44. Glavenus Beast! Evolution!!

Xingyan ate everything clean.

The dead Seregios left nothing behind in this world. Even the blood it had spilled on the ground during their earlier battle had been devoured by Xingyan along with the stone skin.

He had always been frugal.

Since Seregios was always flying in the sky, Xingyan hadn't realized how big it was during their fight. He only noticed once he started eating that this Seregios was actually quite large.

Could it count as a tempered monster?

Still, it wasn't surprising. A Dragon Orb had formed inside this Seregios, and only a victor who had survived countless brutal battles could manage that.

The Dragon Orb had even strengthened its body's regenerative abilities, turning it into a Seregios specialized in long-range combat.

Well, it had some tricks.

Now they were mine.

One was better than many. The evolutionary trait Xingyan wanted from the Seregios species happened to be the very thing this Seregios excelled at, and the Dragon Orb he swallowed delivered all of its essence to him.

In Xingyan's eyes, a Seregios was a bit like a bargain-bin version of a Nergigante or Brachydios. All three could launch things that grew on their bodies, but the Blade Scales Seregios fired dealt far less damage than the other two.

And it had a lot less clout (strike that).

Claw Dragon muscles, Seregios regenerative abilities and Blade Scales—best match!

Are you ready?

Born ready.

The Life Energy he had accumulated during his journey north from his comfortable old home, the Life Energy of several Claw Dragons, the Life Energy of the Seregios, and the Dragon Orb—Xingyan had been saving up for this moment for far too long.

And now, the time had come.

Rather than go somewhere else, Xingyan returned to the passage behind him, formed by the collapsed rock layers. This would be where he evolved.

He used his Sword Tail to chop down a few rocks and block the passage entrance. The already dim light grew darker still. Xingyan made his way back to the cave where he had hidden earlier, settled into a comfortable position, and closed his eyes.

----I'm going to change my tail----

----Get rid of the Air Sac Carapace----

----And the tail blade----

----The carapace on my body----

He murmured the words in his heart, praying silently.

It was like the first time he had defeated a large monster after coming to this world, devouring the Mudfish Dragon down to the last scrap, and then praying he wouldn't grow something like the Mudfish Dragon's mud-spitting ability.

It was also like when he had eaten the Sleepy Floater Dragon clean and silently prayed that its air sacs would become his own.

And this time, Xingyan prayed again. He was like a clumsy bioengineer, and his work of art was his own body.

Evolution or devolution, successful mutation or failed mutation—Xingyan would have to bear every consequence himself.

Fortunately, even if the evolution went wrong, he could correct it through another evolution.

Like the Air Sac Carapace!!!

My Air Sac Carapace is dead again! Dead again!!

Xingyan had had enough of the Air Sac Carapace's two-facedness. No, what he was sick of was how useless it was against special abilities. When he ran into opponents with long-range attacks like Kushala Daora, Sulfur Dragon Slayer, and Seregios, the Air Sac Carapace was truly helpless.

Xingyan didn't like getting hit. If he could, he'd rather beat up every other dragon on equal terms.

So, in this latest evolution, Xingyan decided to abandon the Air Sac Carapace branch. He even changed the air sacs themselves from a dominant to a recessive trait, temporarily hiding them inside his body until he could make use of them again someday.

The brand-new Blade Scales replaced the Air Sac Carapace. The underlying carapace that had been covered by it for so long finally saw the light of day. Every reddish-brown plate was coated in mineral secretions, just as before.

The difference lay at the joints between each plate. Blue-green Blade Scales grew downward from the gaps. Each was as large as the plate it bordered and roughly diamond-shaped, with a raised ridge along its surface that gave it thickness.

Unlike the Blade Scales on Seregios, Xingyan's were much thicker and heavier, not at all flimsy. The only thing they had in common was their sharpness.

The Blade Scales grew from the gaps between each plate, then hung down to cover them. One after another, they fit tightly against the carapace. When every scale lay snug against Xingyan's body, his surface looked astonishingly smooth—except for the exposed tops of the plates, which were still part of that orderly beauty.

It was fascinating. Xingyan now had both large plates and large scales on his body—

Real, large scales.

Leaving aside the technical details, to put it simply, scales were more like an enhanced version of skin. They were usually found on monsters like Flying Dragons and Bird Wyverns.

Carapaces, on the other hand, were more like exoskeletons. They were generally found on arthropod-like monsters such as Neopterons, Carapaceons, and Scorpions.

A carapace didn't grow along with its owner. Instead, after the old, small, worn-out carapace fell off, a new one would grow to fit the creature's current size.

Scales, however, grew along with their owner. New ones only grew after the old ones fell off.

As a Beast Dragon Species, Glavenus had already possessed a small number of scales. They were fairly ordinary and sparse, only appearing on Xingyan's lower abdomen and limbs.

But Glavenus's main armor was still made up of the carapace covering most of its body: its back, head, tail base, and sides.

However, Glavenus's carapace grew from its skin. It didn't need to shed its old carapace and grow a new one as it grew, unlike monsters such as Carapaceons and Neopterons.

That meant Xingyan's original carapace was still technically scales, just thicker and more protective than normal ones. In essence, they were still the same thing.

There were similar creatures in nature: crocodiles. Their bodies were covered in keratin scales, making them the textbook example of scaled armor. But the scales on their backs and tails were much thicker and had ossified, forming incredibly hard osteoderms much like Xingyan's carapace.

Well, they were basically specialized scales.

But now, apart from the few little scales that were better than nothing, Xingyan had real scales—the kind with defenses comparable to a carapace, inherited from the Flying Dragon Species.

These weren't scales that had evolved toward becoming carapaces. They were genuine scales, following the evolutionary path of scaled armor and capable of protecting a Flying Dragon Species monster's body.

Two layers of defense, twice as nice. As for how the Wycademy researchers would clutch their heads and howl over how to write their papers, that wasn't Xingyan's problem.

The uses of Blade Scales naturally went beyond defense. Even their original owner had used them like throwing knives.

Besides, given Xingyan's low—no, clever—intelligence, there was no way he would give up the pleasure of using explosive Reactive Armor to mess with dragons just because he had abandoned the Air Sac Carapace evolutionary path.

Let us celebrate: the newly grown Blade Scale armor still had an explosive function!

It just couldn't make the deafening sound of an air explosion like before, and it had lost the ability to use the blast's shock wave to avoid some damage. In exchange, the instant another monster attacked him, the scales would launch themselves toward the enemy and burst apart, turning into countless fragments of blades of all sizes.

They would also inflict a bleeding status on the enemy, making it lose blood continuously. This suited Xingyan's fighting style even better.

Explosive armor was part of Xingyan. He couldn't live without it.

More importantly, having learned his lesson from the Air Sac Carapace, he could control these Blade Scales. They could become directional land mines when struck, but if Xingyan consciously kept them in check, they wouldn't have to explode on impact. Instead, they could fully serve as protection and show their attacker what the defenses of a Flying Dragon Species were like.

And Xingyan's Blade Scales were already thicker than Seregios's. What pleased him most was that they could regenerate.

Even if he fired them all at once, Xingyan no longer had to spend day and night mining and eating ore to replenish his depleted Air Sac Carapace. He was so moved he could almost cry.

Yes, eating ore could make him stronger, and as long as he could get stronger, Xingyan was happy. But that didn't mean he enjoyed having to spend half the day eating in a mine after every battle! He hated the dim light underground even more!

He was a Glavenus! Not a Basarios or some kind of mining dragon!

Glavenus should have plenty of free time to pick fights with other dragons! And what about him?! All he did was mine!

Now, at last, the good days had arrived.

Even if he fired every last one of his newly grown Blade Scales, he didn't have to worry. They could regenerate with nothing more than stamina and Life Energy.

It was so perfect that Xingyan couldn't help shedding a single tear of a Glavenus.

That tear was for the youth he had lost.

Of course, as the saying went, you had to give something up to gain something. By choosing Blade Scales, whose defense, destructive power, and stability far surpassed the Air Sac Carapace, Xingyan had also temporarily given up on using the special gas inside the Air Sac Carapace to increase his buoyancy and lay the groundwork for his dream of flying.

No more flying.

At least, he couldn't fly for now.

The Blade Scales had even added to Xingyan's weight. They were real metal scales, with heft to match their combat power.

Blackbeard had it right: a person's dreams never ended. The same went for a dragon's.

Xingyan still hadn't given up on his dream of flying. He was simply making a technical adjustment.

In this upgrade, Xingyan had also changed the heat-dissipating shells lining his back like a sword-covered mountain. They were no longer so conspicuous or rigidly upright, like frozen flames.

They were gone.

The heat-dissipating shells had disappeared. Xingyan had directly removed this organ, which belonged to Glavenus's basic bloodline. But that didn't mean he no longer needed to dissipate heat. If he couldn't get rid of the heat produced inside his body while fighting, it wouldn't be his throat that exploded, but everything inside his chest.

Xingyan had made a bold attempt. He redirected the Heat Dissipation Channels that ran through his body to his back, and even changed their length and outlet—from running upward to running backward.

That meant toward Xingyan's tail. The new heat vents were now on his tail, becoming part of the Sword Tail's latest change.

This was preparation for future flight. Xingyan's ideal flight style was that of a Comet Dragon. The Heat Dissipation Channels he had set up in advance might one day become the foundation for jet-propelled flight.

For now, it was only temporary. Like the Air Sac Carapace, he might abandon it in his next evolution.

To be honest, even Xingyan himself had no idea what kind of dragon he would turn into if he kept eating like this. He could only do the best he could with what he had.

He was already grateful that he could deliberately devolve and discard traits he had evolved.

As a dragon without wings that could only run along the ground, Glavenus's body wasn't made for flight. Even if Xingyan solved the problem of how to power his flight in the future, he would still have to make his body as suitable for flying as possible—at the very least, it would have to be aerodynamic.

Otherwise, when he eventually shot into the sky at Comet Dragon speeds, the air resistance and the heat it generated would naturally melt all the parts of Xingyan's body that stuck out too far. Like his heat-dissipating shells, for example.

Even a Comet Dragon itself shed its outer shell during high-speed flight. When the discarded shell hit the ground, it instantly triggered a large-scale explosion.

Xingyan didn't want to leave a trail of garbage wherever he flew. For now, deliberately devolving his heat-dissipating shells was just an experiment. It wasn't final; it was a way to get used to having something missing from his back and lessen the effect it might have on his combat power in the future.

As Xingyan saw it, at least when he was flying at high speed, he needed to minimize the resistance from the air in front of him. Ideally, his body would part the air smoothly, letting it flow along his surface and past him.

That way, he could go faster and use less effort.

He could treat it as a rehearsal.

Xingyan rolled his shoulders. He wasn't quite used to the feeling of having something missing from his back. It felt empty and weightless, which somehow bothered him.

But he knew he had to get used to it.

Clack-clack-clack-clack-clack-clack-clack-clack-clack-clack.

A dense series of crisp metallic impacts rang out, perfectly orderly, almost... smooth?

Just from the sound, one could imagine a scene of piano keys falling in sequence and neat metallic blocks rippling like waves. In reality, it was merely the Blade Scales covering Xingyan's body knocking against one another, like something out of Transformers.

After stretching comfortably, Xingyan had no idea how long he'd been in the cave—maybe a few months?

But now, he was once again standing beneath the sunlight.

He curved his transformed Sword Tail from behind him into view and carefully examined his brand-new weapon!