Before anyone realized it, time had arrived at the year 275 of the new calendar.
Between the Serel Wilderness and the Permafrost 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, as well as the ecological changes brought about by the Dragon war.
Howling cold winds carried ceaseless, goose-feather-sized snowflakes, acting like billions of invisible ice blades that continuously carved at the exposed rock layers and frozen soil.
As far as the eye could see, only a chaotic whiteness remained between heaven and earth; thick snow greedily swallowed every undulation and sharp edge of the terrain, almost assimilating the entire Borderlands into a cold extension of the Permafrost Tundra.
Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh!
The roar of the wind and snow was the only eternal background sound of this place.
Yet, on this snow-covered land, Red Maple Valley seemed isolated from the world.
Regardless of the howling wind and snow outside, which froze the land for a thousand miles.
Within the valley, warmth and vibrant life flowed as if it were the end of spring or the beginning of summer.
The towering maple trees were dyed in layers; crimson, golden, orange-brown... countless burning colors intertwined into a brilliant canopy, while the babbling stream reflected the burning maple shadows across the sky, shattering them into flowing starlight across the river.
Right in this quiet valley, flowing with warm colors and brimming with vitality.
A slender and swift figure was like a sprite of flowing light weaving through the forest.
It was Deborah, the Red-Silver Dragon, who had ended her Dragon Slumber and entered her Young Adult Dragon stage, now able to skillfully use [ Polymorph ] to take human form.
She appeared as a human girl of about seventeen or eighteen, with a slender and graceful figure that was lithe yet agile.
Her waist-length hair was not pure copper or silver-white, but rather like molten liquid red gold and flowing mithril mercury blended with the most exquisite brushwork; with every light leap and nimble turn, it splashed dazzling, brilliant light into the flowing shadows.
Her skin was incredibly delicate, possessing the soft, lustrous sheen of top-quality mother-of-pearl, with an underlying texture that faintly revealed the warmth of fine, gentle jade.
Most unforgettable were her eyes.
Her pupils were pure, brilliant mithril starlight that seemed to contain stardust, while the area around the pupils up to the edges of the eyelids was tinted with a deep, warm base color like top-tier amber wax.
Looking at them as a whole, those eyes seemed to have a deep autumn lake studded with stars embedded within them, deep and lively, reflecting the radiance of the entire world.
At this moment.
This beautiful Red-Silver Dragon girl was barefoot, her flawless jade feet lightly stepping on the wet, smooth bluestones by the stream, leaping and running constantly.
Her target was a magic butterfly with wings shimmering in a hazy, rainbow-like halo.
"Got you!"
Deborah let out a series of crisp, pleasant laughs, her figure suddenly leaping high as her slender hand reached toward the butterfly fluttering in the air.
The magic butterfly seemed to have anticipated this, its wings flapping rapidly.
Hum!
In an instant, light and shadow swirled, and illusions multiplied—hundreds of magic butterflies, identical to the original, appeared out of thin air like exploding colorful fireworks, scattering in all directions without any pattern.
However.
Deborah's gaze did not waver or scatter in the slightest.
Her sight firmly locked onto one of the many illusions in the sky, and then her reaching hand did not hesitate, passing through the layers of false shadows like lightning, her fingers closing shut.
Snap!
She firmly and precisely grasped the real magic butterfly in her palm.
"Eek!"
With a short exclamation and a flicker of unstable magic light.
The magic butterfly in Deborah's hand vanished.
Replacing it was a Faerie Dragon—Vera—who was being pinched in her hand, flapping her wings in dissatisfaction with her tail drooping.
To pass the boring time waiting for Garros to wake up in Red Maple Valley.
Deborah had specifically brought this mischievous little creature back from the tribe to keep her company and relieve her boredom.
Vera swished her tail in a huff, her eyes full of confusion and frustration: "Why! Why can you catch me every time?! My illusion was clearly so perfect! Lifelike!"
Deborah proudly lifted her chin slightly, the corners of her mouth curving into a cunning and beautiful arc, her silver-honey eyes flashing with mischievous light.
"Secret!"
She wouldn't tell the Faerie Dragon—that she had cheated long ago!
Before the game began, she had silently left an extremely hidden and undetectable magic mark on Vera; no matter how varied or indistinguishable Vera's illusions were, that mark always guided Deborah to lock onto her true self.
After a bout of chasing and illusion-battling.
The Dragon and the Faerie Dragon, still not satisfied, came to a calm bend downstream of the stream and started a fishing competition.
Vera clearly still remembered the painful experience of the first time they went fishing, when she tried to use herself as bait and ended up being swallowed by a fierce, large fish.
This time she had learned her lesson, cautiously using her flexible tail to coil around a thin, long branch to act as a fishing rod, staring intently at the float on the water's surface.
Deborah, on the other hand, simply reverted to her Red-Silver Dragon form.
Her elegant and massive Dragon body stretched lazily by the stream, her long Dragon tail soaking comfortably in the cool stream water.
She didn't use a fishing rod, but instead used the tip of her tail to gently sway at the bottom of the water, mimicking the posture of water plants or insect bait, fishing in the way she was familiar with.
Not long after.
Splash!
Water splashed everywhere!
Deborah's long Dragon tail, covered in red-silver scales, whipped upward suddenly.
A plump, large fish with scales shimmering with silver luster in the sunlight was flung onto the grassy bank, still struggling and jumping with full vitality.
"Another one!"
Deborah's tone was relaxed and happy.
She was preparing to reach her tail back into the depths of the stream to search for the next unlucky target.
Suddenly!
Hum...!
The water surface, originally calm as a mirror, rippled violently without warning, and the solid ground beneath their feet transmitted a clearly perceptible tremor, as if a giant beast were turning over underground!
"Whoa!!!"
Faerie Dragon Vera's eyes instantly went round, bursting with excitement.
"My fishing rod is shaking! Heavens! Lord Vera is about to catch an unprecedented super-big fish, maybe even bigger than a Dragon! Deborah, hurry and get ready to help me hold it down! Don't let it run away!!"
As if to verify the Faerie Dragon's exaggerated words.
Boom!
A dull roar suddenly exploded from the bottom of the stream.
The next instant! It was as if countless explosives stuffed into the depths of the riverbed had been detonated simultaneously!
The crystal-clear water was torn and lifted by violent power, turning into billions of broken diamonds splashing everywhere; the solid riverbank cracked inch by inch like fragile biscuits, and bowl-sized rocks and frozen mud chunks shot in all directions like cannonballs.
In the center of the sky-filling water mist and smoke.
A shadow, massive enough to be suffocating and covered in dark scales, carrying the momentum of a mountain collapsing and the seas overturning, tore through the water curtain and smoke, and fiercely shot into the sky.
"Caught it! Caught it! Hahaha, a fish as big as a Dragon!"
"Lord Vera is the well-deserved God of Fishing, Deborah, hurry! Hurry and help me subdue..."
Vera screamed excitedly and incoherently while awkwardly dodging the overwhelming water droplets and flying stones.
"You silly creature, that's not a fish, it's Garros."
"I caught Garros?! Aha! Doesn't that make me even more amazing? Dragon-Fisher Vera, this title is fantastic."
The Faerie Dragon danced excitedly in the smoke and water mist.
"I think he just happened to wake up."
Deborah looked toward the sky.
At the same time.
That figure, which had torn through the stream and the earth, carrying endless water vapor as it shot into the sky, appeared in the high heavens.
The cold wind howled like knives, blowing against his scales that seemed cast from steel, unable to shake him in the slightest; the sky-filling snow danced wildly with him, almost turning into a blizzard tornado connecting heaven and earth with him at its center.
And at the moment the snow tornado was about to take shape.
Massive wings that blotted out the sun spread out; the Dragon tore through the wind and snow, and then suddenly hovered in the high sky.
His wings with edges as sharp as guillotines, his tail whose Dragon scales could interlock to form giant blades and spears, his scales black with silver edges—the massive figure finally appeared without obstruction between the vast heaven and earth, it was the Young Adult Red-Iron Dragon.
"Hoo..."
A low, deep Dragon roar, seemingly carrying the reverberating echo of metal, slowly exhaled from Garros's sharp-toothed mouth.
He moved his somewhat stiff, massive body, his joints and scales clanking.
"This time... I slept until my bones almost rusted."
After hovering for a moment, letting the cold, wild wind thoroughly awaken his silent body and senses.
Garros began to carefully assess his changes.
First was his Life Level—Rank 17!
This was a number sufficient to shock the vast majority of adult Dragons.
You have to know... ordinary adult Red Dragons generally have a Life Level around Rank 15, and the strongest Gold Dragons of the same age among the main Dragon types only start at Rank 16 when they reach adulthood.
Yet Garros had only just stepped into the Young Adult Dragon stage.
"Rank 17. The usual training, the large amounts of precious metals consumed, the Magic Gems, and the black oil crystals swallowed before sleep played a key role; otherwise, I should be Rank 16."
Garros pondered in his heart.
Immediately after, he began to observe the changes in his body.
First was his body size; from the tip of his nose at the front of his head to the end of the ferocious blade-spines on his tail, the total length had reached a staggering twenty-plus meters.
This was not the body size a Young Adult Dragon should have.
Even among adult Red Dragons and adult Gold Dragons, known for their massive size, this physique was absolutely at an upper-middle level. If one were to use a White Dragon as a reference, even a White Dragon that had entered its prime would find it difficult to rival Garros in sheer mass at this moment.
However, the strange thing was.
His muscle groups, which should have been filled with explosive power, were currently in an abnormally shriveled and atrophied state.
The massive skeleton covered in thick metal scale armor was still imposing, thick, and full of power, but outside the skeleton, the muscles that should have been full and knotted, bulging like volcanic mountain ranges, now seemed to have been drained of their essence by some invisible force, becoming thin and slack.
The twenty-plus-meter-long massive Dragon body now gave a strange sense of contradiction.
Powerful as ever, yet abnormally empty.
It was as if what supported this steel body was only the hard, thick bones and tough Dragon skin scales, while the interior had lost the filling of active life energy.
This change was unusual.
Garros clearly remembered.
Before falling into his deep sleep, he had not only consumed a large amount of Magic Gems and precious metal ingots, but had also swallowed all the accumulated black oil crystals in one go.
Given his accumulated resources and life strength at the time, even if Dragon Slumber consumed some energy for the transformation, his state upon waking might not have been as muscular and ferocious as his Peak moment before sleeping... but it certainly shouldn't have presented this appearance of a skeleton Dragon that had been starved for a hundred years, nothing but skin and bones.
Moreover.
His life energy, his Demonic Energy, and his Dragon Qi were all showing a cliff-like drop, as if something had drained most of his energy reserves during his deep sleep and transformation.
As Garros inspected, this thing surfaced.
The heart!
Garros took a deep breath, able to clearly feel the beating of his heart, and the energy contained within it, as vigorous as a furnace.
More importantly.
He perceived with absolute clarity that his heart seemed to have become two?
The special energy tissue structure located in the right chest cavity, which had evolved during the last deep sleep and originally stored thermal energy, had now, deep in his right chest cavity, turned into another heart that was beating vigorously and radiating astonishing energy fluctuations.
To be more precise, it was not heart tissue that had proliferated at the level of physical flesh and blood.
Rather, it was formed from the vigorous life energy, vast Demonic Energy, and condensed Dragon Qi within his body... these energies that were originally stored in various parts of the Dragon body had been compressed, condensed, and transformed, ultimately forming an energy core organ composed purely of high-density energy! A unique energy heart.
Obviously.
The energy that Garros had lost had all condensed into this heart.