Chapter 323: Legacy Of A Dragon Slayer [II]
"I can smell you, dragon," Gideon hissed, gripping the thick hilt of his greatsword so hard the bones in his knuckles popped. "Your fire... Your fear... Your arrogance... You think you are the apex predator on this entire battlefield but you have never faced a true Dragon-Slayer."
Gideon smoothly pulled the massive Dragon-Bone Greatsword out of the bedrock.
He didn’t announce his presence and he didn’t issue a grand, honorable challenge to the Vanguard.
’It’s not like I care about the rules anyway.’ He thought.
Gideon simply stepped off the edge of the stone ridge with his heavy mythril armor carrying him into a rapid forty-foot freefall directly toward the northern ruins.
KRA-THOOOOOM!
Gideon landed directly in the center of the muddy clearing, precisely thirty yards away from Talira’s current position.
The physical density of his landing shattered the bedrock upon impact, sending a massive shockwave of displaced dirt, mud, and stone shrapnel flying violently outward in a perfect circle.
"Huh?"
Talira had just finished driving her armor-plated fist straight through the dense chest plate of a heavy guard.
She casually dropped the unconscious, bleeding soldier into the mud.
Her glowing golden eyes, marked by their vertical reptilian slits, snapped instantly toward the sudden impact point.
She saw the towering scarred man standing in the fresh crater, holding a sword made entirely of ancient yellowed bone.
Instantly, Talira’s draconic instincts flared with a primal warning.
The air around the man smelled intensely of her slaughtered kin and deep generational hatred.
"Who are you?" Talira demanded.
Her voice was a deep growl that carried a vibration, making the loose pebbles on the ground shake.
"You do not smell like the other fragile humans of this army," Talira noted with her scale-armored tail swishing aggressively behind her. "You reek of death."
Gideon slowly rolled his neck, the thick joints popping audibly in the quiet clearing.
He raised the massive Dragon-Bone Greatsword, pointing the jagged pale tip directly at the center of Talira’s chest.
"I am the man who is going to peel the scales from your corpse and forge them into a new set of armor for my clan," Gideon replied coldly.
A sudden sharp pulse of aggressive golden lightning mana erupted from Gideon’s left hand.
VZZZZZZT!
He cast his Hunter’s Mark.
The special draconic debuff shot across the thirty-yard gap instantly as it completely bypassed Talira’s natural, radiating aura and etched a faint glowing golden sigil directly onto her left collarbone!
Talira frowned deeply, feeling a sudden unnatural vulnerability wash over her incredibly dense scales exactly where the mark sat.
Before she could process the debuff, Gideon exploded forward.
He didn’t use a high-tier spatial blink as he relied entirely on raw explosive physical acceleration!
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
His boots tore massive trenches into the mud as he crossed the thirty-yard distance in a fraction of seconds.
He raised the heavy bone sword high over his head, fully committing to the execution.
"Scale-Breaker Strike!" Gideon roared.
He swung the massive blade downward with terrifying velocity.
The jagged edge of the sword hummed with concentrated, armor-piercing lightning mana that was specifically calibrated over centuries of research to cleanly bypass draconic scale defenses.
Talira’s golden eyes widened.
Her primordial combat instincts screamed that she could not simply tank this hit with her raw durability.
She crossed her arms aggressively above her head, engaging the dense resistant scales of her custom runic arm vambraces, bracing her entire frame for the massive impact.
CLANGGGGGGG!
The collision of the Dragon-Bone Greatsword against her heavy armor created a deafening metallic roar that shook the very air.
Bright orange sparks and jagged, wild arcs of golden lightning showered violently across the mud.
Talira gritted her teeth with her boots sinking three full inches deep into the solid bedrock from the downward pressure.
The strike was incredibly heavy, far heavier than any normal human should have been able to generate!
But Talira was not a normal human... She was a Primordial Crimson Dragon.
"You hit hard for a fragile little human," Talira growled with her lips pulling back to reveal sharp elongated fangs. "But not hard enough!"
Talira aggressively shoved her arms upward, violently parrying the heavy greatsword away from her body.
Simultaneously, she pivoted heavily on her left heel, utilizing the massive unnatural momentum of her scale-armored crimson tail.
VWOOOOOOSH!
The heavy tail whipped through the air like a lethal steel mace.
The mythril-tipped spike, forged explicitly for her by Thora in the Blessed Land, aimed directly for Gideon’s exposed ribs.
Gideon didn’t retreat.
His pale gray eyes tracked the microscopic muscle twitch in Talira’s hips before the tail even moved.
He dropped his center of gravity instantly, bringing the flat, broad side of his bone greatsword down to perfectly block the incoming tail sweep!
WHAM!
The mythril spike slammed into the dragon-bone blade with multi-ton force.
The impact sent a massive shockwave of displaced air tearing through the clearing, forcing Gideon to slide five feet backward through the thick mud.
However, thanks to his Slayer’s Resilience passive trait, the immense bone-crushing blunt force of the dragon’s physical attack was completely reduced by forty percent.
Gideon didn’t lose his balance, he refused to stagger.
He simply used the backward slide to instantly re-chamber his heavy weapon.
"Is that all the physical strength a primordial beast can muster when trapped inside a pathetic human shell?!" Gideon mocked violently, his voice laced with venomous pride.
Gideon surged forward again.
He swung the heavy greatsword in a rapid brutal flurry of horizontal slashes, heavy vertical chops, and blindingly fast thrusts.
Talira met him blow for blow. She didn’t draw a weapon as her physical body was the ultimate weapon!
She used her heavy, armor-plated gauntlets, her dense crimson scales, and the hardened bone of her forearms to repeatedly parry, deflect, and violently redirect the massive bone sword!
CLACK! CLANG! WHAM!
The two heavy-melee specialists engaged in a terrifying high-speed clash of raw physical power.
Every single time their attacks collided, the shockwaves blew away the surrounding mud, creating a rapidly expanding crater of destroyed bedrock beneath their shifting boots.
Despite her stats, Gideon was completely dominating the flow of the fight.
His entire martial art style had been meticulously engineered over centuries by his ancestors to specifically hunt humanoid dragon-kin and fully transformed dragons.
He knew exactly how Talira’s joints moved... He knew the precise reach of her tail, the exact wind-up time required for her to breathe fire, and the exact blind spots created by her peripheral vision.
He repeatedly slipped cleanly inside her guard, delivering brutal, grazing cuts across her ribs, her thighs, and her forearms.
SHRRRR-IP!
The Dragon-Bane Edge passive of his weapon ensured that every single minor cut inflicted a deep burning pain that actively bypassed her rapid regeneration.
"GHK!" Talira grunted, stumbling backward as the greatsword opened a shallow bleeding gash across her right bicep.
However, even while taking accumulating damage, Talira was still a monster.
Her combat adaptability was terrifying.
She quickly recognized that fighting him in a purely technical martial exchange was a losing battle.
He had too much specialized technique. He had trained his entire life for this exact specific scenario.
So, she changed the rules.
As Gideon stepped forward to deliver a heavy thrust toward her stomach, Talira didn’t try to block it with her arms.
Instead, she simply opened her mouth.
FWOOOOOOSH.
A massive point-blank torrent of white-hot volcanic fire erupted directly from her throat.
The fifty-foot wide river of pure annihilation engulfed Gideon completely before he could even finish his swing.
The flames were so incredibly hot that the surrounding bedrock instantly melted into a glowing bubbling river of liquid lava!
Gideon disappeared entirely inside the roaring column of absolute fire!
Talira ceased her breath, panting heavily with thick white smoke rising from her elongated fangs.
She expected to see a pile of melted mythril and charred bone resting in the lava.
Instead, as the smoke cleared, Gideon was still standing.
His heavy dragon-scale pauldrons were glowing red-hot, and the leather straps of his armor were smoking heavily, but his flesh was entirely intact.
The Slayer’s Resilience passive trait had neutralized the fatal intensity of the draconic fire, allowing him to endure the blast through pure grit.
"Nice try," Gideon snarled, his scarred face twisting into a demonic obsessive smile.
He raised his heavy right boot.
KRA-THOOOOOM!
Gideon slammed his boot violently into the liquid bedrock, executing his Thunderous Stomp.
A massive concentrated shockwave of golden lightning-charged earth exploded outward from his boot.
The seismic blast tore through the ground, slamming directly into Talira’s legs with terrifying voltage.
"AH!" Talira cried out.
The lightning mana violently disrupted her central nervous system...
The shock staggered her backward, completely seizing her leg muscles and forcing her to drop heavily onto one knee, entirely rooting her to the spot.
Gideon didn’t hesitate for a microsecond.
He raised the massive greatsword high above his head, stepping forward and aiming directly for her exposed ruby-red neck.
"Die, beast!" Gideon roared but Talira’s golden eyes did not show fear.
They did not show submission... They showed primordial rage instead.
’Y-you...’
She had spent over an entire century trapped inside the suffocating darkness of the Warden’s Eye artifact.
She had watched her mother rot.
She had been freed by the kindness of Lord Silas, and though she was arrogant at first... she had sworn to fight for the Blessed Land.
She refused to be killed by a pathetic, obsessive human wielding a rusty bone sword in the mud.
As the greatsword descended rapidly toward her neck, Talira’s draconic mana core violently erupted.
"I AM NOT PREY!" Talira screamed at the absolute top of her lungs!
Her massive aura exploded outward in a colossal shockwave of pure, unfiltered fire and wind mana.
The shockwave slammed heavily into Gideon.
It threw him completely off balance, forcing him to abort his execution swing and desperately slide ten feet backward through the mud just to stay on his feet.
"Fuck!"
Before his eyes, the humanoid woman vanished entirely into a blinding pillar of towering crimson light.
"RAHHHHHHH!"
A terrifying earth-shattering draconic roar echoed across the entire Umbral Basin.
The volume of the sound silenced the surrounding battlefield, causing the sky itself to tremble.
When the crimson light finally faded, Talira was no longer a humanoid woman.
She had unleashed her True Dragon Form.
A colossal Primordial Crimson Dragon towered over the battlefield.
Her wingspan stretched out to an immense terrifying fifty feet, casting a massive, suffocating shadow entirely over Gideon’s tiny form.
Her scales had hardened into a dark volcanic black-crimson hue that was virtually impenetrable.
Massive, jagged spikes ran down the entire length of her long, serpentine spine. Four massive, swept-back horns crowned her terrifying reptilian skull.
Her massive jaws opened wide, dripping with liquid fire. Her glowing golden eyes locked directly onto the Dragon-Slayer far below.
Gideon looked up at the towering, seventy-foot monster.
He didn’t show an ounce of fear.
His pale gray eyes widened with euphoric ecstasy as the adrenaline flooded his system like an intoxicating drug.
"Yes," Gideon whispered, his voice trembling with obsessive joy. "YES! Show me your true skin! Let me finally earn my bloodline!"
Talira didn’t bother speaking.
She lunged forward, her massive, multi-ton jaws snapping down toward Gideon with terrifying supersonic speed.
Gideon engaged his high-speed footwork, diving aggressively to the left.
CRUNCH!
Talira’s massive jaws completely shattered the bedrock exactly where Gideon had been standing just a second prior, leaving a crater the size of a small house!
As Gideon rolled back onto his feet, he immediately swung his greatsword in a wide arc.
The heavy blade bit deeply into the dense scales of Talira’s massive, descending forearm.
SHRRRRR-IP!
Sparks flew wildly into the air.
The anti-dragon mana forced the blade cleanly through the outer layer of her thick scales, drawing a deep long gash of burning, glowing dragon blood that splashed against the mud.
"GRAHHH!"
Talira roared in genuine pain, but she did not retreat.
Her Combat Growth passive was already rapidly activating under the intense stress of the engagement.
’I see...’
She realized that staying on the ground allowed the tiny technical human to easily dodge her massive strikes and counter-attack her vulnerable joints.
So, Talira violently flapped her colossal fifty-foot wings.
FWOOOOOOSH!
The atmospheric downforce generated by the massive wing-beat created a hurricane.
The extreme wind pressure slammed into Gideon, forcing him to plant his greatsword deep into the dirt just to avoid being blown entirely across the clearing.
Talira launched herself into the sky as she ascended rapidly into the dark, smoke-filled storm clouds high above the battlefield.
"You cannot run from me!" Gideon screamed into the sky.
His obsession completely overrode his sense as he refused to let the hunt escape!
He yanked his greatsword out of the dirt.
Utilizing the lingering wind currents generated by her massive wings, he violently launched himself upward.