Chương 125: Reborn as the Dragon — Chapter 125 - Vanish from the Mortal Realm, Cores Scalding Hot

"Saintess, if you ask me, just open the gates now. No need to fight."

"With the troops you have? They wouldn't even make a decent meal for us brothers. Now, if it's you we're tasting, heh heh heh~" Lewd laughter rippled through the mercenaries. Not a trace of fear among them.

"We can take this city in under half an hour. Cost us barely anything."

"And if we want, there's another way entirely." The deputy leader of the Black Beast Mercenary Group wore a cold, flat expression. The words that left his mouth were as venomous as a snake's bite.

"The villages around here are full of your people. We drag them to the gates."

"Right in front of you."

"Kill the men. Take the women. Will you really just stand there and watch, Saintess?" Gus hadn't said a word through any of it. He glanced sideways at his deputy, mildly surprised. The pig-brain had finally thought of something useful. Leveraging Celestine's nature to force her surrender, that was actually a brilliant play.

"Quite a creative idea."

"But you're all about to die." A hoarse, low roar rolled across the sky, thunder gathering inside a stormcloud, echoing over the city and out across the open plain. The mercenaries froze. What kind of creature made a sound like that? Then they remembered. Just a day ago. The Black Dragon that attacked the Sacred Wall of Felinir. Clack. Clack. Claws scraping up stone. A massive draconic head rose slowly from behind Celestine. Armor-plate scales. The Molten Circuit blazing across its body. Then the razor claws.

Then the full, colossal bulk of it. The Black Dragon hauled itself onto the tower of the city wall. Its great wings spread wide. Pale golden eyes swept down over the packed mass of mercenaries below, brutal, imperial, unhurried. Like an emperor seated high on his throne, a butcher's blade resting in his hand.

"It's, it's the Black Dragon! The one that hit the Sacred Wall of Felinir! It's with the Saintess!"

"That's why it attacked the Sacred Wall! Damn it all!" The sight of those wings knocked something loose in the mercenaries' chests. The memory of the ground beneath the Sacred Wall, vitrified, fused to glass by dragonfire, was still perfectly fresh. Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit.

"Correct. It is I." Su Nian launched off the tower and climbed, beating higher and higher until his shadow swallowed the sun above them.

"Lovely day today."

"But your hearts are cold and rotten." A pause.

"So I'll help you warm them."

"Evaporate from this world — cores burning bright~""ROAR—" A searing cone of dragonfire erupted from his maw. Out on that open plain with no cover, the Black Beast Mercenary Group was the most perfect target imaginable. Two passes. That was all it took. By the second, mercenaries were shrieking inside a sea of fire.

"Stop standing there like idiots — scatter!"

"This dragon's breath is wrong. If it touches you, strip immediately. If you can't put it out, cut off whatever's burning." Gus's face was stone. He rolled to his feet and started forcing order into the chaos around him. His authority held with most of them, mercenaries who'd been with him for years steadied themselves and listened. But plenty of others broke and ran. Most of the ones running were human. The humanoids, almost to a man, stayed.

"The real problem is getting that dragon out of the sky," Gus said.

"That's all that matters right now."

"If we don't, everyone here dies." He stared up at the great black shape wheeling overhead, pouring fire, and the rage in him ran hot. These were his people. Every one of them.

"Get me spears!" Two goblins grunted and staggered over with a pair of massive baskets. Gus looked down at the pile.

"I'm a fourth-tier warrior. That dragon, based on size, it's a young adult, but the aura coming off it reads weaker. Fourth tier, give or take."

"Fourth versus fourth. Humans can't normally match dragons, I know that. But I'm not a normal human. I'm the battle-hardened leader of the Black Beast Mercenary Group."

"And these spears are all I need." He lifted one, fine steel, balanced, and his eyes sharpened.

"Skill bridges the gap when strength falls short. Concentrate force to a single point. Find the weakest spot and hit it there. Even a dragon dies if you do it right."

"It will die." Gus with a spear was a different creature entirely. Before he built the Black Beast Mercenary Group, he was a gladiator. Half the humanoids standing behind him right now had come out of that same arena. As for the arena's owner, on the day Gus led his people out, he'd been flayed, stripped to bone, and eaten. By the time the gates closed behind them, all that remained was a smear on the floor. Gus had fought humans. Fought beasts. Fought magical creatures and drakes.

Over three thousand bouts and never once lost. Right now, he was absolutely certain. His knotted fist closed around the spear. He twisted at the waist, drove his elbow back, felt every muscle in his arm load and tighten, then released. Whoooosh, The fine steel spear punched through the air and became a dark streak, screaming as it flew. Gus had done the math exactly. The spear was lined up perfectly with the Black Dragon's flight path, aimed to punch straight through its eye.

And even if the dragon flinched away, it would skewer a wing. The stupid beast was still busy chasing down his fleeing mercenaries, paying no attention to the incoming spear. No attention at all. Ten dragons. Nine die from arrogance. The last one dies from greed. Victory was already forming on Gus's face. A savage grin split his dark features, white teeth gleaming. The spear closed the distance. An instant, CLANG! It scraped across the Black Dragon's flank and threw up a shower of sparks.

A single flick of the wing sent it spinning away into nothing.

"How is that possible, " Gus's face went pale. Had he gone rusty? No. He trained his throwing arm every day without exception, that throw was as clean as anything he'd ever made. Then what? How did that dragon's scales turn away a full-force throw like it was nothing? What kind of monster was this thing? Gus's jaw tightened. He reached into the basket for more spears. This time, he would use his strongest ranged technique. He called it the Long-Range Chain Spear Strike.

The name said it all, overload his body, overdraw everything he had, and project multiple spears in a single heartbeat. Each one had to fly the same line and land the same spot. One point of concentrated impact. No matter how strong the scales, nothing held against that indefinitely. The dragon was already dead. It just didn't know it yet. Confidence flooded back into him.

Up above, that oblivious beast was still circling and pouring fire into his fleeing men, too busy with the easy kills to notice the real threat standing below. Like those runaway mercenaries were somehow more worth his time than the man leading them. Fine. Let it think that. The goddess of victory was smiling at him. ➤ Next: The Fall of the Black Beast Mercenary Group