Chương 48: Chapter 22 Part 1

High inside the Ivory Tower, the very pinnacle of Elyndria's magical infrastructure was on the verge of a catastrophic, explosive failure. Archmage Kirnof stood at the center of the grand scrying chamber, his silver robes drenched in cold sweat, his aged hands gripping the edges of a massive, glowing obsidian table. Around him, a hundred of the kingdom's most elite battle-mages were strapped into heavy mithril chairs.

They were desperately funneling the entirety of their personal mana, along with the city's deep-earth reserves, into the towering runic pillars that sustained the Aegis Array. Blood dripped steadily from the noses and tear ducts of the younger mages. The harmonic crystals embedded in the chamber walls were emitting a high-pitched, terrifying whine, vibrating so violently they were beginning to crack. The mortal bodies of the mages were buckling under the sheer, astronomical strain of holding the sky together.

Through the massive, enchanted-glass ceiling of the tower, Kirnof stared at the apocalypse. He could not simply trust his naked eyes. He needed tactical data. Kirnof raised his trembling hands, forming a complex geometric sigil, and cast the highest-tier True Sight spell in the royal grimoire, layering the arcane matrix directly over his retinas to analyze the threat. The moment the spell connected with the entity hovering above the city, Kirnof screamed.

He violently collapsed backward, covering his face as blood poured freely from his eyes. The sheer density of the data had physically burned his optic nerves. Through the lens of an Archmage, the Ancient Gold Dragon was not merely a large beast. It was a localized collapse of arcane magic.

"It's... it's not a monster," Kirnof choked out, a profound, hollow despair completely breaking his royal composure. He blindly grabbed the robes of a senior evoker who rushed to his side.

"Its heart... it is a condensed, churning star. The ambient mana in the stratosphere isn't just being displaced; it is actively catching fire just by touching her scales!"

"Archmage!" the evoker yelled, his voice cracking with terror.

"The pressure from its wings is fracturing the upper hex-grids! The runes are melting! If it breathes... if it unleashes its solar fire, the Array will shatter in seconds!"

"Hold the line!" Kirnof roared blindly, forcing himself back to his feet, relying on his magical perception to navigate the chaotic chamber. But he knew it was a lie. Mortal magic had limits. This creature was a primordial force of nature, completely immune to the rules of mankind. The Kingdom of Zareth was going to be erased from the map, turned into a sea of glass and ash.

High above the groaning, failing magical dome, the Ancient Gold Dragon hovered in the vaporized rain. To her, the sprawling capital city below was nothing more than a pathetic anthill—a fragile, arrogant stone cage built by greedy, fleeting insects. For centuries, she had slept peacefully in the pristine, frozen peaks of the north, entirely ignoring the petty, violent squabbles of these lesser beings. They lived, they built, they died, all in the blink of an eye. But they had dared to cross a line.

They had stolen her brood. The blinding, agonizing grief in her chest burned hotter than her own solar furnace. The magical resonance of her egg was buried somewhere deep within that stone anthill. These tiny, insignificant thieves thought their little blue glass dome could hide them from a mother's unyielding wrath. She would melt their shield, liquify their towers, and burn their flesh until nothing remained but the wailing of the wind.

She drew the blistering, superheated air into her massive lungs, condensing the solar fire in the back of her throat to unleash a cleansing apocalypse. This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere. But just before she released the breath, the blue glass shield directly beneath her violently popped. A microscopic speck of black and crimson silk rocketed through the breach, halting in the dead center of the open sky.

The Ancient Gold Dragon paused, her massive, slitted eyes narrowing in utter, profound disdain. A single insect had willingly stepped out of the nest. It hovered before her, entirely unsupported by wind magic or leathery wings, suspended by some unseen force. The dragon felt a flash of deep insult. Did this speck truly believe it could negotiate? Did it think a sacrifice of one would stay her fury?

The dragon let out a low, rumbling growl that physically shook the clouds, preparing to passively incinerate the pest with the ambient heat of her exhalation.

Hovering directly in the path of the mythic beast, Ming Xuan Ji did not feel the crushing, existential terror that was currently suffocating the millions of mortals below. She felt the familiar, icy calm of a veteran raider initiating a World Boss encounter. The hurricane-force winds violently snapped her silk sleeves, and the ambient heat radiating from the beast was intense enough to singe normal hair, but Xuan Ji's heart rate was perfectly, rhythmically steady. She didn't instantly draw her Qi to attack.

She didn't drop into an aggressive, all-out martial stance. Instead, she unsealed her Dantian just enough to flood her optic nerves with profound energy. Her dark obsidian irises were instantly swallowed by the terrifying, luminous glow of her Divine Eye. The world around Xuan Ji slowed down. The chaotic blur of the storm peeled away, replaced by the crisp, analytical mechanics of reality. She looked at the Ancient Gold Dragon and saw the flow of energy mapping the battlefield.

Massive hitbox, Xuan Ji noted internally, her eyes tracking the dense, layered golden scales along the beast's chest, neck, and wings. Elemental affinity: Absolute Solar Yang. The physical armor is far too thick for standard strikes to cause internal trauma. Her Divine Eye swept over the dragon's joints. There. The musculature at the base of the wings and the softer scales beneath the lower jaw show a drop in mana density. Those are the critical points.

Annoyed by the tiny human's brazen, unwavering stare, the dragon did not bother with a breath attack. It simply snapped its colossal, galleon-sized jaws forward, intending to swallow Xuan Ji in a single, effortless bite. The jaws clamped shut with the speed of a thunderbolt, moving so fast the displaced air detonated with a concussive boom. But Xuan Ji wasn't there. A fraction of a second before the teeth closed, she had recognized the subtle, muscular tension in the dragon's neck. The telegraph.

With a minimal, highly efficient burst of [Cloud-Stepping Dragon], she had shifted exactly ten feet to the left, exploiting the momentary animation lock of the massive lunge. The dragon's jaws snapped on empty air, the shockwave rippling harmlessly past her. As the dragon's head blew past, Xuan Ji casually raised a finger, testing the waters. She fired a concentrated, crescent-shaped blade of compressed Qi, followed immediately by a dense, golden needle of Yang energy, aiming directly for the beast's cheek scale.

Tink. Hiss. The wind blade shattered into a harmless breeze, and the Yang needle was instantly absorbed into the ambient heat of the dragon's armor without leaving a scratch. Xuan Ji didn't grimace. She filed the data away. Standard elemental attacks are negated. Yang attacks are actively absorbed by the solar affinity. I will need to rely exclusively on Ultimate Yin or Yin-Yang fusion to bypass the mitigation.

The dragon roared in annoyance, twisting its massive, serpentine body and swinging its colossal, spiked tail. It came around in a devastating horizontal arc, a physical blow carrying hundreds of tons of force, designed to completely obliterate the airspace. Once again, Xuan Ji didn't bother blocking. Blocking a blow of that mass would drain her stamina unnecessarily. She read the trajectory of the tail, calculated the exact pixel-perfect reach, and dropped precisely fifteen feet in altitude.

The lethal, spiked club sailed right over her head. The violent wind shear aggressively whipped her hair around her face, missing her by mere inches. To the dragon, the tiny human appeared to be panicking. The insect was frantically dropping and weaving, throwing out weak, pathetic sparks of energy that couldn't even scratch her scales. It was a show of utter, pathetic weakness. The dragon's arrogance swelled, completely eclipsing its ancient tactical caution.

The beast let out a telepathic shriek of absolute contempt. It abandoned its methodical, sweeping strikes and lunged forward into a chaotic flurry of massive claws and snapping jaws, determined to swat the annoying pest out of the sky before burning the city. But hovering just out of reach, easily weaving through a storm of razor-sharp claws the size of royal carriages, the golden glow in Ming Xuan Ji's eyes sharpened into a dangerous, feral, predatory gleam. She had seen enough. The gauge phase was complete.

The boss's physical attack patterns were officially downloaded.