A New Hunt and Evolutionary Concept

The thing Xingyan feared most didn't happen.

A week had passed since he defeated the Mudfish Dragon and ate it whole, and Xingyan had spent the entire week on tenterhooks, afraid he'd wake up one morning to find his skin or carapace secreting mucus, or discover that he'd changed from a Fire-element dragon into one that started spitting mud.

Or perhaps the carapace covering his body would begin to fall off, replaced by fishlike scales, with pectoral fins, pelvic fins, and the like—fortunately, none of those terrifying changes had appeared.

There hadn't been even the slightest sign of change. It wasn't a matter of having eaten only one Mudfish Dragon, and therefore not having enough quantity or quality.

The Mudfish Dragon he'd eaten seemed to have turned into nothing but Life Energy, making Xingyan's body stronger and firmer, but that was all.

If there was any change at all, it was that as Xingyan continued to grow taller and larger, the mineral secretions that had already failed to fully cover his body now covered even less. His expanding frame had left them more and more sparse.

From a distance, he looked just like some kind of spotted dog. Well, a spotted dragon. Patches of ore were scattered across the different parts of Xingyan's carapace. To be honest, it did look a little ugly... at least, Xingyan thought so.

But there wasn't much he could do about it. He'd have to wait until he found an ore vein and make up for it then. Xingyan believed that as long as he ate enough, none of this would be a problem.

What comforted Xingyan was that his theory about his body seemed to be right: it wouldn't change him blindly, but would evolve in accordance with his wishes.

That was a good thing.

Yes, at first, Xingyan had been a little unhappy with the reality that he'd transmigrated into the body of a Glavenus. Even when he played the game, he thought Glavenus was cool and stylish, practically a Long Sword user who could even perform a sheathed counter—but Glavenus couldn't fly!!

Being able to come and go as you pleased, and the advantage flying units had when attacking ground units, went without saying. Everyone knew there was a legendary Pokémon who was clearly powerful, yet players always turned it into a joke and mocked it.

Groudon.

Because it couldn't fly.

Its setting gave it an impressive aura, and it was even the creator of all the land in the world, yet it was always ridiculed for not being able to fly.

Xingyan didn't want to become the next Groudon.

A Forbidden Species that got mocked because it couldn't fly? No way!

Now that was settled. Since he'd gained the ability to evolve in a direction of his choosing after transmigrating, Xingyan could finally breathe a sigh of relief.

He was a little unhappy about not being able to fly, but that didn't mean he wanted to turn into a Mudfish Dragon, burrowing around underground.

So his long-term goal from here on was to eat enough large, winged dragons of sufficient quality!

Hey! You guys! Those wings of yours look great. Let me have a bite!

Just let me have a bite!!

Firelight danced in Xingyan's eyes. After eating his fill, he couldn't help getting a little ambitious as he imagined the future.

Life after becoming a dragon was a little dull. Every day, he did nothing but hunt or sleep, with no entertainment to speak of. He could only pass the time with fantasies like these.

Unless you had the strength of an Elder Dragon, wandering around the Great Sand Sea for fun after a meal was absolutely not an activity for an ordinary dragon.

That was one of the hard lessons Xingyan had learned. He'd long since lost the curiosity he'd felt when he first transmigrated into the game world he loved... or rather, he didn't dare indulge it anymore.

Night.

The Great Sand Sea was relatively quiet at night. Compared to the Ancient Forest, there were far fewer creatures here that were active and hunted after dark. But that didn't mean it was safer to move around at night.

He had reached the foot of a gigantic anthill. The Great Sand Sea was full of these anthills, built by Ant Workers. They were like ant kingdoms, large and small. That was also why hunters had named this area the Great Sand Sea in the game.

The Ant Workers formed the most fundamental link in the Great Sand Sea's ecosystem. Looking up, Xingyan could see many pale yellow lights glimmering across the surface of the anthill like twinkling stars.

It was beautiful, and even illuminated the surrounding wasteland a little more brightly, though it was nowhere near as bright as daytime.

Xingyan knew how cruel things were beneath this beautiful facade. Those star-bright pale yellow lights were actually Shining Winged Insects and their larvae. The reason they swarmed around this anthill was that they were hunting the Ant Workers living there.

They'd brought the kids along for dinner, basically.

Just then, Xingyan suddenly lowered himself to the ground. He'd heard a faint sound from far away.

Whoosh! Whoosh!

To be precise, it was coming from above.

A dragon was coming.

It was flapping its wings rapidly, but the sound was approaching at a surprisingly slow pace, almost leisurely.

Xingyan avoided the direction the sound was coming from and cautiously hid behind the anthill.

At last, he heard the sound of wings beating against the air draw closer, followed by a rustling noise. It seemed the dragon had already started eating.

The Shining Winged Insects, which had been peacefully hunting Ant Workers, scattered in an instant, gathering into several streams of pale yellow light as they fled in every direction.

The flying dragon seemed to grow impatient. It chased after the scattering Shining Winged Insects, stretching its neck as far as it could to swallow them, but the motion was clearly too difficult for it.

Because it had no neck.

More precisely, it did have a neck, but at that moment its swollen body swallowed it up, leaving it unable to stretch out and eat all the fleeing Shining Winged Insects.

It looked like a gigantic balloon, with a long tail dangling beneath it and a pair of broad wings on either side—like a balloon that could flap its own wings to propel itself forward. No wonder it had taken so long to fly up to the top of the anthill earlier.

Its body was pitch-black, with only two conspicuous patterns like monster eyes on either side of the balloon. As it approached in the darkness, night itself was its camouflage.

At the front of the enormous balloon was a huge dragon's head, with fan-shaped ears like a bat's and black-and-white fur.

Glavenus Intel was back online. Never underestimate Xingyan's intelligence network.

Sleepy Floater Dragon.

This was a large dragon that appeared in the Great Sand Sea at night and mainly ate Shining Winged Insects and Ant Workers. The Shining Winged Insects were just a bonus; Ant Workers were its staple food.

All it had to do was open its mouth wide at the edge of an anthill and take a deep breath. This thing could suck a huge number of Ant Workers straight into its mouth all at once.

As a subspecies of the Floating Dragon, the Sleepy Floater Dragon was also considered mild-tempered. But if it was suddenly startled or attacked, it would fight back. More often, though, it would make a fierce face and use the patterns on its body—each resembling the eyes of some terrifying monster—to scare off its opponent.

At most, it might also mix a soporific substance secreted inside its body into the air it inhaled, then spray the mixture out. If its enemy fell asleep after being hit, the Sleepy Floater Dragon would take the chance to run away.

A pushover.

But a pushover was exactly what he needed to hunt.

For the sake of his dream of flying, and the enormous survival advantage flight could bring, Xingyan had set his sights on the Sleepy Floater Dragon that came out at this time of night.

Being able to absorb the essence of creatures he ate and choose their best traits to evolve himself was an incredibly powerful ability. It had given Xingyan enough strength to defend himself even in his juvenile stage.

But for everything in the world, there was a good side and a bad side. The good thing was that with this ability, Xingyan would become a completely new Elder Dragon at the very least. He might even transcend the ecosystem entirely and become a Forbidden Species.

The downside, though, was that Xingyan was entirely responsible for controlling the direction of his own evolution. That meant he had to choose his path carefully and make sure all the new abilities he absorbed didn't conflict with each other, or even hold one another back and weaken his fighting strength.

Honestly, it was pretty difficult. Xingyan hadn't been a biologist in his previous life, and the dragons in this world were completely different from the wild animals of his old one.

Could he replace inferior abilities or organs by continually eating or hunting creatures with better ones?

Xingyan couldn't say for sure without having experienced it himself. All he could do was be as careful as possible.

He wanted to become a one-of-a-kind, premium Elder Dragon, not some random patchwork dragon on the roadside.

That was precisely why, after thinking it over carefully and considering his current abilities and hunting range, Xingyan had set his sights on the Sleepy Floater Dragon.

A Glavenus's body was very heavy. Most of that weight came from two sources. First, there were the minerals it ate during its daily life, which accumulated on the surface of its tail and inside its body. A finely forged Sword Tail alone weighed as much as some small dragons.

The second was the Glavenus's body itself, especially the muscles in its legs and hips. To stay agile while hunting and swing its heavy Sword Tail with ease, a Glavenus needed tightly packed, solid muscles. Without them, it couldn't fight fiercely. Those muscles also weighed a great deal.

Xingyan wasn't about to give up his formidable attack power and physical advantages just to get a pair of wings. So, to take to the sky, he'd set his sights on the Sleepy Floater Dragon's air sacs. The Floating Dragon would work too, but Floating Dragons lived in the Coral Highlands and fed on coral eggs. He couldn't encounter one in the Great Sand Sea.

But it didn't matter. The Sleepy Floater Dragon had the same thing. It had everything he needed.

According to Xingyan's plan, he wouldn't be able to reduce his body weight. In the future, he'd probably get even heavier, and his bones couldn't be hollow like a bird's to make him lighter. But he could increase his buoyancy with air sacs, which would indirectly reduce his weight. At the very least, that would let him fly when he flapped his wings, just like the Floating Dragon and Sleepy Floater Dragon.

Those air sacs could also help him breathe at high altitudes, or let him expel air directly to accelerate. If all else failed, he could use the air sacs as a transitional organ.

Xingyan knew that this world also had a dragon with a unique way of flying. It couldn't fly or glide by flapping its wings either. Instead, it inhaled and stored a huge amount of air inside its body, then mixed it with Dragon-element energy and blasted it out, achieving jet-propelled flight at incredible speed, like a shooting star.

Comet Dragon.

Xingyan thought the Comet Dragon's method of flight was the best fit for him, and the ideal way for him to fly.

No matter how much he weighed, he'd be flying at high speed through the recoil of his jets. All he had to do was inhale and blast away—that was it. If he couldn't get off the ground, it would just mean his output wasn't powerful enough.

Given his unique nature and the abundance of Life Energy in this world, he could just keep cranking up the power.

Perfect.

But that was also what gave Xingyan a headache. The Comet Dragon was an Elder Dragon, and one that appeared and disappeared without a trace. It flew at incredible speed and possessed devastating power.

Unlike the game, which limited its destructive power for the sake of gameplay, in the real world, a single "Cute Little Star, Fly and Crash!" could destroy the ground across an entire area. As for the hunters standing on it... he wished them luck.

That meant Xingyan couldn't simply hunt one or even several Comet Dragons right away. Before that, he needed another way to fly so he could strengthen his combat abilities.

For now, it was just a dragon's wildest fantasy.

Just thinking about swooping down from the sky at Comet Dragon speed and striking with a slash made him giddy. What could a Shattered Black Dragon or Fatalis do against a move like that, coming straight down from above?

Extreme physical damage could even break through an energy barrier!

Xingyan shook the drool from his mouth and snapped out of his daydream. There was no shame in it. Dragons needed dreams, too.

Lowering himself further, Xingyan fixed his eyes on the Sleepy Floater Dragon as it gradually drifted down. It was greedily vacuuming up the Ant Workers in the anthill, along with all the little things the Ant Workers were carrying back to their nest. It sucked in everything from mushrooms to plants.

Busy eating and sucking in air, it kept sinking lower and lower. Finally, it reached a height Xingyan could attack.

Blade drawn!!

Shing!!

A brilliant flash cut through the moonlit night. Xingyan leaped from the ground, then twisted his tail and slashed at the Sleepy Floater Dragon floating in midair!

A hit!

"Gugugugugug!!!"

The Sleepy Floater Dragon let out an especially loud, hiccup-like roar of pain. Its cry was really strange and didn't suit its round, adorable appearance at all. It sounded downright gruff.

It had finally noticed Xingyan.

Honestly, the fact that it had let him hide behind the anthill for so long, playing cat and mouse around it, had already far exceeded Xingyan's expectations. The Sleepy Floater Dragon really wasn't very bright.

To keep the thing from floating away, Xingyan had aimed his surprise slash right at the Sleepy Floater Dragon's wings.