D.I.O

Chapter 255

Ting!

Merlin, while rushing forward, called out for his Divine Weapon, and Olympos soon appeared in Merlin’s hand. When Merlin pulled Olympos’ string all the way to the end, a spell was activated.

Once the spell was activated, a lightning-infused magic arrow appeared.

/Lightning Blade of Zeus!/

Along with a dazzling display of light, the lightning-infused magic arrow struck the Gold Dragon’s body. Though the Gold Dragon hurriedly cast a defense spell to protect itself, a plum blossom started blooming next to it.

Ring!

Normally, Sungmuk would bloom hundreds of plum blossoms when he swung his sword. However, the situation was a little different this time around, so he took a different approach and only bloomed one plum blossom.

Nevertheless, each and every petal of the plum blossom was as vivid as if they were real, and the spirit and divine qi that the plum blossom petals exuded would make any observer revere them as divine objects.

“Immortal’s Solitary Plum! Shall we see how strong a dragon’s hide is?”

The singular plum blossom shot out from Sungmuk’s Divine Red Sparrow sword and made its way to the Gold Dragon’s waist, piercing the Gold Dragon. The Immortal’s Solitary Plum, which represented a singular immortal plum blossom that bloomed in solitude, was an extremely strong single-use attack that created a true plum blossom pattern. Furthermore, it was composed of strong qi that originated from the purification of one’s martial arts. Therefore, the Immortal’s Solitary Plum strike was able to strike the dragon with full force since the Gold Dragon’s body and defenses were already weakened due to Merlin’s strike.

Flash!

Crack!

After the Lightning Blade of Zeus struck the body of the Gold Dragon, Sungmuk’s Immortal’s Solitary Plum embedded itself within the Gold Dragon. When this happened, the Gold Dragon’s golden scales, which covered the Gold Dragon’s entire body, started to break off.

[You scoundrels!]

However, the damage inflicted was only that; the Gold Dragon’s wounds did not open or splatter any blood. This was because the Gold Dragon’s scales, each containing intense energy and power, absorbed all the blows before falling off the dragon’s body.

The Gold Dragon exploded with anger and tried to fly into the air. Yet at that very moment, Miho’s spell, which she had released from Hydra, reached the Gold Dragon. It had been released at the same time as Merlin’s Lightning Blade of Zeus strike, but it was only reaching the dragon now, which showed just how fast Merlin’s spell was compared to Miho’s.

/The Moonlight of Artemis!/

/Bramblehurst of Gaia!/

A soft moonlight glow momentarily dwelled on the Gold Dragon’s body, lowering its defense and magic resistance. Immediately afterward, a vivid green light shone out right before vines with thorns thicker than an adult’s torso grew at terrifying speeds and began to entangle the Gold Dragon.

The Gold Dragon shook its body and tried to brush off the vine’s entanglements, but…

/Bramblehurst of Gaia!/

A Howling spell was fired from Merlin’s Olympus once again, and it landed on the Gold Dragon’s body. Then Arc rushed forward towards the immobilized Gold Dragon, who was tied up.

/Flame Buster! Maximum!/

Click.

With a clicking sound, magic power surged and rushed out. Then the magic power was triggered, activating the prepared spell and rearranging the mana according to an established magic circuit route. An explosion was generated in no time.

“Revolver!”

Fire and flames spewed and flickered over Arc’s armor.

Utilizing her No Thoughts Gold Strong technique, Arc held onto the excessively gathered bundle of mana and continued her spell chant.

“Double spell! Revolver!”

The overlapping magic powers roared out, and dense magic characters rose above Arc’s armor.

“Perfect Vulcan!”

It was her final trigger phrase.

With the activation of the trigger phrase, Arc’s arms flared up with flames as her body’s speed accelerated dozens of times over.

Boom!!!!

[Cheeky thing…]

Arc’s spell-infused fists rushed toward the Gold Dragon at breakneck speed. The fists were lunging toward the areas of the Gold Dragon’s body that had been recently made vulnerable after Sungmuk’s attack, so the Gold Dragon naturally tried to contort its body to avoid Arc’s oncoming punches. However, the Gold Dragon wasn’t able to properly avoid Arc’s attack because of the vines that constricted and immobilized it, holding it firmly in place.

Due to this, the Gold Dragon tried to defeat all its surrounding enemies by using five to six spells in succession.

“Break!”

[W-what?]

Sensing that the spells it was trying to cast were all canceled after Merlin’s cry, the Gold Dragon glanced over at Merlin in amazement.

Of course, the spells the Gold Dragon had been about to cast were all instant-cast type spells, which were considered relatively weak spells relative to the dragon’s arsenal of spells. Even so, how was a user able to cancel all the Gold Dragon’s spells that it was casting with its full power?

In other words, this meant that…

[You… you… are a magic user on the same level as me?]

“Yeah, you dumb hunk of junk. That’s why I called you a half-assed creation. Is there even an ultimate spell you can use? Oh, since there’s been a system recalibration, I guess you do have something similar.”

However, the problem was that the Gold Dragon needed a minimum of several hours to a maximum of several days to cast its ultimate spell. Moreover, it needed to be in peak physical condition.

As its role was a [War Commander], the Gold Dragon possessed tremendous strategic value and was a powerful being. Its power was something that Merlin could not imitate or recreate. Yet the Gold Dragon was unable to display its overwhelming power in this critical juncture when its enemy was clearly positioned right in front of it.

Boom!

After the Gold Dragon’s spell ability was nullified by Merlin, Arc—who had landed hundreds of fist punches in an instant on the Gold Dragon’s body earlier—backed away. Plum blossoms soon began to bloom in the areas that Arc had punched.

[Ugh! You scoundrels! Do you think you can win by doing this!!]

The Gold Dragon roared and twisted its body, and the vines and thorns that bound its body began to fall away. Realizing that it could not block Merlin’s nullification spell, the Gold Dragon gave up on casting magic spells and unleashed the power contained in its Chintamani Marble in the form of raw magic power.

It was true that Merlin and his party members had cut off all the Gold Dragon’s means of resistance in a short time and wounded it superficially, but the Gold Dragon was still confident that the party had no chance of winning against it.

This was because the Gold Dragon knew it was a Raid Monster.

Unbelievably for the Gold Dragon, the cheeky human mage was a magic-power user of the same mage class as the Gold Dragon. Additionally, the orc that was wielding a sword was also able to output at the same power level as the Gold Dragon, though the orc utilized a different type of power from the human user. However, the Gold Dragon ultimately felt that all these efforts were useless and all for naught.

Merlin had pointed to the Gold Dragon and stated that it was a pseudo-transcendent. Of course, this was true. Nevertheless, this still meant that the Gold Dragon was half transcendent.

The Gold Dragon was a being with an inexhaustible reservoir of magic power and a monster with a phenomenal HP capacity.

The power realm it possessed might be similar to Merlin's or Sungmuk’s, but the specifications of its body were different from those of the other two. Even if its power realm was similar to theirs, the Gold Dragon’s body was definitely the body of a transcendent being.

[Do you think these superficial injuries will hurt me?! It’s just ticklish!]

The body of the Gold Dragon spanned over one hundred and fifty meters long from head to tail.

The expression ‘huge’, rather than ‘big’, was appropriate to describe the Gold Dragon’s size. Thus, even a wound the size of a person’s head, which the party members had created through all sorts of attacks, was no more than a superficial blow similar to the extent of piercing a normal human being with a needle.

If hundreds or thousands of users were to gather and inflict the same attack a hundred or a thousand times over, the outcome might be different for the Gold Dragon, but what could a small party of attackers accomplish?

The Gold Dragon believed that the attackers’ mana and stamina levels would tap out before they even managed to inflict a proper wound on it. There was no way that the Gold Dragon would give up, so in the Gold Dragon’s mind, there was no chance of the users winning.

In a situation like this, the Gold Dragon’s pride was hurt because it was as good as being defeated by a party of users in terms of skills and abilities, but the Gold Dragon was confident that it would ultimately win through the advantage of its transcendent body.

Despite this, Merlin approached the Gold Dragon with a smile, ripped off a portion—about the size of a human adult’s head—of the Gold Dragon’s body, and stuck his hand into the lightly bleeding wound.

The Gold Dragon considered the flesh wound as something insignificant since its hide was thicker than an adult’s head. Moreover, the circumference of its body was nearly ten meters, so such a flesh wound wasn’t something it was concerned about.

However, the important point was that Merlin had exposed the inner part of the Gold Dragon and could see the dragon’s blood.josei

“You really think it’s just ticklish, huh?”

[What nonsense are you going to spew this time…]

Rumble!

At that moment, the body of the giant Gold Dragon, all a hundred and fifty meters of it, shook greatly.

It was such a violent movement that an outside observer would have wondered if the Gold Dragon had shuddered of its own accord.

As Sungmuk possessed developed eyesight, he noticed what damage the Gold Dragon just sustained. Sungmuk looked at Merlin with an expression of utter disbelief.

Quiet Heaven and Ellie, non-participants in the current battle, also groaned after observing Merlin’s unbelievable act.