Chapter 18 - 17: A Dragon
David realized only after bursting out of his lair that he had not woken at the most opportune time. It was the middle of winter outside. The north of the Old Continent was inherently cold; by David’s estimation, it had to be at least minus fifty or sixty degrees Celsius, akin to Siberia in January. A glance around revealed a landscape draped in ice and snow, a world of silvery whiteness. This was not a season that dragons, especially Red Dragons, enjoyed.
Should have slept for a few more months, David muttered, clicking his tongue. But now that he was awake, his rumbling stomach wasn’t so easily quieted.
However, after much searching, let alone finding larger prey like bears or elk, he couldn’t even spot two rabbits. It took a great deal of effort before David, using his forked tongue, located a burrow inhabited by a colony of groundhogs. But when it came time to cook this ’beggar’s banquet’ of groundhogs, he misjudged the flame, and the entire bunch, along with their burrow, turned to charcoal.
Perhaps because he had used a bit of Dragon Breath, David, having failed to feast on warm meat, felt even hungrier. There was no choice but to munch on a few mouthfuls of snow to suppress the hunger. In the meantime, David also figured out why, after billions of years, Blue Star had never evolved any species with fire-breathing organs. Simply put, the energy consumption was far too high.
He did a simple calculation using high school chemistry equations from his past life. Suppose he wanted to cook a three-pound rabbit until its internal temperature reached 74 degrees Celsius. He recalled that the specific heat capacity of rabbit meat was approximately 2.9 joules per gram degree Celsius (J/g°C). The energy required would be 1,500 grams × 2.9 J/g°C × (74-25)°C, which was approximately 214,650 joules, or 51.3 kilocalories.
Every 100 grams of rabbit meat contained roughly 20.8 grams of protein and 5.6 grams of fat. Protein and fat had energy densities of 4 and 9 kilocalories per gram, respectively. This meant it would yield 1,248 kilocalories from protein and 756 kilocalories from fat, totaling 2,004 kilocalories.
In other words, damn it! Eating such a cooked rabbit, without accounting for any energy conversion losses, would only net him about two thousand kilocalories. Just getting it half-cooked would cost the energy equivalent of half a spicy rabbit head! But how could that be possible? That last gout of Dragon Breath had probably not only incinerated the entire groundhog colony, clearing out their whole family tree, but it still wouldn’t have been enough to recoup the energy spent. This didn’t even take into account the energy he expended finding and capturing his prey!
With such an abysmal return on investment, he’d lose a couple of pounds of fat just running a spicy rabbit head stall!
Therefore, David came to a somewhat irritating conclusion: He either had to stop breathing fire, choosing instead to eat raw, frozen meat and go fishing like the White Dragons, or he had to ignore these small, innocent animals—which would only leave him starving—and go straight for larger prey. Preferably, prey that traveled in herds.