Chapter 398: The Armored Dragon

From the vortex where the void converged, the dragonsbodies were reforged anew. Proliferating limbs sprouted and stretched, grafted upon already modified shells.

The dragons' talons sharpened to an unnatural keenness. Their strength grew in leaps and bounds, their muscles swelling to a grotesque density. The moment they brushed against the void, it bestowed unearned power upon these abominations.

And neither did the transformation stop at flesh and bone. Their tactics, too, had shifted. Once solitary and chaotic, these dragons now moved with uncanny unity. Linked by a shared conduit to the void, their instincts were shaped into a single, dreadful whole.

And so the balance shattered. The fallen infernal dreadnought caused the tide to shift in an instant. Infernal demons and the alchemical legions of the material plane were cut down in sweeping annihilation.

A thunderous hum split the heavens. Silver light flashed and vanished. The silver dragon's claws scythed outward, shattering the swarm of blackened spines thrusting from warped arcs of space.

The silver radiance that so often cloaked Aurelian did not linger. It flared only in brief, concentrated bursts to empower her strikes.

She vanished, slipping between a rift in space, then reappeared behind Milos. Her tail, sheathed in a barely perceptible sheath of high-energy matter, whipped against his body. The attack wasn't flashy, but the force behind it was catastrophic.

Milos stumbled back. Then, with a casual flick, he summoned the power of his new voidbound body. Phantasmal void doubles shimmered into being all around Aurelian, striking from all sides in a storm impossible to dodge.

Claw, tail, body—every part of her frame became both shield and spear. Power coursed through her, hardening scale and sinew to impossible resilience.

Though her flesh tore and blood was drawn, the wounds were shallow. For a dragon, such injuries meant nothing.

"Have you discovered your own strength at long last?" Milos' voice was mocking and untroubled. "You are the only success among my works. Yet it is too late. You are frail, and your growth far too slow. A fine specimen wasted by weakness."

𝕗𝚛𝚎𝚎𝐰𝗲𝗯𝗻𝚘𝚟𝚎𝗹.𝕔𝐨𝕞

"..."

Aurelian did not answer. Her body blazed with force. Streams of light coiled about her form before lashed outward and striking at Milos from impossible angles.

Her evolution was clear. Once, the argent glow suffused all she did: an all-encompassing power that enhanced her ability to rend, shield, and maneuver, yet was diluted by its nature.

She had since refined her power, portioning it up and incorporating it directly into parts of her body. This new approach had increased her strength by leaps and bounds.

"I knew you would return," Milos said with cruel calmness, wheeling through the air with uncanny grace and threading a path through Aurelian's frantic attacks. "I know you better than any being alive. I even prepared gifts for you. I trust you'll enjoy them."

His new form was a grotesque fusion of dragon and man. The scaled bulk remained—claws, tail, armored plates—but his proportions had shifted.

His neck was shortened, encased in bony plating. His forelimbs had been elongated and thickened for battle. His hind legs sprouted an extra joint, granting him surprising speed and strength.

What stood against Aurelian was no longer wholly dragon, but a bestial human-dragon hybrid, a draconian perfected for war.

With a gesture of his six-fingered claw, Mettros drew upon the void. Energy surged at his command.

Entire regions of space was locked down beneath crushing pressure; even light itself faltered. Aurelian slowed, her argent streams forced into stillness.

The void was Milos's element. Through it, Milos summoned destruction. Power swelled within its frame—an imitation of dragonbreath, but channeled through countless cores rather than a single heart.

It would easily suppress true dragonbreath.

Milos's jaws parted. Energy converged to a point, then burst outward in a lattice of beams—inescapable, all-devouring, falling upon Aurelian like a net of searing light.

In the grip of that void-born force, there was no chance of evading the blast. What appeared to be a simple dragonbreath expanded outward from a single point, then unfolded into a sweeping barrage that encircled and pursued its prey. Though outwardly unremarkable, the strike's power far exceeded its modest appearance.

The stagnant space quivered for an instant. A new tether to the void flared to life as the void itself poured its strength into the silver dragon. The opposing forces collided, canceling one another. The oppressive stasis dissolved.

As if she had anticipated it, Aurelian's argent body spun in midair with a grace that belied her size, talons curving as though gripping an unseen blade. Radiance flared. In the heartbeat of that turn, a blade of silver light burst forth, extending and then cleaving outward with cataclysmic force.

The gleaming edge carved across the heavens, leaving behind a brilliant afterimage—like a sudden crescent moon scythed into the dark sky. It crashed against the torrent of dragonfire released by Milos, its vast arc engulfing the still-expanding beams.

The collision erupted into a tidal wave of force, shock rippling outward and shaking everything caught within reach. The blade shattered. The dragonfire broke apart. The two attacks devoured one another.

Fragments of argent light hurtled toward Milos in searing arcs. Yet even dispersed, the breath retained its fury. After smashing through Aurelian's radiant attack, what remained of the breath struck home, searing through Aurelian's shoulder and wing, leaving two gaping, blood-soaked wounds behind.

"Not bad," Milos drawled. "You've learned quite a bit in the midst of battle. But your flaw is obvious—you're far too weak. Just how much power can that shell of yours bear? Perhaps it's time I said farewell... Your gift has arrived."

He slipped aside with effortless grace, evading the aimless shards of light, his vast frame already fading into the void. His voice, cold and unhurried, coiled around Aurelian where she hovered in the storm-wracked sky.

From a distance, from below, came the wingbeats of dragons she knew all too well. Their forms were ringed in void energy, their bodies twisted beyond recognition. Yet even in their warped shapes, Aurelian recognized them in an instant—her kin, her fallen companions, remade into her enemies. The other heretic dragons.

A roar split the air. One after another, torrents of fury poured forth—crimson flame, crackling lightning, rivers of corrosive acid, cascades of rime and frost—an onslaught sweeping toward the silver dragon in a storm of ruin.

Whether out of malice or cruel amusement, Milos had turned the corpses of her companions into weapons, their husks reforged into engines of her destruction. Whatever its motive, it could not be dnied that these heretic dragons were monstrously powerful, far beyond the strength of common abominations.

The void shimmered. Dragonfire veered along twisted paths. It slipped through spatial rifts, folding back at impossible angles, striking from directions no creature could predict.

At last, the true terror of this abyssal being revealed itself. Its new body was formidable, yes, but little more than a mere vessel.

On the other hand, the island itself, the warped skies, and the dragons it commanded were all extensions of Milos' will. His power was not measured in the might of one body, but in the totality of his dominion.

The silver dragon closed rifts by force, annihilating streams of redirected dragonfire before they could strike her—but her effort was clumsy and unrefined.

Too much broke through, hemming her in from all sides. She slipped between them by a hair's breadth, unable to halt even for an instant. To stop would be death.

The void rippled. Milos surged forth in silence, his colossal form reemerging in a blur. Void-wreathed talons scythed downward, striking the instant Aurelian completed her evasive roll.

The blow ripped across her wing. Blood fountained; fragments of bone and membrane scattered into the gale. Only by sheer instinct, by hurling her body into a desperate burst of speed, did Aurelian save the limb from being torn away entirely.

Milos vanished once more, melting into the void, biding his time as the heretic dragons closed in from below for the next assault.

Silver light pooled across her wounds, sealing them in a fragile patchwork to preserve her flight. Aurelian's heart sank. He had discerned her weakness too easily. He would not gamble against her strength—only grind her down with endless attrition until her fragile vessel broke apart.

Her body could not hold enough power. She was simply too frail.

A surge of scarlet lances burst upward from the depths and tore into the heavens. They spread outward in waves of annihilation, forcing the heretic dragons to scatter. And this assault was just the prelude for what was to come.

A figure rose up from below: an armored dragonwholly clad in steel and alchemy. Magitech conduits glowed with surging light across its body, forged from alloys made to channel pure wizardry.

Vents along its back roared open, releasing streams of destructive energy toward the swarming enemy. Under the stabilizing lattice of its armor, the blast raged on without end, a torrent so sustained it seemed nearly impossible.

The destructive prowess of the attack forced the heretic dragons back.

Then, the vents shifted and reconfigured. Dozens of glowing channels interlocked, merging scattered beams into a single, searing torrent. Wherever it struck, annihilation followed.

Yet even this might struggled to strike foes who slipped through the void itself. And so the armored dragon changed tactics.

Its back glowed as nested rings of light expanded outward, an indicator that a certain weapon was primed.

The residual energy of its blasts was harvested and rechanneled into another form.

A single blazing shell erupted from its throat like a star hurled into the sky. Faster than sight, it burst amidst the enemy before they could react. A sphere of annihilation engulfed them.

The blast was laser-focused, its scope narrow, but its power absolute.

A blue dragon's body vanished. A green titan of a dragon was sheared in half. Others were hurled away by the shockwave. For a fleeting instant, a clear corridor opened through the skies. And in that gap, silver eyes met crimson ones.

"Sorry, Sister. I'm late," came Sieg's voice from the Prayer Network.

Meanwhile, on another part of the battlefield, a fearsome roar shook the world. From the corpse of a titanic demon, from the sundered wreck of an infernal dreadnought, a colossal blade of flame tore free. The infernal lord rose, sword in hand, bound by pact and fury, his presence a cataclysm made flesh. He raised the burning weapon and brought it down as an ocean of fire roared skyward.

"You verminous insects dare lay waste to my warship? Your lives will pay for this outrage!"

From the air, Skyborne City responded in kind. It filled the firmament with explosions as deadly as they were dazzling. It subscribed to the belief that the best defense was a good offense. Against this wall of firepower, nothing that entered its range could survive.

Across the Isle of Dragons, pillars of metal slammed into the earth. Around them, the void faltered and shrank—reality anchors, weapons Wang Yu knew well.

The ground itself split open at the city's heart. From its depths rose a colossal stabilizer fed by torrents of energy. A vast zone that suppressed the void unfurled around Skyborne City.

This was no mere defense. This was war. Skyborne City had never neglected its charge to suppress the abyss.

On the island's shores, tides swelled to form towering walls of water. Storms howled as lightning split the heavens. The priests of the merfolk raised their voices to their god, the Lord of Sea and Storm.

The waves answered in response. A shadow vast as mountains rose from the ocean, brandishing a trident wreathed in surging breakers, and hurled it toward the Isle of Dragons.

The dance of demons spiraled into madness. The battle raged into a new and bloodier phase.