After activating Dragon-Demon Dual Synchronization, it was not just Gauss's body that was strengthened—his mana was enhanced as well.
The same spell, cast by him now, would probably be twice as powerful as before.
An intoxicating sensation surged through his mind, as though everything were under his control, as if he had become invincible.
Of course, he knew perfectly well that this was only an illusion brought on by the sudden explosive increase in power.
His appearance had changed drastically.
If his human form had once carried a kind of handsome dignity tinged with a trace of authority, then his current form layered an aggressive, overbearing pressure on top of that.
He now stood over two meters tall. Beneath the wide robe, his body was lean and powerful, all clean, flowing muscle. Small horns rose from his forehead. His hair was white. The color had drained from his skin, leaving it much paler, while a fine network of translucent dragon-scale patterns spread across the surface of his body.
As he stretched slightly, a pair of energy wings tore through the back of his robe and unfurled behind him.
In other words, even though his transformed body still looked tiny compared to the three juvenile dragons in the distance, the balance of presence had completely reversed.
The aura pouring from that small body instantly crushed the dragons' oppressive draconic pressure.
It forced it back around their own bodies—and even the dark green spores floating through the air were blasted away by an invisible force.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
The scattered spores collided with each other and burst into corrosive clouds of poison midair.
In the next instant, Gauss vanished from where he stood at a speed almost impossible to catch with the naked eye, so fast that only a flickering afterimage remained.
Boom!
"Where—?!"
The three juvenile dragons had barely started looking around in a panic for his missing figure when an incredibly solid silver hand suddenly appeared beside one of the green dragons.
The air around it seemed to be forced aside by sheer pressure.
The green dragon was clearly unprepared. In that brief lapse, the giant hand seized it.
A dragon's body might have been enormous, but this hand, nearly twenty meters long, could still clutch it as easily as someone grabbing a pet.
Almost immediately, the green dragon trapped in Bigby's Hand threw back its head and let out a shriek of pain.
It tried to break free.
But the pressure from that enormous hand only kept increasing.
Crack—crack—crack!
Even a true dragon, famous for its terrifying durability and overwhelming physique, was starting to give out under that grip.
Thick blood began to seep through the gaps between its scales.
Then it dripped down the surface of the giant hand. If any dragon enthusiast had seen that sight, they would probably have called it a criminal waste of priceless material.
Ptoo!
A spray of poisonous mist burst from the green dragon's mouth, drenching the giant hand as it tried to rapidly corrode away Bigby's Hand's magic power.
If this had been a normal Bigby's Hand cast by Gauss in his regular state, that breath might really have chewed through it badly.
But under Dragon-Demon Dual Synchronization, the quality of his mana had been greatly enhanced.
Which meant the overall strength of the Bigby's Hand formed from that mana had been enhanced across the board as well.
The green dragon's toxic breath only left a trail of pale smoke across the hand's surface. Other than that, it failed to do any meaningful damage in the short term.
Crack—crack—crack!
More blood sprayed out from the green dragon's splitting scales and torn flesh.
By this point, the dragon caught in the grip had truly begun to panic.
It could feel a lethal threat from that hand.
It was a proud true dragon—how could it be possible that it could not even withstand a single attack?
Its poison magic. Its power to command nature and manipulate plants. Its magical resistance. Its speed and agility…
At this moment, none of it seemed to matter.
Endless force was driving brutally in through every inch of its skin.
Its internal organs were beginning to shift out of place. Breathing was becoming harder and harder.
Meanwhile, the other green dragon—the one Gauss had not chosen as his first target—watched its companion's miserable struggle and felt a flash of horrified relief.
Its strength was about equal to its sibling's.
Which meant that if Gauss had chosen it instead, it would have fared no better.
Exchanging a glance with the blue dragon, who had spent the whole time preparing defensive magic, both the green dragon and the blue dragon understood that the situation in front of them was extremely bad.
This mysterious enemy was simply too strong.
He had subdued their companion with a single spell.
And once he freed up his hands, they would be next.
That thought alone was enough.
No matter how strained the relationships between the juvenile dragons might have been, they had to move quickly to save themselves—and their companion.
The blue dragon fixed its gaze on Gauss, hovering in the air and staring coldly at the green dragon he had captured.
"Greater Hold!"
A practiced spell shot out from the blue dragon's claws.
The blue dragon's magical talent truly lived up to its reputation.
The spell crossed more than a hundred meters in an instant and landed directly on Gauss.
Gauss immediately felt an unpleasant sensation spread through his body.
Crack—crack—crack—
It was as if countless hands were binding his body from every direction, sinking even deeper to disrupt the flow of his mana.
Under the spell's influence, Bigby's Hand—which had been tightening its grip—suddenly loosened.
The green dragon, already on the verge of suffocation, instantly felt a rush of relief.
Just as it prepared to escape death by slipping out of the loosened grip, the giant hand clenched shut again right in front of its horrified eyes.
ROAR!
A surge of blood traveled up its long neck and then burst from its jaws.
If one looked closely, there were even mangled shreds of flesh mixed into it.
Gauss turned his eyes toward the blue dragon.
Its magic really was no joke. It was actually able to affect him in this state.
That alone showed just how absurdly gifted a blue dragon was.
But luckily, Gauss was no ordinary spellcaster either.
His resistance to interference was absurdly high.
His class specialty, Higher Spell Mastery, made his casting more stable. Setting aside the two enhancement states themselves—which already provided a certain amount of all-around defense—he also possessed Magic Resistance, Master of Stable Casting, and Turret Mage.
Taken together, interrupting his spellcasting was actually extremely difficult.
Gauss floated calmly in midair, not because he was showing off like some grandmaster, but because it maximized the spell's effectiveness.
His strategy was simple: after ambushing one green dragon, he would focus it down mercilessly and force the dragon group to lose numbers as fast as possible.
That was one of the most common tactics when fighting outnumbered—kill one fast before the rest could stabilize.
When the blue dragon realized its magic had not had the desired effect, its forward charge froze abruptly.
It felt as though its spell had hit a slab of stone. Aside from the instant of impact, everything after that simply vanished, like a rock sinking into the sea.
What kind of monster was this?
At this point, it no longer believed Gauss was a silver dragon or a gold dragon.
His aura felt completely different from the metallic dragons preserved in its inherited bloodline memories.
And because of that, the blue dragon was afraid now.
It abandoned the idea of charging into close combat and helping free the captured green dragon.
Its wings spread wide, and it shot upward into the sky.
The closer it got to the sky above, the more strongly it felt a tremendous resistance pressing down on it.
That invisible barrier was preventing its escape.
The blue dragon quickly judged that breaking out in a short time was impossible.
But this attempt had only been a test.
Now that the route of retreat had been cut off, a ruthless resolve flared up inside it.
If this enemy wanted it dead, then even if it died, it would tear a piece of flesh off him first.
True dragons were arrogant by nature.
Boom!
Within the area trapped by the Silent Cage, the sky—which had been clear only moments ago—suddenly changed.
Dark storm clouds churned violently overhead, flashes of lightning glimmering within them, gathering into something clearly devastating.
Gauss glanced upward, then looked over his shoulder.
Unlike the blue dragon, who had quickly realized that close combat against Gauss was a bad idea, the female green dragon that had charged alongside it had not reacted nearly as fast.
She came at him like a cannonball.
One dragon claw glowed with emerald light.
At the same time, the ground beneath Gauss erupted as countless plants burst upward.
Rip! Rip!
The earth rolled like waves on the sea.
Vines thicker than a man's waist shot out in a frenzy.
Hundreds of vines and trees lunged upward like a living swarm of serpents, all aimed straight at Gauss in the air.
Together with the female green dragon closing in physically, the assault seemed to completely box him in.
"Magic Missile."
Gauss flicked his eyes down at the chaos below, his face still utterly calm.
He spread the fingers of his free left hand, black-and-white demonic energy curling around his long fingertips. After the briefest preparation, he pressed that hand downward through the air.
The air below seemed to freeze solid for an instant.
Then, in the next moment, that feeling vanished.
Boom boom boom boom boom!
Countless Magic Missiles erupted from Gauss's left palm like a rotary cannon, spraying down at terrifying speed.
The sound of that barrage layered together into something deep and heavy, almost like a dragon's roar.
The missiles poured down like a torrential storm. Every single one was wrapped in black-and-white demonic energy, trailing dense streaks of light behind it.
The tide of green and the storm of missiles collided in midair, erupting in a deafening thunder of impacts.
Spherical bursts of blue magical light exploded beneath Gauss like fireworks, blooming one after another across the sky.
The vines were blasted apart the moment they touched the missiles, exploding into splinters and sprays of sap.
Gauss's dragon-roar barrage of missiles was denser than the green dragon's control over nature.
Those snake-like plants were cut in half before they could even fully surge up.
And as the female green dragon bore down from above, the pressure of her descent growing heavier with every instant, Gauss's left hand—which had been pressing downward—flipped over, then clenched hard.
The mantis stalks the cicada, unaware of the oriole behind.
Behind the green dragon, another enormous silver hand was forming at astonishing speed.
"Bigby's Hand—Second Movement!"
Why was Gauss so confident that Dragon-Demon Dual Synchronization gave him Level 13 combat power?
Because of this exact kind of ridiculously precise spell control.
The green dragon, whose eyes had been locked on Gauss, suddenly felt a chill run through her spine.
A terrifying pressure of wind burst from behind her.
"Danger!"
But before she could do anything more, that second giant hand seized her just as the first had seized the other green dragon.
Maintaining two enhanced Level 5 spells at the same time was actually extremely difficult.
Especially that cast in the middle of such lightning-fast combat—it was far harder to pull off than it looked.
A high-level creature like a green dragon was not some roadside goblin.
Even though Gauss had caught her off guard, the attack window he had was still vanishingly small.
If he had been just a little faster, the green dragon would have seen the second Bigby's Hand too early and flown clear of it.
If he had been just a little slower, the green dragon's speed would have let her react in time and escape the spell's reach.
Fortunately, it worked.
Gauss floated in the air, one giant silver hand on either side of him, each one holding a captured green dragon.
The first dragon in particular was already at death's door.
So much dragon blood had spilled over it that the once-silver Bigby's Hand had become a bright, horrifying crimson.
Its tendons were ruptured. The muscles inside its body had burst apart. Bones were snapped or dislocated throughout its body. Only its heart was still stubbornly beating.
The light in the green dragon's eyes was already beginning to blur.
Then—
Boom!
A muffled explosion came from somewhere inside its blood-soaked body.
In the next second, the dragon's body—which had been tensed desperately against dozens or even hundreds of tons of crushing force—suddenly went limp, collapsing into slack flesh.
A juvenile green dragon, a being destined to become a powerhouse if it lived, had ended its life in a humiliating death.
A notification flashed before Gauss's eyes.
"Transcendent Creature: Green Dragon (Juvenile) Slain ×1"
A trace of satisfaction flickered through Gauss's eyes.
In terms of actual level, all four dragons present seemed, by his own judgment, not to have truly stepped into the transcendent rank.
But their bloodlines were simply too exalted. They could support them in crossing a barrier that, for humans, would have been utterly unbreakable.
This green dragon's real combat strength had already surpassed the threshold of transcendence, and in terms of survivability, it had been better than the vast majority of level 11 transcendents.
It had died too miserably.
It knew nothing about Gauss, and got caught by an ambush from Bigby's Hand.
Bigby's Hand had very obvious strengths and weaknesses.
Its continuous suppression was terrifyingly strong, but once formed, its movement speed was relatively slow for something so huge, leaving agile enemies room to react.
The best way to use it was to catch an opponent off guard, combine it with Any Door, appear close to them, form the hand instantly, and lock them down before they could react.
And for this juvenile green dragon to hold out that long under an enhanced Bigby's Hand was already something to be proud of.
Right now, Gauss judged his own combat power to be level 13.
[Path of Transcendence: Kill five kinds of transcendent monsters (2/5). Reward: Randomly draw one racial talent from a transcendent monster.]
[Because you have slain a legendary-race creature—a true dragon—you have obtained the title: True Dragon Slayer.]
[Purple-grade racial talent "Draconic" is absorbing bloodline energy…]
[Absorbing bloodline energy…]
"…"
Gauss, who had been feeling faintly tired, suddenly felt an intense surge of hot blood erupt through his body.
It was like soaking in a hot spring. Every part of him was filled with a wonderful sensation.
Because of that, he did not release the corpse of the first green dragon from Bigby's Hand.
He could feel his racial talent, Draconic, actively drawing in some of the power from the slain true dragon's corpse, as if refining it and rapidly growing stronger.
ROAR!!
The other dragons, seeing the green dragon die right in front of them, were struck with shock and unease.
They had always seen themselves as noble creatures, and even though they had already realized how powerful Gauss was, the impact of seeing one of their own die before their eyes still hit them like a hammer.
~~~
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