Chapter 825: The Beginning of Annihilation
Without the Divine Body’s endurance, Gorazdra’s Thunder Body began to crumble and collapse. Torrential lightning surged outward like a rising tide, spreading across the sky and radiating ever further into the heavens.
And as the lightning bolt receded, her true form—broken, ravaged, and grotesque—was revealed. Her chest had been torn open by a fearsome wound, exposing pale bone and charred, mangled flesh. She resembled a dragon corpse left to burn in fire—a skeletal remnant of a once-mighty beast.
She flailed weakly with her wings, her body swaying dangerously, tilting drunkenly as if on the verge of collapsing to the ground. Only electromagnetic force kept her suspended in midair, trembling against the pull of gravity.
Gorazdra fixed her gaze upon the broken horn clutched in Kai Xiusu’s claw—her eyes wild, her mouth bleeding, her vertical pupils narrowing into slits from which electric arcs crackled. A burning, desperate desire burned within her.
“That’s mine! Hybrid Dragon—give it back! Give it back!!”
Now, the ancient blue dragon was a desert wanderer, starved and desperate—driven mad by hunger for her source of power: the Horn of Tiamat.
With that root horn in her possession, she had wielded thunder like a god, commanding lightning with absolute freedom, unleashing divine bolts capable of annihilating everything in their path.
But now, stripped of the Divine Body, she felt nothing but weakness and decay. She trembled even before the Red Dragon Emperor—her once-unshakable pride now reduced to ash.
“Give it back—”
At last, Gorazdra could no longer bear the agony of loss. Reason shattered. With a guttural roar, she lunged at the Red Dragon Emperor, spewing another bolt of lightning—though it was pale, feeble, and utterly powerless compared to her former might.
“Interesting,” Kai Xiusu smirked, his fangs bared and stained with blood. A cruel, mocking smile curled across his face. “Is this really all you’ve got? You’re utterly mad to think you can face me like this?”
With a single, immense claw, the Red Dragon Emperor seized the ancient blue dragon by the neck and hoisted her into the air. Before the towering, fire-wreathed dragon body—hundreds of meters long—the blue dragon seemed like a wounded hatchling, utterly defenseless. Kai Xiusu flung her away with contemptuous ease.
Boom!
She crashed into the ground with devastating force, triggering a mountain collapse. The earth ruptured, groaned in agony, and shattered stone flew in every direction. Her already ruined body was reduced to even greater ruin—bones shattered, flesh torn apart.
Struggling to rise, she began dragging herself up—only for a crimson silhouette, massive and crushing, to crash down upon her, pinning her beneath its weight. She could not move.
Kai Xiusu pressed his claw against her neck, cold laughter dripping from his voice. “I told you long ago—you’re nothing but a loyal hound of Tiamat. You never had the right to stand before me.”
Gorazdra strained her mouth open, gasping between broken breaths. “Hybrid Dragon… you’ll regret this. The Dragon Queen will exile you to a prison beneath eternal darkness, where you’ll suffer for eternity.”
Kai Xiusu’s voice was icy. “Is that your final words? I’d say your Dragon Queen already abandoned you.”
With a sudden, violent surge, he slammed her throat downward with crushing force. The earth buckled beneath the impact, collapsing into a deep crater as Gorazdra was driven deep into the ground.
Blood poured from her mouth. A scream of unbearable agony tore from her throat. Lightning erupted violently from within her body, wild and uncontrolled.
Pain stripped her of reason. Her mind fragmented. All that remained was primal instinct—she threw her head back and howled, frenzied prayers echoing through the sky:
“Queen Tiamat… please intervene! You promised me—you said I’d become a new god!”
Boom!
The sky veil tore apart. A five-headed phantom emerged from the horizon, its gaze cold and merciless. A furious, thunderous curse split the air.
“Useless fool—”
Before the word finished, a column of five-colored light erupted from the rift above, descending like a divine executioner. It carried with it a presence so immense it shook the world. Flames, lightning, frost, poison, and acid—each hue of light pulsed with malevolent divine power, each beam radiating the strength to destroy all things and unravel the fabric of the Material Plane.
This was Tiamat’s divine punishment—launched through the breach of the planar barrier, even at the cost of immense divine attrition.
Boom!
In an instant, scorching dragon blood sprayed across the sky. Kai Xiusu’s fiery form was brutally split apart by the five-colored beam—his back nearly torn in two, exposing bone and pulsing internal organs. His torso trembled under the onslaught, on the brink of being pierced through.
“Tiamat! You’ve gone too far!”
Kai Xiusu roared, lifting his head despite the agony, standing defiant against the five-headed phantom in the sky. From within him, a torrent of dragon flame erupted, blazing with fury.
Seizing the moment, Gorazdra writhed free from beneath the Red Dragon Emperor and dragged her broken body into the air. Her voice, hoarse and broken, cracked with triumphant laughter.
“Hybrid Dragon! Your reckoning has come! I told you—Queen Tiamat would never abandon me!”
Kai Xiusu’s body visibly regenerated before the eyes of all. He clenched the broken horn tighter, raised his head, and opened his massive, blood-filled maw. From his throat, a pillar of blinding flame erupted—colliding midair with Tiamat’s divine punishment, canceling each other out.
“Never thought I’d see you, Queen Tiamat—arrogant deity of the ages—resorting to ambush against a mortal.”
Tiamat’s gaze darkened, filled with cold fury. Her presence pierced the veil of space and time, stretching from her divine realm in Avernus across the infinite void, pressing down upon Kai Xiusu with overwhelming, suffocating weight.
For a god, breaching the planar barrier to unleash divine punishment was perilous. In this Third Era, the walls between the Material Realm and the Outer Planes were unbreakable. To shatter them required staggering divine power—and left one vulnerable to attack by rival deities, who could strike at their own divine realms in retaliation.
But now, Tiamat had no choice. Three of her immortal anchor points—the three divine bodies anchoring her descent into the mortal world—had already been seized by Kai Xiusu. Two of them.
If this continued, her millennia-long plan to descend would collapse.
She never imagined that this hybrid dragon, born less than a century ago, would not serve as her tool—but become her greatest obstacle, the most powerful and relentless enemy of the Five-Colored Dragon race.
“Kai Xiusu! You are now the greatest obstacle to the revival of the Five-Colored Dragons! By the name of the Mother of Monsters—I will reduce you to dust with divine punishment!”
Boom!
The five-colored beam tore open the sky once more, descending with terrifying might. The world trembled. The air screamed. The heavens themselves seemed to fracture.
“Divine punishment, huh? Then bring it on!”
Kai Xiusu acted without hesitation. He channeled every ounce of energy from his hundreds-of-meter-long flame body, gathering it deep within his throat into a single, cataclysmic breath.
He knew Tiamat had many enemies. And in this moment, her rivals would surely seize the chance to attack her divine realm—offering him a reprieve.
He only needed to survive this one moment.
Victory was within reach.
Boom!
The two forces collided in a colossal explosion, a fireball spanning thousands of meters. Instantly, Kai Xiusu’s dragon breath was crushed, suppressed. The five-colored beam surged forward with terrifying speed, racing toward his head.
“Give it back!”
Midair, Gorazdra unleashed her own lightning bolt—a thin, desperate line—flying straight for the Red Dragon Emperor’s claw, for the broken horn.
Kai Xiusu had no time for her. With a brutal swing, his tail lashed out like a battering ram, striking her with crushing force. She was flung hundreds of meters away, crashing into the earth.
“Hurry—stop that blue dragon!”
Ancient Gold Dragon Dionysius roared from above.
A dozen gold, silver, and copper dragons surged into the sky, forming a barrier in front of the wounded blue dragon. But even broken, even stripped of divine form, Gorazdra—quasi-god of the old bloodline—was far beyond their reach.
“Filth—die!”
With a thunderous roar, a storm erupted above her. The ancient blue dragon unleashed a flood of lightning, vaporizing the metal dragons midair. They fell from the sky in burning, charred wrecks, smoke rising from their bodies.
“Help Gorazdra-sama! Aid the Dragon Queen!”
Evil dragon priests screamed. Cultists and descendants of dragons surged forward in waves, joining battle as a single, desperate regiment.
The battlefield erupted into chaos. Allied soldiers clashed again with followers of the Dragon Worship Church. At the center of it all, Kai Xiusu fought with everything he had—absorbing Tiamat’s divine punishment.
The five-colored beam devoured dragon flame, relentlessly advancing toward him. Divine power poured like a flood, reducing everything in its path to ash. Thousands of microscopic spatial rifts split the air.
Even the Material Plane itself trembled, cracked, and began to fracture.
A copper dragon, caught by accident within 100 meters of the beam’s path, was instantly swept up by the divine gale. Its body dissolved in the energy flood, disintegrating into countless microscopic particles—no remains, no bones, nothing left.
“Tiamat—”
Kai Xiusu’s heart—Karex’s Heart—thundered in his chest. The dragon crystal within him blazed with a light like the sun. Steam erupted from every gap in his scales. His maw opened wide, pouring forth a torrent of dragon flame so intense it made the spirit tremble.
A supernova-like radiance exploded across the sky—bright enough to sear the eyes of all who watched. Within a hundred kilometers, hundreds of dragons, millions of soldiers, etched this moment into their souls.
“God…”
The sheer scale of power was overwhelming, spiritual, transcendent.
Tiamat’s divine punishment proved stronger. The five-colored beam swallowed the fire, disintegrating space as it advanced, consuming Kai Xiusu’s form in divine radiance.
But then—across the void, a furious roar echoed from beyond time and space.
“Bahamut—”
The five-colored light halted. The sky shimmered. A cold, blue divine light appeared. The northern wind howled, biting and sharp.
A faint, white-gold dragon phantom materialized in the sky, its metallic wings casting shadows over the land. Its voice rang clear and mighty.
“Tiamat. End this farce. You know as well as I do—gods should not meddle in the affairs of the Material Realm. To destroy this red dragon, you’ve sacrificed divine essence—how utterly ridiculous.”
Tiamat roared, “Bahamut! It’s fools like you who’ve let dragon rule crumble!”
“Regardless, this is not the way!”
“Then let us settle this—damned crawler!”
Boom—
Two titanic forces of divine power clashed in the sky, shaking the very foundations of the Material Plane. But under the weight of the plane’s edict, the light could not persist. The divine energies dissipated, scattered like dust.
Had it not been for the jagged, fissured rifts still visible on the horizon, and the endless wreckage beneath the sky, one might have thought the divine punishment had never existed at all.
“Divine punishment… ceased!”
“The voice—it was the ‘Lord of the Northern Wind,’ King Bahamut! He stopped the Five-Colored Dragon Queen!”
“Thank the gods! Divine protection! The war is over!”
People looked up. Only the towering silhouette of the Red Dragon Emperor remained in the sky. As for Gorazdra?
She had slipped away in the chaos—dragging herself through the air, whispering a broken, desperate roar, fleeing westward into the endless yellow sands.
High above, the Red Dragon Emperor—wounded, bleeding, bone exposed—grinned, revealing blood-stained fangs. His voice was a terrifying whisper.
“Flee? Who once called me prey?”
Without regard for his wounds, Kai Xiusu spread his wings. A scorching gale erupted from his form. He dragged a trail of flame light behind him, becoming a crimson afterimage too fast for the eye to follow.
“Gorazdra—”
In the vast, shifting dunes, the ancient blue dragon—fleeing in blind terror—turned her head. Her scales bristled. Her blood ran cold.
“Damned hybrid dragon… how could he recover so fast?!”
The sky screamed. The Red Dragon Emperor, like a meteor, tore through the heavens. He ripped open the gloomy sky veil with brutal force, leaving a long, thin trail of smoke.
The crimson figure loomed larger, sharper—then, with terrifying speed, plummeted toward her.
Boom!
The sand exploded upward. A shockwave swept across the desert, carving a massive crater. The Red Dragon Emperor dived like a storm, slamming into the earth with the force of a collapsing mountain, pinning the wounded blue dragon beneath him.
In Kai Xiusu’s golden, vertical pupils, the cold fire of death burned.
His maw opened wide. From deep within his throat, fire surged once more.
“Gorazdra… it’s time to pay for your arrogance.”
“No—stop! I’m… I’m the future god—”
The ancient blue dragon flapped her tattered wings, her voice trembling with panic.
But then—
Boom!
A blinding flash of flame consumed everything.
The dragon flame engulfed her flesh, her bones—reducing her to ash.
Only one thing went unnoticed.
A tiny spark of lightning—faint, barely visible—flew from her body, crackling through the air like a whisper, vanishing into the distance.
(End of Chapter)
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