CHAPTER 391: CHAPTER 244: SELF-RELIANCE

His own children inherited his Seven Sins Authority. There was no doubt about that.Yet now, it seemed each of them had only inherited one aspect?

This was almost fully confirmed through a little game David impulsively initiated. He retrieved several magical items from his Portable Cave to use as welcome presents, freezing them in a thick layer of ice four to five meters deep. Then he informed the little ones of the rules they must follow to obtain the gifts: they had a three-minute time limit, physical destruction was prohibited, and each could choose only one. As it turned out, for the hatchling dragons endowed with the powers of Authority, accomplishing this task was ridiculously easy.

Dragons, unlike many mammals, especially humans, are not thrown into the world before their hardware is fully equipped. Instead, they hatch with an intelligence that matches or even surpasses that of adults. They also carry the Dragon Heritage with them, like an external hard drive full of ’power’—akin to cyber ascension. This allowed them to use and develop their potential with great ease, unlike David, this Heteromorphic Dragon, who had to slowly grope and adapt when getting used to his dragon body.

As the eldest, Satilaesa simply turned her eyes and strutted in like a big cat thinking, ’I am the lord of this world.’ She arrogantly picked up the Petrification Armor claw ring that once brought nightmares to the Barbarian raiders in the New Continent and donned it. It took her less than three seconds in total. Very well, a perfect example of ’I reckon it’ll do.’ And from the girl’s expression, David could tell that she chose that particular item purely to show off her aloofness in front of her dragon father; she wasn’t particularly concerned about the item she took. To her, whatever she chose seemed trivial. Hmm, this was very Pride. She even resembled a dragon-girl version of a certain flashy, golden figure.

The second eldest, Svetlana, saw her older sister with a new toy and immediately showed a look of envy. She then followed suit, went into the iceberg, and pulled out a Magic Necklace. This necklace combined the effects of ’Swiftness,’ ’Acceleration,’ and ’Elemental Protection Shield—Fire, Acid, Lightning,’ and was one that the Silver Dragon Shalaina had casually given to Tania. Now that Shalaina had become an Element Master, the item was nothing more than a ’little toy’ to her, one she would casually ’toss into storage to be broken down for its essence.’ But it had high aesthetic appeal. However, Svetlana’s action caused David to narrow his eyes slightly. Could it be stronger than his original version? A Dragon-enhanced Sharingan?

As for the third eldest, Octavia, she was burning with Wrath! It was all too clear that both the set-up of the game and the rules were designed to test her. No, what sort of test was this? It was clearly making things difficult for her, Octavia!

"ROAR!!!" she immediately let out a furious burst of Dragon Breath.

It is well known that ice is a natural substance with low thermal conductivity but high specific heat and heat of fusion. Consequently, using flames on the outside to melt a huge ice block completely is an inefficient and time-consuming process. If Octavia were just an ordinary little fire dragon, she might as well have been declared a failure from the start. But, under David’s and the onlooking Silver Dragon father’s surprised gazes, Octavia’s initially conical-shaped breath, no different from a common Red Dragon’s, slowly focused under the little fire dragon’s boiling rage. The color of the flame breath shifted from red to orange, yellow, white, and finally, a strand of blue appeared, looking like an oversized welding torch. Finally, it rapidly and effectively melted the thick ice at the contact point, carving a hole in the dragon-made iceberg and allowing her to extract the last Stone of Regeneration, before she grinned with delight.

"Well done," David, also smiling kindly, was naturally not stingy with encouragement.

With his legendary physique now rating a 30 under the evaluation system of the Book of the Dragon, coupled with an array of no-cost spells, he generally had no use for such life-prolonging trinkets anymore. It was the same reason he had easily tossed it aside after stepping into the realm of legends. But for a volatile and accident-prone little fire dragon like Octavia, it was an indispensable choice for home, travel, robbery, and arson. The saying goes, ’the brash fear the stubborn, and the stubborn fear the reckless.’ Both David, when he got worked up, and his even more impetuous Red Dragon daughter were undoubtedly such fighters—the kind who could be almost recklessly bold in battle. They were the type of enemies that most Mage Lords, who liked to make risk assessments and strategic prophecies, least liked to encounter, because such foes could always produce unanticipated and even life-risking unexpected moves. That was exactly how the Ogre Monado met his end at the hands of a young David fresh from the Dragon Nest.

But after confirming his previous assumptions about the inheritance of abilities, David felt relieved but also a bit of a headache coming on. It wasn’t disappointment that they couldn’t inherit more to outshine their forebears in the future; after all, as the owner of the Seven Sins Authority, he was all too aware of its price and pitfalls. In reality, most people firmly believe that thoughts guide and influence actions. But few realize that long-term actions can also, in turn, influence and shape thoughts and even the spiritual realm.