during the fight still hissed faintly in several places, and the smell hanging in the air was thick with blood, dust, and dissolving stone.
Traise remained seated heavily against a fractured slab of rock near the edge of the clearing while Minor Regeneration continued working passively through his body.
The healing dulled the worst of the pain, but nowhere near enough to make him feel recovered.
Every deeper breath still sent sharp pressure through his ribs, and portions of his left arm continued burning from venom splashes he failed to fully avoid during the battle.
[You have recovered 1 Health]
The notification faded quietly from his vision while he lowered his head back against the stone behind him.
Exhaustion pressed heavily through every part of his body now that the adrenaline had finally started fading.
Dried blood covered portions of both daggers near his legs, while dust and shattered gravel still clung to his clothing from the collapsed cliffside earlier.
The Queen’s corpse remained partially buried farther ahead within the ruined clearing.
Even dead, the enormous serpent still looked terrifying beneath the collapsed rubble surrounding portions of its body.
White scales streaked with black remained visible between broken stone while one shattered fang protruded outward near the edge of the debris, faint green venom still dripping steadily onto the fractured ground below.
Traise stared toward it quietly while replaying parts of the fight through his mind.
Strategy had kept him alive.
Luna had kept him alive.
The active effect of Minor Regeneration had kept him alive.
But only barely.
The gap between them and the Queen still felt overwhelming in retrospect.
One mistake during that fight would have killed both of them instantly.
Several times, it almost had.
Nearby, Luna rested against a section of collapsed stone with her silver-black fur dirtied by dust and blood from the battle.
Several shallow injuries remained visible along her side and legs, and unlike normal, she had not immediately disappeared back into the shadows afterward.
Even her breathing looked heavier than usual.
Traise let out a slow breath before rubbing tiredly at his face.
The earlier Roc Python hunts had gradually started feeling manageable after enough repetition.
Dangerous, yes, but predictable enough that he and Luna could control the fights through positioning and coordination.
The Queen shattered that illusion almost immediately.
Everything they possessed together had barely been enough to survive.
Luna eventually pushed herself upright before padding back across the clearing toward him.
Her movements lacked their usual smooth confidence while exhaustion and irritation drifted faintly through the Companion Bond.
Traise managed a faint smile despite himself while she settled beside him and leaned lightly against his side.
“Yeah,” he muttered quietly while scratching gently behind one of her ears.
“I know. I feel terrible too.”
Luna flicked her tail once in response before resting her head against his leg.
For a while afterward, neither of them moved much while darkness gradually settled deeper across the ruined clearing.
The surrounding forest remained unusually quiet after the violence that tore through the cliffs earlier.
Traise considered opening the Shop and immediately selling the surrounding corpses, but even lifting his arms properly still hurt right now, and Luna clearly needed time to recover as well.
Stopping like this still felt unfamiliar to him.
Not because the clearing felt safe.
Just because he no longer felt like he needed to run every second of the day.
The hunting grounds beneath the cliffs had slowly become familiar territory over the past several days through repetition, preparation, and survival.
The traps worked.
The hunting routes worked.
Even the constant danger surrounding the forest had started becoming something he could plan around instead of merely enduring.
That fragile calm finally broke when Luna suddenly lifted her head.
A faint shift moved through the bond while her glowing blue eyes locked toward the ruined serpent lair entrance beneath the cliffs.
Most of the outer tunnel had partially collapsed during the Queen’s rampage earlier, leaving shattered stone and broken debris scattered around the entrance while darkness stretched deeper inside beyond the fallen rock.
Luna stood slowly before flicking one ear toward the cave again.
Then she started moving toward it.
Traise watched her for a moment before forcing himself upright with a grimace.
Pain flared sharply through his ribs the instant he stood.
[You have recovered 1 Health]
He exhaled slowly through clenched teeth before grabbing one of the nearby rocks for support.
“You seriously can’t relax for five minutes, can you?” he muttered tiredly while following after her.
Luna glanced back briefly before continuing deeper toward the entrance anyway.
The inside of the serpent lair felt noticeably different from the outer hunting tunnels they had explored earlier.
Rough stone near the entrance gradually became smoother the farther inward they traveled, almost polished from years of massive serpents repeatedly sliding through the same narrow passages.
Warm air drifted faintly through the cave while scattered bones and partially crushed carcasses lined portions of the tunnel walls farther inside.
Some remains looked old enough to crumble apart beneath a single touch.
Traise moved carefully behind Luna while keeping one hand resting near Queen’s Fury at his waist.
The silence inside the cave felt heavier than the clearing outside.
No shifting scales echoed through the tunnels anymore.
No hissing.
No movement beyond the distant sound of dripping water somewhere deeper within the lair.
Massive shed serpent skins appeared repeatedly farther inward.
Some stretched nearly the full width of the tunnel itself while pale scales reflected dimly beneath the faint moonlight reaching inward from behind them.
Black streaks remained visible between sections of the enormous skins, making it obvious which serpent they came from.
The Queen had lived here for a very long time.
The deeper they traveled, the more obvious the nesting behavior became.
Bones layered portions of the floor beneath old shed skins, while the air deeper inside felt warmer and more humid than the forest outside the cliffs.
Luna continued leading silently through the tunnels ahead of him while cautious curiosity brushed faintly through the bond.
She was searching for something now.
Not danger exactly.
More like the source of a scent she didn’t recognize.
Eventually, the narrow tunnel widened into a much larger chamber buried deeper within the cliffs.
Traise slowed almost immediately after entering.
The cavern opened outward naturally beneath the mountain like a hidden nesting chamber untouched for years.
Smooth stone curved around the walls while several more layers of pale shed skins covered sections of the ground between scattered bones and old remains.
The air felt noticeably warmer here than in the outer tunnels, while faint moisture clung to portions of the stone near the center of the chamber.
Then Traise noticed what rested there.
A single enormous egg.
The egg rested alone near the center of the chamber, almost reverently placed within a shallow curve of smooth stone.
Thin purple veins pulsed faintly beneath the white shell while warmth spread softly through the surrounding air.
Traise instinctively slowed his breathing.
The egg did not feel ordinary.
A faint pulse moved beneath the shell every few seconds, subtle enough that he almost thought he imagined it at first.
Suddenly, the Queen’s behavior during the battle made far more sense.
The aggressive hunting.
The sheer desperation behind every attack.
She had been protecting this.
Luna circled cautiously around the chamber nearby while Traise approached the egg more carefully.
Even she seemed unusually alert while watching it from a short distance away.
The purple veins beneath the shell pulsed faintly again while warmth continued spreading through the chamber.
Traise swallowed slightly before activating Observation.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
[Roc Python Queen’s Egg]
Status: Unbound
The egg of a Roc Python that managed to awaken a trace of their ancestral Draconic bloodline.
This egg has inherited the bloodline and holds great potential for a future queen, but not without great effort.
Do you wish to bond with this creature?
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Traise stared silently at the screen while the faint pulse beneath the shell continued beating steadily in front of him.
Under normal circumstances, his first instinct would already be calculating how many Dragon Coins something this rare could sell for.
A monster egg connected to a draconic bloodline would probably be worth an absurd amount through the Shop.
But this felt different.
Something about the system window completely changed the atmosphere inside the chamber.
The egg was not being presented like loot, materials, or some rare resource waiting to be sold.
The system was offering him a choice instead.
Traise continued staring at the hovering system window while the faint purple veins beneath the egg pulsed steadily through the dim chamber.
Warm air drifted through the cave around them, carrying the scent of old stone and something deeper that reminded him strangely of rain before a storm.
Luna circled the nest once more before stopping several feet away, her glowing blue eyes narrowing cautiously toward the egg.
Another companion.
The thought alone felt strange enough that Traise hesitated before saying anything.
Luna had been with him through nearly everything since the forest stopped feeling impossible.
She hunted beside him, warned him about danger, slept near him at night, and trusted him enough to form a bond neither of them fully understood yet.
The idea of replacing her had never even crossed his mind, but standing here now, staring at the system prompt floating above the egg, he suddenly realized how easily it could look that way from her perspective.
He rubbed the back of his neck awkwardly before glancing toward her.
“What do you think?” he asked quietly.
“You want a little brother or sister?”
Luna’s ears twitched immediately.
Curiosity drifted across the bond first, followed by suspicion.
She approached the egg slowly while keeping her body low and cautious, clearly evaluating it rather than simply trusting it as Traise did.
The silver-black fox circled around the nest once before stopping directly beside the shell.
Her nose twitched slightly as she sniffed near one of the glowing purple veins running beneath the surface.
The egg pulsed faintly beneath her attention.
Traise watched quietly while Luna remained near the egg for several long moments.
Curiosity flowed strongest through the bond, though caution lingered beneath it alongside an unmistakable sense of territorial evaluation.
It almost felt like Luna was deciding whether the creature inside deserved permission to exist near them at all.
A tired laugh escaped him despite the exhaustion pulling at his body.
“You’re really acting like an older sister already?”
Luna’s tail flicked once behind her before she glanced back at him with complete confidence.
The emotion that followed through the bond carried an obvious approval, mixed with an almost smug certainty that she would remain the more important companion, no matter what hatched from the egg.
“Okay,” Traise muttered while shaking his head slightly.
“Message received.”
The atmosphere inside the chamber eased after that.
Luna eventually settled beside the nest without hostility, though her eyes never fully left the egg while Traise looked back toward the floating system prompt hovering in front of him.
Do you wish to bond with this creature?
He exhaled slowly before answering.
“Bind.”
The response came instantly.
[Companion Bond Initiated]
The entire egg suddenly began glowing with pale blue light.
Thin streams of energy spread across the shell beneath the purple veins while warmth surged outward into the surrounding chamber hard enough that Traise instinctively stepped back half a pace.
The sensation that followed felt completely different from when he bonded with Luna.
Deeper.
The connection spreading through his chest carried a strange pressure behind it, almost like something ancient remained curled deep within the creature sleeping inside the egg.
Hunger flickered briefly across the forming bond.
Instinct followed immediately afterward.
Not hostile exactly, but primal in a way that made the fine hairs along Traise’s arms rise slightly.
Then came warmth.
Not normal heat either.
The sensation reminded him strangely of embers buried beneath ash, dormant but still alive somewhere deep below the surface.
The pressure vanished almost as quickly as it appeared, though traces of it continued lingering faintly through the bond afterward.
[Please choose a name for your new companion.]
Traise blinked.
“Right,” he muttered quietly.
“Probably should’ve thought about that beforehand.”
He stared at the glowing shell while trying to think of something that actually fit.
Most names that entered his head sounded ridiculous almost immediately afterward, especially while looking at a creature connected to something called a draconic bloodline.
The white shell continued pulsing softly beneath the blue system light while Luna watched beside it with growing impatience.
Eventually, one name settled naturally into his thoughts.
“Nysera.”
The system reacted immediately.
[Name has been set to Nysera]
[Would you like to add this companion to your party?]
Traise accepted without hesitation.
The moment he confirmed it, the light surrounding the egg intensified again before gradually beginning to dim.
Thin cracks suddenly spread across the shell with a sharp snapping sound that echoed softly through the chamber.
Traise froze.
Another crack appeared seconds later.
Then another.
The egg shifted slightly while fragments of shell slowly cracked away from the surface, one piece at a time.
Neither Traise nor Luna moved while the chamber fell almost completely silent around them, aside from the occasional sharp crack echoing softly through the warm air.
The shell finally split wider near the center.
A small section broke apart before falling softly against the stone floor below.
Something moved inside.
A tiny serpent head slowly pushed outward through the opening before stopping halfway free of the shell.
Two golden eyes blinked slowly beneath the dim cave light while the newborn creature stared blankly at the world around her for the first time. Find the original chapter at g.com.
Traise instinctively held his breath.
She looked nothing like the Roc Python Queen.
Her scales were smooth white instead of monstrous ivory, with faint purple coloration lining the edges of each individual scale like soft streaks of fading twilight.
Tiny crystalline protrusions extended subtly backward from the sides of her head while two small fangs peeked from her mouth whenever she opened it slightly.
Despite the draconic bloodline mentioned by the system, there was nothing terrifying about her appearance right now.
If anything, she looked strangely delicate.
Nysera blinked again before carefully pulling herself farther free from the broken shell.
She was surprisingly small compared to the enormous egg surrounding her, barely longer than Luna’s body as she slowly coiled atop the shattered remains beneath her.
The newborn serpent lifted her head cautiously afterward while staring first toward Luna, then toward Traise.
Curiosity flowed through the newly formed bond immediately afterward.
Pure.
Innocent.
Uncertain.
Traise slowly crouched lower near the nest while trying not to startle her.
“Hey,” he said quietly.
“Welcome to the team.”
Nysera tilted her head slightly at the sound of his voice before cautiously slithering forward across the broken shell pieces toward him.
Luna remained close beside the nest the entire time, still watching carefully, though no hostility surfaced through the bond anymore.
Only guarded curiosity.
Nysera eventually stopped directly in front of Traise before lifting herself slightly higher to examine him more closely.
Her golden eyes reflected faintly beneath the cave light while the purple edges of her scales shimmered softly whenever she moved.
Traise slowly reached one hand toward her.
Nysera instinctively pulled back at first, though only briefly.
The bond connecting them pulsed gently afterward, and the newborn serpent hesitated before cautiously leaning forward again until her head lightly touched against his fingers.
Warmth spread faintly through the connection the instant contact happened.
Nysera finally relaxed beneath his hand after several hesitant seconds, her small body loosening slightly while Traise carefully stroked along the top of her head.
The newborn serpent seemed fascinated by the contact more than anything else.
Her golden eyes followed every movement he made while tiny flicks of her tongue tested the air around him repeatedly.
Then the system activated again.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Name: Nysera (Companion / Party Member)
Race: Draconic Roc Python (Female)
Grade: Awakened
Health: 84 / 84
Mana: 23 / 23
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
[Attributes]
Strength: 31
Dexterity: 22
Intelligence: 11
Endurance: 34
Willpower: 26
Luck: 3
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
[Skills]
Venom Strike
Class: Initiate Mid
Type: Passive / Poison
Channels venom through the user’s fangs, allowing attacks to inflict corrosive poison that weakens the target over time.
Hardened Skin
Class: Awakened Low
Type: Passive / Defense
Your skin has become tougher, making it significantly more durable against damage.
Grants reduced damage from physical attacks.
Constriction
Class: Initiate High
Type: Active / Combat
The user may rapidly coil around a target to restrict movement and crush weaker opponents through overwhelming pressure.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
[Abilities]
Draconic Bloodline
Class: Special
Type: Bloodline / Growth
A dormant ancestral bloodline inherited from an ancient draconic lineage.
Physical growth, durability, and mana capacity increase more rapidly over time.
Certain draconic abilities may awaken as the bloodline matures.
Venom Affinity
Class: Special
Type: Affinity / Growth
The ability to naturally generate and manipulate venom has become part of the user’s being.
Venom-based abilities become more potent as mastery increases.
Heightened Predatory Instincts
Class: Awakened
Type: Passive / Instinct
The user possesses naturally enhanced threat detection and hunting instincts.
Allows faster reaction speed toward hostile movement and hidden danger.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Traise stared at the window longer than expected while Nysera continued coiling loosely around his wrist.
Her stats were absurd for something that had literally hatched less than a minute ago.
Luna still surpassed her heavily in speed and agility, but Nysera’s Endurance alone was already monstrous compared to most creatures he had encountered.
And that was before considering the draconic bloodline.
The system itself was treating her like something far beyond an ordinary monster.
Nysera lifted her small head slightly afterward while her golden eyes reflected faintly beneath the cave light.
Warmth continued pulsing softly through the bond between them while the newborn serpent tightened her coil comfortably around his arm as though she already belonged there.
Traise slowly exhaled through his nose while staring down at her.
The Roc Python Queen had nearly killed him.
And somehow, her daughter had just become part of his hunting party.