Oh~, Overseer

After the excitement faded, he suddenly realized a very serious problem. He had obtained the transmigration benefit, but he had no idea what it did or how to use it.

Since there were no instructions, he would have to explore it himself.

He closed his eyes and calmed himself down to think.

Exploring the unknown was always the hardest, because there was no experience from those who came before to draw upon. Everything was a complete mystery.

Wait, it was not entirely without clues.

He recalled the inscription on the base of the Phoenix statue. It had offered a vague hint.

Phoenix Heart. The place where energy gathered was precisely the heart; Phoenix Heart was likely the name of the reward.

As for the S, he remembered the card games he had played in his previous life. If nothing unexpected had happened, S was probably the item's grade.

Reborn One referred to the fact that he had transmigrated.

"Reborn amid blazing flames, to live another life."

Jose murmured, "Could it be that I gained the Phoenix's ability to be reborn through fire? Then fire shouldn't be able to hurt me."

He decided to give it a try.

As a Dragon Hatchling whose magical abilities had yet to awaken, his only means of creating fire was Dragon Breath. Breathing fire was as easy as lifting a hand, but making sure he was not burned by it was not nearly as simple.

Dragon Breath was one of the dragon race's greatest weapons for survival, and what he was about to do was use that very weapon against himself.

Of course, dragons had a certain resistance to their own Dragon Breath.

He opened his mouth, but in the end, he could not bring himself to do it. It was like pointing a pistol at his own head and pulling the trigger—far too terrifying.

Fortunately, the power of Dragon Breath could be controlled.

Dragon Breath was the result of physiology and magic working together. On either side of a dragon's mouth were two passages connected to its abdominal cavity. These passages led to sacs that stored a special secretion. The liquid inside functioned much like an accelerant; when mixed with magic power, it formed devastating Dragon Breath.

Jose could weaken his Dragon Breath by regulating the amount of "accelerant." He opened his mouth toward the empty ground and gently squeezed the muscles around the sacs.

Whoosh!

A one-meter-long burst of Dragon Breath vanished in an instant. He stretched out a Dragon Claw and brushed it over the ground. The rock scorched by the Dragon Breath was over a hundred degrees Celsius. A mere instant of contact had heated stone to such a degree, showing just how powerful Dragon Breath was.

It could be made even weaker.

After repeated practice, he reduced the power of his Dragon Breath to a bearable level.

He extended one Dragon Claw and breathed out a tiny puff of fire.

Huh?!

The instant Dragon Flame enveloped his Dragon Claw, Jose was shocked to discover that not only did he feel no pain, he felt nothing at all.

He touched the burned area with his other Dragon Claw and confirmed once more that its temperature was only a few degrees higher than normal.

That was abnormal. Naturally, he did not doubt the power of Dragon Breath. The source of the problem lay with himself—or rather, with the Phoenix Heart.

Little by little, he increased the power of his Dragon Breath. His body remained completely unharmed, and a tingling itch came from his wounds, a sign that they were healing faster.

Whether he could truly be reborn through fire remained unknown, but this at least proved that flames could accelerate wound healing.

Jose was overjoyed, his face beaming.

Ever since transmigrating, he had worried constantly—worried that the Red Nest would be defeated before his injuries had healed, leaving him at the mercy of his enemies.

For him, the ability to accelerate wound healing with fire was nothing short of divine salvation.

Without further hesitation, he turned his head and breathed Dragon Flame onto his wounds. Amid the roaring blaze, granulation tissue visibly grew, charred and necrotic scales fell away, and new scales gradually formed.

Ten minutes later, Jose's scales had fully recovered.

He felt refreshed all over, as though he had just stepped out of a sauna. He tried tensing his body with all his strength, but felt no discomfort whatsoever.

This greatly encouraged him. He stood up at once and stretched lazily, his bones crackling all over.

"Awesome!"

After the excitement, he gradually calmed down. Recovering his body merely gave him a sliver of self-preservation ability. The most important thing was figuring out how to survive this world-shaking war.

Turning his head and seeing the new scales growing on his body, Jose suddenly thought of something and frowned.

No more excuse to refuse going to the battlefield.

In truth, he did not lack the courage to die protecting something important. But the Red Nest was not worth it.

Looking down at the shed scales on the ground, he fell into deep thought.

In the blink of an eye, three days passed.

During those three days, two more battles broke out.

Jose escaped disaster by pretending to be wounded. This was thanks to the Gnoll Overseer not entering the cave to inspect things carefully; otherwise, he would have been furious, because the charred scales on this "severely injured" Dragon Hatchling had been stuck on with a mixture of saliva and mud.

Not gonna lie, it felt a bit like faking illness to skip school right under your parents' noses.

Damn thrilling!

The Dragon Hatchlings who actually went into battle had it even more thrilling—their numbers had dropped by nearly a third compared to before.

He was certain that if not for the restrictions of the contract and their fear of the Red Nest Matriarch, the dragons would have fled long ago.

At noon, the dragons were sleeping soundly in the cave when the mountains suddenly shook and the ground trembled. Sand and stones rained from the ceiling, as if a magnitude-ten earthquake had struck.

"What's going on?!"

"How did the enemy reach the Red Nest?!"

Roar!

An enraged dragon roar exploded overhead like thunder, drowning out the dragons' cries of alarm. Surging Dragon Might crashed down like a tsunami, and even the other dragons felt immense pressure. This was Dragon Might at the level of an Ancient Dragon!

The dust-covered Dragon Hatchlings scrambled to their feet in panic. At the same time, furious dragon roars and magical explosions rang out together.

The violent waves of energy spreading through the air made Jose's heart skip a beat, while thoughts flashed through his mind like lightning.

There was no doubt that the Red Nest had been attacked, and the Red Nest Matriarch was fighting a powerful enemy.

Yet according to the information he had gathered over the past few days, the enemy was still a long way from the Red Nest.

What was going on?!

There was no time to think. Battles between top-tier powerhouses were immensely destructive, and sand and rocks were pouring down inside the cave; it could collapse at any moment. Jose squeezed toward the exit with the other dragons.

The moment he emerged, he looked up at the sky. The battle had paused, and the two sides were confronting each other high in the air.

On one side was a group of Legendary Five-Colored Dragons led by the Red Nest Matriarch: twelve in total, red, blue, green, black, and white. On the other side were enemy powerhouses led by a white-robed old man. The enemy had more people, a full thirty or forty, but the Five-Colored Evil Dragons were not intimidated in the slightest. They even held Dragon Flame in their mouths, eager to fight.

"Savannah! I'll give you one last chance. Leave Tydanore, and never come back!"

"Old man Moorlin! Have you gone senile? Who gave you the nerve to..."

"..."

From the conversation between the two sides, Jose deduced that this attack had been a test and an ultimatum. Although the Human Allied Forces held the advantage, they were not prepared to kill a thousand enemies at the cost of eight hundred of their own.

To avoid both sides suffering crippling losses, this contact had taken place. The negotiations had failed.

After the talks broke down, the enemy teleported away.

Suddenly, someone beside him poked his body.

Jose turned and saw the Golden Dragon Loli. Then he saw the scales that had fallen off his body from being squeezed among the other dragons, and his heart lurched with a bad feeling.

"Red Scamp~!" A sinister voice, heavy with suppressed rage, sounded from behind him.

Jose's body stiffened. He turned his head mechanically and saw the Gnoll trembling with fury. "Oh~, Overseer~."