Chapter 507: Learning About Society

Bell blushed at the thought of marrying anyone. She had not even talked to a man as far as she could remember. So the idea of marrying someone was not on her todo list. All she cared about was adventuring with her Mama and growing stronger so she would not hold her Mama back.  "Mama, I won't marry!"

"Silly girl, you never know if you will marry or not. Maybe one day you will find someone you love. You won't be by my side all the time. You will one day want to go on your own journey and discover a new you that you never knew about. Bell, I can only teach you so much. As you can see, I am a lizard after all. My forte is fighting and learning what bits of human society I can. I can teach you everything but human interactions or vampire interactions. This is why we are headed to Fendal.  I want you to learn about society. For the past fourteen years of your life, you have been in rural areas kept away from human societal interactions. This is not good. 

"As a mother, I have the duty to make sure you can survive in this world if I am not around. I am not saying I will leave you alone. No, in fact, I will still be there for you no matter what, but this is a life necessity. Because you never know, tomorrow I may die..." Kana pulled the teary eyed Bell into a hug and rubbed her back. "Bell, remember you are my daughter, and as my daughter, you must know how to survive no matter what, okay?"

"Mmm… I understand. I will try my best to learn." Bell nodded her head and hugged Kana tightly.

"But just remember one thing. No matter what, selling yourself is not a form of survival. It is a form of giving up. Do you understand what I mean?" Kana wanted to make this last part perfectly clear. In the city, they had seen some prostitutes calling out to men to go into a brothel. This was how they survived, and to Kana, it was not what she wanted for her daughter. Her daughter should never have to stoop so low as to have to sell herself in order to survive.

" I know. I will never do such a  thing. I would rather take my life. You have taught me ever since that day when those bandits tried to capture us that it was better to die than to let them sully you. I feel the same. Just the thought after the fact makes me sick. Kill without regret. Kill those who wish to harm you. These are all the things you have taught me. Only use violence when it is needed. If you can't talk it out, then take them out." In these past two months, they had met many different people. Those who were nice and then those whose motives were not very good.

After leaving the forest cave and seeing life for what it truly was, Bell had learned a lot along the way.  She was slowly growing and maturing with each encounter. This alone was making Kana feel that one day when Bell did decide to go off on her own that she would be just fine. 

"Mama, what should we do for dinner tonight? This place does not seem very good for hunting." Bell looked around and saw nothing but rocks everywhere. 

"Hmm, food can be many things. We just have to look hard enough. Like, look over there. There is a mound with tooger ants." Kana pointed to a large anthill made of stone. Tooger ants were about five centimeters long and were about four times the size of Kana's index finger around. They were brown in color, and despite their appearance, they had thick meat on the inside. 

The only problem was tooger ants were very territorial, and catching would attack in a swarm if you got too close to their nest. So you had to catch workers from a few meters away, but if you were not quick in snapping their necks, they would let out a loud screech calling for help. So it was all about speed when catching them. Kana learned all this the hard way. 

"Mama, be careful!" Bell was nervous. She had already read and memorized the entire book on monsters that Kana had gotten and knew how dangerous these ants could be.

"It's fine, watch." Kana took a step forward and, in an instant, appeared in another location and pinched the head of a tooger ant and collected it before flashing back to where she stood before. All done in under a few seconds. She repeated this process until she had about thirty of these tooger ants piled up, ready to be cooked and eaten. "See! We now just need to roast them in their shell and suck out the meat for a very nice delicacy. "

"Mama is amazing as always!" Bell smiled and looked around to see if there were any good spots close by for a campsite. She quickly spotted a nice overhang they could use.

The two girls cooked a hearty meal and then laid down to rest. Kana turned into her dragon form and let Bell use her belly as a pillow. In a matter of a few minutes, the two had already fallen asleep. Kana had a keen sense of when something was near her. She had felt something nearby and lifted her head to see two large greenish yellow eyes staring back at her and a snout that was almost right in her face. Half asleep, she reached up with her paw and slapped the snout with all her strength while mumbling: "Your breath smells!" Before falling back to sleep.

Their owner of this large snout was the dragon whose butt was burnt not once but twice by Kana. At this time, it was very confused. It only remembered finally finding the culprit of its sore bum, and then when it went to bite its head off, it felt a strong force hit its snout, and then everything went blank. The dragon did its best to get up and steady itself but felt something was off. When it looked down its nose, it seemed its nose was no longer straight. No, it was not just not straight, but it was completely turned to the right, bent into an L! Its beautiful snout was now broken! It could no longer present itself in front of the female dragons! For the first time in its mighty life, the dragon shed its first tears.