By the time he returned to the cave entrance, the sky had turned pitch black. The bluish aurora had vanished unnoticed at some point, leaving only that solitary frost moon hanging against the curtain of the night sky.
Flashing with faint starlight, the Snowrot Birds landed one by one, looking like a meteor shower falling for mortals to make wishes upon.
They burrowed into the ground or into the snow among the thickets, concealing that beautiful glow.
Merely awaiting the arrival of tomorrow.
Inside the cave, Vivian and Leodero, who hadn't slept well in three days, were snoring peacefully in a deep slumber.
Izo, however, felt no sleepiness at all. He was still at the bottom of the cave, engaged in a training exercise called rock-striking, honing his combat skills.
Thrum—thrum—thrum—
Every strike from his dragon claws, dragon wings, and dragon tail was heavy and powerful. Every impact left deep marks on the silver-tinted rock wall.
Izo's eyes were filled with intense focus, without a single shred of carelessness.
Black, gray, and silver ores continuously fell from the silver-tinted rock wall. Accompanied by bursts of sparks, they were reflected in Izo's pupils.
The deeper he went, the higher the concentration of Silver Crystal became, and the harder the rock grew.
The force of each strike Izo delivered grew greater, but he was not relying on brute force to knock down the rock face.
Instead, before swinging each attack, he would search for the weak points in the rock wall, striving to break off the largest rock formations with minimal force and energy consumption.
This drained his mental and physical energy far more than blindly venting his own strength. Izo hoped that through this rock-striking training, observing and attacking weak points would become second nature to him.
Thus reaching a brand-new state.
Just like when a human is hyper-focused, they lose track of time, as if all external distractions have vanished.
Whatever you want to do, you don't even need to think about it; your body simply moves on its own. This is what is known as "flow."
Dragons could reach this state as well, but only very rarely.
Almost no dragon in this world would do anything with extreme focus. After all, dragons were nowhere near diligent; laziness was their true nature.
With each of Izo's hyper-focused strikes, his mental and physical energy did not wane; instead, it surged higher and higher.
This was inseparable from the abundant energy in his body and his intensely focused mind.
One hour, two hours, three hours.
Without realizing how much time had passed, Izo's movements grew faster and faster, while the force and angle of his strikes became increasingly precise.
He had successfully entered the "flow state"!
Clang, clang, clang, clang!
The entire impact area began to turn slowly red. Dense sparks drifted around Izo, looking as if someone were putting on an iron-spark display beside him.
“Ah? What's going on!”
“Is someone attacking us?”
“So noisy!! How should I know?!”
The increasingly sharp striking noises woke Vivian and Leodero from their sleep. They hastily propped up their bodies, looking around at their surroundings.
“Leodero, why is it all glowing red over there?”
Vivian pointed at the red light deep within the cave, a bit confused.
“Won't we know if we go look?”
Leodero walked slowly toward the depths of the cave, with Vivian following behind him.
“Don't you feel like it's getting hotter and hotter?”
“It can't be lava down here, can it?”
The cave sloped all the way downward. The further down they walked, the more they felt the temperature rising.
When they reached the very bottom, they were stunned on the spot by the sight before them.
A silver dragon was wildly striking the rock wall amid fierce sparks, leaving behind residual images and gusts of wind. What's more, the rock wall was actually receding at a speed visible to the naked eye.
The falling rocks were shattered into even finer stone dust before they could even hit the ground, forming a thick layer behind the silver dragon.
“Is this guy crazy?”
Vivian opened her mouth wide as she watched Izo's self-torturous training. She really couldn't understand what her eldest brother was doing.
Leodero, on the other hand, after recovering from his initial shock, gradually had a gleam in his eyes.
This was practically him!
He had already begun imagining replacing Izo and wildly showing off his own power.
Izo's mind, spirit, and strength began to merge, rising higher and higher.
Suddenly, he heard a sharp crack sound from deep within his soul.
This piercing noise completely shattered Izo's "flow state." His strike placement remained precise, but his movements gradually slowed down.
His mental and physical energy also began returning to a normal state, like a martial arts master in his prime slowly aging into his twilight years.
“Phoo!”
It wasn't until Izo exhaled a long gust of white mist that his movements came to a complete halt.
When the heat in the air met the silver dragon's involuntary breath, it immediately sublimated into rising thick water vapor, looking exactly like dense steam in a bathhouse.
Having fully regained conscious awareness, Izo immediately began investigating the source of that crack sound.
His consciousness slowly reached toward the only thing existing deep within his soul: the Dragon Inheritance!
“Izo! What are you doing not sleeping in the middle of the night?”
Izo was startled by the sudden shout. The weakness in his mental energy, combined with being inside his soul space, had prevented him from noticing the two dragons behind him.
His consciousness immediately withdrew from his soul space, and he turned to look back at Vivian and Leodero with a detached gaze.
“I have my own reasons for not sleeping.”
“Rather, what are you two doing here?”
Feeling somewhat uncomfortable under Izo's cold gaze, Vivian immediately retorted:
“Of course a certain dragon disturbed the noble slumber of the Great Sovereign of the Frostlands.”
“And staying up all night, pounding away like a lunatic at rocks.”
“So we came to check if that guy caught some kind of Dragon Madness.”
Hearing these words, the clarity returned to Izo's eyes. It seemed his late-night training had indeed disturbed the others' rest.
He had disrupted the natural order—after all, most dragons slept at night.
“Alright, my apologies.”
“Perhaps I should find a more suitable cave for you two to rest in.”
Izo apologized decisively and offered a solution. After all, he couldn't stop his training just because of his younger siblings.
Hunting, training, growing stronger, and devising better methods of training had become the entirety of Izo's life cycle at this stage.
Who asked him to be born into this world of swords and magic, heroes and dragons, where power reigns supreme?
All of this pushed him to relentlessly pursue strength now. Remembering how his dragon mother had treated him made him never want to live those humiliating days of depending on another dragon due to weakness ever again.
Because when your power is weak, your words are no longer defined as speech; they can only be called the wails of the weak.
Because when your power is weak, the sole meaning of your suffering is to entertain the strong. Perhaps after finding amusement in your pathetic state, they might grant you a way to live.
Because when your power is weak, your physical vessel becomes nothing more than a prison for your mind. Those wild, brilliant ideas will remain forever stuck at the concept stage, never having the possibility of being put into practice.
In this world, one must possess power first.
Only then is there any reason or right to discuss anything else.
Otherwise, all your actions are meaningless, and everything you have will be trampled by an unexpected "disaster"...
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