"Every dragon! Must die!!"
At this moment, it wasn't just the Second Fleet Master—even the three monsters below, their forms already staggered by the surging avalanche, couldn't help but have this thought flash through their minds.
Mirrorblade even began to wonder what these "Ape-Wyverns" and his own Felyne subordinates were trying to achieve. His confusion only deepened when he spotted Pot standing at the prow of the ship, frantically waving a weapon toward him.
Are they trying to hunt me along with the Velkhana?
But no matter how many storms of thought swirled in their heads, it was already too late for everything.
The Velkhana desperately tried to take flight, but Mirrorblade and the Bazelgeuse brothers refused to allow it. Like two hounds clamping down on a man's legs from either side, they lunged. The Velkhana had begun beating its wings the moment the avalanche started, but before it could even clear a meter off the ground, the combined weight of Mirrorblade and the Bazelgeuses slammed it back into the snow.
Then came the wall of white—an overwhelming crash of snow and ice. Speed, inertia, gravity—once the momentum of an avalanche has formed, even the mightiest monsters cannot ignore the impact. A torrent of rushing snow is no less devastating than a direct collision from a massive beast.
This impact was all-encompassing. It wasn't limited to a single point; it hammered them from head to toe, from wingtip to tail—every inch of their bodies that met the snow was crushed by the force.
But—
Monsters are the very proof of nature's power.
The hunters—the so-called Ape-Wyverns—and the Grimalkynes could not even hope to resist such a disaster; a direct hit from an avalanche would cost them half their lives instantly. However, with their powerful draconic frames, Mirrorblade, the Bazelgeuses, and the Velkhana managed to tumble and struggle through the churning white to maintain their orientation. They weren't buried at the bottom to be left to fate, nor were they swept helplessly toward the distant snowfields.
Instead, they fought tooth and nail to keep their heads above the flow, even finding the strength to snap and strike at one another amidst the chaos.
To make a long story short: it all happened in less than two heartbeats. While the three monsters were still rolling and struggling in the snow, the Grimalkynes were already steering their ship on a collision course with the Velkhana!
Or at least, where they thought the Velkhana was!
In such chaotic conditions, aiming was an impossibility. The "Dragon-Chosen Hero" gripping the helm was putting every ounce of his strength into just hauling the wheel over, trying to keep the entire airship from capsizing in the fierce winds kicked up by the avalanche.
Some Grimalkynes had thick ropes tied around their waists, leaning back and pulling with all their might to stay aboard; others leaped up to grab the sails to prevent the ship from veering too far off course... Behind that massive, jagged Dragonator at the prow, the interior of the cabin was already as sweltering as a midsummer day.
The golden-red glow of roaring flames illuminated the airship's interior. The "Dragon-Chosen" crew were shoveling coal into the furnace scoop by scoop, as the heat and energy released by the combustion were channeled through a series of pipes into the base of the Dragonator.
Faint, irregular lines of cyan-blue light began to glow across the surface of the Dragonator. Despite the sweltering heat behind it, the weapon itself remained chillingly cold.
Everything happened at once. Standing at the prow, the coarse white blizzard had completely obscured Pot's vision. He could only barely make out a faint, ice-blue silhouette getting closer... closer... closer!
Click!
In the midst of the suffocating snow mist, facing that ice-blue figure that was suddenly right in front of him, Pot lunged forward and yanked the lever!
BOOM!
The conical spearhead erupted from the front of the ship at the very last second. It wasn't an illusion—at the moment of release, the thick shaft of the spear burst with cyan electricity and orange-red sparks!
"ROAARRRR!!!!"
A spray of blue blood splattered across Pot's face, but in that moment, he didn't even realize what it was. The violent impact of the airship diving into its target, coupled with the ear-splitting roar of the monster in agony, left the minds of every living thing on board a total blank.
Time seemed to stop. In that void of silence, there was only the cold sensation on his face as he—and every other cat—were launched like cannonballs into the snowbanks. The less fortunate humans and cats were thrown directly onto the monsters' hides.
For those watching the battlefield from a distance, their hearts in their throats as they followed the airship's path, the best news they could receive was that the roar of agony echoing through the mountains didn't belong to any dragon they knew. It was the scream of the Velkhana.
Boom! Boom! Boom!
An explosion followed.
Something had gone wrong. After the Dragonator pierced the Velkhana's body, the airship itself detonated. While this dealt secondary damage to the Velkhana, it also meant that the chances of survival for anyone who hadn't managed to leap from the ship were now slim to none.
"GARRRGHH!!"
The Bazelgeuse brothers were entirely undeterred. As long as the spear wasn't in their own hides, they wouldn't back down. But as they roared and charged, they found an iceberg standing in their way—a massive, jagged mountain of ice as tall as a dragon.
The rushing snow had already flowed downstream, and on this slope that had finally regained a semblance of calm, an outcropping of condensed ice had appeared. It was jarringly out of place, and through the translucent ice, one could see flickering, moving shadows.
"Pah! Pah! We're alive, meow!"
Struggling out of a snowdrift with his weapon in one paw, Pot shook his dizzy head and looked toward the iceberg. He immediately yelled toward Mirrorblade: "It might be trying to heal itself in secret, meow! Little Boss, meow!!"
Crack!
The sudden sound of fracturing ice made Pot freeze. His eyes widened as a crack appeared on the iceberg, followed by more rapid-fire cracks that grew louder and faster.
"This is bad, meow!!"
Without another word, Pot gave a quick signal and dove headfirst into the snow, digging frantically. Within seconds, the cat was nowhere to be seen.
Crack, crack... BOOM!!
Before Mirrorblade's tail-blade could even reach the iceberg, the structure exploded outward into countless sharp, crystalline shards!
A blast of intense freezing wind radiated outward with total indifference. The moment the Dragonator had pierced it, the Velkhana's instinct had been to repel everything around it to protect itself. The weight of the airship and the force of its dive had driven the Dragonator deep into its back.
The Velkhana had never imagined that a fragile collection of things that weren't even "dragons" could cause it such agonizing pain. It wanted revenge, but it found that the thing that had caused it such injury had already shattered into a million pieces scattered across the ground.
Having already wrenched the Dragonator from its body, the enraged Velkhana flung the giant spear onto the snow and struck it with its tail-spear in a fit of pique, but the Dragonator didn't budge.
It was truly a weapon designed by the ancient human empire to hunt dragons. Even though the ship that fired it had exploded, the Dragonator itself was unscathed. Despite being subjected to the Velkhana's frantic assault, the tip of the spear wasn't even slightly bent.
In truth, the injury wasn't critical—it was arguably less damage than the chunk of wing Mirrorblade had sliced off earlier—but it was a pain the Velkhana could not ignore.
It had gone mad.
It was as if it had lost its mind. Even though Mirrorblade and the Bazelgeuse brothers pressed the attack after the ice explosion, the Velkhana suddenly erupted with unprecedented speed. Like a maddened bull, it tossed the wreckage of the airship into the air with its shoulders!
The ship, already broken by the blast, was hurled skyward. The Velkhana then streaked through it like a bullet, causing the wreckage to explode into a shower of ice flowers.
The Velkhana was completely unhinged now. It was like a butterfly dancing in a storm, but it was no victim of the winds—it was the creator of the storm itself. Within a few breaths, the Velkhana had artificially conjured a freezing blizzard that nearly blotted out the entire sky!
Cyan-colored frost, white snow whipped into the air, and a scattering of ice mist... A cannon that had been clear and ready to fire one second was frozen solid in a block of ice the next, along with the person operating it.
The temperature plummeted.
It was a cold unlike anything they had ever felt. Only now did the Grimalkynes truly understand the meaning of "frigid." Compared to the temperature they were feeling now, the weather they had experienced in the Glavenus Tribe over the past year felt positively balmy.
Under these circumstances, the Grimalkynes who had been swept away by the avalanche were actually the lucky ones. At least they didn't have to desperately burrow under the snow driven by survival instinct. Compared to the freezing surface world, even the bottom of the snow drifts felt warm.
They didn't even care if they might suffocate; better to have a few more moments of life than to be flash-frozen where they stood.
Those who couldn't dig—both humans and cats—could only wrap their clothes tighter, huddling behind debris or tall trees. Everything in the outside world had become invisible, leaving only a blur of white wind and snow, and the silhouette of that figure soaring and twisting through the storm.
The temperature continued to drop. The Velkhana was not an Elder Dragon that mastered the power of wind; everything it was doing now was the result of spraying its internal supercooled water, which then vaporized into intense frost to create an absolute zero environment.
In this frozen world, even the explosions of the Bazelgeuse brothers seemed small—like flickering candlelight in the dark, extinguished as soon as they flared.
Nothing leaves a deeper impression than experiencing it firsthand. No matter how much the hunters had described the terror of Elder Dragons during the pre-battle briefings, it wasn't until this moment that the Grimalkynes of the Glavenus Tribe truly understood what an "Elder Dragon" was.
Their bodies were becoming numb. Gradually, they lost the ability to feel the cold; they even began to feel a strange warmth. Yet, a crust of ice had clearly formed on the outside of their gloves, making even the simple act of curling a hand into a fist nearly impossible.
Even their eyes felt as though they were being frozen into solid ice. Their blurred vision could no longer make out their surroundings. When they looked up, they could only see a dense shroud of greyish-white snowflakes covering the sky—wait, the sky?
Hiding under a piece of fallen ship hull, which was now mostly buried under a thick layer of snow, a single Grimalkyne huddled in the tiny space, surrounded by ice crystals.
He weakly lifted his head, praying for the monster to die quickly, praying for his leader to kill that ice dragon soon.
He couldn't even manage a "meow" anymore. The omnipresent frost seemed to turn his very soul into ice, and even his thoughts became sluggish.
This Grimalkyne curled into a tight ball. Through a crack in the broken hull, he stared blankly at the sky where the wind and snow were like a curtain. It was grey, and it was ice-blue. He thought of himself as a kitten, and of the leader who was still with the tribe back then... Boss, I miss you.
The blizzard raged on. The Grimalkyne's pupils began to dilate. He tried to keep his eyes open as wide as possible, wanting to take in the world one last time—specifically, that white line extending from the far reaches of the horizon.
A white... line?
Sizzle, sizzle... BOOM!!!
A sudden, violent explosion caused the Grimalkyne's cold-stiffened brain to finally stir. But it wasn't the sound of the explosion that woke him—it was the heat wave. Heat!
In this world of extreme cold, this sudden surge of warmth was more exhilarating than a thirsty traveler finding a spring in the desert.
The rain-like curtain of white snow finally stopped its motion. Even the frost seemed to freeze in place for a heartbeat.
On the entire battlefield, every human and cat still on the surface, and even the dragons struggling with their heads poked out of the snow, looked toward the giant figure that had shattered this frozen world—squatting at the highest point of the slope against the sunlight.
Beautiful, silver-grey scales reflected the surroundings like a mirror. The horns on its head were short and thick, yet looked exceptionally fierce. Most strangely, there was a section of translucent crystal on the horns; these thread-like crystals covered various parts of the dragon's body, though they were distributed unevenly.
Even though it was daytime, it felt as though a massive bonfire existed inside the dragon's body. Orange-red light pulsed constantly from within, and a closer look revealed that this glow was most prominent along its back.
"It—it's—It's Boss Glavenus!!!"
A heart-wrenching cry rang out. The one who shouted wasn't even a Grimalkyne of the tribe, but a hunter.
It was like seeing a ray of light in the darkness, or a drowning man grabbing a lifesaver. The excitement, the thrill, the absolute ecstasy was beyond words.
The dragon who had torn through the absolute cold to bring light and heat to the Ape-Wyverns and the cats was no stranger. It was Asterion, finally returning to his nest!
"ROAR!!!" (What the hell happened here?!)
...Well, the "Dragon's Confusion."
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