Do you believe me when I say I’m not a dragon?

The monkeys started to move one after another. There was no reason in their eyes, only the desire for their own appetites, even if they were facing a dragon several times larger than them.

"Roar!"

The moment they took action, Mercer moved before them. He turned around suddenly, swept their bodies with a flick of his tail, and knocked them down against the mountain wall.

Mercer didn't use much strength, so the monkeys quickly got up. At the same time, the pain they felt made them regain some sense.

The former leader covered his head and looked around in confusion, and finally looked at Mercer.

"Roar--"

Mercer let out a low growl to calm them down. However, this time, they were conscious and made another move that Mercer did not expect.

The monkeys, whose bodies were still tortured by hunger, roared at Mercer. The former leader also showed his fangs to Mercer and beat his chest violently.

The way the monkeys looked at Mercer made him feel familiar, as if everything had returned to the moment when Mercer, who was just a little dragon, met the former leader four years ago.

——Then, the emotions transmitted to Mercer through the scale powder completely broke the strings of his rationality.

At that moment, Mercer's eyes were filled with anger.

"--Roar!"

......

Mercer didn't want to remember what happened next. When he calmed down, the cave was filled with a group of charred corpses.

In the cave filled with bright red sparks, only Mercer was left standing on the hot land, breathing deeply.

Killing them himself, his breath spurted out without reservation, and the flaming waves burned all living creatures except himself.

The breath organ was already empty.

Staring at the tragedy, Mercer stood blankly as if losing focus, and finally turned around and left in despair.

He walked out of the cave and raised his head to look at the rain in the sky. It was cold and biting, but the roar of the former leader still emerged in his heart.

——Mercer has seen those eyes before, but it was not the time four years ago, but the look he showed when fighting the dragon not long ago.

Faced with the existence that attracted the gray mist, the monkey group shared the same hatred, and a large number of individuals formed a whole, and together they faced the dragon with an insignificant but courageous offensive.

At that time, Mercer naively thought that he was included in them, and was even happy about it.

But in fact, the emotions coming from the monkeys bluntly told Mercer that he was always an outlier.

Their actions never classified Mercer as one of the same kind - they fought against the dragon for the sake of their own tribe, and surrendered to Mercer because they were defeated by his strong strength. Until Mercer showed a kind attitude, they regarded this as weakness.

In the end, they showed their rejection and appetite for Mercer, denied all of Mercer's thoughts, and showed their naked rejection of him. Only then did Mercer's emotions burst out.

They betrayed all Mercer's protection for them. Perhaps this was Mercer's wishful thinking, but when the lie was exposed, the anger in Mercer's heart ignited his reason, so he burned them to death.

Whose problem is this?Should we blame the ruthlessness of the monkeys or Mercer's self-righteousness?

At some point, Mercer thought of his father, the gray-scaled dragon.

It does not hesitate to waste its own life in search of its kind, but what will its mood be like when Mercer roars threateningly at it?

Thinking back on it, Mercer felt that he was so similar to it. He was lonely looking for his kind, the joy of thinking he had finally found a companion, and then the sadness and anger of being disillusioned.

Mercer suddenly flew up, shuttled through the heavy rain, and followed his memory to the sky above the waterfall.

On a rainy night, the water of the waterfall was more fierce than before, washing away the gravel, leaving only a pool with dense waves.

...Back then, I was discovered by several hunters and fled here in embarrassment along the creek.

Mercer flapped his wings again and flew through the night sky, heading downstream.

Something seemed to have happened before that... He got into a fight with a brown bear over the habitat.

If I had defeated the brown bear, would I have stayed in the cave and not encountered the monkeys?

Mercer was thinking in confusion, suddenly stopped, folded his wings and flew towards the cave.

The cave still existed, but the vines used to cover it no longer existed, and the entrance to the cave was clearly visible in front of him.

The wet Mercer entered the cave entrance, shook the rain off his body, and looked around.

"Grumble..."

A low, threatening roar sounded, and in Mercer's sight, several wolf-like and lizard-like creatures gathered together, staring at Mercer with ferocious eyes.

Their hair is dark red, with black cuticles all over their bodies. Their limbs are strong and powerful, and their sharp teeth indicate that they live on carnivorous food.

They are few in number, some of them have just emerged from their juvenile bodies, and overall they are very young.

One of the more mature individuals slowly walked up, bared its fangs and lowered its body towards Mercer.

Apparently, they regarded Mercer as food.

In the past, Mercer would still play with them, but now Mercer is not in the mood.

"Roar!"

The deafening roar passed through the cave and resounded in the rainy night. The sound waves seemed to turn into substantial ripples and spread around.

All the creatures except Mercer screamed, covering their ears and lying on the ground howling.

The roaring stopped, but these creatures were still writhing on the ground and wailing in pain.

After giving them an indifferent look, Mercer turned and left.

He did not kill these creatures. If there was anything that could comfort him at this moment, it would be that there was only a trace of life left alive in this land that was annihilated by the sea of ​​fire.

Chapter 56: Backwaters and Rivers

"Kraft, did you hear that voice?"

Ali asked as he opened the door, with a few drops of rain still dripping from his head.

"...Craft?"

There was no familiar figure in the living room, only a few subtle sounds came from Kraft's bedroom.

Ali walked over and came to the door of Kraft's bedroom. The door was not open. He looked inside and asked:

"Kraft, Team Leader Harold said that the mission will start soon. Now is a good opportunity..."

Before he finished speaking, his voice stopped, and a trace of doubt appeared on his face: "What are you doing?"

——In the bedroom, Kraft was fully dressed and stuffing a large number of books into his huge backpack.

After seeing Ali, Kraft did not show any surprise: "Ah, this, we will leave soon."

"Where?"

"Anywhere will do. Anyway, the things here have nothing to do with us."

"it is good."

Seeing that Kraft was about to pack his luggage, Ali returned to his bedroom and packed it up without interfering.

——After a while, the two of them put on a layer of raincoats and left the village.

"..."

Along the way, Ali did not speak, but walked side by side with Kraft, but Kraft suddenly spoke:

"It must be a surprise to ask you to leave the village together without any warning, right?"

"I'm not surprised."

"Haha, that's right." Kraft smiled, looking very happy.

"...You have become happy." Ali turned to look at his face.

"Really?" He touched his face unexpectedly, and then laughed: "...Yeah."

"Don't you like the village?"

"How could it be? Those forest people are very hospitable, and it's too late for me to thank them."

"Then you hate the scholars at the Institute of Ecology?"

"..." The recorder of the Institute of Ecology fell silent. After a while, he nodded and then shook his head.

Kraft sighed and said, "To be precise, I don't like Team Leader Harold."

Ali snorted: "Although you didn't say it at that time, I probably guessed that you told Harold about the anomalies in the soil, and then he asked you to hide it, right?"

"Well... I am very opposed to the resource collection center. As you know, my talent is not high. I can only rely on my love for ecology to compete with the geniuses of the same class."

"Ah."

"——Actually, to be honest, I admire Mr. Harold very much. My teacher said that he is a 'hard-working genius' and he is also very good to his subordinates... It's just that this time, he has changed .”

"..." Ali said nothing, quietly listening to his companion's words.

"I don't object to his crusade against the gray-scale dragon, but this black gray-scale dragon is different. It is very young and has never even lived with the same race. It may not even know the function of its scale powder... ..Perhaps it felt from the beginning that it had no similar kind? Without similar kind, it would no longer release gray miasma for reproduction, and the so-called crisis would no longer exist - and the gray-scaled dragon would not necessarily release gray miasma. Miasma, as the records say, scale dust scattered by gray scale dragons is common, but the formation of gray miasma on this scale is only once in history. Just because its kin released that gray miasma, we have to Are you going to attack it together?"

Kraft frowned and whispered in confusion. He was not only telling Ali this sentence, he was also saying it to himself.

"Ali, you may think that I am partial to the black gray-scaled dragon, but that is not the case. I just think that the ecosystem is a complex machine, and every living thing is a gear in it. It will not tell you. What is right or wrong will be reflected based on your behavior. The black gray-scaled dragon has grown up in the forest since it was a child. It has become a part of this ecology. It is really difficult to destroy it because of the gray miasma. some......"

While talking ramblingly, Kraft suddenly stopped and sighed deeply:

"...However, even if I say so much, I can't do anything. Leader Harold's purpose is no longer to protect the ecology, but mixed with personal desires - it is also for this reason that I plan to Get out of here."

Seeing that Kraft was silent, Ali also spoke at this time:

"Actually, I can't quite hear what you said, but I think Harold's change started when he received the request from the Resource Collection Center, right?"

"Yes, they are all resource collection centers. In the final analysis, these things should not exist..." Before Kraft could finish his words, he seemed to have thought of something and let out a long sigh, "This strategy is terrible. But other than that, there seems to be no solution. Even if the people on the floating island are allowed to return to the earth, [-]% of them are unwilling to do so. This is not so much a problem of the resource collection center. It’s the people on the floating islands... forget it.”

Kraft was a little excited, and finally realized that he had made a mistake, so he closed his mouth and stopped talking.

"What happened to the people on the floating island?" Ali looked at him and asked, but Kafu just sighed and shook his head silently: "You don't understand even if I tell you."

"At least you will feel better if you speak out." Ali said.

Kraft was stunned, opened his mouth, and said in a low mood after a long time:

"I have made a metaphor - there are hundreds of countries in the world, and then some kind of accident happens. The populations of hundreds of countries have to be crowded on the land of one country. People are crowding and stepping on people. At this time, the population will be There will be a great clearing, and there will be a balance between the population that the land can hold and the acceptable distance between people, and the population will drop to the maximum capacity of this equilibrium."

"——But what followed was the second great clearance. People needed food. Food was grown and raised on the land, but in this way people's living space would be greatly reduced. As a result, the population ushered in the second era. Second Purge.”

"However, the fertility in the land will gradually be exhausted. If you keep planting on a piece of land, sooner or later nothing will grow on that piece of land. Therefore, people who cannot be self-sufficient on that piece of land will eventually My vision looks to the outside world that I dare not touch.”

"Thousands of years have passed, and the outside world that has lost people has long formed a new ecosystem. A few humans struggled to survive in the ecosystem, and were eventually changed by the ecology and evolved into new species adapted to that ecology - only they Nothing has changed, they are rejecting the outside ecosystem, and that ecosystem is rejecting them."

Kafu turned his head, looked at Alimune's expression, and smiled bitterly.

He knew that the long words he spoke were not something that Ali could understand at all, but even if Ali just pretended, it was enough.

"Kraft, look over there."

Ali suddenly raised his hand and pointed not far away.

Near the two of them, a surging river surged downwards. The flow of the river was so fast that the branches that were involved were broken against the shore.

"That's nature," he said.

"this is us."

I moved my finger, and there were several shallow puddles near the river, with a few fish swimming in the puddles.

Chapter 57: The battle begins

After it rains, it snows, and the foggy sky blocks the sunlight, leaving only a vast expanse of white.

The messy snow accompanied by the sound of wind buried the damp ground, and in less than a day it was as high as a person's knees.

Mercer sat at the peak of the forest, looking at the scene in the distance. A large amount of white snow covered his body, and the cold touch made him feel that even the flow of his blood had slowed down.

At this moment, a strange-shaped bow and arrow flew past Mercer's eyes. The arrowhead was made of a small cage with several inconspicuous insects inside.

However, when the arrow flew past Mercer's eyes, the arrow suddenly burst out with a dazzling light, flashing past Mercer's sight!

"Roar--"

Mercer suddenly felt his vision filled with white light. He roared and covered his eyes in pain.

At the same time, he heard rapid footsteps coming from around him, rushing towards him quickly.

"Huh!"