novelraw Chapter 342: Dragon Hunt, Cat and Mouse Game
Chapter 342: Dragon Hunt, Cat and Mouse Game
Chapter 342: The Dragons’ Hunt — Cat-and-Mouse
The sun poured down like a golden waterfall, but the dense layered canopy split it into countless tiny, flickering spots of light that scattered across the leaf-littered, mossy ground.
At the same time,
a huge paw, covered in thick fur yet hiding razor-sharp hooked claws, stepped lightly onto one of those bright patches.
When the soft, broad pad met the earth, it made absolutely no sound, like a ghost gliding by.
And that was only the beginning.
In this dense forest on the Molten Iron Tribe’s border, a group of agile and dangerous predators moved silently.
A pride of lions passed through, their powerful muscles sliding smoothly beneath their fur, suppressing instinctive roars and heavy breaths, advancing forward in a perfect hush.
Leading them was a massive lion with extraordinarily sturdy limbs and muscles that bulged like granite.
Most striking were the thick, coarse, dark-yellow rock-like plates naturally covering many of its key parts—shoulder blades, back, joints—appearing as if fused with the earth itself.Every step it took carried an unusual sense of crushing weight.
A high-ranking magical beast—the Earth-Rending Lion.
Unlike mindless beasts driven only by instinct, it possessed a rudimentary intelligence similar to that of the Earth Rampage Bear.
In fact, it wasn’t only this squad.
At this very moment, every lion squad attacking the Molten Iron Tribe’s border had leaders of the same kind—ferocious beasts or magical commanders with above-average intelligence and strength far exceeding their kin.
Because of this, they were able to suppress and lead other lion-beasts effectively, and the entire pride acted like an elite force.
The Earth-Rending Lion at the head suddenly halted its heavy step and lifted a forepaw.
The lions behind it, as if given a silent command, gradually froze in place.
The massive leader crouched low, its keen nose twitching as it carefully sniffed the air.
Moments later, it raised the rock-plated head. Its deep pupils seemed to pierce through the layered foliage, locking onto a faint Molten Iron outpost a kilometer away.
A low, nearly inaudible command-like snarl rumbled from deep in the Earth-Rending Lion’s throat.
Immediately, the pride pressed their bodies lower, almost flattened to the ground, using bushes and terrain as cover. They moved by stealth, crawling toward their prey like practiced hunters.
However, less than ten meters into their approach,
the leader suddenly froze mid-movement, its neck snapping around, eyes flashing with wariness.
It whipped its head around, staring fixedly toward the low sky behind and to the side, every muscle in its body coiling like iron as it forced out a thunderous, stifled roar.
The other lions were a beat slower but sensed their leader’s alarm at once.
They stopped, bared their teeth and adopted defensive stances, turning with the Earth-Rending Lion to face the same direction.
“You can sense me… your perception is pretty sharp.”
With a calm, low voice, iron dragon Sorog’s heavy, hardened black form gradually took shape in the lions’ view as if emerging from rippling water.
He had been casting a mental concealment spell.
This spell did not merely hide visual presence; it clouded the target’s mind, making their subconscious ignore the caster’s existence.
But these lions had relatively high average levels,
especially the Earth-Rending Lion leader—its perception was acute. Through the subtlest air currents and an almost imperceptible hint of draconic aura, it ultimately saw through the concealment.
The iron dragon spread his enormous wings and hovered at low altitude.
Although outnumbered, he seemed to hold all the advantages.
And indeed he did.
Sorog’s eyes glowed with surging spiritual energy that clearly reflected the silhouettes of several lions below.
The next moment, without any chanting or visible motion—
Mental Manipulation!
In an instant, invisible spiritual energy radiated outward and a violent change occurred.
Deafening roars of confusion and fury erupted.
A massive lion to the right of the Earth-Rending leader suddenly went berserk. It shook its head violently and without warning turned its attack toward the nearest Earth-Rending Lion and lunged.
Almost simultaneously, three physically powerful lion-type fiends’ eyes went blank and disoriented.
They all turned and frenziedly attacked their former comrades; the formation collapsed in an instant, plunging the scene into chaos.
A solid, bright yellow layer of earthen elemental light enveloped the Earth-Rending leader as it displayed agility that belied its massive form. With a burst from its hind legs, it leaped nearly ten meters backward.
Surrounded by that elemental glow, gravity seemed to weaken around it for a moment.
Its movement became unnervingly swift and light, evading the frenzied lunges of its infected companions.
Clang! Clang!
Steel-like claws sprang from its broad paws and gouged into the earth.
The Earth-Rending Lion reared and let out a furious roar, its maw parting.
A concentrated, tearing, vibrating dark-yellow beam—the Earth-Rending Ray—shot toward the low-flying iron dragon, aimed for its head.
The ray could easily pierce stone and tear through steel.
Sorog’s reaction was even faster. With a slight beat of his wings, his massive body drifted elegantly aside as if weightless, eluding the beam’s direct path.
Seeing how hard it was to land a beam-like spell, the Earth-Rending leader changed tactics decisively.
Its hind leg muscles bulged like explosions; the rock plating on its body rolled and layered as if alive, growing heavier and harder.
Then, using the powerful thrust, it leapt fiercely toward the low-flying iron dragon, claws tearing at the air with a shrill whistle.
But in response came a dragon claw that neither yielded nor hesitated—arriving just a beat earlier.
With thunderous crashes of earth and flying debris and a dull, bone-shaking impact, the Earth-Rending Lion was sent rocketing backward like a struck baseball, slamming into the ground with many times the force it had attacked with.
Its seemingly invulnerable rock plating was now webbed with cracks and broken in many places.
Whoosh! Whoosh!
Almost at the same time, two other lightning-quick lions exploited the tiny gap after the dragon’s swing and leapt simultaneously from both sides. Their fangs and claws were inches from Sorog’s wing membranes and flank.
The dragon’s movements accelerated sharply, as if breaking the bonds of time.
Massive claws traced blurred afterimages in the air and launched another round of strikes with almost no pause.
The swift, precise slaps knocked the two attempted ambushers to the ground like flies; the sounds of bones snapping were painfully clear.
To compensate for a mental sorcerer’s weakness in close combat, Sorog had also trained in the Hundred Battle Dragon path.
Though his Hundred Battle Dragon level was not high, he had already mastered several practical close-combat techniques.
His wings beat hard; his hardened, metallic-hued body exploded into astonishing speed, like an armored tank charging low to the ground. He smashed into the other lions trying to encircle him, breaking limbs and bones and sending them tumbling away.
Elsewhere, the Earth-Rending leader clawed itself up from a dip and glared at the hovering dragon. It suddenly slammed a paw charged with dense earth-element energy onto the ground.
In an instant,
dozens of magically reinforced, spear-like ground spikes—sharp as pikes and as hard as steel—erupted through the earth with no warning and surged toward Sorog, covering a wide area.
Sorog’s enormous form displayed astonishing agility.
He beat his wings and darted in midair, dodging the majority of the spikes.
Only a few extremely treacherous spikes struck his body, but they shattered into rubble upon hitting his armor-like dragon scales, leaving only shallow dents and white scars.
At the same time, the Earth-Rending lion casting the ground spikes seemed to be struck by an invisible attack: its rock plating over its chest suddenly caved inward with a muffled grunt, it spat blood and was flung backward.
Mental magic—damage transfer.
At the moment of being struck, Sorog forced some of the damage he would have taken onto the Earth-Rending Lion through the spell.
By proportion, the leader actually suffered far less than Sorog technically should have.
But the gap in physical resilience was enormous. What barely affected the iron dragon was a heavy blow to the Earth-Rending Lion.
Roar!!!
Amid the repeated dull impacts, breaking bones, and tortured howls of pain and fury, the forest quivered. Dust filled the air; broken stones and snapped branches flew everywhere.
The lopsided fight didn’t last long.
In less than ten minutes,
the remaining lions could no longer hold back fear. They whimpered and, ignoring their leader’s roars, fled in a chaotic rout.
Sorog hovered and coldly scanned the area.
Around him, strewn across the ground, lay nine badly wounded lions reduced to combat incapacity.
Then the iron dragon beat his wings and shot up.
In his view reflected below, the Earth-Rending leader staggered through the woods, fleeing.
The next moment Sorog, like a hunting hawk locking onto prey, dove.
Boom!
A precise, violent diving strike sent the strongest member of that squad—the Earth-Rending leader—tumbling and slamming through several trees before skidding to a halt.
The leader tried to rise, but its battered, plated body could not hold.
It collapsed, gasping painfully.
Thud!
Sorog landed heavily beside it, a claw cruelly scraping across the leader’s huge skull. The sharp tip ripped through hide and fur, leaving a deep blood-drenched gouge.
“Crawl, submit or die.”
Sorog’s voice sounded directly in the Earth-Rending Lion’s mind.
Under the iron dragon’s indifferent gaze, the leader’s initial struggle and furious roars gradually dwindled, turning into a fearful, submissive whimper. It chose to submit.
Other injured lions that had managed to survive and fled in different directions did not get far.
They soon ran into Molten Iron Tribe elite units that had already received the signal and steadily tightened the encirclement from the perimeter. After brief, futile resistance, they were beaten into severe wounds and finally captured with special steel cables and nets.
The dragons did not hunt alone.
While locking the lion squads from the sky, they directed nearby Molten Iron followers to encircle from the outside, then personally delivered thunderous strikes. Combined with the followers’ pincer tactics, they aimed to trap the entire pride, leaving no escapees.
Similar scenes were playing out simultaneously across other sections of the border front.
Clad in pitch-black, heavy armor and looking even more imposing, red dragon Samantha whipped her spiked tail with excitement.
Clang!
With each motion, the sharply edged armor plates along her tail clicked into place, transforming into giant blades that screamed through the air and cut into the massive, famously indestructible crossed tusks of a mammoth-lion.
Snap—!
With a teeth-grinding crunch, those symbolically strong tusks broke off.
“Hahaha! Come on! Try more!”
“Pathetic crawlers! Do you think you’re fighting beings like us?!”
Samantha bellowed with mad laughter.
Her own red-dragon power, amplified and protected by alchemical armor, made her look like a combat-born alchemical golem rampaging through the pride.
Every swipe, every tail-lash, every charge carried crushing force.
The previously ferocious pride was shredded and routed, morale shattered as they fled with tails tucked between their legs.
High in the bright sky, an abruptly formed bank of storm clouds rolled low, crackling with lightning as thunder rumbled. Thick bolts struck downward like the lash of a god.
Blue Dragon Heriam hovered elegantly at the center of that thunderstorm.
He didn’t even need to land; he calmly beat lightning-patterned wings and steered the roaring storm.
The violent lightning seemed to have eyes as it targeted the lions below.
Over time, the snarling magical beasts were electrocuted until they smoked and charred, fur standing on end, limbs convulsing as they collapsed lifeless or incapacitated.
Meanwhile, the hotheaded young red dragon Kahir chose the most direct method.
She refused to dodge, letting the pride’s fangs and claws rake her thick-scaled body.
Pain fed her fury like fuel; the boiling wrath in turn unleashed even more power.
The pride soon realized they weren’t hunting prey—they were battering a volcano erupting in their faces, getting crushed one-sidedly by her.
When her fury subsided and clarity returned,
the ground around her lay strewn with broken bones and wheezing, gravely wounded lions—or lifeless corpses.
At the same time,
Garoth’s gaze swept across the battlefield and locked on the largest, strongest squad—the pride’s main elite force with the highest average life level.
He circled above, adjusted his course, then fell like a meteor toward the lions’ front.
Boom!
The shockwave and tremor caused by his landing threw the elite squad’s formation into disarray; over twenty lions staggered, their eyes filled with instant terror.
Whoosh!
The red iron dragon spread wings vast enough to blot out the sky. The gusts scattered dust and smoke, revealing his towering, menacing form.
From him radiated tangible dragon might like a tsunami.
The pride was pressed nearly breathless, their limbs trembling.
“Crawlers, come. Use your fangs and claws; do your best to please me.”
Garoth lowered his head and looked at the pride with calm words.
Roar!!!
The lead beast—an especially large, apparently mutated fiend—crouched low, bared its fangs, and adopted a desperate, do-or-die stance, roaring fiercely at Garoth.
But in the next second,
the beast did something Garoth did not expect.
It suddenly spun and exploded into motion, accelerating like an arrow loosed from a bow, fleeing in the direction away from the red iron dragon at top speed.
Its retreat was decisive and without hesitation.
That earlier display of resolve had been a ruse to deceive.
At the same time, the surviving lions scattered in all directions in a burst of frantic flight.
In the presence of Garoth, they lacked any will to fight; their immediate intention was to escape, and they fled with ruthless speed and focus.
“I should perhaps hold back my dragon might next time,” Garoth mused as he shook his head, then his form vanished from sight.
Even though this pride fled at once, in the face of absolute disparity all resistance was futile and could not change the result.
The dragons’ hunting continued efficiently.
After quickly finishing one pride, the dragons left the cleanup, binding, and prisoner handling to the arriving Molten Iron forces, then flapped their wings and rose into the clouds.
Using their aerial dominance, they fast-locked another target area and repeated the strike pattern:
precise location, lightning assault, followers’ encirclement...
Under the sky’s dragons’ beatings, the lion squads that had once been the hunters and had spread out across the Molten Iron Tribe’s territories were quickly reduced to fleeing prey.
They were beaten into panicked flight and routed.
With the dragons’ coordinated onslaught, the situation reversed completely.
Within less than a day, the vast majority of lion-beasts invading Molten Iron territory were captured; a small number that resisted fiercely and couldn’t be taken alive were killed on the spot. Only a rare few—either extremely lucky or cunning—managed to slip through the tightening encirclement and limp back toward the Lion King’s domain with heavy wounds.
The Lion King’s probing attack against the Molten Iron Tribe ended in utter failure.
“Now, it’s our turn.”
Night deepened, and the dragon flock circled under the starlit sky.
“Assemble the legions, pursue the victory, and march on Echo Rift!”
Garoth gazed toward the Lion King’s territory and issued the new order.