novelraw Chapter 465: Wherever I Stand, There Is Royal Soil
Chapter 465: Wherever I Stand, There Is Royal Soil
On the highest battlements of Ironwall Fortress.
The Red Iron Dragon spread his wings and gently set the massive silver satellite at his side.
The satellite’s surface still shimmered with faint magical light, but under the emperor’s talon-like suppression, every glimmer looked tamed and dim, like a captured beast.
He stood atop the wall, gaze sweeping as if he could see the entire battlefield.
At this moment, the Aola legions were advancing across the line, the Oath of Ten Thousand Armies' Command noticeably amplified by surging morale; the soldiers moved with renewed ferocity, and spells hit with increased potency. In contrast, the Theo legions’ magic array light had clearly faded, their formations slackening, signs of rout spreading from local pockets to the whole front.
Ashen Plain, eastern sector.
Beskarl’s body was already blackened and cracked, the curled scales revealing pale, bluish dragonhide underneath; wounds sealed with frost and scars charred by fire crisscrossed his form.
Under the assault of three Legendaries, he had clearly lost the upper hand.
Every beat of the great dragon’s wings felt heavy and sluggish, and his frost breath no longer bit with the same piercing intensity it once had.
But just moments ago, the scene of the Red Iron Dragon Emperor returning with the satellite had been witnessed by most on the field. At the instant the meteor streaked across the night sky, the three Theo Legendaries had simultaneously received an urgent dispatch from their commander.Their faces tightened instantly, and they exchanged a single look.
Rodrigo had just issued a new order.
—At all costs, capture or kill the White Dragon Beskarl, recover what losses you can.
Almost the moment the order reached them, the three Legendaries intensified their assault, doubling the pressure on the White Dragon.
But he did not cower.
On the contrary, Beskarl raised his battered head and laughed like thunder from his throat. In that roar, his damaged wings suddenly stretched to their limit, and every tear in the wing membranes unleashed a gale of bone-chilling cold.
“Humans—!”
The roar shook the plain.
“You think you can kill me?”
The White Dragon’s aura rose. Air temperatures plummeted around him, thick white frost forming in the sky; countless ice crystals whirled in the air, creating a rapidly spinning vortex of frigid wind.
“The great Frostcataclysm, the noble ancient dragon, will never flee without a fight!”
“If you think you can kill me, then come! But know this—each of you must be prepared to be dragged with me into hell!”
With that, the White Dragon lunged forward.
The motion carried the desperate, tragic force of a beast throwing itself into death, as if to burn every last ember of life from his body.
His wings beat, whipping up a blizzard; his claws tore the frozen air. His head drove straight at the least protected of the fire casters.
The three Theo Legendaries tensed instantly.
They braced for the White Dragon’s desperate counterstrike.
Then, at that moment, the great body of the White Dragon shuddered with an astonishing agility.
His wings tilted sharply; huge dragon bones creaked. The whole torso used that momentum to execute an astonishingly swift backward flip.
The blizzard abruptly changed direction.
Beskarl rotated his head, flapped his wings with all his might, dragging a long tail of cold behind him, and sped off toward Ironwall Fortress without looking back.
It wasn’t a charge.
It was a retreat.
A retreat disguised by the most magnificent posture, the boldest of escapes.
The three Legendaries faltered, then their faces drained of color.
“Pursue!”
But it was already too late.
Beskarl had a speed trait. Exhausting everything into escape gave him the advantage; in an instant he became a rapidly shrinking white dot on the horizon.
Ashen Plain, western sector.
Karu paused, lifting his head toward Ironwall Fortress.
The meteor’s trail had not yet fully faded from the night sky; that streak of scarlet still burned in the eyes of every soldier who glanced upward.
Karu inhaled deeply, drawing in air thick with smoke, blood, and scorched earth. Then he bared his teeth and roared with a battlefield-shaking cry.
“The great emperor has seized the Eye of Theo! Victory—belongs to Aola!”
His voice rolled like thunder.
On the battlefield, every Aola soldier’s action stalled for a heartbeat.
Then frantic cheers erupted from every corner of the line.
“Long live His Majesty!”
“Holy Aola will unite us!”
“Victory! Victory! Victory!”
Each shout louder than the last, mounting wave upon wave.
The wounded straightened with effort, the exhausted found light rekindling in their eyes, the front-line fighters swung their weapons with three times the force.
The cries coalesced into a tangible wave of sound that barreled skyward, nearly tearing apart the smoke and clouds that cloaked the field.
“ROAR——!!!”
Gluttonous Ogre Karu hurled his head back and bellowed.
He felt it.
A scorching, surging, tidal power poured in from every direction—streaming from each shouting soldier, from every burning will, from every pair of eyes turned toward the emperor.
That power had no form yet was undeniable, and it flowed straight into the Oath of Ten Thousand Armies' Command sigil on his chest.
The sigil grew hot.
In the next instant the power surged outward, flooding his knotted muscles, fueling his burning blood, nourishing his battered flesh.
Crimson flames visibly rose from his scales.
No longer a faint, flickering aura, it solidified into a viscous, substantial crimson blaze. The flame coiled around his limbs and bones, flickering with each breath and warping the air nearby.
Even more astonishing changes unfolded on his body.
The wound through his chest, the one from Balor’s spear, was now wrapped in scarlet flame.
Muscle fibers writhed like living things, grew, and reknit; the gaping hole of blood visibly contracted and healed, leaving only a dark red scar.
Where golem cannon fire had shattered scales, new plates pushed up from beneath, quickly hardening and spreading to cover the exposed flesh. These new scales were thicker than before, their edges gleaming with a metallic chill.
Where human spells had torn flesh, the flame cauterized, scabbed, and sloughed away to reveal newborn skin beneath.
....
While his wounds healed at an astonishing rate, his overall aura climbed steadily.
Karu clenched his fist and swung his arm fiercely.
Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom!
Four shockwaves burst almost at once.
The air before his fists compressed to the extreme, forming four visible conical impact waves that ripped the ground apart, plowing four long furrows.
By now, the Theo army’s morale had hit rock bottom; the emperor’s satellite theft had shattered their psychological defenses. Many soldiers looked panic-stricken, formations loosened, and commanders’ hoarse cries could not staunch the retreat.
At the opposite end of the battlefield, the Legendary warrior Balnar had just retracted his spear.
This Theo Legendary clearly realized the tide had turned decisively.
He showed no lingering love of battle and streaked back toward his own lines.
“Trying to run?!”
Karu sneered.
He no longer needed to conserve energy or worry about his injuries; buoyed by the entire army’s morale, he was at an unprecedented peak.
He stepped his right leg back and crouched low.
The ground groaned beneath his feet.
In the next second Karu slammed off the earth.
Boom! The ground buckled, spiderweb cracks spread outward violently, dust and rubble shot skyward, and Karu’s figure vanished from the spot.
Only a streak of crimson afterimage remained in the air.
The pursuit began.
...........
Ironwall Fortress, the iron dragon Sorog emerged from the fortress and landed beside Garoth.
He inspected the spatially torn wounds across the Red Iron Dragon and asked quietly, “You’re hurt.”
“No matter. What’s the situation?”
Sorog replied, “Our forces are advancing along the entire line. Theo’s morale is collapsing and they’re routing. Our legions are in pursuit, but casualties are substantial.”
Garoth nodded, unsurprised.
Even with the enemy’s morale broken, swords and spells still took lives. The desperate fight of routed troops could be more savage than direct confrontation—they had nowhere left to fall back to, only life for life.
“Do not pursue too deep. Consolidate the ground we’ve taken. Count the dead and wounded. Repair fortifications.”
Garoth said.
While he spoke, a small figure flew in with a stagger.
It was faerie dragon Vira.
She had returned to her true form; the catlike small dragon looked especially disheveled—dull, lackluster scales, erratic wingbeats, and a drunken, wobbling flight path.
When she reached the Red Iron Dragon she closed her eyes and dropped straight down.
Garoth extended a talon and caught her steadily.
The faerie dragon collapsed completely into the emperor’s palm, belly up, limbs limp, tail listless.
She opened her mouth, gasping, looking near death.
“...dragon tired to death...”
Vira whispered, eyes cracked open just enough to sneak a look at the Red Iron Dragon’s expression.
“One hundred gems...far from enough...I want two hundred...”
The dragon’s mouth curved slightly.
“All right.” The emperor said, “I’ll give you two hundred.”
She had played a key role in the satellite’s stealth capture. Her “Red Iron Dragon Emperor Arrival Technique” was so seamless that unless a Legendary watched up close, the flaws were nearly impossible to detect.
Although Theo’s satellite used many detection enchantments, they lacked the experience and understanding to deal with a Dimensional Dragon—rare, inscrutable beings.
Vira’s eyes widened instantly.
All weakness, fatigue, and near-death feeling vanished.
She popped up from the talon in a flash, hovering before the Red Iron Dragon’s massive head as her rainbow-hued scales flashed with renewed delight.
“You promised! No backing out! Two hundred gems! Sparkly, shiny gems!”
“Haha! Vira’s gonna be rich!”
She twirled seven or eight somersaults in the air in excitement.
But soon the faerie dragon stopped.
She blinked, propping her chin on her little claw with a pensive look, then murmured softly—just loud enough for Garoth to hear.
“You promised so fast...is two hundred gems maybe too little?”
“I should have three hundred...no, five hundred...Garoth is so generous, maybe even five hundred—”
At that moment three meteors streaked from the distant sky, tracing bright arcs before halting midair ahead of Ironwall Fortress.
The light faded, revealing the three Theo Legendaries.
Bosival stood in the center, his gaze fixed past the Aola defenders on the wall, locked onto the Red Iron Dragon, then shifting to the captured silver satellite.
“Ignas.”
Bosival spoke, addressing the Red Iron Dragon by imperial name.
“You think you’ve won?”
His expression was austere, eyes sharp as arrows, as if he wanted to dissect the Red Iron Dragon from head to tail.
“Look back at your capital. It will be burned to ash.”
Garoth’s vertical pupils narrowed slightly.
He had taken note of Bosival’s form of address.
Among intelligent peoples, using a given name was common among acquaintances, while addressing a family or surname could imply formality and respect—or deliberate disdain.
Clearly Bosival’s tone belonged to the latter.
The way the Theo guardian looked at the Red Iron Dragon was not that of a sovereign regarding a peer, but of a hunter appraising a rare, dangerous prey—evaluating its weaknesses, habits, and worth.
Garoth’s mind flicked through information about Bosival.
Bosival, this Theo Legendary, did not come from nobility but from humble origins. Before he became a ranger, he was a hunter beneath the Sere Silver Range, growing up among forests and beasts—born a natural hunter who could lay traps to snare snow wolves at seven.
At twelve, a band of orcs slaughtered his family on a winter night.
In his father’s stiff palm he found a broken hunting knife—that was all he inherited.
At fifteen he tracked the last surviving orc into an ancient wood and killed it by thrusting a sharpened deer antler into its eye. That hunt caught a military ranger’s eye and brought him into the army.
At twenty-five, a pack of terrible winter wolves crossed the mountains. As a guardian of the range, Bosival led thirty hunters through nine days and nights of blizzards, burying the wolf pack with ice traps, avalanches, and lethal arrows.
At forty he tracked and brought back the head of a prime adult dragon that had devastated towns.
Bosival’s renown grew. He became a Theo hero; the king personally granted him the title “Fang of the Mountains” and married a princess to the forever-unwedded Bosival.
.........
Now two hundred years old, Bosival was a pillar of Theo.
By Legendary human standards of five hundred years, he was still young—a prodigious human star with an aptitude for hunting giant life, which had given him corresponding traits.
Garoth shifted his gaze to the other two Legendaries.
He had already noticed that only three Legendaries had returned—one was missing.
From Bosival’s words it seemed that the missing Legendary had struck toward the Citadel of Crimson Flame.
After the Theo satellite was captured, Rodrigo refused to concede. While ordering Beskarl hunted down, he dispatched another Legendary to strike at Aola’s heartland—the Red Iron Dragon’s stronghold, the Citadel of Crimson Flame.
He sought to turn the tide.
If they could destroy the Citadel—or even inflict major damage—Theo might regain some morale and perhaps swing the war’s balance back.
The Red Iron Dragon Emperor only rolled his eye with indifference.
His deep black vertical pupils reflected the fires of battle and the three Theo Legendaries standing before him.
“The entire Aola Kingdom exists because of me.”
He lifted his head slightly, dragon might spreading like mountain and sea overturning.
“Do you think I care about a single capital?”
He paused, tone deepening with gravity: “Where I stand, there is royal soil.”
Arrogant, brazen, contemptuous.
If a human king had uttered those words, he would have faced questions from subjects, noble critics, and condemnation from history.
Yet when those words thundered from the Red Iron Dragon Emperor’s throat, the Aola soldiers only felt the dragon’s majesty like a blazing sun; their reverence and fanatic fervor burned even hotter.
“Moreover…”
Garoth bared sharp white fangs in a grin. “Do you think a mere Legendary can destroy the capital under my command?”
Across from him, Bosival’s pupils tightened.
Could Aola really be hiding other Legendaries? Other masters?
Almost the same instant Garoth’s words fell, Dragonback Mountains, Citadel of Crimson Flame.
A meteor streaked across the night and halted over the royal city, stopping in place to reveal its form.
A gaunt old man in a deep gray robe hovered above the city, hollow-cheeked but with silver magical fire burning in his eyes, holding a twisted staff like deadwood with a constantly spinning crystal at its tip.
The Eye of Ash—Hossand, Theo Kingdom’s Legendary Curse Mage.
Upon arrival, the mage wasted no time.
He raised his staff; his thin lips began to move as ancient, obscure incantations poured from him like running water. Each syllable drew surrounding magical energy; the air began to tremble and an invisible pressure radiated outward from him.
It was the prelude to a Legendary spell.
A spell that required a Legendary curse mage to chant and prepare could move mountains, alter terrain; even a dragon like Garoth would avoid locking horns with a fully prepared Legendary spellcaster.
Yet Hossand’s chant suddenly stumbled.
It was not a voluntary pause but a dangerous foreboding that soaked his spine.
He raised his head.
His pupils snapped wide.
High above, between the clouds, a pair of massive vertical pupils composed of pure spiritual energy hung motionless.
Those eyes were a deep purple, over ten meters in diameter; their edges flowed with star-like radiance. They showed no emotion, merely looked down indifferently at the royal city and the tiny Legendary mage within it.
As if gazing upon ants.
“Spiritual energy...a Mind Sorcerer? A Legendary Amethyst Dragon?!”
Hossand’s heart dropped; he sensed dragon might.
The last opponent he wanted to face had appeared.
Mind Sorcerers match well against casters—they can seize initiative with strange spiritual methods, interfering with spells, reading thoughts, crafting illusions...the pathway naturally counters.
Moreover, this was a Legendary great dragon, not just a Mind Sorcerer.
The massive vertical eyes slowly turned and fixed on Hossand.
Then a voice sounded directly inside his mind.
Just two simple words.
“Leave.”
Hossand’s chant stopped entirely.
He froze mid-air, the gaunt fingers clutching his staff until his knuckles whitened.
For a fleeting moment he considered fighting to the death—trying to finish the spell before interference, even if it only leveled half a city to give Theo a reprieve.
But reason overcame impulse.
Facing a prepared Legendary Amethyst Dragon, his odds were near zero.
Three seconds of silence passed. Hossand drew a deep breath and exhaled slowly.
He spoke no threats, made no bargain, did not even glance once more at the royal city.
The crystal at his staff tip spun rapidly; he formed a deep blue portal and stepped through, vanishing.
Before Ironwall Fortress.
Bosival remained silent.
The Hunter kept his eyes fixed on the Red Iron Dragon, attempting to read something from those deep black vertical pupils.
Was this bluster—or genuine fearlessness?
Seconds later, Bosival’s expression shifted as if he’d received a transmission.
“A Legendary Amethyst Dragon...actually guards your capital?”
At that remark, the two Theo Legendaries beside him also changed color.
An Amethyst Dragon? Those dragons were famous for neutrality, isolation, and refusal to meddle in kingdom affairs. When had the Aola Kingdom recruited such a Legendary to its side?
Garoth neither confirmed nor denied.
He simply looked calmly at the Fate Hunter Bosival; the hunter’s face slowly darkened in Garoth’s reflective pupils.
“The war is not over.”
The Red Iron Dragon spoke slowly, his voice like thunder rolling through the night: “You lost your eye, you lost your defensive line, and I have only just finished warming up. I’ve only just begun to take this seriously.”
Bosival fell silent for a moment.
He looked Garoth in the eye, then toward the captured silver satellite, and finally turned away.
“Retreat.”
Two words said cleanly and decisively.
Three beams of light shot up into the sky, streaked away toward the Divine Kingdom of Theo, and vanished over the horizon.
Garoth watched them go and did not pursue rashly, then slowly withdrew his gaze.
Below, the sounds of slaughter were gradually diminishing.
The rout of the Theo legions had become inevitable. Aola soldiers started pursuing, clearing the field, gathering the wounded, and consolidating lines. Flames still burned across the plain, staining the night red; the scent of scorched earth mingled with blood and spread on the wind.
Tick, tick—the passage of time.
The Aola Kingdom’s territory extended under the night and the blaze.
Theo’s defeated forces abandoned the border areas, retreating under the protection of their remaining Legendaries, withdrawing through the night toward the Emerald Ridge Mountains.
This mountain range marked the last natural barrier between the two Ao territories. Once crossed, the Aola legions could plunge deep into Theo’s heartland and drive the war toward the core of the Divine Kingdom, not just its fringes.
Theo capital, Silverglow City.
The remaining joy from the Flower Bloom Festival had hardly lingered before it was completely shattered by the grim reports from the front. The entire capital was shrouded in a heavy atmosphere.
The front’s crushing defeat made everyone realize the Aola Kingdom was no weak barbarian state.
Even the royal paper’s headline shifted.
“Red Iron Dragon Tyranny on the Brink, Civilization Will Prevail Over Savagery” changed to “Cruel Red Emperor Seizes Satellite, Vile Aola Kingdom Occupies Borderlands.”