Chapter 312: A Change Of Priorities
The colossal Crimson Dragon angled her wings, gliding down toward the front of the Vanguard line.
TAP!
Talira touched down onto the earth directly beside Morwenna.
Even though a creature of her massive physical weight should have created an earth-shattering impact crater, Talira skillfully concealed her landing kinetic force, sending only tiny, gentle tremors through the soil beneath her talons.
Standing proudly atop the dragon’s flat, broad head was Lord Vespera...
Vespera casually stepped off Talira’s snout, landing lightly on the grass.
She raised her gloved hand, gently patting the thick ruby-red scales on the side of Talira’s massive snout.
"Good girl, Talira," Silas praised softly with her voice calm and relaxed.
PURRRRR...
The moment Silas uttered those three words, the colossal, terrifying Primordial Dragon... an apex predator capable of leveling a lot of things let out a deep vibrating purr that sounded like a heavy engine.
Lord Sky, watching through his helmet’s optical lenses three hundred yards away, could have sworn on his life that he saw the giant dragon’s fierce, golden eyes light up with a bright undeniably happy glow, its red scales subtly flushing a lighter shade of crimson from the praise.
Vespera turned her head, stepping forward onto the grass to face Lord Sky.
She patted Talira’s massive flank once more.
"Well, Lord Sky..." Vespera greeted smoothly, her voice projecting clearly across the field. "It’s quite surprising that I pulled out a dragon right in front of your entire army, isn’t it?"
Sky stood on his command deck with his throat dry behind his mask.
He swallowed hard, forcing himself to maintain his composure for his stream audience, though his voice sounded strained.
"It is... extraordinarily surprising, Lord Vespera. I didn’t expect a brand-new territory to command a Primordial beast."
Vespera offered a subtle smirk beneath her hood, adjusting her cuffs.
"Well..." Vespera reminded him casually, "...we are currently at war, aren’t we? You shouldn’t expect your opponents to lay out all their cards beforehand."
Sky’s jaw clenched tightly beneath his full-face helmet.
Inside his mind, Sky felt a cold, paralyzing sense of dread settling into his chest.
He had not only been outdone in terms of frontline Hero strength... he had been outplayed, out-maneuvered, and completely out-staged on a global broadcast level!
His engagement metrics were plummeting while Blessed Land’s brand value was skyrocketing to unprecedented heights.
...But Sky was a veteran Classic Lord. He had built The Unmovable Wall from nothing through pure resilience.
He was NOT going to give up.
Sky raised his sword high into the air, his audio transmitter bellowing with fierce authority.
"ALL SURVIVING UNITS! FORM UP! CLERICS, ADVANCE TO THE FRONTLINE AND DISTRIBUTE HIGH-TIER REGENERATION SPELLS IMMEDIATELY! WE FIGHT TO THE VERY END!"
SHRRRRR!
Dozens of Sky’s high-tier Cleric combatants rushed forward from the secondary decks of the mobile fortress, casting wide-area healing circles over the wounded infantry and Hero officers on the field!
Sky turned his head toward the side railing, locking his eyes onto a short, stout female dwarven blacksmith clad in heavy, soot-stained leather aprons... Brenna, his territory’s smithy and beast keeper.
All of Sky’s hidden secondary Hero combatants were already assembling along the lower ramps, preparing to march onto the field for the final ground collision.
Sky looked at Brenna, his voice dropping into a hard, urgent command:
"It’s time, Brenna. Release the Wyverns!"
Brenna offered a firm, heavy nod.
"Understood, Lord Sky!"
Brenna reached into her belt, pulling out a heavy runic brass horn, and blew a sharp echoing signal into the air!
HOOOOORN!
GRAAHHH! RAHH! GRAAH!
From the massive, cavernous flight decks built into the upper rear hull of The Unmovable Wall, iron cage doors slammed open.
A flock of over thirty massive, dark-green Iron-Scale Wyverns erupted into the sky.
Their leather wings beat furiously against the wind as they took flight, their yellow eyes burning with mind-controlled aggression as they formed an aerial assault formation above Sky’s army.
Sky offered a sharp smirk behind his mask.
He didn’t expect thirty Wyverns to defeat a Primordial Crimson Dragon.
But at the very least, thirty aggressive, aerial beasts would serve as a massive airborne distraction... forcing the Crimson Dragon into a chaotic dogfight while his ground troops closed the gap to engage Silas’s small army.
Down on the grass, Silas stood beside Talira’s massive leg. He felt the shift in atmospheric pressure, looking up at the flock of thirty dark-green Wyverns screaming through the sky toward their position.
Silas reached out, gently patting Talira’s warm scale-covered flank.
He noticed that Talira’s golden eyes were locked onto the flying Wyverns, her long tail swaying slightly against the grass with her nostrils venting tiny sparks of irritation at the lesser reptilian creatures daring to screech in her presence.
Silas offered a soft, amused chuckle.
"Go ahead, Talira. You have permission to deal with them."
HUMMMMMMM!
The exact second Silas gave the command—
Talira’s massive ruby wings spread wide!
FWOOSH!
She shot straight up into the heavens like a crimson rocket.
The launch velocity generated a kinetic shockwave that blasted the grass flat for fifty yards around her takeoff point!
Hovering high above the clouds, the flock of thirty Iron-Scale Wyverns saw the single Crimson Dragon ascending toward them.
Mind-controlled by Brenna’s runic horn, the Wyverns let out bloodthirsty screeches, diving straight toward Talira from all directions with open jaws and venomous talons.
Talira looked at the thirty diving Wyverns, her golden dragon eyes narrowing into razor-sharp contemptuous slits.
"Try it, lesser worms," Talira’s dragon voice echoed through the atmosphere.
Talira didn’t even bother opening her massive jaws to unleash a traditional dragon fire-breath.
She simply raised her long, elegant head toward the sky, channeling a tiny fraction of her ancient magic into her horn crest.
HUMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM!
A blinding, incandescent sphere of pure, high-density White Lightning ignited atop Talira’s central horn!
BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!
A single, colossal bolt of blinding white lightning... over thirty feet wide erupted from her horn, splitting the sky in two.
The divine white lightning didn’t just strike one target...
It branched out across the upper atmosphere in a terrifying, web-like electrical cascade, striking all thirty Iron-Scale Wyverns simultaneously in a fraction of a second.
HISSSSSSS... FLASH!
There were no bloody corpses falling from the sky and there were no severed wings.
The moment the white lightning touched the thirty Wyverns, their physical bodies, iron scales, bones, and blood were instantly vaporized into nothingness.
All thirty Wyverns ceased to exist in a single silent flash of blinding white light, leaving behind only a drifting cloud of harmless ozone ash in the upper atmosphere.
The entire sky was left completely, pristine clean.
Talira hovered gracefully against the blue clouds with her ruby wings beating slowly, her golden eyes looking around the empty ash-filled air.
She let out a quiet, bored dragon huff through her nostrils, her internal voice ringing with pure disappointment.
’This is light work...’ Talira thought to herself, floating weightlessly in the empty sky. ’...Is this pathetic trash really what I did all of that grueling training for?’
...
Inside an ultra-exclusive, top-floor suite located in the most prestigious residential district of the capital, Elora sat gracefully at a wide, polished obsidian dining table.
The private room was a masterpiece of imperial luxury... high vaulted ceilings adorned with glowing mana-crystal chandeliers, plush velvet drapery trailing down floor-to-ceiling panoramic windows, and rare elemental orchids blooming softly in silver vases along the walls.
Floating directly above the center of her table was a crystal-clear, high-definition holographic projection of the global LordTube stream.
The golden broadcast display flickered, showing the grand, breathtaking scene taking place thousands of leagues away in the Umbral Basin... the massive, ruby-red scales of the Primordial Crimson Dragon glistening under the morning sun, its thirty-foot wingspan fanning the air as it stood proudly beside a dark-hooded figure.
For the first time in as long as she could remember, Elora’s usually emotionless, porcelain-like face fractured into a visible expression of genuine shock.
Her cool distant gaze widened slightly, her delicate fingers pausing mid-air where she had been holding a crystal glass of chilled fruit nectar.
"A Dragon... huh?" Elora murmured softly to herself, her melodic voice echoing through the silent room.
Elora leaned back slightly in her plush leather chair, her sharp analytical mind immediately spinning through her extensive mental archives.
She remembered seeing a dragon before... or rather, she remembered seeing the terrifying, colossal remains of one.
Back during the high-stakes expedition into the ancient Secret Realm, it had erupted from the ground.
But that had been nothing more than ancient calcified bone... a relic of an era long forgotten, not to mention that it had been rotting and turned to dust almost immediately.
There was absolutely no guarantee that the creature standing live on her holographic screen was of the same species or bloodline.
After all, when that ancient skeleton had erupted from the earth at that time, there hadn’t been a single living dragon anywhere near the site.
Elora shifted her posture, resting her chin lightly on her knuckles as she narrowed her eyes, focusing her attention away from the Primordial Crimson Dragon and locking onto the slender figure standing calmly beside its massive snout.
The mysterious Lord of the Blessed Land... Lord Vespera.
Elora zoomed in on the holographic projection, scrutinizing every single pixel of Vespera’s posture, dark robes, and aura.
A quiet calculating thought surfaced in her mind.
’It couldn’t possibly be Silas anymore...’ Elora thought, analyzing the physical height, the relaxed feeling, and the overwhelming authority radiating off Vespera’s frame.
Of course, a rational part of her brain reminded her that high-tier spatial disguise artifacts were capable of completely masking a person’s voice, height, gender, and mana signature.
Vespera could very easily be wearing an elaborate top-tier spatial disguise... so she couldn’t definitively rule out the possibility with one hundred percent certainty.
However, looking at the breathtaking historical display on the stream... a Lord who commanded a Primordial Crimson Dragon and an army of elite, invincible female warriors... Elora felt a sudden, profound shift in her personal priorities.
’What a waste of time...’
Until today, Elora had been subtly entertaining the idea of pursuing a romantic relationship with Silas Graves since she assumed that he was the Lord of Blessed Land.
But looking at the floating golden screen now, a cool decisive smile touched her lips.
Silas was interesting, sure... but Lord Vespera was a titan who was currently rewriting the geopolitical landscape of the Sovereign Realm on a global broadcast.
’Forget Silas,’ Elora concluded in her mind, her eyes glinting with sharp ambitious conviction. ’My intentions are changing. The main purpose was that I thought he was the Lord Of Blessed Land, now I have no reason to think of this anymore...’
A soft, quiet sigh escaped her lips as she recalled her recent actions.
She remembered spending a staggering eight million spirit credits just to purchase a custom vehicle for Silas as a casual gesture of goodwill.
She shook her head gently with her expression relaxing into complete indifference.
’Ah, well... eight million credits,’ Elora thought, dismissing the thought entirely. ’It doesn’t matter. That was barely a microscopic dent in my personal savings account anyway.’
Elora raised two slender fingers, snapping them lightly in the quiet air of her suite.
SNAP!
A side door swung open instantly, and a young maid dressed in a crisp, black-and-white uniform rushed into the dining room.
The maid bowed deeply, her forehead nearly touching the polished marble floor.
"You called for me, Lady Elora?" the maid asked respectfully, her voice trembling slightly under her mistress’s intense presence.
Elora didn’t even turn her head, her eyes remaining fixed on the glowing holographic projection of Vespera and the dragon.
"Compile every single piece of information available across the global networks, imperial registries, and private intelligence guilds regarding Lord Vespera," Elora commanded smoothly, her tone leaving zero room for argument. "I want a complete, comprehensive dossier by tonight. Cross-reference her public movements and compile a detailed list of every single possible identity she might be hiding behind."
The maid raised her head slightly with her lips parting as she tried to speak.
"Lady Elora, the magistrate’s council has already placed a strict informational blackout on the Umbral Basin due to the live broadcast, so gathering private—"
Before the maid could finish her sentence, Elora raised her hand, interrupting her mid-word with a single cold glance.
"I did not ask for an explanation of the difficulties," Elora spoke quietly, her voice dropping into a chilling authoritative tone. "I gave you a command. Go."
The maid’s face turned ghostly white.
She bowed frantically, stepping backward three paces before turning on her heel and sprinting out of the suite at top speed to execute the order.