The battle—or rather, slaughter—against the rat horde in the dark depths of the mine was nearing its end.
With Li Wei, a dragon disguised as a Gnoll, and Huozi, the Deeply Alienated Gnoll created by Li Wei's blunder, leading the charge, it was as if two meat grinders had been installed at the front lines from the very start.
Everywhere they went, the scene could only be described as a bloody storm. Maybe it wasn't just a figure of speech: blood and chunks of flesh really were flying everywhere like rain. The Gnoll warriors charging behind them had barely entered the mine before their fur was drenched in a layer of sticky blood.
The thick stench of blood also stirred the Gnoll toughs into a frenzy. Their eyes were bloodshot, their breathing ragged, and their surging bloodlust and excitement were almost impossible to contain.
They had fought countless battles for survival since birth. If the Riverbank battlefield, where they had fought as enemies, had been the most terrifying and desperate battle of their lives, then charging alongside the nightmare BOSS from that battlefield was the most exhilarating fight they had ever experienced.
They didn't need to worry about anything else. All they had to do was grab their knives and follow the two blood-crazed big shots.
Perhaps the Gnolls were killing too quickly and too wildly, while the two "Demons" at the front were so absurdly tough that they could break your teeth with a single bite—you had to see it to believe it.
Before long, the Cavens Rats, who had been starving to death, regained a little sense after suffering horrific casualties and began shrieking as they fled in every direction.
This enraged Li Wei, who had planned to use the battle to get rich quick and stock up on some cured meat. Every fleeing Cavens Rat seemed like a copper coin growing legs and running away from his lair.
If Li Wei hadn't suddenly realized the creatures looked like the bamboo rats from his previous life, and decided on the spur of the moment to raise them, he would never have ordered the Gnolls, who were in a killing frenzy, to switch from killing them to capturing them alive. The terrified Cavens Rats might otherwise have stayed out of sight for a long time.
Cavens Rats had a habit somewhat like paramecia. Even though they were numerous and bred quickly, seemingly endless, they would often flee the moment they encountered a natural enemy capable of wiping out their entire population. Sometimes, they even moved their nests along with them.
While Huozi and the other Gnolls gathered and divided up the spoils, and traded insults from afar with the Duergar who had arrived later to compete with them for the hunt, Li Wei had already led Pipim and a group of Slimes who had secretly traveled through the underground Dark River to a nesting site he had chosen after weighing several factors.
It was a natural cave near the underground Dark River, partially enclosed and far more spacious than the former temporary nest by the riverbank. It was as large as a football field.
Before Li Wei arrived, the Slime army, acting like a group of nannies, had already come ahead and transplanted the Fluorescent Moss from the riverbank wasteland to the cave's ceiling.
They had also embedded some of the glittering little objects they had collected over the past few years, such as quartz, pearls, and fluorescent stones. They weren't worth much, but they shone brilliantly when the light hit them.
The moment Li Wei entered, he fell deeply in love with the "opulent" lair. Dragons were born to love shiny things—and if they were valuable, so much the better.
"Mm-ee?" Remlu, perched on the Gnoll's shoulder, reverted to her Slime form and lost the ability to speak. She babbled in a string of sounds, seemingly asking Li Wei whether he liked the lair.
"Pipim, Remlu, thank you. I really like it here." Li Wei bared his fangs and patted the Slime on the head.
Li Wei had originally meant to keep calling her Pipim, but he realized she was already a mature Slime, and that the name had been chosen by their collective consciousness. He decided to respect their wishes.
He stepped forward, and his shape shifted. A silver beast more than twenty feet tall appeared in the cave.
As his Silver Dragon true form appeared, a bitterly cold wind swept through the cave. A layer of frost visibly formed across the surrounding rock. If Li Wei hadn't held Remlu in his palm to keep her warm, she would have turned into a block of ice.
This was the innate domain ability that True Dragons possessed in addition to Dragon Might. Humans liked to call it an Ice Aura, but Li Wei preferred to call it the Winter Domain.
It was a natural phenomenon caused by the violent elemental energy in a dragon's blood radiating into the surrounding area, and it only grew more pronounced with age.
Li Wei was rather glad he had been transported into the body of a Silver Dragon. If he'd been a Black Dragon, with its Aura of Decay that corroded everything, wherever he built his lair would become a filthy mess of flowing sewage. Just thinking about it was enough to ruin a dragon's appetite.
They said Plutonium Dragons had it even worse. Those things were walking sources of radiation. Anyone who saw one either died on the spot or developed malignant tumors, and even they could barely control it. They were the very definition of dying alone.
Li Wei went to the center of the cave, where the Slimes had licked a shallow hollow into the ground. He took a deep breath, then began contracting his foregut to regurgitate.
A few seconds later, countless blocks of gold, silver, and other precious metals burst from his mouth like a cascading river of stars. Quite a few shoddy weapons and pieces of armor belonging to adventurers were mixed in as well.
If the Black Dragon Kangerweian, on his way back to Lady of Corruption's lair, had seen this, his eyes would have bled as he let out a despairing, grief-stricken cry: "Those are my treasures! Mine! All mine!!!"
That was right: these were the treasures the Gnolls had taken from Kangerweian's Black Dragon lair.
Most of it consisted of unrefined precious metal ingots, such as nuggets of gold as large as a human head. Mixed in were some gold, silver, and copper coins, most of which had been issued by the Drow.
Before swallowing them, Li Wei had tried coating them with a layer of magic, but it didn't seem to work very well. Most of the coins had been corroded until they were hard to recognize.
Still, it didn't matter much. Li Wei planned to follow one of the customs of dragons.
Use money as a bed.
He'd even had this fantasy before he was transported here. Whenever he saw news about someone winning the lottery and becoming rich overnight, he sometimes imagined what he'd do if he won tens of millions—spread the cash across his bed and roll around in it, just to see what it felt like.
Li Wei had never imagined that a fantasy he hadn't been able to fulfill in his previous life would come true in this different world.
Though Kangerweian's accumulated wealth from decades of hoarding wasn't all that much, and barely covered the shallow hollow in a thin layer, Li Wei was already quite satisfied.
As if afraid of damaging the treasures underfoot, Li Wei stepped gingerly onto the pile, like a rooster settling onto its eggs, then slowly lowered himself onto it.
"Oh yeah, so good!"
The moment Li Wei lay down, the sensation of countless tiny darlings massaging every scale on his body sent him into a daze.
If he hadn't remembered that he still had other matters to attend to, he could have fallen straight into a blissful sleep right then and there.
"There's a reason dragons love treasure. Rolling around in a pile of money feels so damn good," Li Wei thought.
"Mm-ee~ Mm-ee~ Mm-ee~"
As soon as Li Wei had settled down, Remlu eagerly leaped into the ocean of money. She swam past him freestyle, then came back doing the backstroke, completely carefree.
Li Wei gave her an affectionate look, then picked an eye-shaped alchemical device from between his scales.
It was another good find from the Black Dragon Kangerweian's lair.
It was called:
The True Sight Eye.
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