Ice and Fire

Right at that moment, a portal of flame abruptly appeared within this white domain of ice and snow. "What an interesting fluctuation..." A young nobleman with black hair and golden eyes stepped out. Motes of magical aura shimmered across his body, and an instant later, he transformed into an immense red dragon nearly twenty meters long. With the red dragon's arrival, a wave of scorching heat flooded the surroundings. Magma surged beneath the snow-covered earth, keeping the furious blizzard at bay. The frost clinging to Duoluo slowly receded, melting into trickles of water. Yet he crashed heavily to the ground, his breathing still faint and shallow. Dragon's Respite. Cassius waved a claw lightly. Rays of light descended from the heavens—the purest draconic vitality, soothing the frostbite throughout the dragonblood hobgoblin's body and preserving his life. "Master..." "You've... come..." Lying near death on the ground, Duoluo forced his eyes open and spoke with great effort. His heart was weighed down by the bitter humiliation of being so effortlessly routed and nearly killed. "Forgive this subordinate's... incompetence..." Seeing that Duoluo was out of danger, the red dragon paid him no more heed. Instead, he looked thoughtfully up at Grand Duke Oliver suspended midair and the blizzard churning around him. "A formidable frost power indeed." "Yet the one wielding it is far too frail." In Cassius's eyes, the horn slung behind Duke Oliver was the only thing of any consequence. The human carrying frost giant blood was merely an inconsequential vessel. When Duke Oliver saw the red dragon appear, the frost giant bloodline's ancient hatred for dragons compounded his own rage, sending a fierce surge of fury straight to his heart. "Damned red dragon!" "I'll show you what true frost is!" He drove the snow and gale toward the dragon. Laden with hail and sheer, boundless cold, the howling tempest surged forward to swallow Cassius. Draconic Agility. Spatial power coursed across the surface of Cassius's wings, granting him terrifying flight speed. Blurring into an afterimage, he effortlessly slipped past the incoming blizzard like a phantom. Whoosh— The red dragon swept over the earth in a flash, soaring directly above Duke Oliver. Yet he made no haste to strike, leisurely coming to a hover instead. Cassius looked down upon Duke Oliver with open disdain. "A decent spell." "Yet... can you truly command such power?" "You pathetic mongrel?" Seeing the scorn in the red dragon's golden slitted pupils, Duke Oliver became utterly beside himself with fury. "How dare you—!" Since childhood, his family had drilled into him that he must obey the commands of the Principality of Bosque and serve them meekly. Though the northern nobles politely addressed him as "Lord Duke" to his face, behind his back they mocked him as nothing more than the "Loyal Dog Duke" or "Lord Barbarian." He had never held the power to decide anything for himself, forced to cower and scrape beneath Bosque's wing. It had warped his temperament into a twisted blend of pride and inferiority, leaving him able to vent his frustration only upon his own subjects. Now, he finally wielded power beyond his wildest dreams, enough to hold dominion over everything, yet this red dragon still treated him with utter contempt. That sneering look was something he had endured in silence his entire life—it was all too familiar! A merciless chill gleamed in Oliver's eyes, and the runes across his body pulsed with light. He threw his head back and roared toward the sky: "Reptile, I will have your life!" With his furious bellow, jagged spires of ice erupted from the earth, thrusting straight toward the dragon hovering in the air. Cassius still watched him with mocking indifference. A brilliant red radiance flared across his chest, and energy pooled in his throat before surging forth. Maximized Fire Breath. Fire elements far more concentrated than the frost converged into a searing white pillar of flame. It ripped effortlessly through the wind and snow, shattered the ice pillars, and vaporized every trace of frost in the surrounding area. Yet he did not pursue Oliver with the fire. Instead, he unhurriedly shut his maw and paused, even letting out an amused jeer. "Is that all?" "Duke Oliver, to me, you're merely a good dog leashed to that horn." Cassius spoke with tranquil calm. He was deliberately goading Duke Oliver. He simply wanted to see just how far this fellow with frost giant blood could go under the horn's augmentation. The man's grasp of the Everfrost power was far too crude. He didn't even know how to focus the elements into a single point, venting it indiscriminately like a rutting dog and squandering his strength for nothing. Because of that, Duke Oliver posed no real threat in Cassius's eyes; rather, he offered an ideal opportunity to test something. To test the capabilities of that horn. Whether by coincidence or deliberate provocation, the red dragon's words struck Duke Oliver's rawest nerve, thoroughly stoking his fury into an inferno. "You are courting death!" "I will lay you to eternal rest!" Oliver roared frantically. He unstrapped the horn from his back and blew into it. An extreme cold poured from its mouth, whipping up a deafening, violent blizzard in the air. Wuuuung— The horn blast echoed through the heavens, churning the sky into an even more savage blizzard. The sheer chill was enough to give even the red dragon a sense of danger, as if he had plunged into a glacial abyss. Cassius breathed a torrent of blazing flames, raising a wall of fire to hold off the encroaching frost. Watching Oliver blow the horn, his eyes suddenly brightened. "These ripples have reached the legendary tier." "Quite an unexpected prize. I never imagined this horn could truly grant a mortal power on par with the legendary tier." "Still... his time is short." In Cassius's eyes, Oliver was now like a bomb ready to go off at any moment, his body crammed with overwhelming, uncontrollable power. "Come, strike me!" "Show me your power!" The red dragon continued to sneer, slowly beating his wings in the heart of the storm. Suspended in midair by the anchor of spatial force, flames danced around him with every sweep of his wings. Having nearly lost all reason, Oliver thrust his hands forward. A torrent of freezing air poured from his palms like a rushing river. "No, not enough..." "I need... more power!" "To kill that red dragon!" Oliver continued to greedily siphon power from the horn. The Everfrost energy resonated with his bloodline, causing the icy-blue runes on his flesh to blaze with blinding brilliance. That power surged out in the form of pure, devastating cold. Boom! A tidal wave of freezing air washed over the red dragon's form, yet the colossal draconic body vanished into thin air. The wasted wave of frost crashed into the earth, throwing up jagged pillars of ice several meters high. It was only an avatar of flame! Given Oliver's rudimentary grasp of magic, he couldn't even see through the simplest flame avatar, expending every ounce of his power against an illusion. Meanwhile, the true red dragon, propelled by the terrifying speed of Draconic Agility, had already appeared silently behind him. "The experiment is finished. Your life is at its end." "What a... truly pathetic creature." Cassius merely made a casual swipe of his claw. He invoked only the lowest tier of draconic cantrips. The reason was simple. Duke Oliver possessed legendary-tier energy output, but none of the corresponding defenses or mastery. Had the blizzard not barred the way and made it impossible to close the distance, even Duoluo could have easily hacked Oliver into mincemeat. Scratch. A shimmering magical forcefield shaped like a claw materialized behind Oliver, slicing through his frail, unconditioned flesh with ease. And as the red dragon tore into Duke Oliver's body, the Everfrost power barely sustained by his bloodline completely lost its balance, detonating outward in full fury! "I clearly hit—" "No—!" Frigid light burst from his mouth, nostrils, and eyes. Duke Oliver's body, bloated from gorging on power, was now like a bursting balloon. Sharp spikes of ice erupted violently from his wounds, surrounded by billowing white vapors. In the end, his entire form crystallized into irregular, bitterly cold ice, resembling a glacier that had lain buried deep beneath the earth for tens of millions of years. The horn dropped and lay quietly upon the ground, its runes dimming once more as the blizzard in the sky gradually subsided. "Tsk. A fool blinded by power, a half-breed frost giant whose bloodline has been diluted who knows how many times..." "Did you really think picking up a racial relic meant you could challenge a true dragon? Courting death." Cassius looked at the frozen crystal and could not help but remark with a disdainful sigh.