novelraw Chapter 423: The Sacred Aola Era, Time and Gears
Chapter 423: The Sacred Aola Era, Time and Gears
Brilliant sunlight fell from the high heavens, scattering across the gently rippling surface of the Tranquil Sea as if a sheet of liquid gold had been laid upon it.
Splash—!
At the edge of a broad, pristine beach somewhere in the Everbright Dragon Domain, the sound of waves surging and washing the shore rose and fell in steady rhythm.
A powerful man, his musculature seemingly carved to perfection, wearing simple light armor and sporting striking black-and-red short hair, walked along the sand with a group of men and women whose faces and clothing varied in style.
Occasionally, massive dragons could be seen in the sky, stretching their wings and streaking past at high speed.
Among them, that stern, imposing man with an aura of authority even when he did not speak, stood subtly at the center of the group like a sun surrounded by orbiting stars, naturally drawing attention.
This was Garoth in his human form.
To avoid those overly zealous young metal dragons known as "star-chasers" and to quietly enjoy the unique scenery of the Everbright Dragon Domain, Garoth had to take on a human guise that was relatively less conspicuous.
Aside from a few companions like Deborah and Nasha, most metal dragons in the Everbright Domain had never seen Garoth’s human appearance.
Though he still looked handsome, tall, and imposing, and some passing great dragons still glanced longer than usual, it was nowhere near as flashy as his signature red iron dragon form.At least he would no longer be instantly swarmed in layers of excited metal dragons wherever he went,
which would make it impossible for him to move and deny him any peace.
Deborah walked lightly at Garoth’s side, her honey-silver long hair fluttering gently in the bright sunlight, giving off a soft glow.
She turned her head to look at Garoth’s profile, which remained somewhat tense even while he was relaxed, and she smiled teasingly. "Still bothered by those overly enthusiastic young fans?"
"You probably never expected to meet this kind of reception here in the Metal Dragon Domain before you came."
Garoth exhaled lightly and shook his head in resignation.
"Compared to being gawked at like some rare specimen, I prefer the quiet days on my own territory."
The adoration of the metal dragons was different from that of his own tribe’s followers.
The followers were restrained; no matter how devoted, they would never casually disturb him. But those young metal dragons—especially the ones who chased after Garoth—had not yet been taught harsh realities, so they were naive, foolish, and unbearably enthusiastic.
Meanwhile, Alberto looked up and scanned the sky with a wary eye.
He noticed the number of great dragons circling and streaking nearby seemed to be growing, and he said, "Garoth, even though your human form has suppressed much of your aura, some of it still leaks out."
"I think we should move to another place."
"If we stay here any longer, those keen-nosed ones will detect us soon enough."
It was worth noting:
Alberto, though also in human form, did not choose a purely human appearance like Garoth; he insisted on keeping a few pairs of dragon horns on either side of his forehead, making his humanoid form distinct and remarkable.
Beside him, Nasha scoffed at her brother’s words.
She teased Garoth, "Hiding and dodging is boring. There’s no thrill in that."
Her voice carried an uncontainable excitement; her golden eyes sparkled, clearly eager to stir up trouble.
"If you ask me, anyone foolish enough to come close and disturb us, you just beat them up! Beat them into submission! Then spread the word that the metal dragons of the Everbright Domain are nothing but weak trash."
"Let’s fight our way through, beat up anyone who disagrees—now that’s real intimidation!"
"No."
Garoth shook his head and dismissed Nasha’s unmistakably Nasha-style "brilliant" idea without a second thought.
He had come to the Domain primarily to claim the contest prize and to seize the opportunity to breakthrough to Legendary in the Eternal Tide, and secondarily to deepen ties with the Metal Dragon Domain to add background and allies for himself and the tribe—not to make enemies everywhere, escalate conflicts, and bring himself needless trouble.
Whoosh!
A tiny figure, trailing droplets of water, leapt nimbly out of the frothy surf.
A faerie girl with butterfly wings and a body no larger than a thumb—that was Vira in her preferred miniature fae form.
Her personality was always lively and unpredictable. She landed on Garoth’s broad shoulder, blinked her big eyes, and in a bright, clear voice said, "Garoth, you’re just too dazzling! Even in human form, if you stay in a place with many dragons for a bit, you’ll still get recognized."
"But—"
She lengthened her tone and smiled slyly, a hint of pride on her face. "I have a brilliant idea that can help you get rid of these troubles once and for all."
Vira’s schemes were usually unreliable and wildly fanciful.
Still, Garoth patiently went along and asked, "Oh? What’s the method? Tell me."
The faerie girl immediately flew in front of Garoth, hands on her hips, and laughed like a silver bell. "Simple! I’ll just transform into you, won’t I?"
Before she finished, she no longer hesitated.
A surge of fierce red iron evil dragon aura burst out from her.
At the same time, her body shot upward into the sky, and under a dazzling, blinding flash of light, she began to rapidly change and reshape.
In the blink of an eye, a towering red iron dragon with black-red scales, a muscular frame, and imposing presence appeared in the air.
The black-red scales reflected a cold, metallic sheen in the sun; the powerful limbs contained the strength to split mountains, and when the dragon wings fully spread they nearly obscured a patch of sky, casting a massive, heart-stopping shadow.
Most striking were the dragon pupils—calm, majestic, almost identical to Garoth’s own.
Almost at the same moment,
the metal dragons circling nearby who seemed to be searching for someone lit up with excitement, focusing en masse on this suddenly appearing red iron dragon.
"Look! It’s Lord Garoth! He’s finally here!"
"We found him at last! I knew he couldn’t hide forever!"
"Ah! I heard that touching the scales of the champion dragon brings luck and power! This time I must get a chance to touch them!"
Soon, a dozen or more young metal dragons of various forms and wide-eyed expressions gathered enthusiastically around the impromptu "red iron dragon."
They jostled to greet it.
Their faces shone with unashamed worship, curiosity, and a dash of eager bravado.
The red iron dragon first paused as if assuming a majestic pose, then a look of triumphant calculation crossed those great eyes.
It leaned back slightly, cleared its throat, and struck a steady, imposing stance, saying, "Fellow kin, no need for formalities."
One young silver dragon, trembling with excitement, pushed forward and asked, "Lord Garoth, your dragon breath is so powerful—the dragons marvel at it! Is there any unique secret you can teach us? I truly want to master a stronger dragon breath technique."
The "red iron dragon" blinked those huge eyes.
She put on an air of serious deliberation for a moment, then spoke solemnly, "Well... actually it’s simple."
"The key is persistent practice! Three hundred times in the morning, three hundred at noon, three hundred at night! Nine hundred breaths a day—keep at it, and you’ll get there."
Nine hundred times a day?! The throat would be destroyed!
The young silver dragon sucked in a breath, shock and conflict written across his face.
Yet immediately he steeled himself, gritted his teeth, and decided to find an empty spot later to give the champion’s secret a try.
At that moment, a young brass dragon on the right could not hold back either.
She spoke with a shy yet eager tone, "M-My lord, your body is so strong! This muscle, these scales! Could I... touch your scales and feel them?"
The "red iron dragon" laughed heartily.
"Ha! Of course! Please do!"
She even raised a thick forelimb and flexed the hardened muscle like forged steel, generously inviting the brass dragon to come and stroke it.
On the beach below,
the real Garoth watched the impostor in the sky, and his eyelids twitched involuntarily.
He felt his composed, powerful champion image being demolished and collapsed at lightning speed by Vira.
Deborah, trying not to laugh, covered her mouth lightly and whispered to him with a smile, "Vira’s imitation of your red iron form is getting more and more lifelike. Look at all these metal dragons circling her—none of them noticed the flaw."
In dragon society’s social etiquette,
randomly probing an unfamiliar kin with detection-type spells was considered extremely impolite and even provocative.
So these young metal dragons who had gathered did not carefully verify the authenticity of this "red iron dragon."
Even so, Vira’s illusion deceiving so many pairs of eyes already testified to the impressive skill she had developed in illusion magic—she was not the same as before.
In the sky, Vira basked in the sensation of being the center of attention.
The "red iron dragon" soared and swooped across the blue vault one moment, tracing ostentatious, magnificent paths that drew gasps below; the next moment it spewed scorching breath toward the empty sea, evaporating volumes of water and producing dramatic steam clouds.
By the end, Vira, thoroughly enjoying herself, even manifested a four-armed Crimson Lotus Form.
The fierce, domineering display provoked waves of astonished admiration from the metal dragons.
This made the already giddy faerie dragon even more proud.
She started to imitate a leader’s bearing, using a low voice like Garoth’s to command her "followers," arranging them into a decent formation to "parade" along the coast, receiving curious, astonished, and admiring glances from other great dragons along the way.
The commotion grew louder.
The number of metal dragons following Vira snowballed, eventually catching the attention of some Legendary dragons resting in the high clouds.
Those Legendary dragons, however, had sharp eyes.
They could see through Vira’s illusion, but most merely found the trick amusing and were too lazy to expose the little ruse; some were even curious and intrigued by the faerie dragon herself.
Gold Dragon Nasha crossed her arms and watched the lively red iron dragon in the sky, laughing uproariously until she nearly doubled over.
"Garoth, honestly, "
"I think this little faerie dragon enjoys life more than you do."
She teased, "You should learn from her—find some fun from those young dragons who admire you, instead of hiding like this."
Garoth shook his head in helplessness.
Although Vira was undermining his image, he wasn’t going to stop her.
At least for now, this solution effectively resolved his problem.
All attention had been drawn to the "Garoth" in the sky, and no dragon was paying any heed to the real red iron dragon on the beach.
"Let her have her fun."
"After all," Garoth glanced at the frolicking imposter in the distance, "it allows me to be peaceful for a while, which is nice."
He changed the subject and turned to his companions. "I’m interested in the largest library in the Everbright Domain."
"When I came by before I didn’t have time to read properly before the dragons who caught wind of it swarmed in."
"I recall it houses knowledge not recorded in my inheritance. We can take this opportunity to examine it more closely."
The sun sank slowly toward the west, staining the clouds in the horizon with a gorgeous orange-red.
High above, the faerie dragon Vira still reveled in being fawned over by the crowd, showing no sign of stopping.
Garoth, however, did not delay.
He and his companions—Deborah, Alberto, and the others—quietly left the increasingly noisy beach as twilight began to fall.
Behind them, they could still clearly hear Vira blustering in a low voice and the occasional worshipful exclamations and cheers from the young metal dragons.
Ten minutes later.
Garoth and his group arrived before a majestic library known as the Dragon Sleep Corridor.
The library’s grandeur far surpassed mortal book repositories.
It was not made of brick and stone, but grown from countless immense, still-living ancient dragon trees whose towering trunks and lush branches were interwoven and naturally formed.
The dome soared high with natural magical runes flowing through the leaves, emitting a sense of layered, settled ages.
The interior space of the library was unimaginably vast.
Bookshelves the girth of dozens of people’s combined arms rose from the ground, densely packed with volumes.
Contrasting its magnificent scale, the knowledge sanctuary’s interior felt rather quiet.
Aside from Garoth’s party, only a sparse dozen or so great dragons could be seen in the expansive space, mostly steady-tempered adults or even older dragons.
Few dragons devoured books the way short-lived species might.
The knowledge stored in the inheritance alone was enough to consume one’s life.
Garoth’s attention was drawn to the many books.
"About the first era of dragon rule over the world—those obscure histories in my inheritance, even blank spots—perhaps there will be fragments recorded here."
He thought to himself and wandered slowly through the solemn, tranquil aisles of bookshelves, his gaze scanning row after row of spines, some ancient, some new.
It wasn’t long before Garoth’s eyes were caught by a volume with an archaic binding.
[Aola Era: Dragon Covenant]
The word "Aola" in the ancient dragon tongue contained layered meanings such as "sacred," "origin," and "glory."
The first era of dragon domination was often called the "Sacred Aola Era."
Garoth unconsciously slowed his pace, reached out and took the hefty tome from the shelf, holding it in his hands to inspect the cover and the title page.
However, after skimming through it, he felt a bit disappointed.
Although the book described some details and events missing from his inheritance memories, the content was mostly conventional and official, not delving into the buried secrets he truly wanted to uncover that might have far-reaching implications.
Overall, it lacked anything that made his eyes light up.
Garoth gently closed the book and returned it to its place, coming out of his focused reading trance.
He glanced around instinctively and realized Deborah, Alberto, and Nasha—who had been at his side—were nowhere to be seen, having slipped away to explore other shelves.
Garoth was not surprised.
In this ocean of knowledge, it was normal for each to discover based on personal interest.
He did not deliberately search for them, instead choosing to walk deeper into the library toward older, more obscure sections.
At the same time, he vaguely sensed the surrounding environment growing... unusually quiet.
Previously he could hear faint distant conversations, the soft turning of pages, even the steady breaths of other great dragons; now those sounds seemed to have disappeared entirely.
Garoth did not immediately notice this.
Lost in thought, he stopped in a relatively secluded corner where the light was a bit dim.
It felt like a forgotten quiet point in the vast library.
A desk made of translucent roots, naturally intertwined and grown, sat quietly there.
At the desk, a young man in a simple linen robe was seated.
He looked very young and delicate.
His face was somewhat pale, his short light-gold hair lacked luster, and his aura seemed weak.
Tiny wrinkles kept appearing and disappearing on his face, repeating incessantly.
At that moment, the young man had his gaze lowered and was intently fiddling with a gear mechanism.
It was layered and interlocked, and at a glance composed of at least a hundred finely crafted gears of various sizes.
The first gear at the start spun so fast it was hard to track with the naked eye; the second rotated nearly ten times slower than the first, the third another ten times slower than the second... and so on, decreasing by tenfold each step. The gear at the end of the sequence, under such a long transmission chain, remained completely still.
The young man stared at the gears, unblinking.
"This thing... is somewhat like an ancient Goor gear."
Garoth had seen a similar structure in a past life.
Legend had it that, assuming material strength could be infinitely sustained, if the last gear could be nudged to rotate, the first gear in the sequence could spin faster than the speed of light! Conversely, making the first gear rotate for an almost infinite duration might one day cause the final gear to reach visible motion.
Sensing Garoth’s gaze, the young man raised his head, revealing a pair of deep, azure eyes.
There was a trace of fatigue that was hard to hide.
Beneath that tiredness, however, lay depth and calm.
Garoth could be certain the seemingly frail young man was actually a dragon whose life level had reached the Legendary tier, though why he appeared in such a state was unclear.
"Are you interested in those dry, weighty histories?"
The young man spoke. His voice was gentle and magnetic, incongruent with his frail appearance.
Garoth did not stiffen at the possibility that the other was a Legendary; he naturally walked to the opposite side of the desk and sat on a chair formed of roots.
"Civilizations rising and falling, states emerging and collapsing, the transfer and change of power... to me, it all follows certain patterns."
Garoth replied calmly, his gaze honest. "Studying history lets me see those patterns and better anchor the future."
"Besides, aren’t the things we do now, in the next moment, already history to later generations?"
Surprise and appreciation flickered across the young man’s eyes.
He tilted his head slightly and said, "In this era, few young dragons think like that anymore. Good."
He then refocused on the slowly meshing gears on the desk.
He extended a long, pale finger and tried to nudge the last, completely motionless gear.
Click!
A clear, audible crisp sound.
The motionless gear did not rotate as expected; instead, as if unable to bear the fingertip’s force, it shattered into a scattering of tiny metal fragments.
The young man gazed at the pile of fragments and sighed.
He then waved his hand gently, and an invisible force swept over them.
The metal shards quickly reassembled into the original intact gear, resuming their interlocked motion.
After doing this, he lifted his eyes to Garoth.
He casually asked, "What do you think time is?"
"A relentless, ever-flowing river that cannot return, only flowing forward? Or is it like this gear set—seemingly open to observation and even nudging, yet ultimately powerless against it?"
Garoth did not answer immediately.
His gaze passed over the still-quietly meshing gears and returned to the young man’s pale, calm face.
He thought for several seconds in silence.
Finally, he raised his head and said from the heart,
"To me, time is a furnace, an anvil, an unending, severe trial."
"I rarely dwell on why it exists or how it truly flows—those are overly philosophical questions."
"I care more about how to better temper my claws under the current of time, to make them sharper and tougher; to hone my will so it becomes unshakeable; to refine my soul so it can bear greater power."
The young man was slightly stunned.
Then a smile creased his face, softening the tiredness in his brows.
"Interesting understanding—very pragmatic, and full of strength."
He commented, "I can sense an extraordinary obsession with power in you, though remarkably it does not lack reason."
The young man rose slowly, casually pocketed the gear, and his figure began to fade.
"Level 21 Legendary for a dragon like you is only a beginning. You can rise further."
His voice took on an ethereal quality, as if coming from far away. "I look forward... to seeing your future performance."
His figure vanished completely.
At the same time, Deborah’s slightly puzzled voice sounded in Garoth’s ear,
"What are you standing here dazing for? Weren’t you going to go in and take a good look around?"
Hearing that familiar voice, Garoth suddenly snapped awake.
He reflexively turned his head and looked around.
Deborah, Nasha, and Alberto were indeed standing by his side, their faces showing mild confusion.
He himself stood at the grand library entrance, his feet not yet having truly stepped inside.
What had happened earlier seemed only like a momentary vision.
Gears... time... that azure-eyed young man... What had just occurred?
Garoth shook his head, trying to grasp the memory fragments that were rapidly fading from his mind,
but the images and the conversation slipped like sand through fingers, growing hazy until only a lingering daze remained, leaving him with the sensation of waking from a dream he could not recall.
"Nothing," he recovered and told his companions, "I just spaced out for a moment. Let’s go in."
Garoth resumed his steps and once again entered the vast library, marveling at its awe-inspiring grandeur.