Garon slowly moved closer to his mother, attempting to nuzzle her dragon head and act cutely to coax some food from her.
He was going all-in for food, using every trick in the book to appear endearing.
Back when he was human, Garon's pet cat behaved the same way—usually mischievous, but pitifully cute when hungry, rubbing against his hand or leg until fed.
Garon hoped this tactic would work just as well on the white dragon mother.
However, just as most humans only find other creatures' offspring cute and their own somewhat ugly, the white dragon mother looked unimpressed by the clumsy charm of the young dragonling.
Her gaze was sharp and cold, and without a word, she just stared at Garon, making him shiver and hesitate to come any closer.
"Affection among evil dragons is practically nonexistent."
Trying to act as if nothing had happened, Garon turned his attention to the other four intact dragon eggs.
These eggs were also slightly shaking, with fine cracks spreading across their surfaces.
The dragonlings inside were stirring, trying to break free, but it seemed they would need some more time. It was uncertain how many would eventually hatch.
Dragons typically lay between two to six eggs at a time, and this batch of six positioned the white dragon mother as quite fertile among dragons.
The most common clutch size was three or four eggs, with over ninety percent of dragon eggs falling within this range. Only about five percent of dragons, like the white dragon mother, laid as many as six.
"Once my other siblings hatch, snatching a bit of their eggshells shouldn't be too excessive."
The eggs only reached up to Garon's chest, suggesting they contained normal-sized dragonlings.
Garon looked down at his own significantly more robust and larger body, feeling a surge of confidence that he could handle four at once.
His tongue instinctively licked his lips as he backed against the wall, keeping his gaze fixed while stealthily moving toward the eggs.
The white dragon mother was still watching him, forcing Garon to conceal his cunning plan.
But he didn't believe she would keep watching him without blinking.
Even if discovered, perhaps the white dragon mother still wouldn't stop him; after all, stealing from Hil's eggshell had gone unpunished. However, due to uncertainty about her limits, Garon had returned the smallest piece of eggshell.
Just as this thought crossed his mind, the icy floor of the nest trembled slightly.
Garon turned to see the white dragon mother shift her body as if stretching her limbs, akin to yawning.
She glanced at the other shaking eggs, her pale yellow eyes devoid of any emotion.
Garon had seen this look more than once.
Although white dragons ranked lowest in intelligence among dragon kinds, leaning more toward beastly instincts than thoughtful reasoning, they were still not unintelligent compared to other species; they simply preferred instinct over contemplation.
And the nearly adult white dragon mother certainly possessed intelligence surpassing that of an average human.
She probably just couldn't be bothered to deal with her offspring.
Next, the white dragon mother slowly stood up, her massive body casting a shadow over Garon, the pressure making him feel slightly suffocated.
After flapping her wings, she walked heavily to the entrance of the nest, looked back once, then turned her head and with a beat of her wings, her massive form disappeared into the snowstorm outside the nest.
Garon slowly moved toward the entrance of the nest.
As he neared and peered out, the sight before him momentarily took his breath away.
Velvet-like snowflakes fell from the sky, landing on the already snow-covered ground.
The howling, almost visible cold wind whistled through the icy crevasses, its moans echoing in this vast land of snow, wind, and ice crystals.
In the distance, beyond Garon's keen vision, winter wolves moved low through the snow, leaving paw prints soon covered by the drifting snow; frost tigers hid in the snow, only their dim, wild eyes visible as they patiently awaited their prey.
In this frigid, snowy world, numerous resilient beings struggled to survive, creating a breathtakingly beautiful tableau of freedom despite the frost.
These were sights Garon had never experienced, leaving him unsure of his feelings but deeply moved.
Refocusing, Garon raised his head and looked into the distance.
A vast mountain range, almost endless, loomed like a dragon's back, covered in ancient snow and reflecting faint glimmers of light.
Stretching from the east to the south for thousands of kilometers and made up of countless peaks and valleys, it served as a natural barrier separating the northern ice plains from the human-dominated Duchy of Warwick.
"The Northern Ice Plains, a cold desert."
Due to the dragon legacy's uniqueness, dragons inherently knew of the world into which they were born.
Just from a brief glance out of his steep cliffside nest, Garon knew
the name of his surroundings.
Dragons, as one of the most superior beings across numerous planes, owed much of their innate world knowledge to the dragon legacy, in addition to their robust physiques, sharp claws and teeth, and formidable magical abilities.
The white dragon mother's nest was situated on a cliff of an iceberg, more than five hundred meters above the ground.
After inhaling the cold air from the high altitude, Garon peeked down.
Through the dense flurry of snow, he saw layers of thick snow silently accumulating.
Recent heavy snowfalls had submerged the entire northern world, obscuring the true form of the ice plains.
He fluttered his large wings slightly, feeling an intuition that he might safely land from five hundred meters up.
Without actually attempting to fly from the nest, Garon confidently returned inside.
With the white dragon mother no longer there to draw attention, Garon's gaze was immediately drawn to an array of glowing objects in the deepest part of the nest.
Upon closer inspection, it was a collection of fine weapons, armor, scrolls, and various lightly glowing gems.
Crystals, agates, jades, diamonds—mostly common gems, but many pulsed with magic, particularly the diamonds.
White dragons favored collecting diamonds because the radiant light reflected from them made their ice-crystal-filled nests sparkle brilliantly.
Garon's platinum eyes glittered, momentarily dazzled.
He inherited the dragons' love and greed for treasure, and in his past human life, Garon's greatest pleasure was watching his savings slowly increase.
The greedy tendencies of his two lives combined at this moment with remarkable force.
Garon swallowed unconsciously, his mind racing audaciously as he plotted how to make the treasures before him his own.