In the distance, the pitch-black Doomsday Dragon looked down upon Cassius. A piercing glare shone from his dark-golden slitted pupils, his gaze laden with undisguised mockery and derision.
Tilting his massive head, he said coldly, "Did you think this would be enough to stand against me? Cassius, you are far too conceited."
Kazul's voice grew louder and louder until it erupted into an enraged roar: "With just this—you dare presume to make an enemy of a god who brings doomsday?!"
Amidst that earth-shattering roar, a pitch-black torrent a hundred meters in diameter surged forth from the great wyrm red dragon's maw, sweeping toward Cassius with colossal momentum.
In this moment, the entire world seemed to sink into dead silence, leaving only the concussive blasts of that black light obliterating all in its path. This was the breath capable of bringing doomsday.
"Boom—!"
Roaring, Cassius beat his wings and soared into the sky amidst searing gales. Raising his right claw high, he drew together a boundless surge of lightning, condensing it within his grasp into a silver-white spear a thousand meters long.
Engulfed in storm clouds and tempestuous winds, thunder rumbling and lightning flashing, the Cinder Emperor stood like a master of the storm as he hurled the spear forged of pure energy with all his might.
Spear of Lightning!
Silver-white arcs of lightning vaulted across the sky, tearing through the ash-shrouded firmament to meet the black torrent head-on.
One had to understand that Kazul's Doomsday Breath was the product of divine power. Even if it was faint and fragmented divine power, it was entirely on a different level from mortal elemental magic—to say nothing of the fact that it was saturated with the most brutally destructive divine power of ruin.
Yet the Spear of Lightning Cassius unleashed was by no means to be underestimated. It was neither ordinary elemental lightning nor the magic of storm giants; it was the destructive divine thunder Cassius had wrested from Gorazdla.
As one of the "Three Gods" recognized by the Cult of the Dragon, Gorazdla—known as the Thunder Tyrant—similarly bore a world-ending mandate. Her Lightning Breath was even the most potent among the three champions, something not even Kazul dared ignore.
"Boom!"
The explosion shook the heavens and earth, ringing across the sky. Fire and lightning collided, spawning over a hundred squalls across a hundred-mile radius and whipping up monstrous shockwaves.
The lightning spear actually pierced through the black light in an instant, crashing down toward Kazul with the thunderous roar of heaven's wrath.
"Is this... Gorazdla's power?"
"How is this possible?"
Kazul's expression shifted drastically. Brow furrowed in shock and fury, he had never imagined that in a mere matter of days, the Cinder Emperor could have plundered and completely assimilated the power of his old rival.
Yet there was no time to ponder. Kazul's colossal wings, vast enough to blot out the sky, snapped shut before his body like a gargantuan curtain, bearing the brunt of the strike head-on.
"Boom!"
Thunder crashed. A massive hole nearly a hundred meters across was blown through Kazul's draconic wing. Limitless black mist surged forth, filling the wound and dispersing the tendrils of lightning clinging to its edges.
"To think that in such a short time, this traitor could grow to this extent... It seems I must eradicate him completely!"
Kazul glared at the distant dragon enveloped by storms, his eyes terrifyingly dark. The surrounding space itself seemed to sense his fury and began to tremble faintly.
The power of the Cult of the Dragon's "Three Gods" had always maintained a delicate balance. Though Kazul looked down upon Erebus and Gorazdla, the combined might of the great wyrm blue and green dragons was enough to counter the red dragon, forming a tripartite stalemate.
After awakening this time, Kazul's strength had surged immensely, placing him infinitely close to true godhood. He had intended to seize this opportunity to devour the remaining two demigod dragons in one fell swoop and usher in Tiamat's descent.
Yet Cassius's arrival had utterly upended everything, shattering his plans and overturning the script he had long prepared.
This red dragon emperor had resolved to make an enemy of the Queen of Chromatic Dragons, defeating Erebus and Gorazdla one after another, seizing their divine bodies, and wiping out both the Green and Blue Dragon Sects.
Facing Cassius, who possessed two divine bodies, even Kazul could not afford the slightest carelessness.
With this thought, Kazul raised his claws. Innumerable massive boulders floated into the air, assimilated by the apocalyptic cinders and transformed into countless pitch-black meteors that rained down upon Cassius.
Cassius did not dare dally either. Holding his head high, he stared straight at the black meteors. A thousand beams of light instantly erupted from his narrow golden pupils, shattering the meteors in midair.
After claiming Erebus's "Eyes of Tiamat," Cassius's eyes had been enhanced to the utmost limit, and his Cataclysmic Dragon Eye had evolved into the Eyes of the Primordial.
Not only could it transcend space-time and see through the essence of all things, but it could also discharge beams comparable to breath weapons and craft illusions indistinguishable from reality.
Most of the meteors were intercepted by the beams bursting from Cassius's eyes, yet several still plunged rapidly toward him.
Cassius reached out with a claw, intending to block them with forcefield magic, only to discover that the meteors punched straight through the walls of force. It was only when he unleashed a blast of divine breath that they were pulverized in midair.
He preserved one of them, however, intending to use this opportunity to probe the true nature of Kazul's power.
Yet the moment his claw made contact with the meteor, pitch-black light burst from it. Exuding an aura of utter despair, it swept over the surface of Cassius's scales and rapidly spread, disintegrating one of his toe digits into ash.
Cassius hurriedly cast the meteor aside, destroying it with a beam from his eyes, and channeled divine power into the wound to swiftly regenerate his flesh.
*So this is destructive divine power—the power Kazul uses to end the world...*
Cassius was deeply shaken. The black light Kazul unleashed could corrode virtually any matter in the Material Plane; even the scales of the red dragon emperor, harder than diamond, were reduced to ash in an instant.
This was no longer physical erosion, but corruption at the level of foundational laws!
In other words, "destruction upon contact with the black light" had become underlying code written into the Material Plane—inviolable, immutable. Only phenomena at the level of divine power could halt its spread.
What a horrifying ability!
As if suddenly realizing something, Cassius snapped his head around to look down at the earth.
He saw countless fragments of black-light-laced stone from the shattered meteors raining down onto the ground, blasting out pitch-black craters. Those craters were steadily expanding like cosmic black holes, greedily swallowing all surrounding matter and converting it into the cinders of doomsday.
At this dreadful pace of expansion, more than half the battlefield fell in a matter of moments, degenerating into an apocalyptic restricted zone choked with ash, smoke, and flames.
"Long live the New Age!"
"Praise Lord Kazul!"
Cultists of the Dragon knelt upon the earth, their faces wild with fanaticism, praying at the top of their lungs as they let the black light engulf them.
In their minds, dying in the apocalypse would allow them to ascend to Tiamat's divine realm, reincarnating as noble dragonborn to rule the new world after her descent.
As for the reality—whether the Queen of Chromatic Dragons would ever deign to restore souls devoured by divine power—none could say.
"Do you see now, Cassius?"
"Surrender your resistance! The coming of doomsday is foreordained; even you cannot stop it!"
Kazul's roar swept across the entire battlefield, causing tens of thousands to collapse unconscious in sheer terror and panic. Those nearer or weak-willed had their souls torn apart outright, falling dead on the spot as hollow husks.
"Roar—!"
Cassius's answer was a roar of sky-shattering fury. Beating his wings, he enveloped his body in endless arcs of lightning that formed a pale, bone-white armor, annihilating the oncoming black light.
Cassius drew a violent breath, nearly vacuuming the air dry. Vast elemental energy rushed into his lungs, transformed into lightning by the Authority of the Storm Lord and coalescing at the horns atop his head. Finally, it erupted forth as a beam of lightning that illuminated the heavens.
This was Gorazdla's proudest and most destructive ability:
Lightning Breath!
"Boom—!"
Deafening thunder echoed through the sky. The bone-white beam of lightning surged like a roaring river, bridging the sky and tearing through the dark expanse to crash against Kazul's apocalyptic body.
"Heh, the breath of that blue-skinned lunatic... How nostalgic!"
Kazul grinned savagely. Beating his titanic, sky-blotting black wings, he stirred up a furious black gale. The Heart of Tiamat within his chest pounded wildly with the dull, resonant thud of war drums. He slowly parted his cavernous, bloody maw.
Pitch-black, murky ash and crimson flames gushed from the depths of his throat, carving what looked like a bleeding wound across the sky—the World-Ending Fire.
"Boom!"
The two breath attacks clashed, instantly detonating a horrifying shockwave. A tempest swollen with thunder, fire, and ash expanded outward with frightening speed, swallowing tens of miles of airspace in its embrace.
"Look out—!"
"Super-Alpha energy fluctuation detected!"
"It's too late! Quick! Activate the maximum defense field immediately!"
"Tiamat above, what immense power! Praise Kazul, the World-Ending Dragon!"
Whether allied soldiers or cultists of the dragon, anyone swept up by the tempest was struck by lightning, scorched, and torn to shreds in mere seconds, becoming part of the drifting ash that filled the sky.
At the eye of the storm, bone-white lightning and deep-crimson fire intertwined, waxing and waning in fierce contention. Neither breath ceased, each continuously pouring forth power.
Under the terrifying force of these breath weapons, two charred trenches thousands of meters long and several meters deep were gouged into the earth, resembling straight canals carved by titans.
Maintaining the terrifyingly taxing energy output, Cassius gritted his teeth and roared, "Kazul! Do you truly believe Tiamat would ever permit an unconstrained god to exist beneath her?!"
Kazul maintained his Doomsday Breath just the same, replying coldly, "I am Her Majesty the Dragon Queen's most trusted champion! She promised me—she would make me the god of the Seleucians!"
"A promise?"
Cassius opened his claws, coalescing a blazing miniature sun within his grip, and hurled it forcefully toward Kazul with a cold sneer. "You actually believe a promise from the Queen of Chromatic Dragons? Give up those ridiculous, delusional fantasies, Kazul!
"If you win, you will indeed become a god—but only as Tiamat's avatar, an empty puppet carrying her will!"
"Nonsense!"
Kazul bellowed. Rolling ash condensed into a massive black claw hundreds of meters long, seizing the blazing sphere of radiance in its grip.
Solar divine power detonated violently. Hundreds of light beams pierced the ash, bursting through the black draconic claw as if striving to break free.
Yet Kazul merely clenched his claw tight. The black light circling him surged in, swallowing every last ray and completely extinguishing the city-destroying miniature sun Cassius had cast.
Cassius watched with cold detachment, hardly surprised.
After all, his opponent was Kazul, the "Crimson Cinders." For beings beyond demigods like them, an attack of that caliber was merely testing the waters.
Beating his wings, Cassius climbed higher, punching through the clouds of ash. From a height of ten thousand meters, he looked down upon Kazul and said coldly, "Heh. Kazul, you are merely deceiving yourself with the fantasy of godhood."
Kazul likewise beat his sky-blotting wings, whipping up furious black winds that raked across the earth as he surged upward. Roaring toward the sky, he cried, "I have been her champion for thousands of years! I understand Her Majesty's nature far better than you ever could! Your life is as fleeting as an ant's—how could you possibly comprehend the greatness of the Mother of Evil Dragons?"
"Furthermore—"
Kazul paused, a cryptic undertone creeping into his voice. "Do you think you are so different from me—vessel chosen by the All-Naught?"
"What did you say?"
Cassius was jolted to the core, his pupils trembling in shock.
Lord of Fire, the All-Naught, the World Purger—these were all honorifics of Karaxis, the mad dragon god. How could this great wyrm red dragon know of his connection to Karaxis?
Had Tiamat disclosed this to him?
Before Cassius had time to think, Kazul's wings, spanning over a thousand meters, swept forward carrying billowing apocalyptic cinders. They stirred a terrifying hurricane high in the sky, setting off violent tremors in the fabric of space.
Cassius's left wing was lashed by the black wind, catching fire with crimson flames that threatened to turn it to ash.
If that blow landed squarely, Cassius's physical form would likely be obliterated by the destructive divine power in an instant, reduced to fodder for the apocalypse.
"Roar—!"
At this sight, Cassius turned his head and bellowed. He inhaled with immense force, virtually vacuuming the air for hundreds of meters around and packing it all into his lungs.
Inside his chest, the dragon crystal underwent a rapid magical fusion reaction, channeling a breath weapon formed from the combined origins of Solar Divine Fire, the Flame of Order, Hellfire, and other flames into his breath organs, compressing it to the absolute extreme.
Eternal Breath!
The next moment, Cassius opened his great jaws. First came a blinding speck of brilliance, followed by a torrent of dazzling draconic flame that erupted from deep within his throat. Sweeping downward, it slashed like a blade straight through the pitch-black sky, tearing away half of Kazul's wing.
Chapter 853