"YUE!"
"YUEEEEE!"
In the deep pit, now unrecognizable and marred by signs of a desperate struggle, a persistent stench of acid and inhuman retching sounds arose.
David could previously compete with the Undead for beauty. Now, he had ballooned to more than eight times his original size, resembling Kirby after inhaling too much. He continued to inflate like a balloon with the passage of time.
Yet, at this moment, his expression was quite agitated.
His equally chubby forelimbs and dragon claws were all stuffed into his mouth. Meanwhile, his hind limbs thrashed against the pit walls as he pulled out one ogre corpse after another from his stomach, each more corroded and disfigured than the last.
He wasn't worried about dying from overeating. Being a Red Dragon, at worst, he would be overweight for a few years.
A dragon loses weight after a long sleep faster than any other species, surely enough to incite envy, Jealousy, and hatred in human females hoping to lose weight.
The real trouble came from within.
To be more precise, it came from his own Authority—Gluttony.
This damn thing greatly accelerated his digestive capabilities.
Dammit!
His digestion speed was almost catching up to his vomiting rate.
His insatiable gut had turned into a monstrous beast that devoured heavens and earth, each gastric fold and septum transforming into tentacles that tenaciously clung to the food.
They were playing tug-of-war with him through his esophagus!
So, even though he had been mentally prepared for this, he didn't dare to be the slightest bit careless at this moment.
He could already feel it. As the ogre corpses, especially their brains, were rapidly digested, the memories concerning the ogres—particularly those of an ogre named Monado—were gradually melding with his own. They were being devoured by his memory, transforming into information he could better understand.
But Gluttony's 'kindness' was really too much for him to handle at the moment.
In just a short while, he began to intermittently utter the Ogre language from his mouth.
He would occasionally touch the still underdeveloped litchis in his cloaca, tickling them to nurture affection and understanding with them ahead of time.
It was as if he had overeaten and started to dream—dreaming he had become an ogre named Monado. He began to have trouble distinguishing reality from the dream.
Surprisingly, what he did not expect was that the R-rated scenes of cannibalism did not appear.
At most, they ate their own kind during funerals. Only some ancient 'ogre gourmet recipes' had been passed down to this day and were used in funeral ceremonies.
That was why funerals were the most anticipated holiday for ogre children. They could eat their fill and thank the deceased elders for their gifts.
Yes, this ogre tribe was already showing the beginnings of civilization. Especially in the past century, they had begun to learn from the surrounding Highland Barbarians. Aside from daily hunting, they would trade with other ogre tribes and even Barbarian tribes. After years of fierce battles, they also learned to sign non-aggression pacts with foreign Barbarian tribes.
For the sake of that pact, the chieftain of that Highland Barbarian tribe even had his eldest son marry this ogre named Monado.
Yes, this ogre was a female.
And, wouldn't you know it, from his dragon's perspective, this couple with their drastic height difference—'the handsome man and the beautiful woman'—were actually quite a visually compatible match.
But in the blink of an eye, he saw the 'bridal chamber' adorned with various bone ritual artifacts. A muscular Highland Barbarian, his legs hairy and his expression tender, walked towards him. Just as the ogre beauty was about to be publicly NTR'd in the 'dream,' David became even more nervous than when he had faced seven ogres simultaneously.
With flailing claws, he frantically pulled the last ogre, Monado, from his stomach.
Finally, he ended this horrific and unconventional 'first close encounter' before it could truly begin.
The barely emerging Lust retreated into the depths of his mind, grumbling and swearing.
"Damn it! PTOOEY, PTOOEY! This is just too horrifying," David thought, a lingering fear making him resolve never to use this forbidden art again unless absolutely necessary.
But then again, that seemed like a pointless statement...
He had won the gamble on his theory about Gluttony, betting his own life.
That was its incredibly useless and painfully inconvenient triggering mechanism...
It freaking had to be when he was nearly starved to death.
Just like moments ago—starving to the point of being skin and bones, hunger seeping into his very marrow.
That feeling... it wasn't pleasant to endure.
No, he didn't even want to recall it—starving to the point of wanting to gnaw on himself...
It was like falling into the Realm of Hungry Ghosts in the cycle of reincarnation!
So, by the time he reached that point of absolute necessity, it was practically no different from starving to death.
He might as well 'die a little' beforehand and see if he could forcibly drag himself back from the path speeding towards the Styx River.
From what he could recall, this female ogre named Monado seemed to be a pretty renowned figure in the Northland of the Old Continent.
At least she had sacrificed her beauty to 'marry down' to the Highland Barbarians, making an indelible contribution to the peace of the land.
David fell silent for a moment, uncharacteristically.
Screw it. I've already killed her; can't let it go to waste.
True to his diligent and frugal habits, David used his claws to detach the half-digested ogre heads one by one, then shoved the remaining scraps back into his stomach.
He didn't know if his esophagus was getting used to this rough treatment, but it didn't feel as bad as before.
This repeated in-and-out business finally won the recognition and favor of a certain Authority:
Lust
"Damn it!" Upon noticing these words, David felt mocked and responded with a disdainful verb from his past life.
This was, of course, ignored by the other party.
Naturally, if such a mental violation provoked another instance of Lust, David would only feel horrified.
An Authority that adheres to subjective facts... quite nice.
BURP~~~~
Having once again eaten enough to swell to the size of eight fat men, David let out a loud, forest-ringing belch.
At the same time, a strong wave of sleepiness hit him.
David immediately knew that his first deep sleep after hatching was about to begin.
Looking at the neatly arranged row of ogre heads on the ground, David rubbed his own head with his claws. He then fished out an undigested spine from his stomach, strung the heads on it, and hung them around his neck, imitating Ogre fashion.
He planned to wait until the effects of Gluttony subsided, then barbecue their brains. If he could bear to save the skulls, he could later cosplay as an otherworldly version of a Lava River hermit or Sandy the Dragon. This way, he could scare off any clueless locals and prevent them from coming around to cause trouble.
Just as he climbed out of the pit, fully loaded, the overwhelming sleepiness struck again. It was even more intense and sudden than the most urgent call of nature.
"No good! Can't hold out much longer!"
But the thought of the Drow, who might be trailing him at any moment...
David slapped his head. He hurriedly ran a few steps to leave footprints, then suddenly leaped as if taking off from the pit's edge. However, he feigned the takeoff and instead dove back to the bottom of the pit like a swimmer. Using both claws, he continued to dig downward like a pangolin.
Simultaneously, the remnants of his recent feast ejected from his cloaca. Like black coal dust, Crimson Ash shot skyward in a volcanic eruption, then settled like falling molten ash, perfectly concealing the pit's entrance.
"Hmph... Even those clever Drow would never guess that I, David, would stoop to diving back into a cesspit."
"Besides, I'm a Red Dragon; I don't get dirty."
"Hmph... not dir... ZZZZZZZZZ!"
Deep within the dense forest, snores like thunder erupted, startling a flock of birds into flight.
Around the pit, various insects like centipedes and mole crickets frantically burst from the ground to escape. A nest of fire ants swiftly grabbed their queen and fled the area.
His Red Dragon Might had already surpassed the alarming scent characteristic of a freshly hatched dragon; it was beginning to take true shape. Before it, all evil retreated with ease.