The roars of the three-headed beast echoed through the narrow canyon, shaking loose chunks of rock from the cliffs.
Its six scarlet eyes locked onto Dustin. The central head suddenly reared back, spewing a torrent of blazing, sulfur-reeking dark-red flames. Like a flood of molten lava, the inferno surged toward the group.
Even before the fire arrived, the searing heat warped the air. Shallow puddles on the ground evaporated instantly. The guards felt their hair singe and their skin sting.
“Fall back!”
Dustin barked the order, yet instead of retreating, he stepped forward, placing himself at the front.
He did not draw his sword. Instead, he pressed two fingers together like a blade and slashed through the air.
Shhh!
A crescent-shaped arc of azure sword-qi appeared from nothingness, sharp and condensed to the extreme. With a piercing whistle, it cleaved straight into the torrent of flames.
There was no thunderous explosion—only the effortless slice of sharpness cutting through weakness. The azure sword-qi split the inferno cleanly in two, as easily as a hot knife through butter.
The parted flames roared past Dustin’s sides, scorching the cliffs behind him into blackened ruin, but leaving him and those behind untouched.
The beast roared in fury. Its other two heads stirred to life!
The left head spewed a thick cloud of noxious, greenish poison, choking and putrid. The right head unleashed a silent psychic shockwave that struck directly at Dustin’s sea of consciousness.
“Petty tricks.”
Unfazed, Dustin flicked his sleeve. A gale of energy surged forth, sweeping the toxic fog away and hurling it back toward the beast.
At the same time, his eyes gleamed. Within his mind, his divine sense coalesced like a sword and shredded the invading psychic attack into nothing.
The beast coughed and snarled, choked by its own poison. Its rage only deepened.
With a deafening roar, the monster reared onto its hind legs. The chained forelimbs, wielding force enough to crush mountains, came crashing down toward Dustin like twin colossal hammers.
This strike alone could have flattened a hill.
“Good—come then!”
At last, a spark of battle spirit flashed in Dustin’s eyes.
His right hand, which had rested on his sword hilt all this time, finally moved.
Chaaang!
The crisp cry of steel rang out, clear and sonorous, like the song of a dragon.
His longsword leapt from its sheath, gleaming cold and sharp as autumn water.
Facing the monster’s earth-shattering blow, Dustin did not dodge. His wrist flicked, the blade tracing a profound arc. An azure sword aura surged upward like a pillar of the heavens.
“Split the Sky!”
Sword aura and monstrous claws clashed head-on!
BOOOOM!!
The impact shook the canyon. A blast wave burst outward like a physical storm, fracturing the ground and scattering stone shards like arrows.
The beast howled in agony. Those claws, tough enough to rival divine weapons, were severed cleanly at the wrists by the seemingly slender sword-qi.
Dark-red blood gushed out like a waterfall.
Reeling from the grievous wound, the beast staggered back, three heads thrashing wildly, roaring in pain and fury.
Yet just as everyone thought it was about to collapse, the air shifted.
The cracks in its black scales glowed with blinding red, as if a volcano within was about to erupt.
At the stumps of its severed limbs, flesh writhed and squirmed—not to regrow the claws, but to fuel a violent transformation.
Its body began to shrink, but its aura surged skyward!
The scales thickened, gleaming with metallic luster. With a sickening crack, its back split open and unfurled a pair of wings, veined with black membrane.
The three heads convulsed, bones grinding together with a nauseating creak, until they fused into a single monstrous skull. A jagged horn jutted from its brow, its maw filled with razor fangs, and a single blood-red eye blazed with ferocity—now tinged with cunning and cruelty.
The ground-bound colossus had become a flying abomination: nearly thirty feet tall, wings spanning more than fifty feet, its form part dragon, part lizard, yet belonging to neither.
Its speed and agility had multiplied.
“Second form?” Dustin raised an eyebrow. This was unexpected.
He could feel it—the creature’s strength, speed, and energy had nearly doubled.
“Raaaagh!”
The mutated beast fixed its single eye on Dustin. With one thunderous beat of its wings, it shot forward like a black lightning bolt, leaving only afterimages behind. Its hooked claws streaked toward Dustin’s throat.
At the same time, the horn on its brow flared with dark light. A concentrated beam of annihilating energy lanced forward, aimed at Dustin’s chest—arriving even faster than its claws.
“Impressive speed.”
Dustin’s comment was calm. His figure blurred and vanished like a phantom.
The black beam struck empty ground, carving a bottomless pit where he had stood.
In the blink of an eye, Dustin reappeared above the beast’s flank. His sword slashed down, unleashing a torrential rain of azure sword-qi. Countless blades of light poured upon the monster.
Clang! Clang! Clang!—Splurt!
The beast beat its wings, summoning black whirlwinds to shred the storm of blades. Many strikes were deflected, yet several pierced through, carving deep gashes into its armored scales, down to raw flesh.
It shrieked in fury, its lone eye flashing with murderous resolve.
Spinning midair, it opened its cavernous jaws. Within, a pitch-black energy sphere rapidly condensed, so dense with destructive power that even Margaret and the others, far behind, felt their very souls tremble. - Marinien
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