"Stop being so unreasonable!" The Red Dragon Mother, upon hearing Muria's words, immediately started to struggle and roar. Even evil dragons have a maternal instinct to protect their offspring, and ever since she awoke, her attention had been focused on her egg.
"Calm down! I didn't do anything to you," Muria retorted, stepping back a few paces. His ears were ringing from the mother dragon's roar. He had entirely forgotten about his kick to the red dragon, not seeing it as anything significant.
The similarly chained Red Dragon Mother, now choking with emotion, blurted, "Why is this happening? Why are we faced with such a disaster?"
"Um," Muria was puzzled as he stared at the dragon that was thirty-five meters in length. From the dragon's eyes, which resembled molten lava, a trail of lava-like liquid trickled down. "Is she crying?" he asked uncertainly.
After all, according to the information he had gleaned from books, red dragons were the proudest and most arrogant of the five colored dragons. However, Muria hadn't noticed any arrogance in these two dragons. Instead, they seemed wronged. Very wronged, indeed.
"What exactly happened to you?" curious, Muria asked. "In other words, how did you upset my mother, enough for her to bring you here?"
"We didn't provoke your mother at all." The slightly larger male red dragon turned his head in rage. "Before today, we only knew your mother by reputation. We hadn't even met her once."
"Then it's certain that you must have done something wrong that reached my mother's ears," Muria insisted.
"Rubbish," the male dragon roared in anger. "In the recent decades, I have only plundered a few adventure teams that came near my territory. I never raided any human city."
"Exactly! We were even preparing to lay an egg. There's no way we would have acted rash and drawn attention to ourselves," added the dragon mother, her face full of grievance and resentment.
"..." Muria fell silent. If the dragons were not lying, then they were rather innocent. To only plunder adventure teams that entered their territory over several decades was quite restrained for evil dragons— a model example.
"Just today, while my partner and I were guarding our egg in our nest, your mother appeared. She mercilessly and unreasonably beat us. No matter what we said, she didn't listen, and just pummeled us until we passed out," sobbed the male dragon, recounting his grievances to Muria.
Muria carefully inspected their bodies, noticing the unnatural twists. Both the male and female dragons had broken bones, visible by their scars crusted over with blood. It was clear that Dragon Mother Atreus had quite a heavy hand.
"Well, you guys are really unlucky," Muria commented, a hint of sympathy in his voice as he listened to the dragons' tale and saw their injuries. "However, if you didn't do anything, how did my mother know where your nest was?"
Upon hearing Muria's question, both dragons fell into deep thought. Then, the dragon mother growled angrily in Dragon Language, "Adventurers, it must be the damn adventurers who leaked our nest's location."
"Rooar! Damn the adventurers, I, Carlos, swear I'll devour every adventurer I encounter," vowed Carlos, the male dragon, bellowing in anger. He blamed the unfortunate incident on the adventurers.
"These two tragic dragons. Haha, this is too funny," Muria laughed. Now he finally understood what had happened. His mother, a metallic dragon and natural enemy of the five-colored dragons, had probably heard news about a pair of mature red dragons from sources like the Adventurers' Guild. She then confronted the dragons head on, ending with the resulting miserable scene of the dragon couple Carlos' nest being wiped out.
"Aargh, my treasure!" Another louder roar reverberated across the hall. This time it was Carlos, the red dragon, whose eyes leaked magma-like dragon tears. He was mourning the loss of all his treasure, all of which was irreplaceable.
Muria found the sight of these two fearsome dragons, creatures meant to instill fear into any mortal being, rather amusing. He silently offered some words of comfort, "Don't be too upset. At least you're still alive. Although you've lost your treasure, you can always accumulate more in the future."
However, the Red Dragon couple, completely consumed by the pain of losing their treasure, could not hear Muria's words. For the notorious greedy red dragon, losing treasure was as painful as losing their own life.
"Let's go, ignore them." Muria called out to Sophia and the four dragonborn maids who were struggling to contain their laughter, planning to return to his room.
"Descendant of Atreus, what do you plan to do with my child?" the mother dragon asked mournfully from behind Muria, likely due to the loss of her treasure.
Without turning his head, Muria replied, "I have no intentions of harming your child. I just plan to hatch all of them."
Leaving behind a dumbstruck Mother Dragon, Muria, accompanied by Sophia and the maids, exited the hall.
...
In his room, Muria started his daily necessary intake of food with a furrowed brow. Today's sustenance comprised a golden, crispy-on-the-outside, tender-on-the-inside, roast whole cow.
The bovine creature that now became Muria's meal was no smaller than him in stature. This fact illuminated the enormity of Muria's diet: he consumed food no less than his own size every day.
The reason for Muria's grimace while eating was not that the roast whole cow was unpalatable. On the contrary, it had been made quite delicious by the chefs of the Crystal Castle, who served a very discerning master - Atris, the legendary giant dragon.
What truly bothered him were the six red dragon eggs resting in his room. He had bragged about hatching all six, but accomplishing this task was no mean feat. Typically, if even half of a clutch of dragon eggs hatched, it was considered a good outcome. It would take divine intervention to achieve a full hatch rate!
"Sophia." Muria, starting to drift into sleep, called for his personal maid.
"Master Muria." The blonde girl replied respectfully, "What can I help you with?"
"Fetch all the books from my mother's collection on incubating these things before I wake up." Muria pointed towards the six red dragon eggs on the floor, each surrounded by the glowing essence of fire elements.
"As you wish, Master Muria."
"Go now! I'm off to sleep." Muria yawned grandly, climbed onto his crystal bed (which he had insisted on having a soft velvet quilt since he found the hard crystal uncomfortable to sleep on), and promptly fell asleep...
The next day, when Muria woke up again, he was startled by the pile of books in front of him.
He then turned to Sophia, the ever-present head maid standing nearby, and pointed at the three-meter-high pile of books, "Are all of these about hatching dragon eggs?"
"Yes, Master Muria."
"Well, there's no helping it then, I'll read slowly." Muria stretched lazily, then picked up a book and started reading. The book specialized in dragon species, primarily lesser dragons. Entities authorized to directly study giant dragons were not plentiful in Elasia, albeit not scarce either.
Thanks to the dragon race's heritage memory, Muria could comprehend this book written in Elvish. In fact, he was quite impressed with the initial inheritance of the dragon race. After the inheritance process, he was fluent in more than a dozen languages, including Common Language, Elvish, Dragon Language, Demonic Language, Giant Language, and Dwarven Language, and could read books written in these languages naturally.
However, mastering over ten languages is far from sufficient in Elasia—for instance, humans alone have developed hundreds of languages. Other races like elves and dwarves, including their branch races, have all evolved their exclusive languages.
The giant race was no exception; the Titan tribe, to which Muria's father belonged, had their specific Titan language. Therefore, it's roughly estimated that almost a thousand languages are in use throughout the world of Elasia.
Regardless, the Continental Common Language, which was invented and propagated by an unknown sage at an unknown time, is the language that's widely used. Muria considered the invention of this language as a remarkable service to mankind.
"Hmm, after red dragons lay their eggs, they usually place these in volcanic regions rich in fire elements, and then let time take its course for natural incubation."
"Damn fool, this laissez-faire mode can achieve a fifty percent hatching rate, only because the dragons as a species are so resilient."
Upon reading about the hatching procedure of red dragons in the book, Muria was frustrated. These high-intelligence beings, superior to humans, led lives like beasts. Their intelligence seemed to focus only on destruction and plunder, without contemplating any meaningful questions like how to improve the survival rate of their offspring.
"Clearly, the hatching of red dragon eggs requires an environment rich in fire elements, but it doesn't necessarily have to be in a volcano." Muria skimmed through one book after another, gradually forming an idea of what he should do.
Improving the survival rate of dragon eggs is a topic that's been researched long ago in Elasia, and quite successfully at that. Hence, Muria just needs to follow the established procedures.
"Though abundant, the fire elements in volcanic regions are too violent and highly unstable, making it extremely unsuitable for red dragon egg incubation. Because the unhatched baby dragon must withstand wave after wave of violent fire elements to absorb them."
"So, the method to improve the survival rate of red dragon eggs is straightforward. Use energy crystals of fire elements as the energy source and construct a simple magic array that can release fire-element energy gently."