City of Sin

Book 9, 43

Dragon’s Escape

Nasia smiled, jumping right into the hole she formed in the chromatic barrier. Her armour emitted a faint barrier that completely eliminated the effects of the mist within, so she was free to slash out once more and open a passage into the fog.

Initially scanning for a weak point to attack, Richard’s attention was shifted to Nasia as she struck. That strike felt like it came from someone at level 33, not 21. Levels weren’t a perfect reflection of battle prowess, he was an example of that himself, but skill alone could not make up for an overwhelming difference in energy reserves.

However, the energy Nasia used to propel her blades truly was only legendary. It was just that the swords themselves were insanely powerful, amplifying that might to a great degree. For a moment he felt like they were extradivine; even his three swords combined wouldn’t compare to a single one of her two. As he activated the Field of Truth to try and see through them, he realised that the chilling power they contained could allow even a commoner to cut a dragon in two.

The examination of Nasia’s swords also brought Richard’s attention to her armour, finally allowing him to notice that it wasn’t a complete set but instead a mix of various pieces. The two pauldrons were actually different, and the visor and helm were separate as well. Even the scabbards of her swords were enchanted, but clearly not in the same way as the swords. In fact, they barely even fit properly.

The twenty-plus pieces of divine equipment on Nasia’s body started glowing with power, making the source of her might obvious. With this amount of protection, she could simply stand still and most legends wouldn’t even be able to hurt her. Richard had thought she would have gotten a few pieces of divine equipment with the offerings he gave her, but this was completely ridiculous!

He shook off the surprise, taking advantage of the Five-Coloured Dragon’s surprise as he cut apart the barrier with Moonlight and the flaming sword. Strangely, he felt no resistance once he entered the mist, not even needing to resist the curses and hallucinations. A tetrahedral barrier had materialised the moment he went in, dissipating any of the mist that came into contact with it.

Richard was stumped for a moment— this ability definitely didn’t belong to him— but he quickly realised that it had to come from the Projection of Ruin. He had assumed the buff had simply enhanced his laws of destruction, but he pushed those thoughts to the side and charged towards the mountainous figure before him.

“How— AH!” the Five-Coloured Dragon screamed in shock as his blades buried themselves up to the hilts, the same tetrahedrons floating out from Richard’s body and piercing into her flesh. He quickly retreated a few hundred metres away, leaving what only seemed like mosquito bites compared to her now five-kilometre frame, but the injured section suddenly bulged and a hail of giant scales rained down below. A terrifying column of flesh and blood spurted tens of metres away, revealing a wound that was metres wide and perhaps a hundred metres deep.

Even Richard himself smiled at the impact of the single attack. He would normally have been satisfied by half the power, especially considering that he hadn’t even activated all of his Lifesbane layers, but this wound was using the laws of destruction to burrow into the dragon’s soul and was certain to be excruciatingly painful.

It was around the same time that Nasia arrived, prying open a few scales and burrowing her blades into the dragon’s body. The Five-Coloured Dragon started to panic as she turned her enormous head and tried to bombard the paladin with breath attacks, but the divine armour simply blocked it all.

With the dragon occupied, Richard managed to slash out a wound that was a hundred metres long and ten metres deep, causing her to roar in pain. Apeiron and Ruben had also broken through the fog and were about to attack, but the dragon was still most afraid of the only legend in the attack. She felt like those swords could burrow deep into her body; no matter how strong she was, Nasia could slash her way to the heart, brain, or even dragon crystal.

Feeling helpless, the enormous dragon started a chant that shrank her body back down. Nasia was thrown out in an instant, but that loss of physical superiority meant that Richard’s attacks were much more effective. Her attempts to attack him failed to a combination of the tetrahedral barrier and a number of magical ones, with the few dregs of power left behind safely absorbed by Richard’s tough body. Apeiron suddenly flew down from above and punched into the dragon’s neck, forming a mangled crater that was covered in a purple glow. While still struggling against the mist, Ruben used his experience to target the wounds that were already opened up with his nebular chains, starting to suck out the Five-Coloured Dragon’s flesh and blood.

Facing the assault of three epic beings and one that was clearly more powerful than them, the Five-Coloured Dragon eventually gave up on the fight and decided to retreat. Richard seemed unaffected by fighting in her home plane, with every strike of his containing the laws of destruction that left her trembling in fear. With the rest added on top, she simply didn’t stand a chance.

Even when the dragon shrank down to less than a thousand metres long, Nasia continued to blink around her body while trying to find a place to burrow in. Scale after scale was torn open savagely, to the point that the matriarch of the dragons felt less pain and more fear. She had a body comparable to a greater abyssal lord, but the bundle of divine equipment was tearing right through her. Roaring out in defeat, she eventually shrank down all the way to a hundred metres long before waving her attackers off and fleeing into the depths of the plane. Ruben’s nebular chains broke, leaving him pale, but the damage to her was much worse.

Richard dropped nearly a kilometre before he could stop the fall. His own face was pale as he spat out a mouthful of fresh blood, but Nasia seemed to do much worse as she was thrown multiple kilometres until she almost hit the ground. When she flew back towards him, she was wobbling all around.

“Are you hurt?” he asked.

“Huh? No, I’m fine. But that bitch sent me spinning, so dizzy...”

This reply left Richard a little annoyed. Even his tough body had sustained decent injuries, and a similar amount of force would have severely injured both Apeiron and Ruben, but this walking chest of divine equipment seemed to be impossible to injure unless all of her items were broken through.

Apeiron and Ruben stared at Nasia with complicated expressions as well. Both of them had received moderate injuries themselves; the former had taken on two breath attacks while the latter was quite weak and had exhausted most of his power in the mist. This meant that three epic beings had been injured, but a legend at only level 21 had come out unscathed.

That being said, they had finally repelled the Five-Coloured Dragon despite fighting on her home field, opening up the Dragon Plane for invasion. With the Five-Coloured Dragon defeated, all the others near the portal had already fled with their tails tucked between their legs. Richard could rebuild the forward base in the Dragon Plane quickly without detracting from the war against the reapers, attracting more powerhouses to the reward point system and increasing the income supporting his war effort.

Unfortunately, he didn’t have any time to dawdle here. With Nasia present to take care of both reward point battlefields, he had nothing to worry about anyway. However, he was about to teleport away when the Celestial Sage floated towards him and asked, “Your Grace, will the Dragon Plane continue to be a battlefield for reward points?”