"Splash!" Bai Feng pulled up her fishing rod, only to find the hook empty. The disappearance of the fish was happening at an astonishing rate. She had merely accepted a "Stocking Up Ingredients" task issued by the chef due to the mysterious mass disappearance of fish. However, upon arriving at the Wildspire Waste, she quickly realized that gathering 20 Pink Parexus was far more challenging than she had imagined.
"Splash!" The young dragon disdainfully tossed a small goldfish back into the water. Such tiny fish weren't even enough to fill the gaps between its teeth. The fish harvest had truly dwindled significantly, even though it had already restrained its appetite and switched its main diet to Kelbi. It seemed that a new glutton had arrived in the area.
A territory typically could only sustain one apex predator. Yet, clearly, there were now two apex predators feeding on aquatic life, especially since one of them had a habit of hoarding.
"Roar~" The Rathian wandered through the oasis at the edge of the wasteland, her venomous saliva dripping from her mouth. She had been pregnant for some time, and the eggs inside her urged her to seek more food. However, the territory's resources were far too scarce. Returning to her original territory would mean facing the danger of battling a Diablos—a risk she, as a pregnant female dragon, could not afford to take.
This place was truly no longer suitable to stay. The young dragon decided to move, but the prerequisite for relocation was mastering the ability to fly long distances—a challenging feat. It packed the essentials it needed to take with it, clutching them in its front claws, and crouched atop the rocky peak. Its wings spread wide, and bluish flames, slightly different from those of its kin, orderly alternated from the tiny nozzles across its body.
After nearly a year of growth, the young dragon's wings entered their first developmental phase. The rapid growth of its bony wing plates caused intense itching, requiring constant rubbing for slight relief. Beyond that, flying was essential. The high heat would burn away the less dense components, and the resulting ash and residue would recondense into new material, sealing the growth gaps in the bones and forming the initial heat-resistant wing plates capable of controlling the jet flames.
As time passed, these heat-resistant plates would continuously wear off and accumulate more material during battles, eventually becoming broader and harder. At that point, it would need to use rocks to grind away the excess, allowing the bones to regrow. Otherwise, the plates would grow so large that they would block the jet nozzles, ultimately threatening its life.
The second growth of wing plates signaled that it had entered a prolonged adolescence, lasting until the plates wore down completely a century later, marking the onset of old age. At that time, it would once again consume large amounts of minerals, allowing toxic metals to accumulate within its body.
This step would kill nearly 90% of dragons. However, those with strong enough digestive systems, having preyed on the livers of numerous ichthyosaurs, would slowly expel the metals through their wing nozzles. Under intense heat, these would sinter and solidify into true "Celestial Wisdom Wing Plates," signifying its transition from an "Elder Dragon species" to a true "Elder Dragon."
That said, the ability to rapidly grow bony wing plates meant it could now truly fly—a difficult skill to master. In fact, without maternal guidance, it had already fallen countless times. After experiencing flight firsthand, the young dragon gained a new understanding of the human knowledge stored in its memory: "Every takeoff is a gamble with death, and every landing is a brush with it." Well, perhaps the original words weren't exactly that, but it had reinterpreted them based on its own experience.
Without parental guidance, learning to fly would be an extremely challenging task for the young dragon. This was not a species that relied on flapping wings for lift, nor was it a gliding type like the Thunderclap Dragon. For them, flight was achieved through high-speed fluid jet propulsion, forcibly lifting themselves into the sky. At high speeds, their flat, scale-less bellies and streamlined, ridge-like backs formed a broad triangular lifting surface, ensuring basic buoyancy.
To ascend, it adjusted a pair of wing flaps for downward vector thrust. To descend, it reduced the thrust, allowing its heavy weight to naturally lower its altitude. While this method of flight was incredibly fast, it also meant there was almost no room for fine-tuning direction or making agile maneuvers. A single mistake would inevitably result in a brutal confrontation between a mass of flesh and the ground, with the latter emerging victorious.
Therefore, in theory, a young dragon without hands-on parental instruction could never learn to fly. However, it had other "teachers" from which to learn the postures and processes of flight. Though these teachers' propulsion systems weren't located on their wings, their wings couldn't flap, and their thrusters couldn't move freely, this ironically reduced the difficulty of its flight training.
"First, grip the ground tightly, then push the engine to maximum... engine?" The young dragon decided to replace the incomprehensible terms with something it understood. It spread its wing plates to their fullest, unleashing a torrent of flames, while its limbs clung tightly to the rocks to resist the force propelling it forward. "Then, once at full power, release the brakes."
When it felt it could no longer hold on, the dragon loosened its claws, and the entire creature shot off the cliff like a flaming arrow. It dipped slightly under the pull of gravity, but as the three pairs of jet wings tilted slightly, it regained its original altitude, circling in the sky with a high-pitched roar.
"Roar!" After a brief battle, the female Rathian had killed a Piscine Wyvern and was now tearing into its flesh. The dragon raised its head and let out a threatening roar at the noisy flying wyvern species in the sky. At the same time, the young dragon caught sight of this much larger monster and the numerous Piscine Wyvern remains at its feet. Ah, so this was the reason for the sudden decline in fish harvests in its territory.
Bai Feng and her companions had also identified the culprit. "Just how many years has it lived to grow to such a massive size?" "Let's not approach it. We'll leave quietly." Bai Feng touched the bone hunting bow on her back. Her equipment wasn't enough to penetrate the Rathian's scales. Now wasn't the right time for a fight. They needed to return and prepare more thoroughly.
However, as a self-proclaimed gourmet, it would not give up due to the weight of its prey. It spent several days searching through nearby shipwrecks and found a rusty hunter's spear. After sharpening and thinning it, it tied the spear to the outside of its thigh with vines, making it easily accessible for its forelimbs. Next, it gathered several empty wooden barrels to use as tools for practicing its new hunting technique.
Its "teachers" had repeatedly instructed it on how to hunt underwater prey and which weapons to use. Now, it was time to put those lessons into practice. First, it ascended. The abundant sea fish and the fuel accumulated from its feasts propelled it higher and higher into the sky. After piercing through the thin veil of white clouds, the dazzling sunlight bathed its body. Then, it shut off its engine, allowing itself to naturally flip and descend along an inverted U-shaped trajectory.
The wind howled past its sides as its three pairs of wings tightly folded against its body. Its speed increased rapidly, and the friction with the air heated its beak and facial armor. The horns on its head and the back of its skull glowed red-hot as usual, resembling a meteor streaking down from the heavens toward the sea.
"Whoosh!" Its wings spread wide, and the six wing flaps frantically ejected, gradually slowing its speed. The wooden pole, used as a training tool, shot into the sea like an arrow under the force of inertia. Without a doubt, the first training session ended in failure, with its landing point at least a hundred meters away from the target barrel.
It must be said that compared to its kin, it seemed to have mastered some rather extraordinary attack techniques. At least, other Astalos would only dive and glide while searching for prey, then swoop diagonally into the water to snatch fish. They had yet to learn the advanced skill of using a "harpoon," let alone the mysterious technique of utilizing an Immelmann turn to accumulate energy and release it for a dive-bombing attack.
This training process lasted a long time, until it had nearly devoured all the edible fish along the coast, leaving only the unpalatable, fuel-inefficient pink dragonfish. Finally, its accuracy improved from less than 1% to around 60%, though this was limited to stationary targets. However, for a creature with human-like knowledge, this was hardly an issue.
Because some hunters are always generous enough to sponsor it with hunting tools, such as... bait. For a tuna, it needs to keep swimming to maintain its breathing, which in turn requires it to constantly feed to sustain its energy. Food, movement, and time gradually infuse its fat and flesh with flavor, shaping its massive size to the point where some predators dare not target it.
Today was no exception. The plump and gluttonous tuna swam around, searching for anything edible. Its habits were similar to those of a shark—its stomach could contain just about anything. There was no danger nearby; the explosive dragonfish and large dragonfish that used to prey on them had recently vanished. Meanwhile, the delicious squid and jellyfish were still alive, allowing it to expend less energy than usual to fill its belly.
"Splash!" A twisted mass fell into the water. Driven by instinct, it quickly swam away, but soon realized it might be some kind of food. Whether a fish's memory lasts only seven seconds or not, at the very least, the shape of that large jellyfish matched something in its instinctive memory. So, it swam closer, circling around the mass that might have been a jellyfish, repeatedly attempting to peck at it.
The young dragon narrowed its eyes, the air currents parting like solid walls as they flowed past. The shadow on the sea's surface, unusually still for once, was unmistakably visible. In its pursuit of food, it had risked suffocation by slowing its swimming speed—precisely the goal of the predator in the sky, which was now diving down with a shrill, ghostly wail. As the altitude dropped to the point where it could almost see the texture of the plump fatty mass on the water's surface, its four claws released...
"Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh!" A cluster of harpoons, crafted from iron spears, tongs, and other metal rods, plunged into the water with a timing error of no more than a second. To improve accuracy, the young dragon had replaced its single harpoon with a clustered version—a choice that proved wise, as several unlucky tuna had already surfaced. Clearly, more than one glutton had been enticed by the jellyfish lure!
This was an exceptionally successful hunt. Satisfied, the young dragon tugged at the ropes attached to the harpoons, flying at a low speed as it towed the three unfortunate tuna toward the shore. It had already prepared a full set of tools, ready to strip away their slightly silvery-blue skin and reveal the tender, crimson flesh layered with fat, reminiscent of the finest beef. For this, it had even risked a confrontation with a Rathian to steal some blue mushrooms and dragon fruit from its hunting grounds, along with a few stalks of poison sac grass, crafting a "Astalos Special Spicy Dipping Sauce"—a special treat prepared for these hundreds of kilograms of delicious meat.
Meanwhile, the mud dragon, nearly ten meters long and intimidating enough to deter the female fire dragon from preying on it, suddenly experienced a sense of foreboding that seemed beyond its intellectual capacity. As a species just as delicious as tuna, it was a "mobile fuel depot" with layers of crystalline, high-quality fish oil and fat beneath its dirty, muddy exterior. When faced with a "gourmet that never says no," it seemed that the mud and hard shell it relied on for protection might no longer suffice.
"The gourmet never says no" was the young dragon's philosophy. The pursuit of more and better food was an endless journey. It was filled with simple curiosity about the world, which it summarized in the famous "Three Questions of the Heavenly Gift" or later known as the "Three Questions of Crystal": "Can it be eaten?" "Is it tasty?" "How do I eat it?" This mindset, almost indistinguishable from human dietary habits and preferences, was the original driving force behind its rise to the top of the ecological chain.
The only regret was that no one shared the delicacies of the "Dragon Restaurant" located at the bottom of the Dragon Crystal Land with it. This was the greatest sorrow for the crystal dragon, who had already reached the pinnacle of the new world's ecological hierarchy.
PS:
In reality, the hunting time of hunters is far longer than what you experience in the game. The simplest point to notice is that the ships traveling between continents are not steam-powered vessels. When you complete 2-3 missions, the Fourth Fleet's supply team has already made a round trip, delivering the items you ordered—indirectly indicating that the duration of a single mission is roughly equivalent to the time it takes for a ship to travel between two continents, which is at least 1-2 months or more.
Moreover, the actual hunting grounds are not as confined as in the game due to technical limitations; they are, in fact, vast areas. Hunters often spend dozens of days to several months completing the process of tracking traces, pursuing prey, setting traps, and hunting, rather than finishing it all within 50 minutes as in the game.
If hunting were truly this fast and frequent, the ecological chain would be utterly incapable of supporting such rampant overhunting by hunters... even if most Elder Dragons were only repelled rather than captured or killed.