Before his words had fully faded, the frost giant slowly drew a crystalline greataxe dozens of meters long from his belt, howling as he cleaved through the empty air.
*Whoosh—*
The gale whipped up by the greataxe carried shrieking ice and snow through the jagged glaciers, churning into a terrifying blizzard that swept up, froze, and tore apart everything in its path.
In an instant, over a thousand devil soldiers were swallowed by the dreadful tempest, reduced to pulverized shards of ice drifting across the sky.
"Run!"
"No, no—!"
"Lord of the Nine Hells, this damned blizzard is too fast! There's no chance to—"
The devils panicked, flapping their wings frantically to flee backward, yet they still could not escape being ripped to shreds by the blizzard.
"Kostchtchie!" Cassius's roar sent ripples shivering through space. The dragon crystal at his chest blazed with blinding radiance, releasing a majestic torrent of energy.
"Your throne will melt in my dragonfire! The one who dies today—is you!"
Cassius surged high into the sky, unfurling wings of peerless breadth amidst a long, resounding cry. His towering silhouette cast a gargantuan shadow across the earth.
"What terrifying magical fluctuations!"
"That's..."
The onlookers gasped in awe.
The edges of the red dragon's wing membranes shifted from brownish-white to a fiery scarlet. Like red-hot iron, they belched plumes of white smoke, warping the surrounding air into distorted waves.
*Boom—*
The sharp crack of detonating air echoed across the heavens.
A torrential surge of dragonfire erupted from the edges of his wings, stretching out like an extension of Cassius's wingspan.
A hundred meters, a thousand meters, ten thousand meters... The dragonfire transformed into a sky-scorching sea of flames, dyeing more than half the sky blood-red and holding the freezing gales unleashed by Kostchtchie at bay.
With wings outstretched, the red dragon hovered high in the sky. The dragon crystal at his chest blazed with ten thousand rays of light, rendering his colossal body somewhat blurred so that onlookers could see only a silhouette engulfed in brilliant radiance.
At this moment, Cassius radiated an unfathomably immense heat. Like an incandescent celestial body, he altered the surrounding environment with reckless abandon, even unconsciously bending the nearby laws of the world.
Behind the red dragon, the air grew blisteringly scorching and distorted. The last traces of moisture in the earth were boiled away, turning the ground swiftly barren and cracked into a sizzling, arid wasteland.
Even devils, who naturally favored blistering environments, began to break into sweat, their skin searing. Those standing closer watched molten liquid begin to drip from their iron armor.
Even Bel, who could bathe in molten magma, was visibly astonished. Feeling the overwhelming fullness of fire elements saturating the air, he muttered under his breath:
"Is this... an elemental lord? Where did this greedy bastard get so many bizarre tricks!"
Bel cursed inwardly, his wariness of Cassius deepening.
The devil swore a silent oath in his heart: unless it became absolutely necessary, he must never turn against this reckless and formidable monster!
In an instant, the wasteland was cleaved into two starkly different halves—one a frozen arctic expanse buried in frost and snow, the other a scorched earth baking beneath a blazing sun.
These two worlds stood in diametric opposition, each carrying matchless power as they violently expanded, on the verge of collision.
*Boom!!*
The two dreadful forces collided, producing a heaven-shattering explosion. Along the boundary between them, roaring flames melted frost and snow, and scalding water vapor erupted outward in violent, billowing plumes that swallowed the barren plain.
Piercing, freezing gales and searing winds converged, forming a whirlwind tens of thousands of meters across centered on the explosion. It enveloped the surrounding region in an apocalyptic catastrophe.
Amidst the trembling earth, rock and sand instantly liquefied under the extreme heat, churning boiling magma up from the subterranean depths. Yet moments later, that very magma solidified rapidly in the freezing wind, turning into porous black lava glazed in a layer of white frost.
Soon, however, fire and ice, heat and cold shifted again. Mastery of this domain repeatedly changed hands: frost instantly turned to white mist, stone liquefied anew beneath the searing heat, and burning meteorites rained down from the sky...
Under this cataclysm, even the land was battered into utter devastation, to say nothing of the creatures dwelling upon it.
"Holy shit, the storm is spreading over here!"
"Crap, run!"
"Watch out for the meteorites! Don't go into that steam cloud! You'll be boiled alive—!"
Hundreds of players who had just been eagerly watching the spectacle now fled in a chaotic scramble, shouting for help and dodging left and right, yet many were still claimed by death.
Within this maelstrom of energy, even spells failed to function. Not even spatial teleportation scrolls could outrun the dreadful tempest.
Standing upon the battlements of the Bronze Citadel, Langlibaitiao watched the players fleeing frantically through the storm with uncontainable excitement, laughing uproariously: "Hahahaha! I knew there'd be noobs dying out there!
"All that effort writing in my beginner's guide that you could scavenge top-tier loot during boss fights wasn't wasted—plenty of idiots actually bought it!"
Indeed, it was purely his twisted sense of humor.
Vanguard veterans were far too experienced; they had long since retreated a hundred thousand leagues away. After all, they had witnessed tens of thousands of players perish in the collateral damage of the red dragon's battles.
Losing a life just to watch a show was simply not worth it.
Meanwhile, the "Beginner's Guide" posted by Langlibaitiao had already drawn over a thousand replies of furious curses from players who had died in the aftermath, with no sign of slowing down.
"Lang-beast must die!"
"I almost fell for his crap. Calling this guy an animal is an understatement—he's utterly unhinged!"
"You scammed real people, hope your mother drops dead!"
"Lang-beast sabotages new players! He deserves ten thousand deaths! Heaven will not forgive this!"
Beneath this natural disaster, not only was the immediate vicinity reduced to shambles, but regions even further away were swept up in the fallout. For hundreds of miles around, the climate grew wildly erratic.
One moment howling blizzards brought flying snow; the next, rolling heat waves rained sparks and wandering flames. If such a disaster were unleashed on the Material Plane, it would be enough to obliterate a small mortal nation.
Yet the sole cause of this terrifying calamity was merely a mutual probe between Cassius and Kostchtchie.
Neither side had even formally begun the battle. They were only creating conditions favorable to themselves, observing the other's reactions, and searching for the right opportunity to strike.
*Such potent elemental mastery... to actually push me slightly onto the back foot...*
Feeling the biting chill bearing down on him, Cassius furrowed his brow, unable to suppress a twinge of admiration. *Then let me play with you properly!*
*Roar—!*
The red dragon roared, his neck suddenly thrusting forward as his bloody maw snapped wide open. A dazzling light flared deep within his throat, and the dragon crystal at his chest flickered with particles of magical fission.
Primordial Breath!
*Boom!*
The sky was torn asunder by a massive pillar of fire. Its outer mantle burned orange-red, while its inner core blazed with piercing blue-white intensity, setting the horizon ablaze.
Tearing through the storm and piercing the fire wall where the two energies met, the pillar of flame surged with immense power, blasting straight toward the frost giant.
"Foolish beast."
Kostchtchie sneered, calmly extending a thick, calloused palm. Pale, ancient runes pulsed with light across his ash-gray skin.
In an instant, endless freezing winds converged upon the frost giant, condensing before him into a colossal, thick barrier—a Wall of Ice like a suspended fortress of frozen rime hovering in the sky.
*Boom!*
The pillar of fire crashed into the ice wall, instantly gouging through its outer layer of solid ice. The melting runoff flash-steamed before it could even drip, weaving a vast, pale curtain across the sky.
Yet Kostchtchie's ice wall was imbued with divine frost power. Even the sacred flames of the sun could not easily melt it; there was a fundamental difference in the nature of power between it and the high-temperature fire produced by the Primordial Breath.
Kostchtchie rose from his throne of frost, hefting his greataxe with a mocking sneer: "Frail and powerless! Did you really think you could fight me with that little spark?
"Reptile, I will teach you the gulf between a mortal creature and a demigod!"
Cassius's goal had never been to defeat the frost giant with a simple probe, but rather to create a distraction.
Amidst howling winds, he dived downward. His wings churned the tempest, his draconic roar shattering frozen cliffs. Moving with lightning speed, the massive draconic form bridged hundreds of meters in the blink of an eye, soaring clean over the ice wall.
*Rippp—!*
Accompanied by a roar that shook the four winds, sharp dragon claws empowered by golden divine force tore through the mist, lunging straight for the frost giant's throat.
"Die!"
Kostchtchie raised his muscled left arm, ice-blue runes flaring along it. The greataxe cleaved through the air to meet the blow head-on.
*Boom!*
With a deafening sonic boom, a violent shockwave erupted outward, sweeping across a hundred meters and making space itself shudder.
The sound of shattering ice armor mingled with the cracking of scales. Deep-indigo, blackened blood of the tanar'ri giant and the gold-red blood of the proto-ancestral red dragon splashed onto the icy ground, sizzling furiously.
Cassius's claws were sliced open, half his talons frozen solid like blocks of ice, and his massive body was knocked back over a hundred meters.
Meanwhile, a savage claw mark tore across Kostchtchie's shoulder. Golden light churned within the wound, causing thick black smoke to billow from the mangled flesh with a sharp, hissing sound.
Both sides had sustained damage in this clash, finishing on equal footing.
*His physical strength is actually on par with mine!* both the red dragon and the frost giant gasped inwardly at the same time.
These two brutally violent, unreasonably tyrannical behemoths had finally met their match.
The frost giant's expression turned even graver, a whirl of chaotic thoughts flooding his mind. In the instant they clashed, He had actually felt... a sensation like encountering a natural predator?
That momentary shock had slowed his reaction by half a beat, allowing the red dragon's claws to strike true and rip open a large swath of his left shoulder.
It was the instinctive dread a rabbit felt before a giant eagle, a mountain goat before a worg, or a mortal before a demon.
Yet such a sensation should never have arisen in an Abyssal lord! Much less in a demigod demon who possessed a cult of his own!
Damn it, how could He possibly fear a mere mortal creature!
The fury in Kostchtchie's heart burned ever hotter, and the urge to slaughter Cassius intensified violently. Once, He had regarded this red dragon as a mere mortal that could be squashed at will.
Now, he was a threat.
He had to kill him! That red dragon was an utter calamity! He would stand in the way of His glorious dominion!
What Kostchtchie did not know was that against the "Frost Giant Slayer" trait granted by the system, let alone him, even Thrym, the God of the Frost Giants, would be affected to a certain degree.
"Cassius, today is the day of your death!" The frost giant leaped abruptly, hoisting his greataxe high. Cleaving downward with monumental might, he sent several hundred-meter-long blades of ice ripping across the sky, sealing off almost all avenue of escape.
*Swish—*
Cassius flapped his wings sideways, dodging swiftly to slip through a gap between the ice blades, only to find that the frost giant had anticipated his flight path and was already leaping down to chop at him.
As Kostchtchie swung the greataxe known as the "Heart of Winter," boundless cold poured forth. The surrounding space seemed to freeze solid; Cassius's movements slowed to a crawl, making even basic flight agonizingly difficult, let alone dodging via spatial spells.
This was the divine power of frost!
At this caliber, any physical matter would be immobilized by that absolute freezing aura—an effect virtually indistinguishable from a Time Stop.
Facing the frost giant's incoming cleave, Cassius strained with all his might, buffing himself with multiple spells as he executed a forward flip in the narrow gap between the blades of ice.
Though Cassius rolled with blinding speed, the greataxe still shattered his hardened scales and bit deep into his back. Terrifying divine frost power froze a large patch of his flesh.
Yet Cassius pressed the entire weight of his body down, using the momentum of his roll to lash his tail violently. The silver-white Flame of Order erupted from the tip of his tail, slamming heavily into the frost giant's shoulder.
Kostchtchie had not anticipated this sudden counter. Taken completely off guard, his body was hurled downward a thousand meters.
Seeing this, Cassius had no intention of relinquishing his advantage. Disregarding the wound on his back, he tucked his body tight, brilliant plumes of light and flame jetting from behind his wings as he dived toward Kostchtchie like a falling meteor.
*Boom!*
The frost giant dropped to one knee, the ice below him fracturing into a web of fissures that opened a colossal crater. His shoulder bore a deep, blackened scorch mark carved by the dragon tail wrapped in the Flame of Order.
Kostchtchie rose from the crater, his eyes glowing with manic, savage, infuriated light.
Abyssal power poured from every inch of the frost giant's form, swirling with an ominous black fog. Horrific bone spikes sprouted across his massive body, and pitch-black blood dripped from the corners of his mouth.
At this moment, He was not merely a frost giant; He was the master of countless demons, the Prince of Wrath of the Abyss!
"Reptile—I will tear you to pieces!!!"
Kostchtchie let out an enraged roar and pounded the earth. The glacier surged violently in response. Amidst splintering ice rubble, countless giant icicles resembling frozen mountains erupted from the ground, thrusting viciously toward the red dragon.
*Roar—!*
The red dragon bellowed, violently beating his wings. Forced airborne, his wings were immediately snared by an ice storm that coalesced out of thin air, while the divine frost power lingering in his wounds also hampered his movements.
The King of the Frost Giants seized the opening and sprang high into the air, reaching an altitude of a thousand meters as his greataxe swept through polar gales toward the dragon's head.
Yet Cassius suddenly spread his wings, a faint purple glow washing over his entire body. Spinning with fluid grace, he broke free from the ice storm's constraints in an instant and climbed higher into the sky.
It was a 10th-tier Draconic Spell—Eternal Freedom!
The frost giant's greataxe cleaved nothing but empty air. But stomping upon a jutting glacial crag, Kostchtchie leapt high once more, dragging freezing gales in his wake as he gave chase to the red dragon.
Chapter 737