These guys didn't even rest at night. Instead, they worked in shifts, with one group mining during the day and another mining at night... Then they used the carts they'd put together through long hours of overtime to haul the stones and ore back to their camp.
The funny thing was that the hunters of this period hadn't yet domesticated the local herbivores, so they had to pull the carts themselves—and they were incredibly strong. Just two of them could pull a cart all the way back.
But observing the hunters' way of life had gradually stopped being Xingyan's main focus. After hunting that Sleepy Floater Dragon some time ago, Xingyan had kept an eye out for opportunities to hunt a few more.
No need to say more. He just focused on eating their air sacs.
And after eating six whole Sleepy Floater Dragons and their air sacs, perhaps because he'd taken in enough... well, evolutionary information?
Or perhaps the prayers Xingyan had offered while eating them had worked. In any case, when he got to the fourth Sleepy Floater Dragon, his body finally began to undergo some unusual changes.
It wasn't that he could take a deep breath and inflate himself like a balloon, the way a Sleepy Floater Dragon or Floating Dragon could. Thankfully, that wasn't the change he'd developed; otherwise, Xingyan couldn't imagine how much people would laugh at a Glavenus as round as a ball.
Of course, he hadn't developed the ability to secrete sleep-inducing substances, either. He hadn't turned into a Sleeping Glavenus.
The change was in Xingyan's carapace. To be precise, another layer of carapace had appeared over the one he already had.
A shell over a shell.
At first glance, it was still dark red, but this new layer of carapace had none of the defensive strength of the one beneath it. Instead, it was remarkably light.
It was filled with compressed air, and Xingyan could even sense it. He could consciously control the outer layer of carapace and make it take in large amounts of air.
Could this be... an air sac?
His very own air sac.
It wasn't an internal organ, but an external... organ?
There were a lot of these external organs. They hadn't appeared on every plate of his carapace yet, but there were already plenty of them.
But could these little things really help him achieve his goal, increasing his buoyancy and helping him fly into the sky one day?
Xingyan had tried hopping up and down to see if it was any easier to get airborne. But perhaps because this shell-over-shell hadn't yet covered his whole body, he honestly couldn't feel much difference.
The bigger change was to his appearance—uh, he'd gotten uglier.
The mineral deposits scattered across his carapace had already made him look like a spotted dragon. Now he had an extra thick layer of shell over shell, making the surface of his body look like a hilly landscape, all bumps and dips.
All right, to be honest, he looked like a giant cauliflower. Or some kind of tumor.
No wonder those few scholars accompanying the First Expedition Team had come up with such ridiculous theories. Xingyan really did look sickly now.
He was somewhat aware of his appearance. After all, every time he went to drink at the Flower Field Marshland Area, he admired his handsome dragon self in the water. Unfortunately, lately he'd found it harder and harder to admire what he saw.
But that was all right. He believed that as he hunted more Sleepy Floater Dragons and took in more Life Energy from eating them, this little unevenness would eventually disappear.
By dragon standards, he had all the time in the world.
Time passed at an unhurried pace: hunting, eating, growing... Before he knew it, Xingyan had been in this world for over a year.
A young Glavenus was cared for by its adult mother for about a year after hatching. That was long enough for it to grow large enough to hunt on its own and begin forging its Sword Tail into a sharp Great Sword.
After that, it had to live on its own. It was no longer a young Glavenus, and its mother lost all her patience and maternal affection at that point, kicking the newly grown Glavenus out of her territory.
If the young Glavenus wanted to stay, what awaited it wasn't a loving mother, but its mother's blade.
There was a reason Glavenus populations never grew very large. Too many factors limited their numbers, keeping the ecosystem in their habitat from collapsing.
But Xingyan, an unusual Glavenus, had passed that stage long ago. And that wasn't just because he lived alone; his body had also nearly reached the size of an adult Glavenus about two months ago.
There was no secret to it. He just knew how to eat.
With all that food and plenty of Life Energy, it would have been strange if Xingyan hadn't grown so large, given his special abilities.
Even this growth rate had been slowed by his evolutionary abilities. Most of the Life Energy he obtained from eating went toward covering his whole body with mineral deposits and growing the shell-over-shell across his body.
Even so, these new changes still hadn't spread across his entire body. They currently covered only the undersides of his heat-dissipating plates, his chest and abdomen, and a few other small areas.
That was because his body had continued growing rapidly during this time, creating a race between the two.
But that was all right. Xingyan believed that as he gradually approached the limits of the Glavenus species—or the limits of his own body—his growth would slow down or even stop. His physical evolution would catch up sooner or later.
If Xingyan had once looked like a dragon-shaped cauliflower, like some sick dragon, now he looked like a knight wearing full plate armor.
Ordinary Glavenus were fairly slender, but Xingyan was a full size broader than them. He looked incredibly imposing.
It was much like how the Ape Dragon Species had both ordinary Ape Dragons and the Gold Rathian subspecies.
But despite his burly, muscular appearance, which made him look incredibly heavy, when Xingyan actually moved, he was more agile than his enemies could have imagined.
That was because the layer of carapace that made him look so bulky was only an outer layer over his real carapace. Well, they were air-sac carapaces—and they could be shed and regrown.
When these air-sac carapaces fell off, Xingyan didn't even feel any pain.
Likewise, they didn't offer much protection. They were filled with compressed air, so they weren't heavy at all. In fact, they increased Xingyan's buoyancy, making him more agile when he moved.
They were deceptive and useful for tactical tricks. They also let Xingyan jump higher and run faster. But there were downsides, too. Without his full body weight behind him, Xingyan couldn't use it to add power to a strike when he leapt and swung his blade.
All in all, Xingyan was quite pleased.
He'd taken his first step toward his dream of flying.
"Come on, hurry up! Put your backs into it!"
"Shh! Keep it down! That guy's still in there!"
The creaking sound of a cart came from the road by the entrance to the cave. The hunters were pushing their little cart, and a few of them were urging the others on in hushed voices.
It was rather strange. Over the past six months or so, Xingyan had gradually claimed the area around his cave as his territory.
And at some point—perhaps the first time he'd ignored the hunters who happened to be pushing a cart past him—
Anyway, before anyone realized it, the hunters had gradually gotten used to taking this wide road in front of his cave whenever they transported the prey they'd hunted or the ore they'd mined.
The first reason was convenience. This wide road, with nothing but rocks and wild grass, let them reach their outpost by the shortest route.
The second was safety. This was Xingyan's territory, and since he didn't attack their carts, that meant no hotheaded monster—say, a Great Jagras or some other strange creature—would suddenly leap out and attack them along the road.
After the first group of hunters had made it past Xingyan, who was watching them intently, the same thing had happened again and again, until it somehow became the norm.
To be honest, though, Xingyan was starting to think about moving.
For one thing, he was getting bigger and would probably keep growing. The cave that had originally housed him and the Kulu-Ya-Ku Brothers had become terribly cramped.
He didn't want to damage a place so full of memories, so he figured he might as well move.
The other reason was that hunters were always passing by his front door, which made it a bit noisy... especially since they sometimes transported their prey. The smell of blood always worked up Xingyan's appetite.
Still, the strange understanding between them was rather amusing. One day, when he woke up and stepped outside, Xingyan even found a dead Carapace Dragon at his door. It had only just died, too.
He took a quick look around but didn't see any sign of hunters. Still, he had reason to believe they'd left the Carapace Dragon there. The hunters who'd done it might even have been scholars, probably hiding nearby to observe him.
No way. Xingyan kicked the Carapace Dragon away right then and there. He didn't want to eat anything the hunters had given him like that.
He couldn't know what the scholars were thinking, of course. But as he kicked the Carapace Dragon away, he couldn't help wondering mischievously whether the scholars would write in their report that he was arrogant and only ate food he'd hunted himself.
Thanks to this strange understanding between them, Xingyan at least didn't have to worry about the Kulu-Ya-Ku Brothers being killed for materials by hunters passing through.
The First Expeditionary Force's hunters did have a few skilled members, but to be honest, most of them were rather mediocre. The only monsters they could pick on were small ones like Kulu-Ya-Ku.
And in the resource-poor Great Sand Sea, the equipment hunters could make was mostly from these small monsters.
To help the hunters distinguish his Kulu-Ya-Ku Brothers from other ordinary Kulu-Ya-Ku in the Great Sand Sea, Xingyan had gone to considerable trouble to make a special marker for them.
Well, perhaps you could say he'd put a set of armor on the Kulu-Ya-Ku Brothers?
He gritted his teeth and pulled three plates of carapace from the side of his chest, all still connected to one another. Then, with great care, he used his Sword Tail to drill a hole in the center of each plate. It really was delicate work.
Given Xingyan's size and the thickness of his Sword Tail, the task was like pulling out a strand of spaghetti that had to be thin enough to pass through the eye of a sewing needle.
It left Xingyan sweating buckets. Talk about a fierce tiger sniffing a rose.
But the result was good. After drilling a hole large enough for the Kulu-Ya-Ku Brothers' head to pass through, Xingyan put the piece of carapace around their neck. Their long necks meant it rested against their chests, where their forelegs met their bodies, with one leg sticking out through each of the side holes.
Well... it looked a bit like the square wooden cangues worn by prisoners in ancient times before their execution.
Ahem! What was he thinking?
This wasn't a cangue. It was highly protective gear. The plate with the hole in the middle kept it firmly on the Kulu-Ya-Ku Brothers, while the two plates hanging down on either side protected their flanks. It was practically a little vest.
As for how it looked... who cared? As long as it worked, that was good enough. At least, it had achieved its purpose.
Thanks to this obvious marker, the hunters could easily recognize that this Kulu-Ya-Ku belonged to the strange Glavenus who ignored their cargo carts. That way, they wouldn't try to hunt it.
To be honest, the hunters' outpost was already abuzz with discussion about the bizarre creature that was probably a Glavenus, and its Kulu-Ya-Ku companion. It had even sparked a strange trend.
At first, some hunters at the outpost had suggested that, to be safe, they should gather together and hunt down the Glavenus. If it discovered the outpost and attacked, its aggression could cause them serious trouble.
But the few scholars at the outpost soon talked them out of it. As the changes to Xingyan's body became more and more obvious, and his shell-over-shell and mineral deposits grew increasingly abundant, they abandoned their original theory that he was a sick Glavenus.
Now they thought they'd discovered a subspecies of Glavenus living in this uncharted land—or perhaps even a deviant.
That made Xingyan extremely valuable to their research. There might only be one of his kind, so they couldn't use crude methods to deal with him.
And besides, with the Commander and the Leader away, it was anyone's guess whether the hunters still at the outpost could even hunt down this Glavenus.
They were there to investigate, not to get themselves killed.
Before you continue