novelraw Chapter 387: Nasha’s Small Goal: Defeat the Red Iron Dragon
Chapter 387: Nasha’s Small Goal: Defeat the Red Iron Dragon
Since the gold dragon Nasha set foot in Dragon Valley, more than a month had quietly passed.
During that time, the orderly Ignas Dragon Cluster and the large-scale, efficiently run Molten Iron Tribe had their operating methods observed closely by Nasha.
Her understanding of the red iron dragon Garoth also gradually deepened.
He is, in short, a powerful being who combines strength with intelligence.
At the same time, the two huge dragons who had both walked the Battle Dragon path naturally exchanged combat experience.
And the way Battle Dragons exchange experience has always been direct and pure — fighting!
Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh!
A raging wind howled over Dragon Valley, sweeping across the dragons’ near-indestructible scales.
Black-red dragon qi and dazzling golden dragon qi clashed like two opposing armies, colliding and grinding in the void and sending out ripples of energy.
All sorts of elemental lights flashed and detonated within.The low roars heavy enough to overpower the wind and the thunderous detonations of qi blasts intertwined continually.
After a dozen minutes.
With a dull impact, the golden dragon’s silhouette lost its balance when the red iron dragon connected a fierce wing-sweep into a claw strike. Immediately after, Garoth’s massive, dark-red scaled foot planted heavily on her back, forcing her unable to maintain flight posture and sending her spiraling down toward the hard ground below.
Crash!
The ground trembled violently, thick snow instantly roiling into white waves that spread outward in rings, revealing the frozen ground beneath crisscrossed with spiderweb-like cracks.
Garoth released the claw that had been pressed on Nasha’s back.
His power-filled body stood in the storm like a mountain, chest rising and falling with his breath.
“Exhilarating! Exhilarating!”
Nasha gulped air, panting heavily.
Air filled her lungs with stinging pain, but it also eased the blazing heat of her body a little.
She struggled, rolled back onto her feet, and shook her somewhat dizzy head.
Although many new wounds had been added to her body, the ripping pain and the soreness of overworked muscles spreading through her, she grimaced from the pain yet also looked unusually satisfied and joyful.
Unlike Garoth, she was not addicted to pain itself.
What she craved was the state during battle—full concentration, losing oneself in the fight, and the thrill when colliding with a powerful opponent.
Every second of sparring with Garoth made her feel enormous pressure.
Yet precisely because of that, in that state her mind could focus entirely on the fight, and her proficiency in Battle Dragon techniques improved far faster than when she trained alone.
Moreover, Garoth struck far more honestly than those metallic dragons in the dragon domains who insisted on sparring with restraint.
Aside from avoiding fatal strikes to ensure no lethal danger, he had virtually no other scruples.
Battles among metal dragons in the dragon domains were never this fierce or real.
Because Garoth’s temperament had been forged through countless life-or-death clashes, combined with the feel of claws sinking into flesh and scales split by blood in real combat, sometimes Nasha even had the illusion that Garoth really wanted her life.
That near-real sense of combat, like dancing on a wire, thrilled Nasha immensely.
“You tried to link ice skills into fire skills just now, using the instantaneous collision of extreme heat and extreme cold to break defenses and create openings. That idea is not bad.”
The red iron dragon looked at the rising gold dragon and spoke in a low voice.
Nasha shook the dizziness from her head and listened intently.
“But at the moment of transition, your dragon qi showed a noticeable lag. It’s fine against weaklings, but versus opponents of the same rank or stronger, an instantary flaw can be fatal.”
“If you can’t make the transition seamless, it’s best not to use this technique in a fight.”
“It will become your own weakness instead.”
Garoth touched the spot that had been grazed by an earlier blow, where a faint frozen mark remained on the scales but was rapidly melting away.
Nasha took a deep breath, feeling the still-turbulent dragon qi inside her, and nodded thoughtfully.
“I understand.”
The Four Elements Path pursues variation and combination, using changes to counter different situations, but if the elemental shifts themselves aren’t fluid and there are gaps in transitions, then no amount of variation will help — it will only become a burden and add flaws.
She paused and looked at Garoth.
She said with feeling, “Your offense is like thunder with no gaps, it leaves me breathless. Compared to you, my Battle Dragon skills are still too immature.”
Nasha couldn’t help recalling details from the recent clash.
Garoth’s every pounce, every tail-swipe, every claw strike seemed forged and perfected, his transitions astonishingly fast, almost as if he’d permanently activated a warrior’s skill cadence — flowing, effortless, with no excess or lag.
Once he seized a single opportunity,
the subsequent dense, continuous strikes would often determine the outcome in an incredibly short time, ending the fight.
Garoth replied, “At the root, it’s still because you lack sufficient real combat experience.”
Hearing a younger dragon evaluate an adult dragon as lacking combat experience sounded somewhat paradoxical.
However, gold dragon Nasha did not argue, and she accepted the assessment.
She still clearly remembered the scene when, for the first time in intense combat, she had finally broken through Garoth’s resilient Frostburst Scales defense and seen what lay beneath.
Those black-red scales marked with Battle-Hardened Patterns had delivered a visual and spiritual shock.
Moreover, over time, with one collision after another and a string of incisive pointers and in-depth discussions, Nasha could feel her advancement on the path of Battle Dragons.
Some previously vague ideas and designs became clear under real combat and Garoth’s blunt critiques.
Garoth was not stingy with instructing Nasha in battle experience.
In the process of sparring and mutual discussion, he also benefited.
Facing a Battle Dragon proficient in the Four Elements Path, skilled in elemental combinations and tactical variations, enriched his understanding and counter-strategies for different fighting styles. Those endless elemental combos and tactics, though not a real threat to him, served like a mirror, revealing rarely touched blind spots in his own combat system.
Beyond fighting and instruction, Garoth also required Nasha to act as his training partner.
This served as repayment for the experience and advice he had poured out.
“Shall we end today’s exchange of Battle Dragon techniques here?” Garoth glanced at the sky and proposed.
Nasha, unwilling to stop, stuck out her tongue and licked her lower jaw; the battle lust in her golden eyes hadn’t died down. “No, a little more! I’m not satisfied yet, I feel like I can squeeze out more potential.”
The red iron dragon nodded.
“All right, as you wish.”
In the wind and snow, the two vast forms, one black and one gold, again unleashed powerful force, soaring toward the sky, then crossing, separating, and colliding repeatedly until half an hour later when they gradually subsided.
Nasha shed her shimmering golden armor and stowed it away.
She flopped onto the cold snow on her back, utterly spent, breathing heavily, feeling as if every muscle and bone had been wrung out to their physiological limit.
At that moment, she didn’t even have the strength to twitch the tip of her tail.
Garoth exhaled a puff of warm white breath, stretched his strong body that had also endured intense confrontation, and said to the collapsed gold dragon, “Rest here and recover. When you feel ready, come join me for the next round of resistance training.”
His breathing was only slightly heavier than before, showing no sign of fatigue or lassitude.
To him, the fierce fight had seemed like a very effective warm-up.
In fact, that was indeed the case.
So Garoth was already planning to bring out the brass-silver dragon for a bit more training.
Hearing Garoth’s words, Nasha couldn’t help but weakly complain, “You’re truly a creature that doesn’t know the meaning of tiredness... Garoth, do you have a perpetual motion machine inside you? Don’t you ever feel tired?”
Garoth considered seriously for a moment after hearing her.
He answered matter-of-factly, “I do get tired, of course, but I’m working toward the goal of ‘not knowing fatigue.’”
He recalled the two battles with the red dragon Gorthax and the blue dragon Perest.
Battles at that level were the ones that truly fatigued him.
Compared with those, his duels with Nasha were far from that intensity.
Nasha was momentarily speechless at Garoth’s answer that sounded like boasting yet was utterly sincere, and she did not know how to react.
“Arrogant and perverse fellow...”
She ground her teeth and daydreamed involuntarily about the glorious day she would one day become much stronger, defeat Garoth in turn, and then condescendingly critique his Battle Dragon techniques.
After all, however much she loved fighting, she could not always be the one being suppressed and taught.
Master Garoth’s techniques, assimilate them, then surpass him!
That was Nasha’s small goal.
What she did not know was that the last one who set a similar goal—even swearing an oath to it—was her own younger brother Alberto, and that ambitious gold dragon was still trapped in a cycle of repeated defeats and comebacks, his oath’s fulfillment still far in the distance.
Having finished his warm-up, Garoth vibrated his wings and returned to the Dragon Valley area.
“Hm? Where is Deborah?”
His gaze swept the surroundings but did not find the familiar silver-white figure.
“Here, here! I know where she is, I’ll take you!”
The faerie dragon immediately appeared, grinning, bouncing ahead to lead the way.
So, guided enthusiastically by the faerie dragon Vira, Garoth found the brass-silver dragon hiding at the bottom of a lake, using Transformation to disguise herself as a large silverfish and trying to blend into a school to avoid notice.
“Deborah, stop hiding, I found you.”
The big silverfish pretended to be dull and ignorant.
Garoth shook his head slightly, then charged through and scattered the school of fish, single-handedly plucking the big silverfish out.
“How did you find me?”
Helplessly, Deborah reverted to her true form.
Garoth didn’t betray his informant, then disregarding her half-hearted resistance, forcibly took the brass-silver dragon away from her comfort zone and threw her into a new round of training.
Time flowed steadily with the howling wind and snow.
It was not long before the brass-silver dragon collapsed from exhaustion; the faerie dragon flew over and whispered Garoth’s faults in her ear, pledging steadfast solidarity with her.
Garoth was used to this and began training alone, focusing more deeply.
In another area of Dragon Valley, the hatchlings and young dragons from the Dominik Dragon Cluster were under the strict, nearly harsh training of White Dragon Trixie, gritting their teeth as they endured arduous physical conditioning and basic skill drills.
The air filled with the suppressed groans and heavy pants of the young dragons.
But no dragon cried out in complaint.
It was said that the powerful Lord of Molten Iron had become awe-inspiring to dragons because of training intensity far beyond what ordinary dragons could imagine.
This greatly motivated these younger juniors; they took Garoth as their model and strove to match him.
Moreover, although the training intensity was terrifying, often resulting in scales bursting and flesh torn, the Molten Iron Tribe’s provisions and nutritional supplies were unprecedentedly ample and high-quality, allowing them to gorge themselves and recover quickly after exertion.
This level of favorable treatment was unimaginable in their former Dominik Dragon Cluster.
Because these concrete benefits were visible, and because the bitter training—though painful—had clear, effective results that truly aided their growth and development, the young and hatchling dragons’ sense of belonging and trust in the Molten Iron Tribe steadily increased.
They began to view their original Dominik Cluster as something shameful to look back on.
Rumble!
The dragons’ low roars and heavy footfalls vibrating the earth — all manner of sounds interwove, rising and falling without end.
The atmosphere in Dragon Valley was hot and full of vigor.
If the ground and mountain formations here had not been reinforced and enchanted layer by layer by tribe sorceresses and maintained by a dedicated engineering crew, they likely could not have withstood so many dragons’ near-crazed daily training.
Before long, time quietly slid into deep night.
The black curtain of night covered the world like heavy velvet, snowflakes dancing wildly in the howling cold wind.
Under the night, it seemed as if only Dragon Valley still radiated light, with numerous bonfires and magical glows dispelling the dark.
Those hatchlings and young dragons finally finished their day of grueling training, then dragged battered bodies and flapped still-immature wings as they wobbled toward the caverns carved into steep cliffs that served as their dragon nests, preparing to sleep and meet tomorrow’s challenges.
At that moment, a golden dragon silhouette circled in the sky, as if searching for something, then descended in front of Garoth, who was still training alone.
It was gold dragon Nasha.
After some rest, she had recovered a portion of her strength.
“You came at a good time.”
Garoth paused briefly, stopping his movement.
He looked at the dragon whose breathing had steadied considerably and called to her, “Use your elemental skills against me, same as before, do not hold back.”
Nasha was used to this request and was not polite about it.
She took a deep breath, suppressed the lingering soreness in her body, lifted her claws, and let dragon qi surge again.
The next instant, flames, frost, thunder, rock spikes, raging torrents — a dazzling array of elemental attacks of all kinds and attributes erupted like the most brilliant fireworks display, bombarding the red iron dragon head-on.
Brilliant lights instantly engulfed Garoth, the turbulent energies warping the surrounding air.
The scales on his body emitted faint cracking sounds, but he did not show any pain; instead, a trace of delight flickered in his eyes. He even actively stretched his wings and body, subtly adjusting posture to better expose himself to Nasha’s attack angles, enabling elemental assaults of different attributes to cover every inch of his body more comprehensively.
Although there was no explicit progress bar, Garoth was certain he was gradually adapting to these attacks.
His resistances were thus slowly increasing.
After a while, Nasha again felt utterly drained as if hollowed out, her dragon qi nearly depleted; her breathing became as ragged and broken as a torn bellows, and she gradually ceased this round of elemental onslaught.
Garoth’s body was now covered with the marks and scars left by various elements.
Charred, frosted, corroded, slashed — a variety of wounds.
Under such fierce pounding, his Frostburst Scales had largely shattered and flaked away, revealing the lower layer of black-red scales dense with Battle-Hardened Patterns.
Those intricate patterns and elemental marks complemented each other.
Far from appearing disheveled, they emphasized the grandeur and toughness of his body.
A ferocious aura, forged through countless battles and tempered like steel, rolled off him, and for a moment it unnerved panting Nasha, causing her gaze to falter.
At that moment, as if sensing something, Garoth and Nasha almost simultaneously turned their heads and looked in the same direction.
They saw Alberto approaching with steady, unhurried steps.
He walked with chest lifted and head held high, his eyes containing the look of a lion coiled to spring, carrying a depth of aura different from before.
Most strikingly.
Garoth and Nasha both sharply noticed that Alberto’s golden horns atop his head, at some unknown time, had grown from a single pair into four pairs!
The newly sprouted horns had grown and twisted together, intelligently weaving and entwining.
In the end, they formed a jagged structure atop his head that resembled a natural crown, shimmering with a noble and mysterious sheen in the light of bonfires and magic glows.
Under the combined gaze of the red iron dragon and his dragon sister, Alberto did not speak or offer any explanation.
He simply raised his head again, making his horns appear even more conspicuous.