Chapter 1053 — A Glimmer of Light

"This is the situation we face now."

Kradore the Red stood beside a scorched long table, speaking to Hragor, who sat on the other side.

This was one of the few "rooms" in the makeshift shelter still more or less intact. It had once been the pipe control room of some factory; when the shockwave came, this facility, half-buried in the rock strata, had survived the blow thanks to its sturdy construction — though not without damage. Deep cracks ran from ceiling to walls, some of them now open to the outside, and the howling wind poured through these fissures, bringing with it not only a shrill whistle but a piercing cold.

A dragon's constitution could shrug off such cold, but the psychological落差 — no, the sense of desolation such circumstances bred — could not be avoided.

"How many dragons are in this camp now?" Hragor raised his head and looked at Dukmor, who stood silent to one side.

"Two thousand — the vast majority wounded or suffering severe backlash from enhancers and hallucinogens. Fewer than half a percent could be called healthy," Dukmor said. "The good news is that many of the wounded retain some capacity for labor; at least after emergency treatment they can help search for supplies. We send out search parties every day now, combing the nearby ruins for kin who have awakened, and our numbers have been growing steadily."

"How far does the search range extend?" Hragor asked.

"For now, limited to the area around Agondor, out as far as the great rift to the west — supplies are short, communications poor, and elemental creatures still roam deep in the ruins, so the search parties dare not venture too far from camp."

"Elemental creatures?" Baryangor frowned. "Why would there be elemental creatures?"

"In the late stages of the battle, the gods' power shattered the barrier of the prime material world and tore open several rifts to the elemental planes at the heart of Tarrond — rifts that at one point expanded to a third of the continent, and countless elemental creatures poured out," Dukmor explained patiently, knowing Baryangor had not been on the battlefield then. "The elemental forces have since receded on their own and the main rifts have healed, but a considerable number of wandering elementals still roam near the rift radiation zones, and countless small fissures remain... it will be decades before they dissipate completely."

The room fell silent. After a dozen seconds or so, Anqian spoke: "The search must continue. For now it seems more of our kin are waking in the ruins and awaiting rescue. With Tarrond's communications cut and the wilderness grown so perilously hostile, the odds of survival for these isolated kin in the wild shrink with every passing day. And we should expand the search range as far as possible — especially toward the City of the Gods, where..."

Anqian was barely halfway through when the twisted metal gate nearby suddenly creaked open and Metzen Pernia walked in, fatigue written across her face. She paused a moment at the sight in the room, then bowed her head in greeting to Anqian and Hragor. Noreta, the white dragon seated at the corner of the long table, rose to her feet: "You're back? How are things outside?"

"Our kin in the western district are fighting off enhancer withdrawal symptoms, but elsewhere things are all right," Metzen said with a breath, trying to dwell on the more hopeful parts. "You can tell everyone was heartened by Councilor Anqian and the others coming back — and those dragon eggs you dug out today... I feel many dragons have had their hope rekindled by those eggs."

"Noreta found the egg vault at the old hatching factory site — she took a team and dug there for a long time, and they recovered several hundred intact eggs," Kradore said, turning to Hragor and the other two dragons. "We've stored them in a cavern at the center of camp, with dragons taking turns to guard them. When the eggs were brought back, morale visibly lifted."

"Split them up, don't keep them all in one cavern," Baryangor warned at once. "Right now both the surface structures and the underground caverns are unstable. Spreading the eggs out will be safer."

Kradore nodded quickly. "Yes, I'll see to it shortly."

"But I never imagined... you actually found intact eggs," Anqian could not help saying, his voice even carrying a faint tremor. "I thought they were all destroyed when the hatching factory collapsed... Finding them is what matters. With eggs, we can have a healthy new generation — a generation untouched from birth by enhancers and implants... In the days to come, only these 'original dragons' will be able to adapt to a dragon society that has lost the Omega system."

Anqian's words stirred something deep in Metzen — in the brief time since awakening, she had already come to see one fact clearly: the previous stage of Tarrond's civilization had ended. The gods and Omega were gone, and the generation of dragons raised in the cradle had been thrown from the wheel of the age. Implants, enhancers, automated systems... these things had once shaped the whole of dragon society, and yet that society she knew had vanished along with them. In the new era... dragons starting from zero needed a generation that would start from zero.

The eggs Noreta had found in the ruins were not merely a "hope" to lift morale — they were the dragons' true "future."

"There should be more eggs in the collapsed section of the hatching factory," Kradore said, moved as well by Councilor Anqian's emotion, his face wearing an expression of near-solemn gravity. "From now on, beyond search and rescue and gathering supplies, our priority is to dig out those eggs and move them somewhere relatively safe and stable."

"Good, that's what we should do," Councilor Anqian said with a slow nod — but then he shook his head, his gaze sweeping slowly around the room. "But there is one more problem. Have any of you thought of it?"

Curiosity showed on Kradore's face. "One more problem?"

"...Do you know how to hatch dragon eggs?" Anqian's expression was grave as his gaze passed over the younger dragons — Metzen, Noreta — and even over Kradore, who was relatively old. There was no trace of jest in his tone. "Among the young dragons in this camp, is there anyone who still knows the skill of hatching eggs without the factory's facilities?"

At that, silence fell over the room once more. Kradore's expression stiffened for an instant; Noreta sank into thought; Metzen pondered for a long while before she spoke hesitantly: "Just throw them into magma or a mana pool... um, that probably won't hatch them, will it?"

"That would only cook them," Kradore said, giving Metzen an odd look before turning to Anqian. "I... roughly know the process. You should maintain a suitable temperature, keep a stable mana environment..."

"If even a red dragon like you knows only that much, you can imagine the level of the younger, more ignorant dragons in this camp. I hold out no hope at all," Anqian sighed, shaking his head slowly. "Yet this is not your fault, nor any dragon's... After all, before today, no one had ever considered a situation like this."

"...The dragons were cared for by the 'cradle' for too long, and now this is what comes of it," Dukmor sighed as well, a bitter, self-mocking smile on his aged human-form face. "And hatching the eggs is only the first step — caring for hatchlings without the automated rearing systems and temperature-controlled nests will be an even greater problem."

"Then what are we to do?" Metzen looked from one dragon beside her to another, feeling at a loss. "We can't even hatch eggs... then..."