The obvious answer was to kill her.

He found himself settling on it as she neared. He wasn’t sure what she was, but she wanted the eggs. So did he. What else was there to know? When it came to treasures as valuable as these, conflicts of interest only ended one way.

He crept around the side of the nest, eyes tracking her through the gloom. He watched her yank out a handful of coals, then set them ablaze with a fingersnap. He watched her scratch her chin, squint at the eggs. Then her pan grew to twice its size. Humming cheerfully to herself she set it on the fire.

Her eyes gleamed, drawn to the eggs once more. She advanced on them, back turned to him. He stepped out. Now!

But before Dorian got the chance to summon his Javelin—before he’d even mustered the qi for an attack—she whirled around. Their eyes met.

“Oh, hey!” she said, smiling. “It’s you! The limbless wonder!”

He blinked.

She waved at him. “Remember me? Girl with her ass on fire?”

She frowned at his stunned silence. “…Really? I was kind of hard to miss! There was this giant minotaur chasing me. I had its baby under one arm, my trusty pan in the other? I was screaming a lot—it went something like—“

She cleared her throat. “‘AHHHHHHHH!!!!!’ Sound familiar?”

“…Yea, I remember,” said Dorian with a frown.

“Last we met you were a stump! Now you’ve got arms! And legs! And a tail! Huzzah! And my butt’s not on fire anymore!” She grinned. “Life’s looking up for the both of us, eh?”

“…”

What am I doing? Why haven’t I fed her the tip of my Javelin yet?

Something about her threw him off. Some eerie feeling he got—like if he attacked now he wouldn’t live to regret it. Instincts were often wrong, of course! But they’d also saved him many a time.

Then she turned his back on him, humming, and lathered some oil on her frying pan. “Oh, I’ve been waiting aeons to try one of these…”

Turned her back. He frowned harder. Did this creature have no survival instinct whatsoever? How was she alive?!

Dorian gave up. She could act as weird as she liked, he decided. It would hardly save her from being cut in two. He readied his Javelin—

“Don’t!”

“…”

“I know what you’re thinking.” Her pan sizzled as she sloshed the oil around. “Don’t you try it, mister!”

She said it like a schoolmistress scolding a naughty boy. She turned, brandishing her pan, and her face was so serious he stilled. Her expression transformed. In that instant she was not some strange monkey-girl. She had the visage of an ancient goddess, stern and severe as a cliff face that had seen ten thousand years. The look passed as quick as it’d come—so quick he was left wondering if he’d hallucinated it.

“I am very handy with this pan!” She said. She waggled it menacingly at him. “Do anything funny and I will smack you. I mean it!”

“…”

“This pan has caved in the skulls of gods, you know.”

Dorian was speechless. It was a state he usually left others in. Is this what everyone else felt like when they spoke to him?

Yet that pan—that pan, in that instant, had a flash of that same ancient grandeur! Like a glimpse of aura leaking from under its harmless veneer. Suddenly it was no mere red-and-yellow pan. Suddenly it felt like he was staring at the face of an ancient Godbeast whose sheer size and age he could not fathom.

Gone as quick as it’d come, again.

Red-and-yellow… he frowned. The color scheme, that aura… it pricked something at the back of his memory, something he couldn’t quite place. Somehow he had the distinct impression he’d seen that thing before.

Stranger and stranger…

She turned back around, humming, and went back to her pan. “Don’t be stingy! There’s plenty of egg to go around. We can both have a hearty dinner, eh?”

He was at a loss. “…Who are you? What are you? What in Heavens’ name are you doing here?”

“Name’s Sun, monkey-kin!” She said without turning. “I’m here for dinner, like I said. Y’know. Hence the pan.”

She gave him a hefty serving of side-eye. “What? Is there something on my face?”

“This is a Torchdragon’s lair.” He tried to keep his voice even. “Guarded by bloodline wards. Under a Realm’s worth of Hell’s hottest magma! How’d you get in here?!”

“I’m a good swimmer,” she said with a shrug. “As for the rest…it’s a secret. Say, you’re a nosy one, aren’t you?” She frowned at him. “My turn. Are you going to try to kill me or not? Make up your mind already! I’m not cooking ‘till the fighting’s done. It’s a personal rule.” She made a face. “I’m not getting blood all over my omelettes.”

They stared at each other.

Dorian finally put a finger on what bothered him. He could read pretty much anyone, god or mortal. It wasn’t hard to suss out their wants, their innermost thoughts. Often they had it written plain on their face!

But this girl…it was like staring into a void. A very smiley void. He couldn’t even figure out her power level. She could only be powerful, or very good at faking it. Which was it? He hesitated.

If this were a true run he might’ve gone for it. But his bodies were locked away, his brother fallen. The Fate of the Multiverse teetered on the brink. Screw this up and it was over, forever.

In this risk calculus he had to hedge his bets.

“There’s five eggs left,” said Dorian slowly. “Three for me, two for you. We stay out of each others’ way.”

She shrugged again. “Deal!” Then she turned back to her pan and brought out a handful of seasonings, like the matter was settled.

Not taking his eyes off her, feeling like an idiot, Dorian went up to the first egg and hauled it off to the other side of the small cavern. Facing her all the while, he punctured the egg. Then he put a hand in and began to draw out its qi.

For her part she kept humming, paying him no attention whatsoever.

[Dragonoid: Base Form]

[Bloodline Quantity] 1.0 -> 1.1

[Star Realm: Dwarf] 26% -> 28%

[Darkness Law Saturation] 41% -> 43%

[Darkness Law Grade] Very Low

[Fire Planet: Meteor] 23% -> 26%

[Fire Law Saturation] 35% -> 39%

[Fire Law Grade] Very Low

And so they settled into an uneasy equilibrium. Uneasy for him, at least—she seemed perfectly at ease. Soon a heady scent wafted over to him, flecked with spice. She nabbed an egg, cracked it open, and sloshed it down into her pan; it sizzled fiercely, popping like firecrackers as she tossed it to and fro. A thin layer of steam soaked the room.

His powers kept ticking up…

[Dragonoid: Base Form]

[Bloodline Quantity] 1.1 -> 1.18

[Star Realm: Dwarf] 28% -> 30%

[Darkness Law Saturation] 43% -> 46%

[Darkness Law Grade] Very Low

[Fire Planet: Meteor] 26% -> 28%

[Fire Law Saturation] 39% -> 43%

[Fire Law Grade] Very Low

His blood coursed hot through his veins. The world seemed to love him ever-so-slightly more with each uptick of his Fire and Darkness Laws. Qi of those aspects rushed into him. They leapt over one another to answer his calls. His body, meanwhile, only grew denser, stronger, harder as qi seeped into it, packing into his core.

The Dark Star had grown a quarter larger. His Laws had beefed up a respectable chunk too! He’d wager he’d more than match the Dweller in a straight duel now.

Monkey-girl Sun, meanwhile, seemed happy to leave him be. She had just about finished an omelette, a softly wrapped blanket of yellow dabbed with peppers, crisped brown at the edges, glistening with oil.

Its looks were enough to get his mouth watering. Its smell was enough to get him contemplating reneging on their deal—

“Don’t even think about it!” she called.

“I know, I know,” he grumbled. He frowned. “And stop doing that!”

“Can’t help it. I can sense killing intent a hundred li away.” Gingerly she cut out a slice of omelette, letting yolk drip out the middle like a dollop of liquid sunlight. She bit into it.

“Oh…” she moaned. The look on her face was exactly like Dorian imagined how he looked when he leveled up. “Oh, Heavens!”

Something about it ticked him off. Maybe it was her face. Each time he looked into it he came away with nothing. A perfect mask, betraying nothing of what lay beneath. Even now he had no clue what her true motives were. Even her face’s construction was off-putting—very pretty, yet also somehow utterly forgettable.

“Oh, come off it,” he snapped despite himself. “It can’t be that good.”

“Tch! You dare doubt me?” She snorted, looking every bit an offended old master. “My cooking skills are the stuff of legend, I’ll have you know! They’ve made statues of my frying pan!”

She held an oozing chunk out to him with her chopsticks. “Here, then! You try it. Go on.”

“I—“

There. Again! Nothing about this creature made a lick of sense!

The only reason she’d offer was if it was poisoned. This was an easy way to eliminate a competitor. Yet somehow he knew it wasn’t. She was offering it to him simply to offer it to him.

It was the sort of naïveté only mortals had.

It was the sort of naïveté that wouldn’t last a day on a Profound Realm cultivator—much less a god!

“I’ll pass,” he found himself saying. On principle more than anything.

“Eh. Suit yourself.” She went back to slowly munching. Munching and moaning. “’Snot poisoned, by the way.” She rolled her eyes. “Another personal rule: I don’t lie. I wouldn’t break it over something so silly.”

She nearly sounded as bad as Old Man Fate.

Soon she finished, and started work on the second egg. This time she’d pulled out pots and pans, cloves of something green, a wriggling insect-thing? Whatever it was it was much more complex than the first dish.

Dorian rolled his eyes, and went back to focusing on his growth.

***

[Dragonoid: Base Form]

[Bloodline Quantity] 1.73 -> 1.81

[Star Realm: Dwarf] 45% -> 47%

[Darkness Law Saturation] 94% -> 100%

[Darkness Law Grade] Very Low

[Fire Planet: Meteor] 38% -> 41%

[Fire Law Saturation] 78% -> 83%

[Fire Law Grade] Very Low

And then—

[Level-up!]

[Darkness Law Grade] Very Low -> Low

His Laws had been his weakest point. Now, simply by eating two eggs, he’d gotten the same progress as decades of meditation. But the next step was a Medium Law Grade, and that was a far greater hurdle to clear. That was the bottleneck to Demigod.

Minutes trickled by, then an hour…

…

…

[Level-up!]

[Fire Law Grade] Very Low -> Low

…

[Dragonoid: Base Form]

[Bloodline Quantity] 1.97 -> 2.0

[Star Realm: Dwarf] 58% -> 60%

[Darkness Law Saturation] 11% -> 13%

[Darkness Law Grade] Low

[Fire Planet: Meteor] 49% -> 52%

[Fire Law Saturation] 4% -> 6%

[Fire Law Grade] Low

Second egg, complete! Dorian breathed out a roiling cloud of black-red qi. If only he had an infinite stash of Torchdragon Eggs! Alas…

To the side he heard soft snoring. You’ve got to be kidding me.

Sun was lain out against a rock, fast asleep. This time he didn’t even bother thinking about killing her. What was the point?

She’d eaten her two eggs. She’d left his two untouched. She could’ve snagged them, thrown them in her Interspatial Ring, and then dove for the exit while he was distracted cultivating. Yet she didn’t. He gave up trying to make sense of her.

Suddenly her eyes shot wide open. Her pupils trembled for an instant, contracting. Then a new expression filled her face. Horror.

“Oh, please,” he sighed. “I wasn’t even contemplating it this time.”

“Not you!”

She scrambled to her feet. Her head swiveled to a spot on the wall. No—a spot beyond the stone wall. “…Ah, shit. Shit!”

Then she dashed over to her backpack and started stuffing in utensils at lightning speed.

He frowned at the same spot. A moment later he felt it too, now that he looked for it.

A presence at the top of the magma layer, descending fast. Something horrifyingly massive. His Resonance quivered within him.

He hissed. This time there was no mistaking it. This time it was real.

“She wasn’t supposed to come back this early!” cried Sun. “What are the odds?!”

And it was no ordinary beast, either. This Torchdragon made no effort to hide the tremors of its qi. A full-fledged God.

“Fuckfuckfuckfuck—there’s only one way in and out!” Sun stared at the magma tunnel, then at him. “You! What can you do? What do you fancy your odds are against her?”

“Me?” Dorian choked. “Why don’t you fight it? Didn’t you say your pan had caved in the skull of gods?! ”

“It has. But I wasn’t the one wielding it!” She cried. “I’m weak as hells! I stole it hardly six months ago! All that—that stuff I spewed? Total nonsense! I’m only good at two things—faking and fleeing! And neither one’s any use here!”

Dorian’s head was starting to spin. He watched, face twitching, as she cradled her head in her hands. She sniffled. “Oh gods…oh, you dumb moron, you stupid idiot! You’ve done it again! I knew this place was bad news—but no. Listened to my stomach over my gut—again—and where’s that got me? Where it’s always got me! Should’ve never left the godsdamned monastery. Should’ve never stolen from ol’ Grandpa Wukong! Oh—“

Dorian froze.

“Wait.”

It clicked. Everything. How she’d gotten through the blood wards. How she faked the appearance of a Torchdragon Bloodline. Why she could fool even him. All of a sudden he knew exactly where he’d seen that red-and-yellow hue on her pan before.

“Did you just say Grandpa Wukong?!”

“Yea?” She glanced up at him.

“You’re not just monkey-kin,” he breathed. “You’re a descendent of the Godking Sun Wukong, the Monkey King! You practice the Art of 72 Earthly Transformations. That—that frying pan—is the Jingu Bang!”

This time it was her turn to be shocked. “Yea, that’s me. Sun Wukong the Ninth. How’d you know?”

“Nevermind that. Shut up. Stop panicking. Listen to me very carefully.”

He breathed deep. The Torchdragon mother was more than halfway down now. Soon it would start probing for the signatures of her eggs. Then it was all over.

“There is a way out of this mess. Here's what we’re going to do.”