Geronimo felt an uncontrollable hunger.
Deep within him, an insatiable black hole seemed to be constantly draining his life force, and only by devouring more flesh and blood could he even slightly alleviate the torment.
Paying no heed to Catherine's incoming arrows, his sole focus was cramming every last demon into his maw.
Catherine refused to let the opening slip by. Circling on her giant eagle, her bow never ceased firing.
Arrows laden with starlight sank one after another into Geronimo's body, quickly turning the dragon into a pincushion.
Yet despite the gruesome appearance, the strikes did little. Geronimo's body continued to swell, making the slender shafts look increasingly minuscule. Many arrows were even squeezed clean out of him by his rapidly regenerating flesh.
Catherine sensed that something was amiss. She had truly pulled no punches, pouring everything into every shot.
The longbow in her hands was one of the elven artifacts, capable of imbuing arrows with armor penetration, acceleration, splitting, and a multitude of other enchantments. A single archer wielding it was equivalent to an entire legion of snipers. Yet these magic arrows, which should have been potent enough to fell a balor in a single strike, failed to display their proper might.
Anbaixiu came beside Catherine and said, "Save your strength. Something is wrong with this dragon."
As a full-fledged mage, Anbaixiu was far more sensitive to magical currents than Catherine. The dragon gorging itself on demons wasn't just consuming flesh and blood—it seemed to be absorbing the ambient mana all around them.
When Catherine's enchanted arrows struck the beast, only a fraction of the impact was absorbed by its scales. Most of the magical energy was swallowed directly by the dragon's flesh.
"This looks a bit like your elven anti-magic weapons," Anbaixiu noted. "Any magic touching this dragon has its structure forcibly unraveled, and then it gets absorbed."
"An anti-magic weapon? How could a living creature be made into a weapon? This is a dragon, not a phaerimm!"
Catherine found the notion absurd. The magic circles etched into anti-magic weapons had been designed by mimicking the characteristics of phaerimms, and inanimate weapons could have their internal matrices altered at will. Replicating that inside a living organism would essentially mean transforming the creature into a phaerimm.
"I don't know either, but this dragon clearly isn't normal. I suspect it wasn't even born a dragon to begin with, but modified by someone." Anbaixiu's immediate thought went to a rogue experiment concocted by some mad alchemist.
Before Anbaixiu could devise a way to counter the creature, the dragon seemed to tire of demon flesh. It raised its head and roared at Anbaixiu and Catherine.
The monster had expanded several times over, turning into a colossal behemoth capable of swallowing Anbaixiu whole in a single gulp.
Yet for a body so massive, its speed was terrifyingly swift. With a single flap of its wings kicking up a gale, the fearsome dragon lunged directly before them.
Its jaws parted, and a torrent of blazing fire erupted from its throat.
Anbaixiu shoved Catherine aside, summoned the Golden Throne, and shielded himself behind a magical barrier.
It wasn't that he couldn't dodge; Anbaixiu was merely watching for an opening.
As the dragon breath began to recede after several seconds, Anbaixiu seized the moment to fire a Disintegrate spell right into the dragon's still-open mouth.
A beam of ominous, dark green light pierced through the fading, sweltering flames and slammed deep inside the dragon's throat.
Without the protection of dragon scales, the Disintegrate spell blasted the inside of its mouth to mush, and Anbaixiu could even see a gaping hole blown clean through the monster's neck.
"It has no magic resistance inside!"
Anbaixiu excitedly shared his discovery with Catherine, only to watch in horror as the wound he had struggled to inflict began mending at astonishing speed.
Anbaixiu cursed in outrage. "Ridiculous! What lunatic created this abomination?!"
Absurd magic resistance, rapid regeneration, and a body that expanded the more it ate—given enough time, wouldn't it devour the entire continent?
Scientific madmen truly posed a greater hazard than any other kind of lunatic.
Anbaixiu attempted to cast spells amplified by the power of the Golden Throne, only to discover that the dragon's hide was maddeningly tough. Any offensive magic hurled at it had the majority of its force neutralized, and what little damage remained couldn't even pierce the scales.
Catherine was equally powerless. All she and Anbaixiu could do was evade the dragon's onslaught, falling completely onto the defensive.
The Golden Throne and the Dice of Fate were rendered useless. The Golden Throne could dramatically enhance spell power, but it could not overcome total magic immunity. The Dice of Fate guaranteed that Anbaixiu's spells would strike their mark, yet with the damage largely stripped away, a guaranteed hit achieved next to nothing.
Guided purely by instinct, the dragon chased and snapped at Anbaixiu for a while. Finding it couldn't bring him down, it returned to the ground and resumed devouring the demons pouring from the Gate of Hell.
With every mouthful, its frame swelled once more.
Anbaixiu and Catherine watched with mounting dread as the dragon grew larger, its defenses hardening in tandem. Two legends fighting together couldn't even scratch its scales anymore.
"What do we do now?" Catherine frowned. She had never encountered such a monstrosity. If it kept eating, who knew what it would become?
She could turn and leave, but if the beast invaded the Silvermoon High Court, the elven race would suffer catastrophic casualties. Anbaixiu harbored similar concerns; the monster had to be eliminated now, or his castle would be the first thing obliterated.
As if the Goddess of Fate were playing a cruel joke on this faithless scoundrel, the dragon suddenly abandoned the demons on the ground and took flight straight toward Anbaixiu's castle.
Startled, Anbaixiu gave chase at full speed. If that beast crashed into his castle, his home was finished.
He tossed dozens of the Dice of Fate. The dragon's wing twitched, and with a sharp pop, the joint dislocated.
Anbaixiu had manifested a minuscule probability of dislocation into reality. The titan teetered as if about to plummet, but in the blink of an eye, the dislocated wing snapped right back into place.
Anbaixiu was left utterly speechless. This regenerative power was simply impossible to counter unless the creature could be slain in a single blow.
Once healed, the dragon didn't bother chasing Anbaixiu. It remained locked onto the castle, and over such a short distance, the fortress loomed close within moments.
Anbaixiu hastily took control of the castle's defensive system, unfurling a massive magical ward.
The dragon slammed into it with a thud, shattering the immense barrier to pieces.
The beast was practically a living anti-magic weapon; any magic it touched had its stability shattered, collapsing into nothing.
Fortunately, the impact robbed the dragon of its momentum, forcing it down onto the ground.
Before it could attack again, a horde of aberrant skeletons surged out from the perimeter of Anbaixiu's castle, swarming toward the dragon.
Mantis-shaped aberrant skeletons crawled over the beast like termites swarming prey, their twin scythes hacking wildly and throwing off vast showers of sparks against the scales. The spectacle resembled a collective welding session, enveloping the dragon in flashes of fire and lightning.
Yet such assaults were futile. The aberrant skeletons couldn't breach the scales, and with a single roll, the dragon crushed the majority of them to dust.
Alongside the aberrant skeletons, Anbaixiu summoned several skeleton tanks onto the field.
His original tanks had been demolished when the paladins raided his home, but thanks to his time-dilated private domain, he had quickly built replacements.
A skeleton tank was formidable in its own right, but compared to this titan, it paled into insignificance—its main cannon wasn't even as thick as the dragon's fangs.
Trailing behind Anbaixiu, Catherine looked at the bizarre constructs in astonishment. "What are these? Your skeletons look so strange!"
With no time to explain, Anbaixiu commanded all the skeleton tanks to fire.
Every bone shell found its mark, focusing fire onto the dragon's head and driving the savage draconic skull upward.
Most of the bone fragments failed to penetrate the scales, but the hail of shrapnel was so dense that some slivers lodged into softer crevices, opening slight gashes.
The bone-colonizing virus took hold. White bone coral sprouted from the corners of the dragon's eyes and mouth, rapidly spreading to encase its head.
"What a terrifying weapon!"
Catherine watched with a sinking heart. She had never witnessed so vicious a weapon: bone spikes that proliferated uncontrollably the moment they tasted blood. Were such a weapon turned against the elves, the consequences would be unthinkable. She silently gave thanks that she had forged an alliance with Anbaixiu; meeting such weapons on a battlefield would have cost the elven race dearly.
Yet the bone-colonizing virus, normally infallible, achieved little against the dragon.
Even with its head enveloped in bone coral, the beast merely bellowed in agony and slammed its skull violently into the ground, smashing most of the coral to pieces. Though its head was left a mangled mess, its monstrous vitality forcibly pushed the proliferating bone out of its flesh.
Anbaixiu wasn't surprised in the least. The monster was just that absurd.
The injury only drove the dragon into a greater frenzy. Gaping wide, it began devouring everything in sight.
Whether bone shards, soil, or rocks, the dragon snapped its jaws shut and gulped them down whole.
Anbaixiu's skeleton forces were utterly trampled; fragile undead were useless against this monster. Elves within the castle rushed out upon hearing the commotion, unleashing arrows and spells to assist, but their efforts failed to leave a scratch.
Catherine was forced to shout for them to retreat, knowing that staying behind was pointless suicide.
Escaping wasn't difficult. Mindless as the dragon was, it could not halt the elves from teleporting away, and Anbaixiu had long prepared evacuation routes inside the castle; Isabel and the others had likely already departed.
Yet Anbaixiu's castle itself could not be moved.
Watching the rampaging dragon, Anbaixiu fell into deep thought. The sight seemed strangely familiar.
Catherine flew to his side and murmured, "This monster... looks like it's suffering from mana addiction."
Chapter 138