Hot winds swirled with grit across the Hemlock Hills, letting out thin, sharp whimpers.
Garros slammed the Rock-Crushing Worm heavily onto a patch of open ground, his dragon claws pinning its head carapace, forcing the giant insect—nearly twenty meters long—to curl into a ring.
Were it not for the layer of insectoid carapace covering it, the Rock-Crushing Worm...
...would look more like a giant serpent than an insect at first glance, given its length and thickness.
"Rock-Crushing Worms live underground; digging and tunneling are their instinctive talents, and they are adept at hiding and lurking."
"If I could subdue it, I could have the Rock-Crushing Worm steal black oil for me."
"No, it wouldn't exactly be stealing. black oil deposits are unclaimed property to begin with; this is just securing it through one's own ability."
Garros thought to himself.
The defenses at the Carmel Black Oil Field were tight, and there might even be some form of defense underground. However, there was more than one oil field in the Serel Wilderness. In some smaller-scale fields, the defensive Rank was not as high, meaning the chance of obtaining black oil would be much greater.
As for Samantha...
Her Alchemy couldn't be relied upon for now; she hadn't yet learned how to extract and refine black oil.
Furthermore, even if she could use Alchemy to extract black oil directly from magic monsters, the efficiency wouldn't be high enough.
black oil itself is the result of magic monster carcasses depositing and undergoing special reactions underground over an extremely long period of time.
Unless one's Alchemy level was already extremely advanced, using Alchemy for direct extraction would consume far too many magic monsters to obtain a small amount of black oil; the cost would not be proportional to the harvest.
The primary source of black oil remained natural deposits.
Refining black oil, however, was a possibility.
Although Garros had never tasted higher-quality black oil, he felt that, much like the difference between ordinary metal and hundred-forged steel, the effects of refined black oil would certainly be better.
His gaze fell upon the Rock-Crushing Worm.
Garros let out a long breath, his claws pinning the Rock-Crushing Worm's head firmly so it could not break free from his restraint.
Spell-like ability—Thought Sensing.
A white luster lit up in his dragon pupils. Garros immediately closed his eyes to concentrate, projecting invisible mental energy to touch the Rock-Crushing Worm's head and sense its mind.
The Thought Sensing skill was something Garros had obtained after delving into his Bloodline for a long time.
Whether it was luck or because his goals and thoughts were very clear, the Adaptive Evolution talent had taken effect.
It hadn't taken Garros long to achieve the Awakening of this skill.
It allowed the caster to sense the subject's emotions while also letting the subject understand the caster's thoughts, allowing the two to communicate to a certain extent through the mental world.
This gave Garros the possibility of subduing the Rock-Crushing Worm.
Vicious Beasts like the Rock-Crushing Worm had low intelligence and were difficult to interact with; communication was only possible through skills like Thought Sensing.
Due to the gap in mental strength between the two parties, Thought Sensing was successfully cast on the Rock-Crushing Worm.
In Garros's perception, what surged forth first were primal impulses like hunger and the desire for destruction. Then came memory fragments: the salty-fishy taste of Kobold corpses encountered while gnawing on mineral veins, the excitement of mating with other Rock-Crushing Worms, and the terror of being carried into the sky by a Dragonkin, away from the underground.
The Rock-Crushing Worm's consciousness was ignorant and muddled.
A dragon-shaped silhouette representing Garros's mental will appeared in its mental world.
Garros looked around and found that the Rock-Crushing Worm's mental world was exceptionally dark, like the pitch-black underground. The Rock-Crushing Worm's will-form was curled up in a pit.
"Submit to me. I can let you live and grant you food."
Garros's voice rang out in its mental world in a way it could sense and understand.
"Oh."
The Rock-Crushing Worm's reaction was flat; it seemed that neither life nor food was important.
Thinking back to its previous points of excitement, Garros pondered for a moment and said, "Submit to me, and I will grant you unlimited opportunities to mate with other Rock-Crushing Worms."
Sure enough.
The Rock-Crushing Worm's emotions instantly soared.
For it, this seemed to be the most important and sacred thing in its life, even above life itself.
"I... am... willing."
It replied intermittently.
Great, he hadn't expected it to be so simple.
Garros felt a surge of joy.
Although communication via Thought Sensing was not enslavement, given the worm's IQ, it had no concept of deception. As long as Garros could provide what it wanted, it would remain loyal to its instincts and serve him.
This was more like a mutually beneficial arrangement.
A transaction where each got what they needed.
Just then...
...something unexpected happened.
*Cr-crack.* The mental world, which resembled the underground, suddenly began to tremble. The Rock-Crushing Worm's consciousness also became filled with awe, respect, and terror.
"What's going on?"
Garros asked.
"King... is... coming."
The Rock-Crushing Worm replied in agony.
Simultaneously, its will-form began to tremble. Crack after crack appeared on its surface, and then it shattered. A much smaller worm, but with a more solid and lifelike image—as if it were a physical entity—crawled out.
It had no eyes.
But Garros could feel that it seemed to be staring at him coldly.
At that moment, the Rock-Crushing Worm's entire mental world began to collapse, and the tiny worm also gradually became transparent, slowly disappearing.
Garros opened his eyes again.
The Rock-Crushing Worm in front of him twitched a few times and then stopped moving, as if it had become a soulless husk. It had no fatal physical wounds, yet it was dead.
"It seems subduing a Rock-Crushing Worm won't be that simple."
Garros let out a sigh, but he wasn't discouraged; he regained his spirits in an instant.
The world didn't revolve around him; encountering setbacks was perfectly normal. The key lay in how to overcome difficulties, making flowers grow from thorns and filling in the bumps to create a smooth road.
"The 'King is coming'... the small worm that appeared at the end should be the Worm King."
"It can directly decide the life or death of the worms under its command and destroy their spirits?"
Garros remembered the Worm King he had seen before. Its carapace had a cold, hard metallic luster under the sunlight, and its length of about a hundred meters was terrifying. Its life Rank was at least over 12.
Rank 12. A Red Dragon would likely need to be around 40 years old to reach such a life Rank, while an Iron Dragon would need to be over 50.
In other words...
...the Worm King's life Rank was at least equivalent to a Young Adult Dragon, which was not something Garros could deal with right now.
"Strange, the Legacy didn't mention that the Rock-Crushing Worm King possessed such mental control methods."
"Perhaps it has undergone some kind of mutation and has skills different from an ordinary Worm King."
Garros pondered.
Next, he went to the Abandoned Mine once more. Using beasts he had driven there as bait, he lured out ordinary Rock-Crushing Worms and captured them alive. He then repeated the process, using Thought Sensing on them in an attempt to subdue them.
The result was the same; he was once again met with the Worm King's interference.
This made Garros realize that unless he could deal with the Worm King, he had no way to subdue the Rock-Crushing Worms to work for him with his current methods.
"Ruining my plans... just you wait."
Garros made a mental note of the meddlesome Worm King.
Sooner or later, he would capture it and make it mine for ore and oil every day until it died of exhaustion.
As the saying goes, there is always a way for a dragon. As long as one wants to do something, other methods can always be found. This colony of Rock-Crushing Worms was difficult to subdue, but Garros had other targets.