Tinia tilted her head in confusion at first, but soon grasped what the female red dragon meant. Outraged beyond measure, her features instantly contorted into a snarl.
White dragons were well aware of their racial inferiority and often carried a deep sense of inadequacy because of it.
Yet Volcanis had mocked her relentlessly and even brazenly proclaimed she would bear offspring for Tinia's master—an outright insult and blatant provocation.
This damned red dragon!
Her master had once taught her the principle of killing the chicken to scare the monkeys. If she needed to establish dominance before this flock of female dragons, she would start with this reckless, arrogant red dragon!
"Roar—!"
Fury blazed within Tinia's deep draconic eyes. She threw her jaws wide and roared; instantly, gale-force winds howled, and a terrifying chill swept outward.
"Volcanis! Who told you I was an ancient white dragon? Compared to me, you're the old dragon!"
"I am the Glacier Duke, Tinia, the most loyal retainer of the great Cinder Emperor! I have come by my master's decree, representing the Emperor's supreme will!"
The white dragon's roar echoed across the sky. Sensing the tremendous surges of ice magic, every female dragon present was startled, their expressions turning grave.
"This kind of power... how is that possible?"
"Is she really a white dragon? How could an adult white dragon have such a massive frame!"
"And that spellcasting prowess... it must be at the level of a great wyrm! I've never seen a white dragon reach such heights!"
Dragons were natural magical creatures, born with innate gifts and an acute sensitivity to the flow of mana.
Nearly every female dragon could sense the unbelievable might coiled within that graceful white draconic form—and Volcanis was no exception.
Something was wrong with this white dragon!
Feeling those magical fluctuations, even Volcanis stiffened. Her contempt slightly receded, though she still maintained a haughty demeanor.
How could a lowly adult white dragon, a mere beast of the frost plains, possess power like this?
Suddenly, a different thought struck Volcanis.
It was His Highness the Dragon Prince! Under His Highness's favor, even a lowly white dragon could possess such power. If a noble red dragon like herself were favored, what staggering strength would she receive?
At the thought, greed gleamed in Volcanis's golden pupils. She looked up at the furious white dragon hovering high above.
"As expected, an inferior breed like a white dragon is fit only to be a servant to red dragons. You aren't worthy of standing beside us as equals."
"Tinia, you are far too insolent. After all, I am your future mistress." The red dragon spoke with absolute, unwavering confidence.
Hearing this, the fire in Tinia's chest burned even hotter. She laughed out of sheer fury. "Stop daydreaming! How could an old dragon who can't even defeat me be qualified to mate with His Majesty?"
At those words, veins bulged across Volcanis's brow, and twin jets of flame burst from her eyes. "Lowly white beast! I'll make you understand what true strength is!"
Flapping her broad wings, the red dragon took to the air. Enveloped in searing flames, she lunged toward the white dragon above with movements packed with raw power.
"Then come try, fool!" Tinia threw back her head and let out a piercing screech. Snapping her wings open, she stirred howling winds and swirling blizzards as the surrounding air plunged in temperature.
Watching the two dragons on the brink of battle, the green and blue dragon factions held their ground, waiting to see how things unfolded.
Vesuvilla exchanged glances with her fellow green dragons, each curling their lips into the sinister, cunning grins characteristic of their kind.
This white dragon seemed extraordinarily powerful, far outstripping her weak and dim-witted kin.
Yet Volcanis was a mature adult red dragon of formidable renown, by no means an easy opponent; she would certainly give the white dragon a fierce fight.
Once these two brainless fools exhausted themselves in their clash of brute force, it would be the green dragons' chance to launch a sneak attack and reap the fruits of victory.
Except... they still had to deal with those troublesome blue dragons.
With that in mind, Vesuvilla turned her gaze toward Christina, her eyes glinting with malicious intent.
Christina, however, was also taking in the situation. Feeling the green dragon's stare, she locked eyes without flinching, a ferocious glint in her gaze.
Suddenly, a thunderous boom ripped through the air above. The green and blue dragons looked up in unison, firelight reflecting in their eyes.
Volcanis had struck!
"White dragon, tremble before the flames!" The dragon's roar shook heaven and earth.
Rearing up, the red dragon channeled her internal energy and unleashed a cone of fiery breath. The orange-red inferno cascaded like a blazing waterfall, warping the air.
Boom!!
Volcanis's breath weapon was immensely destructive; every tendril of flame could easily incinerate mortal soldiers and even melt stone city walls.
In a fit of fury, she had once reduced a southern town to scorched earth, leaving only rivers of lava behind with not a single survivor escaping with their life.
That was how Volcanis had earned the moniker "The Tyrant of Flowing Magma."
Yet looking upon the surging fire and feeling the heat blasting against her face, Tinia only found it laughable and did not even react immediately.
Was this the flame breath she took so much pride in?
Or rather... could this even be called a breath weapon?
Far too weak.
Tinia had seen Cassius melt walls over a hundred meters tall with his breath.
She had watched him turn vast, sky-blotting tides of fiendish hordes to ash, and had even witnessed with her own eyes Cassius blast a pillar of flame piercing the heavens to contest divine wrath.
To Tinia, Volcanis's fire could not even match an aftershock of her master's breath; at best, it was barely comparable to Cassius's morning yawn upon waking.
And that was being generous.
Seeing Tinia make no move for so long, supreme confidence flooded Volcanis's eyes.
Was this white dragon so terrified she was frozen stiff?
Heh, a cowardly beast after all. Even with a little trick of power, she was only fit to tremble before her wrath.
Then let's end this battle quickly!
She could hardly wait to mate with that mysterious, noble monarch! Then she would attain formidable power and bear the most exalted draconic scions!
With that, Volcanis poured even more energy into her breath. The flames roared, swelling ever hotter and churning across the sky.
Yet at that moment, the red dragon was startled to see... contempt in the white dragon's eyes?
Had she seen that wrong?
Or had that white dragon been scared out of her wits?
Just as the flames were about to engulf the white dragon's body, Tinia let out a long cry. She snapped her wings forward, ice-blue runes lighting up across her wing membranes like interlocking veins.
Whoosh—!
With the flap of her wings, a bitterly frigid ice storm blasted forth, sweeping across the sky in an instant and extinguishing the roaring inferno on the spot!
"What?!"
"That white dragon blocked Volcanis's breath weapon so easily?!"
"What terrifying ice magic!"
The spectating dragons were stunned; with a mere flap of her wings, this white dragon had conjured an ice storm rivaling a seventh-tier spell!
"H-How can this be?"
Volcanis was deeply shaken, but hearing the dragons' murmurs, unprecedented anger and shame surged into her heart.
How could she lose to a white dragon younger than herself!
Unforgivable!
"That damned white dragon must be relying on some powerful magical artifact! That kind of magic can't last forever!" Volcanis snarled viciously, pouring even more force into her breath.
Yet Tinia beat her wings and unleashed an even clearer, ringing roar that sent an unprecedented, soul-piercing chill through every dragon present.
"Roar—!"
The blizzard grew increasingly violent, swiftly painting the sky white. The immense wind pressure wreaked havoc, causing the lake beneath them to freeze at astonishing speed.
Volcanis's breath flickered like a candle in a gale, growing ever weaker until it was completely snuffed out.
In the extreme cold, moisture in the air condensed into ice crystals. A heavy coat of frost glazed the red dragon's scales, and her maw misfired entirely—unable to sputter out even a single spark.
Caught in the biting gale, she could only beat her wings frantically, barely holding her balance like a galleon tossed in tempestuous seas.
"Are you trying to keep me warm?" Tinia mocked ruthlessly.
In truth, she could have ended the fight just then, but white dragons were notoriously vindictive, never letting slights go unpunished.
Because the red dragon had humiliated her in public earlier, Tinia was determined to make her lose all face and suffer absolute defeat before the crowd.
Stung by Tinia's taunt, Volcanis erupted with furious flames, instantly melting the frost around her.
Crazed with rage, the red dragon bellowed hysterically, "Despicable white dragon! Without His Highness's boon, you are nothing! You'd still be scavenging for frozen corpses on the tundra right now!"
Yet her voice was swallowed by the screaming wind, sounding pathetically feeble.
"Louder! I can't hear you!" Tinia held a claw to her ear, feigning an effort to listen.
Seeing the once-unbearably arrogant Volcanis humbled like this, even the spectating chromatic dragons couldn't help snickering and chuckling.
"I will make you pay a harrowing price, white dragon—you're going to die a miserable death!" Panting heavily, white steam puffing from her nostrils, the red dragon's eyes turned blood-red.
"Roar—!"
Volcanis beat her wings with a roar, climbing hundreds of meters before diving with unstoppable momentum straight through the ice storm.
Though blinded by fury to the edge of madness, the red dragon still possessed sound tactical sense—an instinct for battle ingrained in her very nature that required virtually no conscious thought.
To her mind, while the white dragon's ice magic was indeed bizarre and potent, she could reclaim the upper hand in melee combat.
A twenty-meter red dragon against a twenty-six-meter white dragon meant an undeniable disparity in size.
Yet red dragons were the mightiest of the chromatic dragons, packed with dense muscle and armed from head to tail: razor-sharp claws and teeth, a tail like a battering ram, and thick limbs—living weapons forged purely for war!
White dragons, in contrast, were leanly built, their bodies evolved merely for survival and reproduction on the frozen wastes, completely incomparable to red dragons.
By Volcanis's reckoning, her raw strength surpassed this lucky white dragon's; closing in for physical combat was the ideal choice.
The white silhouette cloaked in freezing gales drew clearer and clearer. Volcanis narrowed her eyes, a murderous gleam bursting forth as a vicious grin spread across her dragon snout.
"Arrogant fool, you will pay for this..."
"Roar—!"
With a roar of overwhelming force, Volcanis tucked her wings and pounced viciously toward the white dragon.
"Die!"
Her razor-sharp talons slashed through the air, hurtling toward the white dragon's slowly beating wings.
Her cavernous maw, bristling with dagger-like fangs, snapped open to tear into the white dragon's slender neck.
The red dragon had decided to kill.
In her mind, this white dragon would instantly have her wings shredded, her neck snapped, and be reduced to a mangled, frozen corpse.
Yet Volcanis had vastly underestimated Tinia's physical might.
Over untold tens of thousands of years, draconic bloodlines had diluted hundreds of times over, and the weakest among them—the white dragons—had degraded into mere predators of the frozen wastes.
Yet back in the ancient epoch when dragons ruled the sky and the earth, even the comparatively weakest white dragons were nightmares to countless living beings, terrifying living cataclysms.
Their flesh and bone struck terror into the mightiest warriors; their breath could freeze whole oceans solid.
Such were the progenitor white dragons.
And Tinia was a white dragon blessed with a progenitor bloodline—one whose purity had risen considerably under Cassius's Bloodline Boon.
"Roar—!"
Beating her wings, Tinia charged straight forward without the slightest fear, the progenitor dragon blood surging through her veins.
Her dragon claws, clad in an ice-blue radiance and carrying staggering, torrential force, swung violently straight toward the red dragon's outstretched head—
Wham!
The air exploded at the violent impact. A ferocious shockwave of freezing air erupted outward from Tinia's claw, sweeping across the sky in a flash.
Immediately after came the red dragon's bloodcurdling shriek, accompanied by the crisp, sickening crunch of shattering bone and tearing flesh.
"How can this be?!"
"By Tiamat, is that still a white dragon?!"
"Great Mother of Evil Dragons... She actually knocked Volcanis flying!"
High above, enveloped in freezing gales, Tinia held the follow-through of her claw strike, while Volcanis was sent hurtling backward in utter disarray.
Broken fangs, steaming dragon blood, and bloody scales rained from the sky.
The red dragon's jaw hung dislocated, her mouth dripping with gore, and even her thick neck was twisted at a bizarre, unnatural angle.
Agony tearing through her, Volcanis coughed up a mouthful of blood. Her vision spun, her mind utterly overwhelmed with disbelief.
Impossible!
How could this white dragon possess such immense physical strength!
Yet soon, an even more terrifying sensation took hold: her consciousness was growing sluggish and faint, inexorably plunging toward pitch-black silence.
Where the white dragon had struck her, a rune shimmering with a faint blue light surfaced on the wound. Volcanis's head began to freeze, coated in a thick shell of frost.
The frost spread at blinding speed, encasing the red dragon's entire body until she was frozen solid into an ice sculpture!
Rigid as stone, the red dragon plummeted straight out of the sky, shattered the ice, and plunged into the lake with a heavy splash, remaining motionless beneath the dark waters.
—Such was the "Hammer of Freezing" effect of Matalotok.
Looking down upon the gaping hole in the ice, Tinia nodded with satisfaction.
She raised her head, stretched her neck, and unleashed a long, resounding roar.
"Roar—!"
"By Tiamat!"
"Great Dragon Mother, how can such a white dragon exist?!"
"Th-that was the Magma Tyrant! A mature adult red dragon, defeated so easily?!"
All at once, the assembled female dragons stared up at the graceful white dragon in the sky, collectively drawing in a sharp breath of cold air.
Chapter 745