The blue dragon was under immense pressure.
If it had been human, it would probably have been drenched in cold sweat by now.
The humanoid creature floating in the distance even made it think of its foster mother, the Green Dragon Queen Aesselas.
Of course, that was not to say Gauss was already strong enough to rival an adult true dragon. The pressure the two gave it was completely different.
If the Green Dragon Queen represented overwhelming power—the helplessness of a juvenile dragon facing an adult—then this enemy in the distance gave it an extremely peculiar feeling.
His pressure was nowhere near the Green Dragon Queen's, but whenever it looked at him, a constant sense of dread rose in its heart.
As if he possessed some special power aimed specifically at it.
Though it was only a feeling, the blue dragon trusted it completely.
The stronger a creature was, the more accurate its instincts tended to be, especially when it came to matters of life and death.
The countless ancestral powers lingering in the dragon blood flowing through its body all seemed to be warning it that the enemy before it was an extremely terrifying opponent.
The blue dragon flew with all its might, trying to distance itself from Gauss.
On the other side, Gauss, who had finally finished digesting the draconic bloodline, moved at last.
Earlier, because his physical state had not yet stabilized, he had not gone all out against the young blue dragon.
After all, the blue dragon was trapped inside the Silent Cage. As long as it remained within the time limit, Gauss could attack whenever he wanted.
But his body had been in an abnormal state, and using his power too violently might have created uncontrollable risks.
Fortunately, everything was ready now.
He could finally act without restraint.
The power inside Gauss had reached an unprecedentedly overwhelming state.
It was as if a dragon with bared fangs and claws had been sealed inside his human body.
Power.
Overwhelmingly abundant power.
Mana also surged wildly through his body like a great river.
Boom!
His waist-length white hair slowly drifted around him.
The pair of golden vertical pupils in his eyes, like those of a true dragon, shone with terrifying brilliance.
At this moment, even his mind had entered a state of exceptional clarity.
Earlier, to save some energy, he had not fully pushed Dragon-Ghoul Dual Synchronization to its limit. Now, he no longer needed to hold back.
That was another reason the blue dragon sensed him rapidly growing stronger.
Gauss slowly turned his head toward the figure flying away at high speed in the distance.
It had already pulled far away from him, circling around the edge of the dragon valley. The invisible dome of the Silent Cage forced it to keep turning near the boundary.
Four minutes had passed.
Six minutes remained.
That was enough.
Gauss rolled his shoulders.
The next instant, the energy wings behind him swelled, brilliant tail flames extending from their edges.
Buzz!
The dragon wings behind him beat once.
The air around Gauss seemed to twist.
A faint black outline even appeared around his body, like an illusion created by movement so fast it tore through the air.
Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh!
Dozens of Gauss afterimages appeared across the sky at once, forming a line that pointed straight toward the distant young blue dragon.
The blue dragon sensed this and immediately flew in the opposite direction with everything it had.
But its speed, several times—or even ten times—faster than ordinary flying monsters, was still too slow before the current Gauss.
The distance between the man and the dragon shrank at a terrifying pace.
"What level of spatial magic is this?!"
The blue dragon caught flashes of Gauss streaking through the air from the corner of its eye and was horrified.
But its judgment was wrong.
Gauss had not used Any Door at all.
This extreme speed was solely the result of the power granted by ghost energy and dragon blood, exploding through his dragon wings.
In pure movement speed, flying with dragon wings was even faster than Any Door.
After all, Any Door had brief intervals between uses, and each jump could only travel up to three hundred meters. Since it was point-to-point teleportation, the overall movement path was not smooth. Against agile opponents, it was not as useful as one might imagine.
By contrast, dragon-wing flight that easily broke the sound barrier was far smoother.
The only disadvantage was having to withstand the enormous wind pressure head-on. But right now, Gauss's entire body was wrapped in armor made from ghost energy, so he was completely unaffected.
"He's gone!"
The panicked blue dragon, still flying at top speed, suddenly lost sight of Gauss in its peripheral vision.
Just as unease struck it—
Tap.
A hand landed without warning on the edge of its wing.
Gauss had flown above its back and entered its blind spot. That was why it had briefly lost track of him.
Boom!
A powerful repulsive force exploded from the blue dragon's body.
Gauss could feel the defensive spell on its surface taking effect, trying to blast him away.
This was probably one of the blue dragon's bodyguard spells.
That repulsive force was not to be underestimated. It was extremely powerful.
And with the blue dragon's speed, as long as the enemy was knocked away, it could easily use that brief moment to pull open enough distance, then counter with attack magic.
It was far more useful than simple defense.
Unfortunately, strong though that force was, Gauss's arms remained locked to the blue dragon's body like steel claws.
The ghost energy and dragon energy emanating from his body clashed wildly against that repulsive force.
When the blue dragon realized Gauss was already on its back, it panicked even more.
Its body spiraled at high speed, diving and climbing, trying to combine its movement with the repulsive force and use inertia to throw Gauss off.
But Gauss remained steady as a mountain.
"Dawn."
Just as the blue dragon was about to ram itself into the mountainside and use a sudden high-speed turn to smash Gauss into the cliff wall, that cold voice rang out from its back.
Shhhk!
Gauss had already adjusted his posture.
With a wave of his hand, he summoned a radiant pillar of light from the heavens, dropping it onto the blue dragon's other wing.
Boom!
The instant the light touched the dragon wing, a tearing sound erupted.
The blue dragon's bodyguard spell collided with the upcast Dawn.
After a brief stalemate, Gauss's Dawn steadily gained the upper hand.
Within the holy light, dragon scales and hide began to peel away, and flesh continuously evaporated inside the radiance.
In an extremely short time, Dawn blasted a massive hole through the relatively fragile dragon wing.
The excellent result was partly thanks to the title [True Dragon Slayer].
That strike had triggered specialized true damage.
"ROAR!"
At first, the blue dragon did not feel much, but it soon realized its body was spinning uncontrollably.
A true dragon's flight did not rely purely on the physical beating of its wings; magical assistance was also involved.
But the enormous hole in its wing, along with the spreading continuous corrosion, was more damaging than expected.
The wound had become extremely difficult to heal. A troublesome force occupied the edges of the injury.
It even felt as if that area had no sensation, as though it were no longer part of its body.
That was the true reason its flight had gone out of control.
The blue dragon, flying at high speed, tumbled violently through the air before finally crashing into the valley below.
Not far away, Hephaestus, who had only just awakened from his evolution, happened to see this scene and could not help shrinking his neck.
He remembered something unpleasant, and even his body began to ache faintly in response.
It seemed that not too long ago, he had also been knocked out of the sky by Gauss in a similar way.
And the commotion in the distance now was several times more violent than what he had suffered back then.
"Good thing…"
He could not help exhaling, feeling a burst of relief.
Good thing he was on Gauss's side now.
After that relief, he happily admired his current body through the reflection in the pool of blood left by the black dragon on the ground.
His body had grown quite a bit again.
Before, his wingspan had been close to twenty meters. Now it had already reached twenty-three meters, nearly catching up to the twenty-five-meter blue dragon.
The horns on his head had grown much larger too.
Those rounded little horns from before had made him feel somewhat inferior, after all. They represented incomplete development. But now they had grown substantially.
They were a full fifty centimeters long, with their tips extending outward, looking far more majestic and sharp.
More importantly, the dragon blood inside him seemed to have fully awakened.
That hot, violent power was now no different from the true blood of a pure red dragon.
In fact, it was even more scorching.
He had become so strong!
His burning gaze could not help shifting toward the distant battlefield, eagerness flashing in his eyes.
But after a moment, he shook his head.
That was Gauss's opponent.
Though Hephaestus badly wanted to test his current true strength, he would leave that enemy to Gauss.
After all, without Gauss's order, he still did not dare act rashly. He was afraid of making Gauss angry.
Gurgle…
Suddenly, a violent rumbling came from his stomach.
An intense hunger rose from his belly.
So hungry!
He looked around, and his gaze eventually landed on the black dragon, which had been dead for a while now.
I'll… just take one bite. That should be fine, right?
He swallowed.
Come to think of it, he, Hephaestus, had never eaten dragon meat before. It was not as if he had self-harming tendencies—he was not going to randomly bite himself.
After glancing once more in Gauss's direction, he finally lowered his head toward the black dragon's corpse and chose a relatively soft part of its abdomen.
Chew, chew, chew…
Soon, Hephaestus showed a complicated expression.
Black dragon meat was just like its breath: sour, with a strange, faintly rotten odor.
So disgusting!
The only comforting part was that black dragon meat really was extremely filling.
Just one bite greatly eased the intense hunger caused by his evolution.
Maybe… one more bite?
Gauss did not know his red dragon mount had already started eating.
Before the blue dragon crashed to the ground, he had separated from its back.
In an instant, he shifted from extreme speed to complete stillness.
Boom!
The valley floor was smashed into a massive crater, with cracks stretching hundreds of meters outward.
At the center of the depression, amid steaming hot smoke, the blue dragon lay there covered in blood.
The moment its blood left its body, it burned into white vapor.
It looked utterly miserable and covered in wounds.
Yet even in that state, seemingly clinging to its last breaths, a closer look would reveal that the heart inside the blue dragon's body was still beating powerfully.
The thousands of wounds, both large and small, across its body were healing at a visible rate amid the rising white smoke.
All except…
The wound on its wing caused by Gauss's Dawn, which had triggered specialized true damage.
A true dragon's vitality was far more stubborn than a cockroach's.
Unless one possessed true damage like Gauss did, any nonfatal wound could heal in an extremely short time.
One could easily imagine how despairing it would be for an ordinary creature to face such an opponent.
The blue dragon slowly rose from the crater.
Crackle!
Countless arcs of electricity drifted through the air.
In the brief moment it had spent healing, it tried to unleash lightning magic at Gauss floating overhead.
That detail alone showed that its wounds were not as severe as they looked.
A mere fall from a height was nowhere near enough to kill it.
Even now, its bodyguard spell was still active.
"Dispel Magic."
Gauss swept the white wand forward, and the scattered lightning serpents in the air collapsed with a roar.
He looked down.
"Magic Missile."
The True Dragon Slayer title gave him a small chance to trigger specialized true damage.
That made high-frequency attacks especially meaningful.
Boom boom boom boom boom!
Dozens of Magic Missiles roared from the tip of Gauss's wand, blasting downward in a full-coverage barrage at the blue dragon crouching below and "recovering."
Bang bang bang!
Most of the Magic Missiles struck the blue dragon's body and were ruthlessly deflected by its protective spell, exploding craters into the ground.
But a very small number of missiles triggered the specialized effect.
Those missiles pierced through the blue dragon's bodyguard spell and exploded against its body.
"ROAR!"
The blue dragon quickly felt bursts of piercing agony.
That strange power again!
The storm of high-frequency missiles continued raining down.
Ordinary missiles weakened the strength of the blue dragon's bodyguard spell, while the missiles that triggered specialized critical hits dealt true damage.
And whether the blue dragon was healing wounds or replenishing its protective spell, both required energy.
An ordinary creature could not possibly fight a battle of attrition like this against it.
But Gauss was different.
Under Dragon-Ghoul Dual Synchronization, his mana was no less than a dragon's. In fact, it was considerably greater.
After all, he had many ways to replenish his mana continuously, including [Feast] and [Threefold Source Power].
Boom boom boom!
In less than a minute, Gauss fired hundreds upon hundreds of Magic Missiles.
Under his map-wide bombardment, even the ground beneath the blue dragon was pressed down by one or two meters.
Its aura gradually weakened.
Gauss rose higher and higher into the sky, looking down at the blue dragon below, whose eyes were filled with resentment.
"You want to drag me down with you before dying?"
The corner of Gauss's mouth lifted slightly as he spoke in Draconic with calm cruelty.
Naturally, he would not give it that chance.
Unlike the other three dragons, this blue dragon skilled in magic seemed to have received far more inheritance from its bloodline.
Facing a true dragon with inheritance, even if it was weaker than him, he still had to be fully cautious.
A flash of hatred and despair crossed the young blue dragon's eyes after Gauss exposed its intent.
Just as Gauss guessed, its inheritance did contain a method for retaliating against an enemy right before death.
By sacrificing all of its dragon blood, it could inflict a Dragon Grudge Curse on the enemy.
Unfortunately, while this curse should theoretically be castable from a distance, when it realized its end was near and tried to cast it not long ago, it sensed that there was another higher-dimensional force inside Gauss's body preventing its curse from taking hold.
Therefore, it probably needed to get closer to him before it could place the curse.
But even this one remaining plan had apparently been seen through.
"ROAR!"
The blue dragon roared. Its entire body burst with dazzling blue light, and blood filled with immense mana surged violently through its frame. Under that influence, its body began swelling rapidly.
"Self-destruct?"
Gauss had not expected the opponent to be this selfish, choosing to blow itself up at the drop of a hat and not even leaving him an intact corpse.
"Dawn!"
"Dawn!"
"Dawn!"
He released three Dawns in succession, all aimed at the blue dragon's heart.
The third Dawn finally triggered the title's specialized true damage.
Because the blue dragon's bodyguard spell had already been heavily depleted, this attack was especially effective.
Of course, that was not pure luck.
It was pseudo-random.
Gauss had been silently counting. The past few dozen missiles had not triggered a critical effect.
And the title's mechanism seemed to be that the higher-grade the attack method, the higher the trigger probability. Combined with three consecutive Dawns, the final activation was not just a matter of luck.
Boom!
Right before the blue dragon could self-destruct—
the pillar of light descending from the sky pierced through its heart.
Pffft!
Like a leaking balloon, the blue dragon's swollen body ultimately failed to explode and instead slowly deflated.
"Transcendent creature: Blue Dragon (juvenile) Slain ×1"
Gauss saw the notification and let out a breath of relief.
In the end, he had still been one step superior.
He had protected his spoils.
The weak did not have the freedom to choose how they died.
~~~
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