Chapter 132: Dismembering the Red Dragon (Part 1)
April 1, 2015
Author: Floating Tower of All Beings
The blade sliced through the tendon, and Soren surprisingly felt an unusually smooth sensation.
It felt as if he was chopping wood; previously he had to cut horizontally, requiring considerable strength. Now he was chopping vertically, with both the force of gravity and the wood’s natural grain aiding him. This stab was supposed to lose power after penetrating three inches into the red dragon’s body, but now Soren had driven it in nearly a foot deep, simultaneously opening a gaping wound that was almost three inches across. To put it simply, Soren nearly cut off a piece of meat weighing around one hundred pounds from the red dragon’s belly.
Just one strike!
The red dragon let out an incomparably painful low roar, even more agonizing than withstanding a round of spells from the Northern Witch.
Mental-type spells couldn’t control the will of the dragon, while damage-type spells struggled to break through its scales. Since the destruction of the Arcane Empire, the theory of elemental tides had been raised multiple times, citing numerous pureblooded dragons’ transformations to demonstrate the influence of elemental tides on other beings. Dragons have long lifespans, often lasting thousands of years; some giants that have lived for extraordinarily long periods can clearly see how time has profoundly affected their power over the centuries.
This theory ultimately pointed to the time, roughly three to five hundred years from now, when dragons’ powers would reach the peak of the elemental tides.
Some doubted this would lead to the rise of Dragon Island once again.
……
The formation of the witches was completely thrown into disarray.
They were not the true forms of the witches, retaining only about 80% of their power. Both their spellcasting levels and spell strengths were significantly lower than in their true forms; a wizard’s projection technique could preserve about 70% of their power, while soul projections, although slightly stronger in combat power, could only preserve around 80%. It was said that the Arcane Empire once had a powerful spell called ‘Illusion,’ which could maintain over 90% of battle capacity, but this spell has been lost for a long time.
After the destruction of the Arcane Empire, many spells lost their lineage, especially those from other planes.
For a half-baked wizard like Soren, the reduction in strength was not too noticeable because he didn’t have many spell slots to begin with and could only cast a few arcane missiles. Moreover, the soul projection of a wanderer does not reduce attributes but slightly affects foundational skills in various aspects. Thus, entering the astral realm had the least impact on him; in soul projection state, he retained most of his attribute points, and his combat power was largely supported by these attributes.
A howling gust of wind rushed towards him from behind!
When Soren’s blade broke through the dragon scales and inflicted significant damage on the red dragon, its elongated tail rose in the air and then whipped at him fiercely.
Soren dared not take it head-on and could only withdraw quickly. When he pulled out the curved blade, a large splash of dragon blood sprayed out.
The boiling dragon blood splashed onto Soren’s body; the red dragon’s blood was even hotter than that of the white dragon, resembling boiling water, and actually caused him a slight burn. This injury would not affect Soren’s combat power but caused his body to shudder slightly. He had to rely on his great agility and flexibility to twist and dodge, making a leap to the dragon’s side. From where the tail had risen, he caught a glimpse of a huge flower; it must be said that the excretory organs of giants were not too different from those of other creatures.
But this was likely to be one of the few vital areas without dragon scale protection!
Dragon dung was a useful outdoor item that could scare off other wild monsters, deterring them from approaching and attacking traveling adventurers.
So if there was dragon dung, it follows they also had excretory organs.
For any creature, this position was a critical weak point; typically, it was protected by the dragon’s tail, making it nearly impossible to strike. However, the red dragon had just swept its tail toward Soren’s body, creating a defensive gap of about a second and a half. Being one who never cared much for fair play, when Soren saw the area without dragon scale protection exposed by the enemy, he immediately thrust in.
When the curved blade instinctively drove itself nearly fully inside, he realized the location of his attack was rather special.
Damn it!
This red dragon turned out to be female!
The enemy’s gender did not affect Soren’s battle instincts. As the red dragon let out an earth-shattering wail and turned to spray dragon breath at him, Soren already retreated into the shadows and immediately activated the new ability of the shadow warrior, “Shadow Leap.” This was a universal ability of wanderers, although shadow dancers mastered it slightly earlier. A pure thief could only grasp it around the semi-legendary rank. This was a very important prerequisite skill, the most crucial escape and assassination skill for wanderers.
It was somewhat different from “Shadow Travel.”
“Shadow Leap [Supernatural Ability]: As their connection to the Shadow Plane deepens, wanderers begin to master the mysterious ability of shadow leaps. They can jump and traverse in shadows, rather like the any-door spell mastered by wizards; this shadow leap ability does not require entering a stealth state. As long as they are within shadows, wanderers can perform shadow leaps, with a maximum distance of 100 meters, which can be divided into any number of jumps. Before mastering a specific advanced ability, the limit of shadow leaps in a day is 100 meters.”
[Note: This ability can be used ten times, with each jump covering a distance of 10 meters, or it can be jumped once for a distance of 100 meters.]
This was the legendary “Shadow Leap”!
A more flexible and useful ability than shadow travel; it did not require entering a stealth state, only needing to be in shadows.
Then it could invoke a jump ability similar to an any-door and be immune to dimensional anchor spells and the like.
However, this supernatural ability had a weakness: its maximum distance was 100 meters; unless one mastered a very special specialty ability, they could at most jump a distance of 100 meters. In this regard, “Shadow Leap” could not compare to the legendary skill “Shadow Step,” as the latter had farther distances, greater freedom, and stronger lethality. In fact, Soren had been contemplating whether to enhance his profession level as a wanderer or to boost his spellcaster profession level.
One is about current combat power, and the other about future combat potential!
Boom!
A violent flame surged like an explosion.
Soren only jumped a distance of about fifteen meters; “Shadow Leap” could only traverse within visible shadows. Only those with legendary strength could sense the invisible shadows. Soren’s thin figure vanished into the shadows and promptly reappeared, completely avoiding the red dragon’s breath attack. In fact, once wanderers entered the advanced tier, the gap between them and wizards gradually shrank; otherwise, they wouldn’t be just behind sword saints, possessing the assassination capability to take down wizards in one hit.
Soren had relied on many supernatural abilities to deal with wizards back then.
The battlefield changed in the blink of an eye!
The situation for the Northern Witches seemed to have taken a turn for the worse. The tactic of the Gisz Yankees was to continuously dispel magic and then rely on mental warriors to attack the enemy. This created a significant problem for the Northern Witches, as without continuously enhancing their defensive energy fields, they could easily expose themselves to the attacks of the mental warriors. However, if they continuously reinforced defensive spells, they would fall into a passive war of attrition since spell slots would eventually run out.
The fragile bodies of the wizards inevitably struggled to hold up for long without the support of AT fields!
Because the ones attacking them were advanced warriors from the astral realm.
Clang!
A strange figure appeared out of thin air. It then swung the Gisz Silver Blade toward a Northern Witch who had exhausted her defensive spells. Wizards could remember at most one-third of their defensive spells, so after her defensive spells were depleted, she could only retaliate by continuously casting a large number of attack control spells, taking down quite a few Gisz Yankees in front of her. However, losing the protective energy field made her presence quite fragile, turning her into a target for many mental warriors.
The Gisz Silver Blade shimmered with a silvery cold light, directly stabbing at this Northern Witch’s heart!
Clang clang block!
An unexpected event occurred.
The Northern Witch, who had almost exhausted all her defensive spells, suddenly seemed to trigger some kind of unexpected spell, and then swiftly raised her staff to block the mental warrior in front of her.
Power, agility, reflexes.
From any aspect, it was nearly impossible for the Northern Witch to block the attack from an advanced warrior.
But she did block it.
— “Transformative Spell!”
The mental warrior in front seemed to realize something, but it was already a bit too late.
The seemingly delicate Northern Witch swung her staff, instantly breaking one of his arms, and then the staff swung horizontally to smash down on his head. The scene was horrific; just one look revealed this witch’s strength had reached around 20 points, as it nearly crushed the opponent’s skull. Everyone who witnessed couldn’t help but raise their eyebrows. Simultaneously, Soren, who unexpectedly witnessed this scene, was suddenly taken aback.
“Transformative Spell?!”
Soren rolled to evade the breath attack, murmuring, “I didn’t expect that there would be a battle wizard proficient in transformation among the Northern Witches!”
Battle wizards.
A special class of spellcasters.
They mainly focus their studies on transformation spells, such as learning transformation spells at lower levels to turn into animals, spiders, wyverns, and so on. At higher levels, they learn the Transformative Spell, allowing them to achieve battle power comparable to warriors of the same level while transformed. In the future, they can also learn various specialty transformation spells, as well as legendary spells that enable them to transform into giants, golems, demons, and other creatures.
This is a rare wizard subclass!
Especially after the destruction of the Arcane Empire, there have been fewer and fewer wizards mastering high-level transformation spells.
……
(Transformative Spell [Sixth Ring Spell]: Increases one’s strength, agility, and constitution to 20 points, grants +4 natural armor, +5 toughness, automatically masters military weaponry, vitality equivalent to a warrior of the same level, loses spellcasting ability during the spell’s effectiveness.)
……
PS: I got home at ten-thirty, barely managed to write a chapter. Three updates tomorrow. (To be continued ~^~)
