Dragonblood Mountain in the Great Anzetta Waste. Winter had already settled over the Northlands, yet heat and vapor still billowed around this towering, majestic peak.
"Roar—"
A resounding dragon roar tore through the sky. A massive red dragon ripped through space, manifesting at the mountain's summit amidst flames and dense smoke.
"Back at last."
Feeling that familiar sense of total control, Cassius smiled comfortably, finally letting his guard down.
This was absolute security. Within his Imperial Domain, even a true deity might not be able to harm him.
As the old saying went, gold nest or silver nest, nothing beat your own doghouse. North Aethel might be brimming with magical energy, but in his heart it could never compare to Anzeta, the place where he had grown and built his strength step by step.
After spending months on the North Aethel Plains, Cassius had finally returned to Anzeta, back to the familiar domain of his empire.
Yet Cassius had not returned out of nostalgia. He had come to handle an extremely dangerous item—one that even he was not entirely certain he could keep under control: the Eye of Gruumsh.
Anything connected to a deity, even an object long separated from their divine form, harbored power far beyond mortal imagination. Cassius could not afford to be anything less than cautious.
He had keenly sensed that the power within the Eye of Gruumsh was gradually awakening!
In the pool where divine blood had mingled during the legendary battle between Gruumsh and Corellon Larethian, Ityak-Ortheel, the "Elf-Eater"—one of the renowned three great elder evils—had been spawned.
Year-round, that elder evil lurked in the slime of some forgotten layer of the Abyss, feeding on elven souls and repeatedly sacking elven kingdoms throughout recorded history.
Only by meeting conditions akin to slaying a demigod on its native plane could mortals or gods truly destroy Ityak-Ortheel. Otherwise, it would inevitably reform in the Abyss after ten years.
Even deities of greater divine rank, such as the storm god and the elf god, could not completely kill it.
If mere drops of divine blood could birth such a horrific abomination, what about his eye?
Cassius suspected that being allowed to obtain an artifact of greater divine power so easily was likely done with the tacit consent of Moradin and Corellon.
In the Third Age, when gods were cut off from the Material Plane, even greater deities found it difficult to project their might into the mortal world. If the Eye of Gruumsh broke through its seal entirely, the consequences would be unimaginable.
Rather than expending the lives of dwarves and elves to seal the abomination, it was far better to let an equally troublesome evil dragon deal with it. With any luck, the two tigers would fight and wound one another.
Of course, this was merely an unfounded guess. After all, his alternate identity had not been exposed, and the Cinder Empire was his sovereign domain, fully capable of shielding against prying eyes from beyond.
Even though this was only half of an eye, sealed for countless years by two greater deities, Moradin and Corellon, its power was by no means to be underestimated.
In short, he could not afford to drop his guard for an instant.
"Let me see... what kind of power the remnant of a greater deity truly holds."
Cassius extended his dragon claw, reaching into the extradimensional pocket his avatar had prepared. He drew out the half of the Eye of Gruumsh and held it in his palm.
Sure enough, the power awakened!
"Awoo—"
In an instant, an overwhelming surge of evil erupted like a tidal wave. Pitch-black fog of war engulfed the surrounding space, and harsh, discordant battle cries and wails of agony shook the sky.
The red dragon could feel the boundless resentment pouring forth, even washing against his mind.
Immediately after, terrifying divine power tied to domains of chaos, evil, war, strength, and hatred poured out like a monstrous black hole, distorting everything around it.
"This is..."
Cassius looked around. His surroundings had transformed into a scarred battlefield reeking of blood and smoke. Spears and battleaxes were plunged into the earth, and the ground was strewn with the corpses of orcs, elves, and dwarves...
A battlefield from ancient times!
In that distant age, gods still walked the earth. It was said that during that grand duel, the three deities—Gruumsh, Corellon, and Moradin—had fought until heaven and earth turned dark.
The clash lasted years, bringing terrible catastrophe upon the world, ending only when Corellon put out Gruumsh's left eye and the orcs were defeated.
"Ooooh—"
A distant horn blew from afar. The red dragon raised his head to see an orc deity gazing down at him with utter disdain.
Clad in crude, heavy black full-plate armor, the deity was colossal and imposing, radiating an aura of evil and chaos. Behind his towering figure stretched a mottled sky woven from crimson and black.
Even the red dragon felt a crushing weight bearing down upon his shoulders—the sheer suppression of a divine existence's life rank.
Judging by appearance and aura alone, the identity was obvious: Gruumsh, the Orc God.
From that day forth, Gruumsh had ruled the other orc deities with an iron fist. He was a fearsome, brutal god who reveled in war and eternally sought new territory for his race.
Under Cassius's gaze, the orc deity slowly spoke: "Mortal... why do you not bow?"
The red dragon remained where he stood, offering no homage. Instead, he tilted his head, regarding the orc as if examining a curious novelty.
Seeing no reaction, the orc deity's face twisted into a snarl. Raising his spear, he roared in fury, "Dragon! Do you know what manner of existence stands before you?"
"Of course I know..."
The orc had never expected the red dragon before him to show no trace of fear, calmly answering, "Just a divine abomination playing ghost!"
"What? How could you..."
The orc "god's" pupils dilated abruptly, a flicker of panic surfacing on his face.
Cassius continued with a clicking tongue, "Tsk, tsk. Worthy of an abomination born from the remains of a greater deity, to pull off a disguise like this. The divine pressure, the aura of godhood... even I couldn't spot the flaw at first glance. It's practically identical to a divine avatar. Except..."
Cassius's tone turned sharp. He bared his fangs in a ferocious grin, his voice rising into a thunderous roar: "You forgot—this is the Cinder Empire!"
Boom!
The red dragon clenched his claw. In an instant, dense webs of cracks spread through the surrounding space, shattering with crisp fractures.
The mottled sky and the grand ancient battlefield vanished into dispersing mist.
The form of the "Orc God" in the sky began to warp, twisting like a monstrously stitched-together beast on the verge of collapse.
"Who gave you the audacity to play your tricks on my turf?" Cassius snapped his wings open and soared into the sky.
The dragon crystal embedded in his chest blazed with blinding brilliance. Within his body, progenitor dragon blood, solar divine power, the power of order, and chaotic flames all surged into rapid motion, releasing a torrent of energy.
An endless torrent of fire poured from Cassius's frame, extending his limbs. His sixty-meter-long dragon body expanded continuously, ballooning to over a hundred meters in just a few breaths.
At the same time, Cassius activated his Imperial Domain at full power without reservation. The lightning, fire, wind, and even the laws of space and time in the area fell entirely under his control.
In this domain, the red dragon was a god!
Throwing his head back with a furious roar, the red dragon raised a foreclaw. Innumerable ferocious fire dragons erupted from the ground, surging into the sky toward the orc.
"Damn you! I am Gruumsh, He-Who-Never-Sleeps, King of War!" The orc howled toward the sky, swinging his spear with a furious bellow as an unmatched aura of divine might surged outward.
Evidently, he was making one final desperate struggle, attempting to use his display of power to cow the red dragon.
Cassius merely sneered. He flapped his dragon wings, stirring a blazing tempest fierce enough to crack space itself.
"Do you know what that orc god's most famous title is nowadays? The One-Eyed God!"
Cassius did not hesitate. Spreading his vast wings, cloaked in terrifying might, he dove down from the heights, cleaving through the sky.
Imperial Domain: Burst.
Imperial Domain: Control.
This time, not only did fire, lightning, and radiance sweep forward like a tsunami, but space itself crushed inward against the orc. Fractured shards of space thrust into the orc's body like razor-sharp blades.
"Awoo—"
A shrill, piercing shriek rang out, carrying endless malice and hatred—a sound capable of driving ordinary mortals mad just by hearing it.
The orc's figure turned increasingly bizarre. Hundreds of densely packed eyes sprouted across its head, and its arms and torso became riddled with eye sockets, radiating an aura of utter chaos.
The abomination could no longer maintain Gruumsh's form. Its body was breaking apart, revealing its true nature as an elder evil!
This was hatred from the dawn of time, the most chaotic existence birthed from divinity, driven by an instinct for pure destruction!
Now, this ancient evil power even began infecting the Imperial Domain, unraveling the order Cassius had built, attempting to taint Dragonblood Mountain—and even the entirety of Anzeta!
"To counter extreme chaos, only the purest order will do..."
Watching the increasingly monstrous orc, the red dragon showed no panic. Instead, he analyzed the situation calmly, terrifying energy surging through his fundus vessels and glowing through his scales like a web of shimmering roots.
The red dragon drew a deep breath, feeling the power of order flow through him. He opened his jaws, and silver-white flames gathered deep in his throat, radiating brilliance like a midday sun.
Breath of Ordering.
In an instant, amidst the detonation of the air, the silver-white fire poured forth, streaking across the sky like a comet!
Boom!
The silver-white pillar of flame pierced clean through the thick black mist spewed by the elder evil, slamming directly into the true body concealed behind the shroud.
The flames of order not only vaporized the moisture in the air, but also incinerated the chaotic, evil aura radiating from the abomination, restoring order to the surrounding space.
"Why!"
"Why stand against me! Why bind me!
I am the avatar of Gruumsh, a mighty deity! All who oppose me—whether elves, dwarves, or dragons—shall be destroyed!"
The screeching cries made space shudder and quake, as if the world itself were about to crack open.
The silver-white pillar of flame shredded the elder evil's final disguise. Hundreds of tentacles covered in eyes burst through its skin, casting aside the husk that resembled a brawny orc.
Finally, a colossal, slime-drenched eyeball broke through the husk. Its pitch-black pupil brimmed with boundless venom, yet only half the eye existed, as if sliced clean through by a blade.
The main body of the eyeball spanned a hundred meters in diameter, while each tentacle stretched over a thousand meters long. The tentacles sprouted directly from the eyeball, writhing and thrashing like countless pythons, nearly blotting out the sky.
Dense clusters of eye sockets dotted the tentacles, each bearing thousands upon thousands of eyes that glared venomously at the red dragon—a thoroughly chilling sight.
"Ignorant mortal, I will tear you to shreds!
I am the End of All Things, the Scourge of Elves and Dwarves, the Avenger, the Half-Eye of Gruumsh—Iwenis!"
Overlapping screeches rang out as the evil bellowed its true name, causing all creation to tremble.
With every passing second, this abomination radiated a forbidden, primordial aura, corrupting the surrounding space. Any mortal witnessing such a grotesque spectacle would lose all sanity and go mad on the spot.
This was an elder evil. Sealed, imprisoned, and restrained by the forces of cosmic order since ancient times, their release would unleash monstrous atrocities and destruction, annihilating the worlds where mortal races thrived.
They were not gods, yet they were equally immortal.
Yet as Cassius beat his wings, staring at the distant elder evil that bore a passing resemblance to a beholder, the look on his dragon face was not fear—it was disgust.
Furrowing his scaled brow, the red dragon could not help but grimace. "What an ugly piece of trash. Even more revolting than the Lady of Fungi from a couple days ago."
Moreover, Cassius keenly noticed something: this so-called elder evil seemed far weaker than he had anticipated.
Chaos Evil Eye - Iwenis (Challenge Rating: 28)
In Cassius's eyes, the elder evil before him was noticeably weaker than his normal dragon form.
Compared to Cassius under the godlike empowerment of his Imperial Domain, the difference was night and day. It was nowhere near as terrifying as its dramatic form suggested.
"Could it be... it hasn't fully unsealed yet?"
At that thought, a mocking grin spread across Cassius's dragon face. "So that's how it is..."
This elder evil had taken bluster and bluff to the absolute extreme. It had likely unleashed all of Gruumsh's residual divine power to create this earth-shaking spectacle, while its true body remained trapped inside the half-stone.
Anyone else encountering this might have had their mind shattered by the illusion of Gruumsh, giving the elder evil the chance it needed to break free.
"In that case, let me show you what this 'mortal' can do."
The red dragon beat his wings and reached a claw toward the sky, clenching it from afar. A brilliant, crimson claw spanning over a thousand meters materialized in the heavens, crushing down toward the abomination's central eye.
"Awoo—"
With another shrill wail of agony, the Chaos Evil Eye burst apart in midair, disintegrating into roiling plumes of black smoke.
Chapter 640