Chapter 58: The Fall of the Mad Dragon
Fighting giant beasts is the most boring thing. They don't understand your exquisite techniques, nor do they know the hardships of your training. They only use the simplest means of attack to engage in the most intense struggle with you.
Yet, fighting giant beasts is also the most glorious thing. Because they are born powerful, with strength etched into their bloodline. Because of their simplicity, if you can hunt them, it means your own power is equally pure and strong.
And the dragon, among all giant beasts, is the most powerful, and the glory gained from slaying one is the most noble.
When the shockwave finally subsided, rolling gray smoke rose from the ground, with two pillars of smoke, one large and one small, standing tall amidst the Black Forest.
Before the fall, the entangled red and black light points had emitted a powerful oppressive aura and a faint, mad dragon presence. This caused the surrounding beast tide to flee far away, none daring to approach. With the two smoke pillars as the center, there was not a single magical beast within a radius of several hundred meters.
—Because, there, were their 'King.'
Crack...
At the source of the smaller smoke pillar, in a not-so-shallow impact crater, a faint sound came. A human figure could be seen in the dust, with the cold gleam of a silver-white blade flashing.
Eyes snapped open quickly, two red light points igniting. When Joshua awoke from his brief unconsciousness, he felt a strange ringing filling his ears. All kinds of chaotic noises poured into his brain. He instinctively looked around, finding only darkness, with sand and dust churning endlessly, and the mournful roars of beasts sounding in the distance.
The earth rumbled and shook—the sound of the beast tide stampeding. The warrior quickly realized his current situation.
"Looks like I couldn't completely cancel out the impact force."
Muttering to himself, Joshua shook his head, wiping away the blood flowing from his forehead, while a stream of data flashed before his eyes.
[Unknown Martial Arts Stance: +15 Strength, Agility, Endurance on first strike]
[Unknown Burst Power: +20 Strength, Agility, -20 Endurance for two minutes]
[Divine Mechanization Lv2: Explosive State, +10 Strength, Agility, Endurance, +5 Perception, Spirit]
[Keeper's Inherited Power: +20 to all stats permanently, +0.01 to all stats for each Chaos Monster killed (Inherited by designated bloodline upon death, inheritance degree depends on individual quality)]
[Berserk: +20 Agility, +15 Strength, -10 Endurance]
[Steel Armor Breathing Art: Reduces physical damage...]
[Left Arm Severely Injured...]
Martial arts, battle qi, skills... all kinds of buffs, enhancement abilities, and passive skills were all applied to Joshua, nearly doubling his overall attributes. Combined with the significant physical boost from his recent level-up, the warrior was able to quickly awaken from the shock of the fall.
Using the silver-white greatsword he had never let go of as a crutch, Joshua stood up from the crater he had created. At this moment, his entire body, from the inside out—bones, muscles, skin, and organs—was wracked with intense pain and a feeling of distortion. The pain was everywhere, but Joshua paid it no mind.
Heaven is on the left, the warrior is on the right. As a former legendary warrior, he had experienced countless battlefields and suffered near-fatal injuries many times. This current pain was nothing more than an itch. Even compared to the severe injuries he sustained when he first crossed over, this was nothing.
He could still fight.
Step by step, he walked out of the gradually dissipating dust. The powerful regenerative abilities of a Gold-rank warrior slowly mended the minor wounds on his body. Although some internal injuries caused by the impact couldn't heal immediately, all the scattered small cuts closed up, and the deep purple bruises gradually faded and disappeared. By the time Joshua walked out of the dust, all his small wounds, except for his left arm, had healed completely.
Of course, his left arm, with its shattered bones, couldn't heal in such a short time. This was the price of Joshua's misjudgment. He thought it was a dragon, but who knew it had long since turned into some kind of unknown monster.
"I should have noticed earlier. The Dragon-Slaying Stone didn't have an extreme reaction. That was a pure-blooded dragon, but its reaction was about the same as the hybrid Dragon Spider from before."
Reflecting on his mistake, Joshua sighed. Because he hadn't slain a dragon in so long, he got a bit excited this time, forgetting the terror of Chaos Erosion.
Chaos Invasion is the day of the apocalypse—that's the Void Chaos outside the world, a terrifying existence that erodes entire worlds. It is the eternal enemy of the orderly world, and the only thing the First Flame burns.
How could its erosion allow a creature to retain its original characteristics? It was only because the form of the Black Erosion Dragon spreading the Mad Dragon Plague was too similar to ordinary Chaos Monsters that Joshua got the illusion it was still a dragon.
After all, it was a calamity dragon that grew from a corpse like a fungus—truly a perfect match for Chaos.
"Hsss aaaah..."
In the howling wind, a strange roar came from the large pit not far in front of the warrior. Accompanied by the rising of the purple-black smoke that had become the Black Dragon's trademark, a black figure slowly emerged. It walked through the gray sand and dust, stepped outside the smoke pillar, and stared at Joshua from afar with its single golden eye.
The Black Dragon. It hadn't died either. It was still alive.
Just as Joshua had seen in the distress letter sent by Verdani half a month ago, half of the dragon's body shone like platinum, while the other half was as deep as the night. On the right side, a golden dragon horn stood erect, while on the left, another black dragon horn was tucked close to its neck. Only the golden half of its head had an eye, and it was tightly shut, while the black half had none. Its two-colored dragon wings carried two large wing-claws, and the smooth curves of its limbs contained powerful explosive force.
But due to the erosion of Chaos, the platinum half of its body had been stained with a filthy purple-black. The intelligence granted by some unknown, terrifying existence could no longer control the body's mutation, preventing the dragon from maintaining its original form.
On its chest, the huge wound created by Joshua's Divine Mechanization-powered Solar Sword, combined with the power of the Dragon-Slaying Stone, was still dripping liquid. But this liquid was no longer blood; it was some kind of strange, pulpy fluid. As it dripped to the ground, it corroded deep pits into the soil and rock.
Countless tiny tentacles writhed at the wound, merging into strands of granulation tissue, and then healed rapidly. Before long, the massive wound that had nearly split the Black Dragon in two was reduced to a long scar, shimmering with black-red light traces.
As a price, the platinum half of the Chaos Black Erosion Dragon had completely disappeared. It had transformed entirely into a huge black monster. There was no longer any dragon aura emanating from it, only pure Chaos fluctuations.
"Woo... Woo!!!"
A low, pained roar came from its mouth. Joshua, who had been staring at it, could see that before being completely eroded, this Black Dragon was unwilling to accept its fate.
It was still unwilling.
In that moment before the Black Erosion Dragon's fading consciousness disappeared, the only thing it could still recall was that scene.
Its life frozen in that moment, the dragon, halfway through its transformation, was attacked by a fellow dragon that had completed its evolution earlier. It was forced to forcibly terminate its one-in-a-lifetime awakening. After that, endless pain crushed its spirit, causing this dragon, which had once soared freely over the Central Black Forest, to gradually fall into Chaos.
"Chaos, the enemy of order."
Taking a deep breath, Joshua, who had recovered to about seventy or eighty percent of his strength, tightened his grip on his weapon. Crimson battle qi once again swirled around him.
Watching the Black Dragon, whose body was still undergoing violent mutation, a trace of emotion flashed in the warrior's eyes. He raised the silver-white Divine Mechanism in his hand, pointing it at the monster that was staring at him with a purely manic gaze.
"Grievous mad dragon... your awakening will never come."
So, die.
"...Hsss aaaaaah!!!!!!"
Unable to understand the warrior's words, the monster simply hated this life form radiating the fluctuations of order before it.
Amidst the violent sound waves that shook the atmosphere, the Chaos Dragon, now completely mutated, with a pair of huge dragon wings and six arms, erupted with a strange, powerful force from somewhere. Its six limbs bent, then kicked off violently, leaping high from the ground. Its massive, dozen-meter-tall body, wrapped in purple-black Chaos smoke, charged straight at Joshua.