This chapter has been proof-read by: AnthonyL

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Had I reached the maximum amount of red mist my body could tolerate? Could I not increase my resistance any further? The amount of red mist my body could hold was so high, that measuring it had become very difficult. After thinking about it for a while, I came up with an idea.

The plan was to expel all the red mist in my body, then weigh and eat as much dragon meat as I could before feeling sick again. By weighing the meat, I would be able to obtain a measure of the amount of red mist I could tolerate. Confident in my plan, I went outside and emptied myself of red mist. Then, I began to cook steaks which were weighed one pound at a time.

After only a few minutes, I realized this plan wasn't going to work. I needed to eat way too much meat before being filled with red mist and would most likely get sick from overeating instead. I scratched this plan and tried to think of a way to obtain more red mist more rapidly.

Only a few minutes later, as I was observing the empty meat bags on the table, a genius idea came to me. These bags all contained a lot of blood, and blood was most likely what contained the most red mist. I grabbed Rambo and walked to the cafeteria where I was keeping my precious meat.

I took a giant cooking pot and went into the big walk-in freezer with it. There, I proceeded in opening the meat bags one after the other and gathered the frozen blood in the bottom of the bags into the cooking pot. After going through all the meat bags, I had gathered almost 3 litres of frozen dragon blood.

I took a propane burner, a propane tank and went back to my private area for some cooking. I installed everything on the floor, lit the burner and began to cook the blood. The blood first melted, then boiled for hours until all the water had evaporated. I had to constantly stir it up to prevent the thick syrup from sticking to the bottom of the pot but after a few more minutes, I was left with a small amount of smelly brown powder. (Dehydrated blood)

Now that I had a good quantity of 'dragon dust', I proceeded to weigh and divide it in little piles of 500mg each. With this, I could possibly be able to put a number on the amount of red mist my body was capable of containing, and see if my tolerance to it was still increasing or had reached its maximal capacity.

Since I had felt red mist poisoning for the first time in a very long time, I was either losing tolerance, or had reached my limit. Knock!* Knock!* Knock!* While I was weighing and dividing the powder, someone knocked at my door once more. Sigh, living here was going to put my tolerance to people to the test. “Doowrr! Doowrr! Doowrr! Fawwtarrr Fawtarrr! Doowwrr!” At least one of us liked it when people came here.

“Yes yes Rambo, I know.” This little dragon was learning how to communicate at an alarming speed. Seeing him learn so fast was almost scary in a way. I walked up to the door and answered it. “Heyy handsome!~~ I found this amazing bottle of Jack Daniel, mind joining me for a drink?” Asked the joyful Emanuela while holding the square bottle in her hands.

“Nwela! Nwela! Eeeoooo!” Energetically interrupted Rambo. “Since when does he know my name?” She asked with a confused look on her face. “Don't ask me, I'm as confused as you are.” I retorted. If Rambo kept learning human speech that fast, we would be able to hold simple conversations with him in only a few months.

The little creature was bobbing his head up and down while turning in circles to show his happiness. I was glad to see Rambo happy, but if Emanuela kept coming here all the time, it would become a problem. I was seriously considering telling her that even though I was very attracted to her, I would never date her.

I mean, seeing her dump Marc as soon as she saw me had ruined any potential romantic feelings from me. If I dated her, she would most likely dump me as soon as we got back to earth. With that in mind, all I needed to fight against were my feelings of lust for her. I had slept with a few women in the past, but then hadn't had any interaction with them after becoming an hermit.

If I had been able to live for 7 years without sex, I should definitely be able to hold on for a bit longer. Seeing how happy Rambo was to see her, I decided to invite her in and have a few drinks. An hour of her talking and me pretending to be listening later, Emanuela had passed out and was sleeping on my couch with Rambo rolled up in a ball next to her.

Being around people truly was exhausting after all, and there didn't seem to be any way to avoid it. Feeling a bit drunk myself, I still decided to proceed with my red mist gauging test. I went outside, emptied myself of red mist then went back in. Now completely empty, I mixed 500mg of dragon dust and mixed it with some sugar before diluting it in water and drinking it all.

Luckily, the taste wasn't as bad as I was expecting it to be. Still feeling fine, I repeated the process a second time, and a third one. It was after consuming 2000mg of dragon dust that I finally began to feel red mist poisoning. Then came the time to see if I had reached my limit.

I emptied my body of red mist once more, and took 2000mg again. I got sick had had to expel some red mist like the first time. Then I repeated this process 5 times but at the 5th time, I didn't feel sick anymore. Seemed like I could now tolerate 2000mg of dragon dust without feeling sick.

This was the confirmation I was hoping for. My body resistance had not reached its limit but was actually still increasing. Then why had I suddenly begunn to feel red mist poisoning again after spending months without feeling it once. Feeling a bit tipsy and confused by my newfound knowledge, I laid back on my chair and pondered about it for a while.

Red mist was still so mysterious in every way. We were still far from understanding how our bodies reacted to it. A good example of its mystery were the results of the other survivors' training. All the other survivors were now able to spend almost 48 hours outside their air filtered shelter, except Annie and Marc who could barely tolerate 8 hours of it.

There was no indication of it being linked to gender, age or anything else. Even more bizarre was that Annie could apparently see the red mist just like me, but unlike me had difficulty adapting to it. The more I pondered about it, the more confused I became and decided to call it a day. In fact, it was getting harder and harder not to stare at Emanuela's ass as she slept, which was part of the reason why I wanted her gone.

Not only that, but I was also getting tired and wanted to go to bed, so I grabbed my radio and called for Robert to come see me. A few minutes later, he arrived and seemed confused by what he saw. First, there was me, drunk and barely conscious on my chair. Then there was Emanuela and Rambo who were sleeping on the couch, and on the table next to me laid a bunch individually weighed and separated piles of suspicious red/brown powders. Everything looked a lot like an after-party at a suspicious drug lab.

“Mind taking her away? I don't want to sleep with her in the room.” I slurred out in my drunkenness. “I feel like I shouldn't ask and just bring her back to her bed. Goodnight Nate.” He then said while carrying Emanuela back to her room. I locked the door behind him and collapsed on my bed for the night.

“Fawwtarrr!! NNNgwyyy! Nnnngwyyy!” I woke up the next morning to the voice of Rambo complaining that he was hungry. We had breakfast then I did my daily exercises. After my exercises, I did a quick fence patrol then tried to train that telekinesis power thingy I had used on Marc the day before, but never managed to move anything.

I first tried to move a mug, then thinking that it was too heavy, I decided to try with a pen, then a small piece of paper. No matter what I tried, I couldn't recreate what had happened that time. Was there some weird requirement to it like an emotional trigger or something? Seemed like I had more and more difficulty understanding what was going on with red mist recently.

I was still pondering about what I had discovered the day before. Why was I now reaching my red mist limit faster than before? What was now different from before? Could my body be absorbing it faster now? Unlikely. Then I tried to think about it in a different way.

Imagining that my body was an empty bucket with small holes in it. If you wanted to fill it with water, you needed to pour the water in faster than it leaked out. Keeping that in mind, what if my body had become less permeable to red mist? Meaning that my body used to leak red mist out, but was now better at keeping it in. As if some holes in the bucket had been patched up.

This would explain why I was getting filled with red mist faster now than before. But I was still stuck with an important question, why and how had I stopped leaking red mist out? What had happened that had made my body better at keeping the red mist in? I still had so many unanswered questions in my head that I decided to take some aspirins to prevent an oncoming headache.

Then something came to mind. A while back, Alice had shown me how the areas in contact with my skin on my previous necklace had turned red. If it was only the areas that were in direct contact with my skin, that meant that it had gotten its red mist from my body. I already knew that gold was like a red mist sponge, so it had to be the cause.

My gold necklace had kept leeching red mist out of my body, making it harder to get filled with it. With my necklace now fully turned to red gold, it probably wasn't absorbing red mist anymore, which was why I had started to fill up on red mist faster again. Then a major realization came to mind. All the others had gold rings or other accessories, except Marc and Annie, the two who seemed to adapt the slowest. This was such an important piece of information that I decided to keep it to myself.

Keeping Marc weak was a good thing, so I needed to think of a way to get him to wear some rings or something. That way, Marc would remain vulnerable to the red mist while taking longer before getting poisoned by it. The only reason I had managed to grow this strong even while wearing gold, was because I was consuming a large amount of dragon meat and could use the expulsion technique.

I had tried to teach the others the expulsion technique but all of them failed miserably. Thinking back on it, since Annie can also see the red mist, she should be able to learn this technique as well. I would need to try to give her some personal lessons later.

Pumped by my new important discovery, I decided to finish the work on my riot suit when someone knocked at the door once again. Seemed like there was always someone knocking at my door, how annoying. This time it was the old man Léopaul who had finally completed lil boy's detonator.

“There you go young lad. This remote should reach at least 1 kilometre away, and I suggest you don't put the batteries in it before being ready to blow things up. Hurhuhurhu* Also, I'm almost finished with the taser carpet I talked about. Ha! I almost forgot, Miss Camille also asked me to tell you that she has finished preparing some nasty gasses or something like that.” He said with his usual good mood.

“Thank you very much old man.” He then proceeded to explain to me how everything functioned, then we talked a bit about my new riot suit. Rambo was listening to us and observing everything we did, but never showed the kind of affection he usually showed with Emanuela. By the looks of it, Rambo seemed to prefer women. Luckily though, his affection toward me seemed to be unwavering as we kept growing closer and closer each day.

From what Léopaul had said, we would be ready to start hunting the king dragon tomorrow, so I had to complete my suit before that. A few hours later, my suit 2.0 was finally finished and should be able to protect me against almost anything. In fact, I was pretty sure I could even remain unharmed against a Kalashnikov.

Then by the end of the day, it was time to prepare what we would need to lure the king dragon where we wanted him to be. For that purpose, I was sitting on the floor with a microphone in my hand, trying to get Rambo to roar. “Come on Rambo, ROARRRrr!!! Give it everything you got!” The little creature looked at me, tilted its head and seemed to struggle to keep his attention away from his toys.

Hoping to move things along, I confiscated his toys and tried again. “Come on now, ROAArrr! Like a big boy.” Rambo sat and looked at me for a while before finally taking a deep breath and giving his mightiest roar. “Guaaa!” So in the end I needed to think of a different plan...

As I was trying to think of something else that could attract the king dragon, someone came banging on my door once again, but this time it sounded a lot more energetic than usual. KNOCK!* KNOCK!* KNOCK!* KNOCK!* KNOCK!* “DRAGON!!!!! A DRAGON IS HERE!!!!!!” Screamed Emanuela from the other side of the door with panic in her voice. “Nwela! Nwela! Nwelaaa!” Unaware of the gravity of the situation, Rambo did his usual joyful greeting while jumping up and down.

Was it the king dragon again? If it was, we were in a bad situation. We had yet to be ready to fight it. Worried, I ran up to the door, opened it and quickly asked. “Which colour???” This was an essential piece of information in knowing what we were dealing with. “B-Blue greyish! It's flying over the hospital right now!!!”

Ufff* A common dragon... We were getting used to seeing flying creatures being attracted to our giant pile of rotting corpses we called 'compost pile', so it had probably been attracted by it as well. We would usually shoot anything that came to eat our precious fertilizer, but since it was a dragon, we were better off leaving it alone. “Let him eat whatever he wants from our compost pile, he should leave when he's full.” I simply answered before turning back to what I was previously doing.

“No! It's not interested in the compost pile at all! It's acting strangely... Anyway come quick!” She quickly continued. Sigh* Well if it's a common dragon, I should be able to take care of it. I ran back to my suit, put it on, grabbed my 338 and some pipe bombs and ran to the room they had seen it from. Robert and Camille were watching it through the windows and seemed worried by its behaviour. “It's like a crow circling over a carcass. He definitely knows we're in here.” Said Robert with fear in his voice.

“You stay here and don't come out. Emanuela, you take care of Rambo.” I said before giving her my baby boy. “What are you going to do?” Asked Camille with a worried look. Since it was a common dragon, my necklace should work on it, so I judged that the best option was a direct confrontation. Maybe this way, we wouldn't need to fight it. “Just stay here and don't do anything. Don't even make a sound.” I said before running out of the hospital. I ran down to the parking lot and stood in the middle of it.

“HEYYYY YOU UP THERE! WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU WANT?” I screamed at the flying creature to attract its attention. I was terrified, but I had grown more confident in dealing with common dragons since the cave incident. Noticing me, the dragon rapidly landed a few metres away and began to glare at me with its glowing red eyes. I prepared my sniper rifle and waited to see its behaviour.

The first thing I noticed was its size. This common dragon couldn't be more than a juvenile as it was barely taller than myself. This was reassuring since a bullet from my 338 should be able to kill it if things went bad. “ROOOAARRRRR!!!!” The creature roared then slowly walked toward me. Now that was a roar... Not like Rambo's cute squeaky noises.

The way it acted and moved, didn't make me feel threatened. Actually it felt more like this dragon was observing me. The creature eventually began to raise its head in a strange manner, almost as if it was trying to show me its chin but then did something unbelievable. “Shhhh Sshhhh Biiiig boooy... RRRRrrrrrrrrrrOOooooooo Biig booooooy”