A New Habitat
Without pursuers pressing close behind them, the three wyrmlings slowed their pace considerably.
Though they called it traveling, they were really just wandering aimlessly through the vast wilderness.
Whenever night fell, they went hunting under cover of darkness. When the sun rose, they found a secluded spot to hide.
There was never any shortage of danger in the wilderness. Besides centaurs, all manner of other beastmen and dire animals lurked everywhere.
On several occasions, Sol and the others accidentally trespassed into other creatures' territories. Fortunately, their keen senses and quick reactions allowed them to escape unharmed each time.
In the blink of an eye, more than two months passed. As time went on, Sol found that he could sense the magic elements that filled the air with increasing clarity.
Tiny crimson motes drifted around him like fireflies, growing denser the closer they were to the sun overhead.
Tiny yellow-brown motes also seeped out of the ground from time to time, looking like grains of weathered sand.
These were fire and earth elements, two of the four fundamental elements that made up this world. With every breath Sol took, they were drawn into his body.
Red dragons were not purely fire-attribute creatures; they also possessed a considerable earth attribute.
Once they reached their prime or even old age, their long-inhabited lairs could spontaneously connect to the elemental planes of fire and earth, forming active volcanoes.
As his perception of magic elements grew stronger, his ability to absorb them naturally improved as well. The resulting chain reaction made Sol feel that his growth was accelerating even further.
He was now eleven feet long from head to tail. Although his tail and neck accounted for most of that length, his body was already as large as a young horse.
Xisitana and Kalpu had finally grown to seven feet long thanks to the occasional bit of Dragonvein Crystal Sol shared with them, but standing next to him, they looked a whole age category smaller.
The price of growing so quickly was that Sol had converted the vast majority of his mental power essence into Dragonvein Crystals and swallowed them.
This substance, formed from the energy of the ley lines and the life force of an ancient dragon, could indeed serve as a high-quality magic crystal to some extent.
If other true dragons saw Sol eating something so precious in such a wasteful way, they would probably be so heartbroken they could hardly breathe, even if it wasn't their property.
The weather grew colder by the day. The wild grass had gone from a mix of yellow and green to completely withered yellow, and in the early hours of the morning, a layer of silvery frost even formed on it.
Before the snow fell, Sol and the others finally found a stretch of low hills. Dozens of small hills of earth and stone ran together, and even the tallest was probably less than a thousand meters high.
In any case, it was far better than the endless wilderness. The vegetation nearby was lush, and there was a small lake not far away.
Where there was water, there was bound to be life. Even though red dragons had no need to drink water, the lake would draw enough prey to them.
The three wyrmlings stopped of their own accord when they were still several kilometers from the low hills.
Generally speaking, unusual terrain tended to attract corresponding monsters to settle there. There might be something dangerous hiding among the hills.
They hid in a dense clump of dry grass, using the long, withered blades to conceal their brightly colored scales. Only when night fell did they crawl back out.
Sol shook out the wings on his back. In the more than two months that had passed, his torn wing membranes and broken wing bones had long since healed and grown larger and broader.
Now, with both wings spread, his wingspan reached an astonishing seventeen feet.
Fine, densely packed scarlet scales covered the surfaces of his wings, while the inner edges of the membranes shimmered with a brilliant flame-tempered blue.
With a beat of his wings, his eleven-foot-long body rose off the ground, lifted by the reaction force of the airflow and the increasingly dense magic within him. Riding the night wind, he flew toward the distant hills.
Generally, low, forested hills of this height were unlikely to harbor overly powerful dire creatures.
Gregarious aerial overlords like griffins and giant eagles were even less likely to appear, which was why Sol felt confident scouting from the air.
His broad wing membranes filled with air, allowing Sol to glide effortlessly like a large pterosaur. He flew at a low altitude of two to three hundred meters, circling the entire hill range.
A few trees that remained evergreen flashed past below, and he occasionally spotted wild boars and roe deer. But when he looked toward the lake, his gaze sharpened.
There was an expansive, gentle slope on that side. As the elevation dropped, water and soil mingled to form a small marsh.
The part of the marsh near the hills bore signs of crude cultivation. Near the foot of the hills were more than a dozen large holes, each nearly two meters across.
"What intelligent creatures live here? Kobolds? Or goblins?"
Sol's pale golden eyes fixed on the traces of a campfire on the ground. His thoughts raced, but he could not guess the answer.
The good news, however, was that there really were no overly dangerous monsters in the hills. The intelligent creatures living in the holes were clearly not strong either.
Sol then returned to the grass where Xisitana and Kalpu were waiting.
The thought that he, the boss, had to go scouting in person made an inexplicable anger rise in Sol's heart.
The moment he landed, his long tail whipped up and lashed across the two wyrmlings' heads with a whistle.
"Ow!" ×2
The intense pain nearly made the two wyrmlings jump, and they roared at Sol.
"Damn it, Sol, what's gotten into you?!"
"Why did you attack us?!"
Sol answered with his fists, delivering two more thumping punches to the wyrmlings' heads as he spoke.
"Shut up! As the boss, I don't need a reason for anything I do. All you need to do is obey unconditionally!"
Only when he saw Xisitana and Kalpu's dragon faces flushed red as they seethed but dared not speak, along with the notification that his mental power essence had increased at the edge of his vision, did Sol feel a surge of pleasure.
He turned and led the two wyrmlings toward the distant hills, running through overgrown woods straight for the tallest peak.
After finding a suitable spot, the three wyrmlings began digging into the hillside with all their might. With the hard claws of true dragons, they soon dug a fairly deep pit.
But then they ran into a problem. Once they had dug through the soft layer of soil on the hillside, all they found beneath it was hard rock, which was extremely difficult to dig through.
After only a short while, the three wyrmlings felt their claws rubbed painfully raw and had to stop for the time being.
Fortunately, the cave had already begun to take shape and could just barely serve as shelter.
After working hard all night, the three wyrmlings squeezed inside and huddled together. Once again, they covered their bodies with the loose soil they had piled up and welcomed their first dawn in their new home.