novelraw Chapter 396: Rage Radiation, The Rational Wild Red Iron Dragon
Chapter 396: Rage Radiation, The Rational Wild Red Iron Dragon
Wind and snow howled and swept beneath the boundless sky of the convergence lands, imprinting cold into every inch of ground.
After a period of concentrated experiments and meticulous contemplation, Garoth had basically figured out the strange changes happening throughout his body, especially the results brought by dragon blood evolution, which he understood thoroughly.
The free conversion between qi and blood had raised his overall strength by a huge tier.
Moreover, the deep black-red, high-density aura flames produced by his burning dragon blood not only could be recovered, they also carried a powerful erosive and destructive effect.
In actual combat, Garoth could decide based on circumstance.
He could choose to reclaim the detached aura flames, converting them into precious blood to sustain life and endurance; or affix them onto claws, wings, and tail; or fuse them into his breath to strengthen his offensive might.
“These tests are about done. Next, it’s your turn, Frenzied Flame.”
The red iron dragon narrowed his eyes slightly, a trace of gravity and anticipation flashing across them.
To prevent any accidental uncontrolled spread during the test that might affect Dragon Valley, he first beat his wings and flew high, leaving the valley where his followers had gathered.
On a flat open ground covered by thick snow, with a wide view.Garoth descended slowly, then reined in his spirit and cast his senses deep into his mind.
Frenzied Flame—it had no physical body, it did not depend on matter. In essence it was a strange, blazing psychic fire that could continually lure out and amplify the deepest fury inside a being, driving them insane with rage until they lost all reason.
What was known on the surface was that it originally came from a mysterious, vanished unnamed meteorite.
As for what it truly was and where its ultimate origin lay… those deeper secrets remained shrouded in mist and unknown.
“Stir, let me feel you more clearly.”
The red iron dragon called inwardly.
At the same time, sensing his host’s will and guidance, the dormant Frenzied Flame began to tremble slightly. Sparks rose and the flame burned increasingly fiercely.
A nameless fury was born and surged in Garoth’s heart, continuing to rise.
However, unlike before when any anger would spiral him into uncontrollable madness, the current rise of fury did not make Garoth lose his cool.
Between his reason and the rising rage there seemed to be an invisible yet tenacious barrier, allowing him to maintain a relatively detached, calm perspective to observe and steer his anger rather than be driven by it.
Garoth understood this was a precious trait evolved after ten years of actively adapting to Frenzied Flame followed by thirty years of deep dormancy evolution.
It let him preserve reason to the greatest extent even while raging.
“This is exactly the ideal state I envisioned back then.”
“Although this is inseparable from the targeted training I’ve done for years, the body naturally evolving this way without producing other uncontrollable anomalies—could this mean my adaptation talent is shifting from passive environmental response to a form of guided, subjective influence?”
Garoth pondered.
Passive adaptation to external environments and actively guiding one’s body in a specific direction were two completely different concepts.
He felt that if his talent could one day be fully controlled—able to direct evolution at will—then that would be true power, able to meet any challenge.
For now, though his talent was strong enough to let him stand out among peers, it was not invincible. Garoth’s achievements came not only from the gift of talent but from sweat and effort far beyond other great dragons.
And even so.
The dragon inheritance records spoke of a few dragons who had shone even more brilliantly than him,
for example, three legendary dragon lineages that existed only in scriptures and songs.
They were said to command not common elemental forces like earth, water, wind, or fire, but abstract, exalted forces like time, force, and light.
It was said that outstanding individuals among them were legendary lifeforms from the moment they hatched.
At worst, they could firmly become legendary by their youth.
But these dragons existed only in vague myth; records about them were scant and ambiguous, possibly just distorted rumors.
Not to mention the Material Plane where planet Bernardo sat.
Even if you expanded the scope to multiverses and endless worlds, you still might never encounter one.
Garoth had no interest in contending with those ephemeral, legendary dragons.
His real opponent had always been his past self.
He pursued constant breakthroughs of his own limits, life leap after life leap, evolving until true meaning of eternity and immortality.
He firmly believed that even if those legendary dragons existed, in the later stages of life they might not surpass someone like him who had repeatedly undergone targeted evolution to optimize himself.
As for those abstract-sounding, overwhelmingly powerful forces,
he believed he could evolve into similar or even stronger abilities in time.
Suppressing some wandering thoughts, Garoth refocused his spirit on the Frenzied Flame within his body.
He did not try to restrain the growth of his anger. Instead he actively opened his body and mind to cooperate with it, like pouring oil on fire, making that psychic fire roar with a heat far exceeding his earlier tests.
At the same time,
visible to the naked eye, one bloodshot vein after another appeared in his eyes, spreading like a fine spiderweb.
The red iron dragon rose slowly, his massive shadow cast on the snow.
Rage surged like a tsunami through him, wave after wave striking the dam of reason.
If it had been before, such fury would likely have already seized him by instinct, turning him into a beast that only knew destruction.
But now, things were different.
The invisible barrier between thought and wrath, though rippling under such vast anger, left Garoth’s reason largely intact.
He carefully felt this unprecedented fury, letting the flames burn unchecked inside him.
As time passed, the bloodshot veins in his eyes grew more numerous and dense, almost dyeing the whites of his eyes a horrifying scarlet.
Finally, at a moment when the build-up reached its peak,
Garoth’s eyes completely turned the deep red of a blood moon!
Simultaneously, without actively entering Frenzied State or any other amplification, his surrounding aura began to rise. His whole being emitted an alluring, manic, dangerous, and highly unstable feeling, as if an active volcano could erupt at any moment.
Garoth naturally and inevitably set foot on the Wild Path.
From now on, anger to him was no longer just a negative effect or burden; it formally became one of his power sources.
He thus spontaneously comprehended the Rage State.
That was the state he had entered now.
“Haa... haa...”
The red iron dragon’s breathing grew heavy and thunderous, echoing across the empty snowfield.
He could clearly feel his attributes rising along with his anger.
“With Frenzied Flame as an almost endless source of rage, my rank on the Wild Path will improve very quickly. I should comprehend a higher Rage State sooner rather than later.”
Garoth tightened his claws slowly, feeling the power swelling with his anger.
Under his active guidance and cooperation, the inner strength and fury both continued to climb.
As this power rose, the irritable feeling inside him increased in sync, and the barrier between thought and wrath wavered more noticeably, yet it still held firm without signs of collapse.
The sensation was odd.
It was like controlling a character full of rage behind a solid screen.
No matter how furious the character inside, it could not truly affect the calm operator behind the screen.
That was Garoth’s experience now.
Rage swept through body and mind like a deluge, while the depths of his psyche remained calm and still.
A coexistence of fury and serenity, contradictory yet real within him.
“Now the key question is, where is the limit of this mental barrier?”
Garoth could feel the pressure and trembling it transmitted.
If it were utterly destroyed by extreme rage, he would inevitably be deeply affected by the frenzy.
Then he decided to continue testing, letting anger and power surge toward even higher peaks.
Meanwhile,
high above in the sky, a polar falcon used to soaring in bitter cold winged past.
Its sharp gaze noticed the fearsome dragon below in the snow, and its instinct immediately sounded an alarm, preparing to beat away from this dangerous place.
Yet suddenly,
an inexplicable, blazing anger exploded within its tiny chest. Bloodshot veins instantly clouded its eyes.
I’m so mad! What business is this dragon having, sitting there so drastically? It makes me furious just looking at it! Even if I die, I’ll dive and bite it!
With this vague but extreme burst of fury, the polar falcon let out a sharp, rage-filled cry.
It abandoned escape, folded its wings, and like an arrow to death it dove toward the red iron dragon below.
Smack!
Garoth didn’t even need to look up. He casually lifted his right wing and gave a light slap as one might shoo a fly.
The diving polar falcon instantly exploded in midair, becoming a wretched cloud of blood-colored mist, dissipating into the bitter wind.
“Such a tiny creature dares attack me? So suicidal—how did it survive to adulthood?... Wait, that’s not right.” Garoth’s thoughts turned sharply. “It seems it was affected by the rage aura I unintentionally emitted, so the Frenzied Flame clouded its mind and made it ignore the huge gap in strength, thinking to suicide-charge me.”
He realized it immediately.
Unconsciously, the rage intent he emitted had already begun to radiate outward like the Red Dragon Gorthax’s rage, directly influencing surrounding creatures.
Moreover, the affected range seemed fairly large.
“Good. This is a simple, crude, but extremely effective divine technique.”
Garoth felt a small joy in his heart.
He had personally experienced how troublesome and tricky rage radiation could be.
But the more headache-inducing it had once seemed, the more delighted he felt now that he mastered it.
He then continued to raise his anger.
In an ever-expanding radius centered on him, all sentient beings were unavoidably drawn into the whirlpool of rage, losing reason, attacking each other, or launching futile charges toward Garoth’s position.
As his anger continued to grow, the range of this madness visibly expanded.
Not long after,
even the red iron dragon’s invulnerable body began to strain under the crazed rise of power. Some areas of his scales cracked and bled slightly, and the mental barrier protecting his reason began to tremble violently, showing countless invisible fissures as if about to shatter at any second.
Garoth knew the test should end here.
He made a decisive move, concentrated, and suppressed the titanic anger bit by bit until it subsided back within a safe threshold.
“Looks like my body’s endurance limit is roughly the limit of that mental barrier.”
Garoth realized: “But when it truly comes to pushing anger to that degree, it usually means I’m already in an all-out life-or-death battle, using every unconventional card and forcing myself to the most extreme and dangerous point.”
“At that time, whether I completely fall into frenzy no longer matters.”
In any case, he had gained one more powerful and terrifying skill.
Even if he couldn’t temporarily enter Crimson Lotus Form after using a Dragon Pearl, it didn’t matter—he had this brand-new trump card.
After spending more time and conducting finer tests on Frenzied Flame’s effects and influences at different activation levels, Garoth finally felt satisfied. He beat his wings and returned to Dragon Valley.
Wings, scales, blood, Frenzied Flame.
This deep adaptation and evolution across these four aspects had pushed Garoth’s strength to an unprecedented peak.
He had no doubt that he could now easily kill his former self at peak condition, not even giving it a chance to flee.
Now, the only question in his mind was how far he still lagged behind a true legend.
Unfortunately, there was currently no suitable circumstance for Garoth to verify his own conjecture.
Elsewhere, in the wide southern nations,
after the turmoil and baptism of the Federation’s civil war, the nations’ structures gradually stabilized, including the Kingdom of Theo on the northern frontier.
It had once followed the Kingdom of Rybos and joined the anti-royalist camp.
Excluding weaker duchies, it was the human kingdom closest to the northern border and the Ser Wilderness among the southern nations.
Since the Holy King’s sudden appearance three years ago and his announcement dissolving the alliance and ending the war,
the Kingdom of Theo had quietly been healing its wartime wounds, striving to recover lost national strength and vitality.
As order and life gradually resumed, some high-ranking figures finally had gaps to redirect their attention to the Ser Wilderness.
Because of its proximity, development and infiltration were relatively convenient.
Theo had always established many outposts in the wilderness, almost second only to Rybos and Lothrian, dotting the wilderness across major regions.
Then, as reports and pleas for aid from those outposts were delivered one by one,
the shocking contents immediately drew the high attention of some of the kingdom’s senior leaders.
Aside from the northeast area,
the northwest, central, southeast, and southwest—Theo’s bases, frontier posts, and resource points located in these four major regions had suffered attacks of varying scales. Garrisons were either brutally slaughtered or forcibly expelled.
Hard-won bases were seized by the so-called 'area lords' of the wilderness.
Previously, because the wilderness belonged to the Federation, handling such matters required reporting to Lothrian, the federation’s leader, for coordination or decision.
But now the Federation had dissolved and each nation acted independently.
How to deal with the Ser Wilderness and the provocations of the local natives was now entirely up to the Kingdom of Theo’s own interests and judgment.
Iron Crown City, Military Staff Headquarters, Far Regions Strategy Office.
On the heavy redwood desk lay several extremely detailed maps of Ser Wilderness regions.
Where blue flags had originally marked Theo’s various outposts, many had been pulled up and tossed aside.
In their place, threat areas were marked conspicuously in crimson paint, ugly scars covering almost the entire map.
The atmosphere in the room was heavy.
Two high-ranking men were in discussion.
Sitting in the main seat was an elderly man with neatly combed gray-white hair, a stern, rigid face, wearing a deep-blue uniform trimmed with gold.
He was Marquis Marcus, Director of the Far Regions Strategy Office.
His fingertips tapped the most glaring red mark on the map, producing a dull, oppressive sound.
Opposite him stood a relatively younger man, about forty years old, tall and erect like a spear, with eyes sharp as an eagle.
He wore light armor beneath and a short cloak bearing Theo’s Howling Mountain Lion crest.
Kailos, the Unfinished Sword, the kingdom’s legendary Sword Saint.
He was also one of the strong men once long assigned to guard the wilderness frontier.
It was worth mentioning that when he had previously guarded the wilderness, Kailos was still below legendary, a level 20 peak warrior specializing in the Sword Saint path, a step away from that rank and stalled for years.
His legend was forged during the civil war, tempered by trials of life and death, iron and fire.
Although he had not been legendary for long, Kailos’s name had already begun to spread early within the kingdom.