Chapter 290: Dragon Taming Technique · Gold Dragon Book

Beneath sunlight that seemed to melt like gold and bathe everything in warmth, the young Gold Dragon Alberto's massive body trembled slightly as his consciousness, like a pearl sunk in the deep sea, slowly floated toward the surface of light.

He woke up languidly, feeling every scale on his body soaked in a long-missed sense of peaceful contentment.

The taut mental string that had been stretched for five years finally relaxed, settling into a lazy serenity.

The world before him—swaying wild grass, scaly cliffs—seemed overlaid with a soft, warm color filter; nothing felt harsh or glaring anymore.

He clearly remembered the last scene before he fell asleep.

A challenge far beyond his means.

The result, naturally, had been an utterly unsurprising crushing defeat.

He had been knocked out by the red iron dragon’s final terrible breath, ending up on his knees in the most humiliated posture before that figure with black-red scales, the shape of molten metal.

The blow had been brutal to the utmost.

It was precisely that defeat and the unconsciousness that followed which, by a strange twist, granted him more than a month of uninterrupted, deathlike rest.

That long sleep was an unimaginable luxury for him.

He had spent the previous five years as if lashed day and night by an invisible whip, shackled by invisible chains.

His longest rest before this had never exceeded a pitiful single day.

Every brief breath would be interrupted by the call of his vow, driving him back into ceaseless, aimless refinement.

Now, by contrast to those five years of racing against every second and suffocating agony, this complete relaxation left the proud Gold Dragon with an unfamiliar, indescribable sting rising from deep in his nasal passages.

No—this sting was not merely emotional; it was a real physical stimulus.

His nose was not only sore; it was filled with unbearable itching and prickling, as if countless tiny, fuzzy tentacles were gently scratching inside.

The sensation was not an illusion; it intensified rapidly as his awareness returned fully.

"A-choo!!!"

Alberto could no longer endure it. He flung open his huge maw and let out a thunderous sneeze laced with scorching breath.

Several meters of golden-red flame, like an enraged fire-drake, erupted from his nostrils and incinerated into ash a cluster of irritating tickle-flowers that some hateful somebody had quietly stuffed deep into his nose while he slept.

A few wispes of bluish smoke carrying a singed smell drifted from his nostrils.

The Gold Dragon raised a gigantic forepaw and, slightly annoyed, rubbed his still-uncomfortable nose.

But when his gaze casually passed over the forelimb that should have gleamed dazzlingly, he abruptly widened his molten-gold vertical pupils!

He saw that the magnificent scales covering his forelimbs—the ones that had shone like fused gold—had been painted all over with wildly bright, eye-assaulting pigments: garish fluorescent green, tacky pink, glaring bright purple—filled with countless crooked, childish, ugly doodles!

Some looked like twisted centipede lines.

Some resembled flattened mushrooms.

There were even a few skewed, barely recognizable stick figures that might have been turtles or pigs.

Turning his head, he realized it was not only his forelimbs; his whole body had been scrawled with graffiti.

A bad premonition rose in his chest. He straightened his bulky frame, took heavy steps, and hurried to the mirror-like lake nearby.

He lowered his head; his huge golden skull reflected in the shimmering water.

Sure enough!

What met his eyes was still a mighty, massive Gold Dragon head.

But that dignity had been utterly ruined by the colorful, ludicrous doodles across his cheeks, forehead, and even around his eyelids—like a wall vandalized by a troupe of drunken dwarf artists.

"Who?! Who dares paint these desecrating things on my Alberto?!" the Gold Dragon snapped, twisting his neck and scanning his surroundings.

"Aha! It was me, Vira!"

A crisp, bell-like voice rang out, thick with the glee of a prank well-executed.

There, the tiny, exquisite Faerie Dragon Vira, her scales flashing rainbow light, darted out from the dense flowerbeds on the lakeshore, wagging her slender tail like a streak of color.

She flipped in midair with pride and announced her misdeed with a grin.

She didn't miss the chance to pull an exaggerated face at Alberto's newly colorful dragon visage.

Alberto watched the mischievous little creature and felt little surprise.

Among the members of Dragon Valley, aside from faerie dragons, no other dragons enjoyed such pranks.

Still, being toyed with like this required at least a little showing of force.

Alberto decided to scare this cheeky faerie dragon—just a little—to make sure she knew Gold Dragons were not to be trifled with.

His face, made ridiculous by the paint, suddenly hardened; he deliberately shed all gentleness and revealed the feral look of a top predator.

"Save me! Save me!"

Vira, without a moment’s hesitation, threw her tiny throat wide and squealed a piercing plea for help.

Her butterfly-thin wings beat furiously; her small body shot backward like a colorful stone from a slingshot, zipping away and instantly putting a sizable distance between them.

A few seconds later, the expected chase still did not come.

Vira stopped mid-flight, puzzled, and turned her head cautiously. The sight before her tilted her tiny head in confusion.

The huge Gold Dragon was calmly stretching his muscles where he stood.

He first forcefully stretched his long neck and powerful limbs, then began to rhythmically beat his broad, sturdy golden wings—no use of sacred oath energy, no magical energy for assisted flight—purely relying on the wings’ own strength.

Each downstroke slammed into the ground heavily, stirring sand, shaking stones, and raising dust.

With that pure physical wing force he managed a clumsy brief lift of a few meters before crashing down with a heavy thud that trembled the earth.

"That strange Gold Dragon must have had his head cracked by Garoth," Vira muttered, blinking her big eyes, then silently beat her wings and moved several dozen meters away, afraid of catching whatever foolishness seemed to ooze from him.

On the other side, Alberto felt the faerie dragon's sympathetic, puzzled gaze and a faint helpless bitterness rose within him.

How could he explain?

Just a moment ago, when he meant to scare Vira to regain some face, a bone-deep chill suddenly coiled around his heart.

It was not a bodily malfunction nor a psychological breakdown.

It was the steel-like vow he had sworn reaching into him with a harsh reminder and merciless urging.

Over the past five years he had become as familiar with this feeling as with breathing—any slackening or deviation from the path of becoming stronger triggered that soul-whipping chill.

For example now.

Merely thinking of scaring a faerie dragon rather than engaging in a genuine combat training meant—by the vow’s judgement—that the act was meaningless, a wasteful leisure.

Thus, the invisible, cold lash of the vow immediately raised itself, ready to lash his soul for attempting to relax.

It sternly reminded him: Alberto! Your time must be spent training! On becoming stronger! Not on childish trifles!

Fortunately—perhaps because he had just undergone a previously unheard-of deep sleep lasting over a month—the taut mental string that had been stretched for five years and nearly snapped had finally found precious rest and repair.

At this moment Alberto's vigor, essence, and spirit were in an unprecedentedly vigorous state. Though he still respected the vow, he felt little fatigue or fierce resistance.

Moreover, the vow had indeed made him stronger and more disciplined.

He chose to accept it quietly.

Ignoring Vira’s gaze, he suppressed distracting thoughts and focused all his mind on forging his wing strength.

"Maybe, as long as I have appropriate deep rests like this one," Alberto thought as he repeated the dull, grueling motions, "I can actually bear the binds of this vow."

With that thought, a bold—borderline self-torturing—plan quietly formed in his mind.

"Maybe I can find more chances to challenge Garoth? Getting knocked out by him would force me into long, mandatory sleep—wouldn't that score me sufficient rest?"

If he tried to actively sleep to rest, the damned vow would never allow it; that would count as slacking off.

But deliberately provoking other unknown powerful beings was too risky—too many variables. Challenging the relatively familiar Garoth seemed safer.

And if by some miracle he won one day? Then not only would he free himself from the vow's restraints, he would also prove himself.

The one headache remained.

Challenges to Garoth came at a price.

If every challenge required paying expensive gems or gold, he suspected he'd be buried under debt for a very long time—perhaps all his earnings for years would be sucked into that bottomless pit of repayment.

Just then, a sudden fierce gale swept by, roiling up clouds of dust that blotted out the warm sunlight and cast a massive, oppressive shadow on the ground.

The red iron dragon, massive as a mountain and forged like steel, descended, blotting out the sun.

His wings, more than twice Alberto’s body length, folded slowly. With a heavy, steady thud he landed opposite the Gold Dragon, watching him with evident interest.

For dragons, whose bodies are enormous and heavy, flying is a miracle. Unless they are top-tier magical creatures, their wings mainly adjust angle and direction and provide limited lift; ordinary great dragons can hardly glide for long on wings alone.

That Alberto could short-hop a few meters purely by wing-beat without powerful hind-leg thrusts proved those golden wings held strength beyond most same-tier Gold Dragons—evidence that his five years of training on wing power had indeed been earnest.

However, in Garoth’s eyes—an expert who had honed his body to extremes—Alberto’s training methods and movements were riddled with flaws and inefficiencies.

Every force point, every stretch of the wing membrane, every balance adjustment made Garoth frown.

He couldn’t help but want to point out corrections.

"Stop, Alberto."

His gaze swept over the slightly trembling wing-root muscles of the Gold Dragon. "The way you're training is too slow. You're wasting energy and time."

Before Alberto could respond, Garoth turned and strode away.

He took heavy steps toward another area of Dragon Valley and left only a brief sentence behind.

"Follow me."

With the red iron dragon leading, Alberto followed, puzzled, to a special training ground.

The surface here was not soil or rock but several meters of poured, cold, hard alloy steel. Around the field stood a few metal pillars engraved with complex alchemical runes.

To Alberto’s bewilderment, Garoth started those alchemical devices without ceremony.

A low hum rose; black light spread from the pillars and instantly shrouded the steel field. Alberto immediately felt his body sink as if invisible giant hands tried to pin him to the ground; the air thickened, sticky and oppressive.

Then, to his astonishment, Garoth—apparently unaffected by the supergravity, or perhaps long accustomed to such pressure—began a series of high-intensity extreme training exercises that made Alberto’s eyes widen.

He did not merely beat his wings; he used them as weapons, executing high-speed, precise slicing and striking maneuvers in the superheavy environment, his body suspended midair and flipping with nimble ferocity.

Compared to Garoth, Alberto’s earlier pitiful wing-beat practice looked like a hatchling’s play.

The intensity, difficulty, and danger were on entirely different planes—separated by countless levels.

"No wonder... no wonder..."

"No wonder I, Alberto, despite five years of sleepless, near-masochistic training, still cannot surpass him."

He thought to himself quietly.

He realized that while the vow had driven him forward for those long five years, Garoth had not stopped either.

Judging by Garoth's natural, practiced ease, this was not the result of a mere five-year frenzy but the accumulation of decades, day after day.

At that moment, Alberto finally understood his fundamental reason for failing: Garoth did not need a vow to enforce discipline; he had internalized self-discipline to a degree ordinary beings could scarcely imagine.

Even if Garoth were of the white dragon caste, he would likely rise from the weakest dragon's position to win respect and awe legitimately.

Before Alberto’s turbulent feelings could continue to swell, the familiar chill burst in again, cruel and sharp as the tip of an icy whip lashing his soul, urging him sternly.

[Do not stand there dumbstruck! Immediately! Now! Start your training!]

"Got it! Got it!"

Alberto growled impatiently in his mind and suppressed his swirling thoughts.

He inhaled deeply and stepped into the steel-poured arena.

Clenching his teeth, he tried to imitate Garoth’s precise and efficient training postures.

Gold Dragons already possessed outstanding physical qualities among dragons, and his five years of vow-driven frenzy had given him a foundation far beyond most peer Gold Dragons.

With such a base, he could barely manage.

Though his movements remained clumsy, sluggish, and slow—unable to match Garoth’s storm-like tempo and intensity—he at least managed, step by step, to follow that steel figure and begin more efficient training and refinement.

As time mercilessly passed,

the sun sank slowly toward the west and finally disappeared beneath the horizon.

Night fell like a vast down blanket, wrapping the convergence lands in a quiet starlight hush.

On the training field, Alberto had long since exhausted his remaining strength.

He collapsed onto the cold, hard metal, breathing heavily, unable even to lift his tail.

But opposite him, that steel-forged figure kept going.

With a rumbling like distant thunder rolling across the earth, Garoth tirelessly honed his already terrifying body—like a furnace that never extinguished, a machine that never stopped.

Even as his scales flaked, dragon-blood wept like sweat, and his heart hammered like a war drum, he did not stop.

"To be his ally, not his enemy, is truly fortunate," the Gold Dragon thought quietly.

As he watched, something he did not notice within himself deepened.

That once-proud Gold Dragon heart was changing bit by bit as he learned more about Garoth and witnessed this will that surpassed limits.

A new emotion—respect—was quietly budding within him.

In fact, anyone who knew the sacrifices Garoth made on his path to strength and had seen his stubborn, indomitable will would find it hard to sneer at him, whether ally, friend, rival, or enemy.

At the same time, Garoth noticed the change in the Gold Dragon’s eyes and nodded in satisfaction.

[Dragon Taming Technique · Gold Dragon Volume]

[Physical might and strength alone cannot earn the Metal Dragon leader’s admiration and respect, but spirit and will can]