GREED: ALL FOR WHAT?

It was a smart idea, but the two smaller ones didn't like it that they had to cooperate. It hurt their pride to have to rely on another for victory. But they had no choice. They had to cooperate or suffer a loss. A loss will hurt their pride more than corporating. Besides, there was a lot at stake here.

Their fight was mostly for fun, but it had serious repercussions for the hierarchy. As proud creatures, they do not like losing, even if it is to their siblings. They may be weak and have only been born for a little over a year, but their need to dominate is ingrained in them. It is the dragon way.

They stopped fighting when they heard the howling of the wind. All three of them turned towards the only opening in the cave in expectation. Their expectations were not subverted. A massive-scaled creature blocked out the light of the sun and flew into the cave. The three of them sensed the familiar aura of their mother in the creature. So they ran to her excitedly.

They became three fast bundles of excitement and anticipation that crashed into the far larger beast. The large beast brought her head low and nuzzled them with her jaw. Her head is more than a hundred times bigger than their whole body, so she had to be careful not to crush them. They screeched and gurgled in happiness due to the ministrations of her affection.

She said to them with a deep, rumbling voice that made the floor hum, "You are all filthy. It seems you have been wrestling again."

"No, we have not been wrestling." They rejected that claim while trying to be as convincing as possible. They shook themselves free of dust to appear clean to their mother. Unfortunately, it didn't work.

She didn't believe them. She could see that they were filthy. The black soil of the cave had marred their features. They were black all over, so it was clear to her that they had been wrestling in her absence.

She smiled and said to them, "You know what this means."

They knew what she intended to do next, so they ran. They tried to scatter in different directions this time around. They have learned that lesson quickly.

"Good," she said in admiration. "Scattering will make escape better."

They are learning and growing up fast, but it is not good enough to escape her. She pressed one of her clawed forelimbs on their retreating tails. Just one hand managed to cover and press down the tails of all three of them.

She is very fast for a creature her size. She was able to pin them down before they got far. It helped that she expected their reaction. They are not the only ones capable of learning.

Then she licked them with her tongue. Transparent saliva fell on them in waves. The acidic saliva ate through all the debris on their body. It revealed their sparking blue scales underneath the black soil. It is the same blue scales as their mother's.

The three of them screeched in resistance through the entire process of getting a bath. The bath was not painful. Their scales protected them from the corrosive saliva. But they don't like being submerged in their mother's saliva. So they struggled, albeit ineffectively, against her.

The bath was quick, but they were quicker to shake themselves clean of her saliva immediately after she let them go.

She said to them, "Now it is time to eat."

She dropped what she was holding in her other clawed hand. It fell to the ground with a thud. It was the prey that she got along the way.

The three of them rushed to the dead prey and began nibbling on it. The way they struggled against its skin made her chuckle. The prey is bigger than each of them. It is about three times bigger than the three of them combined. It is obvious that the prey was stronger than them when it was alive.

Even in death, the prey isn't something they can defeat easily. Its defense is ordinary furred skin, but it is tough enough to give them trouble. They had to combine their efforts to create a gap in the skin. Then they dug in with gusto.

There was no injury on the prey for them to take advantage of because their mother didn't touch the beast to kill it. The heart of the poor beast had given out when she locked her majestic gaze onto it. Then she picked it up and brought it to feed her dragonlings.

She could have helped them out with breaking the skin of the dead prey, but she didn't. She watched them struggle because it is necessary for them to work for their food even if they are still weak. It is struggle that brings out the potential of the strong.

They have immense potential as dragonlings, but they need adversity, no matter how little or how early, to make sure that their potential doesn't go to waste.

"I shouldn't have worried." She thought to herself in amusement at the sight of her struggling offspring.

They were pushing against each other to gain access to the gap that they had opened together. They didn't ask each other for the opportunity to eat. Instead, they fought each other for the opportunity to eat. The sight warmed her cold heart.

A warm heart was a previously alien emotion to her. She didn't think highly of making offspring before. As a powerful being, making offspring serves no purpose for her. She believed that only weak races that needed to acquire strength in numbers needed to reproduce. So she used to look down on making offspring.

She is not the only one with this belief among her race. Most of her race thinks so too. If not for their ingrained instincts to produce at least one offspring before they can leave the plane, then they wouldn't have bothered to reproduce. If not for that instinct, their disdain to reproduce, coupled with their low fertility, would have made their race extinct.

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A/N: Please reread this chapter. I made a mistake yesterday when I uploaded it. I uploaded the wrong one.