Seeing this, Logan planned to leave here. With his current resistances and physique, he was not afraid of any magma flooding. After all, he was already a dragon who could take baths in magma; even letting him dive in magma would pose no problem.
It was just that mixing in the magma together with so many rotting corpses would make him feel a bit uncomfortable even as a dragon. After all, not every dragon likes corpses, especially rotten corpses.
When Logan turned around, he suddenly discovered that, at some unknown point, this space had already been shrouded in a faint yellow miasma.
And unlike the ownerless miasma in the upper layers of the Rotten Vale, this miasma was clearly more vigorous. Faced with the high-temperature environment of the magma, it actually showed not the slightest decline and remained extremely active.
"Seriously, so this really is that guy's lair."
Although he had guessed it when he saw the mountain of corpses, there had been no movement before, and Logan had thought Vaal Hazak had gone out for a stroll. He had not expected that it was actually here.
Only to see the corpse-mountain piled with bones shudder. Those diligently working Girros all began to convulse, and a large amount of miasma was stripped from their bodies along with their life force, gathering at the top of the corpse-mountain.
Before long, as large numbers of corpses tumbled down, a "mound" on the corpse-mountain was lifted up. A giant dragon covered all over with rotting corpses slowly rose amid the stench.
Sharp backward-facing barbs had hooked fast into the corpse of some monster whose living form could no longer be made out. Because of the advanced rot, one could see the flesh within that corpse separating and sloughing off, the drawn-out viscous strands of blood making one feel thoroughly sick.
"Woooo!!"
A long, wolf-like hoarse cry came. As Vaal Hazak shook its wings, a rank stench swept over, and Logan, at the first moment, blew out a gale in reverse to isolate the stink.
The sudden wind left Vaal Hazak, just awakened and still not clear-headed, unable to react.
However, it did not sense malice and thus did not adopt a wary posture, even with a dragon as large as Logan flying alive right in front of it.
In the Rotten Vale, Vaal Hazak could be this willful.
As the master of the Rotten Vale, the miasma permeating the entire Rotten Vale was all its reserve energy. The countless monsters in the Rotten Vale were Vaal Hazak's blood bags, and they were at its mercy.
With the entire Rotten Vale supporting it, in a battle of attrition Vaal Hazak was simply an unsolvable existence. Even years ago, that Nergigante which had come chasing the corpse of Shagaru Magala fought Vaal Hazak for several months and, in the end, could only withdraw in dejection.
There was no helping it. Although Nergigante could beat Vaal Hazak, after every battle Vaal Hazak would take a single inhale, and the omnipresent miasma of the Rotten Vale, carrying the life force it had drawn in, would surge madly into Vaal Hazak's body. Several times, even before the fight had ended, Vaal Hazak's wounds had already recovered; this recovery efficiency was even higher than Nergigante's.
In the end, Nergigante was truly disgusted by this kind of shameless fighting method and could only choose to cut its losses and retreat.
Although Vaal Hazak was limited by the environment such that it could only leave here under special conditions, within the Rotten Vale, unless one could kill Vaal Hazak in a single stroke or directly change the entire environment of the Rotten Vale, it was virtually an immortal existence.
But speaking of an Elder Dragon's vitality, to what degree of strength would it take to successfully kill an Elder Dragon in a single stroke?
Seemingly finished with stretching its muscles and bones, only then did Vaal Hazak, dragging a lazy gait, walk toward the burial cave Kushala Daora had chosen for itself.
Beside the crimson luminescent organs, that pair of eyes hidden beneath rotting beast-hide looked at the lifeless corpse of Kushala Daora. After knowing this was the work object that had disturbed its sleep—
It took a deep breath. A large quantity of special miasma stored in the parotid glands, which had been strengthened over many years by its life energy, was thus exhaled in a thick swath, covering the corpse of Kushala Daora.
These microorganism colonies called miasma frenziedly poured into Kushala Daora's body through the gaps on its surface. Under Logan's curious perception, this miasma seemed like tiny sponges, continuously absorbing the life energy dissipating from Kushala Daora.
Afterward, unable to bear so much life energy, they were, like little balloons, forcibly swollen to bursting.
However, after bursting the miasma, this life energy turned from active back into placid and, in this special environment, was reabsorbed by the leylines.
This miasma was like a buffer zone isolating the middle between detonation and absorption, very stably keeping the power of the "explosion" under control.
Seeing this, Vaal Hazak closed its mouth in satisfaction. With its barbed tail it lashed fiercely toward Kushala Daora's burial cave, and with the fall of pitch-black rubble and bones, it completely buried Kushala Daora's corpse together with that miasma.
The life energy returned to the Everstream, and the nutrients of the corpse returned to the earth. When all was over, the little bit of miasma that had not been overcharged with life energy was Vaal Hazak's reward.
And as the one responsible for linking all of this together, Vaal Hazak, like a worker clocking out after a shift, once again slowly dragged its lazy steps back to the place where it had first risen.
Completely ignoring Logan's presence, it buried itself back into the pile of bones. Before long, several Girros, wrapped in miasma and moving like puppets, came trotting out from the dim, narrow passage, dragging the corpses of the Girros that had been drained of life force to the top of Vaal Hazak's little mound, repeating the work of their "predecessors."
The death of an Elder Dragon thus ended so quietly—without any grandeur, without any twists—only that the being clearing away its corpse had changed from Revoltures and other scavenging organisms into another Elder Dragon.
The separation of life energy required time, so at this moment, within the Everstream, the concentration of life energy had not yet begun to show any noticeable increase.
Having witnessed the entire process, Logan felt an indescribable sense of regret in his heart, but after his curiosity was satisfied, he had no intention of staying longer.
Just as he was about to return the way he came, the crimson light behind the mountain of corpses gave him another idea.
"Since I'm already here, why not try going from the Everstream to the Elder's Recess?"
Once this thought appeared, it could no longer be stopped.
After all, the Everstream now posed no danger to Logan. Moreover, given an Elder Dragon's ability to perceive life energy, there was no chance of getting lost within the Everstream.
Thus, after only a moment's thought, he flew without hesitation behind the corpse-mountain, following the flowing leylines deeper into the Everstream.
A day later, at a volcanic crater in the Elder's Recess—
A Tigrex, exhausted, leapt out from a magma-filled cave. Before it could even celebrate finally making it out of the labyrinth-like Everstream alive before starving to death—
A silver-white figure, accompanied by a gust of wind, whooshed past over its head.
Startled out of its wits, this "absolute powerhouse," now much thinner from hunger, hastily assumed a defensive stance.
The silver-white giant dragon burst through the clouds and flew toward the heights.
Feeling the temperature dropping steadily in the gale, a faint blue-violet flame rose over his body.
Looking at the big, round moon in the sky, Logan slowly let out a breath.
One day!
A whole day!
Without food or drink, without sleep or rest, he had been flying in the Everstream, finally learning what was meant by a labyrinth.
Clearly, his senses told him that there was the correct fork, yet judging by the flow of the leylines, it was another wrong path.
Those flowing streams of magma not only rushed along but also split into upper and lower layers. They seemed to be flowing steadily all the same, but who knew the main current had already turned a corner in the lower layer, and then the main current became a branch, leading some monsters who relied on naked-eye observation into another fork.
More than once, Logan got stuck at the forks, torn between perception and sight; that split between what he saw and what he sensed was truly nauseating.
Fortunately, he still flew out steadily in the end.
He had originally thought he might use the Everstream to try to search for the Confluence of Fates hidden in the deepest part of the Elder's Recess, to go take a look at the egg form of that future king of Elder Dragons, but the oppressive environment in the Everstream nearly made Logan irritable.
Who knew what Shara Ishvalda had been thinking back then, digging the Everstream into such a state—if there's ever a chance, he absolutely has to give Him a bad review!
---
I will post some extra Chapters in Patreon, you can check it out. >> patreon.com/TitoVillar
---