At those words, a peculiar kingdom took shape in the three scholars' minds. The template was easy enough to borrow—the human kingdom was a ready-made example. But in their imaginary world, the kingdom's residents were all kinds of dragons, and this Glavenus sat on the throne with a crown on its head.
Scholars always had plenty of imagination.
"Just imagine: a kingdom made up entirely of monsters. A Rathalos could be the kingdom's head of security... Hmm, and we'd need a golden-haired Glavenus princess, terribly spoiled, always sending out all kinds of incomprehensible requests..."
"Hey, hey, hey! Foer! Stop! Your fantasy's getting way too specific!"
The other two scholars hurriedly covered their companion's mouth in a panic. A spoiled princess was a subject that couldn't be touched, whether in the kingdom or the Guild.
Ahem!
"Ah, look! That was a great swing from the Glavenus."
"Mm-hmm, yes, yes. That was a good swing."
After mumbling their way through the awkward moment, the three of them resumed taking notes. Even if all they could do was observe from a distance, the scholars still wanted to learn as much as possible about this Glavenus.
"Wait, have either of you noticed something?" Bent suddenly said. "Think back to when we first tried to explore the Great Sand Sea, and over the past while, too. Have we ever seen any dung left behind by the Glavenus?"
The scholars looked at one another.
"Uh, he's so smart, maybe he found a spot to do his business every time?" Foer guessed. But before Bent could answer, he had already dismissed his own idea.
Another mystery remained unsolved.
Xingyan had actually noticed the scholars, since they came by almost every day. He hadn't spotted them at first, but eventually he did.
As long as they didn't come bother him to his face or try to capture him for research, Xingyan wouldn't mind them.
Go ahead and observe. Observe all you like. Xingyan believed he would evolve much faster than the scholars imagined. All it would take was one opportunity, and everything they had observed so far would be rendered useless, stripped of its value. By the time the Azure Star arrived forty years from now, perhaps there wouldn't be a trace of Glavenus left in Xingyan's appearance.
The sun set once again, but this time Xingyan, panting heavily, didn't leave right away. Instead, he turned and gazed at the Sword Master.
"Roar." (I'm leaving.)
"Roar, roar, roar." (Thank you for helping me all this time.)
The Sword Master didn't seem nervous as Xingyan roared at him. He simply couldn't understand what Xingyan was saying.
Xingyan couldn't see the Sword Master's face beneath his helmet, but he could guess that it was probably written all over with confusion.
What Xingyan had experienced over this period could certainly be called extraordinary. He hadn't planned to interact with hunters at all. He'd only meant to watch them from a distance, as he always had, and secretly learn their techniques.
He hadn't expected the hunters to be so astonishingly bold. Even after realizing Xingyan was there, they hadn't deliberately avoided him or fled. Instead, they had bravely approached him, and the Sword Master had even taught him swordsmanship without asking for anything in return.
"Roar, roar! Roar!" (Take these. I won't be coming back after today.)
Xingyan didn't want to owe the hunters anything. It was best if they were even.
He turned sideways, deliberately letting the gas out of his air sacs before clamping his teeth onto the two layers of carapace and tearing off a piece by force.
At Xingyan's current size, a single piece of his carapace was about as big as a hunter's head. After sizing up the Sword Master, Xingyan tore off six more pieces and tossed them all down in front of him.
It hurt, of course, but to Xingyan, it was nothing much.
"Are these... for me?" The Sword Master was stunned.
"Roar!"
With a roar and nothing more to say, Xingyan turned and left the hillside without looking back.
Watching Xingyan disappear into the distance, the Sword Master picked up the carapace from the ground and shook his head. He set off for the base, and before he'd gone far, he spotted the scholars who had rushed down from the cliff after noticing the commotion.
"What happened?!" Bent asked anxiously. "Is this that Glavenus's carapace? Why did he suddenly give you all this?"
"I think he won't be coming back," the Sword Master said gravely, handing over the carapace to the scholars, who had been itching with curiosity. "As for these, I suppose they're his payment to me?"
"What?!"
Xingyan had already gotten what he wanted from the Sword Master.
The techniques hunters used with the Long Sword, how to practice swordsmanship systematically, and what direction he should develop in from here...
There wasn't much more the Sword Master could do for Xingyan. At the end of the day, he was only a human, and he wielded his sword with his hands. He didn't have a Glavenus's body, and he didn't know what it felt like to be one.
So in the end, Xingyan still had to figure it out on his own. But this time, unlike before, he wasn't just randomly mulling things over. He had the hunters' experience to use as a reference.
Xingyan didn't think he was incapable of channeling his strength into a weapon and sharpening its edge the way hunters did. In fact, during his practice, he had already felt the Life Energy within him stirring several times.
It flowed with the movement of his muscles, as strength gathered inside him and shifted from one place to another.
But every time, it seemed like something was missing. It wasn't smooth or free-flowing; it was like hitting a wall. Yet that wall wasn't all that solid, as if one more push would be enough to break through. Still, no matter how he adjusted his stance, nothing felt right.
The feeling was more than a little maddening, but Xingyan didn't have a solution.
Maybe... he needed a fight?
An inspiration struck.
Xingyan made a decision that went against everything his Glavenus ancestors stood for.
After all this time, he finally began reforging his broken tail. But unlike the first time he'd forged a Sword Tail, this time Xingyan did no more than hastily reforge it using iron ore and Lapis Lazuli—in other words, he didn't use good materials.
No other Glavenus would ever make such a choice. The reason was simple: Xingyan had a new evolutionary plan for his Sword Tail.
He was about to hunt down new information for his evolution, and until his tail finished evolving, all it needed was to serve its most basic purpose.
Whole, big enough, heavy enough, sharp enough. That was all.
If the New World as a whole were viewed as a living creature, then the Miasma Valley would be its excretory system—or, perhaps, its lowest organ.
Situated at the very bottom of the New World, it was filled with the corpses of all kinds of monsters. Many Elder Dragons came here to die when their lives neared their end, and the Life Energy within them flowed out after their deaths, merging back into nature.
In a sense, the Miasma Valley was the endpoint of the New World's natural cycle. It held vast amounts of the essence left behind by dead dragons, including the skeletal remains of multiple Serpent King Dragons, among the mightiest of Elder Dragons.
Rocks and ores left behind by dead Elder Dragons, countless skeletons... The Life Energy that reentered the cycle flowed from here into the leyline, nourishing the entire New World as it traveled through the Leyline Corridor.
The place was full of poison gas and rotting flesh, and ordinary creatures would die just from breathing the air. But there was no denying the Miasma Valley's importance.
It was the root of the New World.
After spending several months traveling north from the southern part of the Great Sand Sea, near the Flower Field Marshland Area, Xingyan finally reached a canyon that sloped downward like the mouth of an abyss. This was already the outer reaches of the Miasma Valley.
It really was like an abyss. Yellow-green miasma hung visibly in the air, and the stone walls on either side had grown slimy. The nauseating stench went without saying; there was no way decomposing microbes could make anything smell pleasant.
Now, Xingyan had entered the canyon. He opened his jaws and took a deep breath. To a dragon, the stench wasn't much to notice.
Honestly, it was a little sweet and sour.
At least, that was how it tasted to Xingyan.
What surprised him was that after the miasma entered his stomach, it felt as though he were digesting something. The feeling lasted only an instant and was barely noticeable.
As long as it didn't poison him, that was fine.
The Miasma Valley was a vast region, far bigger than the map in the game. Near the canyon entrance, Xingyan found traces left by a Kushala Daora—probably that Old Steel Dragon.
He wasn't interested in following the traces to find it. He hadn't come here to kill the Old Steel Dragon, and before his new evolution was complete, he wasn't capable of killing it anyway. If they fought again now, the outcome wouldn't be much different from their battle half a year ago.
He had come looking for the Miasma Valley's top predator.
The Claw Dragon.
Ahem. Don't be fooled by the fact that a top predator like Deviljho could use a Claw Dragon as a makeshift great sword. It was only a lowly Fanged Wyvern Species, the kind that might call Great Jagras—Mr. Split-Chin—its brother. But in the Miasma Valley, the Claw Dragon had quite a bit of status. It was also one of the few monsters daring enough to challenge an Elder Dragon.
Sure, the Elder Dragon it challenged was a low-ranking scavenger like Kirin, and then Kirin blasted it away with a burst of miasma. But it had challenged one all the same. Great Jagras, another great-sword-wielding dragon species, wouldn't even dare.
(You know who's on top now, huh?)
It was extremely aggressive, and its fighting style was downright ferocious, like a mad dog with rabies. It could knock out a master with wild punches, and when food ran short, it would even head to the Coral Highlands to hunt. It could hold its own against Velkhana, the ruler of the Coral Highlands, and when Brute Dragon invaded the Miasma Valley, it dared to face him head-on.
Its nickname was the Flat-Headed Brother! It took life and death in stride and fought anyone who crossed it!
Whether it could win didn't matter. It would fight first and worry about the rest later!
That was exactly the kind of ambitious, motivated, idealistic Flat-Headed Brother Xingyan needed. Ahem, he meant the Claw Dragon—and a Fanged Wyvern would be even better.
As a subspecies of the Claw Dragon, the Fanged Wyvern was a complete upgrade. It had even mastered the noble power of dragon element, so it would surely be more valuable to eat.
It would be ideal if he found one, but it didn't matter if he didn't.
According to the evolutionary blueprint Xingyan had drawn up for himself, all he needed was the Claw Dragon's muscles.
It was Xingyan's first time in the Miasma Valley, and he didn't have a map or anything. He could only wander around and rely on luck, hoping to run into a Claw Dragon.
One had to admit, even though the Miasma Valley looked like a festering mass of filth, with rotting, pus-covered strands of flesh sometimes clinging to the ground and walls, it still had a strange vitality. Quite a lot of life thrived in this environment.
There were swarms of little bugs—flies and maggots, that sort of thing. There were also plenty of beetles Xingyan couldn't identify, crawling out from the corners now and then.
Dragon corpses weren't scattered all over the interior of the Miasma Valley as Xingyan had expected before coming in. He didn't have to tread on a "carpet of fungi" with every step. At least along the path he'd taken, he had only occasionally spotted a rotting dragon corpse in a corner of a cave or stuck to a wall.
Mostly, he found skeletons stripped of flesh long ago. They hadn't dried out in this unusual environment; instead, they were damp.
Xingyan even tried to look for the Miasma Valley's landmark—the skeleton of the Serpent King Dragon—but unfortunately, he couldn't find it. The whole way, it had been cave after cave, with countless openings branching off in different directions. He had no idea where they led,
There was no chance of sunlight reaching in. The only light came from glowing fungal colonies and moss, and the air was filled with murky miasma that made it hard to see. Ordinary surface-dwelling creatures couldn't survive in an environment like this.
Xingyan even ran into one of the local dragons, a Great Jagras. It was a Fanged Wyvern Species like the Claw Dragon, but it was much weaker in a fight. It had a pack of underlings following it, and they all ran away the moment they spotted Xingyan from a distance.
After going around one cave after another, Xingyan was getting a little turned around. If he lost the trail of marks he'd left on the stone walls, he really suspected he wouldn't be able to find his way back to the surface.
Two days!
Xingyan spent two whole days searching this part of the Miasma Valley!
Nobody could know what he'd been through over those two days!
If he hadn't gotten lucky and run into another group of local dragons along the way, he would have started considering whether to gnaw on some of the rotting flesh.
Sure, Xingyan's stomach could handle eating it, but it was still revolting to think about! And the texture would be awful!
For scavengers, this place was paradise. But for Xingyan, it wasn't paradise at all.
As for where the local dragons went... best not to ask.
Fortunately, just before dawn on around the third day, Xingyan had found a spot that was at least somewhat clean to lie down and sleep. Then he suddenly heard a piercing howl. It was so sharp that he could just barely hear it, even from that far away.
Was that a Claw Dragon's roar?!
He couldn't sleep anymore. Xingyan jumped to his feet and headed toward the sound.
So you're a Claw Dragon, huh? I've finally got you!
Before you continue