A steel fist aims straight at my gut, hits when my own fist reaches his chest and both of us fly out of the ring.

‘We are getting too good at this, it's almost always a draw.’

Doesn't matter, we can just keep fighting until there's a twice unlucky loser. You can bet again right after the fight if you lose, but we are in for this one.

‘You don't have to explain THAT. I'm not complaining or trying to get out of this, where would I go? You wanna make baby sounds, is that why you're so upset? I can do twice as much for you!’

“Guh gah huh gah booh booh.”

I do not cede to his provocations and rush forward to shut his mouth with both my fists. He dodges me with difficulty since I punch twice but don't let go, following up with a kick that leaves surprise visible in his face.

‘LOL’

Then I'm looking at the unreachable white canvas that is our sky.

‘Give it up, give it up~ Baby give it up now~’

I ignore his singing and, using my arms, jump straight at him like an arrow.

‘Raundo Rauso Kicko!’

At the shout of a move spoken in a Japanese accent, flying without air resistance feels terrible. Only simulated gravity brings me to a halt and then crashing down. The breeze that soothes the skin on my cheeks is the wave of warmth from pooping your pants in middle school. Falling face-first into the metal flooring outside the ring feels like that too, though cold.

‘Hehehe, gimme sense of urgency and gimme back control of both eyes. Come on bro, it's your choices and actions that define who you are, not superficial stuff like a mouth or control over your bodily functions.’

Shut up.

‘We are about finished up. Just three more sleeping bears to go. What's her situation exactly?’

Vitality still tanked at 5 and her body shows no sign of learning the regeneration magic. She's stuck at level 29 too, there's a specialization option waiting for her choice before she levels up.

At this point, I'm looking for someone to give her better treatment than she has already received from the shaman since the hammock will be keeping it active for a long time.

There are few druids powerful enough for that, but most of them won't trust us or are too unstable and I'm sure you will say something to set them off. The few that would help are too far away.

‘That's bad. I've been thinking, maybe we can use static to make lightning effects around her when we go into the dungeons.’

What?

‘Before we enter the first, we lay her down on the grass, beat our feet against it releasing some energy as electricity and then once it is a really scary lightning field no monsters will approach, and we can go in without worries!’

…

‘It's better than digging a hole and throwing her in it or bringing her with us to use her bed like a bat in monster baseball.’

Stop joking around. We are going directly to where the pods will crash. After we heal her there we bring her back to her family and on the way back from that we run the dungeons. Her vitality is tanked, there's no reason to level her more than this.

‘Yeah, but there could be drops on the dungeons like potions and the like.’

True, but, like you pointed out, there is no way to do it with her under our protection. Also, this is the new path we will be taking. It will probably change a lot as dangers or inconveniences show themselves.

‘We can no longer use the river, huh. Why is there such a massive detour around the jungle on the other side of it? It is sparse enough, isn't it?’

Oh, yeah, there's an earth dragon's nest there.

‘Earth drag-DINOSAURS!!!!’

Please, don't tell me you had a brilliant idea.

‘Let's get them to protect her while we run the dungeons!’

How?

‘Give me the details on them.’

They are not nearly as smart as the winged dragons, but they have human level intelligence except a lot more predatory and calculating. They have mostly antisocial tendencies.

‘You mentioned a nest? Do they have a chic?’

An egg, yes. Bigger than Linda.

‘And you have their language?’

Yes.

‘That's all I need. Let's go’.

They will try to kill us on the spot. We will survive their jaws, but the girl will not.

‘We just have to offer to strengthen their chic with the party system.’

I don't think they will like us telling them we can take care of their child better than them.

‘Wait, they will feel their pride threatened by social interaction? Aren't they too arrogant for that?’

Now that you mention it. Hmm, I suppose they might not take it to heart, looking through interactions between earth dragons and others. Still, most of them end up as food.

‘Let's bring a bear as a snack then. It was only a sharp cut to the head so there's almost no bleeding, it won't be a problem to carry it in the hammock.(?)’

Yeah, there's plenty of space, just leave its head hanging out. We have made the plains safe enough for the passage of the people from her village, let's move on.

Are we really doing this? This is serious though, a wrong move and she gets eaten.

‘Isn't the way there with just me carrying her also kinda dangerous? We can't do anything against unexpected enemies.’

Yeah. I guess you're right. I don't want to bet for control of the mouth right now then, but I want the sense of urgency back.

‘Right, and I want… hmmm how about unrestricted control of this place?’

You mean, for you as well? Not excluding me? Sur-.

I was about to finish my sentence and hadn't even stepped into the ring when he put his feet for me to trip. I body slammed the mat with dignity.

‘Don't sweat it, it's a best of three.’

I've told you already, pulling tricks don't count. We have to fight fair if we are to ensure each other's cooperation.

‘Come on, simply fighting is so boring. As long as I don’t provoke you, we have gotten good enough to fight for months without losing. Besides, you said “sure” so the fight was on. The rule is if you're thrown to the floor, thrown out of the ring or give up you lose.’

I've been having a lot of fun fighting, I don’t mind the hundreds of simulated years we have spent fighting already. Given that, I've just been reacting to you and developing counters instead of an actual martial arts style. I want to try bringing it all together next.

‘Oh, you finally learn how to combo? Might get interesting then, you were just like an immortal NPC in a training room of a fighting video game all this time.’

I take an instance and wait for him to enter the ring, as he steps in I put in action my master plan.

But since that's how you want to play it...

‘Wait, not fai-!?’

How did you like that? I threw you out of the ring, the ring is right there!

‘Yeah, but, you're not in the ring anymore either? So both of us lost and since you have 2 losses and I just one, I won the match?’

… No.

‘Hahahahaha, come on let's not be sore losers. I wanna do some painting and stuff, looking up after I sent you flying, it really struck to me that we can paint the sky.’

Yeah, but with that you're one bet closer to full control of the simulation.

‘Oh, come on it's gonna be fun.’

I suppose since I never surrendered it didn’t cross my head. And yeah, I shouldn't be this dumb, it is my loss.

In a second he is shooting up towards nothing and the white background darkens to a pitch black night. With a move of his hands it's sprinkled with gold wrap chocolate and shiny gummy bears. I can barely keep up with how he builds an exact copy of the nearest nebula with berries and ice cream.

‘Hey, I can build a copy of them but, I need your help to get them going at the right speed.’

You need help scaling? I don't think you need me for- Oh, you want me to take time dilation into consideration.

‘Yeah, then I can make strands of sweetener shoot out from the wrapped chocolate stars, and they will screw everything up like sugar did our great, great granddad's generation’s health.’

Can I make the black holes? A dark chocolate singularity with melted white chocolate tidally locked with a Doppler effect and everything.

‘You mean black holes are related to light? Both are aspects of space only that they oppose each other, one being explosion and the other implosion? Union and division? One expands to keep matter together and behaved while the other is the expansion of matter into freedom? Or are you just not that creative?’

Huh? Hahahahah, nah. I just like chocolate. I can do it with Açaí and powdered milk if you want.

‘There are many black holes to make and eat, why not both?’

Oh, we will eat them? I thought we were making it for Linda.

‘WE CAN BRING THOSE OUT!?’

Calm down, no. You know we can build cyborg parts, we just have to connect to her brain and uplink her here.

‘We can do that? That's great let's make a candy theme park. Wait we can bring other intellects here? Could we bring the golems and drones here?’

Yeah, we can, but we can directly take over the drones through the free WiFi and the golems through the nanites. We don't need them to get any smarter or proficient. How do you like my orange sundae supernovas?

‘They look cool, but not tasty at all. Hmm, but if something happens to us they become useless, right? Even if they are a little less efficient, I think their autonomy is worth it. Besides, it will get boring to control golems to do chores like carrying fragile stuff around.’

I see, and there could be something that severs our connection to them. There are plenty of blueprints for AI chips that can improve. I don't think they will, but we can try.

‘Cool, there's everything. Aim and logistics and production seem like the most useful. But what do Interpreters for the scans... I'm sad now, they make me sound useless.’

Once we get everything running, we are pretty much useless.

‘Sad, cry, the cake is a lie try a mousse for the supergiants instead, scared.’

Are we making the whole star cluster we are in? That will take a while.

‘Let’s pretend everything is fine for a few hours cause this will take a loooooooooooooooooooooooon~’

He has the sensibility to change his tone to mimic a soothing breeze after a few minutes, and then years pass while we build a replica of our side of the galaxy. It takes more time since I like some of them so much I eat them.

‘ng while.’

I had already forgotten he was prolonging a word. When I turned my head down to look at him he had finished a strawberry and vanilla ice cream wedding cake. Silent, he places a cherry on top, looks up narrowing his eyes with and with an evil smile takes the cherry back and into his mouth, with a slight jerk from the stalk he eats it. Was it the first time he ate anything?.

‘Let’s start over~’

Soon the ice planet he had over built was gone.

By the way, they are up ahead. Hunting away from their nest.

‘Who-? Oh, yeah. Let’s call out to them so they don’t feel their territory was invaded.’

“Marag! Rena!”

For an hour, there’s no sound or response, only the flowing river flowing with the flowing air and the flowing nervousness and flowing flow of what am i even supposed to say or do. I should have forced him to go in a roundabout way after all.

Then I can see and feel their approach clearly, they are using magic to camouflage against the trees and vines, closely watching me. I can feel every sharp atom in the crushing razor blades that are each of the thousands of magic imbued teeth on their ever grinning jaws. I feel their sharpness not on me, but on the delicate keratin pretending to protect Linda’s neck. I can only hope the river between us is enough of a headstart for us to run away. I’ve calculated it is more than enough but there is never enough caution. Indistinguishable sounds of rustling mask their sounds, they communicate by scratching the ground and it seems they decided to come out to talk as they let go of the camouflage magic and walk to the other edge of the river..

“The apex of this land, I ask for safe passage and protection for a while on my way afterwards. Is there something I could offer in return? I have brought this guraj as a sign of goodwill.”

As I finish my sentence, the judging eyes of mommy and daddy carnosaurs fall on my back, past the bear’s carcass and on the cocooned little girl. At that all of us notice she is now level 31, she chose a specialization unconsciously. Or maybe there is a default choice and a timer?

Her scales are almost completely covered by the hammock, but a glimpse of them show vibrant colors filling up with power. Among her new skills scalekin affection seems to be the most useful right now.

‘You go girl! Right on time! Are they being affected by it? Even though they know about the skill I think they are rationalizing that she will be strong in the future. Still, if they come to doubt whether their thoughts are their own or caused by the skill we are done. Hey, it's fine if I show them her right?’

That’s a lot of assumptions, let's hope cross species cuteness works on asocial lizards.

‘The gods of moe, please watch over us.’

Mana swirls into her from the logs. I let them down untangling the net around her, her soft breathing give life to her scales as they grow more and more colorful and vibrant.

MagicKing

I've posted on the forum to get some feedback, but my insecurity has me thinking the parts that are bad are so bad no one wants even to point it out e.e so do feel welcome to comment a scene you liked, disliked or didn't understand or whatevs. I will be revising some of the earlier chapters for grammar and stuff maybe some fluff but nothing important. Also, i didn't mention it because it was weird if i did that out of the blue, but snek girl is really pretty. It's just that the mc commenting on how pretty the loli is has some implications in this genre... *sweating* so i'm letting that into the background tho i'm not that good at it. By the way Linda means pretty in portuguese