Meteor Swarm was classified as a ninth-circle spell; its casting difficulty was inherently exorbitant, and its accuracy was notoriously poor. Anbaixiu originally had to rely on the Golden Throne just to cast it, and even then, he could launch four meteors in rapid succession at most.
Yet now, four hundred meteors were plummeting from the sky at once.
The spectacle looked as if the heavens were collapsing and doomsday had arrived.
Laidesi had never seen such a terrifying scene in his entire life. He frantically layered every defensive spell he knew upon himself and steered his mount to evade.
*It's just Meteor Swarm. This spell is notorious for its terrible accuracy.*
Never mind the sheer numbers—the area it covered was vast as well, leaving plenty of gaps between meteors to dodge through. They could definitely evade it.
Yet Laidesi only had time to yell, "Scatter!" before a meteor slammed violently into the head of his red dragon mount.
The impact shattered a dragon horn and cracked open the skull, knocking the entire red dragon instantly unconscious.
The red dragon's body stiffened and plunged toward the sea. Laidesi hastily cast Fly upon himself and Feather Fall upon his mount.
Red dragons possessed powerful physiques; a single meteor was not enough to kill one, only knocking it out. It might wake once it hit the sea, but if it crashed down with full force, the impact would add grave injury atop injury.
Just as Laidesi was lamenting his awful luck that a spell with such dismal accuracy had managed to hit his mount, he looked around and realized that such "coincidences" were happening everywhere.
All twenty red dragons hit by meteors?
What kind of probability was this?
Had twenty people in all of history ever been crushed to death by Meteor Swarm?
What terrified Laidesi even more was that across the sea, even the Githyanki riding ixitxachitl were being struck by meteors. The impacts churned up colossal waves and gouged out whirlpools, dragging the Githyanki down into the depths.
As hundreds of meteors crashed down, Laidesi glanced across the battlefield and saw that not a single one had missed.
This wasn't Meteor Swarm at all!
By the time Laidesi realized something was wrong, it was already too late. Only then did he recall something: when Tiamat explained the disappearance of the Kingdom of the Unholy Hymn, she had mentioned a name.
Ultraman Tiga—a lich, a divination wizard of legendary rank.
Laidesi was shocked. How could he run into that lich here? Why did all the liches in the world look practically identical? Looking only at that skull, Laidesi hadn't recognized him at all!
And now it was too late. This monstrous barrage of Meteor Swarms had doomed the greater part of the Githyanki army.
Every single red dragon had fallen, their casualties unknown. Over half of the ten thousand ray-riders were gone, either crushed to death on the spot or dragged into the sea depths.
Laidesi knew he was completely finished this time. An expeditionary force of a hundred thousand had been reduced to a mere few thousand in such a short span of time.
Just what kind of plane was this?
Laidesi glared at Anbaixiu with venomous hatred, searing the lich's visage into his memory, before gritting his teeth to give the order: "Retreat! All forces, retreat!"
He could no longer care about whether those red dragons lived or died; Laidesi had to preserve the final spark of their people.
The surviving Githyanki fled without hesitation. They had been scared out of their wits by this terrifying meteor shower. How could such a horrifying spell even exist?
Anbaixiu did not stop them from fleeing, because Laidesi was not running away; instead, he was flying toward Anbaixiu.
His casting range was not as vast as Anbaixiu's, so he had to push forward and get closer. Laidesi already understood he was doomed, so he intended to use his life to cover the retreat of the remaining Githyanki.
Laidesi had never imagined that as a legendary wizard, he would ever need to close the distance against an opponent of his own accord. It felt utterly unnatural—just like everything he had encountered before, so absurd, like a pre-dug pit waiting for him to leap right in.
Anbaixiu watched the Githyanki with curiosity. Aside from a full head of white hair, he looked no different from any other Githyanki: an upturned nose and mottled markings all over his body, ugly as a toad.
Yet Laidesi's face now shone with a fanatic resolve for death. Once he entered his casting range, he unleashed all his mana without hesitation.
Dark clouds gathered, engulfing Anbaixiu.
Lightning flashed, thunder roared, gale-force winds howled, and the stench of caustic acid spread everywhere. This was the ninth-circle spell—Storm of Vengeance!
Storm of Vengeance manifested several distinct types of elemental attacks: first acid rain, then thunder and lightning, followed by hailstones... It was essentially an exhibition of nature's most extreme weather phenomena.
And this Storm of Vengeance was no ordinary ninth-circle spell. The moment the dark clouds coalesced, a giant wreathed in lightning manifested in midair. His eyes were filled with blazing white bolts, yet Anbaixiu could still feel the giant's majestic gaze.
He was the avatar of thunder, the embodiment of destruction, the god of fury—Talos, the Storm Lord.
Even Anbaixiu was stunned. This was completely ridiculous! How on earth could a Githyanki summon a projection of Talos? Was he out of his mind? Githyanki weren't the chosen of Talos!
The Githyanki seemed to share a unified faith. Exactly which deity they worshiped Anbaixiu wasn't entirely sure, but it certainly wasn't Talos.
So how could he possibly summon Talos's projection?
No one was there to answer that question, for endless lightning had already swallowed Anbaixiu whole, condensing into a sphere of lightning a hundred meters across.
All the extreme weather condensed into pure, direct lightning of destruction. Wherever it passed, all matter was annihilated, leaving not even air behind.
Everything inside the spherical lightning vanished, leaving behind countless spatial fractures. When the lightning finally dissipated, the collapsing space produced a thunderous boom in the air, but nothing remained inside.
It seemed Anbaixiu had been blasted by lightning until not even ashes remained.
Watching this, all color drained from Laidesi's face.
This was the power of his legendary boon: each day, he could choose a spell and bestow upon it a special effect.
For instance, the transparent Web spell that blocked sensory perception was a special effect he had granted, transcribed for other Githyanki wizards to use specifically against Gareth.
However, the spell would expire after one day and had to be reapplied.
Furthermore, the more powerful the spell, the greater the cost of bestowing an effect. Laidesi had used his legendary boon to turn the ninth-circle spell Storm of Vengeance into a divine-granted spell capable of summoning a projection of Talos.
This single strike had drained him completely, inflicting severe trauma upon his very soul.
He was doomed to die, but at least he had destroyed the lich's physical form. Presumably, by the time the lich regenerated, his kin would have safely escaped.
In this way, he could somewhat atone for the sin of his repeated defeats.
Yet just as Laidesi closed his eyes, Anbaixiu flew up from below, seizing his body with Mage Hand before slapping dozens of sealing spells onto him.
Laidesi's eyes flew wide in shock. Coughing up blood, he gasped, "How is this possible? The power of Talos can destroy anything!"
Anbaixiu chuckled softly, offering no explanation.
Laidesi's Storm of Vengeance might be a divine-granted spell, but was Anbaixiu's Leira's True Illusion any less of one?
From the very beginning, Anbaixiu had never appeared on the front line; he had been controlling an illusion from far away.
The illusion's effect could fool even deities, let alone a mindless projection of brute power forcibly summoned by Laidesi.
Still, it was fortunate he had been cautious enough; otherwise, this one move would have completely scrapped his mithral mecha.
Receiving no answer from Anbaixiu, Laidesi ultimately stared wide-eyed and died a miserable death, choking on blood.
His death was not entirely meaningless—at least after securing his corpse and damaged soul, Anbaixiu gave up on hunting down the rest.
There was little profit to be squeezed from those Githyanki anyway; who had the time to bother with a few thousand deserters?
Carrying Laidesi's corpse and soul, Anbaixiu returned to the small island.
The island was likewise shrouded in mist. Unremarkable from the outside, only upon entering would one discover tens of thousands of specters serving as mana batteries for a colossal magic circle.
Even with the Golden Throne, Anbaixiu could not have generated a hundredfold Meteor Swarm on his own. But reinforced by this magic circle, the mana of tens of thousands of specters, and finally that wondrous ring...
Anbaixiu had studied it at length within his private space and finally discovered the ring's function: the dark magic it converted proved exceptionally useful, serving as a lever that helped Anbaixiu control vast reserves of mana far exceeding his own.
Only through this multifaceted synergy had Anbaixiu managed to unleash that terrifying Hundredfold Meteor Swarm; missing even a single element would have made it impossible.
Returning with Laidesi's corpse, Anbaixiu left the body to the Rose of Decay, then took Laidesi's soul and began dissecting it himself.
As a general of the Githyanki, this man ought to know Tiamat's plans inside and out; his memories were bound to contain pertinent intelligence.
Caring nothing for how precious the soul was, Anbaixiu unhesitatingly began peeling away its layers like silk from a cocoon.
Several hours passed, and Anbaixiu finally extracted the information he sought from the dissected soul.
Anbaixiu remarked with a sigh, "So it really could help the dragons return. Soul transfer—a rather ingenious trick. What a pity it got ruined by me before it could even get off the ground. Dragon Goddess, this is what happens when you cross me."
Tiamat's plan was actually quite simple: use a devil's ritual to swap the souls of the overseas dragons with those of the Astral red dragons.
Arthur Ryan's covenant only restricted the dragons that had committed sins back then; Astral dragons were inherently unaffected. And as long as there was some ambiguity to exploit, the covenant's restrictions could be circumvented. In Arthur Ryan's view, if every species tainted with draconic blood had been affected, there would have been far too many dragon-blooded creatures on the continent swept up in it.
For example, if the body belonged to an Astral dragon while the soul belonged to a native dragon, it could be exempt from the covenant's effects and enter the continent directly. By the same token, a native dragon's body housing an Astral dragon's soul would be recognized by the covenant as a draconic hybrid, granting exemption from the covenant and allowing a return to the continent.
In this manner, over a hundred dragons could return.
Had the Kingdom of the Unholy Hymn still existed, the dragons combined with the Githyanki would have formed an immensely formidable foundation, more than enough to qualify as contenders for continental hegemony.
Unfortunately, it had all been ruined by Anbaixiu.
Anbaixiu cheerfully gathered up the soul threads, thinking to himself, *I wonder how the people watching the live broadcast are reacting right now.*
Chapter 386