As it turned out, the Demonic Dragon Tyrant in Arthur Ryan's memory was invincible.
After a series of stat buffs in the Synesthesia Dreamscape, Naomi transformed into a time dragon and utterly battered the combined team of Anbaixiu, Catherine, and Arthur Ryan, beating them into the dirt.
Out of forty-seven consecutive all-out battles, Naomi won forty.
Anbaixiu poked a finger right at Arthur Ryan's nose and asked, "Didn't you say you were bound to win?"
Looking rather embarrassed, Arthur Ryan replied, "Then it seems my luck back then was pretty good."
Anbaixiu was speechless. He had already inflated Arthur Ryan's stats to be even higher than in his prime, while Naomi's combat proficiency and mastery over temporal power were nowhere near that of the true Demonic Dragon Tyrant.
Even so, their win rate remained pitifully low.
How the hell were they supposed to fight this?
What made Anbaixiu even more despairing was that, just as Arthur Ryan had said, throwing more powerhouses into the fray made little difference. The only person capable of genuinely affecting the Demonic Dragon was Arthur Ryan; having ten legends like Anbaixiu would hardly change a thing.
Even when Anbaixiu rolled his Dice of Fate to ensure that Catherine's arrow would strike the dragon, the Demonic Dragon could actually accelerate through time to skip past that "unfortunate" future.
Getting hit indeed happened, yet the instant it occurred, temporal power discarded it into the past. What was currently happening became something that had already happened. Such a miraculous feat was an absolute eye-opener even for Anbaixiu. He even began to suspect Arthur Ryan had been bragging—could anyone truly defeat such a terrifying monstrosity?
The only solution Anbaixiu could think of right now was resurrecting his senior brother, having Mister Misfortune sacrifice himself once more to sever every thread of karma binding the Demonic Dragon Tyrant to the world, allowing the power of the entire plane to expel him.
Unfortunately, short of Ao intervening, no deity could resurrect someone who had dissolved into the river of fate.
That was the price of manipulating destiny—one that not even a Wish could offset.
"I wonder how that kid Harvey's training is coming along?"
Anbaixiu toyed with the idea of having the kid make the sacrifice, but that was almost certainly wishful thinking.
No matter how gifted Harvey was, he couldn't catch up to centuries of Mister Misfortune's progress in just a few short months; reaching legend rank within fifty years would already be an incredible achievement for the boy.
"Neither path works? I refuse to believe it."
With a broad wave of his skeletal hand, dense ranks of an undead legion materialized all around them.
Over a hundred Black Tide battleships, two thousand undead mechas of various models, tens of thousands of drones, and cannon fodder counted in the millions.
Naomi had been quite enjoying flying through the air—she could never have been this powerful in real life, but in a dream, anything was possible. Yet when she saw this sprawling, mechanized undead armada, she nearly plummeted from the sky.
Watching the spectacle before him, Arthur Ryan couldn't help but blurt out, "Isn't this going a bit too far?!"
Anbaixiu snorted. "I refuse to believe the Demonic Dragon's power is limitless. I am an undead, and the undead fight with human-wave tactics! Naomi, hang in there one more time. Don't worry—if you can't hold out, just surrender!"
Directed by Anbaixiu's mind, the terrifying undead legion launched into a suicidal assault against the Demonic Dragon.
Frightened out of her wits, Naomi hastily cast Haste and fled.
Flashes of temporal distortion flickered repeatedly, allowing Naomi to blink madly through the undead horde like a ghost.
It wasn't that she couldn't strike back, but that she couldn't stop.
There were too many of them, and the incoming attacks were far too dense. Every second brought a relentless barrage of saturation fire, more than enough to drain her outer layer of temporal defense in an instant.
If she spared even a shred of focus to retaliate, she would suffer hundreds of direct hits.
Yet even under such pressure, Anbaixiu's undead army was ultimately worn down by Naomi.
The Demonic Dragon burned energy, but so did the undead.
The shells aboard the Black Tide weren't infinite, and the mechas' mana would deplete... After a massive battle, Naomi ran until the million-strong army ground to a halt. Although she was thoroughly exhausted by the end, she still managed to scrape by with a win.
Temporal power wasn't incapable of handling crowds; it was just that Anbaixiu's army was so overwhelmingly vast that it drained Naomi excessively.
Seeing that they had lost once more, Catherine was about to offer some comforting words when she noticed Anbaixiu dancing with excitement.
"It works! So the Demonic Dragon really is vulnerable to numbers!"
Catherine couldn't help but say, "With a million troops besieging a single target, who wouldn't be afraid?"
Even a weaker deity would have no choice but to flee before such an army, let alone a mortal.
Yet in Catherine's eyes, such tactics were entirely meaningless.
The Demonic Dragon wasn't foolish. Anbaixiu's million-strong army had just spawned out of nowhere; on a real battlefield, the Demonic Dragon would never give anyone the chance to surround him like that.
Anbaixiu replied, "No, knowing that it works is enough. As long as it works, the direction is right. To deal with the Demonic Dragon, we use saturation attacks to wear him down—that's the simplest and most direct method. As for how to lure him in, wouldn't the upcoming conference be the perfect opportunity?"
"And can you really deploy a million troops at the meeting venue? You worked so long just to build a single Black Tide, and now it's blown to bits."
The elves had close commercial ties with Anbaixiu, so Catherine had a fairly good grasp of his financial situation. The Black Tide hadn't even been rebuilt yet, let alone a hundred of them or thousands of mithral-forged mechas. Anbaixiu probably couldn't muster such a lavish army in centuries.
"No, no, no. When I say I found the key, I don't mean having that many troops—I mean I found what kind of attack is actually effective. In that fight just now, temporal power seemed capable of deflecting anything, but in truth, different attacks affected Naomi very differently. First, wide-area saturation attacks like Storm of Vengeance, an ultra-large-area spell, surprisingly had the least impact on the Demonic Dragon.
"Because against that sort of attack, the Demonic Dragon chooses to apply temporal power to himself—accelerating or rewinding time around his own body to evade the magical damage. Let me just use numbers to make it simple..."
Anbaixiu traced arcs in the air with both hands, sketching out a table. Pointing at the numbers, he explained, "It is known that the Demonic Dragon's temporal power can affect any object and energy, except for Arthur's Divine Smite. If we treat each time the Demonic Dragon applies temporal power to himself as a base unit, let's fix that cost at a baseline of one hundred. When facing large-area attacks, the Demonic Dragon chooses to spend one hundred units of temporal power on himself to evade them.
"Meanwhile, against ranged attacks, even a tiny fireball I toss offhand, deflecting it still takes at least one unit of power. The ratio might not be precise, but that's the general idea.
"A powerful spell like Storm of Vengeance costs several times more mana than a hundred Fireballs combined, but a hundred Fireballs force the Demonic Dragon to expend a hundred units of energy as well. Do you see what I'm getting at?"
Catherine and Arthur Ryan were no fools; they immediately drew the conclusion: the most effective way to attack the Demonic Dragon was with high-frequency, massive-volume single-target attacks.
Anbaixiu was glad both of them were sharp. Catherine might have an ordinary grasp of people's motives, but her grasp of basic mathematics was quite solid. He continued, "So, much of our assault earlier was wasted effort."
With a wave of his hand, the colossal battleships vanished. Battleships relied primarily on magitech cannons; a shell and a thrown rock made little difference to the Demonic Dragon, yet their costs were worlds apart.
The mechas were useless as well. Though the dragon was enormous, melee mithral mechas were like Storm of Vengeance—they couldn't even graze him. Moreover, no matter how many melee mechas there were, the dragon burned the exact same energy to dodge, whereas the cost of deploying mechas was vastly higher.
The cannon fodder relying on physical body-slams didn't need to be so numerous for the same reason, though their poison gas had some utility, so a portion could be retained...
Anbaixiu refined the legion's composition bit by bit, finally creating a brand-new undead force.
It was composed predominantly of numerous micro-drones armed with rapid-fire ranged autocannons—low in firepower, but enough to register an impact on the dragon.
A small number of fodder units served as disposable shields, using self-destructing poison gas to restrict the Demonic Dragon's mobility.
This time, Anbaixiu didn't force the exhausted Naomi to act as target practice, instead directly conjuring a simulated time dragon.
This time dragon wasn't as nimble as Naomi, so Anbaixiu simply waved his hand to give it a massive energy pool.
The battle began anew, and Anbaixiu's new undead legion began pouring out munitions in torrential volume.
As before, the Demonic Dragon used temporal power from afar to disrupt the hit rate of these undead units. Countless barrages zipped past the time dragon without inflicting a single scratch.
However, that was only the beginning.
Under the sky-filling barrage, the Demonic Dragon held out for a minute or two before sustaining damage, as its energy recovery failed to match the drain. No matter how the time dragon altered its temporal applications, so long as the undead maintained their continuous barrage, its energy plummeted drastically, until it was ground down to death.
This time, the time dragon's energy depletion rate was dozens of times faster than before, while the cost of Anbaixiu's newly created army was several times lower than fielding full fleets of battleships.
Anbaixiu paused the scene of whizzing bullets and, pointing at the downpour of projectiles, declared to Catherine and Arthur Ryan, "Low cost, low damage, but dense ranged attacks are the ultimate weapon of attrition! Not even the Demonic Dragon Tyrant can dodge every single drop in a rainstorm!"
Arthur Ryan couldn't help sighing with emotion. "If we had possessed such conditions back then, our casualties would have been vastly lighter."
Back then, they were still swinging longswords and waving staves. Where would they have gotten rapid-fire infantry rifles? If they had possessed such weapons, never mind whether the Demonic Dragon could block them—the other dragons would have been blasted to smithereens long ago.
Catherine, however, spotted the flaws at a glance. She told Anbaixiu, "Actual combat won't be that simple. First, the Demonic Dragon won't just stand there as a target; he will attack proactively, and your undead troops will continuously be wiped out. Second, you seem to have set unlimited ammunition, which is why they shoot without pause, and there isn't even a range restriction. Can a rifle really shoot thousands of meters into the sky? Finally, their accuracy is absurd. You can't possibly field that many marksmen."
Catherine was an expert archer; the marksmen in Anbaixiu's undead legion were more exaggerated than elven archers. In reality, a ranged force of such scale and precision was impossible to muster.
Anbaixiu conceded that Catherine made good points, but he was far from discouraged. Full of confidence, he replied, "Those are all problems that can be solved. The Demonic Dragon can certainly strike back, but we can coordinate our defenses. Are all those wizards and priests just for decoration? They might not be able to defeat the dragon, but can't they even manage to focus on defense?
"Second, ammunition is indeed an issue, but even if we lower the rate of fire, we can still rapidly drain the dragon's power. Not to mention that the time dragon just now was on full defense; if the Demonic Dragon Tyrant chooses to counterattack, his energy will deplete even faster. As for the range problem, we will just have to find a way to restrict his flying altitude. I don't have a good method for that yet, but it should be solvable.
"As for the final issue of troop numbers, I really can't produce that many marksmen. Even if I craft them by weaving souls, at most I can mass-produce troops that know how to aim and pull the trigger... But don't the elves and the other kingdoms have plenty? My rifles aren't only for the undead."
Anbaixiu alone couldn't field such a massive force of skeleton marksmen, but combined with the elves, dwarves, orcs, druids, and the Raging Tide Kingdom, there would certainly be more than enough.
Catherine quickly interjected, "The elves will not let you drag them into the mire."
Anbaixiu chuckled. "What do you mean, 'drag the elves into the mire'? If I prove that the Demonic Dragon has truly revived, do you really think the elven race can stay out of it? Do you honestly believe the dragons didn't wage war on your kind back then out of the goodness of their hearts?
"Even if they didn't act back then, your previous Elven King rebelled alongside Arthur Ryan. Guess whether the Demonic Dragon holds a grudge after coming back?"
Anbaixiu's words left Catherine completely speechless.
It seemed true—the elves really couldn't keep themselves out of this.
"Still, mana addiction hasn't been cured."
This was Catherine's greatest worry: the majority of young and able elves suffered from mana addiction. Unsealing their power to fight would accelerate their demise. It wasn't as simple as unsealing them and sealing them back up afterward; it was like surgery, each time a major operation of cutting open the chest and abdomen. How many times could a normal person undergo that?
"I understand. Mana addiction is indeed a major issue. However, I should be able to solve it."
Anbaixiu's words gave Catherine a start. She couldn't help asking, "Did you lie to me before? Did you actually have a cure all along?"
The sealing technique only treated the symptoms, not the root cause; it merely kept elves alive as semi-cripples rather than curing their mana addiction.
And now this lich was claiming he could solve it?
Catherine suddenly felt deeply betrayed.
Anbaixiu, however, showed not the slightest guilt. "What are you imagining? I always treat people honestly in business. The sealing technique I gave you before was the absolute best solution I could provide at the time, with zero reservations. After all, the knowledge of the Shadow Weave Shar gave me was only that much; figuring out that seal was already the limit of my abilities."
"Then how can you solve it now? Don't tell me you had a breakthrough in your research!"
Catherine glared into Anbaixiu's face. If he didn't give her a valid explanation, she wouldn't be able to believe a single word out of this lich's mouth ever again.
Yet Anbaixiu's reply left Catherine utterly exasperated.
"My research hasn't broken through. I simply have a premonition that I will soon obtain the complete knowledge of the Shadow Weave. Trust me, a divination wizard's premonition is never wrong. When that time comes, I'll be able to find a complete cure."
"How is that possible?" Catherine countered. "Look how badly you screwed Shar over! She would never hand over the knowledge of the Shadow Weave to you. You can't possibly kidnap Shar like you did with the Kuo-toa Goddess."
That was indeed impossible.
The Kuo-toa Goddess suffered from a mental affliction; Anbaixiu had merely exploited a racial psychological defect etched into their very nature. Shar possessed no such flaw, making it impossible to trick her out of her divine realm. Something even Selûne couldn't achieve was completely out of reach for mortals.
Yet Anbaixiu remained as confident as ever. "Trust my intuition. I'm the darling of the Goddess of Fate. Even if this is a pit she dug for me, everything I foresee will come to pass."
Whether anyone else believed it or not, Anbaixiu had absolute faith in his premonition.
The only thing to worry about was... whether this was truly a sugar-coated cannonball tossed his way by the Goddess of Fate. Otherwise, why on earth would Shar give him the knowledge of the Shadow Weave?
Chapter 492