novelzi Chapter 375 - 310: Young Red Iron Dragon, The Second Heart
Chapter 375 - 310: Young Red Iron Dragon, The Second Heart
Unbeknownst to anyone, time had quietly arrived at the year 275 of the New Calendar.
Between the Sel Wilderness and the Eternal Frost Tundra—the Border Area.
This land, once dotted with sparse greenery, had now been reshaped by the cold currents unleashed by the final battle of two Legendary Kings, and the ecological changes brought by the Dragon War.
The howling snowstorm, like countless invisible ice blades, relentlessly sliced through the exposed rock layers and frozen soil.
As far as the eye could see, only a chaotic white remained between the sky and earth. The thick snow greedily devoured every rise and edge on the surface, nearly assimilating the entire area into a cold extension of the Eternal Frost Tundra.
Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh!
The roar of the snowstorm was the only eternal sound in this place.
Yet within the silver-clad land, Red Maple Valley seemed isolated from the world.
Regardless of the howling snowstorm outside, ice sealing for miles.
Inside the valley, it flowed with the warmth and burgeoning life reminiscent of late spring or early summer.
Tall maple trees were dyed in layers of crimson, gold, and orange-brown... countless burning colors intertwined to form a splendid canopy, babbling streams reflecting the blazing maple shadows above, shattering into glittering starbursts that flowed throughout the river.
In this tranquil valley filled with warm hues and vitality.
A slender and swift figure moved like a radiant elf weaving through the woods.
It was Red Silver Dragon Deborah, who, after ending Dragon Sleep and entering adolescence, could skillfully use the Transformation Technique to change into human form.
She appeared as a human girl about seventeen or eighteen years old, with a lithe and slender figure, nimble yet gracefully elegant.
Her hair, flowing down to her waist, was not purely copper-red or silver-white, but rather a blend of molten liquid red gold and flowing Mithril mercury, artfully splashed together, casting dazzling streams of light with every graceful leap and agile turn, mesmerizing all who beheld her.
Her skin was unbelievably delicate, with a soft pearlescent glow like the finest mother-of-pearl, and deep within, it subtly revealed the texture of warm jade.
Most unforgettable were her eyes.
The pupils held a pure, radiant Mithril starlight, seemingly filled with star dust, while the area surrounding the pupils to the edges of her eyelid was tinged with the deep, warm tone of premium honey amber.
Overall, those eyes seemed to embed an autumn lake brimming with stars within, deep and lively, reflecting the brilliance of the whole world.
At this moment.
The beautiful Red Silver Dragon maiden gently tapped her perfect jade-like feet on smooth, moist green stones beside the stream, hopping and running gracefully.
Her target was a Magic Butterfly shimmering with a rainbow-like, elusive glow on its wings.
"Caught you!"
Deborah let out a crisp and melodious laugh, her figure suddenly rising, slender jade hand reaching for the butterfly dancing in the air.
The Magic Butterfly seemed to have anticipated this, its wings swiftly fluttered.
Buzz!
In an instant, light and shadows churned, illusions proliferated—hundreds of identical Magic Butterflies appeared out of thin air like colorful fireworks, scattering aimlessly in all directions.
However.
Deborah’s gaze remained unwavering and focused.
Her sight was firmly locked onto one of the figures amidst the illusions, then her hand reached out without any hesitation, swiftly piercing through layers of false images, fingers closing in.
Snap!
She grasped the real Magic Butterfly firmly and precisely within her palm.
"Oh!"
With a short exclamation and a flickering burst of magical light.
The Magic Butterfly in Deborah’s hand disappeared.
In its place was a grumpy Elf Dragon—Vera, caught in her hand, flapping its wings with dissatisfaction, tail drooping.
To pass the tedious time of waiting for Galos to awaken in Red Maple Valley.
Deborah had specifically brought this quirky little creature from the tribe for companionship and amusement.
Vera shook its tail furiously, eyes filled with bewilderment and frustration: "Why! Why can you catch me every time?! My illusion technique is clearly perfect! Vivid!"
Deborah lifted her chin slightly in smugness, a mischievous yet beautiful curve forming at the corners of her lips, her honey-silver eyes shimmering with teasing light.
"Secret!"
She wouldn’t tell the Elf Dragon—she had been cheating all along!
Before the game began, she silently left an extremely subtle and hard-to-detect Magic Mark on Vera, guiding Deborah to lock onto her true form no matter how Vera’s illusion technique morphed and confused.
After a chase and illusion duel.
The dragon and the elf, still unsatisfied, came to a calm meander downstream and started a fishing competition.
Clearly, Vera remembered the painful experience from the first fishing attempt when she was swallowed whole by a ferocious big fish while trying to use herself as bait.
This time she played smart, cautiously wrapping her agile tail around a slender twig as a fishing rod, focusing intently on the float on the water’s surface.
Meanwhile, Deborah simply reverted to her Red Silver Dragon form.
Her elegant and large dragon form stretched lazily by the stream, with her long dragon tail comfortably immersed in the cool water.
Instead of using a fishing rod, she directly wiggled her tail tip underwater, mimicking the motion of aquatic plants or insect bait, fishing in a way familiar to her.
Before long.
Whoosh!
Water splashed everywhere!
Deborah’s long dragon tail, covered in red-silver scales, suddenly swung upwards.
A plump fish with silver scales shimmering in the sunlight was flung onto the grassy bank, bouncing and struggling vigorously.
"Another one!"
Deborah’s tone was light and cheerful.
She was about to dip her tail back into the stream, seeking out her next unfortunate target.
Suddenly!
Buzz...!
The originally calm water surface, without warning, stirred up violently expanding ripples, and the solid ground beneath her feet resonated with a tactile tremor, as if a Giant Beast was turning over underground!
"Wow!!!"
Elf Dragon Vera’s eyes instantly widened, bursting with excitement.
"My fishing rod is shaking! Oh my god! Lord Vera is about to catch an unprecedented super giant fish, maybe even bigger than a Dragon! Deborah, get ready to help me hold it down! Don’t let it escape!!"
As if to confirm the Elf Dragon’s exaggerated words.
Boom!
A dull roar suddenly exploded from the bottom of the stream.
The next moment! Like countless explosives buried deep in the riverbed being detonated simultaneously!
The crystal-clear water was torn, lifted by violent force, and transformed into billions of shattered diamonds scattering everywhere. The solid riverbank cracked inch by inch like fragile cookies, and large stones and frozen mud chunks shot out like cannonballs in all directions.
Amidst the water mist and smoke filling the sky.
A massive, suffocating shadow covered in dark scales, accompanied by an overwhelming momentum, ripped through the water curtain and smoke, and boldly soared to the sky.
"Caught it! Caught it! Hahaha, a fish as big as a Giant Dragon!"
"Lord Vera is undeniably the god of fishing, Deborah hurry! Help me subdue it..."
Vera, while clumsily dodging the vast flying water droplets and stones, screamed excitedly in a jumble of words.
"Foolish fellow, that’s not a fish, it’s Galos."
"I caught Galos?! Aha! Doesn’t that make me even more impressive? Dragon-fisher Vera, what a fantastic title."
The Elf Dragon danced excitedly amidst the smoke and mist.
"I believe he just happened to wake up."
Deborah gazed at the sky.
At the same time
The figure that tore through the stream and the earth, surged up to the heavens with endless water vapor, appeared in the sky.
The cold wind howled like knives, blowing against his steel-strength scales, unable to shake them even slightly. The flying snow in the sky danced around him, almost forming a blizzard tornado connecting heaven and earth centered on him.
And just as the snow tornado was about to take shape.
Vast wings spread, the Giant Dragon shredded wind and snow, then abruptly hovered high in the air.
The wings, sharp as a guillotine, and the tail of scales that could form into giant blades and spears, scales black with silver edges... the huge form finally appeared unhidden between the vast heavens and earth, revealing the young Red Iron Dragon.
"Hoo..."
A deep, resonant Dragon roar, as if carrying a metallic trembling echo, slowly exhaled from Galos’s tooth-filled mouth.
He moved the slightly stiff gigantic body, joints and scales clanging.
"This time... I almost slept so much that my bones rusted."
After pausing for a moment, letting the icy gale completely awaken the dormant body and senses.
Galos began to carefully assess his changes.
First is the life level—level 17!
This is a number that would astonish the vast majority of adult Giant Dragons.
You must know... typical adult Red Dragons generally have a life level around 15, and the strongest Golden Dragon among the main Dragon species at the same age also starts at 16.
And Galos had just entered his youth.
"Level 17... the usual training, the consumption of large amounts of precious metals, Magic Gemstones, and the Black Oil Crystals swallowed before sleep played a key role, otherwise I should be level 16."
Galos pondered in his heart.
Soon after, he began to observe the changes in his body.
First is the size, from the tip of the nose at the very front of the skull to the end of the fierce blade spines of the tail, the total length surprisingly reached over twenty meters.
This is not the size a young Dragon should have.
Even among the group of adult Red Dragons and even adult Golden Dragons, renowned for their large size, this size is definitely mid-to-high level. If a White Dragon is used as a reference, even a mature White Dragon would find it hard to match the sheer volume of Galos at this moment.
However, strangely.
His muscle groups, which should be filled with explosive power, were instead showing an abnormal state of shriveling and atrophy.
The huge skeleton covered in thick metallic Scale Armor was still prominent, sturdy, and filled with a sense of power, but beyond the skeleton, the muscles that should have been full and knotted, bulging like molten mountains, now seemed drained of essence by an invisible force, becoming thin and slack.
The more than twenty-meter-long gigantic Dragon body at this moment gave a peculiar feeling of contradiction.
Still powerful, yet extremely hollow.
It seems as if the steel body is supported only by the hard stout bones and tough dragon skin Scale Armor, while the inside lost the filling of active life energy.
This change was unusual.
Galos remembered clearly.
Before falling into deep sleep, not only did he devour a large quantity of Magic Gemstones and precious metal ingots, but he also consumed all the accumulated Black Oil Crystals in one gulp.
Based on the resource reserves and life intensity he had accumulated at the time, even if Dragon Sleep would consume part of the energy for transformation, after waking, his state might not be as vigorous and domineering as it was at the peak before sleeping... but should absolutely not appear like this skeleton Dragon form, looking as if starved for a hundred years, skin and bones.
Moreover.
His life energy, his magic energy, his Dragon Qi, at this moment all showed a precipitous decline, as if something had drained almost all of his energy reserves during his sleep and transformation.
As Galos conducted his inspection, this thing also surfaced.
The heart!
Galos took a deep breath, able to clearly perceive the beating of his heart and the energetic furnace-like energy it contained.
More crucially.
He very clearly sensed that his heart seems to have become two?
The special energy tissue structure evolved in the last Dragon Sleep, located in the right chest cavity, originally storing thermal energy, had transformed in his right chest cavity’s depths into another vigorously beating heart emitting astonishing energy fluctuations.
To be more precise, it wasn’t growth of heart tissue on the material flesh layer.
Instead, the vigorous life energy, vast magic energy, condensed Dragon Qi within him... these energies originally scattered throughout the Dragon body were compressed, condensed, and transformed in quality, ultimately forming a pure energy core organ composed of high-density energy! A unique Energy Heart.
It is apparent.
The energy Galos lost condensed into this heart.