The Mighty Dragons Are Dead

This chapter is an extra update rewarded by "Soy Milk Is Not Milk".

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Dodo Island was just a small island, possibly not even one-tenth the size of Black Horse Island. The Sun Descendants who originally lived on Dodo Island numbered fewer than three hundred.

The entire volcano occupied about eighty percent of the area of Dodo Island.

At this time, the sun had not yet set. From where Liszt had landed, he could just see the sun hanging on the edge of the volcano crater. A faint mist swirled around the sun, and as it reflected the sunlight, there seemed to be a barely visible rainbow suspended in the scene. It was exceptionally beautiful.

"Ach, you and Ros, wait here for me. I'll go search the island first," he said.

"Okay," came the reply.

Without a mount, Liszt needed to walk. He first looked at the treeline by the shore. Just as he had speculated, these tall trees were the Human Skull Trees. Hanging from them were mature, immature, human-skull-like fruits—the edible Human Skull Fruits.

He had tasted a few that had drifted at sea.

After opening the outer shell, inside was a soft, white flesh that tasted sweet, had a chewy texture, and a faint citrus aroma. If he had to make a comparison, it was somewhat similar to the jackfruit Liszt had eaten on Earth, only different in taste and color.

They weren't particularly delicious, but they weren't bad either.

Indeed, the Human Skull Fruit was quite filling and could be eaten as a meal.

Liszt only glanced at the forest and did not linger. He headed straight for the volcano, starting his climb. Beyond a height of fifty meters on the slope, there were basically no Human Skull Trees to be found, only some shrubs and weeds. Higher up, even the shrubs and weeds disappeared.

All that remained was the pitch-black mountain. Stepping on it, Liszt clearly saw that the mountain covered in cracks and pores was nothing but cooled lava.

It was unclear how long it had cooled for, but it was definitely not from a recent eruption.

"Oh!"

The Little Fire Dragon in his chest could no longer hold back, anxiously wanting to come out. Liszt did not let him out, as he needed to determine the environment of the volcano before deciding whether the Little Fire Dragon would cultivate there.

Jumping up.

Climbing toward the volcano crater, as he got closer, the temperature rise became noticeable. Approaching the summit, the heat became so intense it was like being in a sauna. Enduring the scorching heat, Liszt jumped onto the edge of the volcano crater and looked inside.

He saw the crater, as large as a football field, with a depth of twenty to thirty meters filled with large black rocks. On the right side, there was a pond, bubbling and releasing large amounts of steam. On the left side, there was a pool of rolling deep red color.

"That's lava!" Liszt exclaimed with joy. Indeed, this active volcano was in the midst of an eruption.

As the stench of sulfur from the bubbling lava assailed him, he could no longer stop Little Fire Dragon Leo from bursting out of his chest, transforming into a majestic, ten-meter-long Fire Dragon, emitting a loud dragon cry: "Oh!"

It glanced at Liszt, then immediately dove into the volcano crater, plunging into that pool of deep red lava.

The deep red lava, in truth, was not exactly a liquid; it was more like melted rock, moving slowly like thick mud. Leo plunged right into it. Just as Liszt thought it might get stuck, it suddenly transformed into a ball of flame and merged into the lava.

"Hmm?"

Liszt, watching the lava as calm as ever, could no longer see Leo. After using the Eye of Magic, he immediately perceived that the entire volcano crater seemed to be enveloped in a faint red Magic Power.

The red Magic Power at the lava's location was the most intense.

And Leo's Magic Power seemed to form a net, spreading throughout the lava. However, this net was thinning and soon disappeared from sight.

Liszt didn't know what this meant and waited for a moment.

Leo did not surface. As the sun sank lower, about to dip below the horizon, he began to worry—Leo certainly wouldn't be drowned by the lava, but if Leo went in and never came back out, that would be no laughing matter.

He had no choice but to call out loudly: "Leo!"

"Leo!"

"Leo!"

No response.

"This ungrateful White-Eye Dragon!" Liszt cursed under his breath, his Dragon Dou Qi circulating as his figure immediately soared into the air before plummeting down onto the black rocks inside the volcano crater.

Upon landing, he felt the air blisteringly hot and the smell acrid, as if he himself were about to be roasted.

"Leo!"

"Leo!"

"Leo!"

He called out to the lava again, moving towards it as he endured the high temperatures. The lava must have been several hundred degrees, with even the air temperature reaching tens to hundreds of degrees, mixed with a large amount of sulfur. From ten meters away, he didn't dare get any closer to it,

He could only hold his breath, stand still, and shout.

After ten minutes, still no response.

He had already cursed Leo to high heaven in his heart, having raised it from a Magic Fire Seed, through its birth until now, a full six months. He had fed it who knew how many invaluable servings of Fire Dragon Magic Power, spent who knew how many Magic Potions and beef, single-handedly causing the price of beef on Coral Island to skyrocket several times over!

And yet, without so much as a goodbye, it just ran into the volcano's lava and disappeared from sight.

Utterly heartless.

"Leo!" He called out several more times unwilling to give up, still no response. By now, the sun had completely set, leaving only a sliver of light on the horizon, inside the volcano crater one could only see by the red glow of the lava.

Looking at the slowly churning lava,

Liszt had a sour expression on his face.

For the first time, he felt that there was a lack in his method of training Little Fire Dragon Leo. With a mature dragon, perhaps compromise and adaptation were the way to live together, but with a young dragon, to give in was a mistake. Perhaps strict training was the correct approach.

Only in this way could it properly understand its role as a mount.

"A miscalculation."

He rose to his feet, leapt up onto the walls of the volcano crater, and sat there, attempting to wait a little longer.

A moment later, misty smoke began to materialize before his eyes.

"Complete the task, reward: Dodo Island Volcano."

Next moment, the Smoke Serpent Script transformed: "Task: Dodo Island Volcano will become an important habitat for Little Fire Dragon's growth, and it will also be an important place for your Dragon Knight training. Take a good look at this island and establish an appropriate training plan. Grow together with Little Fire Dragon. Reward: One Elf Bug."

"Grow together? This guy has already forgotten about me!" Liszt looked at the task content with a very bad mood, but he wasn't panicked.

After all, Leo was inside this volcano, and sooner or later he would be caught again. That was when he'd need to whip it into shape and let it know that some behaviors were unacceptable.

"From my observation just now, there don't seem to be any animals on this mountain, and if there are, they're small creatures. Even though Leo has the volcano for company, it still needs to eat. With hundreds of kilometers of sea all around, it can't survive on its own. This is my opportunity."

Liszt stood up, suppressing all his negative emotions, his mentality returning to calm: "If I cut off its food supply, won't it still be at my mercy to mold as I please?"

He sneered cruelly.

He turned and slowly left the volcano crater.

Preparing to talk to Ach and start touring Dodo Island tomorrow, and to draft a new training plan.