Looking at the empty colosseum, Anbaixiu could not help but exclaim, "Are you insane? You sent all those legends into different timelines—can you even bear the consequences of throwing the world into chaos?"
Back when Anbaixiu had traveled to the past once, he had encountered bizarre trials and was forced to participate in major historical events.
Now, the Demonic Dragon had cast a large group of legends into different timelines. Even if the timeline possessed self-healing capabilities, it would undoubtedly suffer severe repercussions.
Ever since Anbaixiu departed from the City of Alchemy, he had felt more than once that something was amiss. Many of his memories regarding historical milestones failed to line up; at the time, he had simply assumed he was misremembering due to his age.
Looking back now, it was likely an "illusion" caused by the Demonic Dragon messing around.
Yet Artross paid no heed to this in the slightest. The moment Arthur Ryan appeared, he launched a frantic onslaught against him.
Even after reincarnating, the Demonic Dragon still harbored his former hatred. Seeing Arthur Ryan rendered him utterly unable to control himself.
Arthur Ryan's mech form was colossal, standing ten meters tall.
Compared to a hundred-meter dragon, however, it still appeared far too diminutive. A single strike from the dragon's tail sent him flying, scattering pieces and debris across the air.
He stood no chance in a direct fight.
The sole reason Arthur Ryan had pulled off an ambush was thanks to the hourglass artifact within his body, which also contained the Demonic Dragon's temporal power. Having served as its artifact spirit for seventeen hundred years, Arthur Ryan could barely manage to channel a sliver of it.
Yet when the Demonic Dragon focused entirely on him, the artifact hourglass inside his body turned into an impediment instead.
Arthur Ryan's body was frozen, leaving him completely helpless to endure the beating. He struggled to fight back with great effort, but before he could even raise his sword, the Demonic Dragon tore off one of his legs.
The Demonic Dragon was not merely trying to kill an enemy; he was venting his wrath.
He battered Arthur Ryan's frame again and again, only to mend him repeatedly, as if intent on making him suffer endless agony.
Yet Anbaixiu did not seize the chance to flee. Instead, he pulled out a bizarre apparatus, watching its readings with rapt attention.
By the time Arthur Ryan was dismantled for the fifth time, Anbaixiu finally saw the readout reach a critical threshold.
Immediately after, with a crisp snap, a tall and berserk figure materialized in the colosseum.
It was Logar, the Orc King, who reappeared on the arena floor brandishing twin axes.
Logar seemed not to have fully processed his surroundings yet, but the moment he spotted the colossal dragon in the sky, he unleashed a roar and hurled his axes toward it.
The axes, glowing with crimson light, whirled through the air with terrifying speed, giving even the Demonic Dragon a fright.
He had clearly banished this Orc King to another timeline—how could he suddenly appear here?
The Demonic Dragon realized almost immediately: his power had been taxed too heavily. Banishment of so many legendary powerhouses simultaneously across the temporal stream had wreaked havoc across multiple eras of the world.
It was a process of continuous attrition, and the toll of history's self-repair was being borne by the Demonic Dragon himself.
Even though he was far stronger now than he had been as the Demonic Dragon Tyrant of the past, he had still underestimated the destructive toll these legends took on the timeline.
The sudden return of Logar, the Orc King, was merely the beginning; if this continued, the other legends would return one by one.
Faced with the flying axes, Artross momentarily put aside his rage and flapped his wings, whipping up a temporal gale that slowed the spinning axes to a speed slower than a snail's crawl.
With a flick of the Demonic Dragon's tail, the battleaxes whipped backward at ten times their original speed.
Logar's eyes went wide. He tried to catch his axes, but his own movements were also reduced to a snail's crawl.
The spinning axes sliced through his ribcage, cleaving Logar's body diagonally in two.
An artifact sharp enough to shatter any armor had turned against its master.
Never in his life had Logar, the Orc King, imagined he would be defeated so easily. He could not even comprehend how he had lost.
Looking at the severed Orc King, Anbaixiu could not help but sigh.
This was precisely one of the many failures they had tested inside the Synesthesia Dreamscape. Temporal power was utterly unreasonable; one could not even rely on magic resistance to withstand it. It merely slowed your speed and altered the flow of time around you. You would not even realize you were sluggish; rather, fatal attacks simply appeared impossibly fast.
Only a concentrated, relentless barrage of attacks could force the Demonic Dragon to deplete his power and rob him of the precision needed to control time.
Yet right now, with only the Orc King here, it was nothing short of a suicide charge.
The Demonic Dragon did not spare the corpse a second glance. Turning his attention back to the battered mech, he pondered how best to torment Arthur Ryan.
Witnessing the Orc King's gruesome death, the gasping, feeble Arthur Ryan finally could not hold back and roared, "How much longer?!"
The Demonic Dragon froze, finally turning his head toward Anbaixiu, who had been hiding off to the side the entire time. In his eagerness to torment Arthur Ryan, he had genuinely forgotten about this lich. What did he mean, 'how much longer'? Did this lich still have an ace up his sleeve?
Anbaixiu crushed the apparatus in his hand into dust and said, "Right on time."
The previously frozen time began to flow, for the temporal barrier erected by the Demonic Dragon was being violently shaken by an overwhelmingly colossal force.
In the center of the colosseum, a rainbow-hued brilliance broke through the earth, surging straight into the sky.
The Demonic Dragon, the lich, and the mech were all within the blast radius of this iridescent light.
Artross had no idea what this was, but his massive size gave him the highest chance of being struck. Casting aside any thought of dealing with Anbaixiu and Arthur Ryan, he channeled his temporal power with all his might, seeking to freeze the rainbow brilliance in place.
The iridescent energy did indeed slow, yet it continued to crawl inexorably upward. Temporal power, normally imperceptible to ordinary senses, manifested tangibly in that moment—innumerable hourglasses materialized, binding the colossal rainbow light like chains, determined to suppress it.
Witnessing this sky-propping might, Anbaixiu mused with emotion, "Time dragons truly are born legendary dragons—you can even withstand this? This power gathers the faith of tens of millions; even a deity would struggle to endure it!"
"You cursed lich! What in the world have you done?!"
Artross gritted his teeth, holding on with sheer willpower. At this point, the only part of his body he could move was his mouth.
Anbaixiu let out a soft chuckle and explained, "Nothing much. I just emptied out my entire life savings to build a massive magic circle, using tens of millions of subterranean undead and kuo-toa as faith batteries to cast that long-lost spell—Karsus's Avatar."
"Karsus's Avatar?! Impossible, that's completely impossible!"
Artross had naturally heard of Karsus's Avatar—it was the terrifying magic that had slain the first Goddess of Magic. But ever since then, the spell had been permanently forbidden; no one should have been able to cast it.
"Under normal circumstances, it would indeed be impossible. The Goddess of Magic would never permit mortals to commit such blasphemy again. But thanks to Shar, the Dark Goddess, and Cyric, the Prince of Lies—after sequential modifications by two deities—this spell underwent a few adjustments. This version of Karsus's Avatar no longer targets only the Goddess of Magic; it can target any pantheon. So long as the gods nod in approval, this rainbow light can elevate any mortal into a deity. Don't worry, it's completely harmless, with zero side effects."
Anbaixiu was not lying this time; he truly had obtained the approval of the gods. The lingering shadows drifting in the sky above were the very gazes of deities, and this spectacle could only unfold with their tacit consent.
Anbaixiu had called in the favor from kidnapping the Kuo-toa Goddess, piggybacked on Talos's influence, and persuaded all the deities present today to sanction this ascension.
As for the scroll of 'The World Forgets Me,' Anbaixiu had not used it on Karsus's Avatar. Instead, he had used it to make the world forget the existence of the Synesthesia Dreamscape.
It was the most lifelike, imperceptible illusion magic in the world.
Anbaixiu had constructed a magic circle on Silver Coin Island similar to the Dream Barrier of the Emerald Dream Forest. From the moment the Ryanians settled in, they had already fallen into a dreamscape. It was not just the Ryanians, but in fact all the guests from the other kingdoms as well.
The reason he had tasked elven maidservants with reception was that elves were immune to sleep and dream effects, allowing them to carry out subsequent operations once the guests fell slumbering.
One by one, the guests were awakened by Anbaixiu, briefed on the plan, shown the function of the lie-detecting rings, and instructed to act their parts.
Even so, the Ryanians proved stubborn; among their retinue, only Old William and Alan were willing to cooperate within the dream.
The remaining characters could only be generated through the dreamscape's fabrications, which made them look foolish during the battle and kept them from displaying the true prowess of legends. Fortunately, the Demonic Dragon failed to notice anything amiss, eventually slipping up in the dream and exposing his true identity.
By that point, everyone had already been relocated elsewhere—specifically, to Talos's Arena of the Storm. Anbaixiu had similarly spent an enormous fortune to construct a colossal magic circle here.
Karsus's Avatar—Divinely Modified Edition.
An ordinary person would never be able to use it even if they had the spell, for such a massive spell required not only immense resources and manpower, but also divine approval.
If one forced their way to godhood, what kind of god would they even become?
Were they not afraid of being squashed by Ao, or devoured by evil deities?
Moreover, the venue chosen was Talos's domain. Attempting it without Talos's consent was sheer suicide!
Fortunately, Anbaixiu's divine connections far surpassed those of any mortal, which made this grand spectacle possible.
"What on earth are you trying to do?! Karsus's Avatar? What scheme could you possibly have to go through all this trouble?!"
Artross still could not fathom it; he instinctively felt that Anbaixiu was deceiving him. The rainbow light exerted tremendous pressure on him, leaving him unable to relax for a second as he gritted his teeth and held on with all his might.
"What scheme could there be, Your Dragon Majesty? I merely wish to send you back into the embrace of the Dragon Gods. So long as you stop resisting, you will ascend to godhood, and everything in the mortal realm will no longer concern you."
Just as Anbaixiu said, there were only three beings present.
Whomever the rainbow light settled upon would ascend to godhood. Though they would merely become a very weak deity, it was more than enough to shed mortality and leave this mundane realm entirely behind. With the Demonic Dragon possessing the largest frame, he was bound to be the first one locked onto by the magic circle.
Once ascended to a divine realm, nothing in the mortal world would have anything to do with him.
Of course, if he failed to endure the power and was blown to pieces on the spot, that would be even better.
Chapter 512