Within seconds of the bluespawn ambusher appearing in the imperial positions, a gold dragon flapped its wings and descended from the sky amid howling gales, pinning the creature—a beast resembling a cross between a wolverine and a blue dragon—firmly to the ground beneath a massive taloned paw.
"Awoo—!"
The bluespawn ambusher writhed in frantic struggle, yet it could not budge the dragon's talons in the slightest. Instead, the crushing weight only grew heavier. Frothy blood spewed from its maw in spurts, accompanied by the sickening crunch of fracturing bones.
Looking down at the beast with disgust and contempt, the gold dragon said in a cold voice, "Evil dragonspawn... To think these revolting things are multiplying so quickly."
A brass dragon touched down beside him, peering at the bluespawn pinned underfoot, and sighed. "Indeed. Those filthy monsters lurk everywhere across the Taliro Desert—more numerous than subterranean rats. They've caused us no small amount of trouble. Ferdinand, finish it off clean. Vile things like this know only slaughter and destruction... Slaying even one is a tremendous service to Feanso."
Hearing this, the gold dragon named Ferdinand pressed down without hesitation, crushing the bluespawn ambusher into mincemeat. Blood and mangled flesh splattered across the dirt.
Standing nearby, Singo had been listening intently to their conversation. Thick-skinned as ever, he sidled forward and asked respectfully, "Lord Ferdinand, we just returned from Taliro ourselves and ran into quite a few monsters like this. What exactly are they?"
The adult gold dragon tilted his chin slightly, cutting the noble, haughty figure described in countless bardic ballads. Lowering his eyelids, his gleaming eyes raked over the red dragonborn warrior with scrutiny. "You are a red dragonborn. Do you truly not know the origins of these evil dragonspawn?"
Singo shook his head earnestly. "My lord, we were not born dragonborn, but fortunate souls blessed by His Majesty Cassius."
Only then did the gold dragon withdraw his gaze, saying coolly, "Vile spawns of the evil dragon, omens of doom, cursed children born from dragons blessed by Tiamat. They are the basest of dragonbeasts. Their births used to be exceptionally rare anomalies. But several years ago, those cultists used profane rituals to channel the Dragon Queen's divine power into the Material Plane. Countless evil dragonspawn answered the call and were born, bringing turmoil to the world."
"Is it possible for us to destroy these evil dragonspawn at the source right now?" Singo asked.
"Hardly." The gold dragon shook his massive head, his voice heavy. "Their nests are hidden deep underground, often gathering dozens or even hundreds of dragonspawn. Even true dragons like us would risk our lives venturing inside unprepared."
"Underground, huh..."
Singo lowered his head in thought, a gleam flashing across his eyes. After a long moment, he looked up. "Thank you for enlightening me, my lord."
The gold dragon glanced at him and said calmly, "Whatever your faction or allegiances may be, we share a common enemy for now—those followers of Tiamat."
Flapping their broad wings, the gold and brass dragons took off together, leaving behind only the flattened remains of the bluespawn ambusher and a pensive Singo.
Tiansheng Zhankuang walked over, gathering the bluespawn scales from the ground. Scratching his head, he grinned. "What kind of plan are you cooking up now? Let's hear it."
Singo pondered for a moment, then looked up with a confident smile. "Everyone—any of you interested in turning those monsters' nest upside down?"
Beside him, Mantou, whose hair had been zapped into an afro, poked his head out with a face full of grievance and muttered darkly, "Hell yeah. I can't wait for every last one of them to die."
Xiaye Qiuyu quipped dryly, "Out of the tiger's den and straight into the wolf's lair, huh?"
Singo wagged a finger. "No, more accurately, we're taking firecrackers to a rabbit hole."
He rummaged through his extradimensional bag and hauled out a heavy cannon with an absurd caliber, its pointed shell measuring several meters in length.
Setting it on the ground, Singo patted its side and bragged, "A gem I scavenged from the imperial engineering corps: the Crust Crusher bunker-buster shell. It can punch through ten meters of concrete and features a multistage explosive charge, engineered specifically to shatter mountainsides and obliterate subterranean targets."
Mantou stared dumbfounded, as if seeing a certain blue robotic cat superimposing over Singo. "Wait, bro... are you actually Doraemon?"
Looking toward the Taliro Desert, Singo said in a deep voice, "All that's left now is finding their nest. Let's move!"
"Roar—!"
The wyverns resting nearby threw their heads back and unleashed a chorus of piercing shrieks.
...
The Great Taliro Desert.
Everywhere the eye could see were boundless golden sands and undulating dunes. Yet upon closer inspection, monsters cloaked in azure scales could be seen darting across the waste.
These were bluespawn, creatures ubiquitous across the Great Taliro Desert today. Spawned deep underground, the insatiable beasts spread like a plague, ripping apart and devouring nearly every native organism in the desert.
The desert's ecosystem had been ravaged. Native species like giant camels, desert monitor lizards, giant tortoises, and sand behemoths teetered on the brink of extinction, picked clean to the bone by the evil dragonspawn.
Deep within the desert, an evil dragon priest clad in tattered robes knelt before a ruined temple, holding a dragonbeast scepter and chanting incantations.
"Chaos thunderstorms churn within Your eyes! World-ending lightning bursts from Your maw!
Praise be to the Sovereign of Blue Dragons, Weaver of the Vault's Thunderstorm! Tiamat—Your cobalt head looms proud atop the stormy canopy of the Nine Hells! Your advent upon this world is at hand!"
His voice swelled with fanatic fervor. Dark storm clouds gathered in the sky above, crackling with thunder and surging lightning. A violent sandstorm whirled across the surrounding sands as countless evil dragonspawn burrowed out of the earth, craning their necks to bellow into the storm.
The cultist thrust his scepter toward the northeast and roared, "The enemy lies yonder! They seek to halt our Mother Goddess's descent! Scions of Tiamat, raze their cities! Tear their armies to shreds—"
Before his words had faded, the bluespawn roared with frenzied eyes. Skittering on foot or taking wing, wave after wave surged toward the north, stirring a terrifying tempest of thunder and sand into a scalp-numbing deluge of destruction.
Behind a sand dune thousands of meters away, four players concealed under Greater Invisibility carefully surveyed the perimeter of the temple.
Mantou whispered in awe, "That's a ridiculous amount of bluespawn. There have got to be at least a thousand around here alone. If they spot us, not even our bones will be left."
Tiansheng Zhankuang chuckled. "I recently unlocked the pit fiend's self-destruct ability. If we get caught, taking a bunch of them down with me won't be a bad trade at all."
From the look on his face, he almost seemed eager to try it.
Singo, however, studied the magical map in his hands with intense focus before murmuring, "Right. Based on the movement of these dragonspawn, we can deduce where their nest is."
He pointed toward the distant temple ruins. "It should be right beneath that area, about fifty-odd meters underground. We'll head straight into the nest through the burrows dug out by the bluespawn."
"Sounds good."
Advancing cautiously, they happened to cross paths with several bluespawn bursting from the sand.
These beasts were four to five meters long, sporting heads and armaments remarkably similar to blue dragons—namely a pair of massive, powerful foreclaws. With those claws, they could dig through sand as effortlessly as if swimming through water.
The spiked tips of their tails resembled enormous morningstars, and visible surges of electricity rippled along the entire length of their tails.
These were bluespawn burrowers. Blue dragons dwelling in Taliro frequently had them excavate fortifications or expand their underground lairs.
The burrowers rushed straight past them without noticing the players, merely obeying their instincts and marching north.
Holding their breath, the four players slipped between the monsters' ranks, passing by with mere inches to spare.
"Good luck—there's an open tunnel right here. We'll dive right in. Brother Zhankuang, take point. If there's any monster in our way that we can't dodge, hack it down."
"You bet."
Tiansheng Zhankuang rubbed his shiny bald head, smiled affably, and ducked into the tunnel. Mantou and Xiaye Qiuyu followed closely behind, while Singo brought up the rear to watch their back.
As the desert's premier sappers, the bluespawn burrowers had excavated tunnels that were surprisingly spacious and intricately connected, allowing the players to make swift progress.
Before long, however, a bluespawn ambusher came barreling down the passageway, completely unaware of the invisible players and on a direct collision course.
Without hesitation, Tiansheng Zhankuang struck decisively. His axe cleaved into the monster's skull, splitting the hardened bone in two and showering him with blood and brains.
Singo's expression darkened. "These dragonspawn have a sharp sense of smell. They'll track the scent here soon. We can't linger—pick up the pace!"
Sprinting through the tunnels, the players were fortunate enough to encounter no other dragonspawn, smoothly penetrating into the subterranean lair.
The space opened up dramatically. Beneath the endless expanse of sand lay another world entirely—a cavern so colossal it rivaled an underground palace.
Stone pillars rose throughout the cavern, where all manner of bluespawn slumbered. Some clung to the rocky walls, others curled up on the cavern floor, and some hung upside down from the ceiling.
Flickering arcs of static danced across their bodies, causing the cavern to pulse with intermittent light. This was unmistakably the bluespawn nest—an unholy sanctuary where cultists sacrificed wealth and flesh to Tiamat.
At the center of the lair stood an exceptionally massive stone pillar supporting the entire chamber, its surface crawling with bluespawn and crackling with lightning.
Singo eyed the pillar, the corners of his mouth curving upward. "Looks like I found their load-bearing column. That's our target."
He pulled the heavy cannon from his extradimensional bag, secured its footing, and skillfully calibrated its aim toward the pillar ahead.
"Qiuyu, get Mass Teleportation ready. This place is going to collapse fast. Be ready to pull us out at a moment's notice."
"Got it." Xiaye Qiuyu nodded, arcane motes of light dancing in her pale golden eyes as waves of spatial fluctuations rippled outward.
"Brother Zhankuang, watch our backs. Kill any dragonspawn that tries to get close."
"On it." Tiansheng Zhankuang agreed readily, drawing his poleaxe and scanning their surroundings with a vigilant glare, prepared for battle.
"What about me?" Mantou sidled over.
Singo waved him off impatiently. "Go play on the side and do whatever you want, just don't grief the team. Go... assist Zhankuang or something."
Brushed aside, Mantou slumped his shoulders in dejection, but the three pro players were already buried in rapid preparations, paying him no heed.
"Get ready—"
Singo took a deep breath, adjusting the cannon's muzzle to point directly at the lower-middle section of the pillar.
"Three, two..."
Holding his breath, he focused all his concentration.
"One."
*Boom!*
As the countdown ended, Singo slammed down the firing button. Amid an ear-splitting roar and a deafening screech, the pointed projectile erupted from the barrel, hurtling toward the distant pillar at terrifying speed.
By now, the surrounding bluespawn had been startled awake. Spotting the players, they bared fangs and claws and lunged en masse, desperate to tear these audacious intruders limb from limb.
*BOOM!*
An instant later, accompanied by a deafening blast, the shell slammed violently into the pillar, sending violent tremors throughout the cavern.
Encased in a high-strength tungsten alloy jacket, the warhead cleaved through rock like a razor-sharp battleaxe, gouging out a crater as the shockwave blasted a dozen bluespawn flying through the air.
Yet the destruction had only begun. After breaching the outer rock, the high-energy explosives at the shell's rear detonated in staged succession, generating terrifying shockwaves in a devastating chain reaction.
Propelled forward, the projectile tore savagely through the pillar's interior like an enormous auger, violently punching clean through the stone column and bursting out the far side.
Even then, it did not stop. The projectile plunged into the adjacent cavern wall, ripping through rock strata and annihilating everything in its trajectory.
*CRASH!*
Finally unable to support the weight, the colossal pillar gave way and collapsed with a thunderous roar. The catastrophic failure triggered an even more terrifying chain reaction: the entire cavern shuddered violently, raining rubble as dragonspawn tumbled from the walls and ceiling.
Fractures spiderwebbed across the cavern roof with sickening crunches, spreading wider and denser by the second. An endless cascade of yellow sand gushed through the fissures, pouring down like waterfalls.
The cavern was caving in!
"Roar!"
The awakened bluespawn swarmed the players in a frenzy, but Tiansheng Zhankuang swung his battleaxe, churning up a storm of blood and severed limbs.
The fissures in the ceiling grew denser and denser, and tumbling boulders and cascading sand threatened to bury the squad alive.
Finally, a massive teleportation circle materialized above the four, spinning slowly with shimmering magical radiance that warped the surrounding space.
"Let's go!"
"Get out of here! The cave is collapsing!"
A split second before being buried by frenzied dragonspawn, falling boulders, and tons of sand, the four triggered the teleportation spell, instantly vanishing from this deathtrap.
Chapter 810