The Body of Garyx (Part 1)

Another majestic peak, thousands of meters high, thrust upward from the earth to pierce the sky, as if bridging heaven and earth together. The snow upon its summit gleamed with cold silver in the sunlight. And this was the highest peak of the Anstica Mountains—Thierry Peak, revered by the Scanians as the "King of the Snow Mountains." "Whooosh—" Cold winds swept through the valleys, howling with piercing shrieks. Amidst those rolling mountains capped with perpetual snow, the howling gale whipped up blinding flurries, as if intent on burying the entire world in pristine white and bitter cold. Suddenly, scalding steam surged forth. Blackish-red tongues of flame lashed out through the air, tearing open a hideous spatial rift at the foot of the mountain. The snow covering the slopes melted beneath this abrupt heat, first turning into rushing meltwater, then evaporating into plumes of white steam. From the billowing smoke, the balor's massive, battered form hauled itself out of the void—it was none other than Leo Bosque. "Pant, pant..." "Finally... I finally escaped." The balor wheezed heavily, his voice choked with excitement and tension. He looked back to the north with lingering dread, toward the direction from which he had fled. "Cassius..." Leo could not help muttering that name, which had long become his living nightmare, terror once again surfacing across his crimson visage. Yet moments later, he ground his teeth with a sickening crunch. The fleshy wings behind him trembled violently, and veins bulged along the thick arms gripping his storm greatsword. The balor's expression twisted into one of growing savagery and rage. "Cassius... that damned reptile! Before millions of people, he killed me eleven times! "Eleven times! "I will sever his head, strip his scales, cleave off his wings, and tear away his tail—" Unfurling his wings, the balor roared toward the heavens, fiery embers of vengeance bursting from his eyes. The demon's fury stirred dread phenomena in his wake; rivers of molten magma and searing subterranean fires churned beneath the peaks, sending up boundless steam. "No, no... all I need to do is wait... That red dragon will deliver himself right to my doorstep. "When that time comes, I will watch with my own eyes as my enemy is dragged into the Abyss, heheh..." Leo's breath came in ragged gasps. A grotesque grin stretched across his face, spreading to the very roots of his ears as plumes of acrid smoke drifted from the corners of his mouth. Suddenly, the balor sensed an abnormality, and a flash of astonishment crossed his face. "Wait... what is— "He arrived this quickly?!" A torrential wave of heat swept over the land, accompanied by an invisible pressure that blanketed thousands of li, making Leo's heart sink. The mountains trembled faintly, as though bowing in homage to the being in the sky. "Riiiip—" The balor snapped his head upward. Tongues of fire ravaged the firmament as several colossal claws pierced through space, gripping both sides of the blazing rift before effortlessly tearing the sky asunder. First emerged a massive, majestic head, followed by a thick neck, expansive dragon wings, powerful limbs, and a spine that undulated like an entire mountain range... "Roaaar—" At last, accompanied by a resounding draconic roar, the red dragon—over forty meters in length—flapped his wings, kicking up scorching gales as he appeared high above the mountains. Cassius gazed down upon the mountain range with his pale golden slit pupils, casting an indifferent glance toward the balor below. "Leo Bosque, is this the burial ground you chose for yourself?" Leo stared up at the red dragon in the sky, his demonic flesh quivering intensely between extreme terror and feverish excitement. Fighting to suppress the dread in his heart, the balor rasped hoarsely, "Hahahaha! Excellent! Magnificent! "Arrogant red dragon, just as I anticipated, you truly came! Proud as you are, you never even considered that I could defeat you—or even kill you, did you?" Cassius watched him coldly without speaking a word, seemingly indifferent to the accusation. Leo's voice grew increasingly resentful, his clouded eyes swimming with venomous hatred: "Cassius, I know that for years, you have never regarded me as an equal adversary... "Yet it is precisely that arrogance that will be your undoing, leading you into a fate of certain death! You walked right into a trap!" The balor spread his arms and unfurled his hideous, leathery wings, howling feverishly toward the heavens as if already tasting the sweetness of vengeance. Intricate, wicked arrays surfaced across the demon's chest and back, radiating an abyssal, eerie glow while dark whispers swirled around him. "In blood and flame, voices of despair cry out..." "They sever their own heads and hold them high, tears of blood streaming from hollow sockets..." "And He brings forth the flame of vengeance, the final hymn, reducing all things to..." Behind the balor, the sky abruptly darkened. Pitch-black clouds blotted out the sun, and wild tempests tore through the mountains. "Therefore, Cassius, allow me to introduce to you the demon lord of the 567th layer of the Abyss, the great Demon of Vengeance—" "Aaargh!" Before Leo could finish, the colossal crimson silhouette flashed before him. A razor-sharp talon slashed downward, cleanly impaling his chest. In an instant, purplish-black blood and shredded flesh flew in every direction. The scalding, throbbing heart was clenched firmly in the red dragon's claw, while Leo's face remained frozen in an expression of wild ecstasy. Exhausting his final shreds of strength, he laughed weakly, "Cas... Cassius... It is useless... I cannot die... "I will witness everything with my own eyes... I will watch you die before me... That is my vengeance..." Yet this time, no Abyssal energy rushed to his aid to resurrect him. Instead, it ruthlessly abandoned him, converging high into the sky to form a terrifying vortex. Leo's face contorted into disbelief and sheer horror: "No... no, how can this be..." Cassius sneered. Stepping down upon the dying balor with his talon, he looked down disdainfully, mocking him without mercy: "Leo Bosque, it seems you have outlived your usefulness. "Look. Even your Abyssal master has discarded you, his loyal hound." The balor suddenly erupted with a surge of strength. Struggling and roaring, he protested with flushed desperation: "No! Lord Jerlazax said that I embody His will, that I am immortal—" The heart gripped in Cassius's claw pulsed violently, ceaselessly pumping foul purplish-black blood while flickering with unstable flames. The heart was the core of every balor, harboring boundless Abyssal fire that kept a balor's body burning for eternity, never to be extinguished. Yet now, held tight in the red dragon's claw, that heart appeared exceedingly fragile. "No, you cannot kill me! I am the noble agent of—" "Crack!!" Cassius crushed the heart with brutal efficiency, and the balor's demonic form instantly dissolved into drifting ash. Under normal circumstances, when a balor died, its heart would instantly detonate in a blinding flash, engulfing everything within hundreds of meters. "Boom!" With a muffled rumble, Cassius clamped his claws around the explosion, forcefully suppressing the blast, though piercing beams of light still leaked between his talons. Leo Bosque—the former Grand Duke of the Northlands, later a commander of the Abyss—perished beneath the red dragon's claw just like that, without causing so much as a ripple. "Tsk. Pathetic northern noble, as overconfident as ever. "Northern nobles always believe the world revolves around them. In reality, they are merely cannon fodder on someone else's chessboard." Cassius sighed with mild contempt as he watched the ashes and dust trickle through his claws. "Next, it is your turn... "Jerlazax." Beating his wings, the red dragon lifted his head solemnly, his pale golden pupils brimming with mingled tension and anticipation. The distant snow-capped mountains stood tall and majestic, yet the Abyssal energy coalesced into raging currents, forming a colossal vortex thousands of meters across. The blackened sky cast an ominous pall over the entire range. "Roaaar—" Chaotic, layered roars echoed from within the Abyssal vortex, resounding through the mountains and striking soul-deep dread into all living things. Such was the power of the Abyss: the primordial chaos of the cosmos, the ultimate disorderly force that annihilated everything. Cassius narrowed his eyes, his expression growing graver, with even a flicker of suspicion, for he sensed something extraordinary. "Is this... the pressure of a progenitor dragon?" Yes, it was Frightful Presence. This was an aura Cassius emitted at all times; every drop of scalding blood flowing through his fundus vessels produced such dread. Yet the pressure the red dragon sensed now seemed to share the same origin as his own, even stronger than his draconic aura, imparting an unsettling sense of bloodline suppression. Cassius had never experienced such a thing before. With his current status and power, exceedingly few dragons could ever evoke this feeling in him. "Could it be—" Cassius's pupils contracted sharply as memory stirred, giving rise to a terrifying conjecture. "Roaaar—" The mountains shook and the world shuddered. Another long bellow echoed from the Abyss, triggering avalanches across the Anstica Mountains as vast floods of snow cascaded down the slopes. This roar resonated even deeper within the soul, causing the red dragon to snort and vent a puff of sulfurous smoke. Under Cassius's tense gaze, a colossal claw covered in dark crimson scales emerged from the Abyssal vortex, anchoring itself upon the snowy peak. Next, a massive dragon head slowly jutted out. It bore huge, swept-back horns, a gaping maw lined with razor-sharp fangs, and profound, pitch-black eyes—a visage all too familiar to Cassius. It was the head of a red dragon! That head alone was nearly twenty meters long, already larger than the entire body of most dragons! "Whooosh—" Then, wings that blotted out the sky entered the red dragon's view. They were tattered like ragged cloth, with howling gales churning through the tears. Behind them lay a body undulating like a mountain ridge, withered flesh stretched taut over dark crimson scales, patterned with alternating bands of black, red, and olive-green. This monstrous "red dragon" coiled atop the snowy mountain, staring across at Cassius. An eerie green light flickered within its black eyes, and its expression twisted into a chilling, sneering bared-teeth grin. It unfurled those tattered, sky-blotting wings, unleashing endless Abyssal gales across the peaks, flooding the earth with an overwhelming Frightful Presence. From snout to tail, this dark crimson dragon measured over one hundred and fifty meters, far surpassing the physical limits of any red dragon on the Material Plane! Throughout history, only the mighty progenitor dragons created by the Nine-Fold Dragon to roam the Astral Plane could achieve such immense proportions. Cassius drew a sharp breath, his internal suspicion fully confirmed. This was the body of Garyx! In that accident ten years ago, he had gouged out Garyx's Heart, but the rest of the corpse had been left to Jerlazax. And that Demon of Vengeance had likely used the remains as raw materials to craft this gargantuan behemoth! The dark crimson dragon—or rather, Jerlazax—gazed at Cassius and opened its gaping maw, speaking in a low, raspy voice: "Long time no see, Cassius. You have grown much stronger... "However, that is utterly meaningless to me." Cassius sneered, meeting the coiled dragon's gaze without a hint of fear. "As expected of a demon lord, Jerlazax. To think you actually claimed such a vessel." Jerlazax peeled back his lips in a mocking grin. "For that, I have you to thank, my dear 'ally,' Cassius. "Tens of thousands of years ago, the gods used Garyx's true body to seal me, banishing both me and Garyx to the fringes of the Astral Plane. They forced our powers to counterbalance and consume each other, trapping us in an eternal stalemate from which neither could escape. "It was you, red dragon. It was your boundless greed that set me free." Jerlazax raised a claw. Instantly, countless cascades of snow and boulders plummeted from the peak, and under that sheer force, the towering mountain groaned, tilted, and collapsed in a thunderous avalanche. The dark crimson dragon let out an exhilarating roar, spewing forth scalding, chaotic fire. "Cassius, do you see? "I claimed Garyx's remains and absorbed all of his lingering power, finally forging this vessel—a body that should never exist in the Third Age." Cassius stared at the colossal dragon body over a hundred meters long, faint light gleaming in his pale golden pupils. Indeed, in the normal course of history, the gods would never permit such an immense dragon to manifest in the Material Plane. In the original storyline of his past life, after the original Cassius was defeated by players, his body had likely been claimed by Jerlazax as well, lying dormant in the Astral Plane awaiting the end of all things. Jerlazax lowered his head once more, glaring fixedly at Cassius as if trying to see through his flesh into the secrets hidden behind. The colossal dark crimson dragon growled at the red dragon. Under his control, chaos surged through the sky like a raging torrent, dragging the entire mountain range into what felt like the bottomless Abyss. "Cassius, this destiny originally belonged to you. You could have wielded such power. Unfortunately, you rejected cooperation with me; you rejected the call of the Abyss. "Thus, I have no choice but to utterly destroy you, absorb the last of Garyx's power, and transform myself into the true World-Ending Dragon!" The red dragon beat his wings with sudden force, soaring into the air and unleashing scorching dragonfire to confront the Abyssal dragon midair: "Roaaar! Jerlazax, you talk too much! "Do you truly think that seizing a broken corpse is enough to defeat me? I will shatter your so-called destiny with my own claws!" Jerlazax threw his head back and bellowed, spreading his wings that spanned hundreds of meters, letting loose another roar that sent shudders through all creation. "Roaaar—" In the standoff between these two titans, amidst the heaven-shaking roars, the Anstica Mountains cowered and trembled like a fragile child. The peaks groaned in sorrow, accompanied by deafening rumbles, as avalanches cascaded down like endless floods.