"How... how much food will you need?" Ethan stammered. "I'm not sure I can make a correct estimate..."
"No excuses" Haku cut him off immediately, looking him straight in the eyes. "Do it. Now"
Ethan felt a shiver run up his spine as his eyes met Haku's murderous ones. He understood very well that the dragon wouldn't have hesitated to jump on him and force him if he tried to falter again. From his look, he didn't think it was impossible that he would have eaten a finger or two of his, or maybe the whole hand, just to reaffirm his position of superiority. The best choice for Ethan at the moment, given his strength and the fact that the dragon still had his weapons, was to continue to keep him quiet. "Of course, of course! Don't worry, your excellency! I'll get to work right away!"
Haku said nothing, but he let out a satisfied snort and abandoned, at least partially, his previous menacing attitude. Ethan began to chew on his fingernail as he thought. "So, to calculate the right amount I'll have to take into account the growth rate... and also the number... how many are you exactly?"
"Seventeen" was Haku's curt reply.
"Seventeen? Wow… quite a lot" Ethan murmured. He knew that dragon litters were usually less numerous, but after all those dragons had already shown that they didn't follow the normal rules (in reality, Neytiri's litter was as numerous as the others, simply in other cases many babies died before leaving the nest). "Let's see... if I remember correctly, during the first year of life a dragon needs on average fifteen kilos of meat a day... considering that there are seventeen of you... fifteen multiplied by seventeen multiplied for an entire year, which is 372 days... total 94,860 kilograms, therefore more or less 95 tons. Basically, just to feed you and your siblings in the first year, you would need at least 95 tons of food"
Haku snorted, but he wasn't too worried. While 95 tons was a large amount, one karkadann alone could provide at least ten tons. And with his sisters' help, even killing one of those huge beasts wouldn't have been impossible. Therefore, with only ten karkadann he could already exceed the necessary amount. However, that was only for the first year. "I understand. Continue"
"Of course that I continue! How could I disobey you?" Ethan hastened to say, and then he went on with his calculations: "Let's see... in their second year, a baby dragon doesn't increase much in size, but due to growth they hava a faster metabolism... they needs an average of 30 kilograms of meat per day... so to feed all seventeen of you, you would require at least 190 tons of food. During the third year the growth is more stable, with an average of 40 kilos of food per day... so 253 tons. The fourth year they need 50 kilos a day... so 316 tons. And the fifth year 70 kilos a day, with a total of approximately 443 tons" Ethan looked like if he was about to spin in circles. "Then, from the sixth year the growth slows down because the wings have to be formed, but due to the slow activation of their domain the metabolism increases and the dragons need at least 100 kilos a day... so 632 tons. For the seventh and eigth year the metabolism doesn't change much... so basically they need 130 kilos and 170 kilos respectively... total 822 and 1,075 tons. The ninth year the metabolism accelerates again, since the domain is forming, so they need 200 kilos, and in the tenth year they need 300 kilos... for a total of 1,265 and 1,897 tons respectively. Basically, your excellency, to survive until you have grown wings and unlocked your domain, you will need almost 7,000 tons of food. And this is only an approximation, keep that in mind"
Haku felt dizzy. It was an abnormally huge amount. While it wasn't that surprising, since it was still the food needed to go from creatures no more than five meters long to winged monsters over thirty meters long (the average length of a dragon when it gained its mastery), it was still a scary figure. 7,000 tons meant he would have had to find and kill at least 700 karkadanns, an almost impossible task. However, he certainly wasn't intimidated. His brain had previously calculated how to get so much food. "Tell me, do you think the forest to the north, the one where you came from, can provide so much food?"
Ethan wasn't sure of the answer. Technically the right response was 'yes', however... "By hunting consecutively for several months or even a year you may be able to obtain that much meat, but it will be impossible. Such indiscriminate hunting will certainly attract the attention of fairies and ogres"
Haku had already guessed it. No matter how fast he hunted, he could never have gotten as much food hunting in Neytiri territory alone with so little time on his hands. But if he started hunting elsewhere, the locals would quickly have noticed him and his siblings. "Tell me more about fairies and ogres"
Ethan smiled. "I can do better than just tell you about it! I can show you everything I've learned!"
In the course of that conversation, Ethan understood one thing: he absolutely couldn't mess with that dragon. Haku seemed calm and peaceful, but it was enough to look him straight in the eyes to realize that he was a predator of the worst kind. He had to be able to please him as much as possible, at least as long as he was at his mercy. So he had no problem being extremely subservient. "In the bag there is my diary, where I wrote down all I discovered on my journey. Everything about fairies and ogres is written there. Take it, it's a piece of parchment bound in a leather cover"
Haku opened the dimensional bag and searched for the object indicated by Ethan. It didn't take long to find it. Once out, the little ant-sized notebook became a rather bulky diary. Haku opened it, and there he found several images that almost certainly depicted cities and villages of ogres and fairies, with various writings in the margins or even occupying the entire page. He smiled: he knew that what he was holding was a real treasure. Such a receptacle of information could be very useful to him. There was one problem, however… "I don't know how to read" he said with a hint of shame in his voice.
"Oh, that's okay! I can teach you! Normally it would take a while to learn to read, but since you learned the metric system so quickly, you'll surely learn the alphabet in less than ten minutes!" Ethan said fawning. "And you don't have to be ashamed of it, you are young after all. At your age it is already surprising that you can speak my language..."
"Uh? What language?"
"What? Your excellency, didn't you realize it? We are speaking in Juraotian, the language of the Jurao Kingdom"
Haku forzen for a second. Were they speaking in another language, which wasn't the one of the dragons? How was this possible? He hadn't noticed anything! Had he learned another language without even realizing it? Up until now he had thought he and Ethan understood each other because they spoke the same language, but how likely was it that his mother knew the language of the Jurao Kingdom and used it habitually to the point that her children learned it?
Ethan looked surprised too, but he recovered quickly: "I've read in many books that dragons can learn any language just by hearing it for a single instant, and they can speak it so well that sometimes they don't even realize they're speaking a different idiom! It's amazing that I was able to see it in person!"
"Uh... yeah, I guess that's it" Haku murmured, finding no other explanation for that strange phenomenon.
Unbeknownst to either of them, this was just one more adaptation of the dragons to the harsh conditions they had lived under for the last few thousand years. Since they often had to deal with newcomers, the baby dragons who survived the longest were those able to learn their language early on, so they could understand what their enemies were saying and act accordingly to defend themselves. By then, evolution had made its magic… and mana had helped, aiding natural selection. After several thousand years, dragons' brains had become capable of learning any language within a second, using particular mana fluctuations that came from the newcomers they were conversing with. Basically, they transferred from their interlocutor's brain all the knowledge necessary to speak their language correctly. And since it was an evolutionary adaptation, it didn't need a domain to be used, so baby dragons also had that ability. However, this adaptation didn't work for reading; in that case dragons still had to learn manually.
However, that wasn't a problem for Haku. As Ethan had said, his photographic memory allowed him to learn the entire alphabet and figure out how the placement of the letters worked in no time. It turned out that Ethan had forecasted wrong: Haku didn't learn to read in ten minutes… he did it in six.
After that, he was finally able to read the diary. An infinite amount of information was stored in his brain. Haku continued the walk almost without looking up from the diary, wanting to learn every single secret of ogres and fairies. It was only after at least half an hour in which Haku read and Ethan walked beside him in silence so as not to disturb him that the young dragon spoke again: "From what I understand by what is written here, ogres and fairies aren't on good terms"
Ethan nodded. "No, they're not. In fact, you can say they hate each other" he replied. The reasons for the feuding between ogres and fairies were varied, but generally the blame lay with the warlike nature of the ogres, which led them to periodically attack the fairies. The fairies, in turn, had developed a certain grudge against the ogres because of this. So the situation in the forest was never entirely peaceful: either the two sides fought, or there was an armistice but tensions remained high.
Haku let out a slight growl. "So if they start fighting, each side will do everything to weaken the other"
"Absolutely yes, without a doubt"
"Even deprive them of food supplies?"
Ethan froze, and after a couple of seconds he understood what Haku meant. For a moment he wasn't able to say if he was amazed by such intelligence or frightened by such subtlety. "Of course! How could I not think about that! Many times in the past the fairies indiscriminately killed the animals of the forest to deprive the ogres of supplies. If a conflict arises, you could kill all you want in the forest, because both sides would give blame the other! Not counting the… um, the corpses of the slain ogres and faeries"
Ethan felt quite disgusted to say those words, but he knew that for dragons, even other intelligent races were nothing more than additional sources of food, so surely Haku wouldn't have had any qualms about using them. And in fact that was exactly what Haku thought: after all, if someone abandoned a prey after killing it, they couldn't complain if someone else ate it. Could that prey talk? And so? It was still made of meat, and therefore it was food. If a conflict broke out between ogres and fairies, Haku would have obtained a great deal of food without even having to kill the prey himself. This, added to all the animals that he and his siblings would have killed, would have allowed them to obtain the 7,000 tons of meat necessary for their survival rather quickly.
However, one problem still remained, namely that of preserving food and transporting it. But Haku, thanks to Ethan, had already found the solution. "I read in this journal that ogres and fairies also use dimensional bags and refrigerators"
"Well, as I told you before, they are very easy to make and useful for..."
"So I assume they would use them to carry weapons and supplies, right?"
Ethan understood immediately. "Of course yes! It would be enough for you to strip the corpses or set up an ambush. You could get a large number of refrigerators and dimensional bags!"
"And that would solve the logistics problem" Haku murmured. "I say it's a perfect plan"
"Absolutely, your excellency" Ethan said. "But how are you going to get the ogres and fairies to fight?"
"That's my problem. You have other things to take care of" Haku replied, pointing to a spot in front of them. "That's the way out, right?"
Ethan realized he'd been too distracted on the last stretch of the road; he looked up and saw that they were almost at the foot of the mountains. And in front of them was a small rocky path, through which a forest could be glimpsed on the other side.