"Awoo,"
The young Red Dragon, who had been dozing off with his head tucked under his broad wings, paws wrapped around his tail beneath his chin, slowly opened his eyes.
Karon lazily stretched his red wings, which were adorned with magic patterns, yawning long and wide, releasing a burst of fiery sparks from his mouth and nostrils.
The Red Dragon, entering his teenage phase, had scales the size of an adult human’s palm, marking the most gentle period in a Red Dragon’s life, transitioning from the bright scarlet of infancy to a deep dark red.
His entire body was covered in scales of a red hue with a soft metallic sheen, emitting a faint glow in the somewhat dim volcanic lair, sparkling like a treasure amidst the deep magma.
Karon surfaced from the flowing lava, shaking off the dried clumps of magma sticking to him, which slid off his smooth scales, splashing the molten flow in all directions.
The Red Dragon, connected with the field fluctuations of the entire lair, had already detected the presence of the adolescent Blue Dragon Akzhi waiting below the mountaintop.
In fact, even without the field connection, Karon knew that any solitary Dragon’s presence outside his lair would certainly be the adolescent Blue Dragon Akzhi.
For the other young Giant Dragons would directly venture to the mountaintop, though they wouldn’t enter the Red Dragon’s lair, they would still call out, waking Karon, as they were familiar with him and accustomed to this interaction mode.
Typically, Karon wouldn’t deliberately put on the so-called air of the Master of the Dragon Clans; he found such behavior somewhat foolish.
And the young Dragons in the Dragon Group knew well that as long as they didn’t challenge Karon’s will or decisions, the Red Dragon was actually quite approachable, more so than the so-called Good Dragons.
The Red Dragon often appeared more like an elder brother to all the young Dragons of this Giant Dragon Race, powerful and tolerant, yet his mischievous character was quite troublesome, infamous enough for those Five-Color Dragons of dubious nature.
Only the adolescent Blue Dragon Akzhi would patiently wait below the mountaintop when coming alone, not because of his high manners; expecting a Five-Color Dragon to behave politely was as ridiculous as asking a Dwarf Blacksmith to embroider.
Instead, the adolescent Blue Dragon seemed unable to fully integrate into the Dragon Group’s core atmosphere; unlike other young Dragons, he didn’t grow up, play, hunt, fight, and endure hardships together with them from a young age.
The other young Giant Dragons did not intentionally alienate Blue Dragon Akzhi, it was the naturally developed atmosphere, and the adolescent Blue Dragon Akzhi was most familiar with White Dragon Gomot.
He typically appeared alongside White Dragon Gomot when the Dragon Group gathered; perhaps Blue Dragon Akzhi, like Black Dragon Rosani, hadn’t yet found his place within the Dragon Group.
Thus, he had a special respect and awe for Karon, the Master of the Dragon Clans, which Karon keenly noticed.
The Red Dragon shook off the debris from his body, folded his broad wings, stepped to the edge of the mountaintop, and gazed at the patiently waiting Blue Dragon Akzhi, his scales glimmering with enchanting hues under the sunset.
His body shimmered brightly in the sunlight, yet his head and eyes, turned away from the light, remained in shadow.
Blue Dragon Akzhi gazed up at the ever-growing form of the Red Dragon, his scales wide and even, gleaming like the world’s most perfect gemstone, sparking an unrelated yet curious thought in his mind under the unwitting yet growing pressure from the Red Dragon.
"If Karon’s scales were sold to those greedy human merchants, each might be worth at least Two Thousand Gold Coins." The inherent talent of Dragons to appraise treasures surfaced in the Blue Dragon, triggering a subconscious mental calculation of the value of all the Red Dragon’s scales.
"Come forward, Akzhi, stand by my side," the Red Dragon lowered his head, calmly observing the Blue Dragon Akzhi, whose thoughts were currently filled with golden radiance.
To Karon, the Blue Dragon before him was extremely special; during the Dragon Group’s infancy, before they had the ability to hunt alone, this Blue Dragon fed and protected the young ones on his own.
Nominally, the Dragon Carlette, the leader of the Dragon Group, didn’t contribute much effort; after helping Blue Dragon Akzhi establish this territory, she simply stayed in her lair, sleeping and hatching dragon eggs of unknown origin.
Most of the time, it was Akzhi maintaining the territory, transforming from a lazy, indulgent Five-Color Dragon to a hardworking model Dragon unmatched in the world.
In comparison, the adolescent Blue Dragon Akzhi appeared more like the head of a Giant Dragon family than the female Blue Dragon Carlette.
In his view, this transformation seemed more challenging than a Giant Dragon reviving its ancestral bloodline, even for Karon himself, who sometimes couldn’t overcome his own laziness, even though he could now effortlessly control the will of the Evil Dragon Blood.
But laziness isn’t an exclusive trait of the Evil Dragon Blood, rather it’s a universal existence present in every creature, amplified by the Evil Dragon Blood, thus indicating that Blue Dragon Akzhi was also, in a sense, moving towards mastering the Evil Dragon Blood.