Yu Lian, completely unharmed, leaped down from the dragon's back and stepped out of his equally unharmed mech. Only then did he turn around and pat the badly wounded giant beast behind him. Its head, as big as a heavy tank, was right there within arm's reach. It could swallow Yu Lian whole with a single bite.
But Yu Lian acted like a leader swaggering about, gently patting the dragon's nose. "Very good, little dragon. I saw your sacrifice with my own eyes. You've shown more courage than most of your kin."
The wounded star dragon let Yu Lian stroke its chin, which bristled with sharp barbs. A rumbling breath with a hint of intelligence escaped from an organ like a nostril, and then it flopped down on the soft grass and didn't want to move again, like a feline whose very life force had been drained away.
Of course, this was a titanium dragon, the one of the eight star dragon species whose appearance most closely resembled the "dragon" Yu Lian knew from the animal kingdom. That made him feel a particular fondness for it. And considering that Beiseflorus, who had already been released back into the Abyss Nebula, was also a titanium dragon, that fondness naturally doubled.
Compared with the faster, more ferocious Flamewing Dragons, which especially loved breathing fire and smashing asteroids with their heads, titanium dragons really were more laid-back. They also seemed a little less aggressive, but their defenses and regenerative abilities were excellent. By ordinary standards, they almost qualified as "immortal."
Indeed, Yu Lian could now see that the wound on the titanium dragon's flank had shrunk to a shallow little dent. Even its scales, which gleamed with a metallic sheen, had grown back, though their texture still seemed a little off.
That was