Standing on the Black Mountain, Balthazar looked down at the Iron-Eater Tribe.
He paid no mind to the group of Kobolds who were shivering before the precipice, trying to use iron pickaxes to carve out a foothold on the hard “God’s Muscle.”
Kobolds were fanatical but stupid.
Their racial nature of serving dragons made these lowly creatures, who were not recognized as dragon-kin, appear very clumsy and inefficient in activities other than simple, piecemeal handicrafts and stealing or plundering property.
Letting such a group of clumsy slaves carry the mother of his dragon offspring up a precipice where even apes would find it hard to stand was simply a joke at the expense of his future.
WHOOSH—
Balthazar spread his wings, lowered his head, released his now sharper and larger dragon claws, flapped his wings, left the mountainside, and dove down.
Then, Balthazar suddenly thrust out his dragon claws.
Amidst Olga’s cry of surprise, Balthazar did not pick her up gently like a human would.
Instead, like a predator snatching prey, he accurately and firmly grabbed the top beam of the sedan chair.
With his other claw, he more carefully scooped up the stretcher holding Chloe along with the cushion on it, shielding them in his embrace full of hard breastplates.
“Hold on.”
After the simple two-word command, his massive dark wings suddenly flapped.
BOOM!
A gale rose abruptly, blowing dozens of Kobolds over.
Balthazar ignored the chaos on the ground and took off directly with the two women, flying toward the Black Mountain.
Seeing Balthazar fly away, the group of Kobolds hurriedly got up.
Klar, in particular, was kowtowing incessantly and scrambling to command his tribesmen to begin attempting to climb the black cliff they hadn’t dared to think of before.
The Kobolds felt that this cliff was likely a trial for them.
As dragon kin, if they couldn’t even manage the instinct of digging holes and climbing a rock wall rich in mineral veins (God’s Flesh and Blood), then they deserved to fall to their deaths.
Klar, who had finally waited for a true dragon to be their leader, was frantically waving his whip to avoid being abandoned.
He drove his tribesmen to drive their iron pickaxes deep into the steel-hard black rock wall, struggling upward like a swarm of tenacious ants following the scent left by Balthazar.
Then, another shadow was cast down from the mountain.
At this time on the precipice, that group of poor Kobolds was climbing bit by bit by smashing their pickaxes into the cliff.
However, their low stamina meant they could only hang on the nearly vertical black rock surface, unable to go up or down.
The cold wind cut their thin fur like knives.
Several elderly Kobolds, whose strength was failing, had already begun to lose their grip, seemingly about to fall into the abyss and become a pile of mush.
Suddenly, a massive shadow blocked out the snow and wind overhead.
“Grab… hold.”
That nightmarishly majestic voice boomed in the wind, but to the desperate Kobolds, it sounded like heavenly music.
Balthazar was like a giant bird of prey.
His powerful hind claws grabbed the frame of the sedan chair, which had already been stripped of all valuables, while his front claws held the stretcher.
He flapped his wings, hovering by the rock wall, his dark red eyes coldly staring at this group of creatures that were his “property.”
“Those who fall… will have… their rations… docked.”
His raspy voice, with its metallic friction quality, was intermittent but carried a tone of unquestionable stinginess and severity.
The Kobolds, who were about to give up, suddenly exploded with a brute force for survival upon hearing this.
They scrambled to stuff the young, old, and weak into the swaying sedan frame, while the strong ones clung to the edges of the stretcher and the gaps in the dragon’s claws like hanging sausages.
“Fully loaded… take off.”
After confirming that no “asset” had been left behind, Balthazar’s wings gave a sudden powerful flap.
The pull from the weight of thirty-three Kobolds made the muscles in his neck tighten, emitting a slight ache, but for his current strength, it was merely like a slightly heavy shopping bag. Visit novelping . com for the full chapter.
A few minutes later, Balthazar traced a black arc in the sky.
Carrying this string of screaming “attachments,” he broke through the clouds again, circled halfway around the mountain, then lowered his altitude and steadily dumped them in front of a huge fissure located halfway up the mountain, facing the northern ice plains.
“Oh my… is this your ‘mercy’?”
Olga leaned against the stone wall, watching the pile of Kobolds who had rolled into a ball and were now kowtowing to the dragon like pounding garlic, shouting long live the true dragon.
A playful smile curled at the corner of her mouth.
“No.”
Balthazar turned his head, a blast of sulfur-scented hot air snorting from his nostrils as his vertical pupils coldly scanned the mess on the ground.
“This is… cost… control.”
Slaves were his assets, and he wasn’t wealthy enough yet to throw money around everywhere.
“Is that so?”
Olga clearly had no interest in continuing this topic.
After finally confirming the safety of Chloe, who was resting on the cushion removed from the stretcher, she led Balthazar into the massive fissure before them.
This fissure was not a natural wind-eroded cave, but rather more like a natural fault space formed between two massive “muscle fibers” of the ancient giant.
The entrance was ten meters high, shaped like a torn wound, extending into deep darkness.
Looking out from the cave entrance here, one could perfectly overlook the entire northern wasteland and the distant white place of death shrouded in blizzards—the Dark Elf homeland of Nidavellir.
“We’re here… this is it.”
Olga said as she straightened her disheveled dress.
She looked at the familiar cave before her, a trace of complex nostalgia showing in her eyes.
“This is a ‘pore’ in the giant’s latissimus dorsi, connected to a vast magic circuit inside. I once spent fifty years in meditation here.”
Balthazar took the lead, stepping inside with heavy strides.
The interior of the cave was extremely spacious, enough for him to move freely or even fly at his current size.
The ground was flat and smooth, with a warm, dark red texture, as if the giant’s body heat still lingered here.
Not only was there no damp, musty smell in the air, but it was filled with a rich, invigorating aroma of high-grade metal.
What satisfied Balthazar even more was that clusters of black-gold mineral veins, winding like blood vessels, were exposed on the rock walls deep within the cave.
That was unrefined, high-purity Divine Metal.
For a Ferro-Dragon that fed on metal, this was practically living in an infinite all-you-can-eat granary.
“It’s… very hot here.”
Balthazar wagged his tail with satisfaction, the iron-scaled tip striking the ground and sending off a shower of sparks.
The ambient temperature in most of the area remained constant at around 25 degrees, while the deepest parts even reached 30 or 40 degrees.
This might be a bit sweltering for ordinary humans, but for dragonkin in their incubation period and growing young Ferro-Dragons, it was the perfect dwelling.
Balthazar gently placed the still-slumbering Chloe onto a warm, shimmering dark-red stone platform, and she let out a comfortable hum.
“This… is the… prototype… of the future imperial palace.”
“The [Iron Imperial Palace]…”
Having named his future dwelling, Balthazar turned around and curled up in the deepest part of this nest filled with a divine aura.
His vertical pupils, burning in the darkness, watched the cave entrance, looking at the Kobolds who were still cheering.
“Klar.”
“Yes! Great… Master!”
The Kobold leader, who had been praising Balthazar, jolted and practically scrambled on all fours to Balthazar’s claws, pressing his head—which wore a young dragon’s skull—deeply against the hard, bony ground with a crisp “thud.”
Balthazar didn’t look at him; his cold gaze swept across the cave’s surroundings.
Then, he slowly raised a massive forepaw covered in dark iron scales, his sharp claws tracing a cold trajectory through the air and across the surrounding walls.
“Here…”
His voice paused for a moment as if he were organizing the right words in his mind; that slightly awkward pause made the command seem even weightier.
After that single word was spoken, Klar jerked his head up and followed the massive claw to look at the surrounding walls.
A flicker of confusion passed through his cloudy eyes, followed by realization and wild joy.
Balthazar tilted his head slightly, his dark red vertical pupils finally focusing on this lowly vassal.
His deep voice continued, slow but clear:
“Dig… inwards.”
“To the maximum.”
“But… no collapsing… no… danger.”
Every one of his words hammered into Klar’s heart.
The Kobold leader instantly understood the grand blueprint behind this command.
Digging meant expansion, it meant more space, it meant their “Master” intended to make this his permanent nest, and they would become the foundation of this new kingdom.
As a slave, being able to participate in such construction filled these twisted races with wild joy.
“Future… construction…”
“Production…”
“And… army. Training.”
Balthazar used the limited vocabulary he could produce with his throat to outline the prototype of an empire.
“As you command! As you command! Great Lord of Pioneering!”
Klar trembled with excitement, unable to even think of more flowery words to praise this foresight.
He kowtowed heavily several more times until blood seeped from his forehead, then jumped up gesticulating wildly, rushing towards the adult Kobolds who had just managed to rest, screeching in their own language to convey the Dragon Emperor’s expectations.
Soon, from deep within the cave, the crisp and rhythmic “ding-ding” of pickaxes striking hard bone plates rang out.
The construction of the empire began here, between two bundles of muscle fibers in this Divine Corpse.
Balthazar exhaled a breath of turbid air.
Although the current cave could still accommodate his body, which was 5 meters long and 2 meters high at the shoulder, he was still in his youth and far from reaching adulthood.
For the sake of the future, he needed a larger palace.
“Haa…”
Curled up in the deepest part, Balthazar gave a lazy yawn, buoyed by the heat.
In this comfortable environment, a wave of sleepiness washed over him.
[Are you sleepy? Dragon?]
“Mhm…”
Traveling, flying, and his physical growth hadn’t cost Balthazar much stamina, but the desire to sleep for a while had firmly taken hold of his mind.
[Then sleep… Dragon, you’re still growing.]
[I’m here.]
Olga’s voice, echoing in Balthazar’s mind at this moment, was full of gentle reassurance, causing Balthazar’s consciousness to slide deeper into sleep.
“Don’t… seek death…”
[Hehe.] Olga chuckled in Balthazar’s mind.
An elf who had lived for a thousand years, she unconsciously adopted the composure of someone coaxing a young child to sleep.
[Don’t worry, I know what I’m doing.]
[Sleep now.]
[When you wake up, you will be even stronger.]
Thus, Balthazar let his heavy eyelids fall, closing his dark red eyes and sinking into a dreamless slumber.