Chapter 406: The Hydra — Hydra

The White Dragon Lord and Skyhowler followed Mage Alan outside and saw the waiting Orc—Odom Mad Axe.

"Is it done?"

"It's done."

Odom Mad Axe stuck out his thick tongue and licked his protruding fangs. Drool clung to the three iron rings piercing his tusks, and his yellowish-brown eyes gleamed with undisguised excitement.

"Then let's hurry. My axe hasn't tasted a hydra's blood yet."

The White Dragon Lord glanced at the people coming and going in front of the main tent.

"Don't be in such a rush, Odom. Teleporting requires a quiet place. Follow me. The Seventh Army Group's overseer tent will do nicely."

The three of them followed the White Dragon Lord all the way to the Seventh Army Group's overseer tent.

Seeing the spacious, empty tent, Mage Alan felt highly satisfied. "Excellent. I'll prepare the teleportation magic now."

As he spoke, Mage Alan rapidly chanted an incantation. This wasn't a standard teleportation spell, but spatial magic—Precision Teleport. Precision Teleport could greatly minimize spatial fluctuations during transit, ensuring everyone's safety. After all, hidden dangers lurked within the void of the Abyss.

The Precision Teleport incantation lasted for over twenty seconds before the White Dragon Lord and the other three High-Tier Legend powerhouses vanished from the overseer tent.

On the 71st Layer of the Bottomless Abyss, the Rotting Swamp was deathly silent. Pale gray mist drifted over the marsh waters. Up in the hazy sky, the White Dragon Lord and his group suddenly materialized.

Hovering in midair, the White Dragon Lord observed the swamp below. This marsh was vastly different from those on the material plane. The water here was pale green, dotted with floating white bubbles. The plants growing on the patches of land were pitch-black and twisted, and the air reeked of rot.

The White Dragon Lord took a sniff, analyzing the information carried in the scent. The air was laced with toxic gas produced by decaying Abyssal plants. An ordinary person living here for a day would be corroded by the poison, bloating up and dying in agony. Fortunately, none of the teammates with the White Dragon Lord were ordinary people.

Smelling the rotting air, Mage Alan frowned and cast an air purification barrier over the group.

"Everyone, we've arrived. This is the Rotting Swamp. If that adventurer's intel is correct, that hydra's lair should be twenty li to the west."

"Then what are we waiting for? Let's chop its heads off!" With that, Odom Mad Axe flew westward.

Mage Alan gave the White Dragon Lord and Skyhowler a helpless shrug. "That guy Odom is just reckless like this, but he's a reliable partner."

Recalling the Orc's indiscriminate axe, the White Dragon Lord nodded in agreement. "He is quite reliable... um... for us ranged spellcasting Mages, at least."

Realizing the same thing, Alan's mouth twitched. "Lady Skyhowler, try to keep your distance from him when the fighting starts."

"Hahaha! I've been in the Alliance long enough to have heard the great name of Odom Mad Axe."

The three chatted as they chased after the Orc, naturally shifting the topic to their target—the hydra. The experienced mercenary expedition leader explained techniques for fighting hydras to the White Dragon Lord and Mage Alan.

"A hydra's nine heads possess different attributes: flame, frost, gale, sand and stone, lightning, poison gas, acid, necrotic, and psionic. These diverse attributes, combined with its heaven-defying regenerative abilities, make the hydra far more dangerous than ordinary monsters. To hunt a hydra, we must first find the main head controlling the body. Based on a hydra's habits, the main head is usually the one right in the middle. Once the main head is chopped off, the hydra's primary consciousness will transfer, and its body will fall into a brief frenzy... Also, let me tell you a secret few people know: directly above its head is its blind spot. Launching a sneak attack from above will yield unexpected, miraculous results..."

The expedition leader—Skyhowler—rattled off the hydra's traits and habits with absolute familiarity. The White Dragon Lord carefully committed them to memory. Although he didn't think he would actually need to use this knowledge, knowing more was always a good thing.

Soon, the four-person team approached the hydra's lair, and they all fell silent.

High up in the hazy gray clouds, buffed by a series of concealment spells, the group gazed down at a mountain of bones on the ground. The bones were diverse, belonging to Demons and swamp beasts alike. The White Dragon Lord even spotted a few humanoid skeletons, likely unfortunate adventurers. These piled-up bones varied in shape and completeness, but they shared one thing in common: they were completely bare, without a single scrap of flesh remaining.

The White Dragon Lord recalled the hydra habits Skyhowler had mentioned. After a hydra swallowed its prey, it would wait until the flesh and blood were completely digested before regurgitating the bones. Being clean creatures, hydras wouldn't leave these bones inside their lair, but would arrange them outside. This wasn't because the hydra was too lazy to walk further to dump its trash, but because the bone pile at the entrance served as a symbol of power and a vital marker of occupying this territory.

Skyhowler said, "Everyone, I'm a little worried that our attack will scare this hydra away. If it burrows into the swamp mud, that will be somewhat troublesome."

"No problem. Watch me freeze this swamp."

The White Dragon Lord reverted to his true form and flew toward the hydra's lair. A hydra was a terrifying monster, but in terms of innate talent, the White Dragon Lord—as an Ancestral White Dragon—was even more fearsome. Not to mention, his strength was vastly superior to it. Therefore, the hydra guide Skyhowler provided was nothing but a flashy trick to the White Dragon Lord. A single blast of Dragon Breath would solve the problem.

"Amos, keep it alive. Just in case it's a relic of the Arcane Empire, we'll still need to ask it for information." Mage Alan's magical transmission entered the White Dragon Lord's ears.

"Alright."

Dragon Breath brewed in the White Dragon Lord's mouth as he dove silently toward the hydra's lair. Upon entering Dragon Breath range, he abruptly flapped his wings to halt his descent. An icy-blue cone of Dragon Breath poured over the swamp, instantly turning the marsh into a Glacier. Not just the surface, but even the depths of the swamp were frozen into rock-hard permafrost.

Because Mage Alan had asked to keep it alive, the White Dragon Lord didn't spray his Dragon Breath directly over the hydra's lair, but instead drew a circle around the edge of its lair.

Bang!

After sealing the swamp in ice, the White Dragon Lord landed on the cold-mist-shrouded glacier and walked toward the hydra's lair entrance next to the bone pile. Before he could even get close, a cluster of snake heads surged out of the lair—exactly nine of them.

Frozen awake from its dreams, this hydra was not in a good mood either. In a state of rage, the nine snake heads simultaneously opened their gaping maws. Flame, frost, gale, sand and stone, lightning, poison gas, acid, necrotic, and psionic energy surged from its mouths all at once. The White Dragon Lord countered with his breath.

One side was icy blue, and the other was a riot of colors. The hydra's breath looked far more spectacular, but the situation was completely one-sided. The White Dragon Lord's Dragon Breath directly suppressed the hydra's flashy breath, and his Dragon Breath, carrying endless frigid air, engulfed the hydra.

Mage Alan landed on the cold-mist-shrouded glacier, his mouth twitching as he looked at the hydra ice sculpture with half its body sticking out of the cave.

"It's not dead, is it?"

"It shouldn't be. I already showed mercy."

The White Dragon Lord had already actively withdrawn the soul attack from his breath. If the hydra still died even with that, it could only blame itself for being too weak.

The Orc gave the hydra ice sculpture a frustrated kick. "Oh! Amos! You're really no fun at all! My battle hadn't even started yet..."

During the gap in the three's conversation, Skyhowler walked up to the hydra ice sculpture and placed her hand on the thick ice. She instantly shuddered from the cold.

Seeing this, the White Dragon Lord was internally startled. No one knew the power of his Dragon Breath better than the White Dragon Lord did. The fact that Skyhowler only shivered after directly touching such a low temperature meant her constitution was simply terrifyingly robust. But remembering that Skyhowler's true form was a Transcendent Beast—the howling moon pig—the White Dragon Lord wasn't quite as surprised.

But the next scene still gave the White Dragon Lord a great shock. With Skyhowler resting her hand on the ice, he didn't see her make any movement or trigger any energy reaction, yet the ice on the hydra's surface cracked and shattered inch by inch, revealing the perfectly intact hydra body inside.

One had to know, the ice forged by the White Dragon Lord's Dragon Breath wasn't ordinary ice. It was saturated with the Ice Elemental, making it harder than steel. Although the Ice Elemental would gradually dissipate as time went by, eventually reducing the ice's hardness to that of normal ice, barely any time had passed right now.

Skyhowler checked the hydra's body. "Hmm, it still has... it still has a breath of life left. Just wait a bit. This guy's recovery ability is super abnormal."

Leaving the Orc and Skyhowler outside to guard the hydra, Mage Alan walked into the frozen hydra lair, and the White Dragon Lord also followed him inside.

Just like dragons, hydras also had a hobby of collecting treasure. The most eye-catching thing in the spacious, damp cave was the pile of gold coins in the corner. Mixed within the gold coins were some gemstones, along with weapons and armor from adventurers.

However, since this hydra was located in a remote area, its collected wealth was truly pitifully small, though this also made it convenient for Mage Alan to search for the item.

Soon, Mage Alan found the item suspected to be a relic of the Arcane Empire. It was a Purple Crystal Cup, but because too much time had passed, it was covered in a layer of dust, and the rim of the cup was damaged like jagged sawteeth.

"That's right! It is indeed a cup from the Arcane Empire era!"

"Alan, how are you certain?"

"Because arcane energy is purple, everyone during the Arcane Empire era—from Great Arcanists rivaling deities down to ordinary people—favored purple. Plus, the purple hue of this cup is uniform and nearly perfect. This is the craftsmanship of the Arcane Empire era. And look," Alan said, turning the cup toward the White Dragon Lord. "There's an emblem on the bottom of the cup."

Under Mage Alan's reminder, the White Dragon Lord also saw the translucent emblem on the bottom of the cup. It was an abstract eye with a pentagram inside the pupil.

"I think I've seen this emblem somewhere before."

The White Dragon Lord flipped through his memories, and it wasn't long before his eyes widened. He remembered where he had seen this emblem; it was in a book introducing the previous Blood War.

Over three thousand years ago, a massive battle broke out in the Abyss, and the fuse for the combat was the newly discovered ruins of an Arcane Empire Floating City. The emblem for those Arcane Empire Floating City ruins was a pattern of an eye containing a pentagram.

During the Arcane Empire era, every Great Arcanist would build a Floating City rivaling a deity's Divine Kingdom. Just like a national flag, the Great Arcanist controlling the Floating City would also design an emblem for their beloved Floating City. Moreover, Great Arcanists had a habit of engraving the Floating City's emblem on their daily necessities, which represented glory and belonging.

The White Dragon Lord said, "In other words, this cup is a palace item of the Great Arcanist of the Eye of Truth?!"

Mage Alan said, "That's right!"

"But why would it appear here?"

"That's something we'll have to ask the hydra outside. Hopefully, it can give us an answer. If my guess is right, then a great opportunity is sitting right in front of us."

Seeing Mage Alan's gleaming eyes, the White Dragon Lord said no more. After putting away the treasures in the cave, he caught up to Mage Alan, who was walking toward the cave entrance.

Mage Alan recounted the discovery in the cave to Skyhowler and Mad Axe. The two were equally exhilarated, but Mage Alan kept his own speculations strictly to himself.

Not long after, the fiercely resilient hydra woke up. But if given the choice, it would have preferred to never wake up, because the auras leaking from the four great High-Tier Legend powerhouses surrounding it were simply too terrifying.

The awoken hydra slowed its heart rate and lay on the ground feigning death, but every single person present was an experienced veteran. They instantly saw through the hydra's plan, which was nothing more than stalling for time to recover its physical strength and then finding a chance to escape.

The hot-tempered Orc took the axe from his back and brought it down in one chop. In an instant, the hydra lost a head, and foul-smelling blackish-red snake blood sprayed over ten meters away.

Rolling on the ground in agony, the hydra let out painful hissing sounds. Looking at everyone's hostile glares, the hydra wisely abandoned its plan to continue playing dead.

Mage Alan held the Purple Crystal Cup right in front of the hydra's eyes.

"Where did this cup come from?"

The hydra—Hydra's eyes flashed. Originally, it was an ordinary hydra from the material plane, and had fled to the Abyss by a stroke of luck while being hunted by a team of adventurers. It never expected that after settling in the Abyss for just over a decade, it would encounter such a group of baleful stars. Precisely because its demonization hadn't gone on for long, Hydra still retained its wits. It knew its meager wealth meant nothing to High-Tier Legends. Since they weren't killing it now, and were holding the cup it had picked up to ask about its origins, these powerhouses' only target was this cup.

"I won't tell you, unless..."

Before the hydra could finish its sentence, its raised snake head was stomped flat by Skyhowler's foot. "Little snake! We aren't negotiating with you!"

"Even if I tell you, I won't escape death! I might as well die together with this secret!"

The White Dragon Lord and the others stared blankly for a moment. This hydra was actually quite smart.

"Alright, as long as you tell us everything about this cup, we won't kill you."

"I don't believe you! Unless..."

Skyhowler delivered another vicious stomp. "Pushing your luck!"

"Violence cannot solve the problem," the White Dragon Lord said, stepping forward. "But magic can. Worm, I wonder if you've heard of Soul Search?"

Soul Search was an unorthodox magic used to directly search a target's memories, but the target was highly likely to turn into an idiot because their memories were forcibly extracted. Fear flickered in the hydra's eyes.

Under everyone's bottomless pressure, the hydra ultimately yielded, telling them everything about the cup. The cup was something it had picked up in a certain place.

The White Dragon Lord and the others looked at Mage Alan. Now that things had come to this, Mage Alan should also reveal the hidden secret.

Mage Alan took out three Divine Contracts.

"Everyone, this next matter is of monumental importance. We must sign a confidentiality agreement before I can tell you."