“Ding… ding… clang… clang…”
It is unknown how much time had passed, but the rhythmic tapping from the depths of the cave acted like a lullaby, keeping Balthazar, who was coiled in the depths of the cave, in a deep sleep.
He was digesting the immense magic power brought by that piece of divine meat in his stomach, while also adapting to the unique aura within this territory of the divine corpse.
However, a sudden, intense feeling of hunger struck like lightning, instantly piercing through his half-awake consciousness and completely jolting him out of that dazed state.
“Gu… gurulu…”
The sound did not come from the outside, but directly from his massive stomach, which was like a furnace.
This feeling was very unfamiliar.
Since hatching, he had relied on devouring the magic power in treasures and the power within his bloodline, and had never experienced such intense hunger.
But now, the agonizing pain of his stomach walls rubbing together due to contraction, as if countless hands were tearing at the inside, made him involuntarily curl up his massive body.
Was it because his body in the evolutionary phase needed more energy?
Or was it a side effect of digesting that piece of “divine meat”?
The acid produced by the violent contraction of his stomach surged at the bottom of his esophagus, and that burning sensation, as if it were going to digest his own internal organs, made Balthazar’s previously closed eyelids twitch violently.
[…Wake up… Dragon.]
That familiar voice did not pass through his ears, but followed the threads of their mental link, like a drop of ice water falling into a boiling pot of oil, spreading directly within the depths of his consciousness.
The voice carried a hint of anxiety, but more of a helplessness in the face of an irresistible force.
[I know you are immersed in a dream of power growth, but if we don’t solve the current problem… we will all starve to death.]
Balthazar snapped his eyes open.
His dark red slit pupils instantly lit up in the dark cave like two suddenly ignited searchlights; deep within the pupils, the violent red light triggered by extreme hunger still lingered.
He exhaled heavily, and the high-heat white mist spewed from his nostrils instantly swept through the space in front, warping the surrounding dry air with heat.
His vision gradually focused.
In front of him, that tiny figure was standing quietly.
Olga stood less than two meters from the dragon’s snout; she had to tilt her head back to meet those huge eyes.
Her once gorgeous and intricate queen’s gown looked somewhat out of place on the ground full of dust and rubble.
The hem of her skirt, visible beneath the black robe covering her entire body, was stained with obvious black stone powder.
Her face, which always maintained a proud smile, now wore a hint of undisguised gravity.
“You are finally awake.”
She sighed softly, and did not take a step back because of the terrifying pressure when the dragon woke up.
Instead, she took a small step forward and reached out, as if wanting to soothe this beast that seemed somewhat irritable due to hunger, but ultimately restrained herself and stopped in mid-air.
“Listen to that sound…”
Olga’s gaze shifted downward, landing on Balthazar’s abdomen covered in thick scales.
Just a moment ago, a “rumble” like muffled thunder came from there again, making the ground tremble slightly.
“Although I really don’t want to disturb your slumber with such mundane matters, this is indeed a tricky and major problem.”
She turned around and pointed toward the entrance of the cave.
There used to be a few baskets of dried meat and moldy tubers scavenged from the Kobold tribe piled up there.
But now, only a few empty, broken baskets remained, rolling around on the ground, blown by the wind.
“Our food supplies… have bottomed out.”
Olga’s voice echoed in the empty cave, sounding particularly harsh.
“Those Kobolds are working hard; for your ‘grand blueprint’, they have even used up all their strength. But the problem is, labor requires stamina, and this Black Mountain…”
She spread her hands, a bitter arc curling at the corners of her mouth, and looked around at this dead, silent world that consisted of nothing but stones.
“Besides the hard stones you love to eat and the somewhat tooth-grinding divine mineral veins, you can’t even find a single mouse.”
“This is a ‘Dead Land’, literally. No plants, no prey, only wind, snow, and stones.”
Olga paused, her gaze returning to Balthazar’s face, her eyes becoming sharp.
“And, you seem to have felt it yourself, haven’t you? That kind of ordinary hunger… I’m afraid your current body can no longer be satiated by just eating stones. I can feel that the fire in your stomach is craving fresher, more vibrant flesh and blood to extinguish it.”
“Chloe and I both have very slow metabolisms. I have long since learned fasting magic and no longer need anything other than magic power. Although Chloe is pregnant now, it doesn’t matter if she doesn’t eat for a week.”
“But your Kobolds cannot.”
As if to confirm what Olga said, behind her, the Kobolds were swaying, listless, still swinging their iron pickaxes to work, but it was obvious that the slow “ding… ding… ding” sound confirmed their hunger.
She rubbed her temples with some helplessness, a few strands of hair falling from her originally elegant hairstyle, revealing a bit of fatigue.
“If this problem is not solved, we won’t need to wait for the Black Dog Mercenary Group to attack; your loyal ‘Iron-Eating’ tribe… will probably start drooling at each other out of hunger first.”
“How… long… have I slept?”
That hoarse, low voice, like rusty gears forcibly meshing, stirred up a visible wave of sound within the empty ‘Iron Imperial Palace’.
Olga’s tattered skirt hem was blown rustlingly by this sound wave carrying heat, and she had to turn slightly to the side, pressing her hand against her wind-blown black hair to keep dust from getting into her eyes.
“Three days… only three days, my Majesty.”
Olga lowered her hand, her gaze complexly scanning the behemoth in front of her, which was a full circle larger than before it fell asleep.
“But in these short three days, the changes in you are as if you had soaked in a high-concentration magic pool for a full thirty years.”
There, a few Kobolds responsible for night watch were huddled in a corner, frightened into a ball by the dragon’s roar just now, even throwing aside the iron pickaxes they regarded as treasures.
“Gurulu—”
The massive stomach rumbling sounded again like muffled thunder; this time, even a few pieces of rubble from the cave roof were shaken down, hitting the black, hard ground with a crisp sound.
Olga looked at the dragon’s snout, from which high-heat saliva was constantly dripping, her eyes becoming sharp—the look of a hunter smelling the scent of blood.
“Your current body is a bottomless pit; ordinary wild fruits, dried meat, even if you stuffed all those useless Kobolds into your teeth, you couldn’t fill this deficit stemming from evolution. You need higher-grade fuel, living flesh and blood full of life essence.”
She walked slowly to the rock wall, where a map she had drawn herself was hanging.
She extended her honey-colored finger, pressed heavily on the edge of the ink stain representing the Black Mountain, and then traced a graceful arc to the south, pointing to the forest at the foot of the southern mountain.
“Although this is a ‘Dead Land’, it doesn’t mean we don’t have ‘neighbors’.”
Olga turned her head, a cruel light flashing in her amber eyes, the corners of her mouth curling into an elegant and cold smile.
“In the forest near Black Mountain, there are quite a few magical beasts you can eat, and we can eat too… but.”
Olga sighed and said: “Most of them, breathing poisonous marsh gas, are poisonous, or they are simply big meat worms… In the lush forest, the most nutritious and fleshy ones are generally the larvae of some giant butterfly magical beasts.”
“So, we might have to eat some… bugs.”
[Go hunting?]
A thought flashed by, but he immediately rejected it.
Judging from previous reconnaissance, the so-called forest near Black Mountain was at least several dozen kilometers away.
Going back and forth would not only consume a lot of stamina, and the food that could be carried each time would not be enough to support him for a week, but it would also expose this secret lair, which had been so hard to find, to unknown risks.
He could not leave two defenseless females and a tribe under construction here while he ran so far away.
[Don’t want to eat bugs…]
Moreover, precious minerals and meat were what a dragon should eat; eating bugs was truly displeasing to a dragon.
Irritability.
An unprecedented sense of irritability welled up in his heart.
For a dragon who believed in the supremacy of power, hunger was equivalent to weakness, and weakness was an unforgivable original sin.
He whipped his tail hard against the rock wall beside him, splashing a patch of rubble.
No, he must find food.
A large amount, enough to support his subsequent activities.
Just then, a long-lost, almost forgotten thought emerged from the depths of his memory that belonged to a “human”, like a straw for survival.
— — Main God.
Immersed in his rebirth as a dragon, he had almost forgotten his most fundamental identity.
For the existences in the Main God Space, a world was nothing more than one of countless “dungeons”.
When resources in one dungeon are scarce, isn’t it a very normal logic to go to another dungeon to obtain supplies?
Once this thought was generated, it could no longer be contained, like a prairie fire.
Balthazar immediately composed his mind and sent an inquiry in his mind to that omnipresent, cold will.
[Inquiry received.]
[Situation assessment: S-rank mission “Divine Corpse Territory Expansion, Strategic Resource Acquisition”. Current world environment confirmed as “Dead Land”, directly affecting the “Iron-Eating” tribe’s survival and mission progress.]
[Judgment: Application reasonable.]
[Permission granted to initiate “Temporary Resource Acquisition Mission”. You will temporarily leave the current mission world, but your time flow will be locked. Upon return, the current world time will not advance at all.]
[Note: The temporary mission world is randomly drawn; the difficulty is based on your basic needs, and there are unknown risks.]
[All loot obtained during the mission will be subject to Main God Space assessment upon returning to the “Divine Corpse” world; some items exceeding the current world’s existence level may be confiscated.]
[Preparing teleportation, countdown: 10, 9, 8…]
It gave him almost no time to reconsider.
Balthazar was startled, and then a surge of wild joy welled up within him.
He immediately ordered the group before him: “Stay…
here!” “Do not…
leave!”
Before the words even left his mouth, a white pillar of light appeared out of thin air, completely engulfing his massive body.
In the eyes of Kral, who was so shocked his jaw nearly dropped, the dragon’s figure instantly vanished from the spot.
“What…?”
Olga looked at the scene before her in disbelief; it was almost beyond her common sense.
“Magic that traverses… worlds!?”
“How? This…?”
Olga instinctively rushed forward two steps, her usually elegant gait appearing somewhat chaotic in her haste.
Her slender palms grasped aimlessly at the void where Balthazar had just been coiled, but she only caught a few wisps of rapidly dissipating white light dust.
“No spatial rifts… no residual magic…”
This queen, who once stood at the pinnacle of Dark Elves magic, widened her amber eyes, staring fixedly at the empty rocky ground before her. You are reading on g.com, the official source.
Her keen perception was frantically scanning the surroundings, attempting to analyze the structure of the “magic” that had just occurred, but the result was a blank.
“What on earth is the principle behind this…?”
Olga muttered to herself.
The fleeting panic that should have arisen from losing her protection was now replaced by a near-fanatical thirst for knowledge.
“Chi-chi-chi-woof!”
Hearing the sounds behind her, she turned around and looked at the group of Kobolds who had fallen into chaos because of the dragon’s sudden disappearance, with some even wanting to drop their pickaxes and flee.
“Silence!”
A sharp shout filled with magic exploded in the cave.
The dark magic in Olga’s hand condensed into a whip, lashing fiercely against the ground and leaving a scorched mark.
“Who dares to stop working?”
She held her head high; even though she was covered in dust, the aura of authority belonging to a queen still made these low-level monsters tremble.
It was dead silent.
After regaining an environment quiet enough to think, Olga looked toward the deepest part of the now empty cave.
Her desire for revenge was temporarily replaced by the curiosity in her heart.
[Balthazar… just how many secrets are you hiding?]
She slowly walked to the patch of ground that still retained a dark red heat—it was the place where the giant beast had been coiled just seconds ago.
As a queen who once stood at the pinnacle of Dark Elves magic, she should have felt fear toward this phenomenon that exceeded her cognition.
Unknown power usually means uncontrollable risk, and for an Avenger determined to seek revenge, uncontrollability is the most taboo factor.
But at this moment, beyond the alarm bells of reason, a more viscous, more scorching emotion was growing like vines within her chest.
Olga slowly crouched down, disregarding the stains on the ground, and reached out with her well-maintained, slender fingers to gently stroke the rock that had been baked scorching hot by the dragon’s belly.
The heat from her fingertips traveled along her nerve endings straight to her heart, making her breathing, which had stalled due to astonishment, become a little rapid.
[It’s not just power…]
Her eyes gradually became unfocused, and an unnatural flush appeared on her cheeks.
If it were an ordinary magical beast, or a dragon possessing only brute force, she would be confident in her ability to play with it in the palm of her hand using wisdom and magic, treating it as a hound to tear apart her enemies.
But this dragon was different.
He knew the secrets of this world, he could devour the bodies of “gods,” and now…
he even possessed the authority to traverse worlds, something even she, a great mage, could not analyze.
“What… exactly are you?”
Olga muttered to herself, her fingertips gliding over the rough rock as if she were caressing a lover’s skin.
A strong pleasure, mixed with awe and a desire to pry, instantly surged through her spine like an electric current.
That massive, tyrannical figure, full of male hormones, lingered in her mind.
The false contract that was originally concluded just for revenge had changed in nature in her heart at this moment.
Was this what she had always longed for?
Not those weak and incompetent kin, nor those slaves who only knew how to beg for mercy.
But an absolutely powerful, mystery-filled…
true tyrant who could crush all common sense.
[Ah… this is a subject worth assisting… no, worth studying.]
Olga bit her lower lip sharply, trying to use the pain to hide the almost uncontrollable smile at the corners of her mouth.
She told herself this was just a scholar’s thirst for unknown truths, just a “deep analysis” necessary to better utilize this weapon.
That’s right, she just wanted to dismantle everything about this dragon, see his structure, see his soul, and see just how many more surprises he could bring.
“Queen… Queen?”
A timid call interrupted her thoughts.
The daze in Olga’s eyes instantly faded, replaced by her usual coldness and arrogance.
She stood up abruptly, turned her head, and looked down from a height at the bewildered Kobold leader, Kral.
“What are you looking at?”
She snorted coldly, the magic in her hand condensing into a black whip shadow, lashing fiercely against the rock at Kral’s feet and sparking a shower of sparks.
“Your master has gone to conquer a new hunting ground. Before he brings back the spoils, if the expansion work here does not meet the standards…”
Olga narrowed her eyes, a dangerous light flashing in her beautiful pupils.
At this moment, she could only vent the unspeakable restlessness in her heart by scolding these low-level creatures.
“I will peel the skin off you trash and make it into a carpet to welcome his triumphant return.”
“Do you understand?!”
“Yes!! Yes!!”
Accompanied by the terrified screams of the Kobolds and the sound of more vigorous stone chiseling, Olga turned around, facing away from the crowd.
She looked at the void again, arms crossed over her chest, fingers digging deep into the soft flesh of her arms.
[Come back quickly… my… dragon.]