The dragon group roared excitedly, their leathery wings flapping like thunder. The dragons circled above the ruins of Valyria. They had reached the heart of the city of Valyria. Balerion, in particular, seemed to feel a sense of returning home, back to the stronghold of the Balerion family. The purple dragon eggs were originally treasures of the Balerion family.
"How magnificent!" Rhaegar exclaimed. The capital of Valyria, the universal empire that once dominated the continent of Essos, looked grand and imposing. Conservatively estimated, its population would have been over a million, but now all were reduced to dust. The Valyrian Dragonlords were enthusiasts of grand spectacles, fond of massive infrastructure projects like the Valyrian Road and the Valyrian Great City. The city's edge was marked by the Valyrian Black Wall, while in the center stood Valyria's council halls, plazas, and temples, surrounded by the towering spires of the illustrious Dragonlords. The dragons circled above the city, then flew back to their respective family towers. Rhaegar recalled those topless, pointed towers made of black dragonglass, and the magnificent sphinx-adorned buildings. Now, he could only vaguely remember their former grandeur; these were the marks of ancient Dragonlords. The Dragonlords resided in these towers, and the dragons could also perch upon them.
"Brother Bass proposed a theory that dragons were created by blood mages of the Valyrian Freehold using long-winged dragons. His view is clear: Dragonlords, like dragons, were shaped by magic and hybridization." Rhaegar also remembered the firewyrms with human-like faces, snake-like bodies, and hands—a surge of firewyrms, fire from hell that incinerated human bodies. There were rumors that dragons were born from the mixture of firewyrms and long-winged dragons. And the Dragonlords themselves seemed to have been molded; the deformed fetuses born to House Targaryen sometimes resembled dragons or insects, which was unnatural. The Blood Magic of humans and dragons, those evils in the shadows. In the slave pits of Ghiscar, Blood Magic bred beasts with female slaves, producing deformed half-human, half-beast infants. If this were true, then the nature of the Dragonlords also carried an artificial uncertainty. Could their madness also stem from this? However, these were merely rumors; treasure hunting was the priority.
"The environment here is truly terrible!" Rhaegar and the dragon group circled amidst the ruins, azure flames covering their entire bodies. The radiation and dust here were too intense; ordinary people could not survive for long. The clouds in the Valyrian sky were fiery red, and in the distance, some un-submerged volcanoes still incessantly spewed flames. For Valyrians to live near volcanoes was undoubtedly like dancing on graves, but the theories of Valyria's demise were indeed numerous. Some said it was a natural disaster, others a conspiracy by the Faceless Men or other deities. The Fourteen Flames became like wild beasts after Valyria's destruction. Some volcanoes still erupted flames, while others had fallen silent again. Overall, the smoke, ash, sulfur, flames, and firewyrms made this place extremely uninhabitable and fraught with danger. Rhaegar looked at the ruins, formed by the collapse of black dragonglass boulders, still covered in ash and dust from volcanic eruptions. Valyria's proud palaces, temples, and towns were now destroyed. All beauty had passed, leaving behind only ruins.
"The catastrophe came too fiercely and rapidly, like a flood of beasts! Even the highest-ranking Dragonlords couldn't escape it." Rhaegar was cautious; the city was destroyed, and perhaps during the firewyrm rampage, though they couldn't fly, they were still terrifying. Rhaegar watched for changes on the ground; if the firewyrms emerged, another great battle would be inevitable. The strangest thing was Valyria's sudden destruction, so abrupt that even the major Dragonlord families, like the Balerion family, who were most skilled in magic, didn't have time to react. Perhaps each Dragonlord family specialized in different intrinsic attributes. Only House Targaryen possessed the special attribute of "Dragon Dream," allowing them to escape through prophecy. Other Dragonlord families invested their points in other aspects, such as physical strength, martial prowess, or magical attacks, paying less attention to such 'hysterical' prophecies. For example, the Balerion family focused on reaching the pinnacle, creating the strongest individual dragon warriors.
"According to the spheres of influence of the Dragonlords, each Dragonlord had their family tower, along with the grand theaters, libraries, plazas, gardens, and so on that they gifted to the citizens of Valyria to curry favor with them." Rhaegar felt that the most promising legacy was that of the Balerion family. House Targaryen had sold off their assets and fled to Dragonstone back then, so they didn't have many treasures left in ancient Valyria. With time pressing, he definitely had to seek out the finest items.
The purple dragon circled in the sky for a while, then led everyone to the tallest ruins in the city. It seemed this was the Balerion family's relic site. The ruins were vast; Valyria's Black Walls and black towers back then were far more magnificent than present-day Volantis, renowned for their towering grandeur. Rhaegar arrived at the largest, broken black dragonglass tower. Even shattered into a great ruin, the tower still stood hundreds of feet tall; in its prime, it must have been even more colossal. The tower leaned against other buildings, casting a huge shadow on the ground. Between the broken ruins of the tower, there was a small passage for entry. Rhaegar had to navigate these ruins as if in tunnel warfare.
"Stay safe, my companions!" Rhaegar called out to the dragon group. They would be safer flying high in the sky. With mental charms and the Blood and Fire Chain, he could monitor the dragons' safety. This place was not safe. When Balerion came here, he even sustained a wound over two meters long. Firewyrms or sea monsters could grow to a size capable of fighting a great dragon, so dangers lurked everywhere.
There were no footprints at the cave entrance, nor any traces of animal activity. This place, even with its high temperatures and sulfurous toxins, was impenetrable to humans. Rhaegar walked alone through the dark tunnel, his raised torch illuminating it brightly. The black dragonglass was covered in dust and volcanic rocks. The foundation of these ruins was still the integrated dragonglass of Valyrian technology, but now it was covered with a layer of grey rock. These grey rocks were relatively brittle.
The great city of Valyria had a river, and a stream flowed through these ruins as well. The stream meandered endlessly, and Rhaegar, clad in Valyrian scale armor, concentrated as he moved forward. The winding stream had a strange smell, mixed with sulfur, making it completely undrinkable.
"Whoosh!" Perhaps due to the presence of a stream, firewyrms appeared less frequently. Rhaegar wielded his flames, once again seizing many firewyrm sparks.
Rhaegar followed the direction of the stream. After the Doom of Valyria, the landscape was altered by smoke and ash, becoming a source of radiation. Long ago, Valyria was a city of advanced technology, and the great river within the city was normally drinkable.
"What is this?" In the dim tunnel, Rhaegar saw a shadow, a figure not far away. Before Rhaegar could approach, the shadow monotonously repeated an action, continuously digging the tunnel with a shovel and hammer.
"It's a dead man!" As he got closer, Rhaegar clearly saw the shadow! The person looked like a Rhoynar, a slave with a withered body and exposed bones. He had olive-colored skin, lean and slender. The only difference from a normal person was the patterns carved on the slave's face, with a warm red stone embedded in his brow. The Rhoynar's eyes were unfocused; he had forgotten many memories, with only the memory of mining etched into his mind.
"The dead are dead; even if they are resurrected, they are not the same as normal people!" Rhaegar walked forward, but the slave ignored him, continuing to mine. "Gold! Mine!" These were their last obsessions.
Rhaegar observed the Rhoynar slave's expression, his unfocused eyes, leaving only endless work. His skin was dark, his face full of gashes, bones exposed. He didn't need to eat, and he could withstand high temperatures and dust.
"Chosen of Khorne? These ancient Valyrian Dragonlords! No wonder such undying slaves could be created." The Valyrian Dragonlords could be considered the most terrifying black-hearted capitalists; the underground mines of Valyria were true sweatshops. Slaves toiled in the deep mines beneath the Fourteen Flames, a molten volcano, so the working conditions can be imagined. The surrounding rocks were too hot to touch, the air smelled of sulfur, and inhaling it caused burning pain in the lungs. They worked hard for gold, only to meet death, sometimes even wishing for it but unable to achieve it.
Rhaegar walked over and summoned the stream water. In the splash of water, the slave truly died this time; they had endured for too long. The red stone drew heat to operate these slaves, but the slaves had not suffered harm from firewyrms and had miraculously survived until now. With the red stone removed from his brow, the slave collapsed in the tunnel. Death was indeed a release for such slaves. Both ice and fire could resurrect the dead, but the dead were dead; even after resurrection, their injuries and bodies changed, and their memories would slowly fade until they could no longer be resurrected. After multiple resurrections, the dead would lose more and more memories, while the injuries suffered in life would not heal.
Rhaegar continued forward, occasionally encountering these very rare, undying miner slaves. It seemed that perhaps due to fewer firewyrms here, these miraculously surviving slaves were left to wander aimlessly, retaining only their instinctive memory of mining.
Rhaegar suspected that the Valyrian Dragonlords originally raised dragons in towers, not needing dragon lairs, so the tops of the towers might have environments suitable for dragons. Like a dragon's nest, using gems to draw heat to allow the dragons to grow. Moreover, Valyria was adjacent to the Fourteen Flames, where the heat was naturally intense. If they raised dragons, they could designate an area on the Fourteen Flames, and also build a flat ground for dragons to stay on the towers in the center of Valyria, which is why many Valyrian towers were flat-topped.
Rhaegar's keen five senses activated, and the tunnel widened with his vision. He saw a fragment of a purple dome. He was all too familiar with this, as the purple dragon nest was roughly like this.
Rhaegar walked forward to a large, broken fragment of a purple dome, adorned with purple gems, flame patterns, runes, markings, and spirals, as well as a magic circle.
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