Seed of Titan-Chapter 149: Stew is the New Milk

Drai crawled forward through the grass, passing under several horses seemingly unnoticed. Soon, he reached the center of the herd. Among the horses that were grazing there, one had a foal suckling under her.

Drai looked around but couldn’t see any other foal.

’Does this large herd only have a single nursing mother? Damn, these stallions should really work harder. Well, I hope she has more than one nipple, or else the foal would have to fast for a bit.’

Following this, he slowly approached the mother, still crawling forward.

Once he was a bit closer to the foal, Drai examined the mother’s underside, searching for her teats. However, to his bafflement, he couldn’t find any. He came closer, almost right below the horse, and searched once more.

’Come on, I was just kidding! Do these weird horses really only have a single nipple?!’ Drai thought in disbelief after failing to spot any semblance of a teat aside from the one that was being suckled by the foal.

Drai wasn’t familiar with animals, so he didn’t know that nipples were normally located on the mammary gland, which usually protrudes from the skin and not randomly scattered across the underside. But interestingly, this female didn’t seem to have such a mammary—the spot where the foal was suckling was no different from the rest of her belly.

Ignorant of the horse’s peculiar biology, Drai’s focus was now on the foal. He crawled closer until he was next to its hooves, but the foal didn’t react—either not noticing him or not caring.

Drai wasn’t an animal whisperer, so he did the first thing that came to mind—he sat up and cautiously tapped the foal.

The foal, which was about three heads taller than him, glanced at him.

"Switch with me for a bit," Drai whispered while trying his best to convey this with a series of hand gestures.

The foal stared at him briefly before losing all interest, shifting its gaze away.

Drai tapped the foal a few more times, but it didn’t react at all, completely preoccupied with filling its stomach.

Drai hesitated, unsure what to do. He wondered if he should just yank the foal off, but he feared that it would end up crying and alert the rest of the herd, which would put him in a worse predicament.

’I could just snap its neck, but that would leave a bad taste in my mouth. It’s just an assignment, not a life or death situation. I haven’t fallen that far to mercilessly slaughter animals for no urgent purpose.’

Having no better options in mind, Drai tried persuading the foal again. This time, he brought out the empty jerrycan.

"Come on, little horsey. I just need to collect this small amount, then you can continue drinking all you want, even until your tummy bursts," he whispered, shaking the jerrycan near the foal’s face.

To his delight, he had caught the foal’s attention again. It eyed the jerrycan with flaring nostrils. Then, to Drai’s surprise, it stuck out its long tongue and licked the jerrycan.

Drai slowly pulled away the jerrycan, hoping that the foal would let go of the teat and follow it. Unfortunately, the foal simply retracted its tongue and resumed suckling.

He tried this one more time, but the results didn’t change. The foal seemed to be only mildly interested in licking the jerrycan.

Drai stared at the jerrycan with a puzzled look, wondering why the foal kept licking it whenever he shoved it near its face.

’Does it actually taste good?’ he thought before getting a taste for himself, licking a section of the jerrycan that wasn’t covered in the foal’s saliva.

As his tongue touched the jerrycan, his eyes widened in realization. As expected, it was tasteless, but he had just gotten a whiff of a faint aroma that was very familiar to him.

’It’s the stew!’

Drai recalled bringing out the jerrycan last night to show it to Max. But he neither expected that the steam from the simmering stew had somehow stuck on it nor that the foal was able to sense the faint scent.

Suddenly, an excited grin appeared on his face. After passing the jerrycan to his left hand, he grabbed into thin air, pulling out a bowl of warm stew.

Almost immediately, the foal’s nostrils flared and it stared at the faintly steaming bowl without having to be tapped by Drai first.

Noticing the foal’s heightened interest, Drai slowly backed off while blowing the steam toward the foal.

"Come, horsey horsey. You know you want Max’s specialty stew..." he whisperingly urged.

Drai’s enticing seemed to work, as the foal slowly released its mother’s teat and wobbled walked toward him.

"Good horsey. Max worked really hard making this for you, hehe..."

Drai was obviously lying. This was just leftover stew from last night that he had brought as provision. Madeleine’s delicious meal had momentarily altered Drai’s and Max’s taste buds, making the stew taste bland, which was why they could only eat small portions of it during breakfast, leaving a portion for Drai to bring along.

Drai didn’t lure the foal away too far, fearing that he would alert the mother. He only walked up until he was almost out from under the mother horse before setting the bowl down on the grass.

Drai immediately walked back to the suckling spot, passing by the wobbling foal that was still trying to reach the bowl. "Enjoy the meal, bud," he remarked, patting the foal’s back.

Arriving at the foal’s previous spot, Drai instantly noticed a wet, dark teat. He opened the jerrycan and raised it until its opening was just below the teat. Then, he reached for the teat to milk it.

However, just as his fingers touched it, the teat retracted in a flash, leaving his fingers pinching empty air.

’What the fuck?!’

Drai squinted, but there was no trace of the hiding teat at all. He tried touching, rubbing, and even digging his finger into the spot it had vanished into, but nothing happened.

Wondering what caused this and how to summon the teat again, he glanced at the foal that had reached the bowl and was busy slurping the stew. Just then, his eyes caught the sight of another teat, dangling from a new spot that previously had nothing on it.

’Gotcha!’