Chapter 1068: Tamed

War causes the most brilliant minds to work overtime, projects that had once been progressing at a snail’s pace even with the best fundings available, were suddenly seeing a great acceleration.

This included the biggest, and most secretive of them all on the side of the humans- The rebirth and taming of dragons, taming powerful creatures was a common thought, after all, such beasts were simply incredible wonders of nature.

Beings like dragon were born to be powerful, a human needed to train and learn to become powerful, and even with the best of teachers and a strong focus, it was not guaranteed that it would be possible, but for dragons, growing up to be a dreadful powerhouse was the norm, it was simply the will of nature of this to happen.

So during the campaign to slaughter all of the dragons within the realm, another time when humans and elves joined hands to eradicate a common threat- The humans had another objective besides slaughtering and harvesting the remains of the dragons, and that was to secretly capture young dragons, as well as eggs.

This secret mission was largely considered a success, but since then, the attempts to not only breed more dragons, but also to tame them in obedient battle-beasts had been somewhat flailing around without accomplishing much.

For one, dragons were difficult to breed, you couldn’t just stick a female and male dragon into the same area and expect them to do the deed like ducks would, they were rather specific about the when, where, and how.

So getting a batch of fertilised eggs was not an easy affair, furthermore, there was a very short window of time during which a female could even have her eggs fertilised, in fact, during a whole year, there was only a single day during which that could happen, before or after and it just wouldn’t work.

Also, the humans had quickly realised that a dragon did not reach maturity as quickly as it grew up in size, they were not a species that reproduced quickly, they had fooled themselves into thinking otherwise because they had had to butcher countless dragons for over a decade before getting rid of them, but this had been the accumulation of thousands of years, dragons were powerful enough that they could spread even with dreadfully long reproductive cycles.

Another problem they ran into, is that while the dragons they knew were not sapient, and were more akin to very smart beasts, they were still very hard to tame due to how they formed groups, in fact, they could easily be compared to lions in how they operated.

A single, powerful male would seek to form a group around himself by gathering several females, and then, it would either have its spot stolen by a competitor or one of its own sons, or would remain in power, and its offsprings would have to eventually leave on their own, the males would seek to do the same thing as their father, and the females would instead be absorbed into an already existing pride.

What this meant for the humans, is that first of all, a male dragon would never want to obey anyone’s command, it was literally in their nature to seek the highest position possible, so following the command of puny little things one of its burps could turn into ash was out of the question with extensive training directly after birth, and even then, nature would often overpower that anyways.

And second, due to how the structure of dragon society worked, they had to have multiple nests, as although beasts, dragons were still very much aware to avoid reproducing with those related to them, so there was a need for other groups of dragons to allow movement in between them.

In short, to get anywhere with their plan, it required a lot of time and resources, and the chances of failure were awfully high.

However, as a new war rolled over the horizon, and the dirt-blooded to be a genuine threat backed by mysterious, powerful beings with never-seen-before powers, the thinking-heads seemed to be struck by epiphanies, and managed to understand a good trick to properly taming a dragon.

By then, they only had a single group of dragons, and what they would do is simply take away the young dragons after they hatched to try and tame them.

Past attempts had been catastrophic, but for the first time, they succeeded, after nearly a year since the conflict had begun, a researcher boldly announced that he had succeeded in getting a young female dragon to listen to him.

Of course, although as big as a rhinoceros, the dragon was still considered small by its species’s standard, however, the female was still very much capable of torching through the ranks of an army with her draconic breath.

And without wait, she was hastily put to use.

On the eleventh month of the war, after the conflict had been mostly remaining at a standstill for nearly six months, both humans and elves had stopped sending their greatest warriors and budding champions into the battlefield, and thus, the dreadful hunters of the battlefield made few appearances since then, only appearing to slay promising youths that had slipped past attention.

But today, the humans were making a bold move, not only were they going to deploy their first tamed dragon, but they also let their champions and heroes join the fray as a group alongside countless soldiers and knights, even the handful of mages available were present.

The army of dirt-blooded that was stationed in the plains facing one of humanity’s greatest fortified cities were certainly taken aback by this sudden, bold manoeuvre, although the dirt-blooded were more numerous, and their somewhat chaotic battle formations were still problematic, their enemies had since long grown accustomed to such challenges, and slaughter quickly ensued.

The strongest opened the hostilities by all launching an attack straight into the dirt-blooded, carving a huge line right through them.

But they did not press forward, they let that to the others, instead, they scanned the sky for signs of the executioners that had loomed so heavily upon them, that they had been forbidden from fighting alongside the others.

Before any signs of the trails of smog appeared, a majestic roar sung out over the battlefield, and for the first time since their supposed extinction, a dragon was flying in the open sky.

Even those who had only barely heard of such creatures in tales felt their bodies stiffen as the dragon’s shadow passed over them.

And soon, fire came raining down.