novelraw Chapter 328: Red Lotus State and Legendary Realm, Values and Mechanics
Chapter 328: Red Lotus State and Legendary Realm, Values and Mechanics
Chapter 328 Crimson Lotus Form and Legendary Domains, Values and Mechanics (Three Chapters in a Row, Please Vote!)
Nearly a quarter of the Undead Legion had been utterly annihilated under the Red Iron Dragon’s devastating assault; scattered bones and drifting soulfire carpeted the battlefield like a gray-white death rug.
Yet the towering, mountain-like dragon with iron-hard scales remained composed and unruffled, its fighting spirit high.
Across its black-and-red scales, Battle-Hardened Patterns stood out as if carved, carrying the memories and glories of countless fights, radiating a seemingly inexhaustible, overwhelming power.
“Damn... how did I run into a dragon this absurdly strong?”
The lich’s eye sockets flared with eerie blue soulfire, trembling violently; for a moment he nearly could not suppress the quake rising from the depths of his soul.
He faced an unprecedentedly agonizing decision.
Risk everything and keep fighting to the end, or cut losses and withdraw from the battlefield?
Centuries of accumulation, cartloads of undead—all had suffered grievous losses in this sudden clash.
To abandon them now was unbearable.Besides, although his life level had fallen to eighteen and he was still some distance from returning to the legendary rank, the essence of his soul still bore the marks of legend.
With his lich husk, he could overload his soul’s root and briefly trigger part of the power that truly belonged to a legendary domain.
But if even that failed to suppress this Red Iron Dragon who seemed born for battle... then what he would lose would be more than an army.
His soul could be accelerated into chaos by overdraw, begin to transform into undeath; centuries of accumulation could be wiped out in an instant, he might even lose consciousness and be forced into eternal slumber.
Then all his ambitions and hatreds would become nothing but empty jokes in the void.
In the end, the cold calculation from his human days prevailed, momentarily overriding the undead’s instinctive greed for the living.
Phillips made up his mind: retreat—must retreat.
Preserve the remaining forces, shift targets, and when he regained the legendary rank he would return to the Ximu Domain and drag this Red Iron Dragon and its territory into the realm of death.
“Decided.”
“Full withdrawal—!”
However, at the edge of the Undead Legion’s right flank, behind an ordinary skeleton warrior with dull eyes and halting steps, the space rippled with a barely perceptible shimmer.
A Crusader’s sword, shining with holy silver light, silently slid out and drove with ruthless precision toward the skeleton’s occiput.
Accurate and vicious, it aimed to pierce the core of its soulfire in a single strike.
But just as the blade tip was about to touch the pale skull, it struck an invisible but indestructible cliff—the kinetic energy was absorbed in an instant, unable to advance another inch.
Shire stepped out of the void in one measured step, brow furrowed.
He flicked his wrist and the Crusader’s sword exploded into a rain of silver light that completely enveloped that skeleton.
The sword’s edge tore the air with a shriek, capable of cleaving through tempered steel armor, yet when it struck the target it failed to leave even the slightest scratch.
“Something’s wrong!”
Shire’s pupils constricted violently; alarm bells rang in his mind.
It wasn’t that his attack couldn’t pierce the defense—every sword strike was cut off by an invisible, absolute barrier before it even touched the surface.
As if responding to his suspicion.
The skeleton’s originally dim soulfire suddenly erupted into a terrifying, inky black glow; viscous negative-energy flames surged off its body, consuming the fragile bones in an instant.
The next moment, all disguise fell away.
Charred, blackened flesh rushed to cover the skeleton; the corpse’s dessicated face twisted and reformed—Phillips the lich’s true countenance was revealed.
—Paralyzing Touch!
Phillips waved his withered claw and countless invisible tendrils of bone-chilling negative energy appeared as if snakes had burst from their holes, coiling toward Shire.
At the same time, several elite skeletal guards and terrifying corpse fiends roared and closed in from all directions, cooperating with the lich’s spells to instantly cut off all of Shire’s escape spaces.
Shire retreated in a flash, his swordlight forming a silver screen; narrowly he avoided the paralyzing tendrils and ducked past a gargoyle whose wind-lashed claws lunged.
Without a moment’s hesitation he stepped back into the void.
The next second he had reappeared beneath the vast shadow of the Red Iron Dragon’s wing, breathing slightly ragged.
“My lord, that creature is extremely strange.”
Shire’s tone was heavier than ever as he spoke quickly: “He can manifest an Absolute Defense-like feature typical of a Legendary Domain, but the actual energy intensity hasn’t reached true legendary thresholds. I suspect he may have been legendary in life and fell when he became a lich, yet remnants of legendary traits and abilities remain.”
Garoth’s dragon pupils were sharp as ever, locking on the lich in the distance.
At the other end, Phillips stared back with those two deep soulfire orbs, the corner of his cracked mouth twisting into an icy arc.
“Heh... astonishing dragon. Your strength far exceeds my initial expectations; you deserve the title of formidable foe.”
The lich’s hoarse voice sounded like scraping bone.
“Just as your perceptive but overconfident human servant guessed, I, Phillips, once stood atop the mountain and glimpsed the scenery above legend.”
“Now... I am merely trapped in a lower shell for the time being.”
He hesitated slightly, choosing his words, then continued: “You have proven your worth with your power, so I am willing to offer you a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.”
“Sacrifice every living being in your domain to me, and help me return to the legendary rank.”
“I will swear it with my soulfire root; I will sign the strictest contract—when I return to legend, I will use every resource and bit of knowledge to help you break through the dragon’s legendary barrier!”
“Even for your long-lived kind, legend is an abyss that requires unimaginably long time and accumulation to cross, but if another legend lends wholehearted aid, the process will be shortened to an extent you cannot imagine.”
A prior legend guiding a later legend?
Garoth felt nothing but a hint of mockery inside.
He wouldn’t believe a hollow promise for a single syllable.
The Red Iron Dragon regarded the lich like an interesting collectible or a rare whetstone.
“Shire, you did well.”
Garoth’s low voice rumbled; he did not directly answer the lich, instead praising his follower’s performance first.
“Forcing him to reveal himself—that was important, very good. Now leave the rest to me.”
Phillips’s soulfire flared.
The dragon’s indifferent attitude enraged him; the hoarse voice sharpened.
“Foolish dragon! Do you truly want mutual annihilation? I admit your strength, but even if I can only use a sliver of my legendary domain power, before a creature like you I still form an insurmountable barrier!”
“You do not understand the fundamental difference between legendary and non-legendary.”
Garoth’s response was a deeper, thunderous dragon laugh that seemed to brew a storm.
“Mutual annihilation? I couldn’t ask for a better outcome.”
A former legend would be the perfect test opponent—enough to let him experience the secrets and strength of legendary power without risking being instantly crushed by a true legend, letting him better measure the gap between himself and that threshold.
No sooner had the last syllable faded than Garoth exploded into action.
His huge dragon wings unrolled with a roar, whipping up savage winds as he charged straight at the lich with the wildest, most direct assault.
“Folly!!”
Time seemed to slow; Phillips’s soulfire burned like madness, his dried face contorted with extreme emotion.
He smashed his decrepit, negative-energy-coated bone hands into the ground.
Boom!!!
A tide of negative energy, a hundred times denser and a thousand times colder than before, burst forth!
Pale-green runes spread from under his palms like living things; surrounding undead collapsed in heaps, bones rapidly greying and crumbling as if all origin had been instantly drained.
Not only that, the piled-up undead remains—shattered bones, rotted flesh, ruptured armor, dissipating soulfire—were drawn like by an invisible hand and streamed into Phillips as gray-white energy.
The earth trembled violently.
Centered on the lich, a vast, intricate magic circle formed in an instant; the ground gave way like quicksand, creating a bottomless, shadowed abyss.
Then a colossal bony hand suddenly thrust out from the chasm and grabbed at Phillips’s body!
A roaring tide of negative energy surged like water.
In the blink of an eye, an humanoid undead colossus of a size rivaling Garoth rose from the pit!
This was no ordinary bone behemoth.
Its back bristled with jagged spines formed from countless fused vertebrae, like a jagged mountain range; each bone pillar was thick as columns but gleamed coldly like jade, surfaces etched with ancient, obscure runes that exhaled millennia of deathly aura; in its skull sockets two orbs of soulfire burned like miniature suns, issuing suffocating pressure.
Phillips himself was embedded in the chest cavity of this undead giant, wrapped by viscous, liquid-like negative energy.
Those energies shone with a piercing bluish glow and pulsed like the heart of the giant.
He had spent everything, sacrificing the last remnants of the Undead Legion to barely forge this unsustainable bone behemoth.
This was his final gamble—to take down the Red Iron Dragon, extract its dragon soul and power, and make up for his horrendous losses.
Now the Red Iron Dragon, riding winds and thunder, slammed into view; its huge claws crackled with lightning and condensed Dragon Qi, tearing the air and producing ear-splitting sonic booms as they descended.
The bone behemoth did not dodge; it raised a terrifying gauntlet forged of countless sharp phalanges like a siege hammer and brought it down toward the dragon’s head.
Meanwhile the lich in its chest lifted a withered claw and pointed at the dragon across space.
—Advanced Brittle Technique!
Without warning, Garoth’s scales were instantly covered with a gray, dull sheen.
!!
Two heavy impacts burst almost simultaneously! The Red Iron Dragon’s strike, filled with Flame Thunder and Dragon Qi, smashed into the giant’s chest, rocking its torso, yet leaving no crack.
The sensation of striking an impenetrable wall fed back through the dragon’s claws.
“Is this... the Absolute Defense trait of a Legendary Domain?”
Garoth thought sharply.
At that same instant, and as he barely turned his head, the behemoth’s massive claw—charged with terrible momentum—crashed into his shoulder.
Immense force ground down, shattering the tough spikes on his shoulder; the brittle-affected scales dented and split, scalding dragonblood splashing out.
!!!
The bone behemoth and the Red Iron Dragon engaged in the most violent brawl imaginable! No matter how ferocious Garoth’s onslaught and how he unleashed Flame Thunder and Dragon Qi, he could not break that invisible domain defense.
“Useless! Idiot! All in vain!”
The necromancer Phillips laughed shrill and triumphant from the giant’s chest: “I told you—you do not understand legend!”
“Even now I am wretched and can only manifest this one domain feature, Absolute Defense. Before a mundane like you, I am an unshakeable wall!”
“You know nothing of the power you challenge!”
—Death Finger!
He swung his claw again and a pitch-black beam, condensed to ultimate lethality and exuding absolute deathly stillness, shot forth and struck Garoth’s chest precisely.
The dragon’s vast body trembled and its life force dimmed slightly, but far from the instant-death effect a Death Finger from legend should have wrought.
Phillips cursed inwardly at the dragon’s absurd vitality, and immediately abandoned slow, inefficient offensive spells, instead frantically chanting and gesturing.
Weaken, slow, stupor, dizziness, agony curse, strength siphon.
A barrage of insidious negative status spells rained down on Garoth like a gale.
At the same time, the undead giant’s assaults became crazier, disregarding its own wear, only seeking to pour more damage onto the dragon!
Rend—!
The great bony claw tore dragon scales again, leaving terrifying wounds deep enough to see bone on Garoth’s forelimb; gray death-energy tried to creep inward through the breach.
“Frenzied State cannot pierce Absolute Defense.”
“Face of the Self cannot find any weakness.”
“Then probing further is pointless—use Bloodburst... no, initiate Crimson Lotus Form directly!”
Garoth’s gaze hardened; all the searing energy stored in the Dragon Pearl released in an instant. Bloodburst State activated simultaneously as his dragonblood ignited.
Thud!
Thud thud thud!!
Like war drums sounding through the battlefield, his heartbeat roared! His dragon body swelled again; every scale turned a blazing Forge-Red. Fiery lines raced along his Battle-Hardened Patterns, weaving into a brilliant, otherworldly Crimson Lotus pattern.
Like pouring oil on fire, the immense power stacked layer upon layer; even the two Dragon Qi-formed giant arms ignited into tangible flames, becoming fury-clawed hands visible to the eye!
Before the lich could react, Crimson Lotus Garoth roared and surged forward.
All four of his great arms spread like ancient carnivorous traps, smashing toward the bone behemoth.
Under a sky filled with phantom fists, the undead giant was slammed to the ground by this sudden, explosive might.
“Some kind of burst state? Survive it and victory is ours!”
The lich sneered, manipulating the giant to curl up in defense, bracing against the storm of blows.
Crash! Crash crash crash!!
Each strike landed like a meteor impact, triggering violent tremors and thunderous roars across the terrain.
The undead behemoth was pinned deep in the pit, the ground beneath it collapsing further, forming an ever-deepening chasm.
What sprayed out were no longer clods of earth but glassy molten matter and boiling steam!
Shire watched nearby with his heart in his throat, his eyelids twitching; he was inwardly grateful he had not been arrogant enough to challenge Garoth’s authority—otherwise his fate would surely have been ugly.
But even such terrifying, apocalyptic attacks—could they really shatter that fabled legendary domain?
Shire gripped his sword hilt; his palm was slick with cold sweat.
He could not be certain.
Garoth himself did not know the answer; he was only unleashing the bursting force that nearly tore his dragonform apart, each strike full and unrestrained, as if pounding on the hardest forged iron.
Finally, after hundreds of ultra-fast heavy blows,
Crack.
A small sound, faint yet abrupt as thunder in that constant roar, echoed.
Garoth’s finely honed combat instinct caught that anomaly instantly; his senses locked on the sound’s source.
On the behemoth’s crossed forearm bones, a hairline, barely visible but real fissure appeared.
Within its chest cavity, the lich’s cold smile froze.
“Impossible, this is impossible!!”
He screamed hoarsely.
Even diminished as he was, how could a mundane force forcibly break my domain?!!
This signaled the opponent’s power had surpassed his comprehension; only by breaking the Absolute Defense before his own strength failed could such a thing occur.
What absurd, terrifying power was this?!
“Nothing is impossible.”
The Red Iron Dragon bared his great teeth.
All four of his muscle-bound arms, wrapped in blazing Crimson Lotus lines and burning with infernal flames, drove like pile drivers, pouring devastation along the fissure.
The crack spread rapidly, webbing outward.
Thirty seconds later,
Hum—
Garoth’s natural forearms and the two Dragon Qi giant arms fused and overlapped; the thickened arms swelled again, muscles coiling like steel cables.
In the next instant,
His Forge-Red, Crimson Lotus-etched right fist slammed down like a falling star!
Boom!
Unstoppable force struck the domain wall; innumerable fissures exploded to the limit, followed by a high-pitched fracture like glass finally shattering.
Phillips’s Legendary Domain collapsed with a reply of ruin!
Boom!
Another crushing punch followed; the other dragon arm instantly pierced through the undead giant’s chest, tearing through dense negative-energy layers and snatching the lich’s true body into its claw, ripping him out.
“Legendary domains, after all, are not that special.”
The Red Iron Dragon stood amid a vast crater, slightly disappointed as he shook his head.
The necromancer struggled crazily in his grip, unyielding: “My domain is less than a tenth of its prime! If I were still a legend, no matter how strong you are, you would never be able to break it!”
Garoth cocked his head slightly; a trace of derision crossed his dragon pupils: “Then what if I were a legend as well?”
Phillips faltered.
He opened his mouth but no sound came—sentences failed him completely.
Cruel reality proved more destructive than any attack: Garoth’s sheer released power had shattered the last pride Phillips had held as a legend.