That was life, I guess.

One second you wanted nothing but getting your ass out of a place, and the next second, that very place became the place you had to get to as quickly as possible.

We dived into the portal once more and found ourselves back at the same open grassland.

Swoosh.

G-Drake swerved right as soon as we appeared and he flew at an impressive speed towards one of the medium sized mountains that seemed to ring the entire place.

There was absolutely nothing I could do to improve our situation at that moment.

My red energy was completely dormant, and I had lost all of my powershistorical

Apart from being exceptionally thick skinned which could allow me to resist even a minor nuclear explosion, I was just a plain little boy sitting in a pod on the belly of a startlingly striking biomech dragon.

Which wasn't a good thing in that situation. We wanted to hide and stay away from unwanted attention. But we were traveling in broad daylight in the most glaring ride ever to grace the skies of that blue dragon lair.

None in their clan had ever seen a dragon biomech which had such strange wings and cool back fins!

If even a single eye were to catch sight of G-Drake at that moment, we would be screwed.

"Fly low and fast." Bruce Pang instructed G-Drake calmly.

As if he knew that Bruce Pang was my elder, G-Drake obeyed him instantly.

Bruce Pang's insane luck held strong that day though, and we managed to spend the most part of our trip towards the mountains in peace.

The idea of traveling so far in the open just to get to a hiding spot irked me to no end, but there was no choice.

We were in a wide open grassland afterall.

After around half an hour of high speed flying and unbelievable luck, we finally reached our destination.

The mountain range to the east of the grassland.

Although it looked like we were flying towards a medium sized mountain range, it still turned out to be a massive, massive set of towering mountains which pierced the clouds and disappeared from our view into the heavens.

We were like a tiny flea flying around the base of the Empire State Building.

G-Drake brought us deep into the mountains, past valleys and winding rivers and waterfalls and mini forests.

Finally after another ten minutes of zigzag flying, we reached a relatively large forest which had a beautiful horseshoe shaped waterfall feeding a massive river which winded through its center.

It was a pretty sight.

Not because of the wondrous natural view, but because of the cover the humongous trees afforded us.

We dived into the forest and crashed through the canopies of the massive trees before landing at a small clearing near the river. G-Drake's ease in finding such an awesome spot indicated that the clearing was probably his personal secret spot.

I remember the pleasant surprise I felt when I stepped out of the pod.

The air was thick with a sharp, woody foresty smell and I could also make out a scent of herbs from somewhere nearby.

Strange trees of several kinds towered from all around me, and left me feeling rather small.

"These trees would probably be sticks in my hand if I could turn into my ultimate mecha form." I muttered lightly as I looked up and squinted my eyes to try and see the top of the trees.

I couldn't.

"Don't be so intimidated by the size of mere trees." Bruce Pang chuckled at my words. "You're not in a competition against nature."

"I am not intimidated. As soon as I regain my power, these trees are but little sticks." I frowned at Bruce Pang and quickly made my way towards a cluster of huge rocks that overlooked the massive river nearby.

I sat down on one of the rocks and started to regulate my breathing. Meditating would calm my body down and place it in an optimal state which could be beneficial to the red energy.

It may be an inconsequential thing, but I wanted to speed up the process of the red energy digesting the Black Pearl as much as I could, and every little speed boost mattered.

G-Drake sat down obediently next to me while Bruce Pang carefully tended to the still unconscious old man.

The situation was very calm and serene, and very soon, I was lulled into a semi-conscious state of rest.

At the back of my head, my brain processed all the blueprints and designs of everything I had absorbed in the past few hours while my body fine tuned itself to give my red energy as much support as possible.

There was nothing much we could do, really, until the white heart crumbles.

And so, just like that, hours passed.

There was complete silence in that small clearing.

However, it was a different case entirely in my mind.

Even though I was in a semi-conscious state, the back of my mind was an explosion of fireworks. After absorbing the strange serpentine mecha and fully digesting its design, it was like my mind was evolving in creative and highly imaginative ways.

The strange but wondrous alien principles that powered the serpentine mecha were very clearly notches above human-derived engineering and design principles!

I had thought that the design of white mechas were a thing of incredible beauty. But the design of the serpentine mecha opened my eyes like never before.

I started to notice horrendous inefficiencies in energy conversion and application within the design of human white mechas, as well as gross deficiencies in the ability to conserve energy in pathway designs.

What was once beautiful turned out to be fat, bloated and full of unnecessary trinkets!

"This is great. As soon as my red mecha core finishes devouring Control and awakens, my full power output would at the very least triple in strength, and I would be able to fight all out for at least ten times longer." I remember thinking very emotionlessly.