Chapter 456: The White Dragon Lord Joins the Battle

After a long wait, Feixi spotted a Titan with immense soul strength. Moving with swift precision, he extended a massive hand forged from divine power and scooped up the struggling soul.

The waters of the river Styx crept along the glowing hand toward Feixi Darkscale. He immediately severed his connection to the divine construct; he had zero desire to touch that sinister water.

Stowing the Titan's soul into a Soul-Sealing Bottle, he resumed his vigil for the next target.

With the massive war raging between the Dragon Race and the Titans, countless dragons and Titans at the High-Tier Legendary Level had already perished. Before long, he snagged another one.

Suddenly, Feixi Darkscale noticed an unusual dark silhouette on the distant river Styx. He hastily retreated, pulling back beyond the river's reach.

As the dark speck drew closer, it revealed itself as a humanoid creature punting a boat. It was completely shrouded in a tattered black robe, exposing only a pair of withered, skeletal hands. The small skiff beneath its feet was pitch-black, and a dense cluster of souls clung to its edges.

He—or rather, it—rowed with a lackadaisical rhythm, yet the boat surged forward across the river Styx at breakneck speed. Every soul in the water scrambled to grab hold of its sides. Stronger souls mercilessly trampled the weaker ones, ensuring that the only ones left clinging to the wood were of the Legendary Rank or higher.

This was a Ferryman of the River Styx.

A Ferryman of the River Styx served as a subordinate to the god of the underworld. They were not particularly powerful, possessing only the strength of an early High-Tier Legend.

But Feixi Darkscale had no desire to provoke it. He was a thief, and the ferryman was an official.

Suddenly, Feixi Darkscale spotted a Titan soul clinging to the side of the ferryman's boat. His eyes went wide—this particular Titan soul actually harbored a trace of Divinity.

Any Titan qualified to possess Divinity wielded terrifying strength and held significant status among their kind. Out of all the souls he had encountered, this one was the most likely to hold classified intelligence.

He stared at the Titan soul, struggling inwardly.

The ferryman's vigilance was low, and the sheer value of that Titan soul made it worth the risk. Coupled with the fact that his own strength far exceeded the ferryman's, Feixi felt it was a gamble worth taking.

Shrouding himself in a faint veil of black mist, Feixi Darkscale drifted silently along the banks of the river Styx, trailing closely behind the ferryman.

The ferryman lowered its long pole toward the Styx. Just before the wood broke the surface, a massive hand of divine power shot out silently from the rear flank. It snatched the Titan soul right off the edge of the boat and instantly retracted.

The ferryman snapped its head around, the nether flames in its eye sockets flaring, but all it caught was a fleeting wisp of black mist.

"Damned evil god!"

The ferryman was furious but entirely helpless; it didn't even know who the thief was.

Not daring to push his luck any further, Feixi Darkscale took his haul of three Titan souls and teleported straight to the Yafeiawei Imperial Palace, seeking an audience with the White Dragon Lord.

"I have not failed my mission!" he said, offering up the three Soul-Sealing Bottles.

A flash of pleasant surprise crossed the White Dragon Lord's eyes when he spotted the Titan harboring Divinity. "You've worked hard. If the Dragon Race emerges victorious, I will personally report your contributions to the dragon gods."

Armed with the White Dragon Lord's promise, Feixi Darkscale took his leave.

Left alone in the grand hall, the White Dragon Lord extracted the divine Titan soul. This one held the highest probability of knowing classified intelligence.

A long time passed before he opened his eyes, a clear look of disappointment in his gaze.

In life, this Titan had been a regional overlord—powerful, but not highly ranked enough to be privy to top-secret matters.

Still, a wisp of Divinity served as a decent consolation prize.

He crushed the soul to pieces, completely erasing the evidence, and drew out the second one.

A long while later, the familiar sting of disappointment returned. This was just an ordinary Titan, even weaker than the first.

After destroying the evidence again, the White Dragon Lord retrieved the final soul. As he sifted through its memories, his mind suddenly jolted. This particular Titan had served as a direct subordinate to a Bronze Titan of the Abomination Rank. It just might hold some useful intelligence.

The White Dragon Lord carefully combed through the Titan's memories from the past few decades.

Time trickled by without a single discovery. Just as he was about to give up, he abruptly stumbled upon a fragment tucked away at the very end of the memories.

It was a scene inside a lavishly decorated hall. The Abomination Rank Bronze Titan sat upon a towering throne, looking down at twenty-odd High-Tier Legend Titans, including the owner of this memory.

They were holding a pre-war rally. The Bronze Titan delivered an impassioned speech that set the crowd's blood boiling.

"You will have the privilege of witnessing the most glorious alchemical achievement of the Titan Race from the ancient era. And within it lies a portion of my own strength."

The memory concluded. The White Dragon Lord crushed the soul in his grasp, a wave of profound elation washing over him. He had finally caught a trail. The Bronze Titan's words had revealed three critical pieces of information.

The ancient era, alchemy, and a portion of his own strength contributed.

He scoured his mind for information on this Bronze Titan. There were only about ten thousand Abomination Rank powerhouses across the entire multiverse, and through various channels, he had long since memorized the basic profiles of every single one.

That Bronze Titan was a perfectly ordinary Abomination Rank powerhouse, not some kind of alchemy grandmaster.

The White Dragon Lord deduced that this alchemical weapon required the combined efforts of a massive number of Titan powerhouses to forge.

An alchemical artifact from the ancient era that required multiple Titans working in tandem—this narrowed the scope considerably. Yet, the White Dragon Lord found precious little information regarding this in his dragon inheritance.

When recording the dragon inheritance, his ancestors had primarily focused on bragging about their own glorious triumphs, followed by archiving magical knowledge. As for the bitter defeats the Dragon Race had suffered in the ancient era, they were mostly glossed over with a single stroke.

He felt a headache coming on as he pondered where he could uncover relevant intelligence.

Ultimately, he decided to consult Sardior, the Jewel Dragon King. After all, the Obsidian Sanctuary was an ancient draconic city that had stood since the Star Realm era. If a Titan weapon had existed in the ancient era, the Sanctuary would surely possess records of it.

"What is it? I'm in the middle of beating up Sinzela!" Sardior's slightly breathless, excited voice rang out from the other end of the magical transmission. It sounded like he held the upper hand—hardly surprising, given that the Star Titan had yet to fully recover from his previous injuries.

"It's like this, Your Majesty. I just received intelligence that the Titans have prepared an ancient alchemical weapon..."

"Go to the Obsidian Sanctuary. Seek out Durakor, the amethyst dragon left in charge of guarding the place. He will tell you everything you need to know."

The White Dragon Lord understood that the Gem Dragon King was too busy for a detailed explanation. He immediately departed, teleporting directly to the Obsidian Sanctuary.

Due to the ongoing war, security at the Obsidian Sanctuary had been drastically tightened. Even a figure like the White Dragon Lord had to undergo several rounds of rigorous interrogation and inspection before being granted entry.

He located Durakor, the amethyst dragon standing guard over the Obsidian Sanctuary. This was a true Ancient Giant Dragon, a cut above standard Abomination Rank dragons, for he had genuinely survived from the ancient era to the present day.

"What brings you to me?" Even when facing a junior of the Dragon Race, the amethyst dragon didn't put on airs. Dragons respected absolute strength above all else, and in terms of sheer power, he fell short of the White Dragon Lord.

"It's like this. Through a special channel, I discovered that the Titans have readied an ancient alchemical weapon. Furthermore, a massive number of Titans likely participated in its creation. I came to ask if you have any intelligence regarding this."

"I see," Durakor, the amethyst dragon, muttered, falling into deep thought. "In the ancient era, the Titans' alchemical weapons were truly fearsome. Many Dragon Kings met their end beneath their might. However, countless materials from that era have since gone extinct. The vast majority of those catastrophic weapons simply cannot be forged anymore."

"Hmm... let me think. A Titan alchemical weapon from the ancient era that required a multitude of crafters," the amethyst dragon murmured, pinching his chin and gazing up at the ceiling. "There's the Star-Destroying Ballista. Forging it requires extracting the pure essence of stellar steel. It takes hundreds of tons of raw stellar steel just to refine enough essence for a single bolt, and only Abomination Rank powerhouses are capable of performing the extraction."

"The Heart of Egulais is another. Its primary component is Titan essence blood, and the core requires the vital heart-blood of an Abomination Rank Titan. The more essence blood used, and the stronger the heart-blood, the more devastating its power. The price to forge a Heart of Egulais is simply too high; usually, it is only created after an Abomination Rank Titan falls in battle."

"The Dragon King Slayer also requires multiple Titans pooling their power to enchant it. However, the materials required for it went extinct ages ago. Then again, there's no guarantee those ancient, long-lived Titans haven't hoarded a stockpile."

"It has to be one of these three."

The White Dragon Lord frowned at the complications, but narrowing down the enemy's ultimate trump card to three possibilities was the best he could hope for.

"Senior, please elaborate on the destructive capabilities of these three weapons."

The amethyst dragon nodded. "The Star-Destroying Ballista fires a bolt with enough raw force to punch completely through the Divine Kingdom of a deity with Greater Divine Power, or even completely bore through a giant material plane. Back in the ancient era, many of our race's fortresses were shattered by this very weapon."

"The Heart of Egulais is an orb of flesh and blood seething with Titan Curses—a vile, corruptive abomination. Egulais was once a Titan overlord who was slain by a Dragon King, but his loyalists managed to recover his corpse. Using his heart-blood and essence blood, steeped in his dying resentment, they forged the first Heart of Egulais. They then used it to corrupt the very Dragon King who killed him, driving the sovereign into madness and death."

"The Dragon King Slayer is a moniker granted by our race. It holds the highest kill count against Dragon Kings among all their weapons, yet we know frighteningly little about it. All we know is that it takes multiple Abomination Rank Titans working in unison to forge, and the materials are extraordinarily precious."

The White Dragon Lord furrowed his brow. "Is information on this Dragon King Slayer really that sparse?"

"Yes," the amethyst dragon agreed, before abruptly shifting his tone. "But I honestly don't think you need to worry about the Dragon King Slayer."

The White Dragon Lord lowered his head in thought and quickly deduced why the amethyst dragon said that.

If the Dragon King Slayer had truly claimed the lives of so many sovereigns, the Titans would undoubtedly save it for Bahamut and the other two Dragon Kings. After all, he could only match the combat power of a Dragon King when piloting his Floating City. The true Dragon Kings were obviously much higher-priority targets.

"Thank you for your guidance. Victory to the Dragon Race," the White Dragon Lord said, bowing respectfully.

The amethyst dragon replied solemnly, "Victory to the Dragon Race!"

His goal achieved, the White Dragon Lord teleported back to Sky City in Nordhill, where he resumed surveying the battlefield through the eyes of his clone.

As he watched the carnage, he continuously analyzed the two potential threats: the Star-Destroying Ballista and the Heart of Egulais.

He leaned heavily toward the assumption that the Titans had prepared a Star-Destroying Ballista. Stellar steel was an exorbitantly expensive magical material on par with adamantine, but given the Titan Race's immense manpower and resources, they could definitely scrape enough together if they pooled their wealth.

The Heart of Egulais was less likely. He hadn't received a single report of an Abomination Rank Titan falling in combat recently. If they were to harvest the required heart-blood from a living Titan, that entity would suffer a massive, immediate drop in combat strength and risk permanent damage to their very origin.

Still, he couldn't leave anything to chance. He had to consider both scenarios and formulate countermeasures for each...

Out in the Star Realm, the battle had reached a white-hot crescendo. Bahamut and the Luminous Titan were locked in a grinding stalemate. Tiamat and the Dark Titan were clashing with such ferocity that the very fabric of space shattered around them. Sardior, the Gem Dragon King, had managed to carve out a slight advantage, but the ultimate outcome remained completely unpredictable.

Dragons and Titans fell in droves. Boiling blood sprayed across the starry void. Corpses were shredded to paste by the sheer shockwaves of the battlefield, their pulverized remains cast out into the endless, distant darkness.

Occasionally, heavily wounded dragons and Titans would retreat from the front lines. Even the isolated battlefield holding the Abomination Rank powerhouses had begun to suffer casualties.

A Plutonium Dragon unleashed a hideous grin as it physically tore a bloated Abomination Rank Titan in half. Nearby, the translucent claws of a Ghost Titan silently phased through a dragon's skull, piercing its very soul. The battlefield was a maelstrom of absolute chaos.

The White Dragon Lord decided his time had come.

He laid his dragon claw upon the Floating City's Control Core, closed his eyes, and drew a long, deep breath.

When his eyes snapped open again, they were pools of absolute, glacial calm.

"Wartime Auxiliary Mode, activate!"

The White Dragon Lord rapidly layered buffing spells over his own body, pushing his physical and magical state to its absolute peak. Simultaneously, he activated all of the Floating City's offensive and defensive systems before initiating a localized spatial jump.

A colossal Floating City abruptly materialized at the edge of the battlefield, phasing into existence so smoothly it was as if it had been anchored there all along.

The warring Titans and dragons instantly detected the sudden arrival of a gargantuan energy source. Its blazing magical radiance flared as hot as a newly birthed sun, casting a momentary hush over the entire battlefield.

Turning to gaze upon the Floating City, the Titans immediately raised their guards, while morale across the draconic army skyrocketed. So many years had passed; the fact that the Dragon Race possessed a Sky City was no longer a secret to anyone.

A few hot-headed Titans recklessly charged the Floating City, but they couldn't even breach the defensive perimeter established by the surrounding Floating Tower combat squadrons. Searing beams from the Metamagic Railguns blasted the offending Titans directly into slag.

On a battlefield hosting a million combatants—every single one of them at least a Legendary Rank—the White Dragon Lord piloted his Floating City straight toward the Abomination Rank warzone. Titans and dragons alike scrambled out of his flight path, parting like a school of small fish fleeing a charging great white shark.

Along the way, the Floating City fired out continuous beams of pure mana, tethering to the allied dragons in his path. The heavily exhausted dragons received massive infusions of energy, their mana reserves instantly soaring back to maximum capacity.

As for the Titan Race, as long as they didn't actively court death, the White Dragon Lord didn't bother wasting his mana to attack them. The Abomination Rank Titans were his true prey.

Within seconds, the White Dragon Lord breached the Abomination Rank warzone. Beams of light shaped like golden chains shot out from the crystals atop the twelve Floating Towers. The towers were, in turn, linked directly to the White Tower at the center of the Floating City, weaving a massive, golden web of energy across the sky.

Aside from the three great Dragon Kings and a handful of wildly uncooperative mutant species—like the frenzied Plutonium Dragon—the Soul-Linking Chain tethered every single Abomination Rank dragon to the Floating City.

Through the Soul-Linking Chain, the disparate dragons suddenly shared a flawless tactical synergy, fighting with the seamless coordination of lifelong comrades-in-arms. Their collective combat power spiked dramatically, allowing them to completely suppress the opposing Titans.

Secure inside the White Tower's control room, the White Dragon Lord surveyed the theater of war through a god's-eye perspective, actively employing his Gold Finger's Scan function to analyze the battlefield. Whenever an ally fell into danger, he instantly laid down covering fire with his Metamagic Railguns.

But despite the intense crossfire, he dedicated the vast majority of his focus to vigilant observation. After all, the Titan Race's ultimate trump card had yet to make its appearance.