Nothing new happened in the Great Sand Sea. Every day was just sleeping and eating.
After Xingyan had met the Grand Commander and Yano, he'd woken from one confused nap and promptly forgotten all about it. After all, those things were a long way off. There was no point worrying about them now.
All Xingyan wanted was to keep hunting creatures rich in Life Energy and build up enough to evolve a pair of wings, so he could finally escape the limitations of being a Ground Dragon.
Xingyan had figured it out: all his problems came down to not being strong enough. If he were as powerful as Fatalis, and had become one of the Forbidden Species, would he still be worrying about these things?
So eating more meat was what mattered.
The hunters were gradually settling into the Great Sand Sea. Xingyan could see they weren't having an easy time of it. The First Expedition Team's hunters were desperately short of all kinds of supplies.
And since the First Expedition Team only had two technicians accompanying them, they were having a hard time ensuring the basics were in place as they began building their outpost.
Water systems, outpost construction, forging and maintaining equipment... The two members of the technical team had to handle all of it. It was nearly enough to make them go bald from worry.
But going bald wouldn't help. If they didn't have something, they didn't have it. They could tear their heads off and it still wouldn't make a difference.
During one hunt, Xingyan spotted the hunters' ship under construction from a distance. Honestly, the little boat could hold, at most, a dozen or so people, and it didn't look like it could make the crossing back to the Old World. Still, once it was finished, it would at least make it easier for the hunters to explore the nearby Ancient Forest.
Compared to the desolate Great Sand Sea, the Ancient Forest had a much wider variety of resources to gather. At the very least, there was no shortage of wood, which would help ease the hunters' most urgent difficulties.
All this time, the hunters and Xingyan had maintained a state of peaceful coexistence. The hunters were busy improving their research outpost, while Xingyan was busy building up his strength.
He'd already found the Female Fire Dragon whose tail he'd cut off. She was in a small forest in the northwestern part of the Great Sand Sea. Water from the Ancient Forest flowed through the area on its way to the Flower Field Marshland Area, making this one of the Great Sand Sea's few places with beautiful scenery and plentiful water. Trees and flowers grew in abundance there.
Female Fire Dragons that lost the competition in the Ancient Forest's breeding grounds would come here to build nests, lay eggs, and hatch them. They also hunted Carapace Dragons in the Flower Field Marshland Area and nearby.
It was the Kulu-Ya-Ku brothers who told Xingyan where to find her. While stealing eggs, they'd happened upon a Female Fire Dragon with a disability. They certainly hadn't forgotten the creature that had beaten one of them so badly he'd slept for ages. So, without even grabbing an egg, the brothers had raced all the way back to tell Xingyan.
But by the time Xingyan got there, the Female Fire Dragon had finished eating. As soon as she noticed him approaching, she flapped her wings and took off. She had no intention of fighting him again.
She didn't have an ounce of the Queen of the Land's pride. She didn't even look back as she flew away. Xingyan was so annoyed that he cursed her for being a spineless dragon. His roar didn't go unheard—the Veteran Female Fire Dragon had heard him—but she still showed no sign of turning back.
It wasn't all that surprising. If this Female Fire Dragon had possessed the kind of fighting spirit that refused to back down, she never would've ended up in the Great Sand Sea. She would either have found a mate and made a nest in the Ancient Forest's canopy, or died beneath another Female Fire Dragon's claws.
Xingyan had no intention of challenging a whole group of Female Fire Dragons driven from their homes at once. Grumpily, he memorized the direction she'd fled, ate a Carapace Dragon, and returned to his lair with the Kulu-Ya-Ku brothers and the eggs they'd stolen.
The rainy season had come to the Great Sand Sea once again.
Unlike the neighboring Ancient Forest, the Ley Line Energy beneath the Great Sand Sea was obstructed and flowed poorly. That was why these two nearby coastal regions had such drastically different landscapes.
The Ancient Forest was lush with vegetation and rich in moisture, while the Great Sand Sea was dry and barren, with desert covering most of it.
That was why the rainy season was especially precious to the creatures that lived in the Great Sand Sea. Even the usually yellow-brown Barren Stone Land would be speckled with green during this time.
The plants living here made the most of the season, absorbing as much water as they could to meet their needs for the coming year. They also took this opportunity to flower and bear fruit as quickly as possible, then spread their seeds.
It wasn't just the plants. The rainy season was also breeding season for the animals—not only the dragons, but ordinary creatures like the Green Deer and the Detour Rabbit. Everywhere was bursting with life, and everyone was doing their best.
The rainy season was a festival for the whole Great Sand Sea. But this time, even though Xingyan had already experienced one rainy season since coming to this world, he couldn't help wondering if the gift was a little too... heavy.
A torrential downpour.
Rain poured down in sheets.
The raindrops fell so thick and fast that they formed a dense curtain, shrouding everything outside the cave in a hazy white veil. But it wasn't mist—it was a solid wall of rain. For a moment, Xingyan even wondered if the sea had swallowed the land, leaving the air full of water.
But the air was still there. It was just a fleeting illusion.
The rain was unbelievably heavy, and it had been pouring nonstop for three or four days. All Xingyan had to do was get up and look outside to see a small river forming at the entrance to his lair. It was already growing into something much bigger.
The rainwater rushing across the ground carried sand with it, forming a yellow stream over and between the rocks. It was creeping closer and closer to the cave entrance.
Xingyan was worried. If the rain kept falling, sooner or later that yellow river would flow right into his lair and turn his home into a flooded pit.
More importantly, the Kulu-Ya-Ku brother had been hungry for three or four days. If Xingyan hadn't stopped him, he would've gone out to look for food in the downpour long ago.
Xingyan was hungry too, of course. But since he'd started digesting the Life Energy stored inside him, he could hold out a little longer.
The Kulu-Ya-Ku brother didn't have that ability. To be precise, ordinary dragons beneath the Elder Dragons generally couldn't make effective use of the Life Energy in their bodies. They could only be passively affected by it.
Which meant they could starve to death.
A normal Kulu-Ya-Ku had to eat three or four eggs a day. The fact that the Kulu-Ya-Ku brother had held out this long meant he'd already been burning through the fat stored in his body.
"Roar, roar-roar-roar!" (All right, stay here and behave. I'll go get some eggs for you.)
After thinking it over, Xingyan still wasn't willing to let the Kulu-Ya-Ku brother go outside. This rainy season was clearly abnormal. Maybe an Elder Dragon was behind it. What if the Kulu-Ya-Ku brother got swept away or killed by some other starving monster?
"Gukak!!" (I'm not scared!)
After spending so long with the Kulu-Ya-Ku brother, Xingyan could more or less understand what his bird-headed brother was saying.
"Roar!" (Who cares if you're not scared? Listen to me!)
He growled impatiently and pinned the Kulu-Ya-Ku brother to the ground with one paw. With those skinny little limbs, what was he trying to prove?
"Roar-roar, roar-roar-roar-roar." (Stay home and don't run off. I'll bring you some food.)
After repeatedly warning the restless Kulu-Ya-Ku brother, Xingyan didn't wait for the skies to clear. He stepped straight into the storm.
The large, dense raindrops came hurtling down with the wind and struck Xingyan's shell. If he listened closely, he could hear them pattering against it.
The paths he usually traveled had become rivers. With Xingyan's weight, he didn't have to worry about being blown away, but a downpour that completely blocked his sight and drowned out every sound was hardly pleasant.
To be honest, Xingyan had quite enjoyed last year's rainy season. He'd even liked standing in the rain and listening to the drops strike his shell.
When something strange happened, an Elder Dragon was always behind it. That was practically one of this world's basic laws.
Well, the second basic law was that the first Elder Dragon to show up was often innocent. The hunters were the ones who chased it down and beat it up for no reason.
[Strong Wind], [Heavy Rain]—honestly, as soon as those two keywords came up, Xingyan had thought of the creature that might have turned this rainy season into a flood.
Kushala Daora.
And if you added [Night], [Ancient Forest], [Five Purple Rewards], [One Palico], and [Two Players, 20 Minutes], it became even more perfect. Just thinking about it was a treat.
Xingyan first went to the familiar Flower Field Marshland Area. The Earth Sand Dragon that had taken over the place had vanished without a trace. It was probably hiding from the rain in some relatively dry cave.
The Flower Field Marshland Area didn't look like a marsh anymore. It had become a vast lake. The pale purple flowers had long since been submerged, and all that remained visible was the dense spray of rain striking the water's surface.
Instead of heading straight for the Carapace Dragons on the high ground near the Flower Field Marshland Area, Xingyan went toward the coast. He'd sensed something strange: in the distance, the clouds were twisting.
The dark clouds that should have covered the entire sky now seemed to be torn apart by a pair of invisible hands. They spilled down from the sky like waterfalls, hanging vertically like a wall.
Then they curled and crashed into each other.
Yes, there were even two of those enormous hands. The sky in that direction seemed to have joined up with the ground. Blue-green lightning flashed within the clouds, and when thunder sounded and the lightning lit up the sky, Xingyan could just make out a gigantic shape flickering past.
The closer he got to the shore, the heavier the pressure felt, as if the sky itself had been turned upside down. It wasn't just the physical force—it was the pressure an Elder Dragon exerted.
Standing on the rocks near the coast, Xingyan could clearly sense the Elder Dragon's presence in the nearby sea breeze and the rain pouring down from above.
It was different from the pressure he'd felt from the debris spewed out by the Lava Dragon, but it came from a creature on the same level.
Xingyan saw them.
Two Kushala Daora were fighting in the sky above the sea.
One was more agile and nimble, covered in silver-gray scales that gleamed like steel in the lightning. The other was a dark, tea-brown color, its scales dull instead of reflective, as if they absorbed the light.
Xingyan couldn't see anything else. The two Kushala Daora fought fiercely, their winds tearing wildly at everything in the sky and shrouding them both in black clouds. Only when one gained the upper hand did it burst out for a moment, giving Xingyan a brief glimpse.
Mystery solved.
The culprits behind this year's disastrous rainy season were Kushala Daora—and there were two of them.
There was no doubt they were members of the Ancient Dragon Species. Even though Kushala Daora ranked near the bottom of that group, they were still beyond anything an ordinary dragon could hope to challenge.
As the name suggested, Kushala Daora were covered from head to toe in steel. Most dragons that ate minerals had something similar, just as Xingyan had a Great Sword forged from ore.
But unlike Xingyan, Kushala Daora had a shell made entirely of metal. That metal shell was their bones, their flesh, and their scales—a structure formed from layer upon layer of metal.
As a Glavenus of sorts when it came to intel, Xingyan quickly recognized what was going on with the tea-brown Kushala Daora. There was no doubt about it: it was molting.
When a Kushala Daora's hide was exposed to wind, sunlight, and moisture in the air for too long, or its body grew larger with age, its outer layer rusted and oxidized just like a real metal object. That was why it had to molt.
But that was where things got strange. As far as Xingyan remembered, a molting Kushala Daora was called a Rusty Steel Dragon. Because molting was incredibly painful, a Kushala Daora in that state became far more ferocious and aggressive than usual. The pain also made it more nimble and active.
In short, it was like someone hopping around from the pain.
But the Rusty Steel Dragon in the sky wasn't acting that way. Compared with its silver-gray kin, it should've been the one moving more frantically from the pain of molting. Instead, it was at a disadvantage most of the time, being beaten down by the other Kushala Daora.
This was bizarre.
What did it mean? Was the other Kushala Daora some kind of Veteran Steel Dragon—or even a Veteran King Steel Dragon?
It didn't look like it... After all, the silver-gray Kushala Daora was even a little smaller than the Rusty Steel Dragon.
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