The Cinder Empire, Governorate of the Great Anzetta Waste, the Forbidden Grounds of Dragonblood Mountain.
This was an absolute forbidden zone within the empire's borders. No living soul dared enter or even approach this territory. The only sounds to be heard were the churning of magma and the howl of scorching winds.
At that moment, a massive rift ripped through the sky, and the ground trembled slightly. The drifting ash and wandering flames in the air seemed drawn by an invisible force, leaping and swirling in agitation.
Along the perimeter of Dragonblood Mountain, patrolling beyond the billowing steam and mist, half-dragon soldiers and wyverns all sensed the change. They turned in unison toward the mountain's peak, expressions of fervent devotion washing over their faces.
One murmured under his breath, "That aura... It's His Majesty! His Majesty Cassius has returned! The Empire has won another victory in the south!"
"Long live the Emperor! Long live the Empire!"
*Rippp—!*
With a tempestuous roar, the Red Dragon Emperor tore through the fabric of space. His towering, majestic dragon form materialized above Dragonblood Mountain amidst drifting flames and thick smoke. In his left claw, he clutched the shattered crystalline dragon horn, while his right held the amber of time imprisoning the blue great wyrm's soul. Beating his wings, he descended with a thunderous blast of howling, scorching wind upon the summit that was shaped like a colossal dragon's skull.
The instant he touched down, the gathered flames shrouding his body suddenly subsided and vanished, exposing a wound across his chest that had nearly cleaved him in two. The horrific gash laid bare his ribs and internal organs, though fresh flesh was already knitting together at a pace visible to the naked eye.
As it turned out, he had merely patched his body with flames to intimidate Clan Faria. What was revealed now was the Red Dragon Emperor's true physical state.
Tiamat's divine punishment was extraordinarily potent, infused with devastating, malevolent divine power that had run straight through his body. Even with Cassius's almost absurd regenerative abilities inherited from the third-generation progenitor dragon, it would take a dozen days—or perhaps even months—to fully heal.
Yet Cassius hardly cared.
To a mortal, such an injury would be unquestionably fatal, but to an immortal demigod, it was merely a flesh wound. Someone like Gorazdla, for example, could have her physical body incinerated to ash, yet over several centuries or a millennium, she would coalesce anew—like a phoenix rising from the ashes.
For this reason, whenever ancient churches defeated demigod or quasi-deity-tier foes, they chose to seal and restrain them with divine magic rather than attempt to destroy them outright, as doing so would only leave endless future trouble.
Unless a true deity wiped out a demigod's immortal quality through divine punishment, no one could truly destroy them.
Had Gorazdla chosen to flee to some remote corner of the Astral Plane, the deepest trenches of the Abyss, or the Elemental Plane of Lightning where she could lie low, even Cassius would have been unable to track her down.
Naturally, Gorazdla could also have chosen to seek sanctuary in Tiamat's divine realm. However, with the precedent of Erebus, the Lord of the Rotting Bog, being devoured, the blue great wyrm—freshly defeated by Cassius and stripped of her usefulness—likely never considered that option.
Yet, driven by the same arrogance and haughtiness she had harbored for a thousand years, Gorazdla had apparently been blinded by her desperate longing for apotheosis. She had chosen to return to Clan Faria's lair in search of a new physical vessel, only to be caught red-handed by Cassius.
Cassius stared down at the great wyrm's soul trapped in the cage of time, grinned, and raised a claw to snap his fingers.
Instantly, a narrow opening appeared in the temporal cage, just wide enough for Gorazdla to poke her head out, while the rest of her draconic form remained suspended within the field of Temporal Stasis.
The moment she caught her breath, Gorazdla let out a shrill shriek, hissing in a high-pitched fury: "Cassius, let me out! How dare you imprison a dragon about to ascend the divine throne?!"
Cassius tilted his head and sneered. "Incredible. Even now, with your body destroyed, you're still daydreaming about godhood.
"Did you already forget Erebus's fate? Her Majesty Tiamat didn't hesitate for a single second before devouring him on the spot."
"That's not the same!" Gorazdla scowled, retorting sharply. "How could trash like Erebus compare to me? I am Her Majesty Tiamat's most trusted scion, destined to be an attendant deity in her future pantheon—"
"Is lying to yourself that amusing?"
Cassius arched an eyebrow. "What kind of deity is Tiamat? Greedy, tyrannical, selfish, and utterly ruthless. If Tiamat learned you still had divinity but had lost most of your power, then purely from the perspective of self-interest—"
The Red Dragon Emperor deliberately drew out his words, his tone dripping with mockery. "What do you think she would do? You ought to know better than I do. That's precisely why you didn't seek refuge in her divine realm, isn't it?"
"You... Cassius, your doom is drawing near as well! Once Tiamat descends upon this world, your skull will become an ornament on her throne...!"
Humiliated and infuriated, Gorazdla was left speechless. She could only lash out with erratic curses, hurling what she believed to be the most venomous insults she could muster.
Yet to Cassius, who had been baptized by the information age, such insults were as harmless as a gentle breeze.
He grinned, baring rows of razor-sharp fangs. Right in front of the blue great wyrm, he drew forth the severed horn, its fracture still crackling with bursts of divine lightning.
The moment she laid eyes on the horn, Gorazdla's pupils were instantly overtaken by madness and greed. "Mine! That's mine! Cassius, give it back to me!
"That is part of Her Majesty Tiamat's divine form! Only her favored may possess it! If you use it recklessly, her will will corrupt your mind, driving you out of control and completely mad...!"
"No."
Cassius looked down at the horn, which pulsed with vast divine power, the brilliant arcs of lightning reflected in his pale-gold slit pupils. He shook his head, then smiled faintly. "Now... it belongs to me."
*Crack!*
With a sharp snap, veins bulged along the Red Dragon Emperor's foreleg as his muscles bunched, unleashing a terrifying burst of brute force. Fine cracks immediately spiderwebbed across the surface of the divine horn, releasing a blinding radiance. Tiamat's wicked divine power surged out from the fissures like water bursting through a breached dam.
Gorazdla screamed in sheer panic, "Do you want to get us all killed?! That is the body of a true deity! If it's destroyed, the resulting deluge of divine power will obliterate everything here!"
Cassius merely curled his lip and snapped his claws once more. The power of the Imperial Domain descended from the heavens, its formidable authority of law sealing off everything around the horn, locking even the raging, tempestuous divine energy within its bounds.
Gorazdla froze, her eyes widening in disbelief as she murmured, "A divine realm... How is this possible?"
At this moment, Cassius radiated an aura of supreme sovereignty, as if the universe were his to command. Even Tiamat's divine power was held effortlessly within his draconic grasp.
In Gorazdla's eyes, only one kind of being could achieve such a feat—the very state she had yearned for all her life: a true deity.
Cassius opened his bloody maw wide, scorching flames erupting from the depths of his throat. The crimson Chaos Fire and the silvery-white Flame of Order collided and melded together, ultimately coalescing into a power that could swallow all of creation.
Space twisted and shuddered in response, letting out groans of agonizing strain. The brilliant red-and-white blaze poured from his maw like an unstoppable torrent, resembling a waterfall suspended in midair.
*Destroy all things; assimilate them into oneself.*
—It was Plunder Breath.
A mad thought struck the depths of Gorazdla's soul: *This Red Dragon Emperor wants to swallow Tiamat's divine flesh!*
She jerked her head up, spitting out bursts of blinding lightning as she wailed in desperate, agonized despair: "No! Stop! That's my divine vessel—"
Yet Cassius paid her no heed. Before Gorazdla's very eyes, he pressed on. The magnificent Plunder Breath began tearing apart everything in front of him, consuming the divine, hyper-material Horn of Tiamat.
Winds howled, the earth shook, dark clouds gathered, and lightning crashed. Tiamat's divine power erupted with frantic violence, its terrifying shockwaves threatening to engulf the entirety of Dragonblood Mountain.
*Rumble! Boom!*
Another earth-shattering clap of thunder sounded as piercing lightning tore open the sky. Out in the endless void beyond the Material Plane, a gargantuan beast seemed to be slamming violently against the planar barrier, desperate to snatch away Tiamat's horn.
Across the boundless sky, an immensely grotesque silhouette materialized—a hazy dragon thousands of meters long.
Immediately following it, more monstrous, colossal silhouettes appeared across the heavens. Like sharks catching the scent of blood, they converged upon the realm, seeking to breach the Material Plane and partake in this intoxicating divine feast.
Yet Cassius snapped his wings open and shot into the sky. Spreading his wings at an altitude of ten thousand meters, he gripped Tiamat's horn in his claw, raised his head, and let loose a roar toward the heavens, his aura surging like a torrential storm. Cloaked in a tempest of thunder and raging flames, he stood like a god of natural disasters.
This was the Great Anzetta Waste. This was the Cinder Empire—the exclusive domain of the Red Dragon Emperor. How could creatures from the Outer Planes be permitted to run wild here?
"Get the hell... back!"
*Imperial Domain: Severance!*
A brilliant light capable of scorching the very soul illuminated the firmament, instantly banishing every entity that did not belong to the Material Plane.
As Tiamat's divine power continued to pour from the horn, dark clouds billowed outward. Lightning danced wildly like countless silver serpents, blanketing the sky to form a blinding forest of silver and white. And Cassius stood right at the epicenter of this lightning storm.
Gorazdla looked up, despair pooling in her eyes as she rasped, "No... Could it be... Is he really going to succeed? He can actually devour Her Majesty Tiamat's flesh?!"
*Boom!*
With an earth-shattering rumble, the dark clouds churned, and the sea of thunder blanketing the sky coalesced into the shape of dragon wings. Fierce lightning bolts shot out from the Red Dragon Emperor's pale-gold slit pupils.
He lowered his head and gave the blue great wyrm's soul a sinister grin. "Your turn, Gorazdla."
Terror twisted Gorazdla's expression, her voice trembling violently. "Wh-what do you want?!"
Cassius did not answer.
In the next instant, Plunder Breath infused with divine might cascaded down like a waterfall, submerging the blue great wyrm's soul body.
Under the scouring of the flames, Gorazdla shrieked in agony and despair. Her soul form shrank and thinned, like a boulder eroded by centuries of battering waves.
She began to plead ceaselessly, even offering to submit to Cassius as her master, but before the flames that consumed all things, every plea was meaningless.
In the end, all that remained of Gorazdla's divinity was completely absorbed by Cassius. In the cage of time, there lingered only an almost entirely transparent, faint draconic silhouette.
Cassius did not obliterate it entirely—after all, this was the remnant soul of a quasi-deity-tier great wyrm, making it an extraordinary specimen for the Empire's researchers.
"This sensation..."
Cassius closed his maw and shut his eyes, savoring the influx of divinity and power coursing through his veins. Arcs of lightning coiled around his massive draconic frame like giant silver pythons, crackling and thundering incessantly.
The power accumulated over Gorazdla's long life of more than a millennium was now entirely claimed by the Red Dragon Emperor.
"Utterly magnificent."
*[You have devoured the Horn of Tiamat and the Soul of the Thunder Tyrant, obtaining a massive quantity of primal divinity across the Dragon, Evil, Thunder, and Destruction domains.]*
*[You have assimilated a portion of the primal divinity. Your level in Dragon of Apotheosis has increased to: 8.]*
The Red Dragon Emperor touched down upon the peak of Dragonblood Mountain, his four claws digging deep into the stone, instantly kicking up a cloud of debris.
A deafening rumble reverberated beneath his feet as the earth shuddered like a beaten war drum.
Lifting his head, he unleashed a heaven-shaking roar that pierced the clouds with boundless majesty and might. The entire wasteland trembled under that roar.
The gale whipped violently, the dark clouds surged like tidal waves, and crisscrossing lightning tore through the upper heavens time and again. Yet before the red dragon's overwhelming presence, everything around him—the lightning, the storm clouds, the mountains—felt fragile and insignificant.
Cassius had become the undisputed sovereign of this world, unquestionable and inviolable. Beyond Dragonblood Mountain, the soldiers stared up at the miraculous spectacle in the sky, their shock giving way to pure, unadulterated awe.
Meanwhile, notifications refreshed across Cassius's status panel in rapid succession:
*[You have acquired demigod abilities: Extramaterial Deflection, Iron Mind, Time Resistance, Demigod Spell Resistance.]*
*Extramaterial Deflection: At 5th level, the Dragon of Apotheosis's Armor Class is vastly increased, granting a deflection bonus equal to its Charisma modifier.*
*Iron Mind: At 6th level, the Dragon of Apotheosis becomes immune to mind-affecting effects (charms, compulsions, phantasms, patterns, and morale effects).*
*Time Resistance: At 7th level, the Dragon of Apotheosis gains resistance to time-based spells and abilities; effects such as Time Stop and the breath of a time dragon will struggle to cause you true harm.*
*Demigod Spell Resistance: At 8th level, the Dragon of Apotheosis's epic spell resistance increases by +5, and any spell of 6th tier or below cannot affect you or your immediate surroundings.*
Chapter 825