Chapter 965: My Feast

Orion appeared before the arch lord dragon beast, his trident striking out with his full power.

But the creature was still an arch lord. Even ambushed, it had passive defenses that triggered instantly. Its massive dragon scales flipped open, revealing countless tiny pores that sprayed a high-velocity shower of venom.

The poison splattered against Orion’s armor of chilled bone, which sizzled and smoked under the corrosive assault. Orion ignored it, his focus absolute as he drove his trident home.

The weapon tore through the beast’s chest, punching a massive hole clean through its torso. The organs near the wound were shredded, coated in a layer of clinging frostfire.

ROAR!

The dragon beast, critically injured, let out a hysterical roar of agony. The sound carried the full weight of its draconic pressure, a powerful sonic attack. But by the time it unleashed its cry, Orion was already gone, having moved the instant his strike landed.

The giant-horned whale’s attack was already arriving. Kori opened its massive mouth, a swirling, abyss-like vortex forming in its throat, and swallowed the dragon beast whole.

For a brief moment, the beast’s sonic roar had actually allowed it to break free from the dual prison of Kori’s sonar and shockwave abilities. But Orion’s attack had come first, followed immediately by the whale’s. The one-two punch was perfectly timed. The dragon beast never had a chance to escape.

WWOOOOOSH…

Having swallowed its prey, the ancient giant-horned whale slapped its enormous tail against the sea, kicking up colossal waves.

By now, the two arch lord dragons sent as reinforcements had arrived.

Orion landed on the whale’s head. A layer of bone-fire flared across his body, instantly repairing the damage caused by the dragon beast’s venom.

“One standard dragon, one fire dragon,” Orion murmured, a slight smile playing on his lips. “Excellent materials.”

“Meet them head-on, Kori!”

The ancient giant-horned whale once again lowered its horn and charged, taking the offensive against the approaching enemy.

From another part of the battlefield, a dragon roared in defiance.

“For our territory! For the Alliance! For the Dusk Continent! Let your fires burn!”

Isabella, carrying her lance, soared and wheeled through the sky on the back of her colossal dragon. Her feet seemed rooted to its scales; no matter how the great beast twisted and turned, she remained perfectly balanced.

A high-speed dive, a graceful glide, a full three-hundred-and-sixty-degree barrel roll—Isabella smoothly threaded her lance through the neck of a green dragon.

Dragon’s blood is thicker than a beast’s, she noted dispassionately. And it stinks more.

She shook the gore from her lance, not even glancing at the dying dragon as it plummeted toward the sea. Alexander’s shadow army would collect the prize. Her job was to kill.

“What a rich bouquet of slaughter… with a hint of death!” a voice cackled. “I will turn this place into a living Hell! There will be no rebirth for you, no entry into any Divine Kingdom!”

A deeply malevolent aura radiated from Demon Makareth, stirred by the scent of carnage. It began to corrupt the combatants around him. Those touched by his power were warped in some mysterious way, their life force siphoning into Makareth, granting him endless vitality and surging strength. It was the same ability that had allowed him to nearly fight Isabella to a standstill.

“The battle has just begun, you worms!”

Makareth became a manic reaper, blinking across the battlefield to hunt down Legendary-level dragons.

If Makareth was a powerful duelist, then far in the distance, Gustalon was a true battlefield meat grinder. The storm avatar had transformed into a colossal hurricane, tearing deep into the enemy lines. Countless Sea Race and dragons were swept up into its vortex. Low-level creatures were either knocked unconscious or simply torn to shreds. Where the hurricane passed, it left only a wake of maimed bodies.

Further still, massive tsunamis rolled across the ocean, one after another. That was the terrifying result of Kraken’s battle with a shark-like arch lord.

He had wrapped the massive shark in his tentacles, his toothed suckers working like ravenous maws, relentlessly tearing and draining the shark arch lord’s flesh and blood. Kraken was fighting and feeding at the same time.

“After I eat you, I’m going to take on a dragon one-on-one!” Kraken’s voice echoed in the shark’s mind, his eyes burning with a mix of madness and joyous revelation.

Without anyone else to interfere, fighting the shark arch lord at his full strength, Kraken was realizing he wasn’t nearly as weak as he’d thought. This massive shark, for instance, was a middle arch lord, and Kraken was easily crushing it. Given a little more time, he would devour it completely.

The shark arch lord sensed the danger. It thrashed and leaped from the water, slamming its body against the waves, but nothing it did could break Kraken’s grip. Finally, out of options, it let out a piercing shriek. A shimmering blue phantom swam out of its body—its body of faith.

The moment it appeared, the surrounding water seemed to freeze as countless, razor-sharp Water spears materialized from the sea. The spears and the shark phantom shot toward Kraken from every conceivable angle.

But even seeing this, Kraken refused to release his prey.

“You think you’re the only one with a body of faith?” he roared. He opened his mouth and his own body of faith shot out—a phantom that looked even more ancient and primordial than his massive octopus form.

The instant his phantom appeared, the sea froze again, its motion arrested by the conflicting faith energy of the two behemoths.

“You’re not getting away!” Kraken bellowed. “Today, you are my feast!”

The two bodies of faith entangled, just as their physical forms had, each trying to consume the other. To Kraken, his enemy’s phantom was just a massive source of faith energy, ripe for the taking.

The battle had reached a fever pitch.

From the Hexagram on Dragonflame Island to the vast Kasenna Sea beyond, the war raged.

From the deep sea to the ocean surface, from the low skies to the heavens above, every inch of space was a chaotic tangle of fighting.

The conflict was so total, so brutally intense, that any hidden onlookers dared not approach, knowing that to get any closer would be to be dragged into the maelstrom themselves.