Amid the violent collision, explosions propagated with frenzied intensity. Sundry energies intertwined, clashed, and converged, detonating with concussions like rolling muffled thunder.
The shockwave expanded at unimaginable speed, and the overflowing blaze came within an inch of tearing Tiamat's barrier apart.
Even the surrounding space webbed with dense, sprawling fissures, seemingly on the verge of being ripped to shreds by the dreadful aftermath.
"Gods above..."
"Tiamat on high!"
"O great Lord of Eternal Radiance!"
Outside the pitch-black barrier, no one could clearly see the situation within. Soldiers of Seleucia and cultists of the Cult of the Dragon alike waited in tense agony for the outcome of this battle.
Only the players wore relaxed, entertained expressions, wishing they could crawl inside to spectate firsthand. Taking advantage of the stalemate between both sides, they engaged in opportunistic skullduggery, picking off plenty of stranded cultists.
Count Adrian stared at the distant barrier, feeling the monumental tremors, his brow furrowing as he wondered silently:
*Lord Franz, was I right or wrong to draw the Cinder Empire into this war in the first place?*
He had good reason to doubt. The Cinder Emperor's power was simply too horrifying and untamable, filling him with dread. To cooperate with him was no different from asking a tiger for its pelt.
Could allies of such a being truly retain their sovereignty? Would they be reduced to a puppet regime like the Seleucian royal family?
Despite his tangled thoughts, Adrian still hoped the Cinder Emperor would prevail—ideally a pyrrhic victory won at a devastating cost.
After all, their soldiers stood no chance against the Lord of the Rotting Bog. If the great wyrm green dragon emerged victorious, both he and the men under his command would surely perish, reduced to sacrifices for Tiamat.
Under the watchful eyes of thousands, a dazzling point of light blossomed within the pitch-black barrier, shining so brightly that not even Tiamat's divine power could obscure it.
*Boom—*
Accompanied by a dull roar and blasting detonations, the column of fire Cassius spewed burst forth like a razor-sharp scarlet awl. Piercing the obstruction of the five-colored ray from its core, it tore through the chromatic beam, broke past the dense veil of smoke, and slammed directly toward the distant great wyrm green dragon.
"How... how can this be?"
Erebus's pupils shrank to pinpricks, his sunken eyes filled with disbelief. The invincible arrogance in his heart seemed to shatter all at once.
He was the chosen one who possessed the Eyes of Tiamat, one of the Dragon Mother's mortal emissaries, and the chromatic dragon held in the highest regard as the most likely to become the next dragon deity.
How could he be defeated by a lowly, base dragon variant who hadn't even set foot on the path to demigodhood?
"Impossible! Dragon variant! I bided my time in dormancy for over sixteen hundred years and sacrificed tens of thousands of mortals! How could I lose to a mongrel like you?"
Erebus let loose a furious roar and held his dragonbone scepter high, a chilling divine radiance erupting from his eyes.
The five-headed phantom that coiled over the earth and spanned half the sky blocked the space before him, throwing open its bloodthirsty maws to unleash a wrathful bellow from the depths of its throats.
*Roar—*
Within dragon eyes of diverse hues, divine brilliance interlaced in resplendent splendor, forming a torrent that froze space itself, with countless illusory chromatic dragons dancing wildly in its midst.
Domain of Tiamat!
Within this divine domain descended upon the mortal realm, Cassius's movements slowed indefinitely. Even the column of fire surging from his jaws became sluggish in the extreme, spreading at a snail's pace.
The spectral chromatic dragons roared and lunged at Cassius, clinging to the Red Dragon Emperor's titanic frame. Like a swarm of piranhas catching the scent of blood, they gnawed, snapped, and clawed with ravenous frenzy, sending scales and flesh flying in all directions.
"In the name of Tiamat—I grant you the most agonizing end!"
Erebus snapped his dragon wings, taking to the air with the dragonbone scepter held high, preparing to deliver the final blow to Cassius.
Yet at that very moment, cracks appeared across the frozen space. The spectral chromatic dragons howled in agony as they were engulfed by flames erupting from the red dragon, disintegrating into countless motes of light.
Wielding his peerless, sinewy might, Cassius forcibly rattled the divine seal and shattered this so-called "Domain of Tiamat."
*Boom! Boom! Boom!*
With a heaven-rending rumble, the frozen world resumed its motion. The rampaging dragonflame burned the five-headed dragon's phantom to cinders, sweeping it away before crashing headlong into the great wyrm green dragon's mountain-like body.
"No—!"
Erebus roared in agony. Boundless divine power flared from his eyes, but it still couldn't halt the incoming dragon breath.
The thick column of fire slammed brutally into his chest, burning through his heavy scales in an instant, reducing the filthy flesh to ash, and punching straight through the heart that had devoured countless tormented souls.
The dragonflame continued to rampage inside the great wyrm green dragon, frenziedly incinerating everything within and reducing the tainted flesh to cinders.
Just like that, a massive, charred crater appeared in the green dragon's chest. His wings drooped, and his hollowed-out carcass dropped limply toward the ground, crashing down heavily with a concussive shock that shook the earth and hollowed out an immense crater.
Even so, Erebus was not dead.
As a demigod dragon, he possessed the traits of immortality. To say nothing of mortal injuries, even if he were ground to dust and burned to ash, his essence would slowly reconverge in some corner of the multiverse after countless years, culminating in rebirth.
Erebus shrieked wretchedly, "Damned dragon variant—as a chromatic dragon, how dare you slaughter your own kin! Her Majesty Tiamat will not let you off!"
"Even if you survive this, those hypocritical gods and the metallic dragons will never truly accept you! Having betrayed the chromatic dragons, you will become the enemy of this entire world!"
Cassius roared back with a cold sneer, "And so what? The empire kneels to no god!"
The Red Dragon Emperor beat his wings, turning into a crimson blur that plunged toward the severely wounded great wyrm alongside sky-scorching, earth-melting dragonflame.
Veins bulged along the knotted muscles of Cassius's forelimb as he reached out with a dragon claw toward Erebus's head. The massive talons burned with raging blaze, tearing through empty space with terrifying power as they swept forward.
This was no ordinary claw strike, but a fatal blow imbued with the Flame of Order, the Chaos Fire, and solar brilliance!
"You—!" Erebus froze in horror, his pupils shrinking to pinpricks as they reflected the dazzling blaze.
*Rip—*
The crisp sound of flesh tearing and burning rang through the sky, followed at once by an agonizing, bloodcurdling shriek.
Flesh and blood splattered as divine radiance clashed in midair. Erebus's pair of Eyes of Tiamat was gouged out raw by the Red Dragon Emperor.
Having lost his eyes, the great wyrm green dragon presented a wretched sight. Where his eyes once rested remained only two bloody sockets revealing pale-white skull, his appearance hideous and dreadful, akin to a rotting carcass dragon.
The moment his eyes were separated from his body, blood spurted out. The ceaseless supply of divine power coursing through the green dragon was severed, and his shred of immortality was cruelly stripped away.
His body, hundreds of meters long, shrank in an instant. The flesh and blood coalesced from divine power vanished completely, his overwhelming majesty swept away, leaving behind only his original emaciated dragon frame measuring just over forty meters.
"No—!"
The blinded green dragon lowered his head, dragging his battered, broken frame as he stumbled about blindly like a headless fly, muttering deliriously, "These are mine! This is the power Her Majesty Tiamat bestowed upon me!"
"Impossible... You are merely a lowly mortal... You cannot take it away..."
Erebus's voice grew fainter. Collapsed in a pool of blood, on the verge of death, he summoned the last dregs of his strength to raise his head and utter an intensely venomous roar.
"Arrogant dragon variant... You think you've won?"
"What else?"
Cassius spared the green dragon a cool glance. Gripping the pair of Eyes of Tiamat in his right claw, he swung his left claw through the air, smashing it viciously down on the green dragon's head to pin it hard to the ground.
The sound of cracking bone echoed. Under the Red Dragon Emperor's peerless might, the green dragon's head warped, then was ruthlessly crushed to pieces. Bone fragments flew, and white and red brain matter splattered across the dirt.
Yet even with only half his skull remaining, Erebus's upper and lower jaws still slightly opened and closed, whispering in a voice like a passing sinister gale:
"Cassius... I curse you! This moment marks the beginning of your festering rot... You will be plagued by venom and filth for the rest of your days... With every breath you take... you will reconstitute the shape of my vengeance!
"One day—
"From within your flesh... my venomous scion shall be born!"
Before the words could fade, the great wyrm green dragon's body suddenly collapsed and detonated, dissolving into pervasive, toxic dust that seeped into the red dragon's wounds. It soon dyed the exposed flesh a purplish black, and moss and briars sprouted eerily between the muscle fibers.
This was the "Curse of Erebus." As a demigod, his body could turn into toxic powder and spores capable of parasitizing other living beings; as time passed, the accumulated toxins would kill the host.
Then the great wyrm green dragon would be reborn within the host's body as an embryo, devouring the internal organs and flesh clean until it finally tore through the host's skin to emerge into the world once more.
At the same time, countless tormented souls wailed and shrieked, pouring out from where the green dragon had once stood to roam the earth, laying waste to the land with their venomous howls.
Faced with this eerie sight, Cassius showed no trace of fear, merely sneering. "A curse? Interesting. A trick like this bears quite a resemblance to those green-skinned orcs."
"Only—you couldn't do a thing to me while you lived, yet you think you can drag me down in death? Laughable!"
Cassius clenched his left claw tight, and surging dragonflame erupted from deep within him. Solar fire hot enough to incinerate all things instantly purged every trace of poison invading his body, turning it to plumes of black smoke.
The Red Dragon Emperor snapped his talons, and a scorching storm swept the earth, scouring away all the wandering tormented souls.
This wicked dragon, whose name had silenced crying babes in the night—the great wyrm green dragon known to bards as the "Lord of the Rotting Bog," the "Emerald Pestilence," and the "Blood-Cyan Storm," the ambitious demigod dragon Erebus—had fallen just like that.
As a demigod, Erebus still possessed a wisp of immortal essence; those scattered fragments burned to fine dust and ash might coalesce again at some point in the distant future.
Yet Cassius was supremely confident that even if that day ever came, Erebus would never muster the slightest thought of defiance.
Cassius held out his right claw. Resting quietly in his palm was a dragon eye trailing threads of blood. Within the elongated slit pupil gleamed a profound light shifting between gold, white, blue, and other colors, exuding a boundless divine power that left him salivating.
A raspy female voice seemed to linger by the Red Dragon Emperor's ear: *"Cassius, do you see? The supreme divine power you yearn for and pursue lies right before you, so simple, so effortless...
"Come, let these great Eyes of God replace your own!"*
The voice turned stirring and rousing. Any ordinary mortal who heard such whispers would surely have succumbed, throwing all else to the wind.
*"From now on, wherever your wrath falls, all things shall burn away to cinders, and even the gods will wail amid the flames that bring about the end of all things!
"Come, Cassius, make it your eyes, and you will obtain might enough to destroy the world. You will become the mightiest dragon in the mortal realm! You shall be crowned atop the world!"*
"Sounds tempting..." Cassius gave a slight nod, appearing quite satisfied with the divine dragon eye.
*"You agree?"*
A flicker of pleasant surprise crept into the voice, as if caught off guard that the Red Dragon Emperor would take the bait so readily.
"However, I refuse."
Cassius shook his head, his voice ringing with absolute, resolute conviction, entirely devoid of hesitation.
"Tsk, tsk. To turn a cunning, greedy great wyrm green dragon into a devout believer willing to die for his god—what fine methods you have. Erebus must have succumbed to the temptation of power back then, exchanging his own eyes for these."
"If I were to accept this so-called 'Eye of God,' your consciousness would descend into the Material Plane the very next instant and seize my body..."
Cassius paused, then abruptly looked up toward the empty sky with vigilant eyes, speaking in a low, heavy voice: "I didn't guess wrong, did I... respected Lady Tiamat?"
*Flash—*
Boundless divine power erupted from the Eyes of Tiamat, condensing in midair into the colossal phantom of a five-headed dragon that radiated unprecedented pressure.
The moment the phantom manifested, the world seemed cloaked in gloom, trembling uncontrollably. For a hundred li around, all living things sank into extreme terror—a dread that originated from the depths of the soul.
The source of that overbearing pressure was none other than the Queen of Chromatic Dragons, Enemy of the Gods, and Mother of Evil Dragons—Tiamat!
"Cassius..."
Tiamat looked down at the Red Dragon Emperor, an unspeakable chill gleaming within all five pairs of elongated slit pupils, cold enough to plunge one into a frozen abyss.
"This is the final chance I grant you to mend your ways. Take these divine eyes for yourself, and all the past can be wiped clean.
"I will no longer pursue your misdeeds. As the preeminent among the chromatic dragons, you still have the chance to rule this world at my side."
Her voice was grim and chilling, carrying unveiled malice and threat.
Cassius merely scoffed, confronting her without the slightest fear as he shot back sharply, "And if... I say no?"
"Then you have chosen to betray me, to become an enemy of the Cult of the Dragon and a traitor to the chromatic dragon race!"
Tiamat's voice rose sharply. All five hideous heads threw open their bloodthirsty maws at once, releasing a roar that shook the very soul:
"Rebel, I will have you buried alongside those lowly, base humans—!"
Chapter 800