Amid the floating clouds, a pure white bat dragon kicked with its two legs, causing the air to gather into a blast and, leveraging the recoil, rapidly darted forward.
From a distance, every dash of the bat dragon seemed like an instantaneous movement.
After several continuous dashes, the bat dragon suddenly hovered in place.
It felt that during its sprint, the bat wings seemed to have brushed against some creature. But looking back, it only saw the mist steaming with no creature appearing.
Could it be an illusion?
The bat dragon pondered but still felt something was amiss, so it used its pig-like nose to sniff back from where it came... but there was no suspicious scent.
It sniffed its own bat wings again and still noticed no scent.
Being a wind elemental creature, it was extremely sensitive to the scents in the air, and the lack of any scent seemed to indirectly confirm it was merely overthinking.
However, the sensation of "brushing" against some sort of supple elastic creature earlier felt too real. Being a cautious bat dragon, it decided to use another method to investigate.
It perked up its disc-like wind-catching ears, waves of high-frequency sound waves spread outward with it at the center.
It hoped to use the feedback from the sound waves to see if there were any hidden creatures present.
However, before it could find the hidden creature, it felt an utterly enormous force of wind speeding towards its position from the sound wave feedback.
Initially, the distance seemed quite far, but in less than two seconds, the wind’s force had already approached closely.
The bat dragon lifted its head and saw a fantastical flying boat of breathtaking beauty breaking through the sea of clouds at an astonishing speed.
Near this flying boat, the bat dragon sensed two incredibly powerful forces of wind. These were undoubtedly creatures standing at the pinnacle of the wind elements!
Even comparable to wind monarchs!
The bat dragon carefully sensed the source of the two forces of wind, and suddenly, as if realizing something, it flashed into the mist, turning into formless wind.
Being of the same wind element, encountering the bat dragon outside shouldn’t be scary, but this time was different because it recognized the identity of the approaching beings.
The Storm Ridge’s... one of the four great wind generals!
The ambition of Storm Ridge to unify all wind element territories had long been declared. The bat dragon, after its external travels, was returning from the nameless lands to the Long Breath Wind Cave to relay this message to His Highness Ghost Wind.
Unexpectedly, just as it was about to reach the Long Breath Wind Cave, it encountered one of the four wind generals, Lobal on the way!
"Oh no, they’re flying this way, they must have already discovered me. What should I do, what should I do?" Hidden in the mist, the bat dragon’s heart filled with despair. It had already forgotten that it stopped to search for the previously hidden creature.
"Maybe I should run?" Though the bat dragon thought so, it did not act on it. Because it knew, with its speed, it couldn’t outrun Lobal. Instead, trying to flee might further offend Lobal.
By cooperating a little, it should not be in mortal danger.
As it continued thinking, a sudden gust of storm arose from afar, signaling Lobal’s arrival.
The bat dragon subconsciously closed its eyes, putting on a cooperative and submissive stance.
Unexpectedly, the storm came and went. After half a minute of silence, the bat dragon opened its eyes to find the surrounding eerily quiet.
Dazed, it lifted its head to look into the distance, only to find that the fantastical flying boat earlier had already reached the edge of the sky. Not only had it not stopped, but no wind elemental creatures had come to trouble it.
The bat dragon did not believe that Lobal couldn’t detect it.
The current situation seemed to have only one explanation: it had possibly been ignored.
...
On the Gondola, Angel leaned against the railing, tilting his head to look back.
"The large bat with a pig nose and round ears hidden in the clouds earlier, was that a wind elemental creature?"
Lobal, flying outside, nodded: "Yes, that was a Wind Bat Dragon, it likely came from the Long Breath Wind Cave."
"How could you know that?" Angel looked over in surprise.
Lobal: "The location of the Long Breath Wind Cave is among a series of caves, and due to environmental factors, the probability of Wind Bat Dragons being born there is quite high. Other wind element territories almost have no birth records of Wind Bat Dragons."
Then, Lobal briefly introduced the characteristics of the Wind Bat Dragon.
After listening, Angel had a sudden realization. Wind Bat Dragons are essentially just large bats. Angel hadn’t expected, though, that bats’ love for cave environments would also be applicable to elemental creatures.
"That Wind Bat Dragon looked really frightened seeing us earlier." Angel mused, thinking the Gondola itself shouldn’t be frightening, the Wind Bat Dragon was likely scared of the creatures accompanying the Gondola.
He, Earl Mi, and Toby hadn’t released any aura; Cubic and Dangross were merely elemental sprites, unlikely to frighten the Wind Bat Dragon.
The answer was very clear, the Wind Bat Dragon was afraid of Speedy and Lobal.
"Both being wind elemental creatures, meeting in the wild brings not joy but trembling fear. It seems your Storm Ridge doesn’t have a great reputation." Angel remarked.
Not long ago, Dangross sensed a fire elemental creature in the valley and went to investigate and help. Even after learning it wasn’t a Traveling Frog from the Fire Territory, Dangross still worried for it. This was in stark contrast to the situation with wind elemental creatures.
Lobal: "The grand vision of His Highness Cyclone, how could they understand."
Angel offhandedly remarked: "No matter how grand, when the Tidal World opens, it will all be insignificant."
Lobal sighed deeply upon hearing this and remained silent for a long time.
"By the way, when we first encountered that Wind Bat Dragon, it seemed to be hovering mid-air. Is that a trait of Wind Bat Dragons?"
Lobal shook his head: "Wind Bat Dragons don’t have the trait of hovering in mid-air. It seemed to be sensing something? Perhaps it sensed our arrival."
Encountering the Wind Bat Dragon was merely a small episode, and Angel didn’t dwell on it much.
Time passed gradually, and the azure sky was tinged with the colors of twilight.