Under the Red Dragon

Like the Green Dragon Antagena, the Black Dragon Rosani now controlled the beasts of the land, while the Green Dragon ruled the birds of the sky.

This was a crucial part of Calon's defensive perimeter for the Dragon Nest, but cooperation and contact with humans were not his responsibility, nor did he want them to be.

Rosani believed that any creature infringing upon the Dragon Clan's interests should be crushed under a dragon's foot, but perhaps that didn't align with the Dragon Clan's temporary goals, as they still needed these humans to work for them.

Thus, the matter was pushed to the Blue Dragon Dos.

The Blue Dragon was, aside from Calon, the most level-headed dragon in the clan, and Calon assigned him to oversee all matters related to cooperation with the Pioneer Camp.

Although the Dragon Clan and the humans in the Pioneer Camp were still in a cooperative relationship, Calon had mentioned that the specific methods of cooperation needed to change, as the Dragon Clan no longer needed to concede benefits for the sake of development.

However, Calon didn't specify how the cooperation should change, leaving the Blue Dragon Dos with a headache, causing him to constantly scratch his forehead with his claws, just like the Green Dragon.

If dragons had hair, the Blue Dragon would have lost a lot of it during this time.

"Damn it," the Blue Dragon muttered, scratching his horn habitually. He said with displeasure to the Dragonkin Centaur, "Send these humans back to their camp and let them know that they are no longer allowed to hunt the magical creatures and ferocious beasts within the Dragon Clan's territory."

"Actually, just announce the Dragon Nest's decision in the camp like the humans do. This time, I'll let it slide, but if this happens again, kill any human who violates the Dragon Nest's rules without asking me."

"Yes, Lord Dos," Chiron the Centaur replied, happily descending from the Blue Dragon's mountain.

Since he hadn't been punished, he could happily hold a bonfire feast in the Centaur tribe tonight. 'Tsk, that Oni from the Centaur tribe seems quite attractive,' Chiron thought.

"But I still need to inform Lady Kleineria, as she now oversees all Dragonkin. Although it's not my turn to keep watch tonight, if she can't find me when she needs me, I'm doomed. She's not a dragon with a good temper."

All the dragons had been assigned tasks by Calon. The White Dragon Germot now oversaw the various vassal tribes under the Dragon Clan, just as he had done before.

The Blue Dragon Akz now oversaw the Dragon Clan's patrols of the sky and land, essentially serving as a security planning administrator. All dragons had to follow his plans.

Except for Calon, who, as the leader of the Dragon Clan, rightfully enjoyed special privileges. He accepted these privileges without reservation.

He had no thoughts of equality; whether in the Dragon Clan or other racial societies, class distinctions would always exist. As the king of the Dragon Clan, he should enjoy his rightful status.

However, even as the leader of the Dragon Clan, he wouldn't always stay cooped up in the nest. After all, showing his face occasionally would help strengthen the vassals' mental energy supply to him.

When bored, he would stretch his increasingly large wings and soar through the sky, looking down upon the land. He now thoroughly enjoyed this feeling, not only because of the freedom but also because of his power and status.

After all, he was an ambitious Red Dragon, and the will of freedom was intertwined with the blood of the Red Dragon, inseparable and indistinguishable.

But Calon was now enjoying his own free time; Kalite's former nest now belonged to him.

For a Red Dragon, a volcano was the most suitable place to build a nest, whether a dormant volcano or an intermittently erupting active volcano. Eventually, under the Red Dragon's power, it would become an especially active volcano.

But Calon didn't want to wait that long. The reason Red Dragons liked to build nests in the mouth of a volcano was not only because the race was naturally fond of heat and warmth but, more importantly, because the volcano's abundant fire-attribute magic could help Red Dragons grow and develop faster.

Moreover, Red Dragons who frequently bathed in volcanic lava would have particularly smooth and delicate scales, which was also a motivation for dragons who valued aesthetics.

So, Calon planned to manually dig through the lava channels of this dormant volcano.

He could not only use his senses to explore the specific conditions inside the volcano, but much knowledge about volcanoes also existed in his mind, not only from the Dragon's heritage but also from his past life's knowledge.

Dormant volcanoes mostly contained lava channels that extended deep into the earth's core like tree roots. Volcanic eruptions occurred because the lava in the earth's core heated up and expanded, then released pressure through the crater channel, forming an active volcano.

In an active volcano, lava and the earth's core lava would, for some reason, create a pressure difference that caused a backflow into the earth's core, leading to the collapse and closure of the crater channel, turning the active volcano into a dormant volcano.

Calon knew that as long as he opened the channel to the lava in the earth's core, the dormant volcano would directly come back to life.

However, Calon needed to control the degree of this. There were many advantages and disadvantages to a dormant volcano becoming an active volcano.

The advantage was that the erupting volcanic ash clouds could carry up to billions of tons of minerals, which would make the area around the volcano the most fertile soil in the world.

Volcanic ash could also nourish the survival of fish in nearby rivers, thereby forming a complete food chain—bears, birds, foxes, and other animals that preyed on salmon, while salmon could consume volcanic ash.

It could also nourish terrestrial ecosystems, bring abundant mineral resources, and form many valuable gemstones, which were the favorite of kobolds and ornaments for dragon hoards.

Moreover, materials such as pumice, formed by the fusion of volcanic lava and other substances, and volcanic ash and cinder were all high-quality building filling materials, needed for building houses and leveling roads.

The benefits were numerous, but the only drawback was that if the degree wasn't controlled, it would be a devastating result. The entire Dragon Nest Mountains would be affected, and even the excessive surge of earth's core energy could cause tsunamis in the sea hundreds of miles away.

Except for the dragons and those powerful enough creatures, this place would become lifeless, everything would wither, and it would take a long time to recover its original vibrant appearance.

But Calon was confident in controlling this degree. After all, he was a Red Dragon who controlled lava and fire, and he also had enhanced senses to help him, so he shouldn't fail.

No sooner said than done, the Red Dragon first dug away the original dome of the crater. Although the existence of this dome could shelter the nest from wind and rain, its existence had now become a limitation.

Considering that it might affect the trajectory of the volcano's re-eruption and his constantly growing size in the future, Calon still dug away this dome piece by piece and piled the rubble on the flat top of the nearby mountain.

With the Red Dragon's current body and strength, dealing with this dome didn't take much effort.

These stones would continuously accumulate and fuse with the erupting debris and lava after the Red Dragon cleared the volcano, growing higher and higher, forming a new mountain peak.

It was conceivable that the future mountain peak would inevitably continue to rise under the influence of the Red Dragon's power, just like the Paricutin volcano in Mexico in Calon's memory, which initially started as only a few-centimeter-wide crack on the plain, emitting lava and black smoke.

A few hours later, the crack became a few meters wide, and the eruption gradually intensified. The ejected debris and lava continuously accumulated at the eruption vent, forming a conical mountain peak, reaching a height of several hundred meters.

Ordinary volcanoes are not frequently active, and the height they can accumulate is also limited. After it temporarily stops erupting, the accumulated crater will also be destroyed by rainwater erosion and various other reasons.

But with the presence of the Red Dragon's influence, if the Red Dragon was willing, the volcano could be active day and night under its influence.

Perhaps when the Red Dragon's power grew to a certain point again, the entire mountain range would continue to rise due to the Red Dragon's power, until the energy of the earth's core was exhausted.

Looking at the neat square blocks of giant stones piled all over the ground, Calon suddenly had a funny thought. If he could return to his original world, perhaps he could let these dragons try working on construction sites. They could earn him a thousand or eight hundred dollars in half a day.

Not to mention how many bricks a dragon of this size could carry at once, even some cranes were not as useful as his dragons, with their heavy load capacity, agility, and dexterity.

Perhaps even becoming a food delivery flyer could put them in the top-earning bracket. Thinking about his current dragon clan and those vassals, they were all quite useful laborers.

Shaking his head, Calon felt that the Red Dragon's greed for wealth must have affected his brain. He shook off these boring thoughts, jumped into the cave, and began to work with his muscular forelimbs.

In the knowledge base retrieved by Calon through the sub-brain cluster, rather than the Dragon's heritage, there were two main reasons for volcano formation.

One was at the boundary of continental plates. Because there was relative movement between the plates, a plate at the boundary would subduct under another plate.

The rocks of the subducting plate would melt due to the strong pressure, forming magma. The magma would rise, some stopping at a certain level, and others rising to the surface, thereby forming a volcano, which accounted for the vast majority.

But in Calon's expanded senses, the volcano beneath him was formed for the second reason.

That was, some radioactive materials inside the earth's core decayed and released heat, causing the rocks to melt and rise to the surface to form a volcano. In the terms of this world, it was probably the excessive energy change of elemental magic that led to the formation of this volcano.

This was good news for Calon. He only needed to control the scale of the lava channel and the intensity of the energy eruption hidden underground to create a controllable volcano that erupted continuously.

Not only could it bring benefits to the territory, but the Red Dragon could also bathe in the fire-attribute magic that poured out day and night.

Calon first dug a channel through the ground that had solidified into basalt and various impurity rocks, leading to the layer of pipes where the lava had solidified into tree-like shapes.

However, he didn't expect that some strange creatures lived in these channels covered by these rocks and volcanic ash.

In these channels near the underground solution vents, there were many giant tube worms that looked very strange. These worms were not very similar to their counterparts in the sea but were more like worms covered with a thin layer of skin.

Their bodies were also covered with a special fluid, allowing these worms to grow vigorously even near the high-temperature hydrothermal vents.

Calon curiously poked at them with his claws for a long time. These worms moved very slowly.

At this speed, unless they had a camouflaged hunting method like a Venus flytrap or a sudden attack with a retractable mouthpart like a frog catching mosquitoes, it would be impossible to hunt.

But these worms grew plump and white in the dark channels, and their mouthparts had no retractable function. They probably fed on volcanic ash or some substance that existed here.

Calon could only marvel at the magic of nature. Eating soil and gnawing on stones could also make them grow plump and white.

Although the powerful digestive ability of dragons could also use eating soil as a means of survival, their bodies would definitely not be as fat as these worms.

It seemed that many chromatic dragons were inferior to metallic dragons not only because of their innate bloodline endowment but also because many chromatic dragons did not receive protection during their infancy and could only eat soil to survive.

Unlike those metallic dragons who were properly placed and raised, they could grow up healthily under the care of dragon parents.

Calon couldn't help but carefully pick up a worm with his claws and put it in his mouth, tasting the flavor of this worm that looked delicious in the eyes of a dragon.

The surface skin of this worm was quite chewy. After breaking the skin, a taste like ice-cold snow lotus water spread in his mouth.

The body fluid of a creature growing in a hot environment was actually cold. He smacked his lips, feeling that the taste was not bad.

A weak energy poured into the dragon's body, so he decided to raise these worms as future desserts and snacks.

In order to avoid these worms being burned to death by the erupting lava after excavating and activating the volcano as much as possible, he also deliberately changed to a direction with fewer worms to continue excavating.

During the excavation process, he also discovered some strange-looking creatures, a scaly-foot gastropod snail, growing in some underground water-filled tunnels.

Since these tunnels were close to the temperature radiation range of the underground magma, the water temperature in the tunnels could almost reach four hundred degrees, but it still did not affect the activities of these snails.

There were also some strange arthropods that looked like crickets, but Calon politely declined these things.

After excavating for almost five full days, Calon approached the underground magma layer.

On the one hand, it was necessary to first excavate a channel from the hard underground rock layer that would allow the huge Red Dragon to move freely, so as to avoid being too stuffy when the magma erupted.

On the other hand, he was constantly exploring the underground situation with his senses. If the energy surging in the underground magma layer was too violent and exceeded what he could control, he planned to abandon this idea.

Fortunately, the result of the exploration was pleasing to the dragon. After years of silence, this long-dead volcano had gradually adapted to a stable underground energy.

Those surging fire-attribute magic forces were also extremely gentle, within the scope of Calon's ability to control.

Now the Red Dragon could see the steaming heat emerging from the holes formed by the erosion of the hard rocks, and a strong sulfurous smell came out of these holes and cracks. Occasionally, leaping magma would also burst out of the holes.

This layer of rock blocking the upward rush of the magma eruption was extremely hard. Even with the Red Dragon's sharp claws, it took some effort to cut the small holes and cracks into a round hole with a diameter of several meters.

Even though these dormant magmas were peaceful enough, the enormous pressure and energy instantly pushed the magma upward.

Calon had long hidden in the pre-excavated horizontal channel, avoiding the impact of this force.

Although this lava feels like a relatively warm bath to a Red Dragon, the Red Dragon doesn't want to directly withstand the force of the impact.

Under the Red Dragon's guidance, the lava, carrying high temperatures and a strong sulfurous odor, along with some materials deposited deep underground, rushed out along the channel.

The long lava channel was quickly filled with surging lava and flames, and some precious minerals deposited in the lava also surged upwards with the喷涌lava.

This upward momentum gradually exhausted itself as it reached the volcanic crater, and the gradually spreading lava began to accumulate in the large volcanic basin, like a reservoir connected to a water pipe.

A cloud of gray smoke began to fill the sky above the outer volcanic crater.

The horizontal tunnel cave where Charon was located was also filled with the surging lava, but this high-temperature, corrosive lava was like a buff for the Red Dragon. The scorching lava gave the Red Dragon a warm, comfortable, and relaxing feeling, as if he were enveloped in the womb.

It made him feel more comfortable and relaxed than any massage or spa, like the relaxation a person feels when they suddenly lie down on a bed after a long day of work.

Charon even had the idea of sleeping here for a while. The Red Dragon's hibernation mechanism was also triggered, and the Red Dragon, who had been awakened prematurely during his hibernation period, now felt like taking a nap.

If it weren't for the pungent smell of the air current deposited underground, which choked the Red Dragon and made him sneeze several times, he might have just taken a good nap here.