Unbeknownst to them, time had reached the New Calendar year 275.
Between the Serre Wilderness and the Eternal Frozen Tundra—the Borderlands.
This land, once dotted with sparse greenery, had now been reshaped by the cold currents unleashed during the final battle of two legendary kings and the ecological changes brought by the Dragon War.
Howling cold winds carried ceaseless goose-feather snow, like billions of invisible ice blades, continuously carving away at exposed rock formations and frozen soil.
As far as the eye could see, only a chaotic pallor remained between heaven and earth; thick snow greedily swallowed every undulation and edge of the surface, almost assimilating the entire Borderlands into a cold extension of the Eternal Frozen Tundra.
Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh!
The roar of the wind and snow was the only eternal background sound here.
Yet, on the snow-covered land, Red Maple Valley seemed isolated from the world.
No matter how the wind and snow howled outside, freezing thousands of miles.
Inside the valley, a warmth like late spring and early summer flowed, along with vibrant life.
Tall maple trees displayed a riot of colors—crimson, golden yellow, orange-brown... countless burning hues intertwined into a brilliant canopy, and the stream gurgled, reflecting the burning maple shadows in the sky, shattering into a river full of shimmering, flowing starlight.
It was in this serene valley, flowing with warm colors and brimming with life.
A slender and swift figure was darting through the forest like a streak of light.
It was the Copper-Silver Dragon Deborah, who, after ending her Dragon Slumber and entering her youth, could now skillfully use [Polymorph] to transform into human form.
She appeared as a human girl of about seventeen or eighteen, with a graceful and slender figure, delicate yet agile.
Her waist-length hair was not purely Crimson Copper or silver-white, but rather like molten liquid red-gold and flowing mithril mercury, blended and splashed with the most exquisite strokes; with every light leap and nimble turn, it cast dazzling, mesmerizing streams of light in the shifting shadows.
Her skin was incredibly delicate, with a soft, lustrous glow like the finest mother-of-pearl, and deeper down, it subtly revealed the texture of the warmest, most refined jade.
Most unforgettable were her eyes.
Her pupils were pure, dazzling, like mithril starlight containing cosmic dust, while the area around her pupils, extending to the edge of her eyelids, was suffused with a deep, warm base color, like top-grade amber beeswax.
Overall, her eyes seemed to have a deep autumn lake full of stars embedded within them, profound and nimble, reflecting the brilliance of the entire world.
At this moment.
This beautiful Copper-Silver Dragon maiden, with her perfect, unblemished jade feet, was lightly stepping on the damp, smooth bluestones by the stream, continuously leaping and running.
Her target was a magical butterfly whose wings shimmered with a rainbow-like, hazy glow.
"Gotcha!"
Deborah let out a string of clear, melodious laughter, her figure suddenly soaring upwards, her slender hand reaching for the dancing butterfly in the air.
The magical butterfly seemed to have anticipated this, rapidly fluttering its wings.
Buzz!
In an instant, light and shadow swirled, and illusions proliferated—hundreds, thousands of magical butterflies, identical to the original, appeared out of thin air, scattering in all directions like exploding colorful fireworks, fleeing without any pattern.
However.
Deborah's gaze did not waver or scatter in the slightest.
Her sight was firmly locked onto one among the myriad illusions, and her outstretched hand moved without hesitation, piercing through layers of false light and shadow like lightning, her five fingers closing.
Snap!
She steadily and precisely grasped the real magical butterfly in her palm.
"Ah!"
With a short cry of surprise and a flickering magical glow.
The magical butterfly in Deborah's hand vanished.
In its place was a Fairy Dragon Vera—that she was holding, flapping her wings discontentedly, her tail drooping.
To pass the long, boring time waiting for Galos to awaken in Red Maple Valley.
Deborah had specifically brought this mischievous little fellow back from the tribe to keep her company and alleviate boredom.
Vera angrily swished her tail, her eyes full of confusion and frustration: "Why! Why can you always catch me?! My illusion is clearly so perfect! So lifelike!"
Deborah proudly lifted her chin slightly, a cunning and beautiful curve forming on her lips, her silver-honey eyes sparkling with mischief.
"Secret!"
She would never tell the Fairy Dragon that she had already cheated!
Before the game started, she had silently left an extremely subtle, hard-to-detect magical mark on Vera, no matter how Vera's illusions changed or how difficult it was to distinguish truth from falsehood, that mark always guided Deborah to her true body.
After a contest of pursuit and illusion.
Still not satisfied, the dragon and the fairy went to a calm bend in the downstream of the stream to play a fishing game.
Vera clearly remembered her painful experience from the first time fishing, when she tried to use herself as bait and was swallowed whole by a fierce big fish.
This time, she learned her lesson, carefully using her flexible tail to wrap around a slender branch as a fishing rod, intently staring at the bobber on the water.
Deborah, on the other hand, simply reverted to her Copper-Silver Dragon form.
Her elegant and massive dragon body stretched lazily by the stream, her long dragon tail comfortably submerged in the cool stream water.
She did not use a fishing rod, but rather her tail tip directly, gently swaying it at the bottom of the water, mimicking aquatic plants or insect bait, fishing in her own familiar way.
Not long after.
Splash!
Water splashed everywhere!
Deborah's long dragon tail, covered in crimson-silver scales, suddenly flicked upwards.
A plump fish with scales shimmering silver in the sunlight was flung onto the grass by the bank, still vigorously jumping and struggling.
"Another one!"
Deborah's tone was light and cheerful.
She was about to dip her tail back into the depths of the stream, searching for her next unlucky target.
Suddenly!
Buzz...!
The originally calm, mirror-like water surface, without warning, rippled outwards intensely, and the solid ground beneath their feet trembled with a clear, palpable sensation, like a giant beast turning over underground!
"Wow!!!"
The Fairy Dragon Vera's eyes instantly widened, bursting with excitement.
"My fishing rod is trembling! Oh my! Lady Vera is about to catch an unprecedentedly huge fish, maybe even bigger than a dragon! Deborah, quickly get ready to help me hold it down! Don't let it escape!!"
As if to confirm the Fairy Dragon's exaggerated words.
Boom!
A muffled roar suddenly erupted from the bottom of the stream.
The next instant! It was as if countless explosives packed deep in the riverbed had detonated simultaneously!
Crystal-clear water was torn, churned, and transformed into billions of shattered diamonds, scattering and splashing; the solid riverbank cracked inch by inch like fragile biscuits, and bowl-sized gravel (shattered stones), frozen clods of mud shot out in all directions like cannonballs.
At the center of the sky-filled mist and dust.
A suffocatingly massive shadow, covered in dark scales, surged upwards, tearing through the water curtain and dust with overwhelming momentum, and brazenly rising into the sky.
"Caught it! Caught it! Hahaha, a fish as big as a giant dragon!"
"Lady Vera is truly the God of Fishing, Deborah, quick! Help me subdue..."
Vera, while clumsily dodging the overwhelming water droplets and flying stones, shrieked incoherently with excitement.
"You idiot, that's not a fish, that's Galos."
"I fished Galos up?! Aha! Then am I not even more amazing? Vera the Dragon-Fisher, that title is fantastic."
The Fairy Dragon danced with excitement in the dust and water mist.
"I think he just happened to wake up."
Deborah looked towards the sky.
At the same time.
The figure that had torn through the stream and earth, carrying endless water vapor as it shot into the sky, appeared high above.
The cold wind howled like knives, striking his steel-forged scales, unable to shake him in the slightest; the swirling snow, as he thrashed, almost transformed into a blizzard tornado connecting heaven and earth, centered around him.
And just as the snow tornado was about to form.
His colossal wings, blotting out the sky, unfolded, the giant dragon tore through the wind and snow, then suddenly hovered high in the sky.
Wings with edges sharp as a guillotine, a tail whose scales could interlock to form huge blades and spears, a massive figure with black scales edged in silver finally appeared unhindered between the vast heavens and earth, it was indeed the young Red Iron Dragon.
"Hoo..."
A deep, resonant dragon roar, as if carrying the reverberation of metal, slowly exhaled from Galos's tooth-filled mouth.
He moved his slightly stiff, massive body, his joints and scales clanking.
"This time... I slept so long my bones almost rusted."
After hovering for a moment, allowing the icy gale to thoroughly awaken his dormant body and senses.
Galos began to carefully examine his changes.
First was his life level—level 17!
This was a number that would startle most adult dragons.
One must know... ordinary adult Red Dragons generally had a life level of around 15, and the strongest Golden Dragons of the same age among the main dragon types had an adult starting point of only level 16.
Yet, Galos had just entered his youth.
"Level 17. My usual training, consuming large amounts of precious metals, magical gems, and the black oil crystals I swallowed before sleeping, played a crucial role. Otherwise, I should be level 16."
Galos mused.
Immediately, he began to observe the changes in his body.
First, his size, from the tip of his nose at the very front of his head to the end of his ferocious spined tail, reached an astonishing length of over twenty meters.
This was not the size a young dragon should have.
Even among adult Red Dragons, or even adult Golden Dragons, known for their massive size, this body size would definitely be in the upper-middle range. If White Dragons were used as a reference, even White Dragons entering their prime would struggle to match Galos's pure mass at this moment.
However, strangely enough.
His muscle groups, which should have been filled with explosive power, now appeared abnormally gaunt and atrophied.
The massive skeleton covered in thick metallic scales was still rugged, sturdy, and full of power, but beyond the skeleton, the muscles that should have been full and bulging like a lava mountain now seemed to have had their essence drained by an invisible force, becoming thin and flaccid.
The massive dragon body, over twenty meters long, now gave off a peculiar sense of contradiction.
Still powerful, yet unusually empty.
It was as if only hard, sturdy bones and tough dragon hide and scales supported this steel body, while its interior had lost the active life energy to fill it.
This change was unusual.
Galos remembered clearly.
Before falling into slumber, he had not only devoured large quantities of magical gems and precious metal ingots, but also consumed all the accumulated black oil crystals in one gulp.
Given his accumulated resources and life strength at that time, even if Dragon Slumber consumed some energy for transformation, his state upon awakening might not be as muscular and terrifying as his peak before sleep... but it should certainly not be this skeletal dragon appearance, like he had been starved for a hundred years, skin and bones.
Moreover.
His life energy, his magic energy, his Dragon Qi, all now showed a cliff-like plummet, as if something, during his slumber and transformation, had drained most of his energy reserves.
As Galos investigated, this'something' surfaced.
His heart!
Galos took a deep breath, clearly feeling his heart beating, and the vigorous, furnace-like energy contained within it.
More importantly.
He clearly perceived that his heart seemed to have become two?
The special energy tissue structure that had evolved during his last slumber, located in the right side of his chest cavity and originally storing thermal energy, had now transformed into another vigorously beating heart, radiating astonishing energy fluctuations, deep within his right chest cavity.
More precisely, it was not a heart tissue that had proliferated at the material flesh level.
Rather, it was a pure energy core organ, a unique energy heart, formed by the compression, condensation, and qualitative change of his abundant life energy, vast magic energy, and refined Dragon Qi—energies that were originally stored dispersed throughout his dragon body.
Clearly.
All the energy Galos had lost had condensed into this heart.