Robert felt a deep sense of helplessness wash over him, swiftly followed by uncontrollable fury.
How dared this red dragon hold him in such utter contempt!
He released his grip with a sudden jerk, and the ballista's multi-meter-long arms snapped forward with tremendous force, loosing the bolt.
*Whirrr—*
A piercing shriek tore through the air.
Watching the bolt streak straight toward the sky, Robert held his breath involuntarily, praying to the god he worshipped that it would find its mark.
Just as the colossal bolt was about to strike his chest and pierce that blazing, thumping draconic heart, Cassius's gargantuan draconic form dissolved into a raging blaze, melting into the fire tornado that twisted heaven and earth.
*Firestride Exhalation.*
At this moment, the red dragon was the true incarnation of flame!
The dragonslayer bolt that had once slain "Glacial Wing" passed through the fire without the slightest hindrance, finally embedding itself limply into the ground.
"Impossible... This is impossible!"
Robert collapsed to the ground once more, shaking his head and muttering incessantly as though driven mad.
He stared up at the empty sky, where nothing remained but endless flames. Utterly despairing, his eyes reflected the brilliant firelight filling the heavens.
"No..."
As the fire tornado drew near, raging tongues of flame rushed toward him.
The terrifying inferno spun, condensed, and took shape with blinding speed, coalescing at last into an immense draconic form—Cassius.
"Who gave you the courage—"
"To challenge me with such pathetic playthings!"
Cassius crushed the massive ballistas to splinters beneath his claws, and the flames swirling around him instantly consumed Robert, who was slumped on the ground.
The youngest count of the Principality of Lakeman and commander-in-chief of the thirty-thousand-strong coalition army was reduced to a pile of ash amid the blazing inferno without even leaving behind a final word.
"The final judgment is at hand!"
"The curtain falls on you pathetic mortals!"
Amid billowing black smoke and raging tongues of fire, Cassius tore through the massive formation of several thousand men as if entering an empty field, rampaging without restraint.
The red dragon's monstrous silhouette flickered in and out of view through the firelight, trampling the soldiers who fled in all directions. His razor-sharp claws and fangs acted as the world's most devastating weapons, annihilating everything before him.
Even when some tried to fight back, their limp, feeble arrows could not pierce his hard golden-red scales; they only brought down torrents of searing white flame upon themselves.
"Help!"
"Stay away! Don't come near me!"
Faced with a monster comparable to a walking calamity, the coalition soldiers completely lost the will to resist.
Yet the soldiers destroyed by Cassius's own claws and fangs were actually the fortunate ones; at least they had died gloriously in battle against the evil dragon.
Those who remained were pure disaster victims.
The nearly hundred-meter-tall fire tornado followed closely behind the red dragon. The nearest soldiers were sucked into it, swept high into the sky, and instantly ignited by the heatwave, turning into burning fireballs.
Some soldiers on the periphery had just managed to run upwind when fireballs rained down in an overwhelming deluge.
Even more soldiers had no time to flee before being engulfed by the fire descending from the heavens. Engulfed in flames, they shrieked and scrambled in every direction. Some frantically tried to dig into the ground, only to be burned to charred husks in agonizing deaths. Others clad in heavy plate armor had their armor melted by the heat, their remaining ashes fusing into the molten iron.
The blaze scorched the sky and melted the earth; smoke and dust choked the entire battlefield.
The soldiers were like headless flies, dashing wildly through the smoke and fire. Some were cornered, some fled in sheer exhaustion, some gasped for their last breath, and some were charred into cinders.
The soldiers farthest away had luckily avoided contact with the flames and attempted to scale the stone wall, but no sooner had they charged toward it than the thick smoke billowing everywhere swallowed them, choking them to death where they stood.
Shrouded by thick smoke, the grey-robed wizard used spells to flee in panic to a corner of the battlefield, raising his staff with trembling hands.
"I must get away."
"I am sorry, my Lord Count."
*Lesser Teleport.*
A spatial ripple spread before him, and Schroeder's figure gradually blurred into translucence.
Cassius keenly sensed the disturbance in the Weave and turned his head. But when he saw that the one escaping was the grey-robed wizard, the "Grey Hawk," he deliberately let him flee.
Suspended high in the sky, the red dragon slowly flapped his wings, gazing down at the scorched earth that resembled the depths of hell.
Where tens of thousands of troops had once been stationed, living beings could now scarcely be seen.
Everywhere the eye could reach, there was nothing but firelight and blackened earth.
Countless embers danced through the air along with the howling gale.
This place had unmistakably become a carnival of flame, a forbidden zone for the living.
Cassius had fulfilled his pre-battle promise to the letter. He slammed down onto the ground, sending ash billowing into the air, and surrounded by the swirling embers, he raised his head and unleashed a long roar.
"Roar—!"
...
On the mountain, Viscount Luton watched this apocalyptic scene, his whole body trembling violently. His mind held countless masterpieces by court poets and endless arrays of ornate rhetoric, yet at this moment, none of those words could capture a ten-thousandth of the spectacle before him.
His lips quivered slightly, until at last he forced out a few words: "An infernal calamity..."
Luton recalled a verse from religious scriptures: *Sinners shall be cast into the inferno, and the flames shall consume them whole.*
"An... an incarnation of flame! He is the incarnation of flame!"
"Gods above..."
The captive nobles stared numbly as an elite army of tens of thousands was reduced to ash, their bodies shaking uncontrollably. Many collapsed to the ground in terror, and some even soiled themselves on the spot.
Meanwhile, the kin of Cinder Nest—whether hobgoblins, ogres, or wyverns—fixed their gazes upon the colossal draconic silhouette surrounded by embers at the heart of the sea of fire.
Reverence, dread, yearning, and other complex emotions mingled across their monstrous faces. "This is our master's power... This is the wrath of the great red dragon."
"This is the purest incarnation of power."
"He will conquer the world, or else destroy it," Langpu murmured to himself, watching the dreadful, hellish spectacle.
Flapping his massive wings, the red dragon pulled free of the vast sea of fire and descended upon the Cinder Nest encampment halfway up the mountain.
As he slowly approached, both the kin of Cinder Nest and the captive nobles could not help but tremble under his overwhelming dragon fear, bowing their heads low.
"Quite a fine fireworks display."
"Wouldn't you say?"
Cassius looked down upon them, the flames from moments ago seemingly still burning within his golden pupils.
...
"In truth, the coalition never stood a chance of victory. It was all like a grand stage play he orchestrated for himself.
"On that day, fire swept across the heavens and the earth, and Trier Valley was choked with ash. Wielding power akin to a living calamity, he announced his presence to the Great Anzetta Waste in the most unyielding manner—a war, or more accurately, a slaughter of the thirty-thousand-strong coalition army, which we commonly call the Trier Massacre.
"From that day forth, the Northern United Kingdom, which had endured for centuries and seemed impregnable, was shaken to its foundations, heralding the imminent arrival of an era of draconic dominion."
—*Chronicles of Anzeta: The Trier Massacre*, Duke Luton
Chapter 118