Garros moved through the night, carrying the corpse of the Cliff Snake Dragon as he returned to the Coniferous Valley.
Thud!
He dropped the Cliff Snake Dragon's corpse onto a patch of open ground at the edge of the valley. Although the Snake Dragon's body was no longer emitting toxic mist, the pungent smell of its blood still carried far into the distance.
Unlike other creatures whose blood would instead attract Vicious Beasts,
the blood of a Cliff Snake Dragon would cause weaker creatures to feel dizzy just by smelling it, making them instinctively avoid it like the plague. If they were too close and inhaled too much, they would be poisoned to death by the scent alone.
Garros landed, his four limbs treading upon the ground.
Because the battle had ended and he was now back in his own territory, he suddenly felt a wave of lightheadedness, dizziness, nausea, and trance-like disorientation. Various negative statuses came one after another.
"The Snake Dragon's poison is truly fierce."
Shaking his head, Garros took several deep breaths and turned to look at his own body.
His torso was fine; the black and red scales showed few green traces.
However, his pair of dragon wings were covered in shocking patches of dark green poison spots. The range and degree of erosion far exceeded the marks left during his first probing encounter with the Snake Dragon.
To wound the Cliff Snake Dragon first, Garros had allowed himself to be stained by some of its poisonous blood at the start.
But this was an acceptable price.
The difficulty of killing a Dragon was fundamentally different from killing other Vicious Beasts or monsters of the same level.
Other Dragons might not have the same insidious blood and death curse as the Snake Dragon, but they each had their own strengths. In a battle of life and death, unless the gap in power was unimaginably large, one would inevitably have to pay a certain price to kill a Dragon, given the tenacity of Dragonkin life.
Meanwhile, catching the strong scent of the Snake Dragon,
the Faerie Dragon and Samantha soared through the sky, while the physically strong Storm Bears rushed over with heavy, thundering steps; all of them sensed danger.
When they arrived at the scene,
they only saw Garros, whose wings had turned almost entirely dark green and who looked slightly weary but overall still mighty and powerful, along with the hideous Snake Dragon lying lifeless at Garros's feet.
At this moment, Garros,
because his unremarkable Explosive Scales had almost entirely fallen off, revealed a set of black and red layered Steel Scales under the moonlight. This was much more in line with Dragonkin aesthetics, as if he had suddenly removed an outer mask of disguise to reveal a more handsome and imposing true form, causing the eyes of the present Dragonkin to light up.
However, now was not the time to admire the Red Iron Dragon's heroic posture.
Both the Faerie Dragon and Samantha noticed Garros's wings, which had turned almost entirely dark green, with many visible spots of decay on the wing membranes.
Samantha was relatively calm.
She was used to seeing Garros get injured and then recover in a short time, becoming even stronger.
Fairy Dragon Vera, however, immediately became teary-eyed, flying around Garros and wailing loudly.
"It's over, it's over, it's the Snake Dragon's poison!"
"Garros, you're going to die, and then no Dragon will be left to play with Vera!"
The sound was like a funeral dirge.
In the Faerie Dragon's understanding, the poison of a Snake Dragon was incurable because, with their fragile little bodies, they would basically die upon contact.
"I won't die."
"If I could die from such a small injury, I wouldn't have lived until now,"
Garros said, flapping his dragon wings.
"Samantha, fly high and use your open field of vision to observe the surroundings. Mobel, take the Storm Bears and patrol the area around the Coniferous Valley."
"If you discover any powerful Vicious Beasts or monsters approaching, notify me immediately."
He gave his orders solemnly.
Affected by the snake poison, his condition hadn't reached the point of being heavily wounded, but it had declined somewhat, so he needed to be extra vigilant.
Seeing Garros's serious expression,
Samantha nodded and immediately took to the air, circling in the night sky to watch the surroundings. Mobel also led the Storm Bears away to patrol and guard the valley's perimeter.
"What about me? What about me?"
Realizing that Garros really wasn't going to die, the Faerie Dragon stopped crying and asked.
"You? Stay far away and don't touch the Snake Dragon's poisonous blood."
Garros flew to Storm Bear Ridge and stuffed the Cliff Snake Dragon's corpse into a natural cave on the mountain cliff. Then, he returned to his Dragon Nest in another spacious cave and closed his eyes to rest.
For Dragonkin,
sleep was the best means of recovery.
"Garros, are you really okay? I heard that when some creatures are about to die, they stay by themselves and walk toward death."
Fearing that Garros would secretly die alone, Fairy Dragon Vera followed him.
Garros lifted his eyelids and said gloomily to the Faerie Dragon, "I won't die, but when I sleep, I like to dream, and in my dreams, I love to kill. I will unconsciously kill any creature that tries to approach me. You'd better stay far away from me."
The Faerie Dragon meant well,
but the sound of its wings flapping was like flies or mosquitoes to Garros, who wanted to sleep and rest, making him feel rather irritable.
"But you're still awake right now,"
the Faerie Dragon said, blinking its eyes.
But just as it finished speaking, it saw that Garros had already closed his eyes as if he had fallen asleep. Yet, while sleeping, his pair of dragon wings, which looked like terrifying lethal weapons, slowly lifted and moved toward the Faerie Dragon.
Given the size difference between the two,
if it were even slightly grazed or sliced,
the Faerie Dragon felt its soul might return to the Fairy Wilds.
While it wanted to return to the Fairy Wilds, it didn't want to do so in this manner.
"Run, run! Garros is dreaming about killing dragons!"
The Faerie Dragon was frightened and flapped its wings, quickly fleeing from the Dragon Nest.
Time passed day by day.
When Garros woke up, it was already a week later.
He looked at his wings and found that the dark green color had entirely faded. Although there were still some spots where the fine scales hadn't fully grown back, leaving some mottled marks, overall he was unharmed.
"This time, the increase in Poison Resistance should be even greater."
"If I had to go through it again, I could handle the Cliff Snake Dragon more easily and at a smaller cost."
Garros thought to himself.
He still had the corpse of the Cliff Snake Dragon, and its toxins remained potent for a short time, which he could use to further increase his Poison Resistance.
"This Snake Dragon should be able to increase my Poison Resistance several times over at the very least."
"And my Fire Resistance can also be significantly improved."
Garros made a conservative estimate.
"I'll study its body in a bit."
"Its method of erupting High-temperature Steam for an explosive speed burst is worth my reference."
He calculated in his mind.
The results of Adaptive Evolution were currently not under Garros's control, but if he chose the right method of adaptive training, he could, to a certain extent, make the evolution proceed in the direction he desired.
There were many Dragonkin races.
Almost every different dragon species had a unique physical structure.
Garros thought that if he could take the strengths of a hundred dragons and combine them all into his own body, he might be able to evolve an unprecedented Ultimate Dragon Body.
At that time,
would he be able to sweep across the entire Planet Bernardo with the power of a single dragon?
Would he no longer have to live so cautiously, as if treading on thin ice?
Would he be able to rival the Dragon God and become the true Dominator of many worlds and planes?
Would he be as eternal as the sun and moon, living until the end of time and the end of the Universe?
The Red-Iron Young Dragon began to indulge in beautiful fantasies.
Gurgle, gurgle.
A sudden protest from his stomach pulled Garros back to reality.
Recovering from injuries and Adaptive Evolution both consumed energy. Garros felt he was starving, enough to eat an entire dragon.
The feeling of hunger was constant, like an invisible hand stirring in his stomach, making him want to stuff a mouthful of the surrounding dirt into his mouth.
Every Evil Wyrmling seemed to have an unavoidable experience of eating dirt when surviving on their own.
However, because he knew that dirt had little nutritional value and that eating dirt was too embarrassing, Garros suppressed the urge and didn't open his mouth for it.
He flapped his dragon wings, and as he walked, he shook off the dust that had settled on him, arriving outside the Dragon Nest.
"Wow, you've come back to life!"
Fairy Dragon Vera was perched on a rocky outcrop near the cave entrance. Seeing Garros, she immediately shouted with joy.
Only, her words weren't very pleasant to hear. It sounded as if he had been dead before. Garros replied, "I was just sleeping, not dead."