Dong! Dong! Dong!...
Two male Dragon-n, towering over two ters and considered burly even among the Dragon Vein tribe, stripped to the waist, raised their drumsticks and forcefully struck the Thunder Bull Hide Drum set up on the giant stone altar.
The thunderous sound of the drums echoed far across the Great Oasis and resonated for a long ti in the desolate desert, unaffected by the peculiar sound-absorbing traits.
In this vast oasis stretching over five thousand square kiloters, live approximately two thousand Dragon-n.
While land of the sa size could easily support over thirty thousand humans, the Dragon-n's terrifying rate of resource consumption has pushed the sustainability of this place almost to its limits.
The most critical factor is.
The Dragon-n living here lack the human ability for Great Navigation; even if resources are scarce, they cannot explore the edges of the known world for new lands and resources.
Even though there are other scattered small communities distributed throughout the extensive "Forgotten Desert," every Dragon-man knows very well. Under the condition of being unable to leave the [Netherworld], their resource limit is entirely locked, and this is their final holand!
And the blessings from God are their only hope.
Including: strength (bloodline purification), oasis expansion (water source), knowledge (agriculture, dicine, breeding)...
Thus in this [Netherworld], which is a forbidden zone for most creatures, the focus of production and life for the Dragon-n revolves around how to worship and appease the Gods.
No one knows whether this design was deliberately arranged by that God; every Dragon-man here is the most devout believer.
Of course, even though there are no external enemies, it does not an their strength is weak.
The Dragon-n are akin to the direct descendants of the Royal Families of various kingdoms in the Material World; most naturally grow into Tier 2 Extraordinary beings after reaching adulthood, yet Tier 3 remains a difficult threshold to cross.
And they don't have the legacy of human Knights; after reaching Tier 3, they have switched to the path of willpower.
Dragon-n benefit from their bloodline and are also constrained by it; strength growth largely depends on talent and age, with Tier 3 Extraordinary beings being few and far between.
After all, even a pure-blood Shadow Dragon upon reaching adulthood is only Tier 4, and a Sub-dragon Species Sea Dragon only reaches Tier 3, let alone a re group of low-level Dragon-n tainted with various Dragon Veins?
As the drums echoed.
The sacrificial crowd began to gather around the giant stone altar at the city center; this is a grand ceremony held each spring and autumn, and no one dares to slack off.
The arrival of this final mont was faster than Angie initially anticipated.
This was because the original sacrificial ceremony had long been prepared; her intrusion was rely a surprise, making her the main course of the sacrifice.
Not far from the altar, in a roughly maintained rocky cell guarded by a female Dragon-man holding an obsidian spear.
Angie gently lifted a pot of precious fresh water, her sole provision as the sacrificial finale, yet she did not drink it but slowly poured it onto the roots of three small plants in the corner.
Trickle...
These are three herbaceous plants, approximately thirty centiters in height. Their stems are straight and rough, of purple-brown color, with oval, thick green leaves and bell-shaped flowers in blue-purple hues, resembling ordinary ornantal plants.
But Angie looked at them as if they were priceless treasures.
This plant, called [Gentiana], is essentially just ordinary and has a widespread distribution across the entire Material World.
Yet, they possess exceptional, highly targeted effects.
To Dragon Vein creatures, they act as natural stimulants and fortifiers, having effects similar to khat from the Southern Continent and coca leaves from the New Continent widely used in the human world.
They are also widely used by Dragon-n as auxiliary ingredients for smoking or brewing alcohol, as ordinary things in nature can't stimulate their robust bodies without the support of such special plants.
It was precisely this trait that Angie, having lost her "Magic Pocket" abilities, saw as her last chance.
After discovering two dust-like seeds in the brick cracks of the cell, she quickly and stealthily began to catalyze and induce mutations while the periodic patrol guards were not paying attention.
Originally.
When Angie first converted to the "Life Tree ditation thod," she could make all the flowers in a garden bloom instantly during her apprentice phase, utilizing [Magic-like Technique: Recovery] to cultivate the powerful Extraordinary plant [wizard flytrap] in a very short ti.
After advancing to an Official Wizard, she obtained two strands of Spiritual Origin as replenishnt, thus her abilities have qualitatively improved since then.
With an afternoon plus one night of effort, she has proliferated the initial two seeds through hundreds of generations, with the concentration and penetration of one alkaloid as the main effective ingredient increased by nearly a thousand tis.
Even though it's just a raw material, still not artificially refined, it has transford into a toxin that targets the Dragon Vein.
If it wasn't completely under Angie's control, prevented from releasing its scent, it might have already attracted the attention of the Tier 3 female Dragon-man not far from the cell.
No mundane plant toxin could harm an Extraordinary Creature of such level.
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