The dragon tasted and swallowed the brick; seconds later, some red light flashed on its body.
It seemed like the dragon was more energetic after consuming the brick.
"This is our favorite food, I wish you had more. I'll pay you back, I'll let you enter my book cave. For the dragon breath…" The dragon sighed and created another chilling vortex in the cave.
"I don't have enough strength to release a dragon breath… As you can see, my body is decaying and I'll die sooner or later…"
"A book cave? But you don't have eyes…" Angele was a bit surprised.
"You'll understand when you're there…" The dragon smiled and moved its tail, revealing a small cave on the wall.
Angele glanced at the dragon and walked straight to the cave.
He entered the cave, passed through a short black hallway, and arrived at a spacious garden.
The white flame circle around his body brightened up the whole garden.
Red, white, purple, and blue flowers were about to blossom. The white leaves, green leaves, and the vibrant vines on the wall turned the area into a fairy garden. The place was quiet and peaceful.
Waving his hand, Angele turned the white flame circle into a lot of white flames, splashing on the walls. The flames stuck on the walls and started burning, releasing bright white light that brightened up the whole garden.
Angele noticed the flowers in this garden were much larger than the flowers in normal gardens. The buds had the size of a human's head and some buds had a diameter of one meter.
He walked to a large red bud and stopped.
*CHI*
The bud slowly blossomed and there was a book hidden inside the bud. The book was covered with blue runes and complicated patterns. The book was made of the petals, which were connected by the pistil.
"That's…" Angele sniffed, he noticed that a floral fragrance permeated the air as the bud blossomed. The fragrance was intense and complicated, it felt like it consisted of the fragrance of more than ten different flowers.
'So that's how the dragon reads? By smelling?' Angele was interested,
he turned the flower book to the first page.
He realized that he could not recognize any of the words on the book. Those words were written in strange runes and were mixed with complicated patterns that looked like they were drawn by a robot.
Angele felt like he was reading the blueprint of a laser gun, but the blueprint was explained using pictographs.
"I can smell it… This is a travel log of the Lost Realm… A friend of mine gifted me this…" The dragon's voice came from outside.
"Lost Realm…" Angele had never heard about the realm before.
"It's a realm that's far from us… The coordinates are more than 100 characters long… You don't want to go there…" the dragon explained.
Angele turned several pages and realized he could not understand any of the content.
He closed the book and took two steps back. The flower returned to the shape of a bud quickly.
Angele then walked to a black bud.
*CHI*
The black bud blossomed, revealing a black book inside. The words written in the book were white and easy to read.
The floral fragrance permeated the air again and the fragrance was changing constantly.
Again, Angele could not recognize the words in the book; however, the colorful galaxy on the book cover reminded him of the science textbook on Earth.
"This is the book of light from the Chaos Realm, it's written in the Chaos language. Why don't you try and read it? The book might aid you…" the dragon suggested.
"This one?" Angele knew the Chaos language and it seemed like the dragon was not lying to him.
He carefully turned to the first page.
'The land will crack when the star flashes! Recorded by the 30060000005th morning light.'
Angele was confused, the name of the author was strange.
"Yeah, this book is written by a ray of ancient light. The light went across thousands of years and recorded everything it saw on this book. That's why it a book of light. This is the only book that was written by a ray of light," the dragon explained.
Angele was surprised after hearing the explanation. He slowly
slowly turned to the next page.
'The next day, fire is burning.' There was only one sentence on two pages.
The book of light suddenly started burning after Angele read the sentence and the flame was white.
The shadow disappeared from the cave as the book burnt. The cave was bright like it was somewhere else and there was no darkness left.
Angele stood in front of the book and stopped moving. Light and fire were being redefined in his mind as information was transferred to his brain.
People would eat when they were hungry and they would drink when they were thirsty. He understood how to turn light into fire like he was just eating and drinking.
Angele had no idea how much time had passed, he finally stopped thinking.
"That was close…" The dragon's voice echoed again. "You only read the second page, if you can read all five pages, you'll be able to understand the truth of the light."
The white light had already disappeared from the cave and the book was not burning. It felt like everything was just an illusion.
Angele opened his mouth and tried to talk, but he was thirsty and his head was aching. It felt like he could fell asleep at any time. He spent way too much mentality on the book.
The book of light closed before Angele stepped away and the flower turned into a black bud seconds later.
"What's going on?" Angele groaned as he rubbed his head. His body numbed and he lost all the strength.
"I spent more than 10 thousand years to collect those books and all the books were infused with mysterious power. Your soul echoed with the book of light, but it was too weak to finish the book. The garden is about to die and you're the last visitor, but you only read one page of a book… That might be the destiny…" The dragon sighed with mixed emotions.
Angele's eyes widened as the dragon finished its words.
The colorful buds in the garden turned translucent and slowly disappeared into the air.
"What? There are so many rare books here! Is there
Is there a way to save those books?!" Angele could not just stand here and watch all the books disappear. All the books had the same level as the book of light and he was not sure how long he needed if he wanted to study all of them. He did not expect that the flowers would die with the books.
He learned a lot just by reading the second page of the book of the light. Angele felt like his soul was evolving when the information was being transferred into his brain.
Angele could feel that his soul was burning while releasing light. His life energy was consumed naturally and he could stop the procedure if he wanted to. Also, he noticed that his body was strengthened when his life energy was consumed.
If he could turn his life energy into a power that would strengthen his body, he would improve much faster than other creatures, since the other creatures were just wasting their life energy.
"My body was changing and my soul was changing…" Angele muttered as he watched the garden decay. All the green plants turned black slowly, they decayed and dropped to the ground, creating pools with black liquid.
He felt like he was waking up from a sweet dream.
"Leave now… It's the guidance of the destiny…" the old dragon spoke in a deep tone depressingly.
Angele's cheek twitched, he had read many books from the ancient era, and they all talked about the guidance of the destiny for some reason.
Shaking his head, Angele stepped out of the book cave and returned to the dragon.
Angele stood by the dragon's head and questioned in a calm tone, "Anyways, your book helped me a lot. Let me know if you want anything from me."
"I've lived for so long that there is nothing I want after all those years… I don't want anything from you, I could live for several more years if you didn't come here, but now, my goal has been fulfilled and I have no regrets. I wanted to meet another living being before I go… It seems go… It seems like the destiny treats me well…" the old dragon responded.
Angele noticed that the dragon's wings were covered with holes, they looked like broken kites.
It seemed like the dragon had seen everything in its long life.
"I spent more than ten thousand years fighting against the Terror Dragons and I ended up dying in this cave…" The dragon shook its head and turned to Angele.
"I'll give you a gift before I go since you're the last living being that talked to me…" The dragon touched Angele's body with its mouth.
The two white horns beside the dragon's ears started glowing.
Angele's body was covered with a strong mentality wave. The dragon's mentality wave was like an endless sea that was filling up the cave.
Angele closed his eyes, he noticed that the dragon's mentality wave was rotten for some reason.
'The dragon's soul is dying—although his physical form is still alive, his mind will be gone…' He finally understood why the eye-gouging dragon was dying despite such a strong mentality wave.
The mentality wave surrounded Angele like water.
"Tell the mortals, tell the creatures, tell the world! Me! Glen Van Vartan is still alive! Inherit my dragon sigil and pass it to someone else when you die… this is my last request…"
The sentence echoed in Angele's ears as the mentality wave entered his body. He had not understood the meaning of the sentence yet.
The information of the Lost Realm, the Lost language, the Eternal Realm, the Eternal language, and the eye-gouging dragon's dragon breath were transferred into Angele's brain.
The mentality wave weakened and disappeared into the air after a while.
Angele slowly opened his eyes, and he noticed that the dragon was no longer moving under the light from the walls. The dragon was trapped in a dream that would never end.
The last eye-gouging dragon had disappeared from this world.
"This marks the end of an old era and the start of a new era…" Angele stared at the dragon's dead body with a pair of glowing red eyes.
The dead dragon slowly turned into ash and merged into the dark surface of the ground.