"True Dragon Sorcerer, Elemental Master, Bloodscaled Fury, Hidecarved Dragon... With four prestige classes under my belt, I'd say I count as an all-around juggernaut among dragons."
Looking down at the arcane runes faintly shimmering across his scales, Cassius braced his thick, powerful limbs against the ground and slowly rose to his feet.
He unfurled the wings behind him. The trailing edges of the wing membranes attached far behind his hind legs and well beneath his tail, their surfaces displaying the pale blue sheen of metal burning in fire.
Cassius raised his massive, majestic head high, four great horns sweeping backward, the Crown of the Supreme True Dragon gleaming atop them.
His entire body was covered in scales of a metallic crimson, which, paired with the intricate, exquisite runes, resembled a masterfully forged suit of armor exuding boundless might.
Along his spine and tail ran sharp, horned scales; his jaws were lined with fangs rivaling mortal scimitars; and his thick tail was like a battering ram—a colossal war machine in the flesh.
After months of refining his bloodline, Cassius had elevated the purity of his progenitor dragon blood by another tier, rendering it virtually identical to that of the ancestral dragon scions from tens of thousands of years ago.
During this time, he had greedily drained energy from the corpse of Garyx, while the entire Cinder Empire mobilized its national might to supply him with every manner of precious metal and mineral imaginable.
Consequently, in this phase of explosive development, the red dragon had gorged himself like an insatiable beast. His stomach became a bottomless pit, devouring every scrap of food that entered his maw.
And the results were glaringly evident—his size had ballooned at a breathtaking pace, constantly shattering the boundaries of his species.
Now, though he remained in the juvenile dragon stage of life, having not even reached his first mating cycle, his body length had already hit a staggering fifty meters.
Even in the era tens of thousands of years ago when dragons ruled the earth, such a figure would have made him an elite among his kind. In this Third Age, marked by the decline of dragons and the isolation of the gods, it was practically unheard of.
If draconic scholars ever discovered Cassius's true age and saw such an absurdly colossal frame with their own eyes, they would undoubtedly cry out in disbelief—*You're telling me this fucking monster is eight?!*
Even among the largest of common true dragons, great wyrm gold dragons and great wyrm red dragons only measured around thirty-six meters.
Moreover, only an extraordinarily gifted few could endure over a thousand years of accumulation to stand at the pinnacle as great wyrms; the vast majority withered from age or perished at the hands of their foes long before reaching the ancient dragon stage.
What kind of concept was a red dragon barely twenty-something years old with a body spanning fifty meters?
Among humanoids, it was the equivalent of a toddler babbling its first words and taking its first steps while already standing three meters tall.
It defied all reason!
By now, the Cinder Empire was renowned across the entire Feanso Continent, and its most fiercely debated subject was its emperor—a terrifying red dragon.
Yet across the numerous scholarly treatises on the Cinder Emperor, even the boldest and most reckless sages only dared estimate his age at around two hundred years. Even then, their claims were met with skepticism and derision from authoritative academics.
If that estimate were revised to twenty, draconic scholars would have unleashed a barrage of scoffing, sneering vitriol.
Cassius casually scooped up a fire elemental crystal over a meter long with his claw and tossed it into his mouth like a snack.
Instantly, a crisp crunching sound echoed from his cavernous maw, accompanied by the crackle of bursting air and burning flames.
Tremendous heat detonated within his mouth, sending wisps of smoke curling through the gaps between his teeth. Most of the thermal energy poured down his gullet and flooded his body, transforming into fuel for his rampant growth.
Chewing on the crystal, Cassius gazed southward. A spark of fire flickered in his pale golden pupils, betraying an ambition he could scarcely conceal.
"Now, with the empire pushing things along from the shadows, the three great kingdoms have been weakened to their absolute limits. Our pieces in Port Victoria, the Mountain Kingdom, Therenia, and beyond have all been put in place. It's time for the empire to step onto the grand stage of the Feanso Continent."
"After lying low and growing for so long, I wonder if I can kill those true divine champions now... and the avatars of the gods themselves."
Cassius's confidence was by no means blind. At present, he commanded the Cinder Empire and wielded four prestige classes: True Dragon Sorcerer, Bloodscaled Fury, Elemental Master, and Hidecarved Dragon.
In spellcasting, close-quarters combat, and material wealth alike, Cassius far outstripped ordinary dragons and entities of comparable tier.
Sorcerers and wizards were fragile compared to him, while fighters and monks were clumsy by comparison.
Previously, Cassius had suffered from a tendency to lose control and a vulnerability to corruption by the will of the Abyss. But after acquiring the Fiendslayer and Iron Will feats, even his sole shortcoming had been patched.
Now, anyone seeking to defeat Cassius could only rely on overwhelming brute force; finding an exploitable weakness was nearly impossible.
He shifted his gaze to the panel before him. Amid the dense sea of statistics in his character profile, one unassuming line of text stood out:
*Challenge Rating: 30 (155,000 XP)*
The corners of Cassius's mouth curled slightly into a savage grin. The images of countless cities and territories were reflected within his golden slit pupils.
"People of Feanso, prepare yourselves... for the advent of the dragon."
***
Southeastern Ugo Steppe, the Plains of White Bone.
This was where the Bindler River—the widest river in the Mountain Kingdom—flowed out from the mountain gorges.
Centuries of alluvial deposits had created a sprawling, open expanse, turning this area into a rare patch of fertile ground on the barren Ugo Steppe.
As a result, the Plains of White Bone had been contested fiercely by the orc clans. The orcs had fought over a thousand battles of various sizes over control of this plain, and it had changed hands dozens of times.
Only when the Red Blood Tribe unified the Ugo Steppe and forged all the clans into a single host did the bloodshed over this land temporarily cease.
The name "White Bone" was straightforward. On one hand, every tribal clash left behind countless mangled corpses.
On the other hand, during every orc invasion southward into the Mountain Kingdom, fallen warriors tumbled into the waters. Countless orc bones drifted downstream, eventually becoming buried deep within the soil.
At the end of every war, orc blood dyed the Bindler River crimson, earning it the grim nickname of the "Beastblood River."
Now, following the catastrophic conclusion of the Battle of Blackrock Mountain, orc blood once again stained the river red, mingled with the foul pollutants of explosions.
Under the leadership of Batu Skullsplitter, the orcs had come within an inch of breaching Evindeldan, coming closer than ever to fulfilling their millennia-old ambition. Yet in the end, they had fallen just one step short.
Chapter 585