Book 10, Baruch – Chapter 30, Discovery
The buckets filled with dragon blood were placed in front of the three children, and with a flip of his hand, Linley retrieved a large quantity of Blueheart Grass from his ring. The jade green leaves of the Blueheart Grass glimmered with that layer of faint blue light. Linley divided it into three parts, with each part having five clumps.
“Listen up, the three of you.” Linley looked at the three kids.
Cena, Taylor, and Sasha all stood attentively in front of Linley, listening to their elder’s instructions. Linley said, “In a while, drink as much dragon’s blood as possible, until your stomach is totally full. But before doing so, you must eat this Blueheart Grass. Logically speaking, three clumps per person should be enough, but just to be safe, it’s best if you each eat all five.”
“Eat grass?” Sasha wrinkled her nose unhappily.
To let a child eat Blueheart Grass, especially one who had been pampered all her life, would naturally result in some resistance.
“Sis, when Father was in his teens, he had to go all by himself to the Mountain Range of Magical Beasts to search for Blueheart Grass and drink the blood of the Armored Razorback Wyrm. Father is now placing dragon’s blood in front of us. And you’re afraid to drink it?” Taylor didn’t have any concerns; he immediately grabbed the Blueheart Grass and began to eat it.
With big gulps, he swallowed it all down.
Seeing this, Linley couldn’t help but reveal a hint of a smile on his face. Linley was quite satisfied with his son, Taylor. Although Taylor was rather playful, he was able to work hard and endure bitterness, and he trained hard as well. Taylor wasn’t much weaker than the level Linley had been when Linley was ten.
Cena smiled, then grabbed the Blueheart Grass and began to eat it as well.
“Sasha, it’s fine. The Blueheart Grass’ juice is actually quite cool and refreshing.” Cena said enticingly.
“Oh?” Watched by her father, Sasha picked up the Blueheart Grass and began to chew it. As she chewed, her face turned bitter. “Big brother Cena, you tricked me. The juice is cool, but the leaves make my mouth go numb.” Despite complaining, Sasha still ate it.
Linley and Delia were laughing.
“Glug, glug.” Taylor was the first to lift up that small pail of blood and began to pour it in his mouth. Taylor knew that the more dragon’s blood he drank, the easier it would be to activate the Dragonblood lineage in his veins, and so he drank it all with big gulps and no hesitation.
Cena and Sasha raised up their pails and began to drink as well.
“Glug, glug.” The three children drank dragon’s blood at the same time. This sight caused Linley to sigh endlessly with emotion.
The predecessors cut the firewood, and the successors will not fear the cold.
Linley’s hard work had made it possible for these descendants to not have to experience those life and death dangers.
“Ah!” The first one to begin shouting in pain was Taylor. The pail in his hand toppled to the ground, and Taylor was in such pain that he collapsed to the ground as well, rolling around. His face instantly turned white, and beads of sweat began to pour down his face.
Delia’s face immediately changed.
“It’s fine.” Linley reassured Delia.
Delia knew...that the first time a Dragonblood Warrior activated their Dragonblood, they would involuntarily transform. This first transformation would be an extremely painful one. Linley had experienced this pain in the past as well...when the pain reached a certain level, one would pass out. And indeed...
As black scales sprouted out of his body, Taylor fainted.
Immediately afterwards, Cena and Sasha began to scream in agony as well, both of them rolling around on the ground. Blue scales began to slowly emerge from Cena’s body. The sensation of scales growing out of nowhere into his body was even more painful than being killed.
“If they can’t even withstand such a little bit of pain, what can they possibly accomplish?” Linley quietly watched.
Shortly afterwards, Taylor and Cena had both fully transformed. As for Sasha, who had been the last to drink the dragon’s blood, she finally began to transform as well. Taylor’s draconic scales were black, as he had inherited the coloration of the Tyrant Wyrm. Cena’s scales were blue, as the Thunder Lizard was blue.
As for Sasha...
“Linley, look.” Delia seemed startled and frightened.
Linley had noticed Sasha’s transformation as well. With a rumbling noise, two golden, butterfly-thin wings began to sprout from Sasha’s back. This was what she had inherited from the Gold Dragon; it’s two massive physical wings. But these faint gold wings made Sasha look like a celestial spirit.
However, those golden scales which covered her entire face made Sasha look very mysterious, especially given that she had that draconic horn on her forehead and that draconic tail, which gave Sasha’s Dragonblood Warrior form a domineering aura as well.
....
After a long time, the three children woke up. After waking up, the three kids excitedly stared at themselves and their transformations.
“Whoah, sis, you have wings?” Taylor stared at Sasha jealously.
Sasha liked her wings as well. They were part of her, like her hands. The two wings fluttered slightly, and Sasha gracefully flew into the air, excitedly shouting, “I can fly, I can fly!”
“I feel so powerful.” Taylor excitedly punched at a nearby piece of rock, and that rock instantly split apart into tiny pieces. A ten year old child who was able to smash rocks into pieces? No ordinary person would be able to accomplish this.
Cena was extremely excited as well.
“Whoosh!” Moving like a flash, Cena’s body left behind after-images when he moved. He was extremely fast.
Linley, Delia, Wharton, and Nina all laughed as they watched this.
“How marvelous.” The Saint-level Gold Dragon sighed in praise. “Dragonblood Warriors truly are incredible.” The three Saint-level dragons all sighed in amazement at this scene. The legendary Supreme Warriors really were amazing. They could already foresee...in a few decades, these three children would be three Dragonblood Warrior Saints.
After the three children got tired from playing around.
“Mother. Where’s my clothes?” Sasha said to Delia.
The transformation had badly damaged her clothes. Fortunately, Sasha’s pants weren’t damaged; they were just a little dirty. But her upper body clothes had been shattered by those two wings of hers. It was no big deal right now, in Dragonform, but if she returned to her human form, wouldn’t she be totally exposed?
Delia began to laugh.
Linley laughed as he said, “The three of you, listen up. In the future, focus on training in accordance with the Secret Dragonblood Manual. There is one thing, however...generally speaking, you are not to transform into your Dragonforms. In addition, right now, you are weak enough that even in Dragonform, your power won’t amount to much.”
“Yes, Father (Uncle).”
The three children assented.
“Wharton, I’ll hand these three children to you to manage.” Linley looked at his little brother. The three children should live in Baruch City. They were still young, after all. If they were to be made to live in a place like Mt. Blackraven, where almost no others were around, the children wouldn’t be used to it, and their temperaments would be affected as well.
“Alright.” Wharton nodded.
....
Taylor and the others went down the mountain. Two of the three dragons, out of curiosity, decided to go to the Baruch City palace as well. But of course, they shrank in size first. Linley and Delia remained on Mt. Blackraven, living a life of quiet training.
Most of Delia’s time was spent with Linley. Naturally, she would also go to Baruch City to spend time with the kids.
As for Linley...
He might go for months or even half a year at a time without seeing the kids. Normally, he stayed on Mt. Blackraven and trained.
The sky was dark.
Mt. Blackraven. The stone room in the center of the lake. The inside of the room was carefully laid out, and Linley and Delia were holding each other on the bed. “Linley, have you ever asked Bebe to go inquire what that black stone was that he gave us on our wedding day?”
“I had Bebe go ask, but the Emperor Rat only said that it was something that was very good for training.” Linley said.
Delia began to laugh as well. “Alas. I never thought my training as a magus would reach such a speed. My big brother is such a genius, and is being personally taught by the High Priest, and is now an Arch Magus of the ninth rank. As for me, I wasn’t as good as him...but I reached the rank of Arch Magus of the ninth rank before he did. Every day, I feel like my spiritual energy is rising...even when I’m not training, my spiritual energy is slowly increasing. Even I’m scared by how fast I’m improving.”
“Enough, don’t overthink things. Whatever it was that Emperor Rat gave us, we’ll find out soon enough. Alright, it’s late. Let’s go to sleep.”
.......
While Linley was quietly training at Mt. Blackraven and constantly analyzing the Elemental Laws of the Wind and the Earth...in a short mountain three hundred kilometers east of the Baruch Kingdom, two men were carefully inspecting the quality of the soil.
All Kingdoms and Empires needed their own mineral resources to be self-sufficient.
Before the Baruch Kingdom was unified, this region suffered from constant war and was under rapidly changing administrative controls. Today, you’d be in charge of this city; tomorrow, someone else might. Nobody had time or effort to find mineral deposits for mining.
Even if they found them, they would probably be attacked by the neighboring groups and end up dying.
Thus, no one ever went mining.
But after the Baruch Kingdom was founded, they focused on scouting and searching for mineral resources. Those surveyors carefully inspected every inch of the territory within the Baruch Kingdom. In the past twenty years, they had indeed found quite a few metal mines, such as iron mines, copper mines, gold mines, silver mines, and what not. Only, the mines were all of different sizes.
They even found some rather valuable mines, but the output of these mines was relatively low, such as the ‘black iron’ mines and the ‘mithril’ mines.
Having their own mines meant the Kingdom wouldn’t need to acquire materials for forging weapons from other nations.
“Chief, the soil here seems rather unique.” A golden-haired man as skinny as a monkey said in a low voice. The middle-aged man near him carefully inspected the soil as well, then immediately ordered, “Kaya [Ka’ya], let’s go down and do some digging. Let’s dig a bit deeper and see what is there.”
“Yes, Chief.” The young man immediately brought out the tools and began to dig alongside the chief. Although they weren’t very strong, the young man was a warrior of the third rank, while the chief was a warrior of the fifth. Digging, to them, was very simple.
Their digging skills were quite practiced, and the deep hole quickly deepened without widening.
“Clank.” A piercing sound. It seemed they had ground onto some sort of metal.
“Chief, come take a look, quick!” That young man hurriedly said.
The middle-aged man immediately lowered his head to stare. Right now, it was the afternoon, and there was still quite a bit of sunlight. The middle-aged man could clearly see that something was reflecting the light of the setting sun, and he immediately used his hand to push away the nearby dirt and mud.
A half-translucent gem appeared before his eyes.
“This...this is...” The middle-aged man was speechless for a moment, then said in shock, “This is a magicite gem. A magicite gem. Kaya, it’s a magicite gem!”
“What?! Captain, we’re rich! We’re rich!” The young man’s eyes immediately shone with happiness.
Magicite gems were extremely valuable. In truth...magicite cores of magical beasts were very similar to magicite gems. Although they were ‘cores’, they were a type of gem as well. For example, the cores of dragon’s were also often called ‘draconic gems’.
But of course, natural magicite gems couldn’t have the terrifyingly high amount of energy that draconic gems had.
According to the normal market value...
A low-quality magicite gem – 10 gold coins, equivalent to the magicite core of a magical beast of the third rank.
A middle-quality magicite gem – 100 gold coins, equivalent to a magicite core of the fourth or fifth ranks.
A high-quality magicite gem – 1000 gold coins, equivalent to a magical beast core of the sixth rank.
A top-quality magicite gem – 10000 gold coins. Natuarlly, it couldn’t match up to the magicite core of a magical beast of the seventh rank ,which was worth around fifty thousand gold coins. To find magicite gems or cores more valuable than top-quality magicite gems, one would have to go out and kill magical beasts of the seventh or eighth ranks, or even higher.
It could be said...that a magicite gemstone mine was more than ten million times more valuable than ordinary gold mines. This was because when engaging in gold mining, one had to pan for gold, and it was extremely time consuming. But magicite gemstone mines were different. They had large numbers of magicite gems clustered together....
It was as though a large number of magicite cores had clustered together.
In the Yulan continent, the only thing comparable in value to a magicite gemstone mine was a mithril mine.
“We’re going to be rich, Chief! We can fill up a bag of gemstones, and they’d easily be worth over a hundred thousand gold coins. We’re going to be rich!” The young man was wildly overjoyed.
The chief frowned. “Don’t be hasty. This should be a magicite gemstone mine...let’s take a look and see how large this mine is.”