Novel Full Chapter 358: Five-Horned Lava Lizard (4)
Chapter 358: Five-Horned Lava Lizard (4)
The lizard gave him no rest.
The ground trembled violently, and a shockwave spread in all directions.
A moment later, Kyrian realized that the lizard had disappeared.
The creature had already plunged underground again, opening a smoking crater where its paws had once stood.
Kyrian’s ice eyes spun rapidly, sweeping across the terrain around him, searching for any sign of the beast.
Nothing.
Then...
Kyrian felt a terrible sense of danger coming from behind him.
He could not see beneath the earth, but he felt the vibration suddenly emerge.
Kyrian turned instantly.
But the colossal tail of the lizard was already before him.
Too fast.
The tail of the Five-Horned Lava Lizard was not like the tail of an ordinary beast. It was covered in volcanic bone spikes, each one glowing with heat. And it moved with a speed that violently contrasted with the creature’s size, a speed Kyrian could not evade.
Kyrian turned serious instantly.
There was no time to flee. No time to create complex barriers or elaborate strategies. There was only one possible move.
He raised both hands.
A gigantic and perfect armor of ice condensed over his body in an instant, thick as tree trunks and dense as crystal formed over countless years. Every inch of his skin was covered by overlapping layers of Qi-reinforced ice.
The tail struck Kyrian directly.
The impact was terrifying.
The ice exploded with dozens of cracks instantly, the outer layers pulverized by the force of the blow. Kyrian was launched like a meteor across the volcanic field, his body cutting through the air in a descending trajectory.
Stone mountains shattered when he collided against them.
The ground exploded repeatedly beneath his body, each impact creating a new crater, each rebound destroying more of the surrounding terrain.
The ice armor continued to be destroyed layer after layer as it absorbed the monstrous force of the tail strike. Outer layer, middle layer, inner layer, all of them fragmented one after another, sacrificing themselves to protect Kyrian’s body.
Finally, after carving a trail of destruction hundreds of meters long, Kyrian crashed into a massive rock formation in the distance.
The entire mountain cracked.
Fractures spread across the rock’s surface like gigantic spiderwebs. Stones collapsed in every direction.
Silence emerged momentarily.
White vapor slowly rose from the frozen rubble, where pieces of Kyrian’s ice armor still glowed faintly.
For a long moment, nothing moved.
Then the ice exploded.
Kyrian stepped out slowly from amidst the destroyed rocks.
His ice-blue robe was torn in several places, the left sleeve hanging by a thread. Small blood-red cracks had appeared across his arms from the impact, not serious injuries, but enough to show that the blow had penetrated beyond the armor.
His breathing was slightly heavier now.
But nothing serious.
He looked down at his own chest, where the gigantic ice armor he had created was practically destroyed. Only a few isolated plates remained, clinging to his robe like remnants of what had once existed.
’If I had taken that directly with only my body...’
Kyrian smiled coldly from the corner of his lips.
’I would be dead now.’
...
In the distance, the lizard stared at him.
For the second time, the creature seemed genuinely surprised.
Its eyes were fixed upon Kyrian with an expression that mixed curiosity and confusion.
Most Core Formation cultivators would have died instantly from that strike. Practically anyone who faced such an attack from that beast directly would end up in pieces of flesh scattered across the battlefield.
Even those at the peak of the Core Formation realm, with many years of cultivation and refined techniques, would struggle to survive a direct hit from the lizard’s tail. Perhaps, if they possessed an extraordinary protective treasure or legendary armor, they might survive.
But the small human was still alive.
Not only alive, he seemed fine. Injured, yes. But far from incapacitated.
That was something no being who exuded a force as weak as Kyrian’s should have been able to withstand. The lizard could clearly sense that Kyrian was only at the first stage of Core Formation. He was practically a child compared to it, which stood at the peak of the realm.
And yet...
The monster’s eyes slowly narrowed.
What had once been disdain, the certainty that the prey would be eliminated in one or two blows, was transforming into caution.
The ground around the lizard’s paws began to melt.
The temperature rose even further.
Lava flowed between the cracks in the earth while the five horns atop the beast’s head glowed brighter and brighter, pulsing with a fiery Qi so dense that it distorted the surrounding air.
Kyrian observed carefully.
’It’s going to use something stronger.’
His snowflake-shaped eyes spun rapidly, processing every detail. The flow of Qi within the horns. The contraction of the jaw muscles. The way the heat concentrated within the beast’s throat.
It was not merely a magma attack.
His Qi began circulating even faster through the two cores.
An enormous quantity of ice spread across the ground around him, creating a frozen region amidst the volcanic hell. The ice was not merely a superficial layer, it extended downward into the depths of the earth, anchoring itself into the rock to resist the heat rising from every direction.
Then the lizard opened its mouth.
But this time, it was not ordinary magma.
The space within its throat distorted. Red-orange flames began to slowly emerge, compressed to an absurd degree, so dense they appeared liquid.
Kyrian’s pupils contracted.
"Draconic Breath."
He knew instinctively.
He had never witnessed it before, but he simply... knew what it was.
It was a recorded ability of the dragon bloodline. Something that should not exist within a lizard, and yet there it was, shining within the beast’s throat like the promise of annihilation.
Kyrian felt mortal danger.
It was a clear perception that if that attack struck him directly, his ice armor would not be enough. His resistance would not be enough. He would be vaporized just like the surrounding rocks.