Translator: AnubisTL
Sunrise and sunset marked the passage of time, and five months had quietly slipped by.
The Hemlock Hills were shrouded in a pale morning mist. Garos buried his snout in the dew-laden iron fir needles, the icy droplets rolling down the gaps between his scales, carrying away the lingering heat from his night's training.
Five months earlier...
After the brief encounter with the adventurers, Garos tucked away the map and resumed his usual routine as if nothing had happened: hunting ferocious beasts and demonic creatures, honing his physical prowess and magical skills, interspersed with brief periods of rest.
During this time, the earth spiders tirelessly shuttled back and forth, bringing back oil-rich soil. Samantha refined this soil into black oil, which Garos consumed as his primary energy source, filling him with vitality and dramatically boosting his training efficiency.
"Gulp! Gulp! Gulp!"
Garos took a final gulp of the dwindling black oil.
Awakened instantly, his eyes gleaming with renewed vigor, he soared into the morning sunlight. Riding the gentle breeze, he ventured out to hunt, battling ferocious beasts and demonic creatures to hone his combat skills and reaction time.
By noon, having hunted and devoured an eighth-level Wild Giant Lizard, Garos began his flight training.
Bathed in the brilliant golden sunlight, Garos's wings shimmered with a cold, metallic sheen, yet they still carried him effortlessly through the skies.
He relied solely on his wings, without any magical energy.
Through relentless training and strengthening, the flexibility of Garos's wing joints was more than twice that of ordinary young dragons, and his endurance was astonishing. He could withstand the desert's sandstorms and fly continuously for hours without landing.
Today's exercise was a dive and sudden stop.
Garos flapped his wings, plummeting toward the earth. When he was just a few dozen meters above the ground, he abruptly spread his wings fully, halting his descent mid-air.
The maneuver put immense strain on his body.
As he repeated the exercise, the membrane at the base of his right wing eventually tore.
Garos licked away the seeping dragon blood without flinching.
Such pain had long become commonplace for him.
As the sun set and the twin moons rose, Garos returned to the Hemlock Hills for his most dangerous resistance training: enduring Samantha's dragon breath.
The flames spewed by a red dragon were no ordinary fire.
They were scorching, domineering, and carried an overwhelming force.
Even a fire dragon facing dragon breath head-on would suffer significant injuries.
Initially, when Garos directly withstood Samantha's dragon breath, he would be blasted away, his body scorched with searing pain. But now, due to the further evolution of his cushion scales, things were different.
As the red iron young dragon bathed in the roaring flames, the iron-colored cushion scales on his body deepened in hue, gradually extending upward without shattering. Instead, they absorbed both the intense heat and the concussive force.
Two seconds later:
Crack! A cushion scale reached its limit and exploded violently.
Burning fragments, still glowing with an iron-like heat, shot outward, striking an iron fir tree. A deafening roar followed as the tree erupted in flames, split in half by the force of the blast.
The cushion scales had evolved.
They could now not only absorb impact but also absorb extreme heat and convert it into explosive energy.
Garos renamed them: Explosive Scales.
This Explosive Scale layer was still incomplete. It required fire-attribute attacks to trigger its explosive potential. When Garos struck the scales with pure brute force, they absorbed the kinetic energy while their temperature steadily increased.
In time, Garos estimated, the scales would be able to convert kinetic energy into thermal energy, or even absorb his own magical energy and channel it into explosive force, unleashing it upon shattering.
Only then would his evolution be complete.
When Samantha collapsed from exhaustion, Garos had the Earthstorm Bear use its earth-type skills to attack him, exhausting it until it lay paralyzed on the ground. Then, he soared into the sky and landed on the desolate mountain training ground.
Here, he used the Silverfrost Ring and lightning tail ring to train his ice and lightning resistance, gradually increasing his defense and muscle strength day by day. He interspersed these sessions with dragon breath practice, enhancing the power and duration of his various dragon breath attacks.
The day ended only when night fell.
Garos repeated this routine day after day, night after night.
In the deep night, the starry sky seemed like countless eyes silently watching over the vast earth.
Garos lay alone on a rocky platform on the desolate mountain, savoring a rare moment of rest as he contemplated the stars and his own transformation.
It had been roughly a year since he left the iron dragon maiden's territory.
At eight years old, Garos's body had grown to 7.2 meters in length.
His physique had become increasingly massive and powerful, with muscle, dragon scale, and bone density far surpassing that of ordinary young dragons.
The branding iron patterns on his Explosive Scales were gradually extending toward his spine. When the patterns fully reached his spine, it would likely mark the completion of the Explosive Scale's evolution.
The electric sensation beneath the scales of his dragon tail intensified, as if an invisible grid of electricity were weaving itself into existence.
Through constant application of alchemy items and daily training, the lower membrane of his wings—once typical for dragonkind—had thinned significantly. Dense, feather-like scales layered upon it, gradually turning crimson. When he flapped his wings, sparks flew from the friction between them.
None of this had happened overnight.
These changes had been pieced together through incremental progress, each step unique to Garos's path of growth.
The wilderness offered no legendary encounters, only the accumulation of daily effort. Each broken dragon scale told a story of strength more authentic than any epic.
This was the true source of Garos's power.
Compared to this will, even Legendary Alchemical Artifacts were mere trinkets.
As for his life grade, it remained at 7, unchanged.
Garos initially wondered why so many transformations hadn't raised his life grade. But after careful consideration, he understood.
Life grade was merely a reference point, incapable of measuring true strength. Below the legendary tier, all beings remained within the realm of the mortal.
He estimated that if he faced his self from a year ago—also at life grade 7—he wouldn't just win; he would utterly dominate.
Moreover.
Garos's evolution wasn't about directly increasing his life grade, but about unlocking his 'potential'.
It was like a fully grown cat transforming into a young tiger.
Though his physical form remained the same, his future prospects had diverged dramatically.
It was normal that his life grade hadn't increased; after all, he was only eight years old.
An eight-year-old dragon at life grade 7 was an achievement only gold dragons could attain.
Gold dragons were universally acknowledged as the pinnacle of ordinary dragonkind, blessed by the Dragon God with unparalleled favor. Even red dragons couldn't match this; an eight-year-old red dragon would typically be around life grade 6, with weaker individuals even lower at grade 5.
If I faced a gold dragon of the same grade, I wonder if I could win, Garos mused, gazing at the starry sky and blinking.
The following days continued in the same relentless cycle of training and self-improvement.
But just five days later, Garos encountered a problem: his black oil was gone.
For some reason, not a single earth spider had returned in the past two or three days, bringing no oil-rich soil. Without raw materials, he couldn't refine more black oil, and he had exhausted his remaining supply.
Something's wrong.
Could the earth spiders harvesting the oil have been discovered?
Garos paced back and forth in the dappled shadows, a growing unease gnawing at his heart.
Unexpected events meant variables.
Variables meant danger.
The sudden disappearance of the earth spiders had sharpened Garos's senses, alerting him to the scent of peril.
(End of the Chapter)
⚡ 𝟏𝟒 𝐍𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐥𝐬 | 𝟖.𝟔𝐤 𝐂𝐡𝐚𝐩𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐬 | 𝟏𝟒.𝟓𝐌 𝐖𝐨𝐫𝐝𝐬 [𝐜𝐢𝐧𝐝𝐞𝐫𝐭𝐥.𝐜𝐨𝐦]