Novel Full Chapter 509 - Taming Diamond Rank - 5
Chapter 509: Chapter 509 – Taming Diamond Rank – 5
Dragarion’s first decision was simple: completely avoid everything, even the trap they had prepared with the most powerful to stop him.
Very much in Dragarion’s style…
“If they want a war of attrition it’s fine,” he murmured, accelerating toward the enormous purple crystal already visible on the ground, ” but they’ll have to catch me first.”
His plan was equally direct: use his superior speed to break through enemy lines before they could react, reach the crystal, and end everything before the sextuples could even touch him.
It was, again, a very characteristic strategy: direct confrontation backed by overwhelming power.
But Coleoran had anticipated exactly that line of thinking.
The enemy King’s Nian manifested first, and immediately Dragarion knew something had changed in it.
This wasn’t the monstrous armored lion he had faced before. This was something that belonged to a new rank… a corrupt one.
The fusion had corrupted the base beast to make it more terrible. The leonine body was still there, yes, but now it was intertwined with the segmented exoskeleton of a gigantic scorpion whose chelicerae in a disproportionately large mouth dripped purple venom.
Worse still, the extremely long translucent tentacles of a superior gold-rank man o’ war emerged from its mane, each one pulsing with abyssal energy that made the air itself feel heavy and viscous.
“Everyone, activate paralysis!” Coleoran absorbed his fully fused beast and roared, his voice distorted by the fusion.
The effect of the lion’s roar was immediate in his voice and slightly unexpected.
It wasn’t the old magical paralysis that Dragarion could resist with brute force. This was different, more insidious. Taking advantage of his now lower speed, the absorption tentacles filtered through his defenses like water through a net, not attacking his body but his draconic power itself.
Dragarion felt his speed drastically reduced, as if he were flying through thick honey.
His muscles responded, but the dragons’ power seemed to be… muffled. The connection between will and manifestation had become sluggish, imprecise.
Clever, he thought with genuine admiration even while struggling more and more against the effect. They’re not trying to paralyze my body completely. They’re trying to reduce my speed and my access to power first.
The strategy revealed deep understanding of how dragon essence functioned. Rather than opposing it directly, they were disrupting the flow, creating interference in the channels that connected his will to the energy.
And that was just the beginning…
Coleoran’s Royal Winged Basilisk activated next, and this fusion was equally efficient.
The massive serpentine body was now inhabited by two contradictory spirits: one of pure light that blazed like a miniature sun, and another of absolute darkness that seemed to absorb surrounding light. Chaos.
The combination created a nauseating strobe effect. Blinding light alternating with impenetrable darkness at rapid and unpredictable intervals.
Each flash was accompanied by a wave of magical disorientation that attacked the nervous system directly.
The sensory assault was more than just visual, it targeted the fundamental ways his enhanced perception interpreted reality.
Not just the petrifying eyes, the entire Basilisk now seemed specialized in freezing movement… the creature hissed, its voice resonating with supernatural harmonics.
Dragarion felt his sense of direction beginning to fail. Up and down became relative concepts. His spatial navigation disintegrated momentarily under the sensory assault.
Still, it wasn’t enough to stop him, he was ready to squeeze more from the diamond power…
But then Ravenspire acted.
His three-legged crow had always been an impressive beast, but the fusion with the gold-rank darkness spirit and an abyssal man o’ war had transformed it into something that defied the description of beast and brought it closer to a cosmic horror.
The wings and their feathers now ended in small claws that seemed capable of expanding beyond reality itself in a dark illusion, while long tentacles extended from that same darkness, each ready to drain energy from everything it touched.
“Obscure Field!” Ravenspire declared, extending his arms.
The space around Dragarion immediately became an expanded spatial trap in the crows’ wings.
Invisible tentacles extended in all directions, creating a net that not only slowed movement but also actively suctioned his power. It was like flying through a swamp that fed on magic.
The technique was elegant and horrifying. Rather than creating physical barriers, it had turned the space itself into a trap.
For the first time since receiving the dragons’ power, Dragarion felt a genuine comparison point. He had found contrast.
Now he could better understand a bit of the confines of the power he had obtained and also the insane development of corrupt forces in Yino.
Coleoran’s paralysis limited his speed. The Basilisk’s confusion limited his ability to navigate effectively. And Ravenspire’s absorption field confined him and actively drained part of the energy he managed to manifest.
’This is kinda bad,’ he realized with growing urgency. ’I didn’t expect they had developed such specific synergies with such annoying characteristics of their beasts… The most exasperating characteristics, very much like Yino.’
Their other 30+ opponents drew near to close the entrapment, each contributing more and more to a system that had clearly been designed with him in mind.
“Problems, Dragarion?” Coleoran mocked, slowly approaching while his Nian-Scorpion-Jellyfish and his Royal Winged Chaos Basilisk intensified the paralysis. “That new power feels impressive, but it seems you don’t know how to use it efficiently.”
It was true, and that realization annoyed him more than the trap itself.
He had been using the dragons’ power like an amplified version of his normal abilities, but clearly that wasn’t enough against opponents of this caliber.
’How efficiently am I using this energy?’ he wondered, feeling how the power flowed through him in a way he hadn’t completely optimized.
His rear guard was still kilometers behind because he had gotten ahead with a flight speed that was too fast. Victor and Zhao might eventually arrive, but by then…
“You know,” Coleoran continued, “I expected more resistance from someone who dared to invade my territory so directly and even alone.”
The taunt carried genuine disappointment alongside the mockery.
Ravenspire laughed, a sound that his fusion with abyssal creatures had made particularly unpleasant.
“Maybe we overestimated his brain,” he observed. “All that power, without the experience to use it correctly.”
The assessment stung because it contained some truth. Raw power without understanding was often less effective than modest abilities applied with precision.
The Basilisk hissed its agreement, intensifying the strobe pattern until Dragarion had to squint to avoid nausea.
It was then that something clicked in Dragarion’s mind.
He had been trying to ration the dragons’ power, to use it conservatively. But was that necessary?
’Why am I trying to be careful?’ The question hit him like a bolt of clarity.
That wasn’t the Dragarion way of doing things. It had never been his style.
The realization was liberating. His entire approach had been based on the assumption that he needed to preserve the power, when perhaps the opposite was true.
Ren hadn’t told him not to use the power, but not to “carry” it too long. But if he was already carrying it anyway…
’This is exactly the opposite situation from what Ren warned me about regarding a time limit.’
A smile began to form on his face.
Now he realized why he had been feeling ’very good’ under this attack, the absorption from dozens of enemies on his power had helped him lighten the enormous load on his shoulders somewhat.
“You’re right, Coleoran,” he said aloud, his voice charged with genuine amusement that made the attackers blink with surprise. “I don’t know how to use this power efficiently.”
Coleoran frowned, detecting something in his enemy’s tone that he didn’t like.
“So,” Dragarion continued, the dragons’ power beginning to accumulate around him like a nascent storm, “I’m going to use it in the most inefficient way possible.”
“What are you…?” Ravenspire demanded, but his voice already carried a tint of growing alarm.
The energy building around Dragarion was qualitatively different from before. Instead of controlled flows, it was becoming a chaotic maelstrom that made the air itself luminous.
“I’m going to use everything at once.”