Chapter 521 287: The Return of the Dragon Knight (Part 1)

The Witch stopped chanting, drew her Magic Staff, and with a spell, transformed the cliff into a red Flower Sea.

They were all red flowers, with petals that looked like burning flames. Each was over ten feet tall with leaves as sharp as knives. Some Cultists, caught off guard, crashed into them and were instantly split in half.

Baron scanned his surroundings but couldn't see the Witch. She and everything else on the cliff seemed to have been swallowed by the red Flower Sea, as if she had become part of it herself.

This was an Illusion Realm. Baron could feel the Spiritual Power flowing through the Flower Sea. The Witch was trying to stall for time.

He skewered several approaching Cultists, then wrenched his Spear Sword free and charged into the Flower Sea.

The Dragon Flame licked at the flowers. They burned, but the fire lacked its usual intensity. The flora was clearly resistant to high temperatures, making it impossible for Baron to set the field ablaze as he had planned.

It was also incredibly easy to lose one's way in the Flower Sea. The giant leaves blotted out the sky, and walking among them felt like navigating a perilous corridor of foliage where death lurked around every turn.

Therefore, if Baron wanted to find the Dragon Witch, his only option was to fight his way through.

But that was nigh on impossible. The Dragon Witch was a Silver Tier Wizard, and one could never predict if a Silver Tier Wizard's Spiritual Power was as vast as the stars in the sky.

This was true even for Baron, a Double Bronze Law Enforcer.

His only chance at victory was to capitalize on the Witch's eagerness to release the Mad Dragon and find an opportunity for a close-quarters fight.

But that brought him back to the same damn problem—the Flower Sea was massive. How was he supposed to get through it in such a short time?

Baron tilted his head back, letting the red raindrops that slid from the leaves fall upon his face.

He suddenly felt that Destiny was a real bastard.

He figured that if anyone could read his current expression, they would see that exact sentiment written there.

He was so tired. So weary. It wasn't the physical exhaustion of depleted Spiritual Power or muscle fatigue, but a spiritual weariness—an emptiness and loneliness that felt as if his very core had been hollowed out.

'The Witch really is in league with the Dragon Eater Association... She wants to release the Mad Dragon... Our meeting at the auction must have been a setup... The Witch in the Dragon Tide wasn't a fake—it was really her...'

Jack was dead.

Killed by the Dragon Witch—the woman who had made a Blood Covenant with him.

That infamous Taboo Item Thief of the Inner Side, the half-assed friend you could never trust with your back but had no one else to turn to, was dead. Just like that.

'And it was all my fault.'

His mind flashed back to their first meeting at the villa. 'She probably hasn't spoken a single word of truth to me since that day, has she?' he thought.

Baron shook off his stray thoughts and suddenly muttered, "Miss Carmen, you're trying to mess with my mind, aren't you?"

He severed the thick stalk of a flower in front of him with his Spear Sword. "I may be sentimental at times, but I never get lost in thought at a critical moment like this."

"After experiencing so many battles, betrayals, and schemes... it may not be very gentlemanly to say this—it might even sound crude—but I'm no longer the boy who'd be left dumbstruck at the sight of your naked body.

If there's any truth left in this world, I only believe in one: whoever bites me, I bite back!"

He pulled a horn-like object from his coat and blew it!

A sudden blizzard swept through the red Flower Sea, and all the serpentine, wildly dancing flowers froze solid in the storm, unable to move.

The A Level Taboo Object, the Horn of Fimbulwinter. Its function: to summon a localized, hyperborean winter that lasts for one hour.

The price was that with every use, one's emotions would grow colder and more indifferent, until all feeling was lost.

Then Baron put on a helmet-like object, and in an instant, he transformed into a Half-Dragon creature with magnificent horns and a pair of wings on his back.

It was the very item Isabella called the Dragon Helmet: Petra's Helmet of Cowardice.

He gripped the hilt of the Spear Sword with his Sharp Claws. Scales growing on his hands spread over the Spear Sword, causing its blade to suddenly lengthen and widen by several inches. Even the barrel and body of the weapon changed, everything adapting to fit his now-clawed hands.

It was not difficult to surmise that this transformation was the work of the Dragon Helmet.

Flames as bright as the sea burst forth from the Spear Sword again. Without a moment's pause, the monstrous Baron charged into the blizzard, wildly swinging his blade through the Flower Sea. With his fearsome posture and aura, he looked like a dying Demon trying to carve a path to the dawn!

One red flower fell after another. In an instant, the crimson flames burned through more than half of the blizzard-frozen Flower Sea. Looking down from the cliff, it was like a winter plain being engulfed by lava from a volcanic eruption.

Under the influence of the Horn of Fimbulwinter, the flowers in the sea were cut down by his blade before they had a chance to regrow, only to be incinerated by the flames.

When the last of the flowers had been burned to ash by the Dragon Flame, the ferocious Dragon Knight pressed the muzzle of his gun against Carmen's smooth forehead. "Any last words, Miss Witch?"

"If you were going to kill me, you would have fired by now," Carmen said. "You're afraid that because of the Blood Covenant, if you kill me, you'll die as well."

"In a way, this just proves we're the same kind of person."

Carmen ignored the gun at her forehead, hopping down from the Talisman Stone to stand at the cliff's edge. The blizzard, laced with red rain, blew her red dress into a long, straight line. Had someone been looking up from below, they might have mistaken it for a ribbon of red silk fluttering in the wind.