Chapter 1276 - Taming the Old World - Shadow Dragons - Last Front

Chapter 1276: Chapter 1276 - Taming the Old World - Shadow Dragons - Last Front

Selthia had pulled back, terrified of losing more assets... The capital was effectively secured.

All Liora had to do was maintain a low-burning curtain of spiritual flames along the wall for a little while longer. Just enough of a deterrent to nip any of Selthia’s second thoughts in the bud.

It would have still been a hard fight... Liu still had plenty of fight left in him.

He alone couldn’t hold a city of this magnitude, though. So the current standoff, Liora’s fire acting as a scarecrow while Liu kept watch, was the perfect outcome. Not a single mutant would have wanted to go back to a wall burning with flames their rotting flesh couldn’t recycle.

The city had held.

♢♢♢♢

Minutes later, Liu guided his beast down from the sky, dropping Liora off right next to Arturo.

The tactician thanked them. He spoke with the quiet sincerity of a man who just watched his riskiest gamble pay out perfectly.

"You arrived almost exactly on time... You saved the city."

"We only handled the final stretch," Liu replied, his tone keeping its usual steady cadence. "Everyone else bled for hours. Without them holding the line, we would have arrived too late. The credit belongs to the people who weathered the storm until we could step in."

Arturo nodded, appreciating the young man’s modesty. But they didn’t have time to celebrate.

He turned his gaze toward the south.

"We still have an active front," he said. "Liu, go... The south is still fighting, and a fresh pair of hands down there could tip the scales."

Liu nodded, ready to climb back into his beast.

"I am going too," Liora said, stepping forward.

"No."

Arturo stopped her. He didn’t raise his voice, but his tone carried the quiet authority of someone who had already run the numbers.

"In his message, Ren specifically asked me to make sure that you do not overextend yourself. Channeling the dragon’s energy took a heavy toll on you, Liora. I knew that before you even touched down."

He looked her up and down, easily seeing past the tough exterior she was trying to project. "And I can see it myself. You are at your limit. One more spell and you will pass out, and an unconscious tamer does not help anyone. You would just be a liability to Liu."

Liora pressed her lips into a thin line. She wanted to argue, but Arturo’s logic was a fortress. She couldn’t defend against the truth.

"The southern front is being held by your former teachers," Arturo continued, his voice softening a fraction. "The academy directors who trained you... They are strong. And they are also as determined as you. Trust them, just as they trusted you when they taught you how to wield that fire. You don’t have to carry every battle on your own shoulders."

Liora stood in silence for a moment. She stared south, looking toward the horizon where her flames could have made a difference, toward the people who had shaped her into the warrior she was today.

Then, slowly, she gave a nod.

"Watch their backs, Liu," she said. "And tell them... tell them the city held."

Liu offered a faint smile. He mounted his beast and launched back into the sky.

Alone.

Liora stayed behind to nurse the dying embers on the wall and catch her breath. Meanwhile, the final ticking clock of the war, the southern front, with its besieged shadow dragon and a bleeding Selthia’s army, raced toward its own conclusion.

Two fronts secured. One left to decide.

And far to the north, Ren was already stepping into the dark mouth of the crystal mountain.

♢♢♢♢

In the southern front, the battle had dragged into a grueling stalemate.

The towering Shadow Dragon was visibly wearing down. Both opposing forces had subjected it to a relentless, unyielding assault. Human magic and corrupted claws hammered the guardian without pause, and the massive creature bore the deep, bleeding scars of hours and hours of constant punishment.

But it refused to fall.

Its monstrous, inherent regenerative capabilities kept it tethered to life. The dragon knit its torn flesh back together almost as fast as the attacks ripped it open. It stubbornly anchored itself to the earth and shadows, ignoring the catastrophic damage accumulating across its scales.

Sirius had been its primary tormentor... Riding his radiant Tiger, his strong attacks of concentrated light bit deeper into the abyssal armor than anything else on the field. Yet, even that blinding, focused damage was not enough to deliver the final blow.

The situation remained a complex, bloody knot.

♢♢♢♢

The academy directors were rapidly approaching their limits as well.

They had successfully chipped away at Selthia’s frontline, but they lacked the sweeping, apocalyptic efficiency Liora had displayed back in the north or the capital. Their spiritual fire was wielded with the precision of seasoned veterans, yet it was fundamentally bottlenecked by its Iron rank weak part of the fusion. It severed the cannibalistic cycle only partially... Whenever they torched a fallen corpse, the surrounding mutants still managed to siphon a good fraction of the residual energy from the fire.

The monsters did not lose their meal entirely, unlike the complete incineration Liora’s higher-tier flames provided. That critical difference in rank manifested in every single body that failed to burn to a crisp.

Furthermore, the two dozen reinforcements Selthia had redirected from the city earlier had made the attackers feel as if all their hard-earned progress was slipping through their fingers.

The south had devolved into a very specific kind of meat grinder. The dragon was successfully slaughtering the mutants, but those same mutants were recycling a significant big portion of their own dead before being reduced to cinders.

It was genuine attrition, but the pace was agonizingly slow... Far too slow for the humans.

High above the carnage, the relieved teachers remained exhausted.

Lin, Yang, and Zhao had not recovered even ten percent of their drained ether. Still, they sat in deep meditation atop the soft feathers of Mayo’s hovering bird, occupying the most secure vantage point on the battlefield. They squeezed every possible ounce of recovery out of the passing minutes, desperate to mend their battered cores.

They fully understood that their raw strength would be required before the curtain closed on this war, and they prepared for that inevitable call with the strict discipline of veterans who refused to be benched when the final push came.

The battlefield held its breath for a long time.

It was an anxious tug-of-war.

A tacit truce existed between the human vanguard and the corrupted horde. Both sides struck the dragon while deliberately avoiding major skirmishes with one another.

Each faction patiently waited for the guardian to collapse, saving their true strength to dispute the final prize. It was an uncomfortable, razor-thin equilibrium held together solely by a mutual interest in bringing down a common enemy.

Until Liu arrived...