Chương 382: Last resort of a Corpse

The colossal body of the undead dragon hurtled through the sky like a collapsing mountain, its rotting frame blotting out the pale light as an enormous shadow swept across the group of Paragons. Caesar was the first to notice the mass descending toward them.

"Move!" Without a moment's hesitation, he seized Yuki by the shoulder and dragged her out of its path. Callum reacted almost as quickly, grabbing Evelyn as both threw themselves from the ridgeline. Instinct overtook thought as the others scattered in every direction, each moving before the dragon's corpse could crash into the mountainside. Everyone moved. Everyone except Artoria.

Callum landed several dozen meters away before twisting around, fully expecting the entire peak to disappear beneath the dragon's impossible weight. Instead, the corpse simply... stopped.

"Hah... sneaky," Callum muttered with an appreciative click of his tongue. The colossal dragon remained suspended only a few meters before Artoria. Between them shimmered a translucent wall of distorted space, the air itself bending into rippling layers as though reality had been compressed into an invisible shield. It was one of the very few techniques she could still force into existence despite the suppressive laws that governed the Undying Valley. Artoria merely scoffed.

"You look impressive..." Her golden eyes narrowed as she met the undead creature's hollow stare.

"... but you are nothing more than bones, and bones shall soon become dust." The undead dragon's head rotated toward her with an unsettling series of cracks. Thick strands of acidic saliva dripped lazily between its decaying fangs while endless hunger twisted across what remained of its ruined face. Without warning, it lunged, its enormous jaws tearing through the air. Artoria didn't retreat. She simply clenched her fist. The spatial barrier shattered.

The compressed space exploded outward in a violent shockwave, releasing all of its stored force at once. The colossal corpse was hurled backward like a stone fired from a giant's sling. Straight toward Ember. The ivory wyvern didn't so much as flinch. Twisting his immense body with effortless grace, he swung his tail in one clean motion. BOOM! The impact thundered across the valley.

Ember's tail smashed into the dragon's ribs with overwhelming force, launching the undead monster through yet another mountain range as shattered peaks erupted into clouds of stone and dust.

"Hey, Ember!" Caesar shouted from below, shielding himself from the rain of debris.

"Mind watching where you're throwing that thing?!" No response came. The battle had already resumed. The dragon tore itself free from the rubble, scattering broken cliffs as it hurled itself back into the sky. It narrowly slipped past Ember's snapping jaws before lunging directly for the wyvern's throat, its rotten teeth clamping down with enough force to crush mountains. Yet they failed to bite deeply. The ivory scales held.

"Should we help him?" Evelyn asked quietly, unable to tear her eyes away from the clash unfolding overhead. Callum waved a hand dismissively.

"I don't think he needs it." He watched Ember steadily overpower the creature despite its relentless aggression before adding with a crooked grin,"Though I'd certainly appreciate it if he paid a little more attention to where he's throwing mountains." The undead dragon raised both claws, attempting to force Ember's neck downward through sheer weight. The wyvern answered with nothing but overwhelming physical strength.

His neck surged upward, tearing free from the dragon's jaws before snapping back toward its face with terrifying speed. The dragon barely escaped. Its massive body recoiled just as a sickly violet glow began spreading through the decaying flesh of its throat.

"Seriously?" Yuki muttered.

"It can still breathe fire in that condition?" This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it. Artoria answered with a quiet whistle.

"Remarkable." No one disagreed. The dragon opened its maw, unleashing a roaring torrent of violet flames that swallowed the battlefield in an instant. For a brief moment, Ember vanished completely beneath the inferno, disappearing within the endless sea of purple fire. Then a single spark appeared. Ivory. Tiny at first, it rapidly blossomed into a blazing white flame before erupting into an ocean of sacred fire.

Ember's ivory inferno devoured the violet torrent from within, consuming it as though it had never existed before punching clean through the dragon's attack. The white flames engulfed one of the creature's remaining wings. Rotten flesh ignited. The undead dragon screamed, the sound resembling twisting metal far more than the cry of any living creature.

"Oh." A familiar voice drifted across the mountains.

"So you all came to watch as well?" The group turned. Atherius approached at his usual unhurried pace, his hands comfortably folded behind his back as though he had arrived for an afternoon stroll instead of witnessing two dragons tear mountain ranges apart. Callum nodded.

"Yeah. We saw Ember chasing something and figured it'd be worth watching." Atherius chuckled softly.

"I suppose that makes sense." Their attention naturally returned to the battle. Ember burst through the fading curtain of ivory flames and seized one of the dragon's forelegs in his jaws. Pinning the creature beneath the weight of one enormous wing, the wyvern twisted with brutal force... CRACK! The sound of splintering bone echoed across the valley. Ember twisted with brutal force, tearing the dragon's entire foreleg free before hurling it hundreds of meters away.

The severed limb spun end over end through the air before crashing through a distant cliffside, reducing solid rock to an avalanche of shattered stone. Yet even after losing another limb... The dragon refused to retreat. Its mangled corpse staggered forward, uncaring of the damage it had suffered, driven by nothing except the endless hunger animating its decaying body.

"... Interesting," Atherius murmured. Caesar nodded thoughtfully, folding his arms as his eyes remained fixed on the battle overhead.

"That's exactly what we were saying. Something like that shouldn't even be capable of surviving here. Its body would require a constant supply of Chaotic Atum just to remain animated." He watched the dragon continue its assault despite the punishment it had endured.

"Fortunately, its abilities seem significantly weaker than they should be." Atherius tilted his head ever so slightly.

"That's certainly one way to interpret it." The dragon lunged again, its jaws snapping shut around empty air as Ember effortlessly lifted his neck just beyond their reach. Before the undead creature could recover, the wyvern counterattacked, clamping onto its remaining wing. Pinning the massive body beneath one forelimb, Ember twisted violently and ripped the wing clean from its corpse in a shower of shattered bone and rotting flesh.

"What exactly seems strange to you?" Callum asked. Atherius never looked away from the battlefield.

"If this creature truly exists here..." His voice dropped noticeably, losing its casual warmth.

"... then something fundamental has changed." For the first time since arriving, genuine concern crossed his face.

"I've never seen an exception like this, and exceptions rarely come alone." Far across the valley, Ember bit deep into the dragon's neck before violently throwing the corpse away once more. The undead giant sailed hundreds of meters through the air before smashing into another mountainside, burying itself beneath an avalanche of fractured stone. Ember advanced without haste. Ivory flames slowly gathered between his jaws. Atherius' eyes narrowed.

"It seems you were mistaken." Callum blinked.

"Mistaken about what?" Atherius gestured toward the severed limbs scattered across the battlefield.

"The ability." Callum frowned.

"You mean it's regeneration?"

"No." Atherius' expression darkened.

"It still has access to it..." His voice trailed off.

"... Or rather-" He stopped mid-sentence. His pupils contracted. Without another word, he vanished. The mountain beneath his feet exploded from the sheer force of his acceleration.

'So fast-' Callum barely managed to finish the thought before Atherius had already crossed the battlefield. His body expanded with terrifying speed. Bone elongated, scales erupted across his skin, and gigantic wings burst from his back in an explosion of golden light. Within moments, another colossal dragon soared across the valley, racing directly toward the undead monster. Meanwhile... The dragon's mouth continued filling with fire. Except... The flames were no longer violet. They had become black.

A colorless darkness that seemed to swallow light itself, twisting the air around it into something that felt fundamentally wrong. Atherius' heart skipped. Only two known flames possessed that color. The Flames of Restoration. And... The Flames of Corruption. One restored life by forcing unbearable agony upon its recipient. The other erased existence itself. Something deep within him whispered that this was not the former.

"Not so fast!" His enormous wing slammed sideways into the undead dragon's skull with enough force to tear its lower jaw completely from its face. The attack should have stopped it. It didn't. The energy gathering inside the dragon refused to disperse. Instead... it changed. The black flames vanished. In their place appeared something infinitely worse. Light. Pure black light. A radiance so unnatural that everything it touched simply ceased to exist. The mountain beneath the dragon didn't even crack.

It didn't melt either. It simply... Disappeared. Erased so completely that even dust failed to remain. Atherius' instincts screamed. He beat his wings with explosive force, throwing himself backward just before the expanding darkness reached him. Even then, the edge of the black radiance continued spreading across the valley with terrifying speed. His draconic voice thundered across the entire mountain range.

"RUN!" The Paragons didn't hesitate. Even Yuki abandoned her usual laziness.

"Well," she muttered while turning to flee, "that was fun while it lasted." Caesar didn't waste a single second. He seized her wrist and practically dragged her forward.

"Move!" For perhaps the first time since anyone had met him, genuine panic filled his voice.

"It's consuming everything!" Unlike the others, Caesar recognized what he was seeing. He had never witnessed those legendary flames with his own eyes. But he had studied every surviving record. Every ancient account. Every theory left behind by civilizations long since forgotten. The legendary dragon Dagon had once battled a monster that wielded those very same black flames. The battle itself had become myth. Its conclusion, however, remained absolute. Dagon had annihilated the creature with a single strike.

Compared to Dagon... This undead dragon was less than an insect. Compared to the Paragons... It was an extinction event. If they failed to escape, the corrupted radiance would not simply kill them. It would erase them, leaving behind neither bodies nor souls, nothing that could ever prove they had existed at all.