Chapter 121: Devours Clouds
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A pale lemon sun nudged over the thorn-elm crowns, dropping coins of light into the mist. Kai woke up when he had fallen asleep. His one shoulder propped against Shadeclaw’s warm bulk, spear across his knees, Miryam the egg cradled inside a scarf of woven leaf-cloth.
He checked the System quickly, no night ambush, all stats nominal and rose to stretch his new transform body. His silver hair flashed molten where sunbeams threaded, crimson armour shimmered with faint ruby runes. The Iron-Tusk boars grunted at the margins, rooting truffles, Moon-Wing perched high, head swivelling owl-like through three-sixty degrees.
"Today," Kai murmured, tightening his tabard, "we hunt for a personal den, a place to call home."
His immediate need was a lair, Hidden, so the Queen ants or any beast or worse, Thea’s vultures couldn’t sniff him.
It needs to be spacious, to raise a Ruler-class wyrmling. Rich, in area, water, and prey enough to feed his subordinates and grow together.
Forest fringes offered none of those. He needed a fortress the size of a myth. He started moving.
A few hours later...
Moon-Wing hooted twice, moving west. Kai scanned through the bond and saw a ridge of distant stone, frosted silver by dawn, the first finger of a colossal mountain-mass that rose beyond the treeline like a continent in miniature. Steep walls cut the sky. Cloud-belts ringed the upper third in spiral tiers. Even at forty kilometres’ distance the summit looked as big as Amber Bastion itself.