Chapter 210: Their Hardest Challenge Yet

Chapter 210: Chapter 210: Their Hardest Challenge Yet

The sheer magnitude of the reaction caught Caelen mid-air.

Before his glowing broadsword could make contact with the drake’s wing joint, Pyroth’s four massive wings snapped tight around its torso. A subterranean roar vibrated through the obsidian floor, and a blinding wave of compressed Thermal Wind violently expanded outward in a three-hundred-degree radius.

"Infernal Tempest Domain!"

The air in the amphitheater didn’t just heat up—it ignited. A swirling dome of pressurized white-hot plasma and gale-force wind erupted around the boss, converting the surrounding thirty-yard radius into a localized furnace. The sudden expansion of superheated air generated a massive shockwave, catching Caelen in mid-flight like a ragdoll.

His gold-tinted aura flared blindingly bright as it strained against the blistering heat and hurricane winds, but the sheer kinetic force shoved him backward, sending him skidding across the obsidian ground toward a bubbling channel of liquid magma.

"Caelen!" Mirei shouted from her perch.

Without missing a beat, she drew three glowing shafts from her quiver simultaneously. Infusing her Breeze-Striker Longbow with every ounce of her newly awakened Level 30 wind mana, she loosed a triple-arrow salvo straight into the swirling wall of Pyroth’s domain. The arrows didn’t aim for the boss—they targeted the rotational axis of the fiery cyclone, creating localized counter-vortexes that punched a narrow, stable air corridor through the wall of flames!

"Barney, anchor the left line!" Rowan called out, his voice calm and completely unbothered by the rising inferno.

"Already on it, boss!" Barney roared.

The heavy dwarf slammed his massive tower shield deep into the stone floor, activating his vanguard skill [Unyielding Mountain Citadel]. A translucent, golden barrier flared outward from his shield, locking onto the ground and creating a safe windbreak for Seraphina, who instantly smashed two crystal vials together above her alchemy belt.

A mist of condensed Glacial Ginseng Essence exploded into the air, instantly coating the entire party in a shimmering, frost-blue shroud that counteracted the suffocating heat of Pyroth’s domain and restored Caelen’s rapidly draining stamina.

Shaking off the singed heat from his armored shoulders, Caelen dug his broadsword into the cracked stone, pushing himself back onto his feet with a vicious grin. "That lizard really doesn’t like personal space!"

"It’s trying to claim the domain as its own territory," Rowan said, stepping forward past Barney’s barrier. His straw hat tilted upward, his dark eyes glowing with the deep, resonant power of his Level 30 Origin Earth mastery. "Too bad for Pyroth... the earth answers to me."

Rowan lifted the Hoe of the World-Tiller high and slammed its iron blade directly into the core of the obsidian floor.

A deep, reverberating tremor thundered through the entire twentieth floor. The golden-emerald pulse of the Fragment of the Origin Earth Pulse burst through the floor fissures, spreading outwards like living roots. The liquid magma channels were instantly capped and smothered under dense, cool layers of packed soil and granite.

Where Pyroth’s domain attempted to burn and scorch, Rowan’s earth domain asserted absolute authority—raising massive basalt pillars to break the raging winds and cooling the air to a manageable breeze.

The fiery dome around Pyroth wavered and cracked under the sheer pressure of Rowan’s terrestrial counter-domain.

"Mirei’s cleared the air corridor! Rowan’s got the floor locked down!" Caelen yelled, kicking off the newly raised stone platform with explosive speed, his broadsword trailing a blinding, concentrated streak of golden light. "Time to finish what I started!"

***

The clash of steel against dragon scale echoed like a struck anvil through the subterranean hall. Caelen’s broadsword bit deep into Pyroth’s wing joint, but the boss’s dense, white-hot scales barely took a scratch. The strike only succeeded in drawing a blinding shower of sparks and a roar of pure fury.

Pyroth drew itself up to its full, staggering height, overshadowing Caelen like an impending avalanche. Its quad-wings flared, whipping up gale-force updrafts, while its massive jaw unhinged. Deep within its gullet, a concentrated sphere of white-hot wind and plasma hummed violently as it lunged downward, intending to crush and incinerate Caelen in a single, devastating bite.

"Not on my watch, you overgrown lizard!"

A heavy, iron-clad shadow surged past Caelen’s flank. Barney, moving with shocking velocity for a dwarf encased in full B-Grade plate, drove the massive face of his tower shield straight into the side of Pyroth’s lower jaw.

BOOM!

The Shield Bash struck with the kinetic thunder of a falling meteor, the shockwave rippling outward and snapping the drake’s jaw shut with a concussive snap. The impact rattled Pyroth’s head sideways, its glowing eyes flickering and clouding over as a visible stun ring shimmered above its horned crest.

"Move it!" Barney rumbled, grabbing Caelen by the collar of his chestplate with one heavy gauntlet and hauling him backward across the cool stone floor like a sack of grain.

Caelen scrambled back onto his feet, his breath coming in ragged, heated gulps as they both slid behind the safety of Rowan’s newly raised granite barricades. The Glacial Ginseng mist from Seraphina’s elixirs immediately washed over them, soothing the singed edges of Caelen’s armor and restoring his depleted stamina.

"Damn, its scale density is absurd!" Caelen wheezed, wiping a streak of soot off his cheek and checking his sword edge. "A fully charged Level 30 aura slash barely scratched its wing joint!"

"Because it’s still channeling heat into its outer hide," Rowan said coolly, leaning against the stone structure beside them. His straw hat tilted slightly, dark eyes scanning the stunned, thrashing drake as it began to shake off Barney’s concussive blow. "Its wind barrier acts like a secondary cushion, dispersing physical kinetic force before your blade even touches the scales."

"So how do we break through that skin?" Barney asked, adjusting his grip on his heavy warhammer and shield, his breathing steady beneath his helmet.

"We stop trying to slice through the wind," Mirei called down from her high vantage point, nocking two wind-piercing shafts into her Breeze-Striker Longbow. "We starve it. If I hit the breathing vents along its neck right as Barney draws its focus, its thermal core will overheat from the inside."

Rowan grinned, tapping the haft of his Hoe of the World-Tiller against the granite shield. "You heard her. Barney draws the eyes, Mirei seals the vents, Caelen drives the blade home. Let’s make this turn count."