[Divine Artifact: Void Boundary (Restructures Spatial Structure)]!!!
Stretch imagination to its absolute limit: what powers stand above all others?
Space! Time!
Whether this world held any power that could bend time was an open question. But the strongest spatial item in existence was, in all likelihood, riding around on that black dragon!
Lin Jun could already picture the scene once he had that divine artifact for himself: the useless slime hauls out the Blood Calamity and hurls a sky-swallowing sea of blood at him; a Puchi gives one gentle wave of its tentacle; a spatial rift drinks the whole thing down; and the slime Demon King, his one trump gone, is so terrified he reverts to his original blob and grovels for mercy...
A pity, then, that artifact recovery had failed. Worse, he had temporarily lost all vision over there. He could only hope the black dragon didn't use the artifact to hole up somewhere truly unfindable.
The artifact hadn't come back with him, but Lin Jun hadn't walked away empty-handed either.
Velariss, the last obstacle standing before Duskfall Keep, had been taken care of by the dragons. The First Legion needed only a little time to replenish its Puchis before it could push on and drive straight at the imperial capital!
And beyond that...
[Greed of the Seven Deadly Sins Triggered]
[Plundered Skill: Shadow Melt LV1]
Velariss had died inside the shadow space, without so much as a corpse left over. But the left wing the blue dragon had blasted off her at the start had luckily survived.
Lin Jun decomposed it, and out of it he pulled this Abyss skill, one that no normal path could ever have granted him!
Level it up a bit, issue it to the Puchis as standard kit, and then, with shadow Puchis seething across every field, Lin Jun honestly didn't know what the Empire was supposed to fight him with!
But that was a project for later. Right now there was a bigger headache to deal with.
Lin Jun had just watched, through the fungal mat, as the victorious black dragon declined to go hide somewhere with its artifact, and instead flew straight for the Mushroom Fortress.
No need to guess. The target was Little Black.
Look at the big black dragon's numbers. Now look at Little Black's panel.
He had pushed Little Black's Ancient Dragon Path as hard as he possibly could, and the gap was still enormous.
That left the old playbook: while time remained, throw everything at the black dragon, wear it down to grievous wounds fair and square, and then hand it to Little Black to finish.
Which would not be easy. Especially not with all three legions deployed far from home.
Several highly intelligent schemes flashed through Lin Jun's mind, and his gaze finally settled on a certain oblivious black figure...
In the Mushroom Garden, three large mushroom houses stood side by side.
At the door of the middle one, Little Black's rear half stuck out through the gap of the not-quite-shut door, her big black-scaled tail swishing left, right, left. It wasn't that she didn't want to squeeze all the way in; the mushroom house for storing silver scales was simply full.
The silver lizardman had stacked her years of collected silver scales in neat rows with his own hands, and under the glowing mushrooms on the ceiling the whole room glittered. Little Black loved it beyond all reason and lived in terror of knocking it out of order. The silver lizardman wasn't in the Mushroom Garden these days, and nobody knew when he'd be back, and Little Black could never stack them that neatly herself.
Sometimes Little Black found it genuinely mysterious: the silver lizardman was such a small little thing, yet he had produced this many sparkly scales, piled higher than the lizardman himself!
Maybe one day, she could fill the entire Mushroom Garden with silver scales!
Her admiration of the silver-scale collection complete, Little Black eased herself back out of the mushroom house with extreme care.
Her strength had grown rather large lately, and the growth still didn't sit quite right in her body. One careless move and it would be like last time, when she accidentally ripped her own mushroom house apart and the sparklies scattered everywhere and took forever to pick up.
Out of one house, Little Black was just about to squeeze into the next one, the one that stored gemstones and glass marbles, when Lin Jun's voice suddenly arrived.
"Little Black. Time to head out."
Little Black's head rotated. "Where?"
Lin Jun wasted no words on preamble. He deployed the killing blow directly!
A dazzling image dropped into Little Black's mind.
The image's background was pure darkness. A handful of light beams fell on a great mushroom at the center.
And atop the great mushroom's cap stood a statue carved from silver-white crystal: a tailless lizardman, radiant, dazzling, lifelike.
Little Black's jaw slid open, slowly. In her golden eyes shimmered bottomless craving.
"Super sparkly!"
Only then did Lin Jun murmur into her consciousness. "That's right. Super sparkly! Truth be told, I've wanted to give you this super sparkly for ages. But I was afraid some dragon would steal it, so I've kept it hidden until now."
"Little Black... wants it."
Little Black wore the most pitiable expression imaginable, as though bracing for Lin Jun to say no.
"I know. I know."
A Puchi surfaced out of the fungal mat and rubbed her head with a mycelium tentacle. "There's just one last sparkly-thief left. Once it's dealt with, I can finally hand you the super sparkly with my mind at ease."
"So for now, go where I tell you. To where the battle will be. All right?"
Little Black's face went grave, and she gave one hard, fierce nod.
Then, navigating by the images Lin Jun fed her, she flew south along the coast.
The point was not to send her head-on into the black dragon. Her heading was the Second Legion. Which was to say, toward No. 4.
Thank goodness No. 4 walked slowly. Flying out now, Little Black should arrive in time.
As for why not keep her at the Mushroom Fortress: with the main forces all abroad, keeping her home would accomplish exactly one thing, dragging headquarters into the fire for nothing.
Lin Jun could also have moved her through the rift, to the United Kingdom, to the Elven Forest, even out to the Tidal Sanctuary in the open sea.
But by everything Lin Jun had observed, this big black dragon was no mindless berserker.
Once it worked out how Little Black had moved, even if it didn't dive through the rift after her, odds were high it would simply destroy the Stone Fortress dungeon's entrance.
The Stone Fortress dungeon was already in its collapse phase as it was; the process was merely slow, which was the only reason Lin Jun could still use that rift.
Against that black dragon's current strength, the Stone Fortress dungeon might genuinely not hold.
And while it was in the neighborhood, the dragon might treat the Mushroom Fortress to a mouthful or two of breath, free of charge.
Losing the rift channel to headquarters would be a disaster and a half.
On top of everything sat the wildcard of the divine artifact, Void Boundary. Playing spatial-transfer games in front of a spatial divine artifact felt, however you turned it over, like flaunting your axe at the master carpenter's door. Some other plan, then.
Weighing it all, the best destination was still No. 4.
No. 4 was also, at present, the only card in Lin Jun's hand with the raw strength to duel a black dragon.
Lin Jun had real doubts about whether No. 4's lumbering swings could so much as graze that wind-fast dragon. But thanks to [Leviathan], in sheer size and health at least, the advantage was crushing.
And if all else failed, No. 4 could always self-destruct.
Regrowing that bulk afterward would take a painfully long time, but if it traded for an Ancient Dragon, that was a bargain.
Conveniently, No. 4 had just been complaining about the lack of any glorious battle. Time to let it have all the glory it could carry!
Of course, if at all possible, Lin Jun would rather No. 4 not simply blast the black dragon to pieces outright.
Lin Jun wasn't certain that Little Black, having sat out the final battle, would still receive the [Ancient Dragon Path]'s recognition.
Best case: cripple the dragon, and let Little Black collect the head.
Little Black, guided by Lin Jun, opened her dragon-strength to the fullest and flew hard toward the Leviathan Puchi.
Elsewhere, No. 4 heard Lin Jun's instructions and bobbed its sky-blotting cap in excitement.
Thoom. Thoom.
"Leave it to me, Fungus Lord!"
No. 4 patted its round belly with a tentacle, producing two muffled thunderclaps of a sound. "Black devils? I'll flatten as many as you like! But, um... could you..."
No. 4 began wringing its tentacles together, mycelium crumbs snowing down.
"Could you record my heroic battle? With those recording crystals!"
No. 4's cap trembled with hope.
Lin Jun had zero objection. "Done."
"Yes! I'm going to show Pink Puchi and No. 1 and everyone!"
No. 4 threw its tentacles high in joy, churning them into the cloud layer, and parted the clouds to let the sun through.
(End of Chapter)
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