Beneath the Red Dragon

The boundless expanse of the pale yellow desert and barren hills stretched as far as the eye could see, devoid of human presence and life.

Karon stood at the crest of a sand ridge, gazing into the distance at the rolling dunes reflecting the blinding light under the sun.

The Red Dragon loved the hot climate; at midday in the desert, the surface temperature reached a scorching sixty degrees, an environment in which ordinary creatures could not survive. The yellow sand beneath his feet was hot enough to cook food directly.

Even many ferocious species in the Icaria World, and some Extraordinary Magical Beasts whose attributes don’t match, would dehydrate and perish living in such conditions for long.

They would be sun-dried into mummies, their desiccated bodies set aflame, turning to dust that eternally accompanies the yellow sand.

This is entirely a desert world; even the senses of an Ancestral Red Dragon couldn’t detect the existence of a significant gathering of water molecules within a hundred or thousand miles around.

This also means, within these hundreds or thousands of miles, there are no exposed water sources on the surface.

The gravel beneath the Red Dragon’s claws was dry and brittle, with only subsurface rock aquifers hundreds of kilometers deep.

But even for dragons who love digging caves in the desert like Blue Dragons, it would take a good half day to excavate hundreds of kilometers deep.

However, judging from the rock layer structures and traces from the depths, this planet of only dunes was once a normal verdant world in distant ages.

According to the information obtained, EraCos Planet transformed step by step from its past as a verdant planet to a desert planet with nothing but barren sand.

In Karon’s perception, far away hundreds of miles, there were exposed salt flats, proving that this planet once had vast oceans and was a water-rich planet.

Yet even in such a harsh environment, the EraCos Planet hosts a native human race—the Fremen.

The harsh environment and the presence of spice have strengthened the Fremen’s physical constitution, though they do not possess the talent to unlock precognitive abilities, they are the most formidable fighters in this world.

But for the Ancestral Red Dragon, in this harsh environment, the warmth felt more like a comforting warm-water bath to normal beings.

Karon folded his broad wings, with scars of iron and ash flowing on them, pressed against the Red Dragon’s side, resembling rune armor.

His claws pressed into the soft, parched sand, starting to stamp heavily on the ground, resonating with the barren earth and sand, striking out a rhythmic frequency and echoes beneath the barren earth.

Thunk, thunk, thunk...

The resonant frequency rhythm transmitted through the sandy ground attracted creatures dwelling in the desert depths, and a different, violent reverberation echoed from beneath the calm sand.

Karon halted his movement and looked toward a direction three miles away.

The surface of the desert there suddenly arched, as if a massive creature was burrowing from deep within the desert, moving under the sand.

The long body of this gigantic creature vibrated at a unique frequency, creating a liquefaction effect in the sand, enabling it to burrow through the desert, parting sand waves, and stirring up gravel and dust, rushing toward the Ancestral Red Dragon at an astonishing speed.

The friction sounds of the gigantic creature moving beneath the sand rolled in with a great whistling, the desert itself and the sandstorm wind stirred by the creature’s forward momentum.

The gravel beneath Karon’s claws started sinking, and the swirling gravel rose past the Ancestral Red Dragon’s body.

Karon extended his wings, leaping slightly to hover low in the air.

The next moment, with a thunk,

A terrifyingly hideous, abyss-like gigantic maw suddenly burst from the sand below, aiming to engulf the Ancestral Red Dragon.

”Condense sand into stone, transform dust into earth!”

The steel scars and ash markings on Karon’s wings flowed with Magic Power, as his steel claws gently descended upon the massive Sand Worm emerging from the ground.

The flowing Magic Power transformed into Magic with a thought from Karon, while his Bloodline Talent impatiently solidified the gravel into stone blocks.

The dust in the wind turned into stacked earthen walls, embedding the Sand Worm, which had thrust its maw skyward, within the stone and earthen walls, unable to advance or retreat.

The ferocious, terrifying Sand Worm’s long tail continued sweeping beneath the sand, a sound like dry plants brushing the sand, mixed with an insect-wing vibration and the sound of a whale echoing in the deep sea, issued from the massive Sand Worm’s maw.

But this was not a call for help or a warning sound; since these Sand Worms have a territorial awareness as strong and exclusive as dragons, when encountering each other within narrow regions, they would fight, so typically only one Sand Worm appears in each territory.

”Is this the unique resource of the EraCos Planet, the indirect producer and source of spice?”

Karon spread his wings wide, flying low to see this ugly and terrifying creature wholly.

In his eyes, the structure of the Sand Worm’s body was very simple, resembling a segmented earthworm but much larger. This Sand Worm was about twenty-five meters long, with twenty-five segments.

But unlike the soft body surface of earthworms, the Sand Worm’s exterior was covered in coarse, hard, rock-like scales, orange-red in color.