novelGlobal Chapter 449: Heroes Are as Numerous as Carp Crossing the River
Chapter 449: Heroes Are as Numerous as Carp Crossing the River
True Dragons are arrogant by nature. Even though these juvenile dragons might have been forced by various reasons to sign a black-hearted pact with the Green Dragon Queen, their treatment were still quite decent.Even if they occasionally encountered beings temporarily stronger than them, they would not swagger in front of those opponents. On the contrary, out of respect for the Green Dragon Queen, they treated the dragon hatchlings with a certain courtesy.
By contrast, the scene before them felt especially shocking.
Especially the juvenile black dragon that was wrestling with Hephaestus; it was obvious its momentum had faltered considerably.
Inner panic affected its actual combat performance. Already losing ground in the fight with Hephaestus, its defensive moves had become distorted from the mental imbalance, and Hephaestus tore off a chunk of flesh from it.
In the sky, the blue dragon rolling in the storm clouds to prepare what looked like lightning magic also had a flash of horror in its eyes.
Although it regarded itself as the strongest dragon in the lair and generally looked down on its dragon companions, that did not prevent it from feeling sorrow at another’s fall.
Now, the black dragon was being held by that red dragon, one green dragon was dead, and another green dragon was being suppressed in a similar way.
If it did not fight for its life, the next moment the one to fall might be itself.
“Roar!”
Thinking that, the magic inside it ignited like a blazing furnace.
In an instant, its vigor surged dramatically.
The blue dragon’s magical talent gave it meticulous control over its inner mana. When life-or-death was at stake, it could run its magic at high speed for a short time to amplify its spells.
This was such a critical moment.
It threw back its head and howled.
Within only a few breaths its belly began to swell. From afar its huge body shone with a dazzling light, as if a spherical ball of lightning hovered in midair.
Thousands of writhing lightning-serpents clung to its translucent blue scales like guardian spirits,
!
The next moment, a pillar of thunder as thick as a water vat shot from its maw.
The thunder pillar rose from below, punching into the dense black cloud above.
“Buzz!”
Heaven and earth seemed to respond to the blue dragon’s call.
Around the valley, the gnolls trapped by the Silent Birdcage saw the sky fill with clouds like the coming of the apocalypse; terror and worship flashed across their monstrous faces.
But before they could admire their master’s might, several tall figures were slowly approaching through the flashes of lightning.
“Boom!”
By the brief light of the lightning, they saw several large goblins far taller and more muscular than normal goblins,
!
One of the goblins leapt high and smashed into the camp amid the gnolls’ terrified expressions.
One swing of a spiked club turned more than a dozen gnolls into meat paste.
While Gauss was contending with the juvenile dragons, he had quietly released many clay-summoned creatures to sweep the monster servants around.
And another observation: Gauss opened his eyes, dissatisfaction flashing across his face.
He glanced at the exhausted corpse of the green dragon.
The true dragon bloodline that the green dragon could provide had already been drained dry.
What disappointed him was that the bloodline power provided by this green dragon’s corpse was insufficient to advance his dragon breed to the next quality.
Of course, it was not that the green dragon’s bloodline was impure; it truly was a pure-blood true dragon of the Zhenglong banner.
But he could feel that the bloodline power he absorbed had been partially depleted, so only a small portion entered his body.
More importantly, although its bloodline was pure, its strength was too weak compared to a fully grown adult great dragon. It had not yet developed into its prime, so its life-force and power were far from their peak.
If he had absorbed a mature adult dragon, or one older than these juvenile dragons—one whose absolute level had already broken into Transcendent—he believed his progress would be much faster, and he might even have advanced on the spot.
One dragon was not enough, but that was fine.
Gauss’s gaze shifted to the other three dragons present.
Absorbing them might push his dragon breed to a higher realm.
If quantity could make up for quality, so be it.
The closest dragon, a female green dragon struggling against Bigby’s Hand, sensed his gaze and suddenly felt a spine-chilling dread.
It felt this mysterious humanoid creature looked at it the way one looks at food.
Unfortunately, Gauss only gave it a passing glance and then looked away.
What mattered more to him now was the blue dragon in the sky.
Among the four dragons, it was the strongest.
Gauss had his reasons for not attacking it first.
Among the four, the juvenile blue dragon was the slyest. From beginning to end it had not approached him. For dragons whose bodies naturally outclass most creatures, this was almost cowardly.
Moreover, it kept holding a defensive spell. Gauss worried he might not subdue it quickly and would instead reveal his methods, losing the informational advantage.
If the blue dragon delayed him, the other juvenile dragons could launch ranged strikes from a distance, and he might find it hard to break the stalemate for a while.
Now it could not be said his strategy was flawless, but at least he was reasonably satisfied.
A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.
One green dragon was already dead, another was practically in the bag, and if he could take a moment to kill the black dragon, he would have slain three true dragons. Even if he then left the blue dragon alive for now, he could escape later.
This commission only required him to kill as many juvenile dragons as possible.
Even slaying seven or eight would already be an impressive result.
In a flash, Gauss composed his thoughts.
“Boom!”
In the sky, the blue dragon’s long-prepared magic had taken form.
Countless streaks of lightning flashed within the clouds.
Gauss narrowed his eyes, sensing a Domain-like aura within.
True Dragons’ talents were indeed exaggerated.
Although Gauss had crossed multiple levels and boasted respectable combat power within the Transcendent rank, his means of leaping levels could largely be summed up as brute force.
At his core he remained a “pseudo-Transcendent,” though a pseudo-Transcendent whose strength exceeded that of many Transcendents.
The reason for that lay in his lack of Domain.
Even someone as strong as Gauss could not bypass the rank barrier to steal the core force of a Transcendent.
But this blue dragon had done that—though how it managed this was unclear. Perhaps it was not entirely due to its own effort but tied to its true dragon heritage. Regardless, it appeared to be ahead of Gauss in the path of Domain.
Gauss could not help but feel a sense of how heroes are as numerous as carp crossing the river.
If just two provinces contained geniuses who could surpass him in a single field, imagine the whole kingdom or continent.
But maybe that was what made things interesting.
After digesting the strengthened dragon-breed bloodline in his body, Gauss temporarily stabilized his current power.
The previous balance of the Dragon-Ghost Union had shifted slightly because the dragon breed had been enhanced, but he had already rebalanced it.
This supplemental power restored him from a drained state back to his peak.
Only about a minute had passed.
He still had enough time.
“Boom!!”
Dozens of lightning-serpents shot from the clouds. At the sound, the valley plunged into lightning prison.
Each bolt could turn most creatures to charcoal.
Gauss’s figure appeared outside the lightning prison. He glanced at the electric arcs flowing around him. Even with his incredible speed, the flashes still brushed his body.
“Boom!”
The faint currents on his skin seemed to attract other bolts from the sky.
Several more bolts struck precisely where Gauss stood.
The thunder pillars swallowed his body, and in an instant his afterimage burst apart.
So fast!
Among elemental magics, lightning might be the quickest.
Technically light is faster, but in practice most casters’ lightning magic is swifter than their light magic.
Lightning mana is inherently more violent than light mana.
A small patch of dragon scales on Gauss’s arm was singed, but in mere moments the energy scales there completed regeneration.
His figure flickered through the valley, yet the thunder pillars always managed to chase him.
“This Domain…”
Gauss had come to understand.
The blue dragon’s lightning Domain probably had something to do with static field amplification.
Every creature inevitably has its own static electric field, and the blue dragon’s Domain could amplify those tiny currents and use them to draw lightning from the sky.
As long as one stood within the Domain, no matter how the enemy moved, the fast-moving thunderclouds would lock onto them.
Couple that with lightning’s inherent speed and destructive force,
and this Domain ranked among the most formidable in the Transcendent Domains.
However…
You can’t truly control it, can you?
Gauss looked toward the faint dragon silhouette hidden in the thunderclouds.
The blue dragon’s lightning magic combined with its Domain was indeed powerful, but one detail exposed that it could not fully master this ability.
The blue dragon had been continuously summoning heavenly lightning to attack Gauss, yet it never attempted to help its comrades.
Whether the green female whose life was fading within Bigby’s Hand, or the black dragon entangled with Hephaestus,
it seemed oblivious to their plight and ignored them both.
This might simply be selfishness—writing them off as unrelated to its fate.
But if so, why not send two more aids to hold Gauss? They were all in the same predicament.
The only plausible explanation was that it could not perfectly control the thunderpower.
If it tried to use the lightning Domain to assist the other two dragons, it might not help them at all; worse, it could inadvertently harm them seriously.
Gauss’s conjecture was not baseless.
To cross ranks and prematurely wield Domain power was already astonishing; given that, small drawbacks were reasonable.
Thinking this, he eyed the sky.
There thousands upon thousands of bolts churned within the black clouds.
The blue dragon seemed to swim in them like bathing in a hot spring, utterly unharmed.
A knowing look crossed Gauss’s eyes.
If he was right, the densest part of the thunderclouds—the supposedly most dangerous area—would actually be the safest.
If the blue dragon could not fully control the Domain, why could it move safely within it?
Because when lightning is extremely concentrated, it stops seeking targets around it.
Realizing this, Gauss’s energy dragon wings suddenly beat.
His body plunged into the jet-black thunderclouds in a near-suicidal dash.
The juvenile blue dragon hiding in the clouds saw this and its face flashed with a humanlike horror.
It could not imagine how Gauss had discovered its sole weakness in such a short time.
When had he exposed it?
As Gauss dove into the thunderclouds, he quickly felt the ubiquitous lock vanish.
The active static around him instantly calmed.
It was as if the lightning that had raged like a river dragon around him no longer aimed to strike him.
Under some mysterious influence it deliberately avoided his position.
Therefore Gauss did not trigger the prepped Dimension Door.
He had made two contingency plans: if his guess was wrong and the thunder struck him from all sides, he would use his defenses to hold a beat and then blink away through Dimension Door.
Fortunately, his guess proved correct.
Inside the Domain was absolutely safe.
In the distance the blue dragon’s expression grew extremely sullen.
It had expected that displaying its Domain would hold this mysterious enemy at bay a while, or at least delay him for minutes. Instead, barely after it began, the opponent had already learned its weakness.
“Lightning Orb!”
It condensed a spherical bolt of lightning in its mouth and spat it out; several lightning orbs flew rapidly toward Gauss.
“Bigby’s Hand!”
Gauss formed a second silver giant palm and slapped the lightning orbs aside.
He felt the flow of mana within him. Although the heavenly thunder inside the Domain would not attack him, it also suppressed his mana circulation to some extent.
He estimated his mana could only perform at about seventy percent of its effectiveness compared to outside the Domain.
Seventy percent?
Still enough!
Several even larger lightning orbs coalesced around the blue dragon and floated, circulating as protection.
Yet while shielding itself with condensed lightning spheres, it quickly retreated in the opposite direction from where Gauss stood.
Gauss’s figure flickered rapidly, closing on the blue dragon at near-lightning speed.
The blue dragon’s flight speed was extremely fast, but Gauss’s Dimension Door was faster.
“Magic Missile!”
He swung his hand and launched a barrage of homing missiles that traced hundreds of streaking arcs in the air, locking onto the high-speed blue dragon.
“Crack! Crack! Crack!”
Before the Magic Missiles could reach, the lightning spheres around the blue dragon blasted out intercepting bolts, detonating the missile-like projectiles into premature explosions.
A huge flash of lightning and the missiles’ glow filled the sky, momentarily obscuring vision.
The blue dragon’s flight speed was affected and had to slow.
Putting aside the incomplete Domain, the blue dragon itself was a powerful Transcendent-level combatant—objectively not something to be trifled with.
While the blue dragon fully focused on parrying and engaging Gauss in a spell duel,
from below the valley came sounds of suffering.
The other female green dragon collapsed weakly within Bigby’s Hand, and the juvenile black dragon fighting Hephaestus was also in dire straits.
The blue dragon looked toward Gauss, horrified to discover that Gauss’s already formidable momentum was still rapidly climbing.
An intimidating power streamed from him, making the blue dragon’s flesh crawl, as if born to counter true dragons.
In fact, time not only favored the blue dragon but also favored Gauss.
If he only needed to refine two more juvenile dragons, his breed Dragon Breed could be further purified, and the title True Dragon Killer would also be within reach.