Chapter 78: Black Dragon went berserk!

Tibbar instantly popped out the front door like a energetic spring, flashing a bright, professional smile that showed off his white front teeth.

"Welcome, my good sir!" Tibbar announced loudly, bowing with dramatic flair. "You are looking at the revolutionary Earthen Vault! Designed by Master Silvester himself! Made of compressed granite, reinforced with internal bronze gears, and completely immune to fire, hammer blows, and lock picks! Step inside, step inside, and let us demonstrate the future of home security!"

The old feline noble looked intrigued, but before he could take a single step toward our doorway, the air suddenly changed.

The bright morning temperature dropped instantly, followed by an unnatural, suffocating heat that made the hair on my arms stand up.

The smell of sweet roasted pastries from the tea house across the street was completely replaced by the heavy, choking stench of sulfur and burning coal.

Then, the ground began to shake.

It was not a soft tremor. The heavy granite floorboards beneath my boots vibrated violently, making the glass jars on my work shelves rattle against one another.

"What in the world?" Tibbar muttered, his long grey ears flopping backward as he looked up at the sky.

A loud, terrifying sound echoed across the entire city of Phoya. It was a deep, guttural roar that sounded like a mountain splitting in half, mixed with the screeching tear of hot metal.

ROAR!

The loud noise was so powerful that it shattered the glass windows of several upper story offices down the street.

People in the crowded market square screamed in terror, dropping their wooden crates and running frantically in every direction.

"Look up! In the sky!" someone yelled from the street.

I stepped out of the workshop, standing on the edge of the wooden curb, and raised my head toward the clouds.

Descending through the thick grey smoke plumes of the industrial foundry district was a giant, terrifying creature.

It was a black dragon.

The beast was massive, easily thirty yards long from its horn-covered head to its heavy spiked tail. Its skin was covered in thick scales that looked like jagged pieces of black glass, and two curved horns stuck out from its head like giant obsidian spears.

As it beat its massive leathery wings, sending powerful gusts of hot wind through the streets below, it opened its wide jaw and let out another earth-shaking roar.

A giant stream of crimson flame shot out from its throat.

The crimson fire was not normal dragon flame. It burned with a deep, dark red color that was so hot it turned the stone rooftops of a nearby warehouse into bright orange liquid in less than three seconds.

"A dragon!" Tibbar screamed, his purple eyes nearly popping right out of his head. "A giant black dragon is attacking the city!"

I pulled down my magnifying loupe from my right eye, instantly activating my Locksmith’s Eye skill.

My vision shifted, overlaying bright golden structural lines over the soaring monster. I looked past its thick black scales, scanning the deep internal mana pathways inside its massive body.

What I saw made my blood run cold.

Twisted around the dragon’s heart core, wrapping tightly around its brain and main mana channels like dark, writhing snakes, were hundreds of pitch-black mana threads.

They were forcing the dragon’s mana core to overload, driving the beast into a blind, unstoppable rage.

"Black thread mana," I whispered under my breath, my jaw tightening. "It is the exact same corruption from the underground laboratory."

Beside me, Tibbar was in total, unadulterated panic. His long ears were trembling so hard they were flapping against his cheeks, and his knees were knocking together with loud thuds.

"Oh sweet mother of carrots!" Tibbar shrieked, grabbing his ears. "We are all going to die! My blue vest is going to get burned to ashes! My beautiful fur will be ruined!"

He tripped over his own boots, scrambled frantically on all fours, grabbed a heavy wooden laundry bucket sitting near the corner, and shoved it over his head.

He then dove headfirst into an empty iron rain barrel behind our front counter, leaving his long grey legs sticking straight up in the air, shaking uncontrollably.

"Do not look at me, dragon!" Tibbar’s muffled voice echoed from inside the dark barrel. "I am just a barrel! I taste terrible!"

I looked at his shaking legs sticking out of the barrel, shaking my head with a brief, dry chuckle despite the insane chaos unfolding around us. "Very brave, Master Assistant."

The city broke into complete mayhem.

Puffing black smoke into the air, the giant military balloon planes floating high above the city turned their heavy brass cannons toward the black dragon.

BANG!

BANG!

BANG!

Heavy iron explosive shells shot through the sky, bursting into bright blue sparks all over the dragon’s back. At the same time, dozens of elite crocodile guards marched out onto the roofs, shouting commands in deep guttural voices.

"Deploy the high magic barrier!" an officer roared, waving a glowing silver rod.

A team of twenty beastmen mages dressed in long red robes surrounded the market square.

They slammed their golden staves into the stone ground, casting a complex, ancient defensive spell that created a giant dome of translucent blue magic over the central district.

It was an impressive display of magic that I had never seen in Novaria. The blue shield hummed with immense energy, thick enough to stop a falling boulder.

The black dragon did not care.

It swooped down from the sky, slamming its massive obsidian chest directly into the center of the glowing blue dome.

CRACK!

The dense raw mana coating the dragon’s black scales absorbed the magical impact instantly.

The high level barrier shattered like thin glass, sending sharp fragments of blue energy raining down onto the streets like falling hail.

The twenty beastmen mages gasped, coughing up blood as the magical feedback blew them off the rooftops.

"It did not even scratch the beast!" a guard officer screamed in horror. "The dragon’s skin is filled with raw mana! Our spells cannot penetrate its hide!"

People scattered everywhere. Buildings were crumbling, hot stone fragments were falling like rain, and citizens were getting trapped beneath heavy fallen beams in the narrow alleys.

I kept my back pressed against the shadow of our shop entrance, watching everything with cool, calculated precision.

I saw two tiny rat children huddled in a dark alley, crying as a heavy stone archway above them began to crack and collapse.

I moved fast. I slipped through the dark shadows of the street like a ghost, arriving beside the alley in three quick steps. I did not draw attention to myself.

I simply reached out my hand toward the heavy iron security gate that was jammed shut beside them, using a tiny pulse of my magic.

Open.

The rusted lock on the gate snapped open instantly.

"Inside! Run!" I shouted softly, shoving the iron gate open and pushing the two children inside the safe stone doorway just as the heavy archway crashed down into the alley, filling the space with thick grey dust.

I kept moving through the chaotic streets, using my ’OPEN’ magic to unlatch jammed doors, slide open heavy window bars, and free trapped citizens without letting anyone see who was doing it.

To the panicking crowd, it just looked like doors were magically popping open on their own to save them.

As I slipped through the thick smoke near the central plaza, I looked up at the dragon’s massive head once again.

Standing high on the beast’s neck, right between its two curved obsidian horns, was a tall, slender figure.

The man was wearing a sharp, tailored three-piece black suit. A smooth black cloth mask covered his lower face, leaving only his dark, cold eyes visible against the blazing crimson flames surrounding him.

He was standing on the back of a roaring black dragon as if he were simply taking a stroll through a quiet park.

My breath hitched in my throat.

It was the suit guy. The exact same man who had vanished through the spatial tear in the subterranean laboratory two years ago.

As if feeling my intense gaze, the man in the black suit slowly turned his head. His cold, dark eyes moved across the burning street, scanning through the thick clouds of black smoke until they locked directly onto me.

He recognized me instantly.

A faint, sinister curve formed around his eyes beneath the black cloth.

He did not attack. He did not cast a spell. He simply raised two slender fingers to his forehead, offering me a polite, mocking salute.

Then, with a subtle wave of his gloved hand, a folded spatial tear opened right behind his back.

He stepped backward into the dark void, and vanished from the scene without leaving a single trace.

The moment his control spell vanished, the black dragon went completely berserk.

Without its master directing its path, the corrupted monster let out a wild, agony-filled screech. It spun around in mid-air, its giant crimson eyes fixing directly on the corner street where my new workshop stood.

It opened its massive jaw, deep crimson fire gathering in its throat, preparing to incinerate our entire block.

"Oh no you don’t," I growled, my eyes narrowing into sharp slits. "I spent seven days polishing that mahogany counter."

Right in the middle of the open street, directly in the path of the dragon’s incoming fire breath, a young girl was crouching in the dirt.