Iron Dragon's Advancement Journey

　But this did nothing to improve the overall situation.

　Behind the murloc warriors, twelve spellcasters had appeared. They were divided into pairs, holding hands as they released bolts of lightning, each capable of accurately killing a kobold.

　The other four dragon vein warlocks in the tribe also began to provide magical support, but they were completely outnumbered and had little ability to effectively counter the spells of the Kotau murloc casters.

　The kobold warriors had a numerical advantage, but they were completely unable to stop the murloc warriors' advance.

　The disparity in strength was too great; this was a massacre.

　Dragon, please, bless the Kalik tribe just one more time!

　Using a misdirection attack to dodge a bolt of lightning, Eisen cried out in despair.

　"Stop! I have decided to take you all as my servants. Who dares to lay a hand on my servants!" A dragon's roar drowned out the sounds of battle. The Kotō murlocs were startled, but the kobolds were instantly filled with courage.

　The dragon is here! The dragon has really come!

　That's a dragon!

　39. Clear the area

　"No! I just decided to take you as my servants, how come you're about to perish? Hold on, I'm coming to save you!"

　Casalos had no idea how the kobolds would misinterpret his muttering growls; he simply didn't want the servant he had just decided to take in to disappear inexplicably.

　They were just a bunch of Koto fishmen who appeared out of nowhere, with one leader who seemed to be a high-level warrior, four whip-wielders, twelve priests, and about thirty ordinary spear-wielding wanderers. They were only as strong as the fourth or fifth room of the Dragon's Treasury.

　Of course, Casalos didn't have any in-game buffs at this point, and the difficulty of the fourth and fifth rooms was actually beyond its ability to cope. But it wasn't alone; it still had the kobolds to hold it off.

　Most importantly, the Dragon's Treasure Vault's training dungeon disabled its flight ability, and now it can fly... Air-to-ground attacks are a dimensional reduction attack, a universal truth in all worlds!

　After being frustrated for so long, Casalos finally got to experience the thrill of licking the ground – this was Casalos's most fundamental psychological motivation for rashly joining the battlefield.

　Perhaps it was the pleasant mood, or perhaps it was the flames from the Bejuri Gem Dragon or some other enhancement, but Casalos swooped down at an unprecedented speed. With the powerful throbbing of its dragon heart and the steady, calm pulse of its basal vessels, the nearly 6-meter-long hatchling folded its wings backward, the folded wing membranes vibrating at a high frequency with the friction against the air, emitting a high-pitched, sharp cry.

　Kou Tao, a merman, possessed nearly 360-degree vision thanks to his protruding fish eyes. Even in dim light, he still spotted the dragon approaching from the sky, its light flashing. Under the whip-wielder's command, a dozen shield-wielding warriors returned to the priest's ranks, raising their shields to provide them with protection.

　With about ten fewer line-filling warriors, the pressure on the kobolds was suddenly relieved. Riding on their innate worship of dragons, they launched a counter-offensive and finally stabilized their defenses. Every three warriors, each accompanied by a ferocious weasel, withstood the overwhelming attack of the Kotō murlocs and stopped losing men.

　Casalos's primary target was the group of murloc priests who had the ability to attack air units.

　The murloc priests had just finished unleashing a burst of lightning and were not yet ready to launch another attack. Seeing a dark shadow, flashing with flames and accompanied by terrifying screams, descending from the sky, they shrieked and hid behind the warriors' shields, praying to their gods that the dragon would target other unfortunate creatures and not them.

　However, their gods did not protect them at this moment.

　When it reached a height of about thirty meters, Casalos opened its mouth, letting the howling wind rush in and into its lungs, where it was compressed and mixed with the dragon magic supplied by its basal vessels, igniting into a raging flame that crackled with electric sparks.

　Having completed its breath attack, it had already descended to below twenty meters. The magically sculpted lightning and flames, mixed with dragon breath, roared and erupted in a cone, giving it a tremendous recoil force. Spreading its wings fully, the shrill roar changed tone, and the flame-studded fledgling dragon traced a graceful arc, transitioning from a rapid dive to a low-altitude flight less than five meters above the ground. Its dragon breath swept across the ground like a broom, engulfing the Kotao murloc priest and the warriors protecting them.

　At least half of the 12 priests and 12 murloc warriors who were providing cover perished in that dragon's breath.

　"Whoa!"

　Seeing this, the leader of the Kou Tao fishmen bared his teeth and roared, stomping on the rocks beneath his feet and leaping high into the air, where he threw his short spear.

　"Wow, you probably need to be at least a level 8 warrior. On the ground, I'd really have to avoid you..."

　Casalos dodged the high-speed spear with a roll, flipped over to the outside of the stone pillar, turned and went deeper into the ground. When he resurfaced, he was on the other side, far away from the murloc leader.

　With the same dive and acceleration, the same charging dragon breath, the Kou Tao murloc leader rushed to cover them, but could only watch helplessly as the last few spellcasters in the group perished in the dragon breath halfway through.

　Without the support of spellcasters, the kobolds completely reversed the situation. Five dragon veins, at most level three or four, merged together and spammed various positive and negative effects on the battlefield. They would occasionally throw out a direct damage spell, smashing a certain overly brave murloc warrior to pieces.

　At this point, the attack launched by Kou Tao the fishmen had failed. The leader let out a shout, and the fishmen who had not yet fallen let go and retreated. With a few leaps, they broke away from the kobolds' pursuit and gathered near the leader. They jumped off the cliff and slid down the travertine layer.

　The kobolds roared with cheers, but Casalos did not descend to accept their worship; it would not let go of this opportunity to beat a drowning dog.

　Diving to catch up with the swooping fish-like group, unfazed by the threatening gaze of the high-ranking warrior leader, Casaloz, regardless of whether the other party understood dragon language or not, maintained a safe distance and taunted, "What are you glaring at? If you're not happy, jump up and hit me!"

　A warrior who has already thrown out his weapon can no longer pose any real threat to the flying Casalos during the descent, unless it wants to test whether it will die from falling from that height of a hundred meters onto the water.

　After roaring, Casaloz unleashed a breath attack—but not aimed at the leader warrior. It had no idea whether its dragon breath, unenhanced at its current hatchling stage, could kill a high-level warrior; weakening the enemy's forces was its true objective in the pursuit…

　The fluorescence completely died out, sparks flew everywhere in the darkness, the kobolds at the top of the stone pillars cheered, the leader of the Kotō fishmen roared, and corpses exuding the stench of burning protein fell into the lake below the stone pillars, creating waves.

　In the end, only the lone Kou Tao fishman leader returned to the water. It poked its head out of the water and stared with resentment at the figure that had been flashing with flames from time to time flying back to the top of the stone pillar that had lit the lighting torch. A burst of cheering barks erupted.

　Casalos folded his wings and landed on the stone platform where the kobold tribe had fought. As he watched the small lizards kneeling on the ground, barking and chanting broken dragon language words to him in submission and reverence, a sense of satisfaction he had never experienced before welled up in his heart.

　"No wonder dragons like to take kobolds as servants; this is what 'humans'..."

Chapter 39

　'The feeling of unconditional worship...it's absolutely amazing.'

　Casaroz shook his large head, sat down, and waited for the five dragon vein sorcerers to approach him respectfully.

　“Magnificent, radiant treasure… Hmm, offspring of the dragon, the Karrick tribe is willing to follow your wings that shield the glowing dome, and spread your blazing light throughout the Underdark…”

　The five knelt on one knee before Casalos, and the only female spoke in fluent dragon language.

　40. A clever little dog

　Casalos gained his first batch of servants.

　Although it was just a group of weak kobolds, it was still only a fledgling dragon.

　Now that you have servants, the next thing to consider is how to develop slowly, accumulate resources, and delay declaring yourself king... Yeah, right!

　The Karrick tribe is now facing a life-or-death situation.

　"They must have come from the Tu-La-Bu tribe, and like us, they were driven to this remote rift valley by the snake people from the large cave on the west side. After arriving here, we discovered the fluorescent mushroom clusters on these stone pillars and settled here. The Kou-Tao fish people, on the other hand, chose to live underwater."

　Prior to this, we had not had much interaction, only occasionally engaging in small transactions, and had never had any conflicts.

　I don't know why, but they suddenly launched this attack on us.

　The female kobold named Eisen was the most fluent in dragon language among the kobold tribe. She had smooth scales and faintly visible dragon horns on her head, which made Casaloz quite pleasing to the eye. Therefore, she became the leader of the Karick tribe—they originally wanted to change their name to the Holy Tribe of the Shining Dragons, but Casaloz objected to this name, so he allowed them to retain their original name, simply adding the prefix Casaloz to the full name—Eisen was now Casaloz's liaison in "ruling" the Karick tribe.

　She reported everything about the Kalik tribe to Casaloz.

　The attack by the Kotow merfolk is the first major event that Casaloz and the Karrick tribe are about to face.

　"It's not a territorial dispute, not a conflict of interest, and not a generational feud, so it must be an internal problem. Do you know roughly how big they are?"

　"That's unclear. They live underwater, which is basically a different world from ours. But judging from the attacking force, their tribe probably has around 600 people. You killed so many of their warriors, they certainly won't stop there."

　“That’s right, they’ll soon raise a new force for revenge.” Casalos lay sprawled on a pile of low-quality iron ore, chewing on a roasted hallucinogenic mushroom.

　The kobold's cooking skills are quite good. The mushrooms are roasted until crispy on the outside and tender on the inside. They are marinated in rock salt before roasting, making them very juicy. The surface is sprinkled with iron ore and the accompanying gemstone powder as seasoning, which is very suitable for Tielong's taste.

　This stuff has very weak hallucinogenic properties; even kobolds can use their willpower to wake themselves from hallucinations. Casalos is completely exempt from it and eats it without any worries.

　Taking over a kobold tribe as a servant was definitely the right choice.

　As it ate, it pondered and discussed with Eisen, "For a kobold, you're quite clever."

　Upon hearing this, Eisen was so frightened that he completely flattened his lizard body, and said in a trembling voice, "Your Excellency, the Heavy Metal Dragon, I am not..."

　"No, no, you don't need to be so afraid. I'm not one of those capricious, evil dragons. I'm sincerely praising you. I really like your intelligence. Having a smart assistant saves me a lot of time and energy."

　Rest assured, now that I have regarded the Karrick tribe as my servants, I will not easily abandon you.

　But you can't place all your hopes on me. You should know very well that I'm just a fledgling dragon right now. If I were to run to the surface, I couldn't even defeat the leader of the Kou Tao merfolk.

　"Aww?" Eisen unconsciously let out a soft, puzzled hum, probably not expecting such a humble dragon.

　"Don't be so surprised. Dragons need to know their own limitations to live a long life. If you have the opportunity to meet and learn more about those famous old dragons on the continent, you will find that they are not actually that arrogant and conceited in most cases, even the red dragons are like that."

　So you don't need to be so reserved in front of me. As long as you maintain the proper respect and order, you can say whatever you want.

　Now, put your intelligence to good use and let's discuss how to defend against the possible attacks that the Kou Tao fishmen might launch next..."

　Like a lizard, Eisen stuck out his long tongue and licked his nictitating membrane, finally getting into his role and analyzing the situation: "The fact that we were able to occupy this fluorescent mushroom patch and settle here is definitely one of the most important factors!"

　The stone pillar where the fluorescent mushroom cluster was located was surrounded by smooth cliffs, connected to another stone pillar to the north by only a natural stone bridge. The fluorescent light of the mushroom cluster was very attractive to wild monsters. After arriving here, we set up a large number of traps on the only stone bridge and dug many shallow tunnels for defense, thus repelling wave after wave of attacks from the monsters.

　It was precisely these traps that allowed us to gain a foothold in this remote rift valley.

　We thought that as long as it wasn't the Mind Flayer's Shell Ship that launched the attack, our defenses would be impregnable!

　Even the slave-hunting teams that regularly travel from the Grey Dwarf City in the Southeast Great Rift wouldn't easily attack the Fluorescent Mushroom Cluster.

　But now it seems that the Kou Tao fishmen don't need to attack the easily defensible stone bridge from the front; they can actually climb up directly along the smooth cliff face.

　Fortunately, they only crawl, not fly. They are most vulnerable to attack and unable to effectively retaliate when crawling on the cliff face. Therefore, we must quickly set traps on the stone pillars and cliffs, dig tunnels, and establish sentry posts…”

　The kobolds were already carrying out the defensive arrangements that Eisen had mentioned. Ignoring the attraction of firelight to the monsters in the darkness, they lit torches in the mushroom bushes, and the clanging and banging never stopped.

　“Indeed, but it’s still too slow. If the Kotao merfolk attack now, you still won’t have any effective defenses. Your traps are useless against the Kotao merfolk…”

　Casalos, recalling the descriptions from his memory, filled in the gaps in Eisen and the kobolds' defenses: "The Koto fishmen have tough, smooth skin, constantly covered in a large amount of lubricating mucus, which has given rise to several unique abilities. Your deadly traps using bones as blades and spearheads, your nets woven from vines, and the falling rocks placed along the cliff edge will likely be very ineffective against them."

　Furthermore, if their next attack involves two or more high-ranking warriors working together, or is covered by a high-level spellcaster, I won't have many opportunities to attack them from the air as I have before. The effective range of my dragon breath is still too short.

　They can climb the stone pillar with very few casualties.

　"Wise heavy metal dragon, please guide us and grant the Carrick tribe a way to fight against the Kotto fishmen!" Eisen prostrated himself on the ground.

　"Hey, what a clever little dog! Don't worry, since I said so, there are definitely some ways..."

　The author says:

　Author's Note: ————

　I have a fever again, and my gastritis, which I haven't had in years, has also come out. My whole body aches, my stomach cramps, I can't eat anything, I have no energy at all, and I feel awful. Sigh, my body is like this now.

　41. Defense Deployment

　Of course, there are solutions.

　Under Casaloz's command, the more than 200 surviving kobolds of the Kalik tribe got to work.

　They temporarily halted their massive project of carving tunnels into the rock face, carrying their pickaxes and hoes, and waving them at the stalagmites that were visible everywhere.

　stone

Chapter 40

　The head is what they will be mining on a large scale next.

　The Karrick tribe's geographical advantage is absolute. If the mushroom jungle atop the stone pillars is considered their city, then the cliffs surrounding the pillars are the most natural "city walls." No matter how strong the Kotow fishmen are, they need to cross this insurmountable barrier to pose a threat to the kobolds.

　For the defense of the city walls against climbers, falling rocks, boiling oil, and even boiling molten gold would be excellent options for ordinary people.

　Unfortunately, the Kou Tao fishmen are not "ordinary people." They are born with two special abilities: "slippery" and "sticky," which can effectively avoid being hit by falling rocks, especially when the kobolds are too weak to prepare for large falling rocks.

　At the same time, Kou Tao fishmen are immune to common toxins, which greatly reduces the effectiveness of the golden juice.

　As for boiling oil... where would you find oil in this godforsaken place? Forget oil, even if you wanted to use water instead, you'd have to fetch water from the lake hundreds of meters above, which is highly impractical.

　Each situation requires a specific approach. Methods like falling rocks are typically used against ordinary people. Since the Kou Tao fishman has its own unique characteristics, we can certainly find suitable countermeasures by using our brains.

　Can a stone only be a stone?

　Of course not. Stones are simply irregularly shaped, glassy aggregates of minerals; minerals are their essence. In other words, stones are minerals, and given the right conditions, they can transform into something else.

　The Underdark Rift Valley where Casalos was located was a typical karst landscape; any rock he broke off could be considered a decent limestone deposit. Quicklime was also a powerful defensive weapon. Casalos never imagined that after being reborn as a dragon and possessing innate magical power, he would still need to rely on the junior and senior high school knowledge he had almost forgotten from his previous life.

　"Perhaps this is also a new approach that has helped me grow rapidly..."

　Knowledge is always one of the most powerful weapons. Even if Casalos's knowledge of natural sciences from his previous life may not be fully applicable in this world, the scientific method gives him a way of thinking and logic that is very different from the magical world, which may give him some different possibilities?

　If you can pull off a whole bunch of crazy stunts in a tabletop role-playing game, imagine what a complete and realistic world would be like.

　The kobolds possess an unwavering dedication and love for their work, etched into their very souls. Had it not been for their poor physical condition, they could have been even more skilled miners than the dwarves. As a dragon-origin race that unconditionally worships dragons, they regard the goals set for them by the dragons as ironclad rules.

　The two hundred or so kobolds moved with remarkable efficiency. In less than a night, they had erected over a hundred earthen kilns within the mushroom thicket. They first laid down coal dug from several nearby stone pillars—who knows why there are coal mines in this underground world? Anyway, it's a common mineral in the Underdark, second only to limestone. The Grey Dwarves have built one steel city after another thanks to underground coal mines. This is probably a blessing from the Earth Goddess, Shonti. They laid a layer of stone on top of the coal, then covered it with another layer of coal and lit it. In just a few hours, large quantities of grayish-white and soft stones were produced.

　They were broken into small pieces, ground into powder, and packed into vine-woven baskets. They were then transported to the edge of the stone pillar cliff, where the city's most important lethal weapon was ready.

　While the burning of quicklime was in full swing, on the other side, Eisen led a group of female kobolds to weave a large number of hanging baskets with vines. Using winches, they lowered the thinner kobolds down the cliff and drew crisscrossing grid lines on the stone pillars with crushed fluorescent mushroom spore juice. These lines would serve as attack markers for dropping quicklime.

　The Darklands are dimly lit, and even under the fluorescent light of "daytime," the kobolds' dark vision range is only about twenty meters. At "night," when the fluorescent light dims, it will decrease to only a few meters. The greatest threat of the Kotō fishmen's attack methods lies in their stealth and surprise. Early warning is the most important thing for defense.

　The ferocious weasels tamed by the Carrick tribe became the main force for early warning. In the first attack, it was the ferocious weasels that first discovered the situation and alerted Eisen and her guards, preventing them from being beheaded in the first wave of attacks. Otherwise, if they had lost a dragon vein sorcerer at the beginning, the Carrick tribe might not have been able to hold out until Casalos arrived.

　This is also a geographical advantage.

　The lava waterfall that led Casalos into the Underdark was not far away. The scorching lava flow, cascading down the waterfall, heated the nearby lake water, forming a warm current that flowed around the base of the stone pillars. As the warm current rose, the pressure difference created by the temperature difference formed a boundary layer that adhered tightly to the cold travertine surface of the stone pillars, carrying the scent very, very high.

　A vine-covered corridor was built outside the cliff specifically for the ferocious weasels to roam, allowing them to temporarily reside there. This way, they could immediately smell the fishy stench of the Kou Tao fishmen carried by the rising air currents from the stone pillars.

　With this setup, repelling the large-scale attack of the Kou Tao fishman "soldiers" should not be a problem.