Chapter 204: The Approaching Storm

Ice-blue Dragon Breath poured down from above. Lacking any means to attack airborne targets, the demonized creatures were completely at Willy's mercy, frozen into lifelike ice sculptures.

Frigid air permeated the base of the gate tower, causing the soldiers atop the City Wall to shiver uncontrollably.

After Willy flew a lap around the City Wall, the hundreds of demonized creatures besieging the city were reduced to the three most powerful: two exceptionally robust cyan-horned wild bulls and a colossal, pitch-black serpent of indiscernible species.

These three surviving demonized beasts all possessed Master Tier strength. Black demonic energy boiled across their bodies, shielding them from the Dragon Breath.

Despite the protective demonic energy, the extreme subzero temperature of the Dragon Breath still coated the three beasts in a layer of frost. The cyan-horned wild bulls roared furiously at the White Dragon in the sky.

Beyond being a White Dragon, Willy also possessed the Warrior class. He suddenly dove, swooping down like an eagle snatching prey. He grabbed the colossal serpent—still alive but frozen stiff—and surged back into the sky.

Always targeting the easiest prey, Willy focused on the serpent first. Snakes were predominantly cold-blooded animals, making them extremely susceptible to low temperatures. Thus, this unfortunate, frozen demonized serpent became his primary target.

Gripping the serpent in midair, Willy flexed every muscle in his body. He seized its head and body and gave a vicious pull.

Snap!

Under the Warrior dragon's tremendous strength, the demonized serpent was forcefully torn in two.

Black demonic blood, entrails, and the severed halves of its corpse plummeted from the sky, smashing into the ice below.

Roar!

The massive White Dragon let out a terrifying, earth-shaking roar.

Yet, to the human soldiers on the City Wall, that deafening sound brought an unprecedented sense of relief.

One soldier, flush with adrenaline, waved his fist and shouted at the White Dragon overhead.

"Only two left! Finish them off!"

The general, however, possessed far more foresight than an ordinary soldier. Staring at the distant horde of demonized creatures still rushing toward Feilan City, he threw his head back and yelled.

"Lord Dragon! Someone is controlling these demonized creatures from the shadows! If we can find the ones orchestrating this, we can end the battle!"

Hearing the human general's shout, Willy furrowed his brow.

He obviously knew that Demon Cultists were pulling the strings behind these monsters. He just had no idea where they were hiding or what methods they were using to control the horde.

Unlike his older brother who was a Mage, Willy relied entirely on the Dragon Inheritance to cast spells. His magical repertoire was quite limited. Faced with a situation like this, he was at a total loss.

"Huh?!"

From within Willy's shadow, the Nether Panther let out a gasp of surprise. Through his vision, the souls of the demonized animals could be seen flying up toward the River Styx in the sky. (Note: Shadows are actually three-dimensional spaces rather than flat planes; it makes sense if you think about it.)

A normal creature's soul was milky white, but Yuir noticed that it wasn't just their bodies that had been tainted. The demonized creatures' very souls were polluted by the aura of the Abyss, their milky whiteness streaked with black-and-red demonic energy.

Hearing the Nether Panther's soft exclamation, Willy finally remembered that he had a genuine Legendary Rank bodyguard hiding in his shadow.

"Yuir, do you have any good ideas?"

The Nether Panther, who had been pondering his own soul abilities, had his train of thought interrupted by Willy. He began to scan their surroundings.

Suddenly, he noticed a polluted, humanoid soul emerging from beneath the ground deep inside the city.

"They're hiding inside the city! There's something going on in the third house on the left of the cross-shaped street!"

Willy was overjoyed to hear this. Following Yuir's directions, he flew directly over the city, hovering above the house where the tainted soul had emerged. He rapidly chanted an incantation.

Ice Burst Bomb!

A massive ice sphere, three meters in diameter, plummeted from the sky.

Boom!

With a deafening explosion, the target house was blown into a pile of rubble.

Willy landed on the scattered masonry. Driving his dragon claws deep into the stone beneath the ruins, he gave a violent heave, ripping up large chunks of the floor to reveal a hidden basement below.

Inside the basement, several Demon Cultists were conducting a vile sacrificial ritual. An innocent commoner lay in the center of an ominous, black-and-red magic array, their blood flowing steadily down the Altar.

Their ears still ringing from the massive explosion, the Demon Cultists stared in dumbfounded horror at the enormous dragon head looming above them. They screamed in sheer terror.

"Dammit! How did they find us?!"

Naturally, they had no idea that it was the ritually polluted soul that had exposed their location.

Willy didn't waste a single breath on words. Unhinging his jaws, he unleashed his Dragon Breath like a surging tide, flooding the basement and completely submerging his enemies in a torrent of frost.

A moment later, Willy snapped his jaws shut. The Demon Cultists' secret basement had been transformed into a massive ice cave.

With the Demon Cultists dead, the magic ritual drawing the demonized beasts was immediately severed. Outside the City Wall, the monstrous horde began to hesitate.

In their natural state, ordinary demonized beasts would never gather together like this. Since they possessed absolutely no rationality, a starving beast would just as easily prey on its own companions.

Up on the City Wall, the general had been startled when he saw the White Dragon suddenly fly into the city. But after the dragon obliterated that house, the general noticed the distant demonized creatures starting to slaughter one another, and he instantly realized what had happened.

The Demon Cultists controlling the monstrous horde had been hiding right inside the city all along.

Having resolved the crisis in Feilan City, Willy didn't linger. He flew off into the distance, vanishing beyond the horizon and leaving behind nothing but the legend of a giant Dragon.

...

Overseas Archipelago.

The White Dragon Lord looked at the intelligence report in his claws, a faint smile on his face as he muttered to himself.

"Not bad at all."

Over the past week, Willy had resolved four demonized beast sieges in the Kingdom of Pavlan. His reputation had spread so far and wide across neighboring countries that people were constantly contacting him, offering hefty sums of gold to have him solve their own nations' problems. This allowed the little homebody dragon to rake in a massive fortune.

As time ticked by, the various nations grew increasingly familiar with the Demon Cultists' methods, and the number of beast sieges steadily plummeted.

This was especially true after word spread of Willy's discovery—that the Demon Cultists needed to conduct magic rituals from within the targeted city to summon the surrounding demonized beasts. In response, the major kingdoms all developed specific countermeasures to detect and neutralize these rituals.

More often than not, before the demonized beasts could even gather in sufficient numbers, the Demon Cultists would be sniffed out by armies conducting city-wide sweeps, stopping the sieges before they could begin.

Furthermore, with the Emerald Tower continuously pressing their sweeping operations deeper into the Underworld, the demonized beast incidents were gradually brought under control.

It seemed as though everything was developing in a positive direction.

But the White Dragon Lord knew better. This was merely the calm before the storm.

Judging from the two previous incidents on the Overseas Archipelago, the forces the Demon Cultists had amassed across the Nordhill Continent were absolutely massive. They shouldn't have been suppressed by the Council this easily.

Moreover, neither side's High Tier combatants had shown themselves yet. There had only been a handful of small-scale skirmishes between a small number of Legendary Rank entities.

The White Dragon Lord gazed up at the gloomy sky overhead.

"The storm is coming."