With a foreleg wrapped around Xingyan's tail, the Rusty Steel Dragon stretched out its neck and bit down on the tip of Xingyan's Sword Tail—the Great Sword part, made entirely of mineral secretions.
A brief digression: Steel Dragons mainly fed on ore. End of digression.
Crack.
Xingyan didn't even have time to struggle. He turned his head and stared blankly at his Sword Tail—his precious blade had lasted barely a few seconds between the Steel Dragon's teeth before it was crushed.
It was pretty hard, sure, but that only meant the dragon had to put a little effort into biting through it.
Tail severed.
Xingyan had never imagined that losing his tail could happen to a cute one-year-old dragon like him.
He had even avoided using Red-hot Transformation, a move that increased the power of his slashes, for fear of losing his tail. He had kept it sealed away throughout this fight, so why had things still turned out like this?!
It hurt. It hurt so much.
If he'd known his Sword Tail could be bitten apart and eaten...
"Roar!!!" (I'm going to kill you!!!)
Pain, hardship, my hatred burns across the Great Sand Sea!
Xingyan roared furiously. The power he unleashed now even sent the Rusty Steel Dragon tumbling away, but it didn't take the opportunity to do anything. It simply flapped its wings and rose into the air.
"Roar, roar, roar!!" (Get down here! Come down here if you've got the guts!! Let's see if I can't chop you to death!!)
Unable to fly, Xingyan could only stare up at it from below, fuming and hopping with frustration as he roared again and again.
Not this again! That damn feeling!!
Those despicable dragons who relied on being able to fly, then taunted you from overhead like they were taking a dump on your head!!!
Xingyan was so angry his face was turning green.
"Roar! Roar!" (Little dragon, you ate the horn I was so proud of, so I ate the tail you were so proud of.)
"Roar!!" (If you want revenge, I'll be waiting for you at the Miasma Gathering Place... but I won't wait long.)
Completely ignoring the furious Xingyan below, the Rusty Steel Dragon spoke to itself, then beat its wings and flew north, toward the Great Sand Sea.
Xingyan ran after it for a few steps, but eventually stopped after jumping onto a cliff.
He didn't chase any farther. He only stared fixedly in the direction the Rusty Steel Dragon had gone, watching it disappear into the storm clouds.
Only after a long while did Xingyan let out a low growl.
Frustration, anger, shame, sympathy... A jumble of emotions tangled together. Xingyan had never expected that even dealings between dragons could stir up such complicated feelings.
He understood what the Rusty Steel Dragon's final words meant.
I'll wait for you in Miasma Valley, but I can't wait long... because I'm about to die.
Come find me after you've reforged your tail.
Honestly, what a petty, stubborn, proud old dragon!!
Steel Dragons were petty! Steel Dragons were arrogant braggarts!!
Ptooey!!
It was like some lonely old man with no children to care for him. He could see that death was near and couldn't bear to die quietly and alone, so he wanted to make a scene before the end—but wouldn't admit it out loud. Ptooey!!
What respectable old person would pull a stunt like that?!
The more Xingyan thought about it, the angrier he got. He wasn't the kind of dragon who refused to face facts. Yes, he admitted it: that Rusty Steel Dragon could kill him. The gap between ordinary dragons and Elder Dragons was simply too vast. Just managing to briefly beat one back, rather than kill it, was enough to go down in history.
People knew that Gold Rathian would try to defeat Kirin and take its horn to grow stronger, but few knew how rarely a Gold Rathian succeeded. Most died attempting the challenge, gored to death by Kirin or struck down by lightning.
And even then, a Gold Rathian that succeeded in taking a horn couldn't kill Kirin. Kirin only had to recover for a while, and its horn would grow back.
It came down to this: the gap between dragons could be greater than the gap between a dragon and a dog. Cruel nature didn't care about game balance. You survived if you could; if you couldn't, you died and were weeded out.
Simple as that.
Back when he still used his memories of the game as a reference, Xingyan had held on to a few fantasies. But today, after seeing the Steel Dragon's devastating power, as if it were the embodiment of a natural disaster, he had finally let them go.
But no matter how you looked at it, the Rusty Steel Dragon hadn't chosen to hunt him down for the sake of its pride. Even after Xingyan had crushed its horn—the proudest and most important part of every Steel Dragon.
It had even left him with words that amounted to, "I'll wait for you to come kill me."
What was that supposed to mean?
What was that supposed to mean?!
You two Steel Dragons were the ones who fought each other and destroyed my home, nearly killing my Bird Bro in the process. And now things had ended up like this... Had either of you even considered the lives of all the bystanders who died in that battle?
Huh?! Answer me!!
...Right. How could an Elder Dragon care about something like that?
It was all part of the cycle of life. The dead nourished the living. Compared to that little matter, helping an elder of the clan escape their suffering and giving them a grand funeral mattered more.
That certain tactical genius named Sun had been right. Without strength, you'd be humiliated, and you couldn't even decide how you died.
Xingyan twisted the remaining Sword Tail in front of himself and looked at the weapon he'd carefully crafted from the mineral waste spewed out by the Lava Dragon. Now it was nothing but a ruined blade. He felt like crying... but couldn't.
A Glavenus never shed tears lightly.
Well, great. Now he'd have to find a whole lot of ore and forge another blade.
At least it hadn't all gone to waste. While grumbling to himself about that stubborn, ornery old Rusty Steel Dragon, Xingyan searched the battlefield and ate all the fragments of his shattered Sword Tail, along with the Elder Dragon blood the Rusty Steel Dragon had spilled.
He couldn't let the whole fight leave him at a loss, could he?
Besides... I've got a promise to keep.
After one last glance toward the direction the Rusty Steel Dragon had gone, Xingyan turned and headed back to his collapsed nest. He needed to wait there for Bird Bro to return.
Just you wait, old timer.
I'll kill you before you die of natural causes.
Xingyan sat atop the ruins of his old nest for a long time in the rain, making no effort to find shelter. He just sat there as if in a daze, without moving.
To be honest, he could barely remember how long it took Bird Bro to return. Maybe Bird Bro had realized there was no longer the sound of an intense battle or roars, and no tornado that looked capable of destroying the world.
Regardless, Bird Bro made it back to Xingyan safe and sound, which helped him feel a little better while he was still hurting.
Xingyan was reviewing the battle.
Reviewing a fight afterward was a good habit. It was a shame he had no footage to watch this time.
Since arriving in this world inside an egg, Xingyan had never once seriously reviewed his strengths and weaknesses, or each decision he'd made during the battle with the Rusty Steel Dragon.
He didn't regret his choices, but he had to admit that he'd gotten a little too cocky. Relying on his limited knowledge of this world, he'd acted without verifying his information first. He'd lost the cautious habit he'd had when he first arrived: making a plan, then hunting carefully.
That was bad. He needed to change. He had to stay alert at all times.
As for how he'd ended up like this, Xingyan had a pretty good idea... First, he'd been reborn as a cool flagship monster—not some pitiful Carapace Dragon at the bottom of the food chain, the kind anyone could kick to death. At the very least, he had the right to roar in this world.
His powerful stomach and digestive system also gave him an energy-absorption efficiency other dragons didn't have. He didn't need to defecate; everything he ate was absorbed and converted into his own energy with one hundred percent efficiency.
That ability had even let Xingyan skip the normal juvenile stage of a Glavenus, giving him a size and strength comparable to an ordinary adult male Glavenus ahead of schedule. Normally, a Glavenus of Xingyan's age would have only just been kicked away from its mother, forced to try living on its own.
A normal juvenile Glavenus at this age was a whole size smaller than an adult, and its Sword Tail was neither as heavy nor as hard. Its temper, however, was every bit as fierce, so the slightest misstep in a fight with another dragon could get it killed.
As for Xingyan... Apart from the first month or so after he'd hatched, when life had been miserable, the Carapace Dragons he'd once had to deal with cautiously could now be killed with a single kick. Even the Mudfish Dragon that had stolen his feast had been defeated by his own hand, chopped into fish chunks, and eaten.
After that, he'd become the ruler of the area. The Great Jagras that had dared bully his brother had been hacked to death. The only truly difficult fight had been against that Tempered Female Fire Dragon.
But to be honest, that Female Fire Dragon was just a failure who'd already lost her fighting spirit. She sounded like a fearsome dragon on the way to becoming a Gold Fire Dragon, but her evolution had barely begun. Only the edges of her wing membranes had turned a little golden.
On top of that, she'd relied on her battle experience and tried to use the same tactics against Xingyan that she'd used against other Glavenuses. The result was a disastrous mistake. Who could have guessed that an ordinary tail swipe would make the enemy explode when it hit?!
A barrage of explosions had hit her head-on, and shrapnel had even flown into her eyes. It couldn't have gone much worse.
Real combat wasn't just a matter of comparing stats. If it were, hunters wouldn't need to risk going on hunts. They could just show up and die on the spot.
Timing, weather, terrain, emotions, preparation, unknown information... The outcome of a real fight could change because of all kinds of unexpected factors. It only took one careless mistake to get crushed.
It was like taking six sets to attack the dam, only to run into a G18 flower at the corner. On paper, the golden M14 was definitely stronger, but you could still end up drooling because you hadn't checked your angles carefully enough.
Xingyan couldn't remember the last time he'd gone out hunting cautiously, afraid to spend even one extra second outside. Once he'd eaten his fill, he'd rushed back to his nest as fast as he could, never sticking his head out for a second longer than necessary.
And setting traps to hunt... That was a skill he hadn't used in a long, long time.
But now, for the first time since he'd been born, Xingyan had witnessed the power of an Elder Dragon.
The path from an ordinary dragon to an Elder Dragon really was difficult. There was a long, hard road ahead.
That damn joke was still chasing him. If Xingyan didn't become an Elder Dragon, he couldn't hunt Elder Dragons. And if he couldn't hunt Elder Dragons, he couldn't become one. It was a vicious cycle, all right.
At the thought, Xingyan couldn't help letting out a deep sigh.
"Roar..." (Sorry, I couldn't kill that bastard who nearly killed you, or make it understand what it did wrong.)
Xingyan's roar was low.
"Guga, guga!"
Bird Bro hadn't given a thought to how it had only just escaped death. Seeing its nest buried under a pile of rocks made it a little sad, but not much. What really made it cry out excitedly and jump around was seeing the severed tail lying beside Xingyan.
"Gugu—gagagagaga!!!"
Bird Bro didn't know enough about dragons to understand that a Glavenus's Sword Tail was made of a fleshy tail covered in mineral secretions.
So, as far as its limited understanding went, a dragon had just beaten the tail right off its own little one!!
How terrifying! How dangerous!
Just imagining how painful it would be to have its own tail severed made Bird Bro feel as though the sky were falling.
It circled Xingyan rapidly, its bird legs pattering through the rain as it hurried around, searching carefully for every injury on its little one.
The tip of Xingyan's tail was gone, and he looked a whole size smaller. The outer layer of blue-green armor had disappeared, exposing the bright-red armor underneath. Since it had never been exposed to the air before, the layer close to Xingyan's flesh wasn't dark red like the armor of other Glavenuses.
But Xingyan's back looked the most badly injured. Most of the heat-dissipating plates that had once risen there like a volcano were gone. Bird Bro could even see the pink muscle beneath them quivering with each of Xingyan's breaths, while fresh dragon blood seeped through the cracks in his armor and dripped down.
Bird Bro was on the verge of fainting.
It shrieked, clutching its head in its forelegs, its mind in chaos. It wanted to hurry off and find some medicinal herbs to apply to its little one's wounds, but Xingyan stopped it.
Xingyan knew his own body. His injuries only looked serious. The same wounds would have been severe on a small dragon like Bird Bro, but a Glavenus's body was so strong and massive that injuries like these would heal naturally after some eating and sleeping.
"Roar!" (I hate dragons that can fly.)
With one foreleg around Bird Bro, Xingyan growled in a deep, muffled voice.
"Guga, guga!" (Then hate them! I hate them too!)
"Roar." (I hate Elder Dragons even more.)
"Guga? Guga, guga!" (What's an Elder Dragon? The thing that bit you up like this? Then I hate it too!!)
Before you continue