Crack. Crack.
Perhaps because it had been unable to move its body for far too long, as Shara Ishvalda slowly raised its head, crisp sounds came from its neck joints. With its eyes closed, it "gazed" at Logan—or rather, it was gazing at the power within Logan that did not belong to this world, and, moreover—the soul that did not belong to this world.
In terms of divinity, perhaps even the Forbidden could not compare to Shara Ishvalda. It was the only dragon capable of seeing through all truths.
It slightly parted its mouth lined with sharp teeth, and an ancient, deep voice slowly reached Logan's ears.
"Why do you stop me."
There was neither joy nor sorrow in that voice. Perhaps it was a question, or perhaps it was merely a statement.
Indeed, it had acted out of self-interest. But within its own understanding, it did not believe itself to be wrong.
By gathering the energy of the entire continent and achieving "transcendence," it would possess the power of "creation," enabling it to create better, larger, and more numerous new continents.
Whether for the growth of the world itself, or for Elder Dragons such as Logan, this was not a bad choice.
Yet the reality was that neither the consciousness of nature nor the Elder Dragons acknowledged its existence. And to it, this merely meant that they had not yet grasped the true essence of the world. It—the future "god"—would establish a new ecology through concrete action, an ecology more suited to the growth of life.
Logan did not respond. He merely silently ignited blazing flames across his body. The roar of thunder reverberated through the skies, and frantic currents—carrying fire—raged outward in all directions. Crimson Terastal energy, mixed with black-red Dragon-element energy, began to accumulate at his joints and along his spines.
All over Logan's body, it was as though he had donned a suit of crimson crystal armor. This was both a display of his power, and his answer once he went all out.
"Roaaar!"
Even faster than Logan was Ruiner Nergigante, who had just flown back.
It knew its own role well. The moment it returned from the farthest distance, it did not even probe—charging straight in at the eyes-closed Shara Ishvalda, taking the lead.
In its view, if you did not seize the chance to attack while the other side had not opened its eyes—before the other side could react—then that behavior was no different from an idiot's.
An advantage in battle had to be built up bit by bit. Waiting even one more second was giving the opponent one more second to prepare.
Shara Ishvalda turned its head and "looked" toward the charging Nergigante. That glaring bioenergy was extremely familiar to it, and it naturally knew how to deal with the opponent.
A wing bone behind it rotated. The wingtip aimed at Nergigante, and then began vibrating at an absurdly high frequency.
Without sensing any elemental energy—and without its eyes seeing anything—Nergigante was like it had been struck by something. A large number of its metal spikes snapped at the wings. The entire dragon clenched its teeth, endured the searing pain, and crashed downward.
The Vibration Wave Point Shot—a transparent, rapid vibration wave—was the ranged attack Shara Ishvalda most commonly used after revealing its true form. As for its power… among Disaster-level Elder Dragons, it was rather unremarkable. However, this silent method of attack, coupled with its sustained nature, was enough to make those ordinary Elder Dragons with unexceptional defenses suffer greatly.
Before it even hit the ground, Ruiner Nergigante, whose injuries had already recovered to a certain extent, forced its wings and burst forward. Raising its solid right claw, it clenched it into a fist and charged fiercely toward Shara Ishvalda.
As if it had not seen it—or simply did not care—Shara Ishvalda did not even spare Nergigante a proper glance. The eight wing bones behind it trembled with a peculiar rhythm.
Immediately afterward, Nergigante—already rushing right up to Shara Ishvalda—felt as if it had slammed into an invisible wall, unable to advance even half a step.
Instead, in its struggle against that "invisible wall," the metal spikes let out sounds of unbearable strain.
"Roar!"
With a low growl, Shara Ishvalda intensified the vibration of its wing bones, instantly blasting Nergigante away. On the ground, a ring of fractured cracks appeared with it as the center.
The next second, the eight wing bones snapped and shifted rapidly. A large number of vibration waves, nearly impossible to see with the naked eye, surged outward, sweeping the densely packed Terastal spikes from the sky in a single pass.
A gust of wind rushed in, and a crimson figure burst straight to the front.
Shara Ishvalda—previously as calm as an ancient well—could no longer maintain that sacred demeanor. Its hind limbs instinctively stepped back half a pace, bracing for impact.
Its ferocious, massive forelimb spread wide, and in the next instant, amid a violent collision, it blocked Logan's flying kick with a single arm.
Vast amounts of flame and lightning surged rapidly along Shara Ishvalda's forelimb and swept across its body. Yet in the next moment, the vibrations of the wing bones shattered that surging energy, and its gaping maw released an ear-splitting dragon roar.
At this instant, sound waves became tangible, carrying the violent vibrations amplified by the wing bones as they counterattacked Logan.
The crimson Terastal crystal encasing Logan's talons emitted a blazing red light.
In the next second, a Terastal explosion carrying four different energies detonated at point-blank range.
Borrowing the force of Shara Ishvalda's sound waves, Logan soared back into the sky. At the point where he had resisted the sound waves, the shattered Terastal crystals rapidly peeled away and, under the airflow he controlled, transformed into one small Terastal bomb after another, continuously bombarding Shara Ishvalda.
Knocked back by the sudden explosion, Shara Ishvalda's arms were forced apart, leaving its chest wide open. It appeared to have no defenses at all—yet four wing bones extended up from behind.
Vibration Wave Sweep!
Within the smoke and dust, the large-area vibration waves finally took on a semi-transparent form, allowing dragons to see them.
The exaggerated vibrations directly ground the Terastal crystal fragments—those that had not yet detonated—into powder, neutralizing Logan's attack. The remaining four wing bones each drew out strands of semi-transparent filaments, sweeping continuously toward Logan in the sky like laser blades.
Logan was not a dragon that relied solely on his eyes to capture movement. His increasingly powerful Mind's Eye trait allowed him, within a certain range, to achieve something similar to Shara Ishvalda.
For Nergigante and the others, the vibration waves were difficult to track; but to Logan, they were little different from ordinary energy attacks.
He precisely locked onto their trajectories, weaving through them with constant agility.
Flames, lightning, and Terastal spikes surged toward Shara Ishvalda from all directions as Logan moved.
Shara Ishvalda, meanwhile, needed only minimal bodily movement. With the two wing bones dedicated to defense, it made its defensive perimeter nearly perfect.
At the very least, not a single Terastal spike successfully struck its body.
On the ground, flames lingered everywhere; in the sky, lightning serpents writhed chaotically.
Four semi-transparent vibration wave lines carved through the space between them, and everything they passed over was reduced to ash.
The entire small island seemed to have become a domain belonging solely to them, leaving the Velkhana that wanted to intervene completely at a loss.
Only Ruiner Nergigante, which had finally wrenched itself free from the cliff, charged once more toward Shara Ishvalda—forcing its way through flames hotter than Calamity Flame, enduring lightning as it advanced.
This fighting style—one that completely disregarded its own life—left Shara Ishvalda with no choice but to divert the last two wing bones it had been reserving to defend against Velkhana, using them instead to deal with this brainless berserker.
---
I will post some extra Chapters in Patreon, you can check it out. >> patreon.com/TitoVillar
---