"Truly a filthy spawn of Tiamat—you have certainly inherited her silver tongue and knack for twisting right and wrong!"
"In my long life, I have fought countless chromatic dragons, and in the end, I have learned only one truth—"
Oszedro glared at the red dragon, the hostility in his eyes growing ever more palpable. "For a scion of Tiamat like you, any attempt at reason is a waste of breath.
"Only the purest force will make you submit! Only force will make you realize your errors and return to the righteous path of the Lord of the North Wind!"
*Roar—*
Oszedro unleashed another furious roar.
He swept his broad, bright-silver wings with violent force. The surrounding hurricane intensified instantly, hurling a storm of freezing hail toward the red dragon.
This was merely a slight probing attack, yet to mortal creatures it was an absolute cataclysm.
Even the Lionheart Knights would be frozen into ice sculptures before a storm of this magnitude.
"Heh, arrogant old fossil—"
"Couldn't win the argument, so now you're resorting to brute force, are you?"
Cassius sneered with a low snarl. Without flinching, he beat his wings in midair, conjuring a searing gale.
As the dragon crystal upon his chest gave a faint pulse of light, the red dragon opened his maw and unleashed a scorching pillar of flame. It pierced clean through the freezing tempest in an instant, surging straight toward the silver dragon himself.
"Savage red dragon! I will show you the true power of the arcane!"
Oszedro hovered aloft. The crack-like magical runes across the spellhoarding dragon's body ignited at once, and his precious magical gear shimmered in response.
Spell after spell was layered onto his bright-silver form. Abjurations—Eric's Protective Membrane, Nezram's Sapphire Screen of Shielding, Abarca's Emerald Energy Shield, and more—were cast in rapid succession, causing his smooth scales to reflect a dazzling, iridescent blaze of magical auras.
The wyrm silver dragon looked practically like a colossal neon disco ball, blinding the spectating mortals below and even prompting the watching players to shout about 'light pollution.'
Yet this seemed to be how a battle between mighty spellcasters was truly supposed to look.
Because Cassius did the same.
Though he possessed no spell scrolls etched into his scales, spells such as Cataclysmic Dragon Eye, Draconic Justice, and Draconic Agility were cast by the red dragon using Metamagic: Quicken Spell. Pinpricks of starlight-like luminance manifested across his body.
A surging torrent of sorcerous power churned around him, stirring tempestuous waves within the Weave.
While he lacked such ostentatiously extravagant light effects, backed by the raw majesty of the red dragon's physique, his presence was not in the least inferior.
Snapping open his wings, Cassius dived at breakneck speed, unleashing a blast of incandescent white fire as he closed the distance.
*Boom!*
The red dragon's breath weapon shattered several spell shields, yet before it could reach the silver dragon's scales, it was halted by a transparent barrier of ice enveloping his body.
Under the searing heat of the flames, the ice sublimated into vapor, thick white steam pouring constantly from the barrier. Yet the breath failed to break through.
Oszedro was not merely defending, however; he seized the opportunity to counterattack.
"Diamond Dust!"
With an elongated chant in Draconic, bone-chilling white stars streaked across the sky, plunging like meteors toward the red dragon mid-breath.
Yet Cassius had already foreseen the spell's descent through Cataclysmic Dragon Eye.
With the terrifying speed granted by Draconic Agility, a mere flick of his wings blurred him into an afterimage, carrying him hundreds of meters away.
The astral motes swerved in pursuit, yet they still could not catch the red dragon's terrifying pace, ultimately plunging powerlessly to the earth.
*Boom!*
Several menacing icebergs erupted from the ground. Had the silver dragon not exerted deliberate control, they likely would have frozen hundreds of coalition soldiers who failed to dodge in time.
"Impossible! How can he be so fast?!"
Oszedro fixated on the red silhouette, his eyes filled with disbelief.
In his experience, while red dragons possessed formidable melee prowess, their overly massive musculature made them clumsy and brutish, easily run in circles by a high-tier spellcaster like him.
Yet this 'Prince of Dragons' before him was startlingly swift; ordinary spells stood no chance of landing easily.
Still, Oszedro was far from discouraged. Raising his mithral staff set with an exotic gemstone that resembled the astral void, he radiated multicolored spell light as he unleashed frost, gales, and radiance in rapid succession, magical energies spilling over in all directions.
Cassius, wreathed in fire and lightning, countered the spells unleashed by the wyrm silver dragon. Turning into a crimson afterimage, he circled Oszedro at high speed, waiting for an opening to close in for melee combat.
A dense sea of rolling white mist now filled the air above the wasteland, obscuring the vision of the throngs below.
The people on the ground could only glimpse vague silhouettes shifting through the clouds, hear the howling wind and roaring dragons, and catch the sharp crackle of lightning.
The entire wasteland trembled.
"What kind of battle is this...?"
"How could such beings even exist?"
"It's... it's too terrifying! We have to get out of here!"
This was merely an opening probe between the two, yet the spectacle it unleashed was far more terrifying than the clash of ten thousand soldiers that came before. Men on the ground stared in horror at the colossal icebergs rising like miraculous monoliths, their faces painted with fear and disbelief.
To these Northerners dwelling in a magical backwater, it was their first time witnessing a conflict of such grand scale, and the opening moves alone were already beyond their wildest imaginations.
"Are these the spells you take such pride in? Bombarding your own allies?"
Cassius mocked ruthlessly.
Rearing his head, he roared toward the heavens. Hundreds of small, incandescent volcanic rocks hurled toward the silver dragon, followed by a downpour of billowy volcanic ash and smoke.
"A spell like this—and you dare flaunt it before me?"
Oszedro bellowed. The frost necklace at his chest radiated boundless chill, the wave instantly freezing all the airborne volcanic rock and ash, sending them clattering to the ground like hail.
The silver dragon vaulted into the air, opening his maw as he instinctively prepared to unleash his breath weapon in retaliation.
Yet hidden within that veil of volcanic ash was an unassuming ray of energy shooting straight toward the silver dragon's back—that was Cassius's true killing stroke.
It was Spell Wither!
What was more, it was a Spell Wither empowered by sorcerous Metamagic and heightened to a 9th-level spell slot!
"Mage's Disjunction?!"
Oszedro's expression shifted drastically in an instant.
Even though several contingency alarms and protective spells had already triggered across his body, the wyrm silver dragon's massive, cumbersome frame was still hard-pressed to dodge, forcing him to endure the spell with his physical flesh.
Upon striking his body, the ray instantly punched through several wards, creating an enormous antimagic field that enveloped half his form.
The magical runes etched into hundreds of scales across the silver dragon's body went dim. Even his precious rings and necklaces looked as if smothered in dust; some fractured directly, crumbling into fine powder.
Oszedro's expression turned thoroughly dark.
For any dragon, even a lawful good metallic one, nothing provoked greater draconic fury than the destruction of their hoard.
What was worse, the red dragon had ruined the spell-carved scales he had painstakingly crafted.
"No—you cunning red cur!"
Cassius, on the other hand, felt thoroughly gratified.
A surge of schadenfreude bubbled within his heart: now, this old silver dragon might not necessarily be richer than him anymore.
Chapter 326