Never, in all his years, had Da Long imagined that anything in this world could be more enormous than Mother.
Still less that a thing vast enough to blot out the sky... would be a Puchi?!
Four tentacles wound around his wings and torso like constricting pythons, coil stacking over coil, tightening endlessly, working to bind him beyond all movement.
"ROAR!"
Across Da Long's body, the black scales rose as one, ten million blades unsheathing together.
He heaved once against the bonds, and like a rasp dragged over soft wood, shaved away a good part of every mycelium tentacle touching him.
He heaved again, and again. Sheared mycelium sloughed off in bulk, chunks the size of grown men snowing down into the ravine below.
The binding force grew weaker and weaker. Da Long began to work himself free.
Then a single arc of electricity rose sizzling off the mycelium's surface.
An instant later, current beyond measuring poured in from every direction at once and broke over him like a collapsing sky.
[Thunder Cloak LV10]
"AAAAH!"
In that moment No. 4 might have been thunder itself given a body. Numberless blue-white arcs leapt and boiled between the colossal mushroom trunk and its tentacles, and for one dazed heartbeat Da Long half believed Azla's lightning breath was striking him all over again.
No. 4 gave the dragon no space to breathe. The four tentacles wrapped inward, layer upon layer, closing into an airtight sphere, a lightning cage sealed from every side, nothing visible through its seams but the ceaseless flicker within.
As the tentacles thickened, the dragon-roars from inside grew fainter and fainter.
And then, with a muffled "pop," a rent tore open in the tentacle-sphere's surface, and black smoke came boiling out of the gap. No. 4 moved to plug it, but the corrosion-laden breath chewed open more gaps faster than they could be sealed!
At last, one great shudder burst outward from the center, and the blackened, brittled mycelium exploded away in every direction like a dried mud shell.
Da Long rose through the black smoke, wing membranes in tatters, scales charred, blood running steadily off him scale by scale.
But those golden eyes blazed brighter than ever.
"Shameless fungus. You would foul the Dragon Strife with those filthy tendrils of yours?"
"Then bring out everything you have. Show me what entitles you!"
Da Long screamed skyward, and his body blurred into an afterimage, sliding around the enormous mushroom cannon shot No. 4 hurled after him.
The battle went on. No. 4's snapped tentacles were whole again in almost no time.
Da Long's own recovery was formidable, for a dragon, and against a Puchi's it was nothing at all. By the time No. 4's tentacles had fully regrown, he had only just stopped his wounds from bleeding.
And yet the fight itself slid into a one-sided beating... in the other direction.
Da Long wove back and forth through the air at speeds that had no business belonging to a body that size, and No. 4's attacks simply never arrived where he was.
The dragon's claw rakes, wing strikes, and breath, meanwhile, No. 4could not dodge at all. It ate every one of them, and endured on the sheer length of its health bar and the speed of its regeneration.
Losing was still a long way off, but never once touching its opponent had No. 4 nearly frantic.
With Little Black still on the field, though, it didn't dare unleash [Infrasonic Attack] or anything else indiscriminate and wide.
All it could do was bellow into the mycelial network: "Black devil, move away! You're in my way!"
But therein lay the problem: the dragon's target, from beginning to end, was Little Black.
And the [Ancient Dragon Path]'s resonance meant Da Long could not lose track of her even for a moment.
Sure enough, the instant Little Black darted out a short distance, not even clear yet of No. 4's [Infrasonic Attack] radius, Da Long reacted.
He first looped around the incoming tentacles, skimmed low under No. 4's backside, and unloaded a huge mouthful of [Corrosive Dragon's Breath] across its two enormous stubby legs.
Then, banking hard around, one wing sliced through the corroded, brittled legs, and No. 4's mushroom bulk shuddered once and came thundering down.
Da Long knew perfectly well this would not kill a giant Puchi with recovery that monstrous. He had never intended it to.
One wingbeat, wings folding again on the far side, and he was standing before Little Black.
He looked down at her, whimpering and cringing, and his golden eyes held nothing but disappointment.
"Why are you this craven? You are about to die. Can you not summon the courage even to resist?"
Sensing the mountainous thing already wriggling its way back toward them, Da Long stopped holding back. The foreclaw rose high.
"Mama... said listen to Da Long."
The falling claw stopped dead above Little Black's skull.
That halting, broken Draconic, thick with hurt, froze Da Long solid where he stood.
"There's the opening!"
From behind, hauling itself forward on its tentacles, every bit as full of hurt feelings, No. 4 swung with everything it had.
The blow batted Da Long out of the sky, and in the same motion a single Puchi detached from the tentacle's tip, the ultimate flavor mushroom packed inside its body. One burst of acceleration, and it shot straight into the dragon's open mouth.
The ultimate flavor mushroom melted the instant it touched the tongue. A heartbeat later, thick white mist, the mist of illusion, came pouring out from every gap between the scales all over Da Long's body.
Da Long blinked, and he was back inside the one day he had never once managed to forget.
"Da Long. Moving is difficult for me now. The little one... there is no one but you I can leave her to."
Da Long's face showed nothing, while jealousy burned through his chest like wildfire, and then, in the very next moment, guttered out.
"Only in your care could I ever be at ease."
In Mother's eyes shone love, and trust.
He knew that love was not for him. And still Da Long spread his wings and gathered the little one, black-scaled just like himself, in against his body. As if, by doing so, he might share in one thin sliver of the love in those eyes.
An illusion born of the ultimate flavor mushroom was more than even a great dragon could shake off. Even that fool Little Black caught the edge of it, sinking into the old feelings alongside him.
Only No. 4 was wholly unmoved.
"Puchi."
No. 4 appeared behind the dragon, four tentacles compressed to their absolute limit, the spikes at their tips glittering cold.
[Sharpness LV10]
[Spring Spike LV10]
Backed by No. 4's full mass, four spikes the size of mountain peaks fired at the black dragon, who appeared to notice nothing at all!
But the grand dragon-skewering never came. Inside the illusion, the ancient dragon extended one claw and touched Da Long's chest, feather-light, and a ribbon of iridescent radiance welled up through the black scales.
[Divine Artifact: Void Boundary]
Huh?
Under the sincerely bewildered caps of Lin Jun and No. 4 both, the four tentacles vanished into an unseen wall before the dragon, as if fired into another dimension. They had not truly vanished, either: dozens of kilometers away, four tentacles came lancing out of empty air. Two found nothing. The other two ran a mountain clean through.
Lin Jun had planned for the black dragon using the artifact. He had not planned for it being used like this!
That activation had very obviously not come from the dragon, who was still buried fathoms-deep in the illusion.
An automatic guardian function, then? Or... that phantom of the ancient dragon...
Da Long came back to himself. He looked at the tentacles beside him, still being dragged back out of the warped space, and then turned to look at the illusion that had not yet finished fading.
The ancient dragon's immense form feathered apart like down in the wind, and out of it stepped a young woman with dragon horns crowning her head and wings folded at her back.
Against that beauty, Little Black beside her compared roughly as a half-evolved monkey compares to an elf.
The dragon-winged girl walked over, unhurried, lifted the great head that had lowered itself without thinking, and ran her slender palm along the black scales with familiar tenderness.
"Da Long. All this time... you have carried so much."
In the golden pupil, one tear slid down along the seam between scales. "Mother..."
This time, the call was answered.
"Foolish child, so devoted to a dragon already dead." Silvia's voice was soft, and very gentle. "Not every dragon of that clutch was mine. But you, Da Long. You truly are my child."
Even as she stroked him, Silvia lifted the slowly spinning polyhedron, and the tentacles arcing in for another strike were quietly relocated somewhere else entirely.
Then she set the divine artifact into Da Long's claw.
"The Ancient Dragon's power was always meant to be yours. Trouble yourself over methods no longer. Go, and take it!"
The white mist thinned. Silvia's figure went more and more transparent. At the last, her gaze crossed to the dumbstruck Little Black on the other side, and she sighed, softly.
"As for this poor child of mine, puppeted by wicked hands into a Dragon Strife she never chose... let her come and sleep beside me, atop Dragon Cliff."
The dragon-winged girl dissolved entirely. Da Long's claw closed on empty air.
Between his talons, only the divine artifact Void Boundary went on spinning.
Da Long's claw clenched around it, and he lifted his head and loosed one long, long dragon-cry at the sky.
In the next moment, Void Boundary bloomed with iridescent light, and a cage woven of twisted space sealed No. 4 outside completely.
Within the cage: only Little Black, and Da Long!
(End of Chapter)
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