Chapter 914: The King’s Nightmare

“Mmm… the rich smell of blood. It’s always so intoxicating!” Makareth closed his eyes, taking a deep breath of the carnage-scented air drifting from the battlefield. “I can feel the Demon blood in my veins starting to boil, starting to rage!”

It was a hell of a rush.

“It’s about to be over,” Leonidas murmured, glancing at Makareth before looking to Orion.

Orion’s gaze was fixed on the sky, focused entirely on Isabella and her colossal dragon. Just moments before, the colossal dragon had used a cloudbank to mask its presence, then seized the opportunity to drop vertically onto the red dragon’s back.

A triumphant roar of a predator that had caught its prey echoed across the heavens.

The colossal dragon opened its terrifying maw, sparks flying from its teeth as it lunged for the red dragon’s neck. At the same time, Isabella bravely leaped from her mount, plunging with her dragonlance aimed straight for the red dragon’s eye—one of a dragon’s most obvious weaknesses.

But just then, a terrifying will projection erupted from the red dragon’s mind, coalescing into the phantom of a much larger dragon. One of its spectral claws shot toward the colossal dragon, the other toward Isabella.

“And you think I don’t exist?”

A cold, imperious voice echoed across the sky. As it spoke, a trident of crackling lightning materialized from nowhere and lanced through the phantom, annihilating it in a blinding flash.

“You have slain my child,” an ancient, furious voice reverberated through the void long after the lightning had faded. “I will not forgive this!”

With the threat eliminated, Isabella was decisive. She gave the kill order.

Her mind linked with her colossal dragon, which clamped down with its full bite force. In a gruesome display, the colossal dragon, still in the air, tore into the red dragon and devoured it completely.

On the palace floating on the sea below, Leonidas shrugged. “That’s how it always is. You kill the whelp, and the mother shows up. You kill the mother, and then the grandmother comes knocking.”

He seemed completely unfazed that Orion had just snuffed out a demigod’s will projection with a single trident throw.

Gulp.

It was the sound of someone swallowing hard. While Leonidas was unconcerned, Makareth, who had witnessed Orion’s casual display of power, was experiencing a visceral, gut-wrenching fear.

It was too fast. Too terrifying. The aura that had radiated from the trident had been suffocating. He knew, with absolute certainty, that if that trident had been aimed at him, he would not have survived the blow.

Orion could kill him effortlessly.

As that reality sank in, a tremor ran through Makareth’s body.

“See that? You should learn from him, kid,” Leonidas said, clapping Makareth on the shoulder. He and Orion had both noticed the demon’s reaction. Leonidas’s tone was cajoling, trying to ease the pressure. “When Little Bro goes to the Abyss, he might be able to hook you up with some serious loot.”

“Big Boss… you’re planning to go to the Abyss?” Makareth, as an awakened, quickly snapped out of his state of shock. Hearing that Orion was heading to the Abyss, his eyes suddenly lit up with a greedy, opportunistic gleam.

“When the time is right, I’ll have to make a trip,” Orion confirmed.

“Big Boss, you have to look me up when you go! I know the second layer of the Abyss like the back of my hand!”

Orion nodded, agreeing. As a senior member of the team, it was his duty to help clear some obstacles for a junior member like Makareth when the time came.

“There’s nothing interesting left here,” Leonidas declared. “Let’s head back. A skirmish like this isn’t enough to draw out the real big bosses.”

With the red dragon devoured, the tide of the battle had turned completely. Aside from a few Sea Race that had fled when they saw how things were going, most of the enemy forces ended up as either food or raw materials for summoning.

Titanion Realm, Thunderhold City.

It was the third day since the dwarven envoys, Harbek and Dain, had departed. The afternoon was bright and sunny. A gentle breeze swept through the city, dispersing much of the oppressive forge-heat.

In those three days, the Giant-Spore Blight seeds spread by Mike and Wyatt had taken root. They grew into a strange, flowering fungus that resembled thick-stemmed mushrooms.

Then, all at once, in every corner of Thunderhold, they bloomed.

The breeze stirred the bluish-green fungi in the grass and at the base of the walls, and a countless, invisible cloud of spores was released into the air.

The cataclysm began.

Achoo!

In the afternoon haze, King Brokk sneezed, stirring from a light doze on his iron throne. On days when he wasn’t forging, the dwarven king had a habit of enjoying a flagon or two at noon. He’d loved that pleasant, hazy state between drunk and sober ever since he was a child.

But today, something felt different.

What’s wrong? he wondered. Is the air too cold? No, it’s more than that. It’s… quiet. Thunderhold is much quieter than it should be.

Brokk heaved himself off the throne and walked to the royal palace’s balcony to look out over his dwarven kingdom.

In that single glance, the boozy haze vanished from the king’s mind, replaced by ice-cold shock.

The view of Thunderhold, normally choked with smoke, fire, and the constant clang of hammers, was gone. A bluish-green mist, which had appeared from nowhere, now blanketed the entire city and was slowly spreading outward.

And in the streets below, dwarves were fighting each other.

To be precise, they were giants—dwarves that had grown taller than humans—savagely brawling. They were frenzied, roaring, attacking each other with hammers and blades, with no regard for the lives of their kin.

“What… what is this?” King Brokk whispered, still not fully processing the nightmare. Was this a dream? An invasion? A rebellion?

“Not a rebellion,” a flat, emotionless voice said from behind him. “A mutation.”

The voice shocked Brokk, an upper-legendary tier powerhouse, back to full awareness. This was an attack.

He spun around, a strange warhammer appearing in his hand as if by magic.

Sitting on his iron throne, as if he owned it, was a puppet.

“I am quite curious,” the puppet said, its voice belonging to the clown, Ogu. “You are a dwarf, the dwarven king no less. Why were you able to resist the Giant-Spore Blight?”

He had possessed the blight for a long time, and it had never once failed him. For it to be ineffective against King Brokk was a genuine puzzle. Out of sheer curiosity, he hadn’t killed the king immediately.

“Who are you?” Brokk roared, his voice thick with fury. “What have you done to Thunderhold City, to the dwarven Tribe?”

The warhammer in his hand began to glow, turning a cherry-red as an aura of peerless power radiated from it. In an instant, King Brook’s presence surged to the level of an arch lord.

“That aura…” the puppet mused, its head cocked. “Could it be… one of the tribal relics? Ah. So that’s how it is.”