Chapter 372: Arduous Battle, Desperate Crisis

Wang Yu carried on his shoulder a piece of magitech ordnance three or four times his own size. It was a monstrous cannon, cobbled together from various alchemical alloys, and within its translucent central chamber burned a blinding, crimson star core—the heart of a Fire Elemental Lord.

The beam erupted from this weapon, which utilized the heart of a legendary fire lord as its power source. It compressed the immense energy within into a focused ray, delivering a piercing, destructive force far superior to the wasteful, explosive energy dispersal of lesser armaments.

With this shot, the battle between the Dragon Cult and Wang Yu’s party began.

Facing the searing pillar of fire, Feilie, a sub-dragon who had transcended the legendary rank, showed no fear. His strange, feather-covered black dragon wings unfurled and crossed before him, forming a shield against the incoming blast.

"Hiss! Boom!"

The beam struck the shield of wings. The black feathers melted under the horrific heat, rising as thick, dark mist. This mist, seemingly under Feilie’s control, formed an insulating layer that stripped away the beam’s destructive power, layer by layer, until the heat reaching his flesh was no longer enough to cause harm.

The dragon’s eyes fixed upon Wang Yu and Aivia. A flash of light—the signature power of a Dragon Cult Archbishop—shimmered within his gaze. On the back of his own deformed, grotesque dragon body, the phantom images of countless dragon-blooded skeletons flickered into existence for a heartbeat.

The next moment, the sea beneath Wang Yu and Aivia churned violently. A multitude of skeletal arms, coalesced from some unknown power, burst through the water’s surface, clawing at them.

"Boom!"

Two explosions overlapped. The red dragon, having launched his own assault alongside the Fire Elemental Lord cannon, slammed fiercely into his opponent. Flames roared from the thrusters of his iron-and-gold wings, creating two translucent, distorted rings of air from the sheer force of his momentum.

The girl threw a sphere of ice crystals wreathed in lightning, which shattered among the reaching skeletal claws. The hybrid ice-thunder spell was devastating; as the currents crackled, the sea below froze to a depth of several meters, trapping the summoned skeletons within solid ice.

"Wang Yu, watch out! These skeletons are at the legendary level!"

Wang Yu heard Aivia’s urgent warning. He fired his Conqueror alchemical revolver in "Mourning Star" mode. A white pillar of destructive energy erupted from the ice, shattering the frozen blocks and venting its full force upon the skeletons.

Yet, as Aivia had warned, the skeletons were indeed legendary in their resilience. Before Wang Yu’s eyes, they burst through the white beam, rapidly assembling in mid-air into a giant mantis composed of pallid bone. Its twin scythes, forged from massive blades of bone, gleamed with a terrifying, pitch-black luster.

"Damn it, just a fraction of his power is already at the legendary level..."

Wang Yu’s expression tightened. A legendary entity was not a Great Knight. He might hold off three or four high-ranking Great Knights, but against a legend, his chances were slim.

The skeletal mantis rotated its hideous, pale head. In an instant, its form blurred and vanished. A massive wound appeared on Wang Yu’s neck; had a shard of broken meteorite iron not been embedded there, he would have been decapitated.

"Hum!"

Several phantom blades manifested the moment the mantis’s scythe was caught by the meteorite-reinforced spine of Wang Yu’s armor. They struck down with fury: Supermagic—Phantom Blades.

"Clang, clang, clang, clang!"

The mantis’s scythes moved in a blur, the collision sounds merging into a single note. The thirty-two phantom blades were shattered in an instant, and the mantis even found the gap to swing at Wang Yu’s waist.

"Ssh, clang!"

To this legendary skeletal mantis, Wang Yu’s flesh was non-existent. The scythe sliced through him without a sound of tearing, like a finger brushing against fabric.

The giant bone scythe slammed into Wang Yu’s waist, cutting through flesh to strike his incredibly tough bone. For the first time, Wang Yu’s tempered, metal-infused skeleton suffered a crack.

The massive impact, coupled with the mantis’s speed, sent a wave of numbness and deep agony through his body, stripping him of control for several moments. This was the power of a legend; he was nearly helpless.

The scythe pulled back, tearing through flesh to reposition for a killing blow, aiming to snap the already fractured bone.

But as the mantis prepared to strike again, it found its bone scythe had snapped in two. The blade remained lodged in Wang Yu’s body; it held only the hilt.

A stroke of luck: the mantis was not a living entity, so Wang Yu’s "Chariot" power could affect it. But then again, if a mere fragment of power possessed such legendary strength, how formidable was Feilie himself?

The dragon’s maw opened wide, and a torrent of searing energy erupted from Zig’s throat, a terrifying wave of flame pouring toward the deformed black dragon. His arms pressed against the wings Feilie used as a shield, muscles bulging and battle aura surging, tearing violently at the relatively fragile parts of the creature’s body.

"Do you know, Zig Welsbach? I have slaughtered countless dragons. Though I am but a sub-dragon, they have no resistance before me. In death, they become my strength, filling the voids of my own deformity."

"Look at these feathers. They are the symbols of my metamorphosis. Under His blessing, I shall eventually become a true dragon—the most loyal and powerful dragon under the Lord of the Heavenly Kingdom."

The scorching dragon breath swept across everything, the terrifying energy tearing through the space, yet nothing ignited upon touching Feilie’s body.

A closer look revealed a phantom barrier on the surface of the deformed dragon, shaped like countless fused skeletons.

Just as he said, the sub-dragons and dragons Feilie had killed had become his power, shielding him and granting him immense strength.

Facing Zig, who seemed to be tearing at his wings but was actually struggling against the residual power of the dead dragons Feilie commanded, the sub-dragon spoke calmly.

The Dragon Cult had indeed been searching for Zig. His uniqueness had prevented the Dragon God from locating the dragon connected to Aerylion.

Previously, when a ritual vessel had pinpointed his location, the Dragon God’s power was blocked by another deity, allowing him to escape. Since then, though the Dragon God had sensed him multiple times, they had failed to kill the crippled red dragon.

Days ago, news from the Alastair royal family had reached the Cult, stating that Zig’s party was heading north. They had sent scouts, but he never expected them to be this far north, leaving the continent for the Sea Tide Barrier. Had the Dragon God not issued a direct decree, he might never have known they were here.

Yet Feilie could not fathom how the Dragon God knew Zig was within this unknown passage of the Sea Tide Barrier. If the God could locate him, why not strike personally instead of sending him?

But for now, Feilie did not care to ponder it. Killing Zig, who was closely linked to that silver dragon of immense power—not to mention the strength he could siphon from the dead Zig—would surely earn him a blessing from the Dragon God that would elevate him to new heights.

"Hum, boom!"

Light flashed across Zig’s body. The living dragon-armor formed by his nameless magic armor turned translucent. Magic circuits roared, drawing in massive amounts of energy from the surroundings, refined by supermagic arts into one of his most powerful spells: the Sixth-Tier Supermagic Lightning spell—Dragon-Thunder Blood Blade.

Layers of blood-red electricity wreathed a massive, shaped blade that appeared in Zig’s claw. He released the grip on the dragon wings and swung the colossal thunder-blade down at Feilie.

The residual power of the blade forced Feilie to focus. This lightning strike, far exceeding a standard sixth-tier spell, could truly harm him. Yet, to his knowledge, Zig was a crippled dragon, insulated from magic and lacking a complete True Name. How could he possibly cast such a blade?

The thunder-blade descended, the violent, twisted electricity forming a solid mass. Its piercing power, bolstered by overloaded mana, climbed to terrifying levels. The overlapping red arcs chained outward, shattering the shield formed by the power of the dead dragons.

"Bang!"

Zig’s power pressed down on Feilie from all sides. The strength he displayed exceeded Feilie’s expectations; Zig was no mere legend. His physical prowess and spellcasting were far beyond any ordinary dragon. He was a genuine threat.

Thus, Feilie did not hesitate to unleash his full power. The feathers that had been evaporated into black mist reappeared above his head—a manifestation of his pure destructive force.

These feathers shifted form, becoming rows of pitch-black tombstones inscribed with incomprehensible script, wreathed in black-purple light, and plummeted toward Zig.

The dense swarm of tombstones linked together with chains of power, quickly forming a massive monument three or four times Zig’s size, crushing everything beneath it.

Zig’s iron wings fired at full capacity, attempting to dash out of the tombstone’s coverage, but the monument’s unique power created an invisible cage, trapping him within its boundaries.

Zig shifted his combat style without hesitation. Magic runes on his body glowed, and a gravity-magic ring of purple lightning appeared above him, pushing against the descending monument.

Exploding with physical strength, Zig turned his wing thrusters downward, providing a powerful upward thrust, and braced himself against the falling tombstone.

"Bang!"

The massive, impossibly heavy tombstone was held at bay by Zig. He immediately turned his dragon head toward Feilie, who was still paralyzed by the plasma-wreathed thunder-blade.

Mana accumulated in his throat, mixed with the immense energy of his own body. This reinforced dragon breath concentrated all his power into a single point, aiming to pierce Feilie’s defenses with ultimate focus.

"That hurts, you know. Why don't you just die like the other dragons I've killed?"

But in the next instant, Feilie’s voice came from behind Zig. On the tombstone Zig was holding up, a dragon shaped like a relief carving detached itself, transforming into Feilie.

The Feilie below, still temporarily controlled by the thunder, turned into a tombstone under Zig’s gaze, releasing a merciless torrent of black energy toward him.

"Crack!"

The skeletal mantis’s giant scythe shot out. Even with Wang Yu’s best efforts to dodge, it was useless; the legendary mantis was simply too fast. Before he could raise his meteorite blade, the mantis struck the fractured bone of his waist for the second time.

This time, the already cracked bone was severed completely by the mantis’s pristine scythe. Wang Yu was cut in two at the waist, his body collapsing.

"Clatter!"

The mantis’s limbs twitched, attempting to maneuver around the carcass of its latest victim to strike at another, only to find itself seized in place; throughout the relentless barrage of slashes, Wang Yu had been meticulously coating the creature’s joints in his own blood.

In the very instant he had been cleaved at the waist, Wang Yu had thrust several shards of meteoric iron along with a cache of alchemical vials deep into the creature’s skeletal chassis. The beast possessed the raw power of a legend, yet it remained fundamentally flawed—it lacked the intellect to perceive the tactical traps Wang Yu had laid.

"Boom!"

The cursed flames ignited, consuming the vials in a kaleidoscopic inferno that erupted from every seam of the mantis’s frame, corroding, embrittling, and melting its form; Wang Yu had crammed every volatile concoction he possessed into that shell, all to carve out a single opening.

"Crack!"

While no single vial of his hand-crafted brew could have crippled such a monster, their combined effects mutated into a chaotic synthesis of destruction, stripping away layers of the mantis’s bone-deep resilience.

Being bisected was no death knell for Wang Yu; he raised an arm, clenched his fist, and unleashed the full might of his Chariot, wrenching the mantis’s primary joints from their sockets just as Aivia had been waiting for.

The girl warped through space, flashing behind the immobilized legendary mantis, her hands brimming with void energy so densely compressed it collapsed inward like a miniature black hole, orbited by a swarm of solid spheres forged from chaotic mana: Sixth-Order Destructive Synthesis—Annihilation.

In terms of pure devastation, ten Wang Yus could not rival a single strike from Aivia; his role was to forge the opportunity, and she had never once failed him. She slammed the spell directly into the mantis’s skull—the nexus of its power—and the overflowing force erased the head from its neck in a single, silent sweep.

"Snap!"

Deprived of its core, the mantis collapsed into a heap of shattered bone, disintegrating into nothingness. Wang Yu, with grim haste, hammered alchemical metal plates into his own spine to bridge his severed torso, a makeshift repair that was precarious, yet functional.

But before they could advance, the scattered bones began to writhe and reassemble; the legendary mantis they had fought so desperately was merely an extension of Fae-Lie’s own power, and as long as the master lived, the construct could never truly be slain.

All their agonizing struggle, it seemed, had been in vain...?