Oszedro trembled with sheer fury, the scales on his face flaring slightly until his solemn, majestic countenance took on a twisted, ferocious cast.
Across the surface of his massive silver draconic frame, one side looked as dull and lifeless as though coated in dust, while the other gleamed with brilliant magical radiance—as if forcibly split between two different filters.
"Despicable, shameless beast!"
"You will pay for what you have done!"
The wyrm silver dragon bellowed once more, his roar brimming with uncontrollable wrath.
Straining, Oszedro extended his right foreclaw. An intricate magic circle several meters across manifested in his palm, and heavy boulders, snapped trees, and even mangled corpses abruptly floated into the air, turning the surrounding space into something akin to the Astral Plane.
Gravity within a hundred-meter radius bent entirely to the wyrm silver dragon's will—an innate spellcasting power of silver dragons.
"What I've done?"
"You mean letting the common folk live better lives? Striking back in this war and shattering the northern nobility's pipe dream of ruling Anzeta for ten thousand generations?"
"Or do you mean destroying the hoard you old miser spent centuries gathering, leaving you half a pauper?"
Cassius mocked him without mercy.
Midair, the red dragon snapped his wings upward. Relying on the formidable musculature anchored to his wing bones, he generated a tempestuous downdraft above his body that counteracted the inverted gravity, keeping his massive draconic bulk suspended steadily in the air.
Met with Cassius's ridicule, the silver dragon grew even more incandescent with rage, his voice booming like thunder.
"Sophistry! You cannot provoke me!"
"We metallic dragons poured untold effort and paid an unimaginable price to barely maintain the balance between mortals and dragonkind, ensuring the catastrophes of the ancient era would never happen again.
"Yet you, the foul spawn of Tiamat—instead of putting the power Io bestowed upon you toward the righteous path, you use it to tear down order!"
The wyrm silver dragon opened his jaws slightly, the scales along his cheeks gleaming with brilliance. From his colossal maw, set with the Dragon's Jaw, surged a snow-white torrent of absolute, freezing cold.
Yet the red dragon was not, as Oszedro had presumed, pinned in place simply to resist the gravity.
With Aerial Maneuverability and Draconic Agility active, Cassius's flight reached the pinnacle of mastery.
*Whoosh—*
Flapping his wings in a bizarre yet nimble posture, the red dragon flew with absolute freedom through the reverse-gravity environment. Blurring into a crimson afterimage, he circled the wyrm silver dragon at blinding speed. The white breath weapon trailed constantly a step behind, unable to catch even the tip of his tail.
As he circled, a fierce gale began to build. Merged with the flames swirling around the red dragon's body, it steadily swelled into a colossal fire tornado.
"Oszedro! I think you've slept for hundreds of years and turned your brain to mush! That leaky, decrepit order of yours is long obsolete!"
"The rotten, antiquated system of the Northlands belongs in the dustbin of history!"
"And you—a sanctimonious, hypocritical silver dragon, nominally a guardian of order, but in truth a stumbling block to historical progress—belong right there with it!"
*Roar—*
A dragon roar shook the wasteland once again.
The flames summoned by the red dragon intertwined with the frost and snow surrounding the silver dragon. Searing heat clashed against bitter cold with a clamorous roar, steam billowing upward in endless plumes.
A towering pillar of cloud and mist seemed to rise between heaven and earth across the wasteland, expanding outward without pause. Scalding steam, windblown boulders, swirling fire, and jagged ice shards transformed the area into an extreme zone of death.
"Retreat! Fall back at once!"
"This is not a battle we can take part in!"
Assessing the situation, Marshal Duoluo swiftly gave the order from the battlefield, and under the coordination of junior officers, the kingdom's forces withdrew to the rear in an orderly fashion.
Tieflings, hobgoblins, and ogres hoisted their weapons high. Though they could not see the battle through the swirling mists, it did not stop them from cheering from afar for the red dragon in this clash of two titans.
The players, on the other hand, were far more chaotic. Wandering aimlessly in all directions, some even rushed forward to get a closer look. Even when swept into the periphery of the storm, they didn't care in the slightest, shouting at the top of their lungs:
"Visual effects turned up to max! This is epic!"
"Holy crap, cutscenes deal damage now?!"
"I'm flying!"
"Wait, why am I on fire?!"
"Look, look! That guy got charred crisp!"
Meanwhile, the soldiers and nobles of the coalition army descended into utter disarray. Drawn from the private levies of various noble houses, their formations were disorganized at the best of times.
Tens of thousands scrambled frantically toward the rear, trampling one another in the chaos, and several unlucky souls were sucked into the hurricane and lost their lives on the spot.
Unlike the immortal players, once caught in the crossfire of this clash, they would truly be parting with this world forever.
"What on earth is that?!"
"Damn it, stay away!"
"Get out of the way!"
"The—the wind is too strong! I'm getting pulled in! Help—"
Viscount Luton was also fleeing headlong, but his trembling legs and sweat-soaked breeches caused him to trip and crash to the ground. Sprawled in the dirt, trembling from head to toe, he turned to gaze up at the apocalyptic spectacle.
"Gods above... what manner of power is this?"
"How could mortals ever stand against such beings?"
Viscount Luton muttered to himself as he watched the clash that shook the foundations of Anzeta.
A sudden thought surfaced in his mind: an epic confrontation such as this should not be swallowed by the river of history. Someone ought to chronicle it.
At the coalition army's rear, Grand Duke Leo also stood quietly, gazing up at the battle.
Amid the roiling white steam, the dragons occasionally showed a glimpse of scale or claw, their massive silhouettes flashing past.
The earth cried out like a newborn babe again and again, trembling in a ceaseless rumble that sent tremors through everyone present.
Lightning, hurricanes, hailstorms, and even meteors—phenomena rarely seen under normal circumstances—manifested in relentless succession. Dim, hazy stars appeared in the daytime sky, and a mere stray wisp of residual force was enough to claim hundreds of lives.
Grand Duke Leo suddenly felt that his decades of scheming had been reduced to a joke. Even the death of his own son had never left him feeling so hollow.
"Dragons."
"They can destroy everything so easily."
"Creatures like this... shouldn't exist in this world at all."
Leo Bosque tilted his head back toward the draconic shapes high in the sky, his lips twitching as he murmured.
He was the Grand Duke of the Principality of Bosque.
He was the titular King of the Northern United Kingdom.
He, Leo Bosque, born of noble blood, was supposed to be the one who ruled Anzeta and decided the fate of the Northlands—not those two monsters in the sky.
Suddenly, a low, gravelly voice echoed abruptly in his mind, yet felt chillingly natural:
"Do you... seek vengeance?"
Chapter 327