But Aegon was clearly in terrible shape, his whole body hanging limply, his wings almost entirely drained of strength.
Redd had only just begun to relax when his heart rose into his throat again. The situation before him was still extremely dangerous.
Ehm's wings beat frantically, his muscles bulging, the skin beneath his scales even gleaming faintly from the excessive strain.
Every beat of the Black Dragon's wings whipped up fierce winds as he tried to counter the weight of the falling Red Dragon, Aegon,
but Aegon was simply too heavy, especially after being weakened by the curse. He was like a boulder burdened with extra weight.
No matter how hard Ehm strained, he could not stop their descent completely,
and they continued to lose altitude inch by inch, the figures of the strange creatures on the ground growing clearer and clearer.
Watching the ground draw closer, Redd's expression grew grave. He had to find a relatively safe place to land as soon as possible.
He immediately gave the order: "Ehm, forget our heading. Fly straight toward Fire Peak, where the Dragonpit is! We know the terrain there. It's relatively safe!"
Ehm seemed to understand his master's intent as well. He changed direction and flew swiftly toward the familiar volcanic peak.
Yet reality soon shattered that hope.
Halfway there, Ehm let out a pained roar, his wings suddenly sagging, unable to support them any longer.
His enormous body carried Aegon down with him, crashing heavily into the ground.
Crash!
Although they had already been very low, and the ground was mostly soft sand and loose stones, the impact was still considerable for creatures of such immense size.
Redd followed close behind astride Ehm, landing beside Aegon almost at the same time.
He immediately looked Aegon over to check his condition. Fortunately, his thick, tough dragon hide did not have even a single obvious wound,
but he was panting in great gasps, as weak as a puppy. Clearly, the curse's adverse effects were far worse than imagined.
"Ehm, fire! Burn everything around us!" Redd shouted to the Black Dragon.
He knew full well that in this eerie nighttime environment, darkness and silence were often breeding grounds for danger.
The firelight could not only frighten off some of the creatures, but perhaps also disperse the eerie white shadows that had drifted out of the wild dogs' corpses earlier.
Ehm understood. His enormous head jerked upward, and a thick stream of Black Dragonfire shot out like a black meteor, igniting a patch of dry weeds and shrubs ahead.
Redd also helped the equally weakened Aegon up and ordered, "Aegon, lend a hand!"
Despite his poor condition, the instinct to survive drove Aegon to struggle and breathe a relatively weak stream of Red Dragonfire, feeding the blaze.
The two streams of Dragonfire intertwined, swiftly turning their surroundings into a sea of flames.
Firelight soared into the sky, illuminating the surroundings as brightly as day.
The wild dogs, lizards, cheetahs, and other creatures that had been approaching visibly slowed under the firelight,
letting out low growls but no longer daring to approach the area shrouded in flames.
Yet just as Redd breathed a sigh of relief, something even stranger and more horrifying happened.
He noticed that the wild dogs that had escaped being burned to death by the Dragonfire,
along with the already somewhat rotten, bizarre creatures farther away, had followed them, and their bodies were actually beginning to swell grotesquely!
Their flesh bulged at a speed visible to the naked eye, dense clusters of gray-green or gray-red growths erupting across their surfaces,
the growths covered in twisted black blood vessels like spiderwebs, looking especially hideous and terrifying in the firelight.
Redd's heart sank. He looked at a creature nearby that had originally resembled an ordinary wild dog,
but now its body was completely covered in these growths, its limbs twisted and deformed,
and it had entirely lost its original shape, becoming a writhing, constantly expanding, mobile lump of flesh that gave off a powerful stench.
"What the hell are these things?" A chill rose in Redd's heart. Tonight was far more dangerous and eerie than he had imagined.
Redd sat firmly on the broad back of the Black Dragon, Ehm, looking down from above at the horrifying changes taking place around them.
The firelight tore through the darkness, illuminating the eerie growths spreading over the creatures' bodies and the process by which they finally twisted into lumps of flesh.
It was a sickening sight that combined swelling, decay, and some unknown vitality. Each bulging growth writhed as though it were alive,
black blood vessels showing faintly beneath gray-green skin as they gave off a nauseating smell that was hard to mask completely even amid the flames.
Redd felt his stomach churn.
He thought of all the things he had eaten during the more than six months he had survived in these Valyria Ruins-whether roasted mutant beasts,
barely edible plant roots, or even unidentified insects...
Heaven knew how many of them had been creatures like these!
At the thought that the things that had once entered his stomach might have been the "raw materials" that would later grow into these disgusting lumps of flesh,
Redd's stomach cramped violently, and he almost threw up last night's meal.
He hurriedly clamped one hand over his mouth while gripping Ehm's scales tightly with the other, his knuckles white from the force.
This was absolutely no time to think about that!
Survival is the priority! (Survival comes first!)
Yet his warning seemed to have come too late.
The fleshy creatures that had just completed their "transformation" seemed to have completely lost their fear of fire-or rather, some stronger instinct was driving them.
They let out low, distorted howls and ignored the sea of flames beneath them, dragging their shapeless bodies as they charged toward Redd and Ehm.
"Ehm!" Redd shouted, his voice slightly hoarse with tension, but he immediately cried out the command in the dragon tongue: "Dracarys!" (Breathe fire!)
Ehm let out a deafening roar, and the dark energy gathered deep in his throat burst forth,
a pillar-thick stream of Black Dragonfire slashing down like a sword of judgment at the fleshy creature leading the charge.
Sizzling sounded wherever the flames passed. The lumps of flesh that had been so lively moments before-if that could even be called lively-instantly caught fire,
turning into clouds of foul-smelling black smoke that quickly dispersed into the air.
But fresh trouble followed close behind.
To his horror, Redd discovered that the ordinary beasts around them-whether wild dogs,
lizards, or anything else-as soon as they came near these fleshy creatures or were even slightly scorched by the edges of the flames,
immediately began developing the same growths on their bodies!
It was as though they had been infected by an invisible curse, rapidly "evolving" into those terrifying fleshy creatures before charging at Redd and the dragons in turn.
Worse still, the black mist that had appeared intermittently during the day now seemed to have been awakened by something.
Before you continue