The presence of flowing lava meant that this specific Geothermal Corridor was open and unobstructed.
Following the logic that the largest openings and the strongest energy readings would lead to the main artery, Asterion pushed forward. By tracing the flow upstream, he would eventually reach the convergence point of all leylines.
In Asterion's understanding, the leylines of the New World centered on the Elder's Recess, spreading outward like an irregular spiderweb. The closer one got to the Elder's Recess, the more massive the corridors became, and the more bioenergy flowed through them.
That was his theory, and that was how he searched. Although he was deep underground, this was nothing like the subterranean world beneath the Wildspire Waste where he once nested. The corridors weren't exactly sun-drenched, but they were brightly lit from dawn to dusk by a constant, ambient glow.
An orange-red light reflected off every surface. After a while, Asterion began to lose track of time. He couldn't tell if it was morning or night, nor could he gauge how far he had traveled.
Unlike the hunters of the Commission, Asterion's powerful, heat-resistant body allowed him to walk directly through magma. This gave him access to passages that would be impassable under normal circumstances. However, because he was taking these unconventional routes, he had no way of knowing if he was actually headed in the right direction.
With no other choice, he simply followed the rivers of molten rock upstream. When he was hungry, he drank magma; when he was thirsty, he drank magma. The air he breathed was thick with the scent of sulfur and the "fragrance" of evaporated mysterious minerals.
To be honest, it felt pretty good. Every gulp of bioenergy-rich magma felt like watching an experience bar tick upward. It was a very tangible feedback loop of growth.
Asterion felt he could finally understand why monsters like Zorah Magdaros spent their lives near volcanoes. Standing in the magma provided a constant sense of satisfaction—absorbing bioenergy, accumulating power, and growing stronger by the second.
Just like Zorah Magdaros, Asterion was surprised to find that if he wanted to, he could simply soak in the lava and sleep. He would wake up stronger. In fact, this was a common method for many Elder Dragons to gain power: find a place rich in bioenergy and slumber for ages, absorbing energy the whole time.
Unfortunately, Asterion couldn't stay still, nor could he endure that kind of loneliness.
More importantly, it was too slow. It took decades, centuries, or even millennia to accumulate significant power that way. Rather than sleeping through the passing ages, Asterion preferred to "rob" other dragons, directly plundering the bioenergy they had spent a lifetime accumulating.
"If my neighbor stocks food and I stock weapons, my neighbor is my pantry!"
It was a perfectly logical philosophy.
Spending long periods submerged in lava meant his world was a blur of air distorted by extreme heat. Everywhere he looked was a monotonous landscape of orange-red and bright yellow, a scenery that seemed as though it would never change.
Asterion felt as if he were trekking through a primeval forest; as long as he followed the river, he would eventually find his way out or stumble upon a settlement. Well... a river of fire was still a river. And remarkably, there were actually fish in it.
That's right—there are fish in the Geothermal Corridors!
They were covered in spines with teeth so sharp they were clearly carnivores. Measuring between one to two meters in length, they swam freely through the magma and occasionally performed "Splash" maneuvers out of the molten current.
They were also incredibly bold. Asterion first discovered them when he lowered his head to drink some "water." One of these fish jumped out and tried to bite his head, only to be blasted into fish-steaks by a counter-attack of Blade Scale Blast.
The damage was negligible, but the audacity was insulting. It actually gave Asterion a bit of a fright.
It goes to show that the miracles of life can bloom in the most unexpected places, whether it's the crushing depths of the abyss or the scorching heat of underground magma. As an "Information Glavenus," Asterion racked his brain for a while but couldn't recall a name for these fish. They likely weren't notable small monsters, but rather endemic lifeforms that had never appeared in the games.
The Geothermal Corridors possessed their own unique ecological environment. Discovering these fish gave Asterion something else to eat so he wouldn't have to survive on magma alone. Meat, after all, tasted better than rocks.
As he continued, he encountered several large monsters. Aside from Lavasioth, the piscene wyverns that dwell in lava, he also found Agnaktor, the leviathans common to volcanic regions.
These creatures had lucked into a paradise. They were arguably more fortunate than their kin living on the surface of the Elder's Recess. This was the heart of the leylines; there was no shortage of bioenergy here. Consequently, every individual he saw was plump and sturdy, their sizes significantly larger than the regional average.
Asterion's professional assessment of them was simple: Delicious.
They were packed with bioenergy. Had he known the corridors were full of such nutritious treats, he would have come down here to eat much sooner. Then again, there was no use in regretting it. Given the unique environment and the fact that the local monsters were exceptionally strong due to the energy saturation, it wasn't certain who would have been eating whom if he had come down here earlier in his life.
He treated the journey like a rolling buffet. Most things that moved along his path were cleared out as if a Taotie had passed through. Given the concentration of life in the corridors, it would likely take a long time for new monsters to wander in and fill the ecological vacuum he left behind.
When he first entered the corridors, Asterion had tried to keep track of his direction. It wasn't precise, but he knew he was heading roughly toward the interior of the New World.
By now, however, he was completely lost. He had even begun to suspect—perhaps out of paranoia—that he might have left the continent entirely and was now wandering beneath the ocean floor. The thought haunted him like a ghost, refusing to be shaken off.
His initial plan had been noble in theory, but reality was proving difficult. The main issue was the sheer complexity of the Geothermal Corridors. They were like highways leading to various parts of the New World, but they weren't straight or smooth like the highways in his memories. They were twisted, jagged, and chaotic.
Even a slight deviation in angle could, over a long distance, lead him toward a completely nonsensical destination.
Then there were the forks in the road. Originally, he thought he would just take the widest path that looked like a "main road," but often the paths looked identical. The worst part wasn't choosing between two paths, but facing three, four, or even seven or eight branching tunnels at once.
It was a nightmare that triggered his "choice paralysis." He didn't know which path to take, what he would encounter inside, or what signs to look for to know if he'd made a mistake. He couldn't even do what he did in the Rotten Vale—violently biting his way through the rock to create his own path.
This was a leyline! The flowing lava and the unmolten stone walls were saturated with energy. He could see clusters of crystals forming where the energy was too concentrated; they were crunchy and tasted okay, but they were a warning sign.
Asterion couldn't tell which parts of the structure were holding back massive surges of bioenergy. If he recklessly tried to bite through a wall and hit a high-pressure node, he might trigger a "100,000-horsepower" bioenergy explosion that would end his life right there.
Even if the explosion didn't kill him, it could cause a leyline collapse, burying him alive. Who knew what was above his head? Rock, soil, or a river would be fine—but what if it was a mountain range? Or the ocean?
After weighing the risks, Asterion didn't dare gamble with his life. He could only explore aimlessly, gradually becoming totally lost in the dense network of tunnels. He didn't know if he was going in circles or how much time had passed.
He ate when hungry and drank when thirsty. When he had energy, he moved; when he was bored, he also moved. Just like his days in the dark of the Rotten Vale, Asterion had once again lost his sense of time.
The only change he could track was the steady accumulation of bioenergy within his body. There was the energy from the Kushala Daora Gem, the remains of the Nergigante, the large monsters he kicked to death before leaving, the magma he drank, and the creatures he hunted here...
The bioenergy in the corridors was simply too rich. In a place like this, every breath pulled energy from the air. Asterion even worried that energy crystals might start forming in his nostrils.
For the first time since his birth, the bioenergy in his body had reached such a saturation point. In the past, he never kept this much energy; he would usually spend it to evolve new organs or burn it as fuel for high-speed regeneration during intense combat.
Asterion's predation frequency was likely the highest in the New World, perhaps only rivaled by a Deviljho. Such frequent combat naturally consumed massive amounts of energy and stamina—regenerating those blade-scales and shells wasn't free.
But now, everything was different.
Because he hadn't decided on his next evolutionary path, he was consciously hording the energy.
Finally, one day, Asterion realized that the energy in his body had begun to coalesce into a single point. It was only then that he realized what was happening to him.
"Do I have a Wyvern Gem now?"
Or perhaps a "Dragon Gallstone"... cough... just kidding.
Asterion could clearly feel it in the center of his chest, right near his heart—a massive, condensed reservoir of bioenergy. In both quality and quantity, it far surpassed the energy present in the rest of his body.
A Wyvern Gem. It was the only explanation. Without realizing it, his body had met the criteria for a Gem to form: he was powerful enough, he had lived long enough, and he had accumulated a massive surplus of bioenergy.
Truthfully, his first instinct upon realizing he had a Gem was to see if he could take it out and look at it. He was genuinely curious about what his Gem looked like—did it glow? What shape was it? Was it "mystical" enough? Fortunately, his sanity prevailed over this bizarre impulse, and he suppressed the urge to perform surgery on himself.
A Wyvern Gem really wasn't a gallstone. Now that he had formed one, he could confirm the joke was just a joke. He didn't know how other dragons felt, but he could sense the Gem's presence with absolute clarity.
It was like a living organ. He could consciously control the flow of energy in and out of it—or even trigger a massive burst.
At the same time, Asterion noticed that his physical size, which had plateaued for a long time, was increasing again. When he stood up slightly on his hind legs to walk like a standard Glavenus, his horns actually scraped against the ceiling of the corridor.
How many growth spurts is this now?
He was pleased. For a dragon, a larger body meant more muscle power, higher damage resistance, and a more terrifying presence.
It was all good news.
The only thing Asterion wasn't sure about was whether this growth was an illusion. Perhaps the ceiling of the corridor had simply dipped lower? If that were the case, he might have accidentally wandered into a minor tributary of the leylines, which would be a problem.
Beyond his suspected growth, Asterion found that his fire breath had become much more intense. The most direct evidence was the color of the flames venting from his wing-bones; they were no longer pale blue or purple, but a brilliant blue-white.
It was a very pale blue, leaning heavily toward white.
To be safe, Asterion found a place to rest and performed a thorough internal check of his organs.
To his surprise, even though he hadn't actively directed his evolution, his internal structure had changed, centering itself around the new Wyvern Gem.
The biggest change was that everything felt more "natural." In the past, the distribution of his internal organs was something he had manually controlled and organized. Now, many organs had shifted positions, either drifting or shrinking, while the spaces they once occupied were filled with fat or a highly elastic type of muscle and connective tissue.
His entire draconic form felt harmonized, as if he had been born this way. No wonder his movements had felt so much more fluid lately; he had assumed it was just a byproduct of his increased strength.
It turned out to be a natural optimization—the removal of useless structures and an increase in systemic efficiency.
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