The Ice Snow Dragon took a deep breath. The ice attribute mana in the surrounding air frantically converged toward its wide-open maw. Deep in its throat, a visible orb of light quickly took shape, emitting an extremely terrifying fluctuation of ice-blue dragon breath that continued to condense. This was the most terrifying attack method of a dragon.
The approaching lance cavalry and dragon swordsmen were swatted away like flies by its claw. The Ice Snow Dragon raised its claw and smashed the remaining, fearless soldiers in front of it into pieces.
“Protect Elder Lord Augustus!” A squadron leader in the front row raised his longsword and shouted hoarsely.
What’s more, this was an extinction-level Extreme Cold Snow Dragon. All the surviving sword-and-shield soldiers crazily pushed forward. They raised their tower shields high, tightly pressing against each other. The slots on the edges of the shields interlocked, forming an impenetrable steel wall.
“Pour all your mana into it! Don’t leave a drop!” The sword-and-shield soldiers gritted their teeth, squeezed out the last bit of mana from their bodies, and frantically poured it into the shields.
The blue mana barrier, which had been on the verge of collapse, suddenly burst into a blinding light. The thickness of the barrier doubled, and even solid-like defensive runes surfaced on it.
Just as the barrier was reinforced, the Ice Snow Dragon suddenly thrust its head forward.
Boom! A pillar of ice-blue light with a diameter of over one kilometer shot out from its mouth. Where the pillar passed, the air was instantly frozen, emitting a series of piercing ice cracking sounds. The snow on the ground instantly vaporized, revealing the black frozen soil beneath.
The speed of the magic dragon breath was too fast, too fast for anyone to react. In the blink of an eye, the ice-blue pillar slammed into the mana barrier of the sword-and-shield soldiers. There was no ear-splitting explosion as imagined, only an extremely high-frequency vibration that made one’s scalp tingle.
Buzz! The moment the dragon breath contacted the barrier, it erupted with an extremely blinding light, making it impossible to open one’s eyes. But miraculously, it was blocked.
However, the sword-and-shield soldiers standing at the front had despair in their hearts. Because the moment the dragon breath touched the barrier, the barrier had actually already shattered.
That level of destructive power was simply not something that ordinary soldiers could block with a defense built from numbers alone. It was like using a pile of eggs to stop a steamroller; no matter how many eggs, it was meaningless.
The reason the barrier still appeared intact was that those sword-and-shield soldiers had used something that should never be used lightly. A forbidden secret art recorded in the sacred scriptures of the Church Nation.
By consuming the source of life, forcibly converting mana. Once the life source is depleted, one disappears directly from existence itself, unable to be resurrected. Equivalent to completely deleting a character’s data in a game. This was a mutual destruction tactic.
The faces of the front-line sword-and-shield soldiers could no longer be described as pale. It was the ashen white of the dead. The terrifying power of the dragon breath was frantically tearing at the barrier that should have shattered.
“For the Church Nation!” A squadron leader suddenly spat out a mouthful of blood, but his eyes were wildly fanatical.
“For the Goddess!” The surrounding sword-and-shield soldiers roared in unison.
Then, a strange scene occurred. That squadron leader’s body slowly became transparent starting from his feet. Finally, even his armor and shield turned into tiny firefly-like blue light particles that directly merged into the mana barrier above.
With the addition of these light particles, the barrier that was about to collapse miraculously stabilized.
However, this was only the beginning. As the dragon breath continued to spew, the barrier required more and more mana. One by one, the sword-and-shield soldiers beneath the barrier began to turn transparent, transforming into firefly-like light particles, evaporating into the air and merging into the barrier.
Ten. One hundred. Five hundred. The formation in the front was disappearing at a visible rate. No screams, no retreat. Only deathly silence and madness.
The adjutant looked back at Augustus. The multiple magic circles under Augustus’s feet had already lit up to the extreme, but the charging was still not complete.
‘Hurry… Elder Lord, hurry!’ The adjutant prayed frantically in his heart.
But the speed at which the number of sword-and-shield soldiers was decreasing was too fast. The power of the dragon breath was too terrifying. The original formation of over ten thousand sword-and-shield soldiers was now less than half.
At this rate, within at most another ten or twenty seconds, everyone would turn into light particles. Then the dragon breath would blast them and Augustus together into complete rubble. I’m afraid they wouldn’t last until the moment the charging was complete.
Just then, from behind, a extremely sharp aura suddenly came. That aura was like a drawn sword, piercing straight into the sky.
The adjutant spun around. He saw a figure sprinting across the snow at an incredible speed.
“It’s Church Deacon Zeke!” Someone shouted in surprise.
Zeke wore that set of male priest robes, the blue trim standing out especially in the wind and snow. As soon as the words fell, he had already passed the long mage formation, passed the sword-and-shield soldier formation that was struggling to hold on.
His figure was as fast as a shooting star, leaving only an afterimage. In the blink of an eye, he had already reached the front line where the barrier and dragon breath met.
His golden hair was blown backward by the gale, and on his face still hung that iconic smile, with a hint of superiority and ostentation. Zeke stomped the snowy ground with both feet. His entire body jumped into the air like a cannonball. In midair, he reversed his hand to grip the sword hilt on his back.
Clang! Two slender rapiers were instantly drawn. These were his exclusive weapons. —Judgment Cross Swords.
Zeke’s eyes suddenly sharpened, staring intently at the contact point where the dragon breath and barrier intersected. He crossed his hands and swung both swords fiercely. The blades, straight toward that point.
The moment the dual swords touched the terrifying ice-blue dragon breath, an anomaly occurred. On the slender blades, dense, sinister runes suddenly appeared. Those runes came in various colors like eerie purple, pink, deep blue, frantically intertwining and writhing. If one looked closely, those runes were like viruses multiplying madly under a microscope. Just one look was enough to make one’s hair stand on end.
Crimson Grade weapon. Engraved on it—Dispel Runes. This was a freakish rune that could directly dispel all magic from its root. Extremely difficult to inscribe. In the entire Church Nation, there were only a few weapons with such runes.
As mentioned before, Crimson Grade. This was the weapon grade in Fantasy Divine Domain where both stats and mechanics began to double-crash. It was also the beginning of all “unreasonable” phenomena.
That dragon breath that even ten thousand sword-and-shield soldiers sacrificing their lives could barely withstand, the moment it touched the blades, was directly dispersed from its very foundation.
The ice-blue dragon breath, centered on the contact point, was quickly eroded by the colors of those sinister runes. Collapse. Disintegrate. Finally, turn into nothingness.
The crisis seemed to be resolved instantly. But… was it really so?