City of Sin

Book 7, 124

The Prime Evil

While Richard had expected the enemy to be waiting for him on the other side, he was still surprised. He looked up to meet the dragon’s gaze, “So there really are dragons, and there’s a prophet here.”

The dragon just roared arrogantly, almost laughing with pride. However, Richard just chuckled as he swept his gaze across the draconians down below, “These people aren’t here to welcome me, are they?”

“You cannot take the coordinates away with you,” the dragon answered, “The invader must stay here forever!”

”Heh, you of all people should know that prophecies aren’t omnipotent. Do you realise where you went wrong?”

“Wrong?” the dragon roared in anger, his voice rumbling, “By the Prime Evil, that is impossible.”

Richard’s face suddenly twitched, “Wait, what did you just say? The Prime Evil?”

“She is our lord.”

“When you say Prime Evil... You don’t mean Tiamat, do you?”

“It is the Prime Evil to you, mortal! Such disrespect!” the dragon bellowed.

“So... this is the place the Five-Coloured Dragon comes from too.”

“That is the Sovereign Divine Dragon! How dare you sully their names, you vulgar creature?”

Richard looked back up at the dragon in the sky. The edges of its scales were covered in a golden pattern, making it look elegant and mysterious. Its body was over fifty metres long, and the size of its horn indicated that it was at least two to three centuries old. This was only a juvenile in dragon years, but prophetic dragons always had great status amongst their peers. This dragon was only level 20, and even with its racial strengths it could barely match up to a human legend; Richard was far beyond it in power.

This was a pertinent issue. All divination abilities, be they innate or magical, relied on pushing against the river of time to spy on what lay ahead. These prophecies were extremely limited, consisting of only a few fragmented scenes like what Richard had once seen during a ceremony. However, there was a fatal flaw; the destinies of powerful beings were similarly powerful; while it wasn’t hard to predict the future of a commoner, prophecies could not determine the full extent of incoming threats if they were beyond one’s own ability to contain.

Even those who trained in divination could only barely direct what they would see. For this dragon to ignore all defences on the other side, it was confident in its ability to predict any dangers. In other terms, it also underestimated any threat that could come from Faelor; in its eyes, those mortals were all ants it could kill with a swipe of its paw.

“It’s been a while since you saw Tiamat, hasn’t it?” Richard grinned.

“The Prime Evil is a sovereign of the race, how would we be able to meet her?” the dragon snorted. By this point, it was starting to find things strange. Richard had been covered in powerful barriers ever since he stepped out of the portal, but even now they hadn’t dissipated yet. He didn’t seem to be re-casting those spells either, giving it no gap to attack him in.

Richard himself was concerned with different things entirely. At this point it was clear that he had somehow wound up on the plane Tiamat came from, which Sharon would likely be interested in. The Five-Coloured Dragon was Tiamat’s master in theory, an epic being who could probably fight Sharon for a long time. At the same time, this was the Dragon Sovereign; the other epic beings of Norland would likely want to join in on such a hunt as well.

“You know, Tiamat’s already dead. Have a look,” he said with a chuckle, producing a transparent test tube that held dark purple draconic blood. The blood seemed to have a life of its own, constantly jumping around and seeking the exit. Richard lifted the stopper ever so slightly before pushing it back in, allowing a trace of Tiamat’s aura to leak out.

“L-Lady Tiamat’s blood!” the dragon in the sky exclaimed in horror, “Mortal, why do you have this?”

Richard burst into laughter, not deigning to give it an answer. Quickly summoning his mana into a spell, he formed a magic array in the sky that quickly absorbed the surrounding energy, forming a vortex of power. Walking into the eye of the storm, he started lobbing a fireball towards the draconians every second. The dragon in the sky got its own gift; a pure blue fireball that zipped towards it like lightning.

The world seemed to melt away as the dragon’s eyes focused on the tiny blue fireball. All of its neck scales stood on end as it shivered from crisis, its instincts warning it to flee immediately. Roaring in alarm, it flapped its wings hard and shot straight up as fast as it could go.

As expected, the fireball curved to follow. Looking at the attacks aimed at its subordinates, the prophetic dragon hastily threw down a barrier and didn’t even look where it went before continuing to fly upwards with all its might. All spells had a range, and it would be safe from the tracking so long as it escaped that distance.

Richard stopped bothering with the beast in the sky entirely, instead continuing to attack the draconians around him. He even activated Blaze once to send out a dozen fireballs in a row before pausing, watching as streams of yellow and blue flames burnt the warriors charging towards him. The draconians had tried to dispel his magic and just destroy the vortex the moment it was cast, but the first wave of attacks had been absorbed safely while the frontline was burnt to ashes. The fireballs continued to explode amidst the formation, taking down a large number in moments.

However, there were saint-level powerhouses amongst these draconians as well. Powerful arrows and spells were shot towards the mana vortex, shaking the barrier until it almost broke, but this only served to reveal their positions to Richard. He quickly cast three pure fireballs and threw them into the fray before stepping back through the portal and returning to Faelor.

Ten kilometres up in the sky, the prophetic dragon finally managed to escape the pure blue fireball. It watched in terror as the condensed flames exploded, tearing apart the clouds. By the time it swooped down, it could only watch as three of its most capable subordinates were enveloped by the flames and burnt to ashes in an instant. Half the area around the gate was scorched, with charred corpses scattered everywhere.

The prophetic dragon estimated that it had lost at least a third of its manpower in this one fight. All of the draconians present were its direct subordinates, and the short battle had dealt it a heavy blow. It roared in anger, but frightened by Richard’s fireball and not knowing how things were beyond the gate, it didn’t have the guts to chase after him alone.

However, it still pointed at one of the draconians and shouted, “You! Go see what’s on the other side!”

The dragon disciples were all zealots who did not fear death. The mages who was pointed to just gleamed in joy, immediately rushing towards the gate. The dragon didn’t bother waiting; one could never tell whether a teleportation would take a few minutes or a few days, so it had its remaining subordinates clean up the mess as it returned to report that the interception mission it had been confident in was a complete failure.

The casualties didn’t even matter; the main point was that Richard had set foot on this plane and was allowed to return. One could only hope he had no spells to determine the coordinates, but considering how he walked through the gate with several barriers on him those hopes were just folly. One couldn’t cast spells during teleportation, while those cast before were invariably weakened in the process; one needed great control over space to be able to minimise the impact of porting on their barriers. Of course, if the dragon had known that Richard stepped through the portal in stealth before instacasting the barriers, its opinion of his power would only increase.

Another important piece of information was the news regarding Tiamat. The prophetic dragon had confirmed that the blood belonged to the Prime Evil, and this had to be brought to attention immediately.