Reincarnated in a novel: I am the villain!

The journey deeper into the Dragon Lands was no longer a march; it was a descent into an active oven.

As the Iron-Horse Mark II rolled farther into the canyon, the temperature didn’t rise linearly; it spiked with every mile they covered.

The air outside grew so oppressive that the red rocks themselves seemed to sweat, shimmering with a violent, mirage-like distortion that bent the light.

Inside the carriage, the atmosphere was stifling. The cooling runes etched into the chassis, which had been humming softly before, were now glowing a frantic white-hot. They buzzed angrily, fighting a losing battle against the ambient temperature of the domain they were trespassing in.

"It’s... unnaturally hot," Lyra gasped, leaning her head back against the seat. She was fanning herself with a large leaf she had conjured from wind mana, but even the conjured air felt like the breath of a furnace.

"My skin feels like it’s drying out. Even with the thermal regulators Brokk gave us... I feel like I’m cooking in my own armor."

Damien sat by the window, his eyes narrowed behind his sunglasses. He wasn’t sweating as much as the others, thanks to his Celestial Life Physique constantly regulating his vitals, but he could feel the pressure.

It wasn’t just heat. It was mana. Thick, heavy, suffocating Fire Mana that saturated every particle of dust in the air.

But as he looked out the window, he noticed something else. Something far more telling than the heat.

Silence.

For the last hour, the constant threat of the canyon had vanished. They hadn’t seen a single Magma Scorpion skittering across the rocks.

There were no Rock Golems bursting from the cliff faces. Even the skies were empty of Wyverns.