Stronger Than an Epic

As the sun rose and the moon set, five months quietly passed.

The Iron Fir Hills lay shrouded in pale mist that morning. Garos buried his snout in a cluster of dew-covered iron fir needles, icy droplets rolling through the gaps in his scales and carrying away the lingering heat from last night's training.

Five months earlier.

After the little incident with the adventurers.

Garos put away the map and, as though nothing had happened, resumed his usual life: hunting powerful beasts and monsters, training his body, developing his spells, and weaving in brief periods of rest.

During this time, the Earth Spiders constantly traveled back and forth, bringing back Oil Soil.

Samantha refined the Oil Soil into Black Oil for Garos to consume. It became his source of energy, leaving him brimming with vigor and greatly improving his training efficiency.

"Strength! Strength! Strength!"

He took a gulp of the little Black Oil he had left.

Garos, who had just awakened, immediately perked up, his eyes shining. Then he soared into the morning sunlight, heading out to hunt in the pleasant breeze, battling beasts and monsters to hone his killing techniques and combat reflexes.

When noon arrived.

After killing a level-eight Wild Giant Lizard and devouring it clean, Garos began flight training.

Beneath the dazzling golden sunlight, Garos's wings gleamed with a cold, metallic luster, yet they still carried him soaring through the sky.

Without relying on magic power, only on his own wings.

Through relentless training and strengthening, the flexibility of Garos's wing bones and joints had become more than twice that of an ordinary Hatchling Dragon. Their endurance was equally astounding; he could fly for hours through Wilderness sandstorms without landing.

Today's exercise was a steep-dive emergency stop.

Garos beat his wings and dove from the sky toward the ground. When he was only several dozen meters above it, he suddenly spread his wings completely and stopped in midair.

The maneuver placed an enormous strain on his body.

As he repeated it, the membrane at the base of his right wing eventually tore.

Without changing expression, Garos licked away the dragon blood seeping out.

Pain of this degree had long become routine.

When the sunlight faded and the twin moons rose, Garos returned to the Iron Fir Hills for the most dangerous resistance training: having Samantha breathe Dragon Breath at him.

The flames breathed by a Red Dragon were no ordinary fire.

They were scorching, tyrannical, and carried tremendous impact.

Even fire dragons would suffer considerable damage if they took Dragon Breath head-on.

When Garos had first endured Samantha's Dragon Breath head-on, he too had been blasted away, his entire body scorched with pain. But now, further changes in his Buffer Scales had made him different.

Before their eyes.

The Red Iron Dragonet bathed in roaring flames. The branding-iron hue of the Buffer Scales across his body deepened within the fire and slowly spread upward. Yet they did not burst; instead, they absorbed the heat and impact.

Two seconds later.

Boom! A Buffer Scale reached its limit and violently exploded.

Flaming fragments, glowing with the color of branding iron, shot outward. One landed on an iron fir, followed by an ear-splitting blast that erupted into a ball of fire and blew the tree apart at its middle.

The current Buffer Scales.

They could not only absorb impact, but had also gained the ability to absorb heat and then explode.

Garos renamed them—Explosive Scales.

This layer of Explosive Scales had not yet fully evolved. It needed to endure fire-element attacks to explode. However, when Garos struck the Explosive Scales purely with brute force, their temperature rose while they absorbed kinetic energy.

After some more time.

Garos estimated that they would be able to convert kinetic energy into heat, or absorb his own magic power and transform it into explosive energy that would blast outward as the dragon scales shattered.

Only then would their evolution be complete.

When Samantha collapsed from exhaustion, Garos had the Earth Violent Bear attack him with the earth-element skills it had mastered, exhausting it until it too lay limp on the ground. Then he flew into the sky again and headed to the barren mountain training grounds.

There.

He used the Silver Frost Ring and Lightning Tail Ring to train his ice and lightning resistance, used Mountain-and-Earth Training to improve his defense and muscle strength, and interspersed it with Dragon Breath practice to strengthen the power and duration of his various breaths.

Only when deep night arrived did the day finally end.

And Garos lived like this day after day, every day and every night.

Late at night, the star-filled sky resembled countless eyes silently watching the vast earth.

Garos lay alone upon a rocky platform on the barren mountain, using this rare moment of rest to feel the changes in both the starry sky and himself.

It had been about a year since he had left the Iron Dragon Mother's territory.

Eight-year-old Garos had grown to 7.2 meters in length.

His body had become increasingly heavy and powerful. The density of his muscles, dragon scales, and bones far surpassed that of an ordinary Hatchling Dragon.

The branding-iron patterns on his Explosive Scales were gradually spreading toward his spine. Once the patterns fully reached it, the Explosive Scales would likely have completed their evolution.

The sensation of electricity beneath the scales on his dragon tail had grown stronger, as though an invisible web of lightning were weaving itself there.

After repeated coverage by alchemical items and constant daily training, the lower skin membrane typical of dragons had become thinner. Dense feather-like fine scales overlapped across it, gradually turning fiery red. When he flapped his wings, they scraped against one another and scattered sparks.

None of this had happened in a single stroke or appeared overnight.

It had been pieced together through tiny improvements, forming Garos's unique path of growth.

There were no Legendary Realm encounters in the Wilderness, only accumulation day after day. Every Shatter dragon scale along the way told a tale of strength more real than any epic.

—This was Garos's true source of strength.

Compared with this will, Legendary Realm alchemical items were merely dispensable little trinkets.

As for his Life Level, it remained level seven, with no improvement.

Garos had initially been puzzled as to why his Life Level had not increased despite so many changes. But after thinking it over carefully, he came to terms with it.

Life Level was merely a reference. It could not measure one's exact strength. Below the Legendary Realm, all beings still belonged to the realm of mortals.

He reckoned that if he faced his level-seven self from a year ago, he might not be able to kill him for certain, but he would definitely beat him senseless.

Besides.

Garos's evolution did not directly raise his Life Level. It raised his "potential."

Like an adult cat becoming a tiger cub.

Their size might still be the same, but their future prospects were entirely different.

It was only natural that his Life Level had not risen. After all, he was only eight years old.

Among eight-year-old dragons, only Gold Dragons could reach level seven.

And Gold Dragons were universally acknowledged as the strongest of all ordinary dragon species, blessed by nature and most favored by the Dragon God. Even Red Dragons could not compare. An eight-year-old Red Dragon would likely only be around level six, while weaker ones might even be only level five.

"If I faced a Gold Dragon of the same level, I wonder if I could beat it."

Garos looked up at the endless stars, blinked, and thought to himself.

What followed was still the same daily life of endlessly training and strengthening himself.

But only five short days passed.

Garos encountered a problem—his Black Oil was gone.

For some reason, not a single Earth Spider had returned for two or three days. None had brought back any Oil Soil, leaving no raw materials to refine Black Oil, and Garos had used up every last drop he had left.

"Something seems to have gone wrong."

"Could the Earth Spiders gathering oil have been discovered?"

Garos paced back and forth through the mottled shadows, a faint unease stirring within him.

An accident meant an unforeseen variable.

And an unforeseen variable meant danger.

Because of the Earth Spiders' abnormal disappearance, Garos keenly caught the scent of danger.

P.S. After midnight tonight, monthly tickets will count double. Don't vote now—please save one for then.