Buzz!
While Marco and Mercphobia were still talking, a wild surge of magic suddenly rushed toward them at high speed.
"He's here again!"
Mercphobia's expression turned irritated.
"Fire Dragon God Ignia?"
Marco guessed who it was right away.
After all, Mercphobia had just said that Ignia was a battle maniac who kept coming over to bother him and disturb his peace.
"That's right. That bastard!"
The moment Mercphobia got angry, the water currents in the whole sea area began to turn unstable.
Fortunately, his temple was wrapped in an air barrier, so there was no water inside.
Buzz!
"I'm going to meet him."
After saying that, Mercphobia flew straight upward toward the surface.
Marco followed him.
The Sagittarius Gold Cloth spread its wings, and his speed was much faster than Mercphobia's.
"Ignia!"
Mercphobia looked toward the figure in the sky.
It was a young man with hair that shot upward like flames. His upper body was bare, with a sun-shaped tattoo on his chest and dense tattoos covering his left arm.
He looked very young, at least younger than Mercphobia by appearance. There had to be at least a ten-year gap between them.
"Hm? You brought help this time?"
The Fire Dragon God Ignia also looked at Mercphobia. He immediately noticed Marco standing beside the Water Dragon God.
There was no helping it.
Marco was wearing the Sagittarius Gold Cloth, shining with gold and carrying an extraordinary air.
Just standing there made him impossible to ignore.
Ignia would have to be blind not to notice him.
"You're the Fire Dragon God Ignia, right? I have news about your father, Igneel. Want to hear it?"
Marco smiled and spoke first.
"?"
The Fire Dragon God Ignia was full of question marks.
"What the hell are you talking about? Where did you come from?"
The question marks over Ignia's head quickly turned into irritation. Clearly, he felt Marco's words were way too offensive.
"Did you put him up to this?"
Before Marco could answer, Ignia turned to Mercphobia, suspecting that this was his doing.
"?"
This time, it was Mercphobia's turn to be full of question marks.
How did this become his fault?
"I'm not joking. I met your father not long ago. We're currently planning to destroy the Black Dragon Acnologia."
Marco seriously explained the situation.
The Fire Dragon God Ignia was Igneel's biological son, after all. Of course, Marco had to try recruiting him first.
If Ignia switched sides too, then the Five Dragon Gods would instantly become the Three Dragon Gods, and things would be much easier to solve.
"..."
Ignia fell silent for a moment, unable to react.
Marco's words sounded far too hard to believe.
Mercphobia watched quietly from the side without speaking.
In his heart, though, he did not think Marco could persuade the proud and arrogant Ignia.
"Where is he now?"
After a moment of silence, Ignia spoke again.
The "he" was naturally his old man.
"On Ishgar. He doesn't know you're still alive."
Marco explained on the old Dragon King's behalf.
Of course, the old Dragon King himself had never mentioned having a son at all.
Buzz!
Marco had only just finished speaking when Ignia rushed straight at him.
"Careful!"
Mercphobia's expression changed in alarm, and he quickly warned Marco while trying to stop Ignia.
He had not expected Ignia to suddenly attack either.
They had clearly just been talking.
Mercphobia reacted half a beat too late, and before his help could arrive, Ignia had already rushed in front of Marco.
He reached out and grabbed toward Marco's shoulder.
Clack!
However, the moment Ignia stretched out his hand, Marco suddenly raised his own and caught Ignia's wrist directly.
"If you want to talk, then talk. Why are your hands so restless? Ignia, is this how you treat your father's friend?"
Holding Ignia's wrist firmly, Marco's smile did not fade.
He even had the mood to lecture the Fire Dragon God!
Only now did Ignia fully react.
His expression changed sharply.
Marco's hand was like an iron clamp, gripping his wrist so tightly it almost felt like it would snap.
Buzz!
Ignia did not hesitate at all. He revealed his true form directly.
His body rapidly expanded and dragonified.
In the blink of an eye, he turned into a giant dragon, looking very similar to Igneel, except he had a single horn on his forehead and spikes on his shoulders.
Buzz!
Marco and Mercphobia both backed away, looking at the enormous fire dragon before them.
Marco roughly understood what Ignia had been trying to do just now.
Most likely, Ignia still had doubts in his heart and wanted to grab Marco, take him away, and interrogate him properly to confirm whether he was lying or not.
That reaction was understandable.
After all, something this ridiculous definitely needed to be confirmed carefully.
In Ignia's mind, his father, the Fire Dragon King Igneel, had been dead for four or five hundred years.
Now that he had suddenly heard his father was still alive, it was hard for Ignia to believe it right away. This was especially true because what he was currently doing made him feel a little guilty.
He knew full well that his actions definitely did not fit his father's values.
Unfortunately, Ignia had acted a little too arrogantly.
Or rather, he looked down on humans too much.
From the beginning, Ignia had never taken Marco seriously. He had only seen Marco as someone attached to Mercphobia.
In Ignia's eyes, creatures like humans could never threaten him.
Even those so-called Dragon Slayers were, at their core, only borrowing the power of dragons, weren't they?
Dragon Slayer Magic was essentially a type of Enchantment Magic. It added the power of dragons onto humans.
And because humans could not fully withstand the power of dragons, dragonification kept happening, slowly turning them into dragons.
In a way, Ignia's thinking was not exactly wrong.
As a dragon, his pride was only natural.
Humans even needed to rely on dragon power to defeat dragons.
They even needed dragon power just to hurt dragons.
But Marco had done it.
Not through Dragon Slayer Magic, but through pure brute force.
He had nearly snapped Ignia's wrist outright.
Although Ignia's body was indeed weaker in human form, he was still not someone any random person could injure.
"You bastard! Who the hell are you?!"
Ignia looked at Marco and shouted.
The last human who had given him this much pressure was the Black Dragon Acnologia.
"I'm Marco Dreyar. I came here to complete the 100 Years Quest issued by Elefseria. Fire Dragon God Ignia, I have to say, with your current level, creating a world ruled by dragons is probably still a bit beyond you."
Marco casually mocked him.
After that brief exchange, he had already gotten a rough sense of Ignia's strength.
He was indeed strong, but he was still a bit short of comparing himself to the Black Dragon.
"Bastard! You don't get to say that!"
Marco's words hit Ignia right where it hurt.
He opened his mouth and spewed out a roaring wave of flames.
Buzz!
This time, Mercphobia was fully focused.
On the open sea, this was absolutely the Water Dragon God's home field. He could not just watch Ignia act so arrogantly.
A huge amount of seawater was drawn up by Mercphobia, rising straight into the sky and forming several waterspouts that roared toward the flames Ignia had released.
Hiss, hiss, hiss!!!
For a moment, steam surged up everywhere.
The entire sky was filled with noisy, hissing water vapor, as if a thick fog had suddenly rolled in.
Boom!
From within the steam-filled sky, a huge figure charged out.
It was Ignia.
He opened his massive mouth, trying to swallow Marco whole.
Anyone who did that clearly had not watched Journey to the West. He needed a certain monkey to teach him a lesson.
Of course, Marco had no such idea.
He did not want to go play around inside this fire dragon's stomach.
Buzz!
Mercphobia really wanted to show his worth, so he directly revealed his true form and clashed head-on with Ignia.
Unlike Ignia, Mercphobia's true form did not look much like a traditional dragon.
His body was even larger, maybe even larger than the Fire Dragon King Igneel.
Overall, he looked more like a dragon similar to Quetzalcoatl, definitely not like a Western dragon.
Boom!!!
The two dragons slammed into each other, creating a thunderous impact.
Their size difference was actually not that big, but Ignia had one advantage.
He had two extra front legs, making him better at close combat than Mercphobia, whose form was more like a feathered serpent.
Buzz!!!
Countless water blades rose from the sea, covering the sky as they shot toward Ignia, who was locked in a struggle with Mercphobia.
Clearly, the Water Dragon God was better at fighting with magic.
Boom!
Ignia spat out a massive stream of fire to intercept them, but he still failed to block everything. Several water blades struck his body.
Although they did not break through his defense, they still left marks on his tough dragon scales and made Ignia feel a sharp sting.
Of course, Mercphobia was not having an easy time either.
Getting swiped several times by Ignia's claws felt very unpleasant.
Boom!!!
A burst of magic power erupted.
Mercphobia released a huge wave-like current, blocking Ignia and forcefully pulling away from him.
Close-range grappling really was not his strong point.
Besides, Ignia was a natural battle maniac.
When it came to this kind of close-quarters fighting, he had more experience than Mercphobia.
"I'll take it from here."
Mercphobia had just opened the distance from Ignia and was preparing to pour more magic at the Fire Dragon God when Marco stopped him.
Marco could already tell that these two dragons were around the same level. If he let them keep fighting, they could probably continue until the end of time.
That was indeed the truth.
They had fought for so many years without deciding a winner precisely because their strength was very close.
Before Mercphobia could say anything, Marco's figure had already vanished.
The next second, Ignia's enormous body shot into the sky, as if he had been sent flying by a punch.
No, not as if.
He really had been.
Mercphobia's eyes widened.
He could not even see Marco's figure. He could only see a clear band of light left behind wherever Marco passed, as though space itself was about to be torn apart by Marco's speed.
"What... what is that?"
Mercphobia was stunned.
He could not understand what had just happened.
Why was Marco so fast?
If that had been Instant Teleportation, it would have been easier to understand. After all, that would be the power of magic.
But just now, Marco had relied purely on speed.
That was what Mercphobia could not understand.
Even dragons, even with their non-human physical abilities, could not reach that level.
Was that really a speed that living beings could achieve?
It had completely broken common sense.
The power of a Saint, the peak of the Sixth Sense infinitely close to lightspeed, was just that ridiculous.
It could make even a supernatural creature like Mercphobia shout, "This isn't scientific."
And it really was not scientific.
It was Cosmo!
Once the power of Cosmo erupted, even the most unscientific things could happen.
In fact, magic itself was even more based on willpower, but when it came to the upper limit, Cosmo was clearly even more absurd.
"Gurgle..."
Mercphobia was completely dumbfounded.
As for Ignia, who had just experienced it firsthand, his brain had already lost consciousness, and his body began falling freely.
Buzz!
Marco's figure appeared above Ignia.
He directly grabbed the Fire Dragon God by his single horn and held the dizzy, unconscious Ignia in his hand.
It had to be said, this Fire Dragon God was pretty sturdy.
He could take a beating!
Marco's punch had knocked him out without damaging his brain. The force had been just right, leaving Ignia only unconscious.
"Is... is he still okay?"
Looking at Marco easily carrying the massive Fire Dragon God Ignia, Mercphobia swallowed and asked with some worry.
For some reason, Mercphobia suddenly felt a sense of sympathy for his own kind.
Mainly because Marco had won far too easily.
It made him feel as if he had truly seen the Black Dragon Acnologia, the one who slaughtered dragons, all over again.