Chapter 305 The Birth of a Mechanical Dragon

The space in front of Abel's three-story house wavered, and Iron, Elyria, and Noah materialized out of thin air.

The moment Iron took his first step toward the front door, muffled shouts and loud crashes echoed from inside.

Elyria looked around, already opening her mouth to complain, but at that very moment, Seraphina appeared right beside Noah.

Bowing deeply and respectfully, she immediately greeted him with excitement:

"Good day, Lord Noah! I'm glad to see you back!"

Noah didn't slow down. Tossing out a brief:

"Yeah, yeah, let's go."

He turned around and started walking deeper into the forest.

Seraphina immediately straightened up and obediently followed him.

Elyria watched Seraphina walk away before shifting her gaze to Iron, who was already climbing the steps toward the front door.

Catching up with him, she threw her hands up in frustration:

"Why didn't you teleport us inside?! And..."

She tried to continue, but Iron immediately cut her off without slowing down:

"Abel only gave me access to the outside. Besides, I barely managed to teleport you here... Though, yeah, next time I should probably ask him for the permanent coordinates to his house."

Iron reached out and placed his hand on the doorknob. Elyria continued:

"And why did your hair turn dark?!"

Iron pushed the door open and tossed over his shoulder:

"Abel helped me get my old appearance back. You're only noticing now?"

Elyria nodded in confusion, taking a moment to process his answer. Iron had already stepped over the threshold and confidently walked into the house, while Elyria hurried in right after him. The door closed smoothly behind them.

Without stopping in the entrance hall, Iron headed straight deeper into the house, toward Abel's hidden laboratory. Elyria, meanwhile, stayed in the hall, immediately looking around as she began searching for Nivea.

Iron walked through the familiar corridors until he reached the maintenance hatch. Recalling every detail of how Abel had done it, Iron repeated the same sequence of movements, and the hatch smoothly rose open.

Iron stepped inside and quickly made his way down. As he reached the passage, the laboratory's heavy airtight doors immediately opened, and he walked inside.

He looked around but found no sign of Abel. The laboratory seemed empty, though there was a faint smell of ozone and heated metal lingering in the air.

Iron activated his scanner. First, he set it to normal power to scan the room for any living organisms or energy sources. The scanner swept across the corners and walls but detected nothing unusual. Nothing.

Unsatisfied with the result, Iron turned the scanner up to maximum power. The mana flow and the system's computing resources were pushed to their limits.

After taking a few more steps and thoroughly analyzing every inch of the laboratory, he detected a tiny, barely noticeable anomaly in the farthest corner. Right there, in midair between the racks, was a microscopic spatial rift, with a faint but distinct bright light coming through it.

Using a gravitational pinch and spacetime metric distortion, Iron carefully pried open the microfracture, gradually stretching its quantum fluctuations. The spatial rift gave way, expanding before his eyes until it was large enough to serve as a proper passage.

Iron stepped forward, crossing the boundary. The moment he entered, the stretched region of space instantly collapsed back in on itself, returning to its usual microscopic size as a barely visible slit.

A pocket dimension opened up before him. Dozens of tools, components, and power modules floated in the air. Iron had to carefully maneuver around them as he made his way through.

A little further ahead, Abel was leaning over an internal console, focused on soldering something inside it.

Iron approached, looked over the construction, and remarked skeptically:

"Is it actually going to be this big?"

Abel poked his head out of an open maintenance hatch in the massive structure, wiping the soot from his forehead. Noticing Iron, he replied:

"Yep."

Standing up, Abel dusted off his hands and turned to face him. Iron crossed his arms over his chest.

"Do you have a permanent power source?"

Abel let out a tired sigh, resting one hand against the metal.

"I wanted to try using Kai's mana, or someone else's from the Council, but I understand that the dragon would simply break under that kind of strain."

Iron frowned in confusion.

"The dragon?"

Abel gestured toward the enormous structure.

"I'm working on a power source right now... a prototype, so to speak."

"What dragon?" Iron asked, still confused.

"Weeell, this dragon..." Abel gently patted the smooth metal plating along its body.

Iron narrowed his eyes skeptically, stepped forward, bent down, and slammed shut the hatch Abel had just stuck his head out of with a metallic clang.

Straightening up, he looked at Abel with an expression of utter disbelief.

"Are you serious? What fucking dragon? I'll say it again: it's easier to just teleport."

Abel took a step back with a faint smile, admiring the machine's silhouette.

"You'll understand soon enough."

Iron let out a heavy sigh as he stared at the massive hunk of machinery and thought to himself:

Here we go again with the 'you'll understand soon enough'... What am I, a fucking child?

Noticing his reaction, Abel quickly changed the subject:

"Anyway, why were you asking about a power source? Got an idea?"

Iron shook his head and raised his eyes toward him.

"I have a Morphic-type crystal... infused with the Electro element."

The moment Iron said this, Abel's eyes widened in shock, and an expression of utter disbelief spread across his face.

In the very next second, he rushed forward, covering the distance between them in two quick strides and practically getting right up in Iron's face. His voice dropped to an almost frantic whisper:

"Seriously?! Are you serious?! You actually have one?! For real?!"

Iron grimaced and took a sharp step back, looking genuinely disgusted.

"Mhmm."

Abel froze for a moment, catching his breath before waving his hands around.

"But how did you get it?! The chances of finding one naturally are incredibly low!"

Iron took another step back, looking at him coldly.

"I made it myself. Took me three months."

Abel stood there with his mouth hanging open. After a brief pause, he finally managed to get the words out:

"Reaaaally...? Damn, that's awesome. I haven't even had the chance to see one in person, and you just went and made one yourself..."

Abel began pacing back and forth, muttering under his breath. Then he suddenly looked up at Iron.

"But how did you even manage to recreate one?"

Iron calmly shrugged.

"I just saw the crystal a couple of times and memorized its composition."

Abel looked even more stunned.

"A couple of times...?!"

"Yeah," Iron nodded. "Saw one on a golem once, and the other times were in the Katogida Valley."

Abel shook his head and returned to work on the ship's massive neck section, adjusting the docking joints.

"A golem?"

Iron stepped closer, watching him work.

"Yeah. In the Kingdom of Nill. In an underground defense complex."

"Got it," Abel replied briefly, focusing on adjusting the connectors.

Iron crossed his arms over his chest, waiting for further instructions.

"Well? What am I supposed to do?"

Without looking away from his work, Abel gestured toward the frame.

"You can work on the tail."

At that very moment, a detailed holographic projection of the future ship's tail appeared in midair right in front of Iron, showing all the joints, stabilizers, and internal wiring.

Iron carefully studied the blueprint and instinctively reached out, already preparing to quickly assemble the entire structure using his magic.

But Abel immediately straightened up, thrust out his hand, and shouted:

"No! Don't use it!"

Iron stopped abruptly, freezing mid-motion as he looked at him in surprise.

Abel spoke with a serious expression:

"First of all, our main platform won't be ready for another week and a half. Roughly speaking, we've got about three days to finish the dragon itself and another week to prepare the place where we'll all be staying. If you finish everything in a couple of minutes with your magic, I'll just switch to another project, and then it'll be impossible to get me away from it. So it's better to just take your time and enjoy the process."

Abel gave a slight smile and added:

"Besides, isn't doing everything with your own hands more satisfying?"

Iron let out a heavy sigh and lowered his hand.

"Fine."

Iron stepped over to the section of the body where the tail was supposed to be. As soon as he mentally fixed the coordinates, the tools, fasteners, and titanium plating segments began moving toward their designated positions, arranging themselves in the correct order.

Iron picked up a micron laser edge calibrator in his right hand and used his left to hold the first connecting plate in place.

Work got underway. Hours passed. The only sounds breaking the absolute silence of the clearing were the steady hum of the generators, the clicking of relays, and the faint hiss of plasma.

Most of the time was spent on the precise alignment of thermal expansion gaps.

Iron adjusted the joints between the tail's armor plates down to the micron. Even a gap just one micron wider or narrower than the specified measurement could cause the joints to seize or tear free from their mounts under peak loads during flight. As the metal heated up and expanded from friction with the dense layers of air and energy discharges, the slightest miscalculation could be disastrous. Every plate required manual fitting, edge grinding, and temperature testing.

Meanwhile, Abel was busy around the ship's massive neck section. He was working on the planar shielding modules, carefully weaving the power conductors together by hand and calibrating the resonators.

"Hey," Abel said quietly, without taking his eyes off the control board he was soldering, slightly raising his protective goggles. "I've only heard rumors, so I can't say for sure whether this crystal can withstand voltage spikes. Based on your research, do you think we should be worried? After all, even the slightest destabilization of the crystal could tear this entire neck apart from the inside."

Iron was just finishing the adjustment of the tail stabilizer's guide slot. He switched off the tool and set it aside before replying without turning his head:

"If I'm telling you about it, then I already know it'll hold up."

Abel grunted softly and went back to work on the wires.

"You'd know better."

They both returned to their work. Another five hours of continuous, exhausting labor passed.

Over those five hours of painstaking adjustments, Iron had managed to complete exactly half of the tail section, while Abel, after spending all that time working on the incredibly delicate electronics and connectors, had finished just a quarter of the neck section.