Luge decided to rest in this space for the first time and try to get a relaxing sleep. The thought had only just struck him: this place was clearly called the Abyssal Bedroom, yet he had never slept or rested here before. That would be too strange; he had to make up for it and fill that gap in the record.
Curious, he approached the spatial wall and brought out his short spear to give it a gentle poke. The chaotic boundary, which constantly shifted back and forth between black, gray, and white, rippled with multicolored light at his touch.
As for attacking the spatial wall with spells or the like, he was tempted to try it, and he knew he wouldn't be able to break it, but in the end he refrained.
He rested in steady meditation and slept until he didn't even know whether it was daylight outside.
His first trial sleep in the space concluded perfectly.
Opening the spatial door, he found himself back in his three-opening bedroom. The location where he opened the door to enter and the location where he came out did not change, as if an anchor had been dropped at that spot just before the portal opened. This had its pros and cons; for instance, if he used it to hide from an enemy, he could only wait for them to leave on their own, and from inside he had no way of seeing what was happening outside.
Luge packed his things simply and left the settlement at an easy pace without alerting Aisjin.
Moving swiftly the entire way, he arrived once more at that valley.
This time, there was no need to dig out earth on a large scale. He pinpointed the location, stood atop it with his hands lightly shielding his head and face, and rapidly gathered the earth and stone beneath his feet, dropping straight down at tremendous speed. In his mind, he calculated that once he neared the underground cave opening, he would dig forward; whether the passage behind him collapsed and caved in no longer mattered.
Seeing the colossal beast once again was just as awe-inspiring as before.
Luge stood frozen in place, waiting until the next terrifying breath sounded before he began walking around the cave at ease.
On the way here, he had replenished his stock of grubs. Combined with what was left in the Abyssal Bedroom, even if this strange dragon woke up and trapped him inside the Abyssal Bedroom, he had enough to hold out for quite a few days—perhaps even until the creature fell back asleep or departed. He wasn't particularly worried about this, because once a giant beast like this woke up, it was almost certain to go out hunting, and that would be a major hunt of considerable duration.
While traveling, he had experimented with pairing Body Lightening with Bull's Strength, and it had proved to be quite an excellent combination. It was just a bit hard to control at first, but once he adapted, it was an entirely different world.
Now he cast both spells on himself once more, tossed in an extra Boiling Spirit for good measure, and began pacing the outer perimeter of the cavern, looking as relaxed as if he were strolling through his own garden.
A thought crossed his mind, and he brought out his robes to put them on properly, pulling the hood securely over his head as well.
After a full circuit, he didn't rush to strike. Even a mosquito had to learn to pick the right moment; at the very least, it needed to know where its proboscis could pierce.
He made his way to the creature's tail, opened a spatial door first, and then plucked up the courage to reach out and touch the tip of the tail. Though called the tip, that tail tip was actually larger than his entire kobold body.
The instant his palm made contact, his heart gave an uncontrollable thud, and the few newly grown hairs on his back bristled. But he quickly focused his mind and began carefully feeling the sensation transmitted to his hand. What he feared most was finding that a mosquito's proboscis couldn't pierce it at all; beginning was always the hardest part, and ending right at the start was indeed the usual state of affairs.
He slowly withdrew his hand and decided to give up on this spot.
Learning Body Lightening had been precisely for this moment. He took a deep breath, summoned his nerve, and leapt, landing squarely on the middle section of the strange dragon's tail.
Since he couldn't break through its aged hide normally, he would look for old wounds on its body.
Since it had no wings, he would go check its back.
Earlier, thinking of himself as a mosquito had merely been self-deprecating humor, but now, traversing the strange dragon's back, he truly felt like a tiny insect. As time passed, however, and the giant beast showed no sign of waking, he ceased to be as nervous as when he started.
Treading upon the overlapping layers of scales, he felt as if he were walking across a massive, man-made landscaped structure.
As he neared the strange dragon's upper back, the pitch-black scales grew larger and larger. The little kobold had no choice but to take off those ill-fitting boots to avoid slipping while walking; he didn't want to become the first kobold ever to trip and fall on a giant dragon's back on account of his footwear.
Nothing!
There really was nothing here?
Whenever he passed steeper slopes, he would crawl across on all fours. After crawling forward another stretch, he wobbled back to his feet, still not seeing what he was looking for. Gathering his courage, he took a gentle leap, though even then he couldn't take in the entire view; fortunately, he could see a wider area.
The bad news was that this giant creature truly had no dragon wings, and it looked as though it had never possessed that pair of great wings by nature.
The good news was that there really was a wound on its back—a wound large enough for Luge to lie down and roll around inside. The angle was somewhat awkward, but it was manageable.
Luge composed himself and began approaching the wound. This seemed to confirm once and for all that this strange dragon was no true dragon.
After overcoming all manner of hardship, he edged closer to the wound, where the angle was too steep to stand comfortably, and peered inside with anticipation.
Within that wound of rolled-back flesh lay yet another astonishing sight.
Luge blinked and struggled closer.
Embedded inside the strange dragon's gaping wound was a massive metal structure. Inscribed upon it in dark-red gouges was a line of large text: Aberrant Dragon Regulatory Committee, followed by a long serial number.
Beneath it was a brief explanation, which also noted: If this dragon is discovered in the wild, please report it to the Aberrant Dragon Regulatory Committee.
He rubbed his chin, steadied his footing, and carefully studied the text.
Aberrant dragons, much like the myriad anomalies in the world striving in their own ways, served as proof from another angle of how vast the world was. There were always some unusually born creatures. Aberrant dragons, taken as a whole, were mostly not considered powerful, and many could hardly even reproduce due to their peculiar mutations; yet some of them were unnaturally stronger than pureblood dragon breeds, even developing absurd abilities. That was precisely why the Aberrant Dragon Regulatory Committee had been established.
And this strange dragon, possessing a long serial number, was one of those aberrant dragons whose strength was not inferior to pureblood dragons—and a particularly stubborn one at that. It had no wings and was unrecognized by dragonkind, yet it still inherited the pride of true dragons.
Normally, the regulatory process for aberrant dragons fell into two categories. Those weak in strength received the lowest level of oversight; as strength and individual mutation grew more exceptional, the degree of supervision increased accordingly, but all of this still belonged to the first category of limited oversight. It amounted to leaving various markings on the dragon's body without constraining its life.
The core principle of the Aberrant Dragon Regulatory Committee was not to base judgment entirely on strength and potential danger.
Rather, it depended on whether the aberrant dragon had committed an offense.
So long as an aberrant dragon broke the regulations, regardless of its strength, it would be placed under the second category: mandatory regulation. From that moment on, it lost its freedom. In severe cases, it would become an asset of the committee, serving as long-term experimental consumables for wizards, which was also a major source of funding to keep the Aberrant Dragon Regulatory Committee operating. The ratings for an aberrant dragon's strength and danger were merely used to determine the severity of the measures deployed during supervision.
The proud fellow before Luge was merely a target under the second-to-last tier of regulation, the kind that had committed an offense and was restricted to a designated territory. Within its body were measures to force it into sleep, triggered whenever it left the territory designated by the Aberrant Dragon Regulatory Committee without authorization. It knew it would fall asleep, knew it might even starve to death in its slumber, knew it could never truly escape—yet it simply refused to remain trapped there.
Chapter 47