Eating and being eaten, survival and destruction—without a ripple, all perfectly ordinary.
When you woke from a good night's sleep, there might be many more ordinary dragons, or there might be many fewer. It didn't matter. It was all just part of the natural cycle, with no effect on the whole.
Perhaps in the eyes of Elder Dragons, ordinary dragons weren't much different from beasts—much like how humans might look at apes and think, Hey? This thing looks a lot like me.
The higher a creature's place in the food chain, the greater the difference between it and those below. Ancient Dragon Species looked down on ordinary dragons still struggling in the food chain, while Forbidden Species looked down on Ancient Dragon Species... The difference between Forbidden Species and Ancient Dragon Species was just like the difference between Ancient Dragon Species and ordinary dragons.
The closer one got to the summit, the greater the gap became—so great it was almost impossible to cross.
Perhaps these intelligent Elder Dragons took pride in their uniqueness, but in front of an information-savvy Glavenus, the reasons for their pride weren't a secret.
"Can you beat an Elder Dragon?"
Xingyan asked himself.
"Probably not."
He already knew the answer.
But if he swallowed this anger, how would he ever swing his blade again?
The rage at having his nest destroyed, the lingering fear that the Bird Bro brothers had nearly died—just thinking about that possibility made Xingyan tremble with fury.
If he ran away every time he saw an Elder Dragon, when would he ever set foot on the path to becoming a Forbidden Species?
Even if I just land a couple of hits and run, it's not like an Elder Dragon can kill me in one shot, right?
My body is already no weaker than an adult Glavenus's. I also know things about dragons that ordinary Glavenus don't, and I've got special armor to boot—you think you can kill me in one shot?
Worst case, I'll just run. At least I can land a couple of hits to vent my anger and see how strong Elder Dragons really are. That'll help me prepare for the future.
No dragon could become a Forbidden Species peacefully and without a struggle... No, actually, no ordinary dragon had any hope of becoming a Forbidden Species... Only me... I alone...
From an ordinary Glavenus to an Elder Dragon Glavenus—the only way to do it was to drink Elder Dragon blood and devour Elder Dragon flesh.
Before that point, it didn't matter how much ordinary dragon flesh he ate; it would never be enough. The gap between ordinary dragons and Elder Dragons was even greater than the gap between humans and dogs. It was a difference in their very bloodlines.
Some dragons were born in Rome, while others were born to toil... Aptonoth, for example.
Going from zero to one, Xingyan knew that sooner or later, he would have to fight an impossibly uphill battle: challenge an Elder Dragon in an ordinary dragon's body.
Kushala Daora was already one of the weaker Ancient Dragon Species. If he really couldn't win, he could burrow underground; at least he wouldn't be trapped with no way to escape.
His heart pounded violently. Hot blood surged from his chest to the tips of his limbs, and Xingyan felt as if he were burning.
Burning with excitement.
Xingyan almost wanted to laugh, because his current predicament inexplicably reminded him of a joke:
A: I want to become an Elder Dragon.
B: Then go hunt an Elder Dragon.
A: How can I hunt an Elder Dragon if I haven't become one?!
B: Then go hunt an Elder Dragon!!
Ha, what a paradox.
The raging storm concealed Xingyan's shape and tracks. By the time he got close enough to the two Kushala Daora wrestling on the ground, they still seemed not to have noticed him—no, they were ignoring him!
Two blasts of scorching white vapor shot from his nostrils. Once he was sure he was close enough, Xingyan leaped straight into the air!
A soaring overhead slash!!
Kushala Daora or Rusty Steel Dragon, he didn't care to distinguish between his targets. His strike was aimed at both dragons as they grappled!
Clang!!!
A tremendous clang rang out, like someone striking a huge bell. Iron collided with iron, metal rang against metal!
He felt no sensation of cutting into flesh at all. Even through the veil of rain, Xingyan was certain that his strike had first landed at the root of the Rusty Steel Dragon's wing, close to its neck, then slid off and struck the belly of the other, silver-gray Kushala Daora.
But honestly, apart from carving a dent where the blade first hit, the strike had probably only left a white scratch on the metal shell. It hadn't even scraped the Rusty Steel Dragon's hide.
It was way too damn hard. It felt just like two chunks of steel smashing into each other, and the recoil had left the base of Xingyan's tail numb even now.
The damage wasn't much, but it was enough to serve as a declaration of war.
"Roar!!!"
Kushala Daora and Rusty Steel Dragon roared in much the same way, their cries incredibly shrill. After all, they were both Kushala Daora; the only difference was whether their scales were rusty.
The two Kushala Daora had undoubtedly noticed Xingyan, the reckless intruder. He was only an ordinary Glavenus, not even old—in fact, he looked more like a cub—yet he'd dared attack them?!
Fury!
Their anger was inevitable.
Angry at having the dignity of Ancient Dragon Species challenged, angry at being wounded; the Kushala Daora and Rusty Steel Dragon even stopped fighting each other and turned to face Xingyan together.
"Roar, roar!!" (Come on, you two bastards!!)
Without the slightest fear, Xingyan held his Sword Tail upright in front of him and roared loudly. There was no such thing as fear in a Glavenus's bones.
"Roar, roar, roar! Roar, roar, roar, roar!!" (You destroyed my home and hurt my brother! I'll kill you!!)
Fury!!
A blazing, searing rage!!
His bloodlust surged. Xingyan taunted them in a way all Glavenus might, but few ordinary Glavenus would dare.
Whether Elder Dragons understood what the word "bastard" meant was beside the point. Xingyan's message had already come across loud and clear.
"Roar!!!"
The silver-gray Kushala Daora seemed to be getting angry. It raised its head, preparing to attack Xingyan—but to his surprise, the Rusty Steel Dragon roared right after it.
As Xingyan watched in confusion, the silver-gray Kushala Daora, enraged by his attack and provocation, stopped in its tracks and instead backed away a few steps.
What did that mean?
Weren't the two of them mortal enemies?
Xingyan really couldn't understand. If they weren't mortal enemies, why had the two Kushala Daora fought from the sea to the shore, then from the sky to the ground? They'd looked ready to kill each other.
But as he watched their movements, Xingyan gradually began to understand.
The Rusty Steel Dragon, which he'd struck the hardest, remained where it was, even taking a stance that seemed to invite him to attack. The silver-gray Kushala Daora on the other side flew backward and landed atop a high pillar of stone, clearly intending to watch.
Got it. Xingyan understood completely.
They wanted a one-on-one duel, huh?
No wonder they were Elder Dragons—proud Elder Dragons. Xingyan was now certain that Elder Dragons possessed intelligence no lesser than humans. This sort of behavior wasn't something a dragon that survived by hunting on instinct alone could manage.
A more sophisticated emotion.
Then let's do this.
"Roar!"
The Rusty Steel Dragon growled low, as if urging Xingyan to hurry up and attack.
Thrust!!
His agile Sword Tail stabbed forward, and at the same time, Xingyan took a sidestep and leaped to the right.
Boom!!
A Wind Pressure Cannon spat from the Rusty Steel Dragon's mouth and slammed into the spot where Xingyan had just been. But Xingyan's follow-through carried him clear of it. This was the Parry Slash!
He hadn't spent the past year wasting his time!
Building up Life Energy was just something he did every day. Most of the time, Xingyan spent watching the hunters who regularly appeared in the Great Sand Sea.
The hunters who used Great Swords, the ones who used Long Swords—he wanted to learn how hunters infused their weapons with strength. In other words, he wanted to give his Sword Tail a red edge, too.
Unfortunately, perhaps because the bodies of humans and dragons were too different, no matter how much Xingyan studied it, he couldn't infuse his strength into his weapon after a certain number of attacks the way hunters did. He couldn't make its blade glow faintly yellow or red.
Xingyan suspected that this was also a way of using Life Energy, a technique humans had developed based on the structure of their own bodies.
Every living thing in this world contained Life Energy. The only differences were how much it had, and whether it was used actively or passively.
In any case, this technique could make weapons sharper and harder, and let them store and unleash more power. Xingyan was incredibly envious.
Though he hadn't managed to master the hunters' secret technique, it wasn't as if he'd learned nothing at all.
He kept recalling the hunters' movements from the game in his memories, then compared them to the attacks of hunters who hunted in the Great Sand Sea in the real world... Uh, he mulled it over, and somehow managed to figure something out.
Whoosh—!
The Kushala Daora's tail was like a long, thin steel whip. It cracked through the air with a sound like tearing fabric as it slammed toward Xingyan—clang!
The sound existed only in Xingyan's mind, but at that very moment, his body twisted at the hips and recoiled!
Parry Slash!!
He didn't just dodge; he followed the evasion with a swift horizontal slash!
This wasn't one of the tiny toothpicks hunters carried. It was a massive sword, thicker and broader than a hunter's Great Sword!
Clang!!!
The huge, sharp ring of metal colliding with metal rang out once more. Anyone watching the fight would have wondered whether the long Sword Tail of the Glavenus might snap from such an impact.
Unlike in the game, a Sword Tail in the real world could break under sufficiently powerful impact and pressure, even if it hadn't undergone Red-hot Transformation. It was, after all, a huge chunk of metal; no blade could avoid breaking or chipping forever.
As Xingyan pulled his Sword Tail back, he swept his gaze over it and saw two deep dents in the metal. The Great Sword he'd painstakingly forged had even been chipped, a small piece knocked clean off.
Kushala Daora truly lived up to its name.
When hunters faced monsters with such powerful defenses, they concentrated their strength to reinforce their blades. That kept their weapons from breaking and made them sharper and harder. But Xingyan didn't know that technique.
He was like a brute with boundless strength: strong enough, wielding a huge enough blade, relying on nothing but raw power to swing it.
But the results were impressive, too. At the very least, the two dents Xingyan had just made in the Rusty Steel Dragon were something even hunters giving it their all couldn't manage. To put it another way, it was like driving two Dragonators into the Rusty Steel Dragon in rapid succession.
"Roar!!!"
The Rusty Steel Dragon roared again. Before their very eyes, the wind—which should have been invisible—gathered around it, sweeping up the rain. Like a veil, it wrapped around the Rusty Steel Dragon's body and shielded it.
"Roar, roar? Roar, roar, roar! Roar, roar, roar, roar!" (Are you stupid? You're already that rusty, and now you're wrapping yourself in rain-soaked wind? Are you trying to make yourself feel even worse?)
Everyone knew metal rusted more easily in a damp environment, and the fierce wind only made things worse. There was even a specific term for it: wind erosion.
Xingyan didn't know whether the Rusty Steel Dragon could understand his roars, but at least he'd had a satisfying chance to taunt it. In his eyes, the Rusty Steel Dragon was just making itself miserable.
Maybe it was his imagination, but for a moment, the Rusty Steel Dragon seemed to stiffen. On the other side, the Kushala Daora perched on the stone platform raised its head.
"Roar!!!"
Maybe it was just his imagination. Xingyan didn't have time to think about it anyway. The Rusty Steel Dragon had whipped up a tornado on the spot. The violent currents swirled around it and over its body, gathering into a storm—or even a black tempest, like a stormy night!
Only by feeling it at close range could one understand what a true natural disaster was. Even with the tremendous weight of a Glavenus, counting both its flesh and blood and its mineral Sword Tail, Xingyan could barely stay on his feet.
The savage gale was simply too powerful. Even when he crouched low and leaned forward, his entire body still wobbled slightly.
With a sudden flap of its wings, the Rusty Steel Dragon raised two huge tornadoes, centered right here. They stretched from the ground to the sky like pillars of water, even dragging down the thick rain clouds overhead.
When the two Kushala Daora fought each other, they had both struggled for control of the wind, so their battle hadn't seemed all that spectacular. Against Xingyan, though, the Rusty Steel Dragon unleashed the full force of an Elder Dragon.
Master of the raging winds, it truly lived up to its name as the Storm Dragon.
It turned out that Playmaker wasn't the only one who could command fierce winds. Kushala Daora could, too.
The howling gale made Xingyan feel as if he were in the middle of a typhoon. Even opening his eyes brought a faint sting.
If not for his Air Sac Carapace, which gave him another way to breathe, it would have been difficult even to draw breath through his nose in that gale. The air around him seemed to be rushing by at tremendous speed.
The power the Rusty Steel Dragon displayed now far exceeded anything the game could show its players. It was a force that seemed capable of destroying the entire world. The ground and rocks around them were stripped away by the knife-sharp wind.
Unlike the game, there were no gaps left for hunters to hide in. Honestly, Xingyan couldn't help wondering if the Rusty Steel Dragon and the silver-gray Kushala Daora had been faking it when they fought earlier.
Compared with the world-shattering destruction all around him now, the fight between the two Kushala Daora had been no more than a couple bickering.
Before you continue