Chapter 136: Slumber
After memorizing the newly emerged runes during his attempt to break the magic circle, Muria left the exhibition hall. With several dragon-born maids watching, he entered the library, selected some books, and then left the crystal castle.
Instead of directly returning to the titan lands, he first went to the Giant's City on Taiji Island, where he summoned numerous giant leaders and storm giants in the White Jade Palace to handle some accumulated important affairs and to accept the homage of the giants who had recently arrived at the titan islands.
Finally, Muria returned to the titan lands through a teleportation circle he had set up in the White Jade Palace.
Upon returning to his courtyard residence, Muria extended his psychic senses and found peace. Cynthia, Jessica, and Renata—the three red dragon sisters—as well as the scholarly white dragon, were all quietly sleeping in their rooms. The white tiger, Troy, was lazily sunbathing on the roof.
Seeing the four slumbering little female dragons, Muria did not disturb them. For them, fighting in the abyss was a very mentally draining task, always on edge.
For Muria, the abyssal training ground was merely a place to practice martial arts and spells. Even at just a gold fifth rank, he could easily kill lower-level soul intent demons when putting forth his full effort.
If he encountered a peak soul intent upper demon, he could not defeat it but could easily escape. As for legendary demons, they were not his concern; should such a level of demon appear, the titans would naturally handle it.
However, for these adolescent dragons, now advanced to gold-level due to consuming legendary sea monster flesh, the abyssal training ground was a perilous place where a slight mistake could be fatal.
The strength of the red dragons was generally around gold third rank, but the first six hatched red dragons led the other five-color dragons in strength, being at gold fifth rank like Muria.
Despite having the same rank, their combat abilities were vastly different, and Muria was on the verge of reaching soul intent, whereas they likely needed to go through a slumber to reach that level.
Among the five-color dragons, these six strongest red dragons could just manage to handle a first-rank soul intent demon. Against higher-ranked soul intent demons, they were outmatched and had to call for Muria's help.
Even the strongest red dragons were like this, making survival even more challenging for the younger red dragons and the other four weaker dragon types in the abyssal training ground. They had to stick together to survive.
This was exactly what Muria hoped to see and enjoyed: under the pressure of death, the five-color dragons set aside their prejudices. The strongest red dragons were willing to ally with the white dragons, often scorned among the five colors. The blue dragons no longer despised the green and black dragons, joining forces to survive in the abyssal training ground and exchange kills of demons for crystals.
This unity was one of the reasons Muria had brought the dragon group into the abyssal training ground. He wanted his fostered five-color dragons to learn to help their kind.
It might sound absurd, but Muria truly hoped the dragons he raised could achieve this, using the threat of death to force them to learn to unite—a method that, so far, seemed quite effective.
"Big cat." Muria flew to the rooftop and joined Troy, who was curling up its pure white wings and basking in the sun. Then, he naturally lay down in its soft fur.
Cassio, the half-transparent, graceful figure, materialized next to Muria, about the size of a normal human. After she formed her body, she waved her hand, and complex runes Muria couldn't break on his own condensed in front of him.
"Let's start breaking it." Muria sat up, stretched lazily, and focused on the runes in front of him, attempting to decipher them. Cassio watched silently, condensing screens filled with profound magical knowledge according to Muria's mental waves to aid his decryption.
...
Time flew, and a year passed quietly. During this time, Muria continued his routine of practicing martial arts each morning, challenging a few titans or descendants of celestial beings, then soaking in the Pool of Life, studying magic circles, deciphering legendary runes, or reading spell books and constructing spell models in his mind.
He also led the five-color dragon group to the abyssal training ground periodically for training and killing. He exerted every effort to erase their selfish, violent natures while instilling in them what he considered "correct" values.
Just as Muria was about to completely break the defensive magic circle of the golden dragon lady's castle on his forty-ninth birthday, the influence of the dragon bloodline quietly began to manifest.
At fifty, for the ancestral dragons, it was time to enter the adolescent stage.
As the sun just rose above the horizon, dispelling the darkness and casting the first rays of light,
some of the five-color dragons who had stayed up all night peeked out of their palaces towards the ancient building on the mountaintop. Usually, by this time, there should have been sounds of weapons slicing through the air, but today, it was unusually quiet.
"What's happening? Why is there no sound today?"
"Could it be that Muria decided to be lazy today, so he didn't get up to practice martial arts?" a blue dragon speculated somewhat darkly.
"Do you think that's likely?" another green dragon looked at the blue dragon disdainfully. "Muria isn't like you; how could he be lazy? In over a decade, I've never seen him take a day off."
"If Muria isn't being lazy, then something must be wrong with him," a white dragon stated calmly, making the guess closest to the truth.
"What could be wrong?" a fierce-looking red dragon asked curiously. Although the white dragons were the weakest in the group, because of the scholarly dragon Claudia, they had the highest casting ability and had developed their intelligence to an extreme.
"Muria has entered a period of slumber, preparing to move into the next age stage."