Free Web NovelChapter 153: Chapter 151: No More Fighting Over the Nest
When Zog woke up in his nest, it was already afternoon.
So decadent.
Ever since his relationship with Furin had deepened, his body was getting weaker by the day.
Even an Ancient Dragon’s constitution had its limits.
He tried to roll over.
He couldn’t.
"Ouch, hey, my wing’s gone numb. Move it. Don’t you know how heavy your head is?"
Zog stretched out a claw to nudge Furin’s head off his wing, but he didn’t dare to use too much force and failed to move her.
"Wake up! I can’t feel my wing anymore!"
Ever since the two dragons started sleeping in the same nest, Zog no longer had to hide his little Pocket Monster-themed dragon nest.
Unfortunately, it was a bit cramped. Using Magic to enlarge it directly always made the mattress feel less comfortable.
’I’ll just have to wait for the custom-made, king-sized dragon nest.’
Fortunately, being dragons, they only ever pinned down large appendages like wings and tails, not hair.
"Nnngh?" Furin grunted, her eyes still hazy with sleep. Just as she was about to move her head, she felt a painful tug on her face.
"Your tail is on my whiskers!" Furin snapped, suddenly wide awake and puffing her cheeks in anger.
A Golden Dragon’s "whiskers" weren’t actual whiskers and weren’t exclusive to males. Similar to how a Red Dragon grew a crown of spines on its head, the feature that distinguished Golden Dragons from other dragons besides their color was the soft spines that grew on the sides of their heads.
If they grew sparsely near the front, they looked a lot like catfish barbels. Furin’s were more aesthetically pleasing, growing further back and more densely, resembling a coarse horse’s mane.
"Well, you pinned my wing first!" Zog’s left wing hadn’t regained feeling yet. It was in a state of numb, tingly weakness as oxygen-rich blood struggled to pump its way to the tip of the limb where circulation had been cut off.
It was just like when your legs fall asleep after squatting on the toilet playing with your phone for too long, and you can’t stand up.
"It’s all your fault," Furin said, gently nipping Zog’s tail.
"Ew, drool. Gross." Zog flicked his tail with a look of disgust.
"You think I’m gross?!"
If you could see a status bar right now, Furin’s would definitely have a "woke up on the wrong side of the bed" buff.
She pounced on him, gnawing and nibbling all over his chin and neck.
"You’ve gone too far!" Zog leaped to his feet.
Furin, however, simply went with the motion and flopped onto her back. She gave him a provocative wink, her tail-tip brushing lightly over the top of his foot, giving him a look that said, ’What are you gonna do about it?’
Zog sneered. ’Trying to trick me into coming over? Not a chance!’
"Magic, Stink Bomb Attack."
Zog turned around, let out a soft POOT, then yanked the blanket over Furin, trapping her inside.
"Zog, you %*@#*!@#%&..."
A stream of curses that children shouldn’t learn came from under the blanket.
Despite her vulgar tirade, as an Ancient Dragon, Furin somehow managed not to tear through the Ordinary blanket.
’She’s so gentle,’ Zog thought, so touched he could die.
In the end, their fragrant morning roughhousing concluded with Furin’s threat: "You just wait ’til tonight."
Zog figured his vacation was about to end anyway, so maybe he should go hide out at the Factory.
Enrich his life with work. He loved work. His work really was to make money for himself.
PM. Breakfast time.
His lifestyle was as regular as a fourth-year university student who’s secured a grad school spot but hasn’t been dragged into the lab to slave away by their advisor yet.
Breakfast was a high-quality vegetarian protein beverage—soy milk; free𝑤ebnovel.com
distinguished, high-fat, refined-flour breadsticks—fried dough sticks;
The people here probably couldn’t imagine that, at the current rate of development, in about eighty to a hundred years, coarse whole-wheat bread that hadn’t been properly cleared of its bran and germ would be more expensive than bread made from fully refined flour.
Health really was a good business.
And, of course, there were Zog’s favorite tea eggs; he could eat five or six in one sitting.
Some might ask if eating too many eggs would lead to high cholesterol.
First of all, the idea that a person can only handle the cholesterol from one egg a day is a myth. Secondly, Zog was a Dragon.
He liked eggs prepared in all sorts of ways, but when it came to scrambled eggs with tomato, he only ate the savory version with a pinch of sugar.
Mealtimes were for playing with Illusion Mimicry.
Zog held a fried dough stick in one claw and swiped through the Magi-Scroll interface with the other.
These days, he was monitoring accounts on Magi-Scroll with large followings to see which ones had the potential to become internet celebrities.
The online economy wasn’t exactly developed yet, but it was never wrong to prepare early.
Currently, the accounts with the most followers were all official accounts for various organizations, like the major guilds, academies, and the different departments of the Zog Group.
After that came the Magic Shadow Drama actors and all sorts of accounts dedicated to posting "fan service."
Zog wondered if he should just make a dedicated website for this group of risqué creators to play to their strengths.
Besides them, only Toto, Soron, and the sole "Big V" of the knowledge-sharing category, Lori, had tens of thousands of followers.
Among them, Toto’s followers had extremely high user engagement. She focused on creating image-and-text-based guides for various games, and every guide she posted on Magi-Scroll received several thousand comments.
In the early days of the internet, guide creators were still in high demand.
"Huh?" Zog suddenly noticed an account he’d never seen before, "Late Wind Blows," which had just broken ten thousand followers.
There weren’t any bot followers yet, and with the total number of internet users still under ten million, ten thousand followers was still a very significant number.
Curious, Zog clicked into the person’s profile page.
He couldn’t hold back his laughter when he saw the pinned post.
"The air in the Northern Domain is so fresh and sweet!"
Below it was a picture of the user at the Snowman Town station.
The shill-vibe was a bit too strong.
Zog double-checked the account ID. ’I don’t recall arranging for an account like this, do I?’
Although he had indeed hired quite a few writers to submit custom-written articles about the Northern Domain to major newspapers, and with no small success, he hadn’t expanded into Magi-Scroll yet.
’Maybe I’ve misjudged this "Late Wind Blows." Perhaps the user is just a travel blogger.’
After all, because the Northern Domain had fewer factories, the air was indeed much fresher than in the big cities.
The early-industrialized major cities were all developing in the direction of a "city of smog."
Zog scrolled down.
"What can 1 Silver Coin buy in Winter City?"
Seeing this title, Zog did a tactical lean-back.
But then he shook his head.
’Not necessarily. What if he really just wants to show what 1 Silver Coin can buy in Winter City as part of a travel guide?’
However, in the pictures posted by "Late Wind Blows," every item purchased was accompanied by its price in the Royal City.
He compared common goods like fish, seafood, potatoes, and drinks.
He successfully came to the conclusion that 1 Silver Coin in the Northern Domain was worth more than 1 Silver Coin in the Royal City.
From there, he deduced that life in the Northern Domain was better than in the Royal City.
But he didn’t mention that the Northern Domain had lakes and was coastal, so of course fish and seafood would be cheaper than in the landlocked Royal City.
For the potatoes, he had specifically chosen discounted ones that were about to sprout. Sprouted potatoes were still sold in the Northern Domain; due to food shortages, people would just cut out the sprouts and make do.
As for the drinks, it was because the Northern Domain had its own beverage factory. Logistics weren’t developed enough yet to implement unified pricing across the entire region.
’What a talent,’ he thought.
Zog was thoroughly shocked.
Never mind how bizarre the logical deduction was, or how unreasonable the chosen examples were.
Just this ability to lie with a straight face alone...
This guy had the divine constitution of a born contrarian public intellectual, even came with his own biased material, and was simply born to run a clickbait marketing account.
Zog also noticed a signature under Late Wind Blows’s personal profile card.
Moderator of the "Feilin People’s Life" Forum.
’What kind of forum is that?’
Zog searched for it and took a look.
"I do manual labor in the Northern Domain. The minimum wage is 10 Copper Coins per hour."
"Still hyping up the breakthrough with the Nine Ring Array? What does that have to do with your 30-copper-coin monthly salary?"
...
