Chapter 316 - Power vs. Control

Chapter 316

Power vs. Control

Alexander knew, of course, that he hadn’t seen the depths of Maximilian’s abilities. It was obvious to him that the Dragon Lord had more dragons up his sleeves than the four he’d met or learned about through research.

Skar'Vathos, the captured saurian. Maximilian had evolved it into a dragon using his new superpower, won through the Multiversal Solo Combat Challenge, right after somehow claiming the creature’s soul from the System instead of letting it die.

Then there was the dark emerald-scaled dragon that Maximilian had been riding the day Grimnir had met the Throne of Scales for the first time, upon a rooftop in Argentum. It was apparently the workhorse of his collection. Large enough for his entire team to ride, strong enough to deal with most threats, and with scales a quarter of an inch thick.

After scouring all available public recordings of the Throne of Scales in combat, Alexander knew there was one other that Maximilian had revealed to the public, prior to claiming Skar'Vathos. Like the saurian, it was another red dragon, though its scales were more of a metallic-ruby color.

It was also smaller, more lithe in form, and incredibly fast. Perhaps even the fastest of all the dragons.

The last dragon Alexander had witnessed was the lightning-breathing sapphire. Maximilian had been forced to reveal one of his own techniques, Dragon Lord’s Mandate, during their battle against the peak-Tier 2 cultivator who’d opened a gateway onto the Nexus.

None of them had walked away unscathed. Skar'Vathos had been seriously injured in that fight, and the technique Maximilian used had allowed him to dismiss one conjured dragon, before instantly replacing it with another.

From that moment, Alexander had understood that the Dragon Lord had a weakness.

If one could call having a dragon a weakness.

Maximilian could only sustain a single, conjured dragon at a time. Everything Alexander had seen since then had reinforced that perception.

He was wrong.

The sky filled with dragons. The new ones materialized in the same instant, conjured into reality all around the Dragon Lord, with Maximilian positioned at the center.

Skar'Vathos, already stabilizing, wings beating hard, was coming around for another attack behind Caroline. The dragon’s mouth was open wide, fire building between its jaws.

Then there was the emerald. The sapphire. The metallic-ruby.

And seven others Alexander had never seen.

A large black dragon, its outline already blurring as dark smoke poured from beneath its scales. A white dragon with frost crystallizing the air around it as its wings beat. A massive brown-green beast, almost as large as Skar’Vathos, though it appeared covered in stone rather than scales. Then there was a serpentine blue dragon that undulated through the air, flying without wings while condensing water around it. A green dragon that trailed vines from its jaw and wings. A streaked silver-and-copper dragon, scales reflecting the sunlight in distorted patterns.

The last one was coiled around Maximilian’s neck, small enough to be mistaken for a scarf. It was a furry yellow thing with slitted eyes, and it hissed from where it perched on his shoulder.

Eleven dragons and one Dragon Lord seized the sky.

And for a single, frozen moment, nobody moved.

Even Alexander held his breath.

Then half of the dragons joined Skar'Vathos’s attack on Caroline, jaws opening. Fire erupted from two directions, joined by lightning. Then a jet of green vapor, rapidly spreading into a cloud. Ice. Smoke. Conjured vines. A torrent of water that snaked through the air.

All of it converged on the woman at the center.

Julia gasped. Her grip tightened around Alexander’s hand.

Caroline moved, head already turned toward a gap between the attacks. Space between ice and lightning.

The yellow dragon’s eyes flared and its body pulsed with light. The air shifted around Caroline, as light bent strangely, as though the atmosphere itself had thickened.

Caroline’s blur became a crawl, her momentum bleeding away in a heartbeat.

Even from this distance, Alexander could see the shock on her face as the breath attacks swallowed her.

“He’s told me about the technique,” Julia said. “And the other dragons. But I’ve never seen him use it. Or them.”

Alexander glanced at her. “Why n—”

A shockwave drowned out his words as Caroline punched through the sustained assault at supersonic speed. Fire, lightning, green smoke, ice, water droplets, and shredded vines erupted in her wake.

As she shot clear of the elemental barrage, most of the dragons immediately began pursuit, some shouldering others out of the way as they fought for position.

The green one conspicuously hung back, remaining well outside the chaotic melee, vines trailing behind it as it circled. Its jaws opened, launching another mass of thick, twisting vegetation toward Caroline, but it made no attempt to follow the attack in.

There was a crack of thunder as the brown-green dragon finally reached Caroline, only to take an immediate punch to its rocky face. The thing was so slow compared to everything else that it barely looked capable of flight, its wings beating ponderously, somehow supporting a body that had to weigh dozens of tons.

Then again, none of the dragons had any business flying. They defied the laws of physics as surely as everything else superpowers did.

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He’d made peace with that.

The rocky dragon jerked back from the impact, then sent a claw-tipped forelimb whistling through the air.

Caroline met the strike with both hands.

The impact shook the sky. Air blasted outward hard enough to flatten the surface of the water beneath them.

Caroline leaned around where she still held the dragon’s foot, and looked it in one of its big eyes with a raised eyebrow.

The dragon bore down harder, bringing its entire bulk to bear as muscles bunched across shoulders covered in stone-like hide.

Caroline’s arms slowly bent as the creature forced her backward several meters, before regaining control with her Flight.

Then she smiled.

“Oh, she likes that one,” Julia said.

Caroline surged upward.

The dragon lurched back as she threw its entire forelimb aside, then followed with another punch that drove its head around. She raced around it, driving in closer to its belly with punch after punch, each strike echoing with a sound like concrete shattering.

This time the dragon was driven backward, its wings folding awkwardly around its body as it tumbled through the air.

Fire washed across both of them.

Skar'Vathos swept past behind Caroline, its dragonbreath engulfing her and the rocky dragon’s underside in a wide, indiscriminate cone of fire.

A streak of metallic red raced beneath all three of them, moving faster than every other dragon, flames pouring from its wingtips and tail as it accelerated. Its jaws opened, and a narrow jet of fire speared toward Caroline.

Most of it hit, striking her in the side.

The rest cut through Skar'Vathos’s own breath attack and struck the larger dragon in the wing. Sticky ruby flames clung to the vulnerable membranes, and Skar'Vathos jerked sideways with a furious roar, jaws snapping at the smaller dragon as it flashed past.

The ruby dragon was already gone.

Skar'Vathos beat its wings hard, immediately turning to pursue the other red.

It didn’t get far.

Caroline seized the rocky dragon and spun, hurling it after the two reds.

Then a golden figure raced through the chaos and slashed at Caroline’s throat as it passed, leaving thin red trails behind.

Maximilian.

Alexander frowned.

The Dragon Lord flew fast, but Alexander had spent enough time learning to fly himself and watching Annie figure out how to operate wings to recognize someone who hadn’t been doing it for long.

Maximilian banked too wide. His wings beat harder than necessary when he corrected. Every movement possessed incredible raw power, but none of the precision Alexander expected from the man.

He also had eleven dragons in the air and was yet to give a single order. The green one was hanging back as if scared to join the fight. The two reds were snapping and snarling at each other as they circled back to perform another strafing run on Caroline.

Maximilian roared. Then collided with Caroline, still bleeding from the shallow cuts across her neck. He swung a clawed hand against the side of her face, causing her head to snap around.

He followed with the other hand, all speed and brute force.

It was completely unlike the man Alexander had come to know and respect.

Caroline blocked the second strike with a forearm, then drove a punch into Maximilian’s ribs.

He folded around the blow and rocketed backward, wings snapping open to halt his momentum. Then he beat his wings and raced straight back at Caroline.

The attack was almost completely devoid of strategy. Even his own dragons were hesitant to engage, breath attacks at the ready but restricted by the Dragon Lord’s proximity to their target.

Caroline threw another punch.

Maximilian twisted around it, one wing folding tight while the other drove him through the turn. His claws raked across her shoulder, tearing fabric and scoring a few more lines of red in the flesh beneath.

He twisted back around, aiming to strike at her back.

Caroline moved. One moment she was glancing down at the new tears in her costume, the next she’d caught Maximilian by the throat.

She held him at arm’s length for half a second, just long enough for Maximilian to wrap both clawed hands around her arm and struggle, then smashed her forehead into his face.

Golden scales cracked. Maximilian reeled, roaring in pain.

Caroline drew back her fist.

The little yellow dragon around Maximilian’s neck flared with golden light, and the air around Caroline distorted again. Her fist was still moving, but unreasonably slowly compared to the Tier 3’s actual speed.

Everything around her continued moving as normal.

Whatever it was, it lasted less than a heartbeat.

Maximilian vanished from Caroline’s hand, replaced by the much larger silver-and-copper dragon.

Caroline’s fingers couldn’t even properly grip the scaled throat, but she was already committed. Her fist struck the dragon in the neck.

The metallic dragon didn’t budge.

Caroline exploded backward with incredible violence.

Alexander’s eyebrows shot up. That dragon was one of a few that hadn’t joined in the combined dragon breath attack earlier, but whatever it had just done had taken even Caroline by complete surprise.

The other dragons were already closing in. A powerful bolt of lightning shot across the sky.

Caroline twisted in the air and thrust out one hand, catching the lightning bolt. Electricity crawled across her fingers and down her forearm, but to no apparent effect.

A wall of water hit her from below.

The serpentine dragon had drawn a twisting column directly from the sea below, hundreds of tons of seawater rising high into the sky as the dragon snaked around it.

Overhead, white wings flashed, and another dragon’s breath joined the attack. Frost spread across the water, and the entire mass froze around Caroline.

Alexander stared.

Beside him, Julia answered the question which had been cut off just moments earlier.

“Each dragon summoned affects his mental state,” she said quietly. “Three is the most he can safely handle. And he doesn’t want the world to know the true extent of his dragons’ powers.”

“Three?” Alexander glanced at her. He considered himself pretty good with numbers, and there were at least a few more than three dragons racing across the sky. “Why is he revealing them now, then?”

A crack appeared across the ice, spreading rapidly.

Julia studied Alexander’s face for a moment. “I thought you’d know.”

“Why would I know? I thought he just conjured dragons and metal leashes.”

She shrugged. “Max said you would understand. Something about the risk of losing sight of yourself in the face of power. And rarely having a chance to safely go all out.”

Alexander frowned. He turned back just in time to witness the massive iceblock, still suspended in the air, explode, sending ice raining in every direction.

Caroline shot across the sky, straight toward the white dragon.

The creature tried to turn.

Too slow.

Caroline drove her fist through its scaled chest. Her arm erupted between its wings in a spray of blood and shattered bone.

The dragon convulsed around her, then the blood began to glow. Its body broke apart outward from the wound, flesh and blood and scale dissolving into fragments of white-blue energy that scattered across the sky.

Across from her, Maximilian landed awkwardly on Skar'Vathos’s back, one hand going to his head, breathing hard. For a moment, he simply knelt there. Then his shoulders straightened, and he rose to his feet.

Caroline pulled her arm back and turned, clapping her hands together as though dusting off conjured blood that no longer remained.