novelraw Chapter 557
Chapter 557
"Fire!"
At the command, dwarven artillery crews cranked their cannons into firing position. Magic crystals were slammed into the chambers.
"Launch!"
A thunderous barrage followed.
Hundreds of arcane shells screamed into the sky.
For a moment, it looked like dragons were raining from the heavens.
The cannons hit hard enough to crack ordinary dragon defenses.
"Destroy those weapons!" Ancalagon roared, swatting one incoming shell aside with his claw as he dove toward the dwarven artillery line.
Anything capable of injuring dragons had to be eliminated immediately.
Rowan didn’t move.
He only smirked slightly.
Sure enough, Fingon remained calm.
"Human battlemages, ready. Stone Wyvern Riders, deploy."
Across the battlefield, human mages from the Magic Academy slammed their hands to the ground, chanting in unison.
The earth answered.
Stone split and rose, forming massive winged constructs.
Stone wyverns.
Each construct carried three riders:
An elven lancer wielding a dragon-piercing enchanted spear.
A human mage providing aerial spell support.
A dwarven gunner armed with a compact arcane hand-cannon.
The constructs were Rowan’s design, merging advanced spell architecture with adaptive transformation magic.
They regenerated damage automatically and could fly through sustained magical propulsion.
Individually, they couldn’t match true dragons.
But with elite tri-race crews?
They could fight them.
At the front of the formation flew one enormous stone wyvern, even larger than Ancalagon.
It was Lúthien’s creation.
Riding it were Angrod, Aegnor, and Galadriel.
"Six armies on one battlefield," Rowan murmured.
Balrogs. Dragons. Orcs. Dwarves. Elves. Humans.
This dwarfed any legendary war that would come later in history.
Even the smallest dragon here rivaled Smaug.
The weakest Balrog would be a world-ending threat in later ages.
These were peak-era elves, many of them born under divine light in the West.
First-generation dwarven bloodlines still ran strong.
Early humans were fewer, but terrifyingly capable.
Heroes of this age shaped history.
Later ages would have better tools.
But weaker individuals.
The stone wyvern cavalry collided with the dragon swarm.
The sky turned into chaos.
Ordinary dragons, once entangled by coordinated stone wyvern assaults, became easy targets for dwarven arcane cannons.
Falling dragons were quickly overwhelmed by ground forces.
Rowan moved through the battlefield quietly.
Whenever a dragon fell near death, he discreetly transferred it into his personal dimensional storage.
He also used advanced restoration magic to stabilize wounded soldiers.
He had plans for those dragons later.
Ancalagon was another matter entirely.
Even Angrod and Aegnor, both powerful combatants and accomplished spell-users, struggled against him.
Galadriel, who had personally slain a Balrog before, pushed even harder.
Still, they were barely holding him back.
Several times, Ancalagon nearly shattered their stone wyvern mid-air.
Fortunately, the construct regenerated rapidly.
As long as the human mage below remained alive and powered, the construct could rebuild itself endlessly.
Still, they couldn’t defeat Ancalagon.
They could barely stall him.
Even direct hits from arcane cannons barely phased the dragon.
At most, they made him snarl in pain.
Enchanted arrows were useless.
"He’s still too strong," Rowan said quietly.
Then he turned.
"Lúthien. Take this. Help them."
He summoned a spellbook and handed it to her.
High above, Rowan could feel it.
A distant, oppressive magical presence.
Morgoth was watching.
Rowan wouldn’t intervene directly.
But he didn’t need to.
Lúthien opened the book, eyes widening.
"This is... the spell card system you’ve been working on?"
She looked up, stunned.
"You actually finished it."
She had helped him with theory and magical structuring during development.
Even she thought it was nearly impossible.
Rowan smiled and gently touched her hair.
"Consider it a gift. Blood-bind it, then use the activation sequence I taught you."