novelraw Chapter 301: The Red Iron Dragon’s Way of Negotiation
Chapter 301: The Red Iron Dragon’s Way of Negotiation
“My name is Shire Hynes. Some call me the Flower Knight.”
“Respected Lord of Molten Iron, I wish to have a proper conversation with you.”
Under the heavy cloak of night, atop a jagged hill, the massive head of the red iron dragon, plated in cold, hard scales, tilted slightly. Its vertical pupils silently fixed on the Flower Knight who had stepped before him.
He heard the other’s attempt to propose a discussion.
No expression flickered across his fearsome visage; his gaze remained calm and unchanged.
When the Albert family’s tax collectors had lunged at the Molten Iron Tribe like wolves, attempting to forcibly extract exorbitant levies by violence, was there even a single knight—one who claimed to embody order and justice—who stepped forward to represent those tribe members branded as monsters and negotiate with the high and mighty Albert family?
At that time, there had only been cold blades and greedy demands.
He could indeed sense a strand of goodwill from this human.
It was not a disguise.
The fact that the man had walked proactively into the dragon’s absolute attack radius without drawing his sword, and that his magical energy remained steady and restrained rather than bristling for battle, made that clear.That courage and candor merited a sliver of respect.
However, that did not mean the Albert family the Flower Knight represented shared even an iota of friendliness.
If there had been half a measure of goodwill, those who would appear beneath this wilderness hill would not be the Albert family’s private military—bristling with murderous intent—but peace envoys bearing olive branches.
As a dragon who respected order, Garoth did not fundamentally reject settling disputes at a negotiation table rather than on the battlefield.
But not now.
Without any warning.
A surge of high-voltage, ear-splitting sizzling suddenly detonated.
Countless wild, leaping golden lightning bolts erupted across the red iron dragon’s towering body; his already formidable frame swelled further in the electric glare, exuding suffocating pressure.
And at the very instant the first golden lightning serpent leapt forth,
the silhouette that had stood there was gone, leaving only a distorted afterimage and scorched arcs of electricity hanging in the air.
That oppressive dragon form lunged at the Flower Knight at a speed beyond visual tracking. In an instant it closed the distance, its terrifying talons laced with destructive force and black-red Dragon Qi tearing the air, striking down with unmatched ferocity.
The ground collapsed and shattered under the impact, countless rocks rocketing outward like shrapnel.
A massive claw-shaped crater yawned beneath the dragon’s talon, dust and smoke billowing… yet the scene the dragon expected—blood and flesh torn asunder—did not appear.
The Flower Knight had vanished in the nick of time.
He reappeared ten meters away from the dragon’s talon, slightly hurried in posture but unharmed.
Flash strike.
In that instant he traversed space, teleporting to any visible, unoccupied location within ten meters before an attack landed.
The essence of this skill was the follow-up with a fierce counterattack after the flash.
However,
before the Flower Knight could steady himself and prepare a counter, even as he had just materialized, the dragon’s blade-like wing had already sliced the air with a scalp‑tingling howl and swung waist-high.
The human form blurred again.
Only a silhouette remained where a violent gust, raised by that dragon wing, had torn the air into shreds.
He reappeared at another point ten meters away, but his feet had not even fully touched the ground when the dragon’s whip-like, brutal tail strike struck down in succession.
The coordination of attacks from different parts of the dragon’s massive body was unbelievably fast.
As if there were no intervals at all, the storm of strikes allowed the opponent no breathing room, no time to think.
The red iron dragon’s strength far exceeded dragons of similar size and far outstripped the Flower Knight’s expectations.
Garoth, holding the initiative, attacked like a sudden gale and torrential rain—relentless and impenetrable—forcing the renowned Flower Knight into constant evasion, unable to find even the slightest opening to retaliate.
Garoth’s talon swept past the Flower Knight’s afterimage by a hair.
This time, the Flower Knight did not merely flash; he abruptly, completely vanished—wiped as if erased from this region of space with no trace left.
“Ranger?”
Garoth’s mind turned like lightning. Using draconic heritage knowledge, he judged the opponent’s class core.
A ranger—but not an ordinary forest hunter.
This was the rare and exceedingly uncommon Border-Walker branch path. Its barrier was high, requiring exceptional aptitude in spatial talent; this branch wielded troublesome powers like flash, banishment, and even space-walking.
In earlier days,
dealing with such a nimble Border-Walker—especially one focused on hit-and-run—might have posed difficulties for Garoth if he lacked effective sensing and locking means.
But he had never ceased patching his own flaws and shortfalls.
This moment was not the old days!
The red iron dragon’s eyes sharpened like blades; the black-red Dragon Qi around him surged like boiling magma.
In an instant, prodigious Qi on his already massive head rapidly condensed and took shape, finally forming a jagged, spike-studded, pitch-dark helmet of Dragon Qi that perfectly matched the contours of his skull.
The helmet almost completely covered his face, exposing only a pair of ever-deepening, indifferent black eyes.
This key skill was reached when Garoth attained Level 6 in the Dragon Qi path.
Stellar Visage.
By commanding Dragon Qi, he could condense a helmet or faceplate unique to him. Its appearance was born from the mind; it granted formidable defense and conferred extraordinary insight and perception to the wearer.
The moment he donned the Dragon Qi helmet, Garoth’s perception of the world shifted violently.
All colors became intensely vivid—red blazed, black plunged deep, yellow dazzled… countless hues interwove yet remained sharply delineated; the surroundings turned into a bold, richly pigmented, line-defined abstract oil painting.
And within that unnaturally vivid view,
without even turning his massive head or opening his physical eyes, Garoth could “see” everything in a full 360-degree sweep centered on himself.
Omni-Field Vision—one of the basic effects Stellar Visage brought.
“What are you expecting, little thing?”
Garoth’s gaze darkened, instantly locking onto a half‑transparent, constantly warping patch of color.
Within, a clear human silhouette tried to hide.
As the opponent had just completed a spatial jump and his form had not yet fully congealed, Garoth spun abruptly. Four massive arms, each wrapped in surging Dragon Qi, whipped up a storm of afterimages and launched an enveloping strike.
Level 6 Dragon Qi Rotation!
Stellar Arms! Claw Mastery!
In that instant, the red iron dragon threw himself into feral combat with almost no reservation.
Strength, speed, and precision surged again; the attacks of the four dragon arms became a destructive tempest, utterly covering every space the Flower Knight might use to dodge!
In Shire Hynes’ perception,
he had just used a higher-tier spatial walk beyond simple flash strikes, attempting to hide in the gap between the Aether Plane and the Material Plane to weather the relentless onslaught.
But a hair-raising chill grazed his heart.
It felt as if a pair of indifferent, all-knowing eyes had pierced through layers of spatial barriers and locked him down.
Boom!
A Dragon Qi arm loaded with terrifying force slammed into the spatial node where he hid. Though it did not tear the space outright, that extreme, condensed energy crushed and shook the fragile interstice violently.
If he had lingered, dreadful spatial backlash would have devoured him.
Forced, the Flower Knight cut his skill short and was painfully ejected from the space gap.
The only mercy was that this hazardous gambit bought him a fleeting, precious moment to breathe.
As soon as he reappeared, he raised a hand and pointed at the red iron dragon.
Banishment—the spell that forcibly sends a target back to its native plane, or if already on its prime plane, flings it to a random region the target frequents.
In an instant,
an overwhelming repulsive and twisting force radiated through the space around Garoth, attempting to scrub him from this location and hurl him into the unknown.
Although Garoth’s enormous, formidable being prevented the banishment from fully succeeding, the violent spatial disturbance still forced him to hesitate for a beat.
That precious beat spared the Flower Knight from being instantly slain the moment he emerged.
At the same time,
the Flower Knight’s longsword shot up. Its blade exuded a nearly ten‑meter shaft of condensed, almost-solid energy! He swung the enormous light-sword, boldly meeting the looming dragon arm.
Clang!
The cross-sword collided with the dragon arm; a terrible grinding sound rang out as a spray of brilliant sparks burst forth.
The blade—wrought with extreme sharpness capable of shearing through hardened steel—could not sever the dragon arm, nor even leave a deep visible gash. After barely breaching Garoth’s unbelievably tough scale defense, it seemed to sink into glue-like, resilient tissue; most of its force was bluntly absorbed and neutralized, the sword jammed fast into tough muscle.
Garoth’s conditioning bore its fruits here.
The countless razor strikes once delivered by the Serpentfolk Sword Saint had, over time, tempered Garoth’s body to resist sharp-edged cleavings.
The Flower Knight’s vitality might not exceed Evil Wolf General Rod’s, but his magical energy was far more refined. His attacks possessed explosive instant power surpassing even a Level 16 Serpentfolk Sword Saint; coupled with lightning reflexes and agile footwork, he had barely held on amid the four dragon-arms’ storm—an extraordinary feat indeed.
However, when the red iron dragon’s great arm twitched and flexed,
a tide of pure, overwhelming, brutal force rolled down the sword like an avalanche,
Clang!
The sword shuddered and hummed under the unbearable strain and flew from the Flower Knight’s grasp.
Yet as the blade left his hand it became a phantom; in an instant it returned, tightly gripped in Shire’s hand.
Weapon Bond.
Establishing a deep link with a weapon meant that while the weapon and user shared space, it could not be disarmed or knocked away—thought alone could instantly recall it.
At the same time, as the Flower Knight swung, several ice swords made entirely of frigid energy formed from nothing and joined the main cross-sword in striking at the dragon’s attack.
A shimmering, arcane translucent shield also snapped into place around his body.
He had spoken no chant, but the ice swords and shield instantaneously took shape as magic.
This was the combat style that fused shaping and defensive magic with warrior martial skill—
the hallmark method of the advanced warrior branch, the Arcanist Knight.
It was clear this Flower Knight had dual cultivation of the rare and powerful Border-Walker and Arcanist Knight paths.
Either path demanded cruelly high talent thresholds.
Once achieved, a wielder could seize huge advantages at the same tier.
Yet the cross-sword’s instant return could not reverse the absolute disadvantage in the battle.
The brilliance of dual rare paths could not change his dire predicament before the dragon’s unassailable power.
Crack! Crack!
Ice-blade after ice-blade slammed into dragon arms and shattered like fragile glass slamming against an iron mountain, leaving at best a few negligible pale scratches on Garoth’s dusky scales.
Facing the next crushing talon, the Flower Knight had to trigger flash strike a fourth time; a silver flash and he reappeared ten meters away.
However, repeatedly forcing spatial skills in such short succession taxed his body and mind heavily.
This time, before his true form had fully congealed, a faint, almost imperceptible ripple of spatial disturbance appeared at his landing point.
Garoth’s eyes were deep. With the augmented insight and perception bestowed by Stellar Visage, that tiny flaw was instantly magnified and clearly captured.
Got it!
At that moment his tail lashed out. Moving faster than sound, it shredded the air a fraction—zero point one second—earlier and struck precisely at the spot where the ripple originated.
As the Flower Knight’s form had just barely re-solidified, his vision was suddenly filled by a terrifying, heavily-armored, immensely thick dragon tail.
Layers of newly manifest arcane shields and protective runes collapsed like eggshells under a sledgehammer.
Clang!!!
The cross-sword that tried to intercept the strike was once again savagely smashed and hurled free from his grasp.
“Pft—!”
A hot, viscous spray of blood mixed with internal fragments burst from Shire’s mouth. He felt as if he’d collided head-on with a mountain moving at high speed; his bones sang under the impossible load. His whole body flailed like a kite cut loose, drawn uncontrollably into the sky,
until the sonic boom of the tail’s air-rending strike rolled across the hill like a belated funeral bell.
Indeed, the Flower Knight’s flash and spatial skills rendered him exquisitely agile, and the Arcanist Knight’s path made his offense and defense well-rounded,
but the gulf in species, body size, absolute strength, and defense meant that one slip, one exposed flaw, ended the fight instantly.
Garoth calmly raised a talon and clenched in midair.
He crushed that small, bloodied human firmly into his palm,
then the Dragon Qi helmet dissipated. The great, jagged dragon head bowed slightly, and his indifferent eyes quietly studied the faintly breathing prey in his claw.
To be honest, this human’s performance had exceeded Garoth’s initial expectations.
He had struck first, opening with Frenzied State to launch a surprise assault, expecting to finish the fight cleanly in two or three seconds. Yet this human, using his own strengths and talents, had stubbornly held on for much longer.
If another dragon of Garoth’s level had faced him—one lacking in perception, defense, or raw strength rather than being robust across the board—chances are they would have been outmatched and possibly crushed by this extraordinary human.
Dual training in Arcanist Knight and Border-Walker alone proved his high talent.
For a human to reach this level at such a young age marked him as a rare prodigy, a potential legend.
But today, he had met Garoth.
“Human, as you wished.”
“Now, we can talk calmly.”
Looking down at the Flower Knight in his blood-smeared palm, his breathing faint, the red iron dragon finally spoke, offering the human a chance to talk.
“Cough… please… stop… the war.”
The Flower Knight did not seem to realize his life hung by a thought from the dragon. He did not beg in a humbled voice; instead he tilted his head slightly and glanced toward the one-sided battlefield below the hill, whispering his plea.
After speaking those words,
he could bear the severe injuries no longer. Darkness closed over his vision, his head tilted, and with swift finality he fainted into unconsciousness.