"Orestes, follow me."
"Bring Marquis Hart along as well."
Cassius spread his wings and effortlessly tore open the space before him, carving out an immense dimensional rift. Gesturing for the lich to follow, he strode straight through.
"Yes, Master," Orestes answered in a timid, low rasp from behind.
Yet when he caught sight of the red dragon's sinister grin, he could not shake the feeling that things were taking a turn for the worse. It seemed that every time this "Master" smiled, some form of ruthless exploitation followed.
Even so, with his phylactery in the dragon's grasp, the lich had no choice but to obey, stepping into the spatial rift right after him.
Hart gripped his long saber and walked in alongside Orestes, his gaze toward the lich filled with vigilance.
***
"This should be the place."
Cassius surveyed his surroundings, stomping his claws firmly onto the ground.
The sun was sinking toward the horizon, casting its golden twilight over the land. Around them stretched a wide, flat wasteland, while tall peaks, broad valleys, and sturdy stone bastions rose in the distance.
Wyverns soared through the sky, and lizardfolk mounted on land drakes herded their beasts across the plains, driving scattered herds of aurochs toward the pastures.
This was the Storm Heights.
The birthplace of the red dragon's rise, and once the very heart of the Cinder Nest.
Now, however, this barren wasteland had become the empire's frontier. It served merely as a breeding ground for wyverns and land drakes, and a grazing range for livestock such as aurochs and horned sheep.
As for the former Giant's Mouth Cave—now renamed the Dragon's Cave—no one had dared dwell there after Cassius relocated to the royal palace. It had instead been converted into something akin to an altar, complete with a gilded plaque hung outside that read *Former Residence of His Majesty Cassius*, guarded by a dozen down-on-their-luck hobgoblins.
Every morning and evening, hundreds of monsters arrived like clockwork to kneel before the cave mouth and toss copper coins inside, praying for His Majesty's blessing—that they might one day join the glorious dragonblood nobility and obtain purer draconic blood.
"It truly brings back memories..."
"More than a decade gone in the blink of an eye."
Cassius gazed out over the transformed wasteland, unable to hold back a wave of emotion.
The two undead, Orestes and Hart, stood quietly in attendance. From the corner of his eye, the lich caught the complex emotions playing across the dragon's visage and lowered his skull, not daring to disturb him in the slightest.
Yet overhearing that casual remark left the lich deeply shaken.
More than a decade!
Whether to a lich or a dragon, such a span was as fleeting as a yawn.
Yet based on what was said, this red dragon had likely reached his current heights in a mere dozen or so years!
At the thought, Orestes quietly congratulated himself on his choice. A normal red dragon could never have grown to such stature in so short a time.
This time, he had likely latched onto a patron of boundless potential—one who might even ascend to godhood.
Soon enough, Cassius's voice broke the lich's train of thought.
"Still... I didn't come here today just to reminisce. I'm here to reclaim what is mine."
"Time to get down to business."
*Roar—!*
The red dragon raised his head and unleashed a resounding roar, beating his broad wings as he slowly ascended into the sky.
Under his command, the boundless majesty of the Imperial Domain descended upon the wasteland, sending tremors through the Weave for hundreds of miles around.
"This is—"
"What... what is he doing?"
The lich looked up in terror. Being a necromantic spellcaster himself, he could keenly feel the horrifying magnitude of that power.
*Boom!*
Accompanied by a deep, deafening rumble, the earth shook and the mountains trembled. Practically the entire wasteland began to quake violently.
Wyverns screeched in panic, beating their wings frantically as they scattered into the air. Aurochs bolted in wild disarray, desperate to flee the danger, and even the cumbersome land drakes scrambled clumsily across the plain with alarmed grunts...
The ground, the peaks, the rivers...
The entire Storm Heights—no, the entire world seemed to be shaking.
"Tremors of this magnitude... this has already surpassed the ninth tier."
"It's... an epic spell! He can cast epic spells! That is a power belonging only to the ancient Netherese era!"
Orestes felt all the more fortunate. To a being who commanded such might, destroying him would be nothing more than a trivial afterthought.
"His Majesty... he has grown this powerful already...?" Hart murmured to himself.
Then, before the utterly stunned and bewildered eyes of both lich and wight—
The earth was torn apart.
A maw-like chasm ripped open across the flat plains.
On either side were sheer, sheared precipices, and peering downward revealed only a bottomless, pitch-black abyss. Loose pebbles tumbled in from time to time, taking long moments before the faint sound of their impact reached above.
Within this chasm, a colossal subterranean cavern took shape. The earth and stone were molded by an unseen force, smoothed out so neatly that the cavern interior resembled a man-made hall.
"All right. Follow me down."
Having wrought such an astonishing spectacle, Cassius spoke as casually as if he had performed a parlor trick.
The red dragon beat his wings, descending slowly into the cavern. After standing dazed for a moment, the lich conjured a cloud of black negative energy beneath his feet to follow, taking the nearby Hart along with him.
"This place is..."
Shock washed over the lich once again.
Scattered across the cavern floor lay colossal, ancient skeletons—remains he could readily recognize as behirs.
The ground was also strewn with all manner of relics: shattered giant statues, the ruins of magnificent architecture, eroded stone tablets, fragmented tomes, and battered, broken weapons of every description...
It was clear they had once been buried beneath earth and rock, only now brought back into the light of day.
Indeed, this was the resting place of Storm Giant Elder Landeta. The tomb once buried here, harboring the heritage of the giant empire, had been forcibly unearthed by the red dragon.
Even as wise as Landeta was, he could never have anticipated that this unexpected intruder would be so voracious.
Not only had Cassius taken his "eye," but he had also returned to ruthlessly plunder everything the elder had spent a lifetime collecting, including the relics of the giant empire.
"Landeta... did you miss me?"
"I'm back."
Cassius pulled his jaws into a grin, boundless greed gleaming in his pale-gold vertical pupils.
The Eye of the Storm Sovereign, which he had risked his life to claim back then, remained in his possession to this day—an invaluable relic that had launched his rise to power. Now that he was revisiting his old stomping grounds, he naturally had to "thank" the elder properly.
And his way of showing gratitude was to ensure that every single item in the elder's collection was put to good use.
Not far off, the lich stared at the bones carpeting the floor and could not help tightening his grip on his staff. A creeping sense of dread settled over him.
He couldn't possibly... expect me to resurrect all these behemoths, could he?
Chapter 403