pertwk 14 Now, you have seen the dragon! [2-in-1, please read on!]
14 Now, you have seen the dragon! [2-in-1, please read on!]
Three days later.
As evening fell, the setting sun shone like blood, and the sea of clouds turned into a rosy glow.
The Wide-Range Silent Ship traveled a long distance along the Merlin Channel and finally arrived at the Mica Hunting Grounds near the upper reaches of the channel.
This is a cubic aquaculture airspace with sides exceeding fifty kilometers, surrounded by eight small sky islands.
On each side, a large number of mobile balloon stations were set up with dedicated personnel to monitor for incoming fire or airships.
Eight airships were continuously feeding the animals inside.
The hunting grounds cultivated tens of millions of luminescent mica.
Luminescent mica is a general term for luminescent mica.
Mica is the common name for jellyfish that fly in the sea of clouds.
There are many types of luminescent mica, which are widely used in lighting, anesthesia and neuromedicine.
The balancing stones inside the body can be used to make airship gyroscopes.
Small luminescent mica can also be kept as pets...
Although the total amount of pheromone in mica beast crystals is relatively low, its purity is extremely high, making it easily absorbed by the human body and suitable for direct consumption to aid in extraordinary cultivation—this is also why mica dragons love to eat luminous mica.
Hunting the Mica Dragon is a well-known paid activity in Mewon County.
Ten gold coins a day can be used to hunt any burning spirit except for cultivated mica.
Along the way, Roya barely earned ten gold coins by fishing with iron wire and selling his catch to the beast-slaughtering ships on the Merlin Channel.
Wendell observed this and, before entering the hunting grounds, gave Roya one last reminder:
Have you ever seen a mica dragon?
"I've only seen the photos."
"It feels like a scam. You've worked really hard these past few days to earn money. Are you sure you want to join the hunting grounds?"
Roya's actions were not impulsive.
Although this was my first time at the Mica Hunting Grounds, I had secretly investigated for a long time beforehand by talking to the hunters in the tavern.
There's definitely something fishy going on here, something really fishy!
In response to Wendell's question, he explained:
"Hunters aren't stupid. Even if it's a scam, the hunting grounds need to set up a typical example of someone who dies in order to attract hunters."
This typical specimen will definitely stay in the hunting ground for a long time, and that's our target.
I have personally witnessed hunters awaken their powers by consuming dragon crystals, and there was more than one of them!
Perhaps the actual number of jellyfish dragons is not as high as the hunting grounds claim.
Perhaps there is no jellyfish dragon, but just other beast crystals that can force people to awaken their powers.
But as long as we have it, we have a chance to obtain it in a relatively safe way.
Even if it means taking on an even higher bounty.
Wendell stared at Roya, lost in thought.
"I see."
Looking at her elegant, indifferent expression, Koroya seemed completely oblivious...
After a while.
The Wide-Area Silence landed on one of the four floating islands above the sea of clouds.
The sky island is not large, with a paid building in the middle and a Tier 3 security ship, as well as several Tier 1 breeding ships and hunting ships moored around it.
Roya disembarked and went to the toll booth, where he met the female toll collector who was surrounded by four mechanics.
Upon reaching the toll booth, I handed over ten gold coins:
"Two-person group, one-day ticket, airship is Cameron Whale-type hunting airship, Tier 3 four-furnace power."
After taking photos and filling out forms, the pretty female toll collector handed Luo Ya two group tickets, a ship-mounted locator, and a small mechanical pigeon for emergency communication.
Roya is registered as Solo, a mortal mechanic.
Wendell's registered name is Wendell, a first-order transcendent.
The female toll collector glanced at Luo Ya and frowned slightly.
Without asking any further questions, he began to explain the precautions for hunting the Mica Dragon:
"Hunting Mica is prohibited. Except for Mica, all other Spirits in the hunting grounds can be hunted freely, including the dozen or so Mica Dragons that frequently enter and leave the hunting grounds."
If no Burning Spirits are hunted after one day, you can receive 100 kilograms of mica jerky and a 20% discount coupon for Arden's Extraordinary Factory for free with your group ticket.
Hunting mica, having multiple hunters without tickets, changing to airships, hunting beyond the allotted time, or leaving the hunting grounds without permission will all result in hefty bounties.
In addition, there are large carnivorous jellyfish, small carnivorous jellyfish colonies, and other hunting boats in the area, so hunting safety cannot be guaranteed.
If needed, we can also purchase personal and property insurance from Lantian Company on your behalf, with a 20% discount.
Roya patted Wendell on the shoulder of his armor.
"No need, I have my own insurance."
The female toll collector glanced at Luo Ya again:
"Good luck to you both!"
Roya and Wendell quickly returned to the ship.
The Wide-Area Silence slowly ascended into the sky, and in the blink of an eye, it disappeared into the sea of clouds below, which was bathed in a magnificent glow and looked as if it were stained with blood.
……
After getting away from the Sky Island, Wendell reminded Roya:
"Your exotic face is too eye-catching; the female toll collector is already suspicious."
Luo Ya had already noticed this.
But it doesn't matter. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of handsome men in Mayman County. No woman would report him without evidence.
"Can't it just be that I'm more charming?"
Wendell glanced at Roya with a lingering look.
Appearance was secondary; what she found captivating was that beneath Roya's almost mechanical calmness and rationality lay a passionate, youthful heart.
"Given your hefty bounty, using an alias is understandable, but why would I need to conceal my extraordinary rank?"
Roya stared at Wendell, his tone unusually calm:
"Because I suspect you have the ability to conceal your rank."
"With armor on my hands, feet, and shoulders, I can indeed control and conceal my blood energy, but wouldn't it be better to reveal my strength to avoid trouble and focus more on hunting the Mica Dragon?"
"There might be something fishy going on in the hunting grounds. It's always better to keep a low profile... You're too strong, which will scare away the prey. Even if we come back empty-handed, we won't leave empty-handed."
"..."
As the airship ventured deeper into the hunting grounds, darkness fell, and visibility decreased sharply due to the shading effect of feed dust.
Roya remained stealthy and did not turn on the searchlight.
There was almost no wind in the hunting grounds.
The air currents churned slowly and erratically...
Luo Ya gradually felt short of breath and felt extremely depressed.
Occasionally, inhaling feed dust or jellyfish excrement would cause a persistent dry cough, at one point even forcing the animal to hold its breath.
Wendell waved his iron hand, raising a biting wind that blew incessantly across the deck, finally allowing Roya to breathe smoothly again.
Luo Ya took a deep breath and felt as if he were in a cave in the Hillis Mountains, with a north wind blowing on his face and refreshing the surrounding area.
"Once I awaken and become a transcendent being, you won't need to waste your energy on such trivial matters."
Wendell's eyelids drooped slightly. He casually took the ram's horn teapot from his waist, took a sip of red tea, and then said:
"I don't like getting dirty. Even without you, I would waste my energy avoiding them."
Night falls.
Ahead of the airship lay endless darkness.
At some point, tiny, colorful fireflies began to appear in the dark sea of clouds.
The fluorescence quickly focused and became clearly visible.
It's luminescent mica, cultivated in the hunting grounds!
The fluorescence varies in size and intensity, with blue light being the dominant color and other colors evenly distributed.
There are bright reds, dark purples, gilded golds, light pinks, emeralds... like gems inlaid in the night sky, shimmering with a mesmerizing luster.
As the airship passed by the swarm of phosphorescent organisms, these mica plants, seemingly unafraid of the airship and humans, gathered on the deck to forage for food...
Their bodies are transparent and soft, like clusters of flowing light bubbles swaying in the night, extending cilia or tentacles of various shapes as they grope in the darkness.
Luo Ya was able to observe the luminescent mica up close.
There is ice-blue transparent flag mica, root mica with colorful spots and eight thick tentacles, cross mica resembling red petals, fluorescent white crown mica with a green crown, and even cubic mica with a square umbrella on its head...
They are all unranked Burning Spirits.
The smallest is smaller than a human.
Large in size, comparable to a gondola.
These mica crystals flew alongside the airship, reflecting a dazzling array of colors onto the deck.
Ice blue, warm purple, blood red, emerald green, golden orange... the light and shadow are dreamlike, like boxes of spilled luminous paint, enveloping the entire airship in fairytale colors.
next moment!
The luminous mica creatures, draped in fairytale attire, suddenly extended cilia and tentacles covered with suckers and venomous stingers toward Roya and Wendell.
At the same time, it opened its abdominal cavity and quickly swallowed the two of them!
Upon contact with the biting, icy wind, the cilia and tentacles instantly retracted.
Leaving trails of afterimages in the cold wind...
One of the blue box-shaped mica spikes managed to break through Wendell's wind barrier amidst the chaos.
Like a poisoned dagger, it instantly approached Roya's left chest, nearly triggering his poison sac armor.
But it was instantly snapped by Wendell's merciless iron hand!
Roya huddled close to Wendell, practically wrapping his arms around her supple waist.
"The cilia or tentacles of luminescent mica are usually highly poisonous, so it's best to avoid them!"
Unable to get close to the two, the various mica creatures turned their attention to the meat slices piled on the deck.
Like vultures smelling carrion, they swarmed in and devoured everything.
It moved so fast that Roya couldn't keep up with its gaze, like a monkey in a zoo that wasn't afraid of humans at all, but instead actively snatched food...
Luo Ya sighed helplessly.
The next moment, the colorful and varied micas convulsed, their tentacles straightened, their crowns rapidly shrank, and they fell silent and lay dead on the deck.
Like a pile of lifeless colorful fabric pieces, the fluorescent light gradually dimmed and eventually went out completely.
"If you could understand human language, I would have reminded you earlier that these slices of meat were bait coated with the venom of the scorpion-tailed winged snake. You thought Mica could fight poison with poison, but you didn't expect..."
Wendell glanced at Roya's expression; it looked like he was doing it on purpose.
In the blink of an eye, the corpses of more than a dozen luminous mica were dragged into the dark cabin by horsehair worms.
The largest cubic mica, after being poisoned, did not die immediately. After a violent spasm, its crown, like a waving flag, rapidly fled the deck.
But he was pulled back by an iron wire piercing his intestines...
After being dehydrated, they were rolled into meat rolls and stored in the ship's hold.
Wendell was stunned for a moment, then asked curiously:
"Hunting mica, are you sure it's okay?"
Roya shrugged and said:
"How can this be called hunting? This is just handling the mica carcass for the hunting grounds. We'll hand it all over when we leave... if nothing unexpected happens."
"What do you mean by 'accident'?"
"I hope I'm overthinking it."
He gazed at the dark, surging sea of clouds, his eyes deep and thoughtful.
As the airship ventured deeper into the hunting grounds, more and more bizarrely shaped luminescent mica creatures, unable to control their mouths and tentacles, were pulled into the cabin one after another by the iron wires.
An hour later, countless tiny specks of luminescent mica surrounded them from all directions...
"Damn it, the ship's hold is already full!"
Luo Ya had no choice but to calculate the route in advance based on the density and flow of the fluorescence, maneuver the airship with agility and perform various extreme maneuvers to break out of the encirclement ahead of time.
It charged head-on into the abdomen of a giant mica ten times the size of the Wide-Range Silent, which emitted no fluorescence whatsoever!
It's like a small fish swimming into a whale's mouth on its own...
This giant mica had been waiting here for at least ten minutes, its belly open and motionless.
So much so that Roya didn't even notice!
The sour, foul-smelling digestive juices surrounded the airship from all directions, but were kept out by Wendell's wind breath.
Roya breathed a sigh of relief. If Wendell hadn't been there, the others might have been alright, but the airship would have been lost.
He could even detect in the digestive fluids fragments of undigested boiler cast iron, exhaust copper pipes, and buoyancy chambers.
"It's second-tier rotten mica, it came from outside, not the luminous mica cultivated in the hunting grounds, so it's safe to hunt!"
"I see."
Wendell had already spotted the giant mica, but assumed Roya wanted to hunt from inside it, which was why he hadn't warned him.
As long as one can withstand the massive amount of corrosive liquid from the mica floc, entering the mica's body is indeed the best place to hunt it.
boom!
boom!
boom!
The Wide-Area Silence fired a salvo, instantly riddling the outer shell of the Rotten Mica with holes.
The flashes of artillery fire exploded in the darkness, illuminating the mica's interior as bright as day.
Blood, flesh, and digestive juices splattered.
The hunting grounds were quickly shrouded in mist...
The mica frantically contracted its body to heal its wounds.
Roya was able to determine the location of the ever-approaching burning crystal.
Whoosh—
A harpoon cannon shot out!
The harpoon pierced the darkness with a sharp whooshing sound, striking the mica crystal with pinpoint accuracy.
The burst fishing net quickly retracted, catching the burning crystal.
The network cable contracted instantly, severing all the neural connections that were adhering to the mica crystal!
The rotten mica emitted a mournful sound, like grinding teeth.
The digestive juices inside his body churned and boiled instantly, surging towards the Wide-Area Silence like an enraged beast.
However, it was completely blocked by the wind barrier on the deck, and the waves crashed and roared.
The Wide-Range Silent ship raised its central main gun in front of the watchtower and aimed it at the head of the mica.
Load a high-intensity furnace cannon that is thicker and longer than a human body.
A single shot was fired!
Deafeningly loud—
The rapidly flying shell tore a wide passage through the dying, decaying mica body.
Finally, a giant crater was blasted open in the head of the mica.
The Wide-Area Silence quickly flew away from the collapsed and disintegrated mica body along the path opened by the shell.
The harpoon gun's cable was quickly retrieved, pulling the mica burning crystal onto the airship's deck.
It was only about the size of a human head, with dark gray surfaces covered in blue nerves, and it reeked of decay...
It looks like it will be difficult to sell it for a good price.
Luo Ya was somewhat disappointed and complained:
"Compared to the enormous size of the mica, this is the result of excessive fitness training."
Wendell seemed to be deep in thought.
The rotten mica also feeds on luminescent mica, but at this moment it is cooperating with the luminescent mica to hunt humans and airships.
"Don't you feel that these mica molecules seem to cooperate with each other, as if they have collective intelligence?"
Luo Ya understood the meaning of collective intelligence, but the luminous mica in the hunting grounds was not of the same kind, and its total number was at least ten orders of magnitude less than that of emerging collective intelligence.
"I'm more inclined to believe that there's a beast tamer nearby."
Beastmasters, also known as beast-taming superhumans, are the rarest and most efficient hunters in the steam age.
A beast tamer who can control the mica in the hunting grounds means...
Wendell crossed his arms, seemingly lost in thought.
"You mean... the hunting grounds not only want to make money off us, but they also want our ship?"
"And life... Hunting for spirits is nowhere near as profitable as hunting for hunters. Merlin Passage is full of traps, which is something novice hunters must go through."
The stories Roya heard all came from the survivors.
"The current harvest, even after deducting the cost of phlogiston, already exceeds the ticket price; everything after that is pure profit."
For the next hour or so, wherever the Wide-Area Silence went, the luminescent mica dispersed.
Like countless stars in the sky, extinguished because of you.
Only a few giant beasts that feed on luminescent mica watched from afar, not daring to approach, much less set traps or ambushes.
Wendell was not used to dim light; his golden pupils were unfocused, like the halo of sunset.
Even though I kept drinking tea, I still felt drowsy.
Luo Ya had no choice but to light a kerosene lamp with a glass cover mixed with phlogiston and place it in front of the watchtower.
The flickering flame cast a dim, shimmering glow on Wendell's holy face...
Roya looked at Wendell's shifty gaze.
The drowsiness disappeared.
Instead, there is a sense of detachment, as if the soul is adrift, as if trapped in endless memories.
Despite her best efforts to restrain herself, she would occasionally snap out of her daze, furrow her brow, glance at Luo Ya, and make sure she was still herself.
At times, his gaze would wander unfocused, his mind wandering, and he would almost forget who he was...
This made Roya realize that Wendell's soul was like a candle flickering in the wind, seemingly sliding irreversibly into the abyss.
Finding him at the Distillery Tavern and rescuing him from the jaws of the Triceratops was the final peak of her sanity.
Could it be that Wendell is really just a fragment of Ishtar's soul?
Roya was both worried about Wendell and harbored a strange expectation for Ishtar.
At that moment, he realized that a two-person team was not suitable for complex and ever-changing hunting missions... He needed at least one more teammate!
To help Wendell perk up, Roya suddenly asked her:
Have you ever seen a dragon?
Wendell had never seen him before.
But Ishtar kept feeding her remnant soul fragments of memories about seeing the dragon, vague and indescribable...
She tilted her head back, took a sip of black tea, and forced out two words:
"no."
Roya blew out the kerosene lamp and pointed to a streak of light piercing the sky ahead of the airship, trailing a rainbow-colored tail, and said:
"Now, you've seen it."