"Well done."
As it turned out, the frontline combat engineers had rigged the stone bridges with explosives long ago, waiting until the spans were packed with as many enemies as possible before detonating them to inflict maximum casualties on the Cult of the Dragon.
With the stone bridges collapsed, everything went back to square one. The Cult of the Dragon's legions remained trapped under the Empire's furious bombardment, unable to extricate themselves for the moment.
Yet at this point, spellcasters among the Cult of the Dragon finally stepped forward. Raising their staves, they chanted incantations, conjuring pure force energy in midair to erect towering, translucent bridges.
Barring high-circle spells like Disintegrate, a wall of force was exceedingly difficult to break, rendering it nearly immune to any physical impact.
With these bridges forged of force energy, and urged on by the shouts of the evil dragon priests, bluespawn and cultists surged onto the spans time and again, launching charge after charge toward the far bank of the Locke Great Rift Valley.
Throughout these charges, countless evil dragonspawn and cultists plunged into the abyss, tumbling to the canyon floor.
Deep in the chasm, densely packed corpses piled atop one another in a horrifying spectacle. Their deaths were gruesome—most had been riddled with bullets before being smashed into unrecognizable paste.
Furious, Jude raised his dragon-headed scepter. The dark clouds above him spread at blinding speed, blanketing the allied positions as bolts of lightning crashed down, instantly obliterating several imperial firing nests.
At last, at the cost of countless lives, the vanguard of the Cult of the Dragon—more than a dozen towering, muscular bluespawn godslayers—finally set foot upon the northern rim of the rift. Unleashing thunderous roars, they swung electrified greatswords, slashing toward the imperial soldiers amid a crackle of sparks.
Boom!
Electric sparks showered in all directions as sandbag fortifications were sheared in two, and the imperial soldiers manning the machine guns behind them lost their lives, reduced to blackened corpses.
In less than a few minutes, the bluespawn godslayers tore through the imperial frontline machine-gun nests with unstoppable momentum. Vast swarms of bluespawn and cultists flooded the northern rim like a rising tidal surge, instantly engulfing the forward imperial troops.
At the sight, Adrian held his longsword aloft. The blade unleashed radiant beams of golden light, impaling several evil dragonspawn in an instant.
"Compatriots of Seleucia, people of Amaunator, follow me! We will reclaim our homeland with our own hands and purge these filthy monstrosities from this sunlit realm!"
Behind him, Seleucia's finest paladins and fighters, clad in polished silver armor, raised their weapons with roaring battle cries and charged into the hideous, loathsome dragonblood beasts.
Whoosh—
Adrian swung his blade, sending forth an arc of golden light that cleaved a massive storm lizard clean in two at the waist, leaving it to let out a dull, crackling wail of electricity.
All around him, however, several bluespawn ambushers had already closed in. Snarling, they leaped at the paladin from multiple directions, intending to rip him to shreds.
Adrian met them with cold eyes. Spinning rapidly, he guided his longsword through graceful arcs around his body; blades of light whipped into a tempest, slicing the bluespawn ambushers apart mid-leap as chunks of flesh and gore scattered in every direction.
Yet one bluespawn ambusher slipped through a gap in the radiant storm, lunging straight for Adrian's back.
"Your Grace, look out!"
An arrow shimmering with faint radiance whistled through the air and drilled straight through the creature's head. Warm blood and brain matter burst out the other side alongside the arrow tip.
The one who loosed the shot was a middle-aged man standing nearby. He wore blood-stained leather armor, his weathered face etched by hardship and marked by a gruesome scar cutting across his features—a memento left by a dragon's claw.
His name was Liam Peyton, an archer fighter from a small city in southern Seleucia. Years ago, a young red dragon had razed his hometown and burned his entire family alive; he had fought back with desperate resolve and pierced the red dragon's heart with an arrow.
From then on, Liam had gone into hiding, drifting across Seleucia. He meticulously planned hunts against predatory dragons and dragonborn that terrorized the lands, earning the title of the Hidden Dragon Hunter and a hefty bounty on his head from the Cult of the Dragon.
Now, he stood here for one purpose: to take vengeance on these dragons who treated humankind as slaves and vermin.
"Damned human, I know who you are!" In the distance, an evil dragon priest glared at Liam with venomous eyes, raising his scepter to loose a jagged bolt of lightning.
Liam remained cool and composed. Leaping high to evade the lightning strike, he nocked an arrow, drew the bowstring, and took aim in midair—all in one fluid, seamless motion.
Whoosh—
Amid the howling wind, the arrow punched a bloody hole straight through the forehead of the half-man, half-dragon skull, knocking him over backward.
"Pathetic human traitor," Liam muttered, watching coldly as the dragon priest plunged into the rift.
Just then, a deep, wrathful roar reverberated from above, and a colossal, monstrous shadow engulfed the archer fighter: "It's you! You insolent little worm!"
Hearing the familiar voice, Liam looked up to see a black dragon diving down at him with a roar. Its right eye was blinded, continually oozing festering pus.
"So it's you..."
Liam's gaze turned razor-sharp as he looked upon the black dragon. His muscles tightened, and his palm grew slightly damp against the bow.
This black dragon had once terrorized southeastern Seleucia, taking sadistic pleasure in devouring human children, until Liam shot out its eye—making it an old adversary.
"Then I'll just shoot out your other eye too!"
Without hesitation, Liam raised his bow, drew the string taut, and aimed at the one-eyed black dragon in midair.
Whoosh—
The arrow shot forth with an ear-piercing sonic boom, darting straight for the black dragon's sole remaining left eye.
Yet the black dragon had anticipated the move. Roaring in fury, it spewed highly corrosive acid from its maw, instantly dissolving the arrow in mid-flight.
At this moment, less than a hundred meters separated them, but Liam did not run. He simply stood his ground, locking eyes with the beast.
In the black dragon's eyes, this mortal had succumbed to utter despair and lost any chance to flee. A sinister grin twisted across its gaunt dragon face as the intoxicating thrill of impending vengeance washed over it.
"Human, I'll grind you into paste!"
Just then, a blazing ball of fire surged down from the heavens, slamming directly into the black dragon and blasting it backward, nearly throwing it to the ground.
Roar—!
A clarion dragon roar echoed across the sky. Terrified, the black dragon looked up to see a majestic, muscular gold dragon appear overhead, its broad wings spread wide, the wing membranes gleaming with a metallic sheen.
"Black dragon! Go to hell and keep your mother goddess company!" Flapping its wings, the gold dragon dove downward and slammed its massive frame into the black dragon, sending it hurtling through the air.
As the mightiest among the metallic dragons, gold dragons routinely held the upper hand even against red dragons; overpowering a black dragon was child's play.
The two leviathans—one black, one gold—tangled and clashed in midair, scales and dragon blood scattering in every direction. In mere moments, the black dragon was covered in wounds, with great chunks of flesh torn away and a wing broken, leaving it to limp away in panicked flight.
Even as it fled, the black dragon could not resist turning back to spit parting threats: "Gold dragon, I won't let you off! One day, I will—"
Whoosh—
A razor-sharp arrow tore through the air. In the split second the black dragon opened its jaws, the shaft drove deep into its throat, erupting clean through the back of its neck.
Blood gushed from the black dragon's mouth as its eyes glazed over in disbelief. It fluttered its wings unsteadily a few times, then plummeted into the depths of the rift.
A hundred meters away, Liam lowered his bow, his right hand trembling faintly from the strain. Glancing at the falling black dragon, he sneered, "Arrogant beast, you forgot about me entirely. Did you already forget how your right eye was blinded?"
Circling high above, the prime-aged gold dragon watched the black dragon plunge into the abyss, its expression icy cold. "This is war, chromatic dragon. You must pay for your deeds..."
With a sweep of its wings, the gold dragon lunged toward a blue dragon circling over the rift. Lightning and fire intertwined as the roaring of dragons reverberated endlessly through the canyon.
As the legions of the Cult of the Dragon seized the northern rim, the chromatic dragons cast aside their fear of imperial artillery and crossed the rift to assault the allied forces.
Meanwhile, metallic dragons—gold, silver, brass, and more—flapped their lustrous metallic wings and soared into the sky, forming an unyielding bulwark against the vile chromatic dragons.
Like dappled clouds, dragons clashed and grappled across the heavens. Lightning, flame, frost, and acid—destructive breath weapons crisscrossed through the air as dragon blood and scales rained down. Amid unending shrieks and roars, the skies descended into chaos, and dragons tumbled from above one after another.
Over the past several millennia, chromatic and metallic dragons had clashed in countless skirmishes, yet fatalities were exceedingly rare. When confronting particularly wicked chromatic dragons, metallic dragons tended to banish them to Outer Planes such as the Abyss or the Nine Hells, barring them from ever returning to the Material Plane. But ever since this war began, both sides seemed hurled back tens of thousands of years to the era of the Dragonfall War. Vendettas, assassinations, and ambushes were rampant, and the death of dragons had become the routine of the battlefield.
At the same time, along the sprawling front stretching over a dozen kilometers, allied soldiers clashed with the legions of the Cult of the Dragon amid deafening war cries.
Dwarves swung their warhammers, leaping up to shatter the knees of evil dragonspawn. Silver-moon elves drew their bows, loosing volleys of lustrous silver arrows that fell like meteor showers to pierce the monsters' scales.
Most spectacular of all was the titan godblood from the Kingdom of Cassander: that flawless-featured giant led his warriors into the charge, his footsteps making the earth quake as his massive golden greatsword cleaved through the scales of storm lizards with ease, rending any evil dragonspawn that dared bar his path.
In individual prowess, tactical skill, and military organization, the allied troops far outmatched the Cult of the Dragon's host, which could hardly even be called an army—it was merely an assemblage of bloodthirsty beasts driven by primal instinct to slaughter.
Yet the Cult of the Dragon had pillaged the entire western half of Seleucia. Slaughtering, plundering, and kidnapping everywhere, they had scraped the land clean to feed their drake-breeding pens and provide sacrifices for Tiamat, mass-producing an enormous army of dragonspawn. As far as the eye could see, the evil dragonspawn stretched across mountains and plains like an endless sea, giving them an overwhelming advantage in numbers over the alliance.
But the appearance of the players overturned that balance. Ancient teleportation circles lit up across the battlefield, disgorging countless players who charged whooping and hollering into the cultist legions.
"Holy crap, look at all this walking EXP! Last time we had a mob rush this juicy was when we fought demons!"
"Kill 'em all—!"
"I'm gonna level up!!"
Brandishing their weapons, the players surged out in full force. By this stage of the game, most players were low-to-mid-tier adventurers of level four or higher, qualified to serve as junior officers in standard armies. A unit comprised of such deranged, fearless adventurers was undeniably terrifying.
What was more, many elites and even pro players were among them—figures like Gangtie Kuangchao, Dawei Tianlong, and Tian Sheng Zhan Kuang. Their character levels were generally above level ten, and they possessed imperial custom-crafted equipment and unique contracts. Their combat power could match true dragons; even Mantou, a self-proclaimed pro, was far beyond what ordinary evil dragonspawn could handle.
Once the players flooded the battlefield, the tide turned dramatically. The cultist army, which had held the numerical upper hand, was pushed back step by step, teetering on the verge of a full-scale rout.
In one local engagement along the northern rim of the Locke Great Rift Valley, Dawei Tianlong led the monk players of the Shaolin Temple guild into close combat against the evil dragonspawn.
These monks were hardcore physical purists who pushed their bodies to the absolute limit. The Eighteen Bronze Men among them claimed that training in the Diamond Art had made their skin harder than steel—though investigations revealed they had actually bought skin-graft procedures from the Machine Cult.
In melee brawl, the sharp claws and fangs of the evil dragonspawn could scarcely breach the monks' defense, whereas the monks' flying fists left the dragonblooded beasts spitting blood, seeing stars, and suffering fractured bones.
In the distance, a storm lizard lowered its head with a roar, fierce arcs of lightning crackling from its massive horn as it built up terrifying energy.
"Insolent fiend! How dare you attempt a sneak attack—shameless wretch, you infuriate me!"
With a furious roar, Dawei Tianlong cracked the ground underfoot and vaulted over ten meters into the air, bringing his fist down violently onto the storm lizard's skull.
Boom!
The surges of lightning about to discharge wrapped around Dawei Tianlong's muscular frame, but like a wrathful Vajra guardian, he shattered the storm lizard's horn with his massive fist, crushing its cranium to splinters.
Letting out only a feeble whimper, the storm lizard collapsed heavily to the ground, motionless—bludgeoned to death by a single brutal punch.
Dawei Tianlong merely shook the blood from his knuckles and dashed toward his next target.
Chapter 814