Langpu said, "Master, according to the intel provided by those Starfallen, if we want to reach the top floor, we should start with the gravity mechanism..."
Cassius shook his head and cut in, "There is no time.
"I am punching straight through this tower."
Before his words had even faded, Cassius snapped his wings and surged directly upward.
Empowered by Draconic Agility, his beating wings blurred into afterimages, carrying him forward at terrifying speed.
The red dragon threw his head high, and from his gaping maw erupted a pillar of blistering fire. It instantly melted through the metal flooring several feet thick, easily boring a breach several meters wide. Searing molten iron dripped continuously from the edges, but Cassius paid it no heed.
In mere moments, the pillar of flame had already punched through the ceiling of the next level, surging toward the floors above.
Firestride Exhalation.
Cassius transformed directly into roaring fire, shooting through the breach opened by the flame and crossing level after level in rapid succession.
Any monster or mechanism in his path was reduced to ashes in an instant or smashed to smithereens by his massively accelerated bulk; nothing could hinder him for even a second. One dragonized creature, too slow to dodge, was caught up in his momentum and ground to paste.
The twenty-eight-story Tower of Polar Night seemed like nothing more than a toy in Cassius's eyes.
Langpu was dumbfounded by the display, utterly unable to keep up. He could only struggle to maintain his protective wards, casting Fly to ascend level by level, gasping for breath by the time he reached the twelfth floor.
By then, Cassius had already arrived at the top.
All of this had taken merely dozens of seconds.
Boom!
A searing white pillar of fire pierced through the metal floor.
Right after, the column of fire whipped into wild, dancing flames before finally coalescing into the colossal red dragon.
Cataclysmic Dragon Eye could glimpse only a fragment of the future. The moment Cassius reached the highest level, the preordained timeline was disrupted; the visions blurred temporarily, recalculating anew.
The white dragon imprisoned on the top floor was startled awake by the tremendous commotion, struggling to open her eyes.
Cassius inspected the white dragon before him.
She possessed scaled cheeks, a spiny dewlap, and teeth that protruded even when her mouth was shut, with a crest supported by backward-curving spines atop her head—a quintessential white dragon in every way. By the red dragon's current omnivorous aesthetic standards across all species, she could even be considered young and beautiful.
From her relatively pure white scales and not-yet-fully-developed proportions, it was evident that she was still a young dragon, around a hundred years old.
Yet what surprised Cassius was that her length already reached fifteen meters. While ordinary enough for a red dragon, for a white dragon, such a size was typically attainable only by very old or ancient dragons.
For a white dragon, often called the "shame of chromatic dragons," to rival a red dragon of comparable age was already an extraordinary feat.
"Tsk, tsk. Is this the bloodline of a progenitor dragon?" Cassius marveled inwardly.
Facing this far mightier "kin," the white dragon, Tinia, hesitated for a moment before lowering her head, emitting a low, pleading whimper.
White dragons living in mountains sometimes clashed with nearby red dragons, but white dragons were wise enough to avoid stronger red dragons. Red dragons often viewed white dragons as unworthy adversaries and were glad to let their white neighbors slip out of sight—and out of mind. White dragons naturally understood where red dragons stood.
"Awoo..."
"Can you not speak?" [Draconic]
Cassius was somewhat puzzled. Though white dragons were jokingly called "white beasts," a young white dragon should at least have the intelligence of a seven- or eight-year-old child. Had Vagnerd scrambled her brain?
He did not know that, under normal circumstances, mastering Draconic for everyday conversation was no simple task for white dragons—some could only fully manage it upon reaching the very old dragon stage. Not to mention the dragon before him, who had been imprisoned in this tower since she was a hatchling and had never had any contact with the outside world.
"Aoo!"
Tinia nodded, letting out a soft growl.
"..."
It seemed she truly couldn't speak, but at least she understood.
Since basic communication was possible, resolving the rest would be straightforward.
The red dragon spread his wings and paced over to stand before her.
"Vagnerd. Do you know him?"
At the sound of that familiar name, Tinia's draconic face twisted into a snarl. Her scales bristled across her entire body, and her fangs instinctively bared—a tumult of intense fear mixed with hatred.
While white dragons were no paragons of intellect, they possessed formidable memories, particularly of events they had witnessed or experienced firsthand. They remembered every slight or defeat and were notorious for waging vicious vendettas against any creature or group that wronged them. The white dragon before him was naturally no exception.
The red dragon casually projected the previous vision from Cataclysmic Dragon Eye to give her a fright.
"This is what I have seen—your future.
"A future devoid of hope."
In the vision, the white dragon was reduced to nourishment for that monstrosity, ruthlessly devoured.
Tinia's eyes instantly filled with terror. Her wings pulled back slightly, and her entire frame trembled, for she could sense that this was real—something about to happen to her.
Cassius looked down into the white dragon's bestial slit pupils. In them, he saw a longing for freedom, an endless dread of the wizard, and a towering hatred. That was enough.
"Yet the future is not set in stone, white dragon.
"Submit to me. I will free you, and... I will kill Vagnerd."
"..."
A trace of confusion flickered in Tinia's eyes, followed by hesitation, before she finally let out a low whimper from the depth of her throat.
"Awoo..."
Constrained by the dragon-trapping array, she could not move far. She could only tilt her head in a symbolic gesture, exposing her vulnerable neck to signify complete submission.
White dragons were among the few true dragons capable of being tamed, yet this white dragon bearing a progenitor bloodline possessed her own fierce pride. Even after nearly a century imprisoned in this tower, she had never truly submitted to the "human" who tortured her, constantly putting up futile resistance.
Now, however, faced with an imminent mortal threat—and with the object of her submission being a red dragon of vastly superior lineage—submitting became a necessary choice for survival.
"Very good.
"You have made the right choice."
Cassius grinned and chuckled softly.
The red dragon swung his claws. Shimmering claw-shaped magical force fields materialized, beginning to tear into the surroundings of the spell formation.
Vagnerd's Dragon-Binding Array had been studied for months by spellcasters convened from across the kingdom. Although they had not fully unraveled its construction principles, an eighth-circle array, like any ordered structure, was far easier to disrupt than to repair.
A month ago, Langpu and numerous court wizards who had defected to the Kingdom of Cinders had already figured out how to destroy its spell nodes, and Cassius knew the method by heart.
"Whew... hah... Master, I'm late!"
Langpu panted heavily, clambering out from the hole with great difficulty.
Seeing the scene before him, he immediately grasped the situation. Hurrying forward, he waved his staff and summoned blazing fireballs to incinerate the dragon scales and dragon blood serving as array nodes, doing everything in his power to demolish the formation's structure.
Chapter 214