A true dragon's pride was innate.
And while these juvenile dragons might have been forced, for various reasons, to sign exploitative contracts with the Green Dragon Queen, their treatment had still been extremely good.
They lived in luxury, and the creatures around them were all servants who waited on them.
Even when they occasionally encountered beings stronger than them for the time being, those beings would not swagger arrogantly in front of them. On the contrary, out of respect for the Green Dragon Queen, their attitude toward the dragonlings remained fairly polite.
That contrast made the scene before them all the more shocking.
Especially the young black dragon currently fighting Hephaestus. Its aura had clearly weakened considerably.
The panic in its heart was affecting its actual combat performance. It had already been at a disadvantage against Hephaestus, and now, with its mentality shaken, even its defensive movements had started to lose shape. Hephaestus forcefully tore off a chunk of flesh with his jaws.
Up in the sky, the blue dragon churning through the storm clouds and preparing what seemed to be lightning magic also revealed shock deep in its eyes.
Although it considered itself the strongest dragon in the nest and did not really think much of its fellow dragons, that did not stop it from feeling the terror of watching another rabbit die before the fox.
Right now, the black dragon was tied down by that red dragon, one green dragon was already dead, and the other green dragon had also been suppressed by the same method.
If it did not risk its life now, then it would be the next one lying there.
"Roar!"
With that thought, the mana inside its body began to burn like an ignited furnace.
In an instant, its activity surged dramatically.
The blue dragon's magical talent gave it extremely fine control over the mana within its body.
When it needed to risk everything, it could accelerate the circulation of its mana in a short burst to strengthen its magic.
And now was exactly that critical moment.
It raised its head and roared.
In the span of a few breaths, its abdomen began to swell. From a distance, its entire massive body radiated dazzling light, like a ball of lightning suspended in midair.
Thousands of wandering lightning serpents coiled around its luminous blue scales like guardian spirits.
Boom!
The next instant, a pillar of lightning as thick as a water vat shot out from its mouth.
The lightning column surged upward from below, piercing into the dense black clouds above.
Bzzzzzz!
Heaven and earth seemed to answer the blue dragon's call.
Around the valley, the gnolls trapped within the Silent Cage also saw the sky fill with dark clouds, an apocalyptic sight descending overhead. Terror and worship flashed across their monstrous faces.
But before they could properly admire the might of their master, several tall figures in the distance began walking slowly toward them through the flashes of thunder and lightning.
Boom!
By the brief illumination of the lightning, they saw them clearly.
They were several huge goblins, far taller and stronger than normal ones.
Bang!
One of the goblins leaped high into the air and smashed down into the camp amid the gnolls' horrified expressions.
With a single swing of its spiked club, more than a dozen gnolls nearby were turned into pulp.
While Gauss was fighting the juvenile dragons, he had quietly released quite a few clay summoned creatures to sweep through the monster servants around the area.
Meanwhile, Gauss opened his eyes, a faint look of dissatisfaction on his face.
He glanced at the drained green dragon corpse.
The true dragon bloodline it could provide had already dried up.
What disappointed him slightly was that the bloodline power provided by the green dragon's corpse was not enough to advance his Dragonseed talent to the next quality level.
Of course, it was not that this green dragon's bloodline was impure. It was indeed a genuine pure-blooded true dragon.
But he could feel that the bloodline power he absorbed had suffered some kind of loss, meaning only a small portion had actually entered his body.
And more importantly, while its bloodline was pure, it was far too weak compared to a true adult dragon. It was nowhere near its full-grown state, so its vital blood energy had not reached its peak either.
If he had absorbed an adult dragon—or even one older than these juvenile dragons, one whose absolute level had already broken through to the transcendent tier—he felt the progress would have been much faster. It might even have completed the advancement on the spot.
Still, if one was not enough, that was fine.
Gauss turned his gaze toward the other three dragons present.
If he absorbed them too, Dragonseed might reach a higher realm.
If quality was insufficient, quantity could make up for it.
The closest one, the female green dragon struggling desperately against Bigby's Hand, noticed his gaze and suddenly felt her scales crawl.
She felt that this mysterious humanoid creature was looking at her the way one looked at food.
Unfortunately, Gauss merely glanced at her, then stopped paying attention.
For now, the blue dragon in the sky was more worthy of his focus.
It had already been the strongest of the four dragons.
Gauss had his own reasons for not attacking it first.
Among the four dragons, the young blue dragon was the most cunning. From beginning to end, it had never come close to him. For a dragon, a creature whose physical talent crushed most other beings, that could even be called cowardice.
It had also been holding onto defensive magic the entire time. Gauss had been worried he might not be able to subdue it quickly, and that he would instead expose his methods and lose the advantage of information asymmetry.
If the blue dragon had managed to stall him while the other juvenile dragons attacked him from range, he really might have been unable to break the situation for a while.
Looking at things now, his strategy could not be called flawless, but at least he himself was fairly satisfied with it.
A bird in the hand was worth two in the forest.
Now one green dragon was dead, and the other was already in his grasp. As long as he found time to kill the black dragon, then he would have slain three true dragons. Even if his condition worsened after that, he could temporarily spare the blue dragon's life and look for a chance to retreat far away.
This commission had only asked him to kill as many juvenile dragons as possible.
Taking three out of four was already an extremely impressive result.
In a flash, Gauss sorted through his thoughts.
Boom!
In the sky, the magic the blue dragon had spent so long preparing finally took shape.
Countless bolts of lightning flickered in the clouds.
Gauss narrowed his eyes slightly, sensing a trace of "Domain" within it.
A true dragon's talent really was absurd.
One had to know that although Gauss had crossed several levels and now possessed combat power that was impressive even among transcendents, his method of crossing tiers could roughly be summed up as brute-forcing it with overwhelming power.
At his core, he was still a "pseudo-transcendent."
Just a pseudo-transcendent stronger than many actual transcendents.
And the reason for that was precisely because he had no Domain.
Even someone as powerful as Gauss could not cross the tier bottleneck and steal away this core power of transcendence.
Yet this blue dragon had done it, even if he did not know how. Perhaps it was not entirely due to its own ability and had something to do with its true dragon inheritance, but no matter the process, the result was that it had gone farther than Gauss on the path of Domains.
Gauss could not help feeling that the world was truly full of heroes.
They were only within the lands of two provinces, yet there was already a genius who could surpass him in one specific field. What about the entire kingdom? The entire continent?
But perhaps that was exactly what made it interesting.
Gauss finished digesting the strengthened Dragonseed bloodline within him and temporarily stabilized his current power.
The originally balanced state of Dragon-Demon Dual Synchronization had fluctuated slightly because Dragonseed had grown stronger, but fortunately, he had already restored that balance.
That additional power also brought his slightly depleted condition back to its peak.
By now, roughly only one minute had passed.
He still had enough time.
Boom!
Dozens of lightning serpents shot out from the clouds. By the time the sound reached him, the lightning had already fallen.
The spot where Gauss stood instantly became a prison of thunder.
Every bolt was enough to turn the vast majority of creatures into charcoal.
Gauss's figure appeared outside the lightning prison. He glanced at the arcs of electricity flowing over his body. Even with his speed, those streaks of lightning could still cling to him.
Boom!
In the next instant, the faint currents on his body seemed to draw more lightning from the sky.
Several bolts descended from the clouds once more, striking precisely where Gauss stood.
The lightning pillars swallowed his body, and a split second later, his afterimage exploded apart.
So fast!
Among the many elemental magics, lightning might be the fastest.
Of course, in theory, light was faster. But in practical spellcasting, most lightning spells used by casters were faster than light spells.
That had to do with elemental nature. Lightning mana was naturally more violent than light mana.
A small patch of the dragon scales on Gauss's arm was scorched, but in an extremely short time, the energy scales there regenerated.
His figure flashed continuously through the valley, yet the lightning pillars could always keep up.
"This Domain…"
Gauss quickly understood.
The blue dragon's lightning Domain was probably related to electrostatic targeting.
All living creatures inevitably had their own static electric field, and the blue dragon's Domain could amplify those faint currents, then use that static electricity to guide the thunderbolts from above.
As long as one remained within the Domain, no matter how the enemy moved, they would be locked onto by the fast-moving thunderclouds overhead.
Combined with lightning's innate speed and destructive power, this Domain was formidable even among transcendent Domains.
However…
You can't actually control it properly, can you?
Gauss looked toward the vague dragon silhouette hidden within the thunderclouds.
The blue dragon's lightning magic, combined with its Domain, was indeed very powerful, but one detail exposed the reality that it could not fully control this ability.
That was the fact that the blue dragon was only continuously calling lightning down to attack Gauss. It never once showed any intention of helping its companions.
Not the second female green dragon, whose life aura was gradually weakening inside Bigby's Hand, nor the black dragon locked in close combat with Hephaestus.
It acted as though it could not perceive their situations at all.
True, that could not rule out the possibility that it was selfish and simply believed the lives of the other dragons had nothing to do with it.
But in this situation, would it not be better to have two more helpers restraining Gauss? They were all grasshoppers tied to the same rope.
The only explanation was that it could not perfectly control the power of the heavenly lightning itself.
If it tried to use its lightning Domain to help the other two dragons relieve their pressure, not only might it fail to help them, it might accidentally injure them badly instead.
Gauss's guess was not baseless.
Crossing tiers and mastering Domain power early was already unbelievable. Under such circumstances, it was entirely reasonable for there to be drawbacks.
Thinking this, he glanced at the sky.
There, thousands upon thousands of lightning bolts were surging within the dark clouds.
The blue dragon, meanwhile, moved through them unharmed, as though bathing in a hot spring.
A look of understanding flashed through Gauss's eyes.
If he had guessed correctly, then the thunderclouds, which looked the most dangerous, were actually the safest place.
If the blue dragon could not fully control the Domain, then why could it move safely within it?
Because when lightning became densely packed enough, the mechanism stopped targeting nearby living creatures.
With that thought, the energy wings behind Gauss suddenly flared.
His body shot into the dark thunderclouds in what looked almost like a suicidal charge.
The young blue dragon hiding within the clouds saw this and immediately showed a very human look of horror.
It could not imagine why Gauss would do such a thing.
Had he really caught the one weakness of its Domain in such a short time?
When had it exposed itself?
As Gauss entered the thunderclouds, he soon felt the omnipresent targeting force disappear.
The active static electricity around him instantly calmed.
Violent lightning like flood dragons flashed beside him, but none of it showed any intent to attack.
It even deliberately avoided his position under the influence of some mysterious force.
And so Gauss did not cast the Any Door he had already prepared.
He had made two layers of preparation. If his guess had been wrong and he drew thousands of bolts of thunder onto himself, he would have used his own defense to delay for a split second and then activated Any Door to escape.
Fortunately, reality proved his guess correct.
Inside the Domain was instead absolutely safe.
In the distance, the blue dragon's expression was incredibly dark.
It had thought that by displaying the power of a Domain, it could restrain this mysterious enemy for some time. At worst, it should have been able to stall him for a few minutes.
But in reality, not long after the Domain had been activated, the enemy had already understood its inner workings.
"Lightning Sphere!"
A ball of lightning condensed in its mouth. After it spat it out, several thunder orbs shot rapidly toward Gauss.
"Bigby's Hand!"
Gauss condensed a second silver giant hand and swatted the lightning spheres apart.
He sensed the flow of mana inside his body. Although the heavenly lightning inside the thundercloud Domain would not attack him, it still suppressed his mana circulation to a certain degree.
He judged that his mana could only exert around seventy percent of its effectiveness compared to outside the Domain.
But seventy percent?
That was enough!
Several even larger lightning spheres condensed around the blue dragon, floating and circling.
But although it had summoned lightning spheres to guard itself, the dragon itself was rapidly retreating in the opposite direction from Gauss.
Gauss's figure flashed at high speed, closing in on the blue dragon at a pace almost like lightning itself.
The blue dragon's flight speed was extremely fast.
But Gauss's Any Door was faster.
"Magic Missile!"
He swept his hand outward, releasing a skyful of missiles. Hundreds of tracer-like arcs streaked through the air, rapidly locking onto the blue dragon as it flew at extreme speed.
Crack! Crack! Crack!
Before the enhanced, shell-like Magic Missiles could reach it, the lightning spheres around the blue dragon fired interception bolts, detonating them ahead of time.
The sky filled with lightning and magical halos, briefly obscuring vision.
The blue dragon's flight speed was affected as well, forcing it to slow down.
Setting aside its half-finished Domain, the blue dragon itself was still a transcendent-level combatant. Objectively speaking, it was not some random weakling that could be casually crushed.
While the blue dragon was focusing all its attention on defending itself and engaging Gauss in a furious magical barrage, a cry of grief came from the valley below.
The other female green dragon had collapsed weakly inside Bigby's Hand.
And the young black dragon fighting Hephaestus was also in grave danger.
The blue dragon looked at Gauss.
To its horror, it discovered that Gauss, who had already been terrifyingly powerful, was still rapidly growing stronger.
The power radiating from him made its heart pound with fear.
It felt as though he was born to suppress true dragons.
In truth, time was not only on the blue dragon's side.
It was on Gauss's side even more.
As long as he refined two more juvenile dragons, his racial talent Dragonseed would be further purified.
And so would the title of True Dragon Slayer.