Having completed his advancement, Cassius leapt down from the shadow-shrouded cliff, hoping to harvest some spoils from the behir.
Yet when he reached the bottom and looked around, he abruptly realized matters were far from that simple.
Scattered across the ground lay not only the behir's carcass, but countless other colossal, ancient skeletons.
Every single one of these skeletons was over ten meters long. Judging from the savage serpentine skulls and elongated spines, every last one was a behir.
And there were hundreds of them!
The massive bones took up almost the entire canyon floor, paving a truly spectacular road of bleached bone. Among them, the fresh behir corpse hardly stood out at all.
Hundreds of behirs.
What did that even mean?
Against a single behir, the red dragon had been forced to exhaust every trick in his arsenal just to eke out a grueling victory.
If ten behirs swarmed him at once, their raging lightning would be enough to roast him into charcoal.
And hundreds of behirs?
Without the slightest exaggeration, such a force could easily annihilate a human kingdom.
"The oldest of these bones must be thousands of years old—they're practically turning to ash."
"Just what kind of place is this?"
Cassius felt his scalp tingle with dread and couldn't help exhaling a puff of hot, sulfurous vapor.
By now, he had completely lost interest in the dead behir, consumed only by the desire to uncover the secret of this dread highway.
*Crunch...*
His talons stepped onto the ancient skeletons, producing crisp snapping sounds with every pace.
Treading softly along the road of bone, the red dragon walked step by step into the road's dark, pervasive depths. Towering, nearly sheer cliff faces rose on either side.
He walked for a long time.
At the end of the road stood a colossal stone gate.
Flanking it were thick stone pillars inscribed with writing.
The gate bore little ornamentation, carved only with primitive motifs. Though hardly exquisite, they conveyed an ancient savagery and a raw sense of primal power. One could just make out the design of an eye set within a storm.
"A storm giant?" Cassius murmured.
The ancient giant empire's reach had once spanned long ages, and storm giants stood at the pinnacle of giantkind.
Few in number, they lived in remote corners of the world far from mortals, contemplating lost glories as reclusive, thoughtful seers.
He closely studied the script upon the pillars.
"Ancient Giant..."
The red dragon did not recognize the archaic language; it had likely perished along with the giant empire long ago.
Yet the translucent blue panel quietly unfurled before him.
[A sorcerer's wisdom allows you to trace back to things far more ancient.]
[The writing before you awakens the deepest memories in your bloodline.]
[Memories of that protracted war between dragons and giants, lasting generations upon generations, deeply etched into the depths of your bloodline, coursing through every vessel within you.]
Cassius fell into a daze as a haze swept over his mind.
He saw an army of dragons numbering in terrifying proportions, their densely packed wings blotting out the sky.
Giants stood in grim battle arrays, their titanic forms filling the horizon.
The two sides clashed in earth-shattering fury, locked in the most primal collision of might.
Storm giants hurled thunderbolts of boundless devastation, cloud giants conjured rolling billows of mist, and stone giants hoisted boulders like rolling hills...
[You have obtained precious ancient lore.]
[Gained skill proficiencies: Ancient Draconic +4, Ancient Giant +2.]
When the red dragon came to his senses, a wealth of inherited knowledge filled his mind.
Cassius fixed his gaze on the inscriptions upon the pillars and softly read them aloud:
"I sought the great ruins, scouring the realm to reclaim the heritage lost when the empire fell.
In the end, I found only that the gods had forsaken us.
I have witnessed the rise and fall of dynasties, victories and defeats in war, and grown weary of the ceaseless struggles between good and evil.
Thus I descended from the heavens, sinking into the subterranean abyss, where weapons of my past shall guard my gate.
O mortals from afar, maintain your humility.
Do not disturb my rest.
Lest an enraged storm giant bring about absolute ruin.
This is my final prophecy as a seer.
—Here lies Landeta, Elder of the Storm Giants."
Having read the passage—or rather, the epitaph—Cassius's breath hitched slightly. He exhaled deeply, venting another plume of sulfurous white smoke.
"This is a storm giant's tomb, and those behirs were merely his gatekeepers."
"How... extravagant."
"Which means this tomb might hold an incomparably precious treasure."
The greed rooted deep within the red dragon's bloodline, inherited from Tiamat, urged him over and over to push open that stone gate.
"Yet the epitaph foretells that he will bring about absolute ruin."
"Better to play it safe..."
Cassius, after all, was no muscle-brained purebred red dragon from an adventure story; reason ultimately won the day.
That did not mean abandoning the tomb, however—merely that he intended to lay low until he was fully recovered and thoroughly prepared before venturing any deeper.
And so, the red dragon settled down here for the time being.
Yes, he moved right in.
Cassius first returned to the site of his battle with the behir, intending to devour its battered remains.
A behir possessed immense strength, making its meat extraordinarily chewy. It even carried a faint, tingling numbness of lightning—the result of the magical beast's internal reservoir of special energy.
"Tastes like the spicy hot pot from my past life," Cassius remarked as he chewed and gulped it down voraciously.
This was by far the highest praise the red dragon had bestowed on any food in this world.
A dragon could easily digest half its body weight in meat each day, converting food into elemental energy to store for future use.
Much of that stored energy went into fueling breath weapons and powering the rapid growth spurts experienced throughout a lifetime.
And so the red dragon passed the time—sometimes gorging on behir meat, sometimes studying the inscriptions on the pillars, and sometimes sprawling out atop the bone heaps to sleep soundly.
Several days went by.
***
A grick curled within a crevice in the cavern ceiling.
Resembling a giant worm, the dark, slate-colored beast blended seamlessly into its surroundings.
They waited in silence within the grottos.
Whenever prey drew near, a grick would rear up, unfurling four barbed tentacles to reveal the snapping, ravenous beak at their center.
Yet just as it hung there motionless like a dead object, waiting quietly for prey to arrive, a bloody maw suddenly materialized, ripping it entirely out of the cavern crevice.
Its soft, rubbery body struggled for a brief moment before powerful claws shoved it into the waiting jaws.
"Tastes like chicken, nice and crunchy," Cassius remarked as he chewed the resilient meat.
A creature that served as the Grim Reaper to ordinary adventurers was nothing more than a decent little snack to the red dragon.
By now, the red dragon's scales were glossy and bright, his wounds entirely healed, his vitality abundant, and his full suite of spells completely restored.
*Time to see what this so-called 'ruin' is all about,* Cassius thought, continuing to chew on the grick.
In the memories of his past life, someone had once retrieved legendary-tier equipment from a cavern somewhere in the Northlands, and this was likely that rumored location.
Moreover, after slaying the behir, he felt as if a mechanism had been triggered. Some power seemed to be brewing, likely to destroy this place completely. If that happened, he would lose this precious opportunity for good.
For someone like him, still in his growth stage and surrounded by formidable foes on all sides, such a substantial boost was truly a once-in-a-lifetime boon.
*Gotta take a gamble to turn a bicycle into a motorbike,* Cassius thought, gritting his teeth as he felt his vigor and surging spell energy.
Chapter 27