Chapter 344: Fire Element Lord

Time slips back a moment to the Elemental Plane of Fire, where members of the Truth Oversight Committee, who had been gathering materials and data, were fleeing through a fracturing mountain range.

The mage summoned a raging gale, wrapping it around the entire party to provide momentum and deflect the searing, molten debris that erupted periodically from the surrounding terrain.

"How could that slumbering Fire Elemental Lord wake so suddenly? Its cycle of dormancy should have lasted at least another decade. The minor sampling and data collection we performed was, to a creature in such an unstable environment, no more than the loss of a single hair."

A scholar, carried by a knight as they fled, struggled to manifest a book of magical pages, flipping through the data logs with a look of bewilderment.

"Forget about that now! The concentration of fire elements here is too dense; spells of other elements are operating at less than forty percent efficiency. If this continues, we will never escape the reach of that Lord!"

The mage flying above, who was driving the gale to lead the party down the mountain, shouted back. Visibly, the power of the storm he summoned was waning; mottled sparks began to be swept into the vortex, and the temperature of the airflow climbed slowly but stubbornly.

This storm was becoming saturated with fire elements not only due to the absurdly high concentration of the plane but also because of the approaching Lord.

"Boom! Crack-crack-crack! Bang!"

The lava-crusted ground shattered. A colossal arm, composed of flame and black stone and radiating unimaginable heat, burst from the earth and slammed into the ground.

Superheated flames poured into the fissures, following the will of the arm's master—the Fire Elemental Lord—as it tore through the earth in pursuit of the fleeing group.

Once the first arm had surfaced, the Lord itself emerged slowly from a pool of boiling magma, melting the earth with terrifying heat. Its massive body was saturated with energy capable of boiling seas and melting mountains.

Around its form, the leaking power created a domain of incineration. Any creature or entity that entered would find its temperature rising under the weight of that force; if they could not withstand the heat, they would be reduced to ash.

The Fire Elemental Lord stood over fifty meters tall, and every movement caused earth-shattering destruction. Merely by waking, the power of its core had leveled the mountain peaks and triggered a structural collapse of the entire range.

Now, as its domain merely brushed against the Committee members, the spells of the formal mages began to falter.

"How can I not care? There is definitely something wrong here. We saw this same behavior when we observed those peculiar Molten-Mountain Drakes—unexplained hostility and frenzy. We didn't commit any of the taboos listed in our files."

"The volcanic bats from earlier were the same. Once or twice could be a coincidence, perhaps we failed to account for their unique habits, but this many times? There is absolutely something wrong!"

"If someone isn't sabotaging us, then we've been cursed with... ah, ah!"

The scholar, still being carried, did not stop checking his data. His suspicions had reached a peak; even without finding physical evidence, he was certain this was no mere stroke of bad luck.

Before anyone could respond, the shockwave from the Lord's rupture reached them. A crackling trail of fire raced forward, colliding with a massive stone wall erected by the other mages and shattering it instantly.

The explosion rippled outward, sending magma clusters erupting from the earth to rain down in every direction.

The two-meter-thick basalt wall was fragile against the Lord's casual strike. In a single collision, the earth-element defense, prepared with such effort, crumbled into scattered boulders that tumbled down the slope alongside the party.

The impact shook the earth so violently that the weaker mages lost their balance. The knights interspersed among them caught them, some even hoisting the mages and the researcher onto their backs to continue the flight.

"It's useless to talk about this now. Escaping is all that matters. We aren't entirely out of luck; our reinforcements were dispatched before the Lord woke. They should be here soon."

"Is the sorcery ready? If not, the moment that thing strikes again is when we turn to charred dust."

The mage who had been fueling the storm responded with a hurried, grim humor, asking if the sorcerers were prepared, or else they were doomed.

In the distance, the Fire Elemental Lord had gathered a massive sphere of molten rock. Stones floated in the searing magma, and ribbons of flame circled the destructive orb, which had grown to a quarter the size of the Lord's own body.

Raising its hands, fire crackled between its palms and the sphere. The Lord launched the massive fireball at the fleeing group.

Its aim was poor; it would not hit them directly, but it would land close enough that the resulting inferno would incinerate everything in the vicinity, defenses included.

"Fine. You don't mean the reinforcements are Chairman Icarus himself, do you? He's the only one in our society who could stand against a Fire Elemental Lord."

The sorcerers threw runestones inscribed with special symbols toward the dark-spotted, burning meteor in the sky, responding as they did so.

"No, but they should have the power to get us out of here."

The mage's tone was uncertain. He wasn't sure if this "highly capable" reinforcement could truly handle a Fire Elemental Lord.

By rank, the Lord was an Archmage-level threat, but given its massive size and the home-field advantage, its true strength was undoubtedly Legendary.

The only silver lining was that fire elementals at the Lord stage were mindless. They only needed to escape, not fight the monstrosity.

Several runestones filled with void energy shot into the sky. A black thread of void energy connected them in sequence, forming a ring. Within this ring, black matter filled the space, writhing like thick, dark mire.

The burning meteor plummeted, colliding with the abruptly manifested black ring. There was no explosion; instead, the massive meteor slowly sank into the black void-mire, which burned away as it consumed the meteor's terrifying power.

The void was not weakened by the concentration of fire elements here. While the mages could not fully utilize their spells, the sorcerers could still wield the void normally.

"This Lord's strength is truly excessive. Even with all the sorcerers casting together, we couldn't fully swallow that attack."

A sorcerer looked back at the collision, murmuring at the Lord's immense power.

The clash between void energy and fire finally concluded. The meteor had been reduced to an eighth of its original size, and the void energy had dissipated after consuming the bulk of the mass.

The shrunken meteor crashed into the earth, the shockwave throwing the party into chaos once more.

Upon impact, the meteor shattered, and among the fragments were countless small fire elementals born from the Lord's infused power.

These creatures, seemingly obeying the Lord's will, began firing fireballs while still in the air, only to shatter into shards of hot rock upon hitting the ground.

"Damn it, the Lord is enraged."

The mage glanced back at the distant Lord, his hair standing on end and his face turning pale.

The Lord had plunged its arms into its own chest. Beneath the molten rock lay its source of power—the Elemental Core.

This action meant the creature was about to use that terrifying energy to unleash a move capable of wiping out the "insects" of the Truth Oversight Committee in one blow.

Towering flames surged over its palms. The Lord gathered all the energy from its core into its hands and slammed them down onto the mountain range beneath it.

"BOOM!"

Fire transformed into a wave over ten meters high, rushing toward the Committee from above, continuously drawing more fire elements from the environment to feed the unimaginably hot, crimson tide.

"It's over!"

The mage screamed internally, despair rising. In this domain, the Lord's power was too great. All they could do was resist with everything they had, praying for a chance to survive an attack of such incalculable force.

The mages gathered mana, the sorcerers channeled void energy, and the knights circulated their battle aura, raising their shields to stand at the forefront of the wave, even as they felt like mere ants before it.

But just as they prepared to face their end, a spatial rift tore open above them, and a massive figure surged through.

"Whoosh, hum!"

Except for the knights and sorcerers, a sudden buzzing sound echoed in the minds of the mages—not a physical sound, but the roar of mana suddenly surging and vibrating.

Looking up with shock and awe, the mages received a new transmission: their reinforcements had arrived. And this was it?

It was a dragon of indescribable state. Its wings were not the leathery membranes of a typical dragon, but wings of forged steel, with nozzles venting jets of flame like fire-feathers.

The dragon was far larger than any recorded in their files, and its body seemed covered in a layer of armor.

Its surface was not layered with dragon scales, but with a smooth, matte black substance etched with complex patterns.

As the roar of mana echoed in the mages' minds, glowing magic circuits flared across the dragon's body, spreading from the jagged horns on its head to the tip of its tail.

Mana surged into the dragon. As a red dragon, Zieg was naturally attuned to fire-rich mana; here, the suppression he faced was far less than in the Undead Plane.

Furthermore, the nameless magic armor on his surface, formed from the remnants of Behemoth tissue, possessed special powers he had yet to fully understand, reducing the plane's suppression to its absolute minimum.

Sieg manipulated the dense, overlapping layers of magical runes etched into his nameless armor, weaving them together to harness the abundant mana surging from the Elemental Plane of Fire to construct the spell he craved.

To counter the tidal wave of flames by force with ice-based magic would be a fool’s errand, a taxing and irrational endeavor; for Sieg, it was enough simply to obstruct their path.

Boom!

The earth shuddered, and under the mage’s stunned gaze, Sieg wrenched a small mountain from the bedrock with earth magic, hurling it before the fiery tide to collide with overwhelming force.

Whoosh!

As waves break against a reef, the flames struck the mountain; the ten-meter-high wall of fire surged upward upon impact, clawing toward the sky.

Yet, this pure and ferocious inferno, having melted a thick outer layer of the mountain and carved two molten rivers that parted and rejoined around its base, was finally brought to a stagnant halt.

The dragon then fixed his gaze upon the Fire Elemental Lord, who, seemingly enraged by his sudden appearance, began to radiate the unique power of an elemental sovereign, summoning fire-born creatures from every horizon to surround the members of the Truth Oversight Committee.

Boom-whoosh! Boom-whoosh!

The roar of engines, deafening and intense, erupted from the steel wings upon Sieg’s back, where the violet arcs of gravity magic were soon eclipsed by the intensifying pillars of flame.

The scattered vents shifted through mechanical precision, merging into two massive thrusters on each wing before firing at maximum capacity.

Bang-bang-bang-bang!

Dragon claws tore through the earth, pushing off to gain initial momentum before the steel wings propelled him skyward, accelerating with terrifying speed; the massive, heavy draconic frame streaked across the horizon like a brilliant comet, crashing headlong into the Fire Elemental Lord without a shred of restraint.