The Mighty Dragons Are Dead

————

The remains of the five unknown creatures, which were huge skeletons, certainly had unusual uses that Liszt had yet to discover. He wanted to collect the bones and put them into the Space Gem, but unfortunately, the bones were too large to fit. Besides, they were stuck in the rocks and couldn’t be pulled out.

“Teacher Marcus, remember to arrange for someone to extract them if possible, or to protect them on site if not.”

“Understood.”

“Also, send people to pick up the bone fragments scattered around here and transport them back to Fresh Flower Town using the Fresh Flower Vessel… I’m planning to open a Bone Craftsman Shop in Fresh Flower Town.”

Marcus nodded and replied, “These bone fragments are indeed suitable for crafting fine bone utensils. Given the number of fragments here, the serfs of Fresh Flower Town will no longer lack farming tools for the fields, and both the Patrol Team and the Bug Guard Team can be allocated additional bone weapons.”

Speaking of bone utensils.

Liszt suddenly remembered that he had a Dragonbone Stabilizer in his Gemstone Space. According to Kostor, the Dragonbone Stabilizer should be made from the bones of a high-level Dragonkin Magical Beast.

“Teacher Marcus, do you recall the Dragonbone Stabilizer?” he patted the huge bone and continued, “The Dragonbone Stabilizer is said to be made from the bones of a high-level Dragonkin Magical Beast, but it is vastly inferior to the bones before us. I believe the gap between a Super Dragonkin Magical Beast and a high-level Dragonkin Magical Beast cannot be this vast.”

This invalidated the previous conjecture.

Marcus apparently also remembered and frowned, “With dragons and Super Dragonkin Magical Beasts ruled out, what exactly are these five bones remnants of?”

In the short term, this was bound to be an unanswered mystery.

As the sun was about to set, the group had to leave the valley and return to their temporary base. At night, without having to sleep on the ship and with Douson taken away by Liszt, they could have a quiet rest.

However, lying on the hard wooden bed.

Liszt didn’t fall asleep immediately; he continued to ponder over the bones.

“Five decayed bones indicate a very ancient era and that they came from an extremely strong creature. Other than dragons, the only creatures that fit the profile of extremely strong beings are the legendary Super Dragonkin Magical Beasts. According to the classification by enthusiasts of magical creatures, Super Dragonkin Magical Beasts only rank below dragons.”

In many a Knight’s Novel, Super Dragonkin Magical Beasts frequently make an appearance.

But they have another name—Sub-dragon.

The other high, medium, and low-level Dragonkin Magical Beasts are collectively called—Dragon Beasts.

Even some Knight novels consider dragons to be a type of Magical Beast too, forcefully categorizing them as—Flying Dragons. They lump Flying Dragons, Sub-dragons, and Dragon Beasts together into one species.

This undeniably degrades the noble lineage of dragons, so this kind of Knight’s Novel is unpopular and part of a niche category. Liszt does not approve either; he dreams of riding a dragon, and now to be told that dragons are merely Magical Beasts, would be tainting his lofty life aspirations.

Such Knight novels ought to be banned!

“So, if not dragons or Sub-dragons, what exactly are these five bones from?” His mind was cluttered with thoughts and various ideas kept surfacing.

Then he paused for a moment to analyze their veracity.

“Sub-dragons are Magical Beasts, whose existence is questionable, so I should exclude them first… Among dragons, I’ve ruled out Gemstone Dragons, Metal Dragons, and Elemental Dragons, but that still leaves Sacred Dragons… Could it be the Smoke Dragon?” he suddenly associated with his own golden finger, the Smoke Mission connected to his fate.

He had always believed that the Smoke Mission was the product of a Smoke Dragon.

But he was more inclined to think that as a child he had come into contact with a Smoke Dragon and then got infected by it, only now, a new idea arose, “What if the Smoke Dragon is dead, and its magic power infected me, creating the Smoke Mission? And what if it died on Black Horse Island, and also infected a group of Black Blood Treasured Horses?”

The idea wasn’t without logic and reason.

But upon further thought, there were some details that didn’t make sense. After all, the bones had decayed, and it could have been thousands of years since then; it made no sense that suddenly a kid on the neighboring Coral Island would get infected. In his former memories, besides Red Crab Island and Beer Island, he had never visited any other islands.

Let alone the recently discovered Black Horse Island.

Moreover, descriptions of the Smoke Dragon generally speak of it as a puff of smoke, without mention of bones or flesh. Upon death, it would likely dissipate completely.

It made no sense for it to leave behind such skeletal remains.

“It shouldn’t be the Smoke Dragon, nor the Formless Dragon which is quite small… Immortal Dragon? Unlikely, since Immortal Dragons are immortal and can’t die… Twilight Dragon? Jade Dragon?”

He still couldn’t figure it out.

After one night.

As day broke the next morning, he mounted Lightning and returned to the valley to examine the bones.

The serfs settled on Black Horse Island also quickly formed a team and arrived to collect every piece of bone fragment on the ground, carefully packing them up and transporting them to the temporary base. Marcus led another team to start digging out the other four bones to see if they could excavate them and catch a glimpse of the full skeleton.

These bones, although not fossilized, indeed had lost some of the properties of bones.

Douson, who loved eating bones, showed no interest whatsoever in the bone fragments on the ground. He followed behind Liszt, eyeing the majestic horse Lightning with drool dripping to the ground.

Lightning, the horse king, contemptuously ignored Douson, leisurely grazing on the grass roots on the ground.

A short distance away, the herd of Black Blood Treasured Horses grazed on the hillside, periodically lifting their heads to look in Lightning’s direction, still regarding him as their leader.

“My lord, we’ve hit a layer of rock halfway through digging up the second bone and can’t dig any further,” reported Marcus as he came over.

“It seems that beneath the soil of Black Horse Island, there’s all rock,” Liszt said as he walked toward the new pit and jumped to the bottom, stepping on the solid rock.

He crouched down, brushed the dirt off the rock with his hand, wanting to get a clearer view of the type of rock it was.

However, his understanding of rocks was not deep and he just felt that these stones were rather hard and seemed to have numerous tiny holes on them, like bubbles.

“Bubbles?” Suddenly feeling like he was onto something, he grasped at the fleeting inspiration.

He then instructed the serfs who were preparing to dig up the third bone, “Expand this pit; I want to see more of the rock.” He didn’t believe that the rock layer was one solid piece, there must be a fractured part that they could pry open to study closely.

As expected.

After the serfs enlarged the bare face of the rock at the bottom of the pit, Liszt saw the fissures between the rocks.

But as the bottom of the pit was continuously expanded and the dirt removed, revealing more and more of the rock surface, he startlingly discovered that these rocks actually had a regular pattern, resembling the size of a washbasin in hexagonal shapes. Moreover, there was a variation in the height of the rocks, as if they were stepped terraces sticking together.

“This…” Liszt finally caught the inspiration he’d had before, “These are basalt columns!”