Badul led his team along the shadowed mountain ridge, moving quietly toward the bottom of the ravine.
Roars ricocheted between the cliff walls — impossible to tell if they came from ahead or overhead. The vibrations of combat made the loose stones underfoot tremble faintly.
The squad numbered just over ten. Besides Badul, who was Lord-rank, there were two Grandmaster-rank fighters; the rest were all Diamond-rank without exception.
If Lin Jun had been there to pull up their status panels, he'd have seen that most of them shared the title [Dragonslayer (Dragon Presence Immunity)].
The dwarves had been harassed by dragons long enough to figure out a few methods for dealing with them.
One lesson was this: numbers didn't matter much in an open-field fight against a dragon.
A dragon's tough scales gave it immunity to most attacks that weren't powerful enough. When defending a city, lower-ranked soldiers could still man siege crossbows and do something useful. In an open field, they were nothing but meat shields absorbing damage for the real fighters — something Badul would never stoop to.
"Captain, look!" After cresting a low ridge, one of his men pointed toward the next mountainside.
On the slope over there was a high-horn sheep ranch. The stone walls had mostly collapsed, and the wooden fence had burned to charcoal.
A few scorched high-horn sheep lay scattered across the ground. The rest that should have been in the ranch were nowhere to be seen — clearly scattered by the dragons to wherever frightened livestock run.
"Damn lizards!" Badul's face darkened with fury.
That ranch was tied directly to his city's food supply.
The curse had barely left his mouth before a staff rapped — not hard, but deliberately — against his helmet.
He spun to glare at the white-bearded dwarven mage behind him. The old man wasn't looking at him. He was already raising his staff, using a trickle of magic to bend the light and blur the outlines of the entire squad into the surrounding rock and shrubbery — and only then did he give Badul a disapproving look.
Badul lowered his voice and squeezed the words through his teeth: "Got it. Damn it."
A dragon's senses were razor-sharp. They had learned that lesson the hard way once.
The fight in the ravine continued, but one of the roars had grown very faint, while the other was growing louder and more triumphant, as if declaring victory.
Badul touched the axe handle and picked up his pace.
---
The red dragon dropped, its body riddled with wounds. Its bulk crushed dozens of thick trees as it fell. The whole hillside shook.
Its eyes were still open. The golden slit pupils were already unfocusing, reflecting the last glow of dusk.
"Azla... you actually got this strong..." The red dragon's voice was hoarse, with a faint edge of disbelief.
The blue dragon pressed one claw down on its throat, tips digging between the scales. Blood dripped down through the talons.
Azla lowered her head and looked at the red dragon's bloodied face. "Because while those of you born stronger were keeping to old habits — fight once, then sleep for half a month — I never stopped fighting for a single moment. You've only yourself to blame."
"Ha... don't act like you're guaranteed to win to the very end... the strongest... will always be..."
Azla didn't let it finish. The claw pressed down. The section of the red dragon's throat unprotected by scales made a clean, crisp snap.
The unfinished words were cut off in its throat. They'd never come out.
With the red dragon finished, Azla turned her head toward the dark patch of forest beside her. In the middle of the trees — a blurry shimmer of light and shadow.
"We've been spotted. Move!" Badul lunged out of the shimmer, his greataxe raised high, bringing it down toward the blue dragon's skull.
More than ten figures burst from the treeline behind him. The white-haired old mage stayed at the rear, staff raised high, the magical energy around him surging.
"Shadow Bind!"
The tree shadows stretched outward, becoming lengths of black rope that coiled around the blue dragon's limbs, throat, and body from all directions.
They had used this combination before, several times. Hold just for a moment and Badul's axe could stun the dragon. The others piled on with a coordinated follow-up — sometimes they finished the fight without a single casualty.
What they didn't know was that a dragon this far along the Ancient Dragon Path was in a completely different league from the ones they had caught before.
"Is that how you dealt with those fools?"
Common Speech rolled off the blue dragon's tongue. Badul's heart lurched with a jolt of dread, but his axe didn't stop.
Azla simply took one step back.
The Shadow Bind coiled all around her snapped apart like cobwebs.
Badul's greataxe struck empty ground. Rock fragments flew. The earth exploded into a massive crater.
Badul realized: they were in serious trouble.
"Careful!" The old mage's voice came from behind them, slightly ragged from the backlash of his broken spell. "This one is in a completely different league from every dragon we've ever faced!"
It was already too late.
Azla opened her jaws wide. From the moment the red dragon fell, she had been gathering charge in her throat. It condensed now into a ball of lightning compressed to its absolute limit.
Where the lightning ball passed, the ground was carved into a scorched black trench. Trees it grazed had no time to catch fire — they simply turned to charcoal.
There was nowhere for Badul to run.
He roared, drove his right foot forward, and lit up every rune on the greataxe at once. The blade blazed red as he brought it down to meet the oncoming ball of lightning.
The instant the blade struck, the world was swallowed by a single flash of white.
Badul could see nothing. Could hear nothing.
Only the searing arc of electricity surging in through the axe handle — burning through his palm, burning through his arm, burning through half his body.
He clenched his teeth and gripped the handle in a death grip, pouring every ounce of strength into the widening crack that split the lightning ball apart.
The lightning ball finally fractured, splitting apart and flowing around him on both sides.
The smoke and dust slowly cleared.
Badul was down on one knee, leaning on the half-destroyed axe, kneeling on scorched earth. His armor was still smoking. The exposed skin was charred and cracked open. He turned and looked back in disbelief.
Behind him, a V-shaped burn mark extended outward from where he had been standing. At the far ends of the V, several dwarves lay scattered, trailing black smoke, their fates unknown. Elsewhere, where people had stood, there was nothing left — only shattered armor fragments and heaps of black ash scattered across the scorched earth.
The only ones still standing were Badul and, far behind him, the old mage, leaning on his staff, blood at the corner of his mouth.
Badul raised his head and looked at the great blue beast still standing on the red dragon's corpse. His voice came out hoarse, barely his own.
"How... can it be this strong?"
Azla looked down at him with contempt. "Short-lived, fragile insects. You ambushed a few fools and thought yourselves impressive? You know nothing of true strength."
A dragon claw pressed down toward Badul. Azla's movement was unhurried — like a single ordinary step forward.
But with both legs charred through, Badul couldn't even dodge. He could only raise the ruined axe and grit his teeth to hold against the claw.
The dwarven mage launched spell after spell at Azla, but none of it slowed that claw's steady descent.
Suddenly, a shadow blocked the evening sun over the ravine. The crushing pressure bearing down on Badul vanished all at once.
Azla withdrew her claw and looked up at the dragon shadow that had landed on the mountaintop.
"Da Long..."
(End of Chapter)
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