Chapter 32: Those Who Are Enemies of Humanity
Yakov lost his grasp of the battlefield in an instant.
Joshua shattered the ice layer, destroyed the position, and drove Agam deep into the dragon's nest, preventing him from continuing to cast buff spells on his friend, while his own charged attack magic naturally dissipated due to the inability to find a target.
Although, with the power of a dragon, suppressing a Gold-rank human warrior should not be something he needed to worry about, it was obvious that this Gold warrior could not be judged by ordinary standards—he was an entirely different existence.
Yakov clearly understood that fighting him with just one dragon was absolutely not enough!
But as a dragon specializing in magic, recklessly charging deeper into the narrower confines of the dragon's nest was undoubtedly cutting off his own retreat. Yet, while he was still hesitating, a earth-shattering scream rang out, unmistakably Agam's voice.
There was no time to hesitate. Yakov angrily swung his tail, smashing a large patch of ice chips from the ground, while his semi-transparent scales emitted a magical glow. With a flap of his wings, he immediately charged toward the hole Joshua and Agam had created, heading deep into the dragon's nest.
At that moment.
Joshua silently wielded his great axe and greatsword. While evading the desperate counterattack of the dragon before him, he tore through its scales, ripped open its muscles, and shattered its bones bit by bit. As his sword light danced, the atmosphere itself was torn apart, letting out a mournful wail.
It wasn't that he couldn't deliver a fatal blow; his current actions were meant to inflict intense pain on the opponent while minimizing his own losses.
Otherwise, he could simply charge forward, take one of the enemy's counterattacks head-on, and then cut off the dragon's head with a single sword stroke—why bother with this?
Thus, while fighting, he still had the leisure to think.
—He had already been inside the dragon's nest for quite some time. Not counting the few dragons he had killed outside the nest while they were flying in the air, could it be that there were only ten dragons inside the nest? And only two of them could be considered elites, barely worth mentioning.
This was indeed a strange matter. The warrior was well acquainted with the distribution of dragon clans.
A dragon's nest was merely a place to raise young dragons. Generally speaking, not many adult dragons lived there. But Joshua knew that in his previous life, to incite a dragon calamity, almost all adult dragons had been summoned back to the nest to be assigned tasks. Calculating the time, it should be around now.
Logically, White Dragon Peak should have over a dozen ordinary dragons, several elite dragons like the one before him, and a nest master close to the Ultimate-rank. But now, aside from other matters, where had that nest master gone?
As he pondered, he once again dodged the dragon's claw strike, breath attack, and tail sweep—a three-hit combo.
The giant claw, like a battering ram, was swung by the dragon, which was writhing in pain from its injuries, creating a howling gale. It smashed through walls made of solid ice, leaving craters several meters deep and over ten meters wide on the ground. Accompanied by a series of roars, a pale blue cold light, carrying freezing cold air, covered the entire battlefield. Following this rapid combo, a massive white tail, capable of carrying hundreds of tons of force and demolishing houses and city walls, swept across the entire battlefield.
But how could Joshua not know these few tricks of dragons? When they were about to use what kind of attack or release what kind of breath, the warrior could guess most of it. This was a pre-reading ability gained from hunting countless dragons. So, with a loud laugh, a thunderous boom echoed through the second layer of the dragon's nest. Joshua stepped on the air, creating ripples with each step, and then bypassed the dragon's front. Before it could react, he launched a fierce attack toward its left side.
On the greatsword, silver light flickered, and crimson battle qi blazed high. The divine mechanism, capable of cutting through steel, possessed an impressive sharpness even against dragon scales. In the next moment, this greatsword was about to sweep past the dragon's left side, plunge directly into the internal organs at its waist, burn out its lungs and viscera, and completely destroy its innards.
Even a dragon could not withstand such an attack!
But at that moment, an intangible, formless fluctuation came from above the battlefield. Yakov had finally arrived at the scene of the fight. The first thing he saw was Agam, caught off guard, being flanked by that human warrior and about to suffer a severe blow. While drawing a sharp breath, he activated a spell inscribed on his scales—an instant-cast spell.
There were not many spells that dragons would deliberately inscribe on their own scales. Generally, they were not very powerful but were extremely practical. This spell was one such example. A terrifying gravity was applied to the silver greatsword, causing the thrust to veer off course. Instead of piercing the dragon's waist, it slashed diagonally, shattering a few scales on its leg. Then, this greatsword, now at least a dozen times heavier, carried Joshua down to the ground—
That should have been the case. Both Agam, who had just realized he had narrowly escaped death, and Yakov, who had saved his companion, breathed a sigh of relief, thinking the same thing.
But reality was different from imagination.
The heavy greatsword, though it momentarily made it difficult for Joshua to control smoothly, was followed by a surge of blood energy. Battle qi stimulated his potential. The warrior, his entire body enveloped in surging crimson light, decisively activated the strongest strength-enhancing state—Power of the Gods!
Beneath his reddened skin, blood surged like a great river. A threefold increase in strength allowed Joshua not only to control the greatsword smoothly but also to deliver an even heavier, more destructive blow!
A horizontal slash. The dragon's leg was thus cleanly severed, leaving only a thin layer of skin, flesh, and scales connecting it to the body.
The steel-like muscles were cut, producing a highly elastic snapping sound. At the cut of the bone, blue dragon bone marrow could be clearly seen slowly oozing out. The blood could not be stopped at all, gushing out wildly, staining the surrounding ice layer blue.
"Foolish dragons, don't you know?"
The heavier the weapon, the greater the destructive power!
With a fierce roar, Joshua's eyes were like those of an Abyss Demon. He did not bother to finish off the dragon, which had already fallen unconscious from severe pain and blood loss. Instead, he stomped the ground, leaped into the air, and flew toward the spellcasting dragon not far away.
Now, how could Yakov continue to unleash large-scale magic? In such a confined environment within the dragon's nest, he couldn't create distance either. He could only regulate his mana, activate the basic formations inscribed on his scales, and use an endless stream of low-level magic to harass the warrior's movements.
Human Paralysis, Prismatic Spray, Freeze Beam, Web, Sensory Confusion... numerous control and hindrance skills, though not very powerful, were all instant-cast and came like a tide. This was an attack method only sustainable by a dragon's immense mana. If not for the scarcity of scales that could be inscribed with spells, Yakov would have wished his entire body were covered in inscribed scales, so he could unleash them all at once against this human who had killed his kin and severed his friend's leg.
Joshua, his entire body ablaze with crimson battle qi, swung his great axe and greatsword, shattering the incoming magical fluctuations one by one. Magic, in the end, only worked when applied to a person. Against a warrior like him, who could see the flow of energy, any indirect spell that didn't take effect at the speed of light was useless. And instant-acting spells like Human Paralysis or the unconsciousness-inducing Prismatic Spray could only deal with ordinary humans; they were completely ineffective against him, whose attributes were already superhuman.
At this moment, Joshua could clearly feel the other's anger. In response, he only sneered disdainfully, "What right does a beast that kills people have to be angry?"
In his mind, he recalled the drawings of villages ravaged by dragon beasts that he had seen in the Lord's Manor.
The brutally killed women, the young children gnawed down to only their heads, the despairing elderly found together with the bones of their offspring, trampled into a pulp by giant dragon beasts. Even in villages where the raging fire had turned everything to ashes, beneath the cinders were fragments of bones covered in teeth marks.
The source of it all was these damned Five-Colored Dragons!
Thinking of this, his movements became even more wild and swift. After cutting through several spells, Joshua simply allowed some insignificant minor spells to strike his body, enduring the dragon's magical torrent and charging upstream!
The dragon seemed to realize this as well. Since even a melee-specialized dragon had been defeated by this dragon slayer, it had no intention of following in its companion's footsteps. So, it glared, releasing its dragon might. A terrifying aura and mental impact, carrying the momentum of ancient times, surged forth. At the same time, it instantly released some mental spells, attempting to disrupt the warrior's movements.
But Joshua's will was far too firm. The dragon's tricks were less harmful than a single maximized Fireball. Now, the rapidly flying Joshua was far more agile within the dragon's nest than the dragons themselves. Even though this was their home turf, his advantage was greater than theirs. He swung his axe toward the dragon's foot, and Yakov found it impossible to dodge freely. Even though he immediately retreated, barely evading the attack, the scales and muscle layer were still cut open by the serrated edge of the great axe, leaving a wound like minced meat.
How could the warrior let this opportunity slip? He immediately pursued, crashing his entire body into the embrace of this white dragon. As a dragon that controlled ice and frost, the white dragon's body temperature was always maintained around zero degrees, and it had innate frost breath and a magic shield. But for Joshua, these were nothing more than a matter of one axe or one sword strike. In an instant, the massive dragon, far larger than the warrior, was knocked back to the ground by him, breaking through the hard ice wall and entering the third layer of the dragon's nest.
The ice wall shattered, snow dust and ice chips splattered everywhere, then were turned into water vapor by the high heat of Joshua's battle qi, forming a thick white mist that permeated the surroundings. In the vast, open ice chamber, countless blue-and-white striped giant eggs were placed around. Through the mist, one could vaguely see that they were protected by numerous ice formations and spells.
This was the deepest part of the dragon's nest, the most important place.
The Dragon Egg Incubation Chamber.
"Speak. Why are there so few dragons in this nest?"
With one foot planted between the eyes of the battered dragon, Joshua pointed his greatsword directly at the center of its forehead and said in a cold voice, "A nest this large, counting the ones outside, has less than twenty dragons. The nest master is also nowhere to be seen. This is different from what I knew before."
This dragon only glared at Joshua with a vicious gaze, remaining silent. But the warrior sneered and raised the great axe in his left hand, aiming it at the dragon eggs.
Immediately, it yielded.
"...Up above. Agam was the new nest master."
The dragon, speaking in a somewhat slow and halting Common Tongue, slowly said to the human warrior on top of it, "The old nest master took the others back to Dragon Island. Fiv—"
"Alright, I understand."
Interrupting the white dragon's words, Joshua nodded slightly: "So that's it. The main battlefield isn't in the Northern Lands. Come to think of it, in my previous life, it also swept from south to north, rolling in like a wave..."
How does this guy know everything?! Yakov felt a chill run down his spine. He had originally thought this human warrior had come to slay dragons only because he had discovered they were the masterminds behind the dragon beast attacks. He never expected that he knew everything, even the Five-Colored Dragon Clan's plan to incite a dragon calamity in the south!
"Did you come here—just to exterminate the Northern White Dragons?!"
This dragon began to struggle, but was quickly subdued by Joshua. It roared several times in extreme unwillingness, but it was all to no avail.
After a moment of silence, Joshua spoke in an extremely calm tone: "In my eyes, you non-humans dare to walk upon the ground, build nests, organize armies, and prepare to be enemies of humanity... You will not feel fear, but will be harvested by me like straw."
"What you possess, I will take away. What triumphs, I will subdue! Though you multiply and spread across the land, I will shatter your prosperity with my weapons, like smashing the earthen vessels of a potter."
Saying this, a cold, mocking expression appeared on the warrior's face. Pointing at the surrounding dragon eggs, he said softly to the dragon beneath him, "I will not only slaughter your kin, but also enslave your descendants."
"These dragon eggs, I will take back to my territory, brainwash them all, and turn them into mounts for my army... From now on, there will be no Northern White Dragons, only the Sinful Dragon Clan."
"ROOOOAR!!!!"
Hearing this, the dragon finally went completely berserk. It struggled with all its might, trying to break free from Joshua's restraint, while gathering violent mana in its mouth, aiming it at the pile of giant dragon eggs.
In that instant, Yakov thought of nothing. His own life, his pride as a dragon—all were forgotten. There was only one thought in his mind—
Even if it meant death, even if it meant dying by his own hand, he would never allow his descendants to be enslaved!
But Joshua kicked him, causing the just-charged dragon breath to spew off course, forming a crystalline layer of ice on the surrounding ice walls.
Then, the warrior raised his great axe. The black-red axe body, the gleaming blade edge, was so dazzling.
And then, he brought it down cleanly.
The dragon's head, with its eyes wide open in fury, was thus severed. Blue blood gushed out wildly, even splashing onto the cluster of dragon eggs.
Only then did the warrior's flat voice echo through the ice chamber:
"This is the fate of those who are enemies of humanity." (To be continued.)