[NR] A Dangerous Opportunity - Chapter 430 (Patreon)

Jason sighs and looks out over the new terrain he is going to have to deal with. It was all hills and trees. Though they seemed to be mutually exclusive. This meant the trees were only in the valleys between the hills.

Not that he had realized the green foliage was trees until he got up close to them. You would think a bunch of deep valleys next to a swamp would be asking for trouble. And maybe it was, but Jason didn’t stick around on the edge of the swamp long enough to learn if it had problems with flooding and how it took care of it.

Though this change in terrain did represent a return to “normal”. In other words, the land seemed a bit too cut and dry. Sure, Jason knows about the treeline, but that involves mountains tall enough that trees can’t survive after a certain height. So, while the hills were bigger than he expected once you counted the deep valleys, they weren’t mountain tall.

Oh, and those deep valleys? Jason wasn’t going to go down into them. The trees had a number of large birds up top and while they looked annoying to deal with, below was much worse. It wasn’t quite as bad as movies like to make places like this look. Still, that only meant he could actually see the ground through the snakes. Big and small, constrictors and venomous, young and old.

That last one was the biggest problem. Irl, an old snake doesn’t mean all that much except maybe the size. In fantasy and cultivation style worlds, though? Old snakes is one of the methods that you get dragons, or at least drakes. So while Jason isn’t certain that is what is happening down there the fact some of the older snakes have horns points towards some kind of advancement.

Jason does admit to himself it could just be a special bloodline. After all, it wasn’t all that many weeks ago that a Maralith got summoned. While Maraliths don’t have horns, demons and devils in general can have them. That and it could be they aren’t turning into dragons, but rather have the bloodline of a dragon. Which admittedly isn’t much better for him. Though since they seem to be relatively unbothered, that likely isn’t the case or else someone would be hunting them for that blood.

Not that Jason wasn’t interested in snagging one of the smaller snakes to check it out. It really depended on how NeoRealm handles dragons, or more likely what kind of dragon ended up invading NeoRealm, whether the blood will be helpful or harmful. While all true dragons tend to end up looking like either the classic dragon with a hoard or the wise long boys with the whiskers, they can in fact come from any source. Dragon bloodline accession, evolution, or even some stranger options, like if a carp manages to jump over the correct waterfall.

All those and more can result in a dragon. Though not all the options for turning into a dragon are at least somewhat voluntary. Specifically, some dragons have infectious blood. All those myths about eating their heart or bathing in their blood to gain power? Technically, you can gain some power from that, but more likely what is happening is the person has been infected with a dragon bloodline. The only saving grace is that such a bloodline transition requires a ton of power and so young dragons can’t infect others and the blood you might get on you when fighting an older one won’t turn you.

Jason frowns, he had been making his way through the canopy while remembering everything he had found out about dragons, but now something caught his attention. There had been birds all over the place. If they had been aggressive, he might have attempted to go around with how oppressive their presence was. It made some sense, while the snakes below would come up and eat a bird or two, they mostly left them alone.

That made the area the perfect nesting ground as the snakes drove away any of the common egg eating pests while the observant birds could easily take flight when a snake was hungry. Which means the area ahead might be a problem. It was clear of birds and since there were visible nests in the area, there must be something driving them away.

Normal enough, except for the fact this area extends in both directions and there aren’t any birds currently in the air. If it was a recent disturbance, then birds would be flying around, waiting to land. Since that isn’t the case, for an area this big to be abandoned meant either a lot of enemies or one powerful enemy. Jason was betting on the second option.

In theory, that meant it would be safe to go around the area, but what predator stayed around when it has driven off all the prey? The answer in this case was most likely one that wasn’t hunting in the first place. For such a large area to be cleared meant a powerful enemy, so since none of the birds nearby are big enough to be worth hunting for something so powerful.

There was an opportunity hidden in the danger though. Jason couldn’t see the ends of the cleared area and there wasn’t much of a visible curve so going around would take a while. On the other hand, if he went through at an angle, he could cut off a bunch of time while being unlikely to see the monster. Though this depended on his guess being right.

Jason, however, was willing to bet on his guess being right. What was his guess? That this area was just like the rabbit plains. An area conquered by a specific species, in this case either the snakes or it might be under dual ownership of snakes and birds. So the actual danger is in the center of the entire area and whatever is ahead is likely a snake from there that came out to the edge to sun itself or some such.