Chapter 642: A Clan Driven Entirely by Self-Interest
Once Kazuya synthesized a flawless structural resolution, the Flygon flock responded with overwhelming, intense enthusiasm.
They even proactively offered to deliberately place themselves in the direct line of fire, launching the initial subterranean offensive to forcefully flush the Druddigon out from beneath the crust of the earth.
Regarding this highly proactive, politically astute attitude, Kazuya expressed profound, genuine gratification.
Historically, the only other individuals across the Dragon Clan to display such a flawless grasp of political optics were the second-oldest Rampardos and the Scrafty lineage. Although Kazuya had originally intended to structure the operational deployment exactly in this manner anyway, the difference between a reluctant command and a proactive volunteer naturally left a vastly superior impression on a leader's heart.
Furthermore, orchestrating the subjugation of the Druddigon clan yielded the greatest logistical dividends explicitly for the Flygon flock itself. It was entirely logically sound that they should exert the heaviest physical effort during the campaign.
"There is absolutely no rush. Judging by your current physical parameters, merely locking horns with a Druddigon would likely prove to be an agonizing chore. We will afford you two days of strict recovery before launching the offensive; there is no harm in a minor delay. Over these next few days, I will temporarily garrison my presence within your territory," Kazuya rumbled, waving his massive claw toward the Flygon leader to signal him to settle his anxieties.
Following that, he commanded the Aerodactyl and Altaria vanguards to temporarily withdraw back to their respective peaks.
In truth, his phrasing had been exceptionally tactful. Any Pokémon lineage capable of carving out a permanent existence within this cutthroat Rocky Mountain range simply couldn't be mathematically weak. Even though both clans operated along the outer periphery of the peaks, the Druddigon absolutely wouldn't be vastly inferior to the Flygon in a direct comparison of raw stats.
If the Flygon launched a subterranean offensive in their current, exhausted state, it wouldn't merely be a matter of "an agonizing chore." It would practically be the biological equivalent of actively delivering a fresh meal to the enemy.
A species like Druddigon possessed an absolute omnivorous palate; they would literally chew on roadside weeds to fill their stomachs. Although Flygon didn't historically feature as a primary staple on their dietary menu, if the Flygon actively threw themselves down their tunnels, the Druddigon absolutely wouldn't decline the free protein.
"Zeee." The Alpha Flygon nodded his head, a wave of distinct embarrassment washing over his compound eyes.
However, upon hearing that Kazuya personally intended to temporarily garrison their territory, his heart instantly solidified into absolute, profound security. He deduced that for the next two days, they mathematically didn't need to fear another raid from the subterranean Kabutops swarm.
The very next day.
The Kabutops swarm launched another raid.
"Zeee!!" The Alpha Flygon unleashed a frantic warning shriek, signaling the Trapinch and Vibrava to immediately tear themselves out of the soil.
Even Kazuya couldn't suppress a heavy sigh. The frequency of these raids was genuinely psychotic. No wonder it had completely shattered the psychological defenses of a relatively powerful lineage like the Flygon.
Yet, considering the Flygon had already slaughtered an immense volume of these bugs across previous skirmishes, the Kabutops shouldn't mathematically possess a massive demographic reserve left... right?
Chaka...
One after another, Kabutops with bloodshot eyes burst out from the subterranean network. Kazuya swept his Aura Power across the field, yet he failed to detect a single shred of complex emotion radiating from their minds—only pure, unfiltered savagery.
Even standing right on the precipice of absolute combat, the biological engines of the Kabutops were driven exclusively by the hyper-aggressive irritability birthed from absolute starvation. They harbored absolutely zero secondary calculations or tactical apprehensions; it was as if their neurological processors had completely stalled.
This reality was entirely logical. The cranial capacity of a Kabutops was highly likely even smaller than that of a Rampardos. They were a hyper-feral, beast-class Pokémon completely enslaved to primal instincts and raw desires. In terms of cognitive complexity, they weren't vastly superior to an ordinary, non-magical insect.
Chaka!
Four or five Kabutops immediately locked their sights onto Kazuya's colossal silhouette, launching a frantic pounce as the vibrant green glow of an X-Scissor ignited across their dual scythes. This swarm completely failed to calculate the overwhelming martial parameters a biological entity of Kazuya's physical proportions inevitably commanded; they merely launched a brainless, suicidal frontal assault.
"You genuinely possess the audacity to strike at me..." Kazuya's internal core temperature began a violent, exponential climb.
Infernal Abyss.
He lifted a massive claw and stomped heavily down upon the earth. An absolute torrent of roaring flames erupted straight from the crust of the soil, violently coiling around the physical frames of the Kabutops like maggots latching onto a bone.
Dozens of Kabutops were instantly scorched to death by this singular, cataclysmic strike. The apocalyptic flames unleashed by the Champion Dragon King were hardly a force a swarm of subterranean bugs could mathematically withstand.
"Zeee!" The Flygon swarmed forward in absolute unison, ruthlessly exterminating the meager handful of Kabutops that hadn't instantly succumbed to the fire.
Following the cleanup, they cast gazes of absolute reverence and adoration toward Kazuya. Their new absolute sovereign was overwhelmingly, terrifyingly powerful.
The following day.
Kazuya officially mobilized his three aerial vanguards. The Flygon flock had pushed their psychological readiness to 120 percent, absolutely determined to synthesize a flawless combat execution to serve as their formal induction gift to the collective.
They were genuinely entirely too politically astute. It nearly brought a tear to Kazuya's eye.
Returning to the primary objective: The sovereign territory commanded by the Druddigon clan was an isolated, desolate valley composed heavily of ash-gray stone. The surrounding rock faces were heavily perforated with hundreds of cavernous openings of varying dimensions.
A structural layout of this magnitude made it remarkably easy for an uneducated outside observer to miscalculate, assuming the Druddigon clan harbored a terrifyingly massive population, thereby deterring them from launching reckless territorial incursions. And that was precisely the exact psychological illusion the Druddigon aimed to project.
Furthermore, every single one of those caverns internally linked and intersected with one another. If the Druddigon found themselves outmatched in a subterranean clash, they could execute a rapid tactical rotation through the network, or even orchestrate a pincer ambush to trap an invader. Any foreign biological entity would absolutely fail to match their structural familiarity with the tunnels.
This was the core essence of Druddigon. In the modern games, they were frequently mocked under the derogatory title: The Disgrace of the Dragon Clan.
Yet in living reality, they possessed one of the most uniquely cunning, deeply treacherous intellects across the entire spectrum of draconian species. The phrase 'the face mirrors the heart' applied flawlessly to their existence. One only had to observe that even a Druddigon's basic, resting smile radiated an incredibly slimy, sinister aura.
Precisely because of this biological reality, Kazuya had completely discarded the notion of employing diplomatic dialogue to subjugate the Druddigon right from the very beginning.
Zero redundant chitchat. Just pure, unadulterated combat.
Against a species like Druddigon, loyalty forcibly extracted through physical, martial domination was absolutely guaranteed to be vastly superior to any loyalty temporarily purchased through smooth rhetoric. The jaws of a Druddigon were highly adept at weaving elaborate deceptions. On the surface, they would crack a slimy grin, swear fealty to dissolve an immediate crisis, and inwardly discard the oath entirely—highly likely even exploiting the majestic umbrella of the Dragon Clan to execute further atrocities against weaker lineages.
Within the desolate valley.
"Roar...?"
At the mouth of the largest cavern, a heavy, jagged skull cautiously peeked outward. Catching sight of the gargantuan armada of flying dragons blanketing the sky, the Druddigon was struck with sheer terror, frantically yanking its head back into the darkness.
By the time Kazuya and his vanguard officially touched down, the entire valley sat in absolute, dead silence. Had Kazuya's Aura Power not clearly pinpointed the frantic, pulsing emotional signatures completely saturating the subterranean network, a lesser entity might have genuinely assumed the Druddigon were currently absent from their territory.
"Heh." Kazuya's lips curled into a sharp grin. He casually raised a claw.
The flying dragons that had just touched down instantly beat their wings, returning to a suspended, mid-air hover.
Immediately following that—
Boom, rumble—!
A cataclysmic, violent tremor radiated outward from the soles of Kazuya's claws, aggressively propagating across every single direction. The entire valley instantly destabilized, threatening to violently collapse in on itself. The deafening, cascading roar of collapsing subterranean tunnels echoed relentlessly across the perimeter.
This singular, localized Earthquake undoubtedly knocked an immense volume of Druddigon into sheer unconsciousness.
Yet even after enduring this devastating strike, the Druddigon stubbornly refused to expose their heads above ground. In fact, they shrank even deeper into the subterranean network, seemingly executing frantic Dig techniques to burrow further into the distant, deepest recesses of the earth.
The thick, concentrated waves of psychological terror bleeding from the tunnels were flawlessly intercepted by Kazuya's Aura.
"They possess a remarkably stubborn capacity for endurance," Kazuya murmured, clicking his tongue in slight annoyance.
Executing this entire clan of Druddigon wouldn't be a mathematically difficult task for Kazuya. Flooding those cavern entrances with a succession of Heat Wave strikes followed by a few additional Earthquakes would absolutely liquidate the vast majority of the clan before they could even breach the outer perimeter of his attack radius.
But his operational objective wasn't extermination. It was subjugation. Yet the Druddigon stubbornly refused to breach the surface. He absolutely couldn't extract fealty from a pack of cunning, cowardly turtles hiding in their shells.
Fortunately, Kazuya had possessed the tactical foresight to conscript a squad of specialized professionals; otherwise, he might have been forced to command a humiliating withdrawal today.
He lifted his head, locking eyes with the Flygon flock hovering directly above him: "It is time for your vanguard to mobilize."
In the very next second, the Flygon executed a coordinated, high-speed dive straight toward the earth. In the blink of an eye, dozens of fresh sinkholes manifested across the topsoil, the Flygon burrowing rapidly through the subterranean network to pinpoint the exact coordinates of the hiding Druddigon.
The Aerodactyl and Altaria vanguards maintained a strict perimeter around the countless cavern entrances, flawlessly assuming their tactical positions for a massive game of Whack-a-Mole.
The Flygon didn't disappoint Kazuya's expectations. As bona fide Ground-type Pokémon, the subterranean domain was their undisputed, absolute home turf. A species like Druddigon—who merely favored executing ambushes within narrow tunnels—was at best a pseudo-Ground-type entity; they were absolutely no match for the Flygon in a subterranean clash.
Consequently, one Druddigon after another was violently flushed out of the caverns by the advancing Flygon. The sight of them desperately clutching their jagged skulls as they scrambled frantically out of the tunnels appeared exceptionally comical.
The Aerodactyl and Altaria vanguards, having waited on standby for a prolonged window, launched a concentrated, immediate offensive. Within a few short minutes, the absolute majority of the Druddigon clan had been ruthlessly subdued.
It could only be stated that they were undeniably worthy of the title: The Weakest Dragons of the Rocky Mountain Range.
The absolute strongest fighter across the entire clan—their Alpha patriarch—turned out to be an elderly dragon sitting precisely on the bare threshold of Lv. 70.
Merely analyzing this level baseline, Kazuya immediately deduced what kind of survival strategy the Druddigon had historically employed across the Rocky Mountains; their operational style stood in absolute, diametric opposition to the cutthroat environment of these peaks. They had explicitly selected a desolate, isolated valley to establish their territory specifically to evade high-intensity combat.
The leisurely, retirement-community pacing of the grassland was actually far more suited to their psychological traits, yet the geographic terrain of the grassland mathematically couldn't support their subterranean biology.
"Roar!"
The elderly Druddigon patriarch unleashed a desperate, terrified bellow. With a single glance, he flawlessly deduced who the true sovereign commanding this armada was. Completely ignoring the surrounding flying dragons, he frantically groveled toward Kazuya, begging for his life.
"Submit."
"Roar." The Druddigon nodded his head with frantic, absolute urgency. From his perspective, there wasn't a single concept in the universe more vital than biological survival.
Kazuya waited in silence for a brief moment. He quickly realized that the physical dimensions of this Alpha Druddigon hadn't shrunk by a single centimeter.
At that exact second, a cold smile breached Kazuya's snout.
This pack of cunning, treacherous dragons... are highly likely calculating that they will simply weather this immediate storm, and then execute a mass migration to slip away.
He couldn't precisely map out the internal calculations churning within the Druddigon's brain. Perhaps they assumed that merging into the Dragon Clan mathematically guaranteed they would be forced into grueling, agonizing slave labor under Kazuya's command, resulting in a drastic degradation of their living conditions, which fueled their reluctance to submit.
Kazuya possessed zero operational avenues to verbally rectify that misconception. Merging into the Dragon Clan guaranteed a future quality of life that, regardless of the parameters, was vastly superior to the miserable existence the Druddigon managed on their own. Merely evaluating the absolute food security anchored by the grassland pastures, the Druddigon would never again need to dread the specter of starvation.
But utilizing mere verbal rhetoric to articulate this reality was absolutely incapable of extracting trust from a cunning species like Druddigon.
This specific clan was composed entirely of extreme, self-interest-driven pragmatists. Only when they physically extracted tangible, undeniable benefits would they willingly anchor themselves to the Dragon Clan. As for actual loyalty... that was a psychological parameter that could only begin cultivation after they had willingly chosen to remain.
Therefore, he had to mathematically force them to personally experience the tangible dividends of joining the Dragon Clan to genuinely subjugate them, compelling them to voluntarily embrace their new identity as a structural component of the empire.
For the immediate timeline...
"Your entire clan will execute a mass relocation. Moving forward, you will cohabitate alongside the Flygon clan."
Kazuya projected an exceptionally "warm and benevolent" smile. The ghostly blue light of his Aura Power flared within his golden irises. He extended a massive claw, gently patting the Druddigon patriarch's shoulder as he offered a soft, chilling piece of advice:
"Merging into the Dragon Clan carries absolutely zero negative consequences for your lineage. You will synthesize this reality very shortly. But prior to that realization... do not attempt to execute any treacherous, underhanded tricks. Otherwise, I will personally grind your bones to dust and scatter your ashes to the wind."
Against a pack of spineless opportunists like this, Kazuya knew he couldn't afford to project excessive leniency. At the very least, he couldn't utilize the same diplomatic posture he had extended toward the Flygon.
Kazuya had deliberately structured the cohabitation of the Druddigon and Flygon clans. Originally, the blueprint was synthesized to allow them to mutually resolve their respective survival bottlenecks; now, a secondary operational layer had been added—tasking the Flygon to maintain an absolute watch over the Druddigon.
With the Flygon acting as their permanent wardens, the Druddigon mathematically couldn't orchestrate a clean escape. As long as they remained anchored, they would inevitably, eventually synthesize the absolute security radiating from the Dragon Clan.
Although the baseline combat parameters of the Druddigon clan weren't formidable, their hyper-cautious survival strategy had allowed them to cultivate a remarkably robust demographic scale, exceeding 80 members. This numerical reality granted Kazuya the operational patience to extend a slightly prolonged window of leniency toward the clan, offering them ample time and opportunity to adapt.
If, after a full month had elapsed... he audited the Druddigon patriarch once more, and the titan still commanded this exact physical stature... liquidation might be an excessive response, considering the Druddigon hadn't actively provoked the Dragon Clan.
But they would absolutely secure the monumental achievement of becoming the very first clan in history to be permanently expelled from the empire.
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