Chapter 61: Contact, Probing

"Serpent Dragons fear no death; pain and injury only bring them pleasure and madness, making them extremely fond of combat."

"Fighting such a mad dragon brings no benefit."

Upon seeing the Cliff Serpent Dragon, Garos's eyes flickered; he held his breath, folded his dragon wings into the most concealed gliding posture, and hid himself behind the clouds.

Serpent Dragons are infamous for their fearlessness toward death.

One could even say this creature chases death and longs for it.

For instance, if a Serpent Dragon fights a powerful enemy and is driven to severe injury, yet the enemy, fearing the Serpent Dragon's curse, refrains from delivering the killing blow and prepares to leave.

A Serpent Dragon that could clearly survive.

Would instead choose the most extreme method.

Suicide, cursing the powerful enemy with its life and soul.

Even in death, it ensures the other suffers torment.

The lineage records state that in ancient times, Serpent Dragons were originally a major dragon type, their numbers no less than those of Chromatic Dragons, Metallic Dragons, or Gem Dragons, but due to this bizarre temperament of dying on you at the slightest disagreement, their numbers gradually dwindled, and now they have become a minor dragon type.

Garos never expected to encounter a Cliff Serpent Dragon within the territory of the Graymane Werewolves.

This creature is far too difficult to deal with.

Its claws and fangs, and its blood, all carry deadly poison.

If one fights it, even if one can kill it, the cost paid will not be light.

It fears no death and has no reservations.

But Garos wishes to live long and is unwilling to risk injury, or even severe injury, by fighting a Serpent Dragon.

In this wilderness, dangers are not limited to Serpent Dragons.

If one suffers severe injury because of it, and then encounters other dangers before healing, the consequences would be unimaginable.

"Moreover, it possesses a curse."

"Even if I can kill it, the Cliff Serpent Dragon's Fire Curse will continuously lower my fire resistance."

As a hybrid of Red Dragon and Iron Dragon, his fire resistance is very high; ordinary fire attacks are directly exempted. He does not want the Cliff Serpent Dragon's Fire Curse to cause him to gain an unnecessary fire resistance weakness.

"However, let us think from another angle."

"Can my Adaptive Evolution work on resistances lowered by such curses?"

"If so, my fire resistance might drop initially, but it will then continuously rise."

Garos pondered in his heart, weighing pros and cons.

Because his initial fire resistance was so high, he rarely trained in this area; the returns were low, and the training difficulty was high, but if he could continuously raise his fire resistance, he would certainly be willing, after all, though his fire resistance is high, it does not reach the point of completely immune to fire damage; higher-level magical fire could still harm him.

"The risk is still too high."

"I am unsure of the specific reaction once the curse lands upon me."

A few seconds later, Garos shook his head, hid himself even deeper, and remained motionless and expressionless.

Just now, upon first seeing the Serpent Dragon, aside from wariness, disgust and killing intent surged in his heart due to the lineage records, but since the risk outweighed the benefit, Garos suppressed his instinctive thought of striking the Serpent Dragon.

At the same time.

The Cliff Serpent Dragon burrowed back into the cave.

This chance encounter seemed to be ending peacefully.

However, the Cliff Serpent Dragon's forked tail suddenly halted in mid-air, then began to sway excitedly; scales rubbed together producing a grating, ear-piercing sound, and it turned around again, its nose constantly sniffing.

Dragons are always drawn to one another, being quite sensitive to each other's auras.

And the Cliff Serpent Dragon's sensitivity to the auras of other dragons is extreme.

At this moment, in its olfactory world, it seemed scent molecules formed a crimson trail pointing directly upward into a thick, dense layer of clouds.

It could not only smell the scent of a dragon.

It could judge more information through the scent.

Red Dragon and Iron Dragon hybrid, eight-year-old young dragon, male, recently consumed much meat, scent is heavy.

Body length exceeding seven meters, covered in unremarkable black-gray dragon scales, dragon wings exceptionally large, body and limbs exceptionally strong. Ordinary Serpent Dragons, though possessing strong smell, cannot detect so much information.

This Serpent Dragon is no different.

Body length and appearance are what it saw with its eyes.

Garos flapped his wings, cutting through the clouds and leaving a clear trail behind as he flew toward the distance.

From the moment the Cliff Serpent Dragon suddenly stopped, turned, and sniffed the air, he knew he had been exposed.

He had already suppressed his aura as much as possible, yet he could not withstand the Cliff Serpent Dragon's radar-like sense of smell, which was too keen, and it discovered his presence.

Since fighting the Cliff Serpent Dragon brings no benefit, Garos did not want to be entangled by it; since he was exposed, he would simply fly away.

Seeing the dragon-like figure burst from the clouds and soar in the night sky, the werewolves of Crescent Valley were somewhat stunned, never expecting a dragon to have quietly lurked here.

Hiss—!

The Cliff Serpent Dragon's blood-red pupils locked tightly onto Garos; a tremulous sound like a viper flicking its tongue rolled from its throat, and its long tail, covered in backward-facing barbs, shattered the mountain rock.

Like an arrow loosed from a bow, it launched into the air with explosive force, its wingless body moving in a straight line through the sky.

Whoosh!

Rising to high altitude, it opened its dragon mouth, its chest swelling high, and spat a linear stream of molten lava dragon breath aimed at Garos's back.

This dragon breath possessed formidable power; its damage was not limited to fire.

Garos did not endure it directly; he increased his speed, dodged to the side, and continued to move away.

And as his speed increased, the scales on his body burst and rubbed against the air; normally invisible, iron-like dark red patterns began to glow, and the edges of the dragon scales gradually took on a burnt-red hue.

Garos attached mana to the bursting scales and whipped his body.

Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh!

Several dragon scales shot out from his body toward the Cliff Serpent Dragon; during their extreme-speed friction with the air, almost all of them turned a burnt red.

The Cliff Serpent Dragon charged straight toward Garos, disregarding those dragon scales.

It spun, whipping its slender body, its spiked, forked three-tail precisely intercepting.

Boom! Boom! Boom!

Balls of fireball exploded in the sky, surging flames engulfing the Cliff Serpent Dragon, the light illuminating that patch of sky.

Hiss! A furious hiss from the Cliff Serpent Dragon came from within the flames.

It burst out of the flames, covered in many blackened marks, but since it was also a fire-element dragon with high fire resistance, the burn marks from the explosive flames were not severe.

However.

Especially sharp broken scales had pierced the scales on its abdomen, where the armor was weaker, sending a dense stinging pain and causing thin streams of poisonous blood to flow.

The pain made the Cliff Serpent Dragon even more agitated.

Its body arched, molten-like patterns emerging all over, a hissing sound like steam rising came from beneath the scales, then its body sprang again, speed suddenly exploding, piercing through clouds and air, rushing toward Garos at extreme velocity.

"This fellow has incredibly strong explosive power!"

"I seem to lack some explosive means."

Using the Serpent Dragon as a mirror, Garos suddenly realized his own explosive power was not outstanding; his strongest strike required distance and acceleration to unleash.

The explosive secret arts and skills within the dragon lineage were inaccessible to him at his current age and level.

Garos did not push his speed to the limit, wanting to test the Cliff Serpent Dragon's quality; the Cliff Serpent Dragon, in some kind of explosive state, gradually approached Garos.

(End of this chapter)