[Field Research Log · 194]
I was wrong. It wasn't friendly at all.
I thought I'd discovered a subspecies of Glavenus. No—given the enormous differences between this monster and an ordinary Glavenus, it should be classified as a Two-Named Monster.
As hard as that conclusion was to believe, I'd witnessed this monster kill a Claw Dragon with my own eyes. I'd temporarily named the Claw Dragon—the brownish-red monster that looked as if it had no skin.
This monster's attack patterns were extremely similar to Glavenus's. Both used their sword tails to stab or slash at their enemies. But unlike an ordinary Glavenus, this monster had no ore great sword on its tail. Instead, the scales along the top and bottom of its sword tail served as blades. They were incredibly sharp.
Aside from the flame-shaped shell missing from its back, this monster's body was not much different from Glavenus's. It had the same short forelimbs and powerful hind legs.
The scholars would surely be thrilled by the appearance of a Two-Named Monster. After all, it was powerful, rare, and of tremendous research value.
I'd been away from the base for more than a year. Maybe I should bring back everything I'd discovered along the way, so no one would be left unaware if I died unexpectedly.
[Field Research Log · 196]
I'm not sure if what I'm feeling now is normal, or if it's a hallucination. Maybe I've been alone for too long? Or maybe it's Miasma poisoning?
I feel like that Two-Named Glavenus is watching me.
It's not my imagination. Lately, I keep running into it in the caves of Miasma Valley. Until now, I'd always thought I was the one watching it, but only today did I suddenly realize: could it be watching me too?
Maybe it hasn't attacked me because it's only ever seen one creature like me in Miasma Valley. (The handwriting became erratic, as if the pen were about to puncture the paper.)
I'm a little worked up. I had to take a deep breath before I could calm down. This is an unprecedented feeling—I may be the first human to be watched by a monster, just as I watch monsters every day.
What is it? Could it be a scholar among monsters?
I really do need to return to the base. Not only because I'm almost out of the paper and ink I brought with me, but also because I'm afraid my discoveries will disappear with me.
But before that, I'll try to make my way to the cave where that Kushala Daora is.
Xingyan didn't know what kind of mental distress he'd caused Yano, but her presence had made him aware of time again. He was no longer trapped in a cycle of eating and sleeping.
It was quite amusing, especially when Yano would glance at him nervously from time to time. Xingyan found it entertaining—until he discovered the Rusty Steel Dragon's rust flakes in one of the caves Yano had passed through.
There was no mistaking it. Xingyan remembered the smell. These were definitely rust flakes left behind by a Rusty Steel Dragon.
So Yano was tracking the Kushala Daora too?
That discovery made Xingyan serious at once. Putting aside his amusement, he followed Yano onward and stopped mentally harassing the female hunter.
"Th-this... a Rusty Steel Dragon?!"
Crouching at the entrance to a passageway in a cave, Yano's pupils widened at the sight before her. The unprecedented shock made her cry out before she could stop herself.
Bang!!
Before Yano could get a closer look, a huge figure passed over her. Its powerful hind legs landed on the rock beside her with a heavy thud.
Yano's cry echoed through the cave, and Xingyan, hearing her shout, hurried over. The cave entrance was so large that he could walk straight in without bending down.
He saw the Old Steel Dragon. The Rusty Steel Dragon.
It was like a small, dark-brown mountain piled in one corner of the cave. Its enormous wings draped over its body like two great cloaks. It lay motionless, not entirely rust-colored; patches of silvery gray could be seen between the layers of mottling.
Even though Xingyan had never tried to hide the sound of his footsteps, the Rusty Steel Dragon didn't react at all—not even when he entered the cave and came right up to it. It was as if it were asleep.
Was it dead?
The thought rose in Xingyan's mind—a ridiculous thought. Was the Old Steel Dragon already dead?
Xingyan could hardly help thinking so. Everything happening to the Rusty Steel Dragon right now seemed to point in that direction.
A cave with so little light should have been lit only by the glowing moss or fungi growing throughout it. Yet when Xingyan stepped inside, he found it far brighter than the other caves, like a desert under the moonlight. Even the rocks on the ground in the far corner were clearly visible.
Thin streams of milky-white light flowed outward from the Rusty Steel Dragon. Yes, flowed. Light should have been formless, passing through space at its natural speed, but here it seemed to have turned into strands of tiny rivers, flowing in every direction.
It was an exceptionally dreamlike sight. No wonder Yano had cried out when she saw it.
Xingyan stopped and quietly watched a ribbon of light drift out from between the Rusty Steel Dragon's body, winding its way toward the far corner of the cave until it sank into the rock.
Suddenly, Xingyan knew—or rather, he'd already guessed—what those beautiful ribbons of light were: Life Energy seeping out of the Rusty Steel Dragon's body.
With its life nearing its end, the Rusty Steel Dragon was releasing the Life Energy it had accumulated over its lifetime, returning it to nature.
Here in Miasma Valley, the place where the New World's cycle turned, the Life Energy would return to the earth veins, then flow through them to every corner of the New World.
But this wasn't the Rusty Steel Dragon's own wish.
At some point, the Rusty Steel Dragon had woken up. Xingyan saw its rust-covered head watching him, but there was none of the agitation it had shown the last time they met.
It had also noticed the Life Energy seeping from its body. The Rusty Steel Dragon stretched out its neck and snapped at the streams, trying to swallow the Life Energy back down. But far more escaped than it could take back in.
"Roar..." (You came too late.)
The Rusty Steel Dragon's growl was especially low.
"Roar." (You died too soon.)
Xingyan sighed, feeling a little melancholy.
He wouldn't have come to find the Old Steel Dragon without first completing his evolution and growing stronger. But when he could evolve wasn't something Xingyan could control. Those evolutionary traits wouldn't obediently stay in one place, lined up and waiting for him to eat them.
The Old Steel Dragon's lifespan, though, was fixed. Especially with its life nearing its end, it could no longer control the Life Energy within its body. All it could do was let it escape naturally.
That was one of the traits of Kushala Daora and its kind. When they died completely, all that remained where they fell was an iron skeleton. In other words, they had already begun dying while still alive.
Sounds abstract, right? But that was how Kushala Daora were. As their lives neared their end, their bodies gradually turned into true iron, starting from the outside and working inward. The process had begun years ago, when it encountered Xingyan.
It was gradually losing control of its body, and the essence it held within was gradually escaping along with that loss of control.
"Roar, roar!" (You think you can kill me? Even like this?)
The Old Steel Dragon still wouldn't admit defeat.
"Roar, roar!" (I think I can—why did you recognize me even though I've evolved into this?)
The Old Steel Dragon's body, which seemed rusted into a single solid piece, finally moved. It struggled to rise and studied Xingyan closely.
"Roar." (Your scent hasn't changed.)
"Roar." (My scent?)
Xingyan more or less understood what the Old Steel Dragon meant, but honestly, he wasn't sure what to do now. The Old Steel Dragon could barely move in its current state. Killing it wouldn't be difficult.
But its peaceful demeanor left Xingyan unsure how to strike. He almost wished it would show some hostility.
"Roar, roar!" (Do you know what those humans call me? They call me an Elder Dragon.)
The Old Steel Dragon's low growl echoed through the cave. Yano couldn't understand the conversation between the two dragons, but she could tell they were communicating. What an astonishing discovery!
Her hands trembled with excitement. She'd assumed that when two different kinds of monsters met, they could only fight—whether over territory or for food. She'd never imagined things could unfold this way.
Was this something unique to the Ancient Dragon Species or Two-Named Glavenus? A privilege reserved for highly intelligent monsters?
Whatever the case, everything she'd discovered today would overturn the scholars' understanding! It would overturn the Guild's understanding!!
"Roar." (Kill me.)
Unlike Yano, who was so excited she could barely control herself, the Old Steel Dragon's growl remained calm even as it spoke of its own death. It never lowered its head.
"Roar, roar, roar!" (I used to think you were just an ordinary dragon, but I was wrong.)
"Roar!" (You're an Elder Dragon too. Your previous form was only temporary, and this form isn't the end either.)
"Roar, roar!!" (Kill me! Eat me!! Show me your true strength!!)
At last, a hint of excitement entered the Old Steel Dragon's growl.
"Roar." (Are you sure?)
Xingyan growled softly. He wouldn't feel guilty or moved. Whatever the Old Steel Dragon said today, he was going to eat it.
An Elder Dragon's flesh, an Elder Dragon's blood, an Elder Dragon's power.
Even if the Old Steel Dragon had already lost most of its strength, it was still Ancient Dragon Power.
"Roar!" (Kill me!)
Repeating those words, the Old Steel Dragon struggled to change position and get up. But most of its body had already turned into a shell of pure iron, restricting its movements. Only its head remained raised!
Xingyan suddenly lunged forward and bit precisely into the Old Steel Dragon's throat. Not a drop of dragon blood even spilled from the bite. Xingyan felt as if he'd bitten into a piece of refined ore.
He tore and swallowed, biting through the Old Steel Dragon's spine. The savage, brutal sight chilled Yano's excitement. She couldn't understand why, after the two dragons had just been speaking peacefully, one had suddenly turned on the other and killed it.
After swallowing the chewed bones, Xingyan lifted his head and looked at the Old Steel Dragon's head, which had fallen heavily to the ground. Its eyes were still open. Was the light gleaming in those murky eyes anticipation? Or relief?
Xingyan couldn't tell.
He only knew that he couldn't waste the Old Steel Dragon's final gift.
An Elder Dragon?
So in the eyes of Elder Dragons, I'm one of them too?
Xingyan devoured the Old Steel Dragon's flesh greedily—but he could barely feel himself eating flesh. After a few bites, he hadn't even drawn out a single mouthful of the Old Steel Dragon's Elder Dragon blood.
His mouth was full of incredibly hard metal, much like when he'd eaten his own severed tail blade and the Sulfur Dragon Slayer's tail blade.
Even the Old Steel Dragon's organs had withered away. Xingyan anxiously searched its body for a Dragon Orb, but even after devouring the Old Steel Dragon's entire body and cracking open and swallowing its head, he couldn't find anything that could be called a Kushala Daora Dragon Orb.
Xingyan was sure that a Kushala Daora on the verge of dying of old age would have a Dragon Orb inside it. But perhaps the energy in that Dragon Orb had already escaped from the Old Steel Dragon's body, trickling away into the earth veins before Xingyan arrived.
After all, when Xingyan had found it, the Old Steel Dragon hadn't even been able to stand up.
Even so, by eating the Old Steel Dragon's entire corpse, Xingyan gained enough evolutionary information and Life Energy.
Perhaps because most of its flesh had turned into pure minerals, Xingyan didn't gain Kushala Daora's signature ability to control the wind. Instead, he gained its steel hide.
The Blade Scales and shell covering his body trembled constantly. They fell off one after another, exposing Xingyan's vulnerable muscles, but new shells and Blade Scales immediately grew in their place.
His original colors were reddish-brown shell and blue-green Blade Scales. But now, the new shells and Blade Scales were all the same color—a silvery gray.
Even the layer of mineral secretions that had covered his original shell didn't reappear. They had fused into the new shell and Blade Scales. Like Kushala Daora's steel hide, they were pure metal, yet they could shed and regenerate.
A kind of living metal.
But the change that made Xingyan even happier was in his forelimbs. His short forelimbs had become a pair of limbs as long as his hind legs. Each paw had four fingers, three long and one short, with the short one on the side like a thumb.
From this moment on, Xingyan truly had the standard skeleton of a wyvern with two wings and four legs. Yes, wings!
Even if his wings were tiny.
Turning his head, Xingyan could clearly see a small pair of wings growing from either side of his smooth back. They were less than a fifth the size of his body, like some kind of decoration, but he could spread or fold them at will.
They were about the same size as Great Jagras's little wings.
Not quite used to the feeling, Xingyan stumbled a few steps. When he nearly fell, he instinctively reached out with his forelimbs to brace himself—but unlike before, this time his forelimbs really did support him.
Full of wonder, Xingyan grasped a rock with his forepaws. A slight squeeze reduced it to powder.
Xingyan was very satisfied with the strength of his forelimbs. That meant they weren't just for show, and from today on, he once again had forelimbs he could use to grasp things!
Blessing
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