Beneath the tree, Xiluo was savoring his delicious food when he seemed to sense someone watching him. He looked up toward the top of a towering tree nearby.
When he spotted Barbara, he gave her a playful wink.
"I originally thought he was just a somewhat clever little dragon.
"Now even his physical growth has shown unusual traits. Even in a real contest against Gordon, he probably wouldn't be at a disadvantage anymore. Just how far will he grow in the future? I really look forward to it!
"This Dragon Legion."
Barbara murmured softly.
Over the next month, Xiluo gambled at dice with a different dragon every five days.
He could have won every time.
But to avoid arousing the hatchlings' suspicions, he deliberately lost to Koraman once.
His plan was to lose to each dragon four times, then stop there and never lose another round, swindling them out of as much food as possible.
Unfortunately, though.
These Dragon Cubs were no fools either. After discovering that Xiluo kept changing his gambling targets,
they began joining forces, pooling their accumulated wins so that one dragon could win the gold coin and then split it with the others.
Naturally, Xiluo refused to agree, but these crafty fellows stood firm too. If he refused, they wouldn't gamble...
Faced with this, Xiluo reluctantly compromised.
At the same time, he privately marveled that they truly lived up to being chromatic dragons, each already so cunning and sly at such a young age.
A scam that could easily fool humans actually failed against a bunch of four- and five-year-old brats!
Did these wretched little brats know how much thought he had put into coming up with this idea?
Xiluo was secretly annoyed and unwilling to accept it.
Yet he could only keep testing these little hatchlings' limits, letting them win a round just before they were about to quit.
But as a result, he really did lose his gold coins one after another...
Two years soon passed.
Constantly deceiving the Dragon Cubs over those two years earned him the achievement [Wyrmling Deceiver].
[Wyrmling Deceiver]: Successfully deceived over a dozen wyrmlings. Reward: 5 achievement points.
Likewise.
During those two years,
Gordon took first place in the third four-event competition.
Through sheer perseverance and unwavering determination, the Red Dragon Whelp had also learned Xiluo's [Lightning Flash], taking first place outright in the speed event.
But the Red Dragon Whelp wasn't happy about it. Instead, he was furious!
All because Xiluo hadn't participated in this competition!
That left him unable to feel the slightest joy in victory.
Because of this, he sought Xiluo out and roared at him for quite a while.
As for why Xiluo hadn't participated, after discovering that taking first place a second time yielded no achievement reward, he had lost interest.
Consequently, the Blue Dragon Wyrmlings rather scorned the first place Gordon had picked up by default. In their hearts, first place would always belong to a blue dragon—to Xiluo.
One meddlesome Blue Dragon Wyrmling even gave Xiluo a nickname.
[Eternal King of the Greenwood]
The title was so grand that even the normally thick-skinned Xiluo blushed.
Unfortunately, such an impressive title didn't unlock any new achievement for him.
Clearly, only a handful of Blue Dragon Wyrmlings acknowledged the nickname.
On the green grass of the Greenwood.
The Dragon Cubs had now entered the wyrmling stage, and every one of them had undergone a substantial change in size.
They had grown from the size of leopards to that of lions and tigers. With their long necks and tails, they reached around thirteen feet in length, beginning to possess the imposing presence of true dragons.
Their heads were no longer so oversized, their bodies so disproportionate, as they had been as hatchlings.
And among these Dragon Cubs,
two wyrmlings stood out as even sturdier and larger.
One red dragon was nearly seventeen feet long, with a body that looked as big as a full-grown pony's.
There was also a blue dragon who, although a little shorter than the red dragon at only around sixteen feet, was even more muscular.
Compared with the other wyrmlings, those two were particularly conspicuous.
The wyrmlings were sitting in orderly rows on the grass.
Lizardfolk slowly approached, pushing along five days' worth of food to distribute among all the wyrmlings.
Compared with two years earlier, the food was now even more plentiful. Besides dairy products, fresh meat, and bones, there were also some soft animal organs, bringing the total weight to around two hundred pounds!
The sight made the wyrmlings' mouths water, and they wanted to dig in immediately.
Seeing this, the enormous blue wyrmling immediately smiled and tossed the gleaming gold coin in his claw.
"My dear brethren! Don't rush to eat just yet!
"Come on! Just one last win, and you'll have accumulated five! This gold coin will be yours!
"Don't just be tempted-take action! Hurry up and gamble a round!"
"Xiluo! Shut up! I've heard that line at least fifty or sixty times this past year! We're never trusting you again! You liar!" A green dragon glared at Xiluo with a face full of resentment.
"You must have cheated, right? How could anyone normally win forty or fifty times in a row?" another dragon said angrily.
"Cheated? How could I possibly cheat? Heaven knows my conscience is clear! The gods are my witnesses!
"Don't you know what kind of dragon I am? If I cheated, would I have let you win those four gold coins before?
"Believe me! It's just luck! Next round! You might win as soon as the next round! Whatever you do, don't give up!"
With an utterly earnest expression, Xiluo encouraged the Dragon Cubs.
"Ptooey!"
Koraman opened his mouth and spat a thick wad of phlegm onto the ground. The green dragon's innate poison made the grass hiss.
The little dragon looked at Xiluo in utter fury.
"You bastard! If we keep trusting you, we really will be idiots! We're not gambling! Absolutely not!"
"That's right! Gambling is our mortal enemy!"
The Dragon Cubs roared in unison, completely unmoved.
"Don't be like that! You really only need one last win! Think about it! If you lose, it's only a meal, isn't it? Just bear with it, gnaw on some bark! Eat a little grass, and it'll be over!
"But if you win, you'll get another gold coin! A gold coin! A treasure you normally wouldn't be able to get for a dozen or even twenty years!"
Unwilling to give up, Xiluo kept encouraging them.
"Shut up! You've gnawed grass and eaten bark yourself, haven't you? That disgusting food! How long have we been eating it? Over this past year, you and Gordon have been eating more and more! We've been starving! Look at all of us! Which one of us hasn't gotten thinner?
"Look at these black dragons! They were skinny to begin with! Now they barely have a few pounds of flesh left on them! Are you trying to kill them?"
The wyrmling shouted at the top of his lungs in utter fury.
Hearing this, the black dragons' faces twitched violently. Couldn't they leave them out of their examples?
We told you! This is slender beauty! It's a kind of beauty! Do you understand? You uncultured idiots!
"Ugh... You lot! Why do you have so little perseverance? So little determination? Is that all you've got? No wonder you can't take first place in the four-event competition! You won't amount to anything in the future either!"
Xiluo grumbled and cursed, his face full of exasperation.
(End of chapter)
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