Beneath the Red Dragon

On a night without stars, the capital city of Valerian, the center of power and politics, in this Fortress of Freedom, lay sleepless.

One by one, the demon dragons patrolling the dark sky fell, their ferocious heads and massive bodies crashing down like a meteor shower, the spilled dragon blood even setting many buildings in the city ablaze.

The demon dragons roared in despair as they fell under the combined attack of the Golden Empire’s Flying Dragon Riders and Legion Warriors, startling the entire city awake.

The whole city seemed to have stepped into the domain of demonic monsters, where the demon dragons and Dragon King Knights, once high and mighty, could only let out the last cries of their lives in the darkness.

Countless civilian slaves trembled in fear through the night, praying to their respective divine spirits for survival until morning.

But it was as if their divine spirits could not provide them with the protection they deserved, even though these slaves and civilians would sacrifice their own families to those high and mighty spirits.

The forty noblest clans ruling over Valerian, known as the Forty Dragon King Clans, each kept multiple giant dragons.

These demon dragons could grow over time, with their final size limits beyond estimation. The largest existing one could even grow over two hundred meters, far surpassing any true dragon species in the Icaria World.

Even the ancient Golden Dragons, such super giant dragon species, found it hard to compare in size to these demon dragons at the end of their lifespan.

This is the only advantage that these demon dragons have over true dragons.

And at this moment, such a colossal demon dragon was stretching its vast wings, casting a shadow large enough to cover a small town under the dim moonlight, hovering above the manor.

The knight on the demon dragon was like a slightly thicker spike on a giant dragon, bound to the dragon’s saddle, communicating and controlling the demon dragon through blood magic.

The Dragon Knight watched as thousands of slave warriors followed the shadow, gradually surrounding the manor of the former great slave master. He extended his hand, gently patting the massive demon dragon and shouted loudly: ”Hoglin, dracarys (Dragon Flame),”

”Roar,”

The enormous demon dragon Hoglin, with a body length of two hundred and eighty meters, was too massive. It heard the command from its master and the dragon rider, flapping its gigantic wings and adjusting its position while soaring in the air.

The tremendous wind whipped up by the dragon, the giant demon dragon controlled its wings and dove downwards.

The demon dragon’s eyes were fixated on those tiny humans on the ground, those who looked up at it without showing any sign of reverence.

A blazing ball of fire brewed and flickered between the demon dragon’s enormous fangs, about to unleash terrifying dragon fire capable of melting stone walls into liquid.

But those tiny humans showed no sign of fear. They extended their hands from their exquisite caster’s robes, raising magic staffs and casting devices, all embedded with large gemstones, chanting spells.

These casters, each one of them was an elite mage trained or recruited by the Empire, with many being high tier mages. They were not only proficient in enhancing techniques when casting without a magic staff but also improved their casting abilities greatly with the luxurious casting equipment provided by the Empire.

Led by a high tier mage holding the Staff of the Tree of Life, these casters with amplification and stabilization casting equipment did not need to output excessive magic power of their own.

Together, they stirred the magic power rich in the air, using the spell models constructed from the collaborative spellcasting models issued by the Magic Integration Department Research Center to channel the world’s magic.

In the night’s sky, thunder suddenly rumbled, and with the muffled roar of thunder, the previously somewhat bright sky under the moonlight dimmed entirely.

A massive storm cloud swirled in the sky, with the enormous thundercloud appearing as if locked onto its target, descending over the nearly three-hundred-meter-long giant demon dragon.

The roaring arcs of thunderbolt darted within the clouds like serpents.

Friction filled the air with flashing lights and sparks, making the hair on the demon dragon rider stand on end.

The Demon Dragon Knight was filled with terror, hastily shouting: ”Hoglin, beware of evasion! Stop the attack!”

But the Dragon Knight’s words were no quicker than the surging thunderbolts filling the sky. Before the dragon flame could be unleashed from the giant demon dragon’s mouth, the dark sky suddenly brightened.

Boom!

Countless sweeping thunders twisted like a colossal blue dragon tornado, drilled through layer upon layer of brooding thundercloud, descending on the massive demon dragon.

”Roaaaaaar,”

The demon dragon bellowed an earth-shattering cry of agony.

The colossal thunderbolt tornado instantaneously incinerated the knight on the dragon into a vaporized gas, then pierced through the rough scales on the demon dragon’s back, burrowing into the dragon’s flesh and blood.

An enormous surge of thunderbolts evaporated large amounts of demon dragon blood in an instant, scorching the vast area of its back into charcoal.

Countless electric sparks rampaged inside the demon dragon’s body, quickly rendering organs within it cooked and necrotic.

In the face of such powerful magic, the massive demon dragon stood no chance, its flesh and tissues disappearing and dying in many places, leaving it unable to flap its wings, plummeting from the sky like a mammoth mountain.

Boom,

The over two-hundred-meter-long demon dragon crashed heavily into the city, causing more than a dozen buildings to collapse into dust. Many civilians, not even having enough time to flee their homes, were buried in rubble along with the dragon’s body.