The sun rose and the moons set. Before anyone knew it, five months had passed.
The Iron Fir Hills lay beneath a thin white mist that morning. Garos buried his snout in a dew-soaked cluster of iron fir needles. Cool droplets rolled between his scales, washing away the heat left by the previous night's training.
Five months earlier.
After that brief encounter with the adventurers,
Garos had put away the map and carried on as though nothing had happened. He hunted powerful beasts and monsters, trained his body, explored his magic, and took short breaks in between.
During that time, the Earth Spiders made trip after trip, bringing back Oil Soil.
Samantha refined the Oil Soil into Black Oil for Garos to consume. It became his source of energy, filling him with vigor and making his training far more effective.
"Now that's the stuff!"
Garos took a sip of the little Black Oil he had left.
Freshly awake, he perked up at once. His eyes gleaming, he launched into the morning sunlight and rode the pleasant breeze out to hunt. He fought beasts and monsters, honing his fighting skills and reactions.
By noon,
Garos had killed a level-eight Wild Giant Lizard and eaten every last bite. Then he began his flight training.
Under the brilliant golden sun, his wings gleamed coldly like metal, yet they still carried him through the sky.
No Magic Energy—just his own wings.
Through relentless training, the joints in Garos's wings had grown more than twice as flexible as those of an ordinary Hatchling Dragon. His endurance was astonishing, too: he could fly through a wilderness sandstorm for hours without landing.
Today, he was practicing diving to an abrupt stop.
Garos beat his wings and plunged toward the ground. When he was only a few dozen meters above it, he snapped his wings fully open and stopped in midair.
The maneuver put tremendous strain on his body.
After enough repetitions, the membrane at the base of his right wing tore.
Garos licked away the Dragon Blood that seeped out without changing expression.
Pain like that had long since become routine.
When the sun set and the twin moons rose, Garos returned to the Iron Fir Hills for his most dangerous resistance training: having Samantha breathe Dragon Breath at him.
The flames a red dragon breathed were no ordinary fire.
They were searing, fierce, and carried tremendous force.
Even another Fire Dragon would suffer serious injury from taking that Dragon Breath head-on.
When Garos had first faced Samantha's Dragon Breath, it had blown him away and left his whole body burning with pain. Now, further changes to his Buffer Scales had made him different.
There he stood.
The Red Iron Dragonet bathed in surging flames. The branding-iron hue of his Buffer Scales deepened in the fire and slowly spread upward. They did not burst. Instead, they absorbed the heat and impact.
Two seconds later.
Bang! A Buffer Scale reached its limit and exploded.
Burning fragments the color of hot iron shot outward. One struck an iron fir, detonating with a deafening roar and a burst of flame that split the tree in two.
His Buffer Scales had changed.
They could now absorb not only impacts, but heat as well, before exploding.
Garos renamed them—Explosive Scales.
This new layer of Explosive Scales had yet to finish evolving. For now, they needed to take a fire-based attack to explode. But when Garos struck them with brute force alone, they absorbed the kinetic energy and grew hotter.
Given a little more time,
Garos estimated they would be able to turn kinetic energy into heat, or absorb his Magic Energy and convert it into explosive force that would blast outward when the scales shattered.
Only then would their evolution be complete.
Once Samantha collapsed from exhaustion, Garos had the Earth Violent Bear attack him with its earth-based skills until it, too, lay limp on the ground. Then he soared into the sky and headed for the barren mountain where he trained.
There,
He used the Silver Frost Ring and Lightning Tail Ring to build his resistance to ice and lightning. Mountain-and-Earth Training strengthened his defenses and muscles. Between those exercises, he practiced breathing Dragon Breath to increase the power and duration of each kind he could use.
Only when night grew late was his day done.
Garos kept at it day after day, night after night.
Late at night, the stars seemed like countless eyes silently watching the vast earth.
Garos lay alone on a rocky ledge of the barren mountain. In a rare moment of rest, he took in the starry sky and reflected on how he had changed.
It had been about a year since he left the Iron Dragon Mother's territory.
At eight years old, Garos had grown to 7.2 meters long.
His body had become heavier and stronger. His muscles and Dragon Scales were far tougher, and his bones far denser, than those of an ordinary Hatchling Dragon.
The branding-iron patterns on his Explosive Scales were gradually spreading toward his spine. Once they reached it, the scales' evolution would likely be complete.
The tingling beneath the scales of his tail had grown stronger, as though an invisible web of electricity were weaving itself there.
His wings had been repeatedly exposed to the alchemical items and tempered by daily training. The lower membranes typical of Dragonkin had grown thinner, while dense, featherlike fine scales overlapped across them. Those scales were gradually turning fiery red, and sparks flew as they rubbed together whenever he moved his wings.
None of those changes had happened overnight.
They had come together through tiny advances, forming a path of growth unique to Garos.
The wilderness held no Legendary Realm windfalls, only gains built day after day. Every Dragon Scale that shattered along the way told a story of strength more real than any epic.
That was the true source of Garos's strength.
Compared with that will, Legendary Realm alchemical items were little more than optional trinkets.
His Life Level, however, remained at seven.
At first, Garos had wondered why so much had changed without raising his Life Level. After thinking it over, he understood.
Life Level was only a reference point. It could not measure exactly how strong someone was. Below the Legendary Realm, they were all still mortal beings.
He figured that if he fought the level-seven version of himself from a year ago, he might not be certain to kill him, but he would definitely trounce him.
Besides,
Garos's evolution was not directly raising his Life Level. It was raising his potential.
It was like an adult cat becoming a tiger cub.
They might still be the same size, but their futures would be worlds apart.
It was only natural that his Life Level had not risen. He was just eight years old.
Among Dragonkin, only a Gold Dragon could reach level seven at eight years old.
And Gold Dragons were widely regarded as the strongest of all ordinary Dragonkin, in a class of their own. Favored by the Dragon God and blessed with every advantage, they were beyond even red dragons. An eight-year-old red dragon would generally be around level six, or even just level five if it lagged behind.
"If I fought a Gold Dragon at the same level, I wonder if I could win."
Garos gazed at the stars filling the sky and blinked.
After that, life returned to the same routine of training and strengthening himself day after day.
But only five days passed.
Then Garos ran into a problem—the Black Oil was gone.
For some reason, not a single Earth Spider had returned in two or three days. They had brought no Oil Soil to refine into Black Oil, and Garos had used up the last of his supply.
"Something seems to have gone wrong."
"Were the Earth Spiders collecting the Oil Soil discovered?"
Garos paced through the dappled shadows, a faint unease stirring in him.
An unexpected turn meant uncertainty.
And uncertainty meant danger.
The Earth Spiders' strange disappearance had alerted Garos to the scent of danger.
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