"Gorazdla's Lightning Breath, is it...?" Cassius grinned, baring a sinister smile as clusters of electric sparks crackled from the corners of his maw.
Back when he fought that great wyrm blue dragon, he had been exceptionally wary of her Lightning Breath—a single misstep, and the all-destroying thunderbolts would have pierced straight through his body.
Now, however, that power belonged to him.
The Cinder Emperor beat his draconic wings and vaulted into the air. Rearing his massive head high, his eyes flared with blinding lightning as he coldly looked down upon the trembling mortal realm below.
Opening his gaping maw, he unleashed neither an ordinary roar nor a torrent of fire; instead, what erupted forth was a breath of lightning—far more blazing and violent than ever!
*Boom—!*
Formed of pure destructive energy, the dragon breath tore through the sky with an ear-splitting shriek. It instantly punched through the lingering dark clouds ahead and blasted an expanse of mountain rock into powder. Stone fragments wrapped in dancing arcs of lightning scattered everywhere, filling the air with a pungent stench of scorching. The thunderstorm unleashed by the Lightning Breath seared a charred gouge across the earth.
The ferocious lightning danced and leapt between the Cinder Emperor's jagged horns and imposing silhouette, as though an extension of his very will.
At this moment, thunder was his battle cry, lightning his claws and fangs. It was as if this progenitor red dragon had been born from the tempest itself, descending upon the earth and weaving the cataclysms of heaven and earth into his crown, declaring his undisputed dominion as Sovereign of Thunder.
Had any scholar of dragonkind been present to witness such a spectacle, they would have undoubtedly mistaken Cassius for a great wyrm blue dragon disguised by shapeshifting magic—for how could a red dragon wield thunder and tempest like this?
Circling in the sky, Cassius raised a claw, and the invisible might of the storm surged outward.
In an instant, countless bolts of lightning converged as if summoned, coalescing within his palm into a spear of lightning over a dozen meters long, pulsing with heart-stopping radiance.
The Cinder Emperor let out an exhilarating roar, swept his claw forward, and hurled the lightning spear with ferocious force.
*Boom!*
The blinding bolt tore between heaven and earth, striking a small peak like divine retribution. Rock burst apart in an instant; plumes of dust and smoke vaulted into the sky as boulders tumbled down. Even solid stone was melted into liquid slag. Countless blackened fissures spiderwebbed across the mountain before it collapsed with a deafening crash.
"Terrifying power," Cassius mused with a slight nod, unable to suppress his admiration.
Then, the Cinder Emperor spread his claws wide, extending all five talons. Once again invoking the authority of the Storm Sovereign, he seized control of the electromagnetic forces within a radius of hundreds of meters.
Amid crackling currents and a low, hummed vibration, particles and fragments containing metallic elements rose slowly from the dust and rock, suspended in midair.
Glinting under the light shed by crisscrossing electric arcs, they drifted slowly around the Cinder Emperor's colossal form like a dense asteroid belt.
"Manipulating electromagnetic force... A wondrous sensation."
Cassius snapped his talons. The arcs leaped even more violently, and high-voltage current clung to the airborne metallic particles, snapping them from stillness into motion and accelerating them to supersonic speed in an instant.
With piercing screeches, the particles trailed dazzling lightning, tearing across the canopy of heaven like a meteor shower. They plunged from high above, tracing millions of silver-white trails and riddling the earth below with craters.
*Boom!*
Dust erupted into the air, arcs crackled and popped, and a constant drone hummed as deafening claps of thunder reverberated through the high sky. The clamor made all things tremble—and stirred a long-slumbering soul.
"Th-this... this is my power! You took that too?" Gorazdla opened her eyes from her slumber, her voice trembling in sheer disbelief. Despair was etched across her translucent draconic face.
Everything she possessed had been plundered by the red dragon before her, yet she could do nothing about it, forced to helplessly watch him flaunt his might before her eyes.
At this point, Gorazdla bore none of the traits of a blue dragon. Stripped of her deep-blue scales, she was entirely transparent and colorless, like a generic amalgamation of what people stereotypically imagined a "dragon" to be, her divinity completely depleted.
Had she not completed her ascension into a demigod—granting her soul a wisp of immortality—and had Cassius not lacked the strong desire to extinguish her completely, Gorazdla's soul would have long since dispersed, her will wiped out, leaving her without even a grave to rest in.
"Insatiably greedy red dragon..." Fear filled Gorazdla's eyes as she shivered and said, "From antiquity until now, no one has ever been able to control so many disparate divinities. One day, your boundless greed will be your undoing, and you will degenerate into an abomination!"
"Is that supposed to be a curse?"
"If you don't want to lose control—release me, Cassius! Give it back, and we can be allies! I can impart to you all the knowledge I've amassed over thousands of years." As she spoke, a hint of pleading crept into Gorazdla's voice.
After all, she was no longer the great wyrm blue dragon who commanded the storm and thunder, the tyrant whose name shook Taliro. Now, she was nothing more than a fragile soul imprisoned by the Cinder Emperor.
"How 'kind' of you."
Cassius shook his head nonchalantly with a laugh. "Rather than worrying about me, you'd better worry about your own fate. Tsk, tsk—a demigod-tier test subject. That's an unprecedented first since the founding of the empire."
"A... a test subject?"
Gorazdla froze in stunned shock. Never in her wildest dreams had she expected this red dragon to humiliate her like this!
Imprisoning a demigod's soul to conduct experiments and research upon it... Even in the Netheril Empire, audacious enough to commit sacrilege against the gods, few arcanists had ever gone that far.
Her eyes flared with incandescent fury and she shrieked, "No! You cannot demean a glorious great wyrm like this! Even the most despicable, shameless gold dragon would never do such a thing!"
"That is not up to you. What is more—in your current state, you are merely a stray wandering ghost. Can you truly still be called a 'dragon'?" The corners of Cassius's mouth curled upward. He reached out a claw, and rippling waves spread through the space around the dragon soul like a massive vortex ready to swallow her whole.
At this sight, Gorazdla abandoned all shred of dignity, falling to her knees and crying out in terror, "Cassius! Spare me! I can reveal Lady Tiamat's plans to you! I can even tell you every secret of apotheosis!"
Cassius merely grinned and clenched his massive claw tight, shattering the surrounding space like fragile glass.
In a mocking whisper, he said, "Save whatever else you have to say—for my researchers!"
*Swish—!*
Amid violent spatial fluctuations, a massive rift tore open in midair, generating a tremendous gravitational pull that swallowed Gorazdla's soul whole.
When Gorazdla opened her eyes again, she was greeted by a clean white ceiling and various metallic instruments gleaming beneath harsh, blinding lights.
"Where is this?"
Gorazdla was bewildered at first, but sheer fury quickly overtook her. She roared wildly, releasing what little dragon fear she had left: "Insects! Audacious insects, do you know who I am?!"
An imperial researcher clad in a pristine white coat smiled and said, "Lady Gorazdla, welcome to the Imperial Institute of Deities and Magic. We hope you will cooperate enthusiastically in the upcoming experiments. In the spirit of humanitarianism, we will strive to minimize your suffering in the procedures ahead..."
"Ah! Release me! Let me go—!"
...
In Avernus, within Tiamat's divine realm, the Dragon Queen's opulent, magnificent palace was draped in stifling silence.
Inside the great hall, an assembly of chromatic dragons—each at least an ancient dragon in age category, beings whose mere presence in the Material Plane could make mortals quake in terror—exchanged glances and swallowed nervously. None dared speak first, terrified of becoming the target of the enraged Dragon Queen's wrath.
After all, news of Gorazdla's defeat and the annihilation of the Blue Dragon Sect had spread across the Material Plane, and had even rippled throughout the multiverse.
The allied forces—spearheaded by the Cinder Empire's troops, the remnants of the Kingdom of Seleucia's army, and the metallic dragon legions—had fought a pitched battle against the Cult of the Dragon's army at the Locke Great Rift. The Cinder Emperor Cassius and the Thunder Tyrant Gorazdla had personally entered the fray, clashing in bloody combat beneath the gaze of countless beings.
It was said that the battle had shaken heaven and earth, staggering all living souls.
Dark clouds rolled across the sky amid flashing lightning and booming thunder, while the earth was left riddled with countless craters and ravines surging with molten magma. Word had it that the corpses of fallen soldiers and dragonbeasts nearly choked the Locke Great Rift, their foul blood pooling into gurgling rivers.
And in that battle, Gorazdla, who had already ascended to demigodhood, had been crushed by Cassius, ruthlessly incinerated into ashes without leaving behind even an intact corpse.
At last, after an agonizing silence, Tiamat raised her heads coldly. Her gaze was dark and chilling, and a hoarse, vicious voice rumbled from deep within her throats, breaking the silence herself:
"Tell me... In all our vast chromatic dragonkind, can there truly not be found a single subject capable of matching that traitor?"
"..."
Tiamat's voice echoed through the cavernous palace, but the dragons remained deathly quiet, not daring to offer the slightest response.
With a dark expression, the Chromatic Dragon Queen swept her gaze around the hall, looking upon the face of every chromatic dragon. Her piercing glare made their souls shudder uncontrollably, forcing them to bow their heads in timid terror, dreading drawing her attention.
The great wyrm red dragon Kaleymas held his breath, his scales trembling slightly all over. Even so, Tiamat fixed her gaze squarely upon him and asked coldly, "Kaleymas, speak. How should your junior be defeated?"
Hardening his resolve, Kaleymas stepped forward and said with utmost caution, "Your Majesty, that traitor is beneath contempt. Before your sublime might, any mortal being would be ground to dust..."
Tiamat snapped in furious exasperation, "If I must act personally for every single matter, then what purpose do you serve being raised by me?! Useless vermin, every last one of you—get out!"
"This is my final ultimatum: kill that traitor—at all costs!"
Accompanied by a wrathful roar, a violent shockwave erupted through the hall. The chromatic dragons fled in panic, buffeted and tumbling in the tempest outside the majestic palace until they plunged into the Material Plane.
Only the Chromatic Dragon Queen remained in the great hall. Her five distinct heads were shrouded in heavy gloom, her eyes sunken and dark, harboring bottomless malice and murderous intent deep within her pupils.
"Of the three vessels I chose, two have been destroyed by that traitor. Now that things have come to this, the Trinity Ritual can no longer be completed... Kazul must be awakened ahead of time.
"No matter. So long as I seize that traitor's body, I can still reign over the earth and descend upon the Material Plane!"
Her five fearsome heads reared high, gazing toward the distance in unison. Her deep eyes blazed with boundless ambition and rampant lust for destruction, as if eager to tear to shreds everything in sight.
Tiamat spread wings that blotted out the sky, and a stream of vile divine power tore through space, streaking across the sky of her divine realm like a comet and speeding toward a certain location on the Material Plane.
...
In southern Seleucia, Pacaya Volcano.
This place was called the "Land of the Setting Sun" or the "Land of the Fallen Sun" by the Seleucians.
In the benighted ages of antiquity, people believed that when the sun set, it plunged into this land and merged with the earth, releasing the dense smoke that blanketed the skies and birthing countless active volcanoes teeming with immense heat.
Seen from afar, the pitch-black mountain range undulated across the horizon, enveloped in sulfurous fumes so that only its majestic silhouettes were faintly visible, like colossal behemoths lurking within the mist.
Deep within Pacaya Volcano, a pool of lava resembled a colossal crucible. Scarlet magma flowed sluggishly inside like the blood of the earth; enormous bubbles swelled slowly and popped, letting out dull, heavy sighs.
Yet at that moment, a scorching red radiance erupted from the volcanic crater accompanied by a rumbling roar, like the wrathful bellows of an ancient deity buried deep in the crust, brimming with staggering power.
*Rumble—!*
The pool of lava suddenly surged. At its center, an unimaginably colossal outline bulged upward, whipping up thick, scalding waves that splashed against the blackened cliffs along the shore, hissing violently and throwing up pungent clouds of sulfur smoke.
At the center of the pool, the flowing blood-red lava was forced apart, and a crimson figure of inconceivable size, armored in heavy scales, burst through the magma!
Behind that towering figure, two broad wings snapped open like two red-iron mountains rising straight from the earth, bristling with vicious bone spurs and craggy ridges. They flapped slowly, stirring a sweltering gale that swept the sulfur smoke away.
As the smoke and ash cleared, the figure finally revealed its terrifying visage.
Magma cascaded down from its jagged, craggy crown, its horns sharp as mountain peaks, and its heavily armored neck.
His head seemed crudely forged from volcanic rock and molten iron, his scales resembling the rusted plate of ancient heroes. His cavernous maw was parted slightly, and from between his razor fangs surged a sulfurous breath that distorted the air above.
Without question, it was a red dragon—and an extraordinarily terrifying great wyrm red dragon at that.
Upon that ferocious head, a pair of pale-gold slit pupils snapped open.
Those were no eyes of ordinary creatures; they were two suns of molten rock, forcibly bound and compressed within draconic eye sockets!
Deep within his pupils lay an almost solidified, heart-stopping dark-golden core radiating blazing light. The rocks swept by his gaze ignited in an instant, turning a smoldering dark red on the verge of melting.
Then, the dragon's entire head reared sharply upward, dragging with it a cascading waterfall of fire!
*Rumble—!*
With a colossal rumble like the cracking of the continental crust, the red dragon's forelimbs, muscled like mountains, seized the boiling rock along the pool's edge with crushing force.
The rock groaned under the unbearable weight of his massive talons, shattering and melting. Still more magma was displaced by his colossal bulk, rushing outward like an ebbing tide.
Rising slowly with a brutal majesty that seemed capable of crushing any obstacle, the crimson dragon dragged his knotty back, powerful torso, and massive hind limbs... tearing free, one by one, from the boiling pool of molten rock.
Chapter 828