Robert rode on horseback at the very rear of the army.
On both his flanks, dozens of soldiers strained against the massive Dragonslayer Ballistas. The gargantuan wheels beneath their carriages turned sluggishly, giving off shrill, metallic screeches.
Schroeder, the "Grey Hawk," rode alongside Robert on a black steed.
"This damned place is getting hotter and hotter," Robert grumbled, wiping the sweat from his body.
He turned to his staff officer. "Why is the army moving so slowly? How much longer until we pass through the Throat of Trier?"
The staff officer answered in a heavy voice, "My lord, our troops have just emerged from a bloody battle. It is only natural that their pace is somewhat slow."
"Lord Robert!"
"A stone wall has been found ahead, blocking the Throat of Trier!"
A messenger spurred his mount forward in haste, his voice ringing with urgency.
"What?"
"How is that possible? They only just passed through themselves!" Disbelief was written all over Robert's face.
Schroeder's tone turned grave. "Spellcasters. Cinder Nest possesses high-ranking spellcasters. If I am not mistaken, that should be Wall of Stone—a fifth-level evocation spell capable of raising an impregnable barrier of solid rock."
"It appears the enemy foresaw that we would pursue them and prepared countermeasures in advance."
"Then what do we do?"
Robert was already losing his composure, sweat pouring down his brow like rain.
Schroeder said in a low voice, "Fret not, my lord. This stone wall can be broken through. And even if their caster is an archmage, it would be difficult to sustain such a spell for long."
"Good, that is good," Robert muttered under his breath.
He pulled out his handkerchief once more and dabbed at his dripping forehead.
Compared to when the coalition army first entered, the Trier Valley now felt like a sweltering furnace. Why the weather here was so erratic and volatile was beyond his understanding.
Robert could even smell the acrid scent of scorched dust in the air.
Wait—
Fire?
Sweltering heat?
A red dragon was known as the "Dragon of Volcanoes."
At that thought, coupled with the abrupt retreat of the Cinder Legion and the red dragon's complete absence from the field, an ominous premonition seized Robert's heart.
Unfortunately, his premonitions were rarely wrong.
"M-My lord..."
The staff officer beside him spoke in a trembling voice.
Jolted from his thoughts, Robert turned to him and snapped impatiently, "What is it now?"
"Turn... turn around and look behind you."
"You'll see."
The staff officer's voice was laced with utter despair, bordering on tears.
Robert finally realized something was horribly wrong. He twisted around in the saddle—and promptly tumbled from his mount in sheer shock.
He slumped onto the ground, staring up at the sky in boundless horror.
"Tempus above..."
Fire. Boundless, unending fire.
Half of the distant sky was dyed a blazing orange-red. The horizon had transformed into a searing, pulsating line of flame, while colossal billows of dense smoke rolled upward, gradually swallowing the earth.
Gales howled in from the southwest, sweeping across the battlefield and overturning heaps of corpses. Severed limbs, swarming like locusts, were caught in the drafts and hurled into the sky above the inferno, where the blistering heat ignited them into fuel, sending them plummeting back down as blazing fireballs.
And at the heart of that raging conflagration—
A colossal red dragon slowly beat its wings.
The red dragon was like the incarnation of flame itself, the beating heart of the vast inferno. With every stroke of its wings, the flames pulsed as if drawing breath, flaring higher and hotter.
"Schroeder..."
"Is this... also an illusion?"
It was a question that needed no answer.
Robert stared up at the sky, his face bathed in the crimson glare of the blaze. He could already feel the scorching blast of air against his skin and smell the suffocating reek of sulfur.
Schroeder did not answer. He merely stared numbly into the distance, muttering in disbelief:
"Control Weather..."
"Eighth-level... That's an eighth-level spell!"
The grey-robed wizard screamed as if losing his mind.
The officers and men of the coalition army were struck dumb by this terrifying, awe-inspiring spectacle. They wept, wailed, and prayed in despair, but before this boundless ocean of fire, everything was utterly futile.
"Ye gods..."
"This must be hell."
"No..."
"How could we ever make an enemy of such a creature?!"
The path ahead had been sealed by an impenetrable wall of stone; behind them raged an endless sea of fire.
If they wished to survive, their only hope was to pray for the gods themselves to deliver a miracle and quell the calamity—yet such divine intervention had not occurred in over a thousand years of the Third Age.
In other words, it was an absolute dead end.
A purgatory consumed by flames!
"Roaaar—!"
Standing amidst the boiling flames, Cassius unleashed a thunderous, imperious roar.
"Ignorant mortals..."
"I am fire. I am death!"
"I shall reduce you to utter cinders—"
The relentless, surging heat spawned rising columns of superheated air. Countless fiery serpents rolled, leaped, and coiled upward from the earth. The southwest wind blew ever fiercer, generating immense centripetal suction that swept brush, corpses, flames, and ash high into the sky.
The myriad fiery serpents coalesced into a colossal fire tornado, spiraling above the Trier Valley across an expanse of dozens of li.
It was as though a yawning rift had been torn through the world.
And within that hundred-meter pillar of flame connecting heaven and earth, the red dragon beat its wings in deliberate, steady strokes. With every beat, the fire tornado swelled and raged with greater fury.
The fire whirlwind ravaged the land, consuming all in its path.
The coalition army had nowhere left to run.
Only now did Robert scramble up from the ground as if jolted from a trance. Staring up at the red dragon in the sky, a thought suddenly crossed his mind, and a glint of desperate resolve flickered in his eyes.
A natural disaster could not be killed.
But the culprit behind it could.
Robert looked toward the Dragonslayer Ballistas covered in heavy tarpaulins, seeing in them his final clutching straw.
If these great ballistas could slay Glacial Wing, the beast that had ravaged the Northlands a century ago, surely they would prove effective against this terrifying red dragon before him—this living embodiment of calamity.
Savagery gleamed in his eyes as he muttered under his breath,
"Kill it... If only we kill it..."
"Prepare the Dragonslayer Ballistas! Kill that damned red dragon, no matter the cost!"
Robert bellowed in reckless fury.
Shoving aside the panic-stricken soldiers around him, he ripped off the heavy cloth draped over the ballista and threw all his weight into pushing it.
"My lord, let me assist you!"
The personal guards around him grasped the count's intentions. Summoning their courage, they rushed forward to help, straining together to steer the heavy siege weapon and aim it at the red dragon in the sky.
Resting upon the groove lay a massive bolt as thick as an arm and over two meters long. Its razor-sharp iron tip gleamed with a cold sheen, marked with mottled stains of dried blood.
It had once pierced the heart of a dragon.
And now, the hour of destiny had arrived once more.
Rampaging tongues of fire drew closer, poised to swallow everything.
"As long as this bolt strikes true..."
"It will all be over."
Robert aimed the Dragonslayer Ballista toward the heavens, watching the approaching red dragon with white-knuckled tension. Sweat dripped from his chin. He held his breath in spite of himself, his heart pounding like a war drum.
Through the blazing curtain of sky-scorching fire, he could see those golden, vertical pupils looking down upon him from on high.
Flames filled the sky, and the air grew stifling.
Man and dragon locked gazes.
And in those eyes, Robert thought he caught a flicker of disdain.
Chapter 117