Defeating the World with the Power of One Dragon!

Phillips dragged his weakened lich body, moving silently through the dark, dead wilderness.

The soul-annihilation that reveals the soul’s origin flickered faintly in his hollow sockets; its glow was countless times dimmer than before.

"Damn that red iron dragon... damn Ximu Domain...

"I will come back!"

Thinking of the vast undead legion he had spent centuries building—of the countless effort poured into it—being destroyed in such a short time, Phillips could not help but curse again. His words mixed deep dread and resentment toward the red iron dragon with greedy longing and desire:

to be able to breach a legendary domain’s defenses ahead of schedule.

Even with Phillips’s experience as a former legendary and his extraordinary insight, in those long years he had only ever heard of one example.

—The Lothrian Holy King!

That powerful being, when he was still level twenty, had once challenged a true level twenty-one legendary simply to test the limit of his power and personally feel the might of a legendary domain.

After an earth-shaking fierce battle,

the Holy King crossed the enormous chasm between mundane and legendary like it was nothing, showing extraordinary strength.

He did not win a decisive final victory, but he managed to force the legendary to a stalemate.

Even so, the strength the Lothrian Holy King displayed was enough to earn countless looks of awe and plant deep fear and jealousy in many greats.

Phillips had carefully probed the red iron dragon’s life level in the previous fight.

Seventeen—that roughly equated to a mid-adult gold dragon.

Although Phillips’s legendary domain was far weaker than it had been at his peak, the red iron dragon was still far from the mundane pinnacle of level twenty.

"If that damned wyrm reaches level twenty..."

"Who knows—he might actually be able to defeat a healthy true legendary head-on!"

"If he keeps growing without hindrance, perhaps one day he will become the unprecedented King of Evil Dragons, a titan as mighty as the Sky-Shrouding Wings once was—a primeval dragon of terrifying power."

"And that would mean—if I could somehow control him, I would gain an unprecedented chance to surpass my former peak, to reach a new height I never imagined!"

Greed glittered in Phillips’s eye sockets.

Being over a thousand years old was the perfect age for a comeback!

He made his decision inwardly.

After restoring his condition and regrouping, he would use every means, pay any price, and rush to regain legendary status as soon as possible. Then, with all his power, he would seize that red iron dragon that had inflicted him such heavy losses and yet tempted him so.

He fantasized blissfully about the future as he moved silently through patches of dark forest and rolling hills.

At last, midnight arrived.

The necromancer reached a deeply hidden steep cliff curtained in vines.

"By the name of the dead, open the way!"

Phillips croaked the incantation.

As the words fell, the thick, twisted vines on the cliff stirred like living things and swiftly parted. The vine-covered rock split silently, revealing a bottomless black mouth.

Phillips did not hesitate; he slipped inside at once.

The vines behind him snapped shut and healed the fissure as if it had never existed.

The cavern descended downward. As he went deeper, negative energy grew thick and viscous in the air; the cold, damp environment made the lich feel slightly more comfortable.

He followed the familiar path in his memory, winding and turning for a long time, passing several trap-laden passages and a few empty chambers before finally reaching the deepest chamber.

The scene opened before him.

Embedded in the walls were countless pebble-sized crystals that emitted a ghostly blue light, bathing the space in an eerie glow.

Beneath that light stood rows of silent, statue-like elite undead guards, piles of varied creature bones, experimental subjects soaking in huge glass containers that gave off a sharp stench, and at the cavern’s center a mysterious altar carved from a single block of obsidian.

Floating above the altar was a fist-sized crystal box of unknown material.

It was Phillips’s phylactery—the core of his existence.

Returning to the lair he had tended for countless years and seeing his phylactery intact finally eased Phillips’s taut nerves; he breathed a long sigh.

He stepped up to the altar, climbed the steps, and slowly stretched his skeletal hand toward the phylactery.

If he touched it, he could siphon the negative energy and soul essence stored within, repair his damaged spirit and body, and slowly restore himself.

Without warning, a figure silently emerged from the shadows beside the altar.

Lord Flower Shire seemed to step out from a fold in space like a specter. Before Phillips could react, Shire’s dry sword sliced with surgical precision and severed the defensive runes around the altar.

"Sorry, Mr. Lich."

Shire’s long fingers shot out like lightning and gripped the crystal phylactery. A smile creased his handsome face. "This thing doesn’t belong to you anymore."

"You—!"

The soul-fire in Phillips’s eye sockets flickered like a gale and trembled violently, threatening to explode!

He had not expected this Boundary Walker to have followed him all along.

Spatial magic requires talent and is one of the hardest categories, alongside temporal spells; many legendary sorcerers lack the slightest affinity for spatial arts.

Phillips, a necromancer specialized in death magic, was not skilled in spatial techniques, but he knew how dangerous spatial power could be. At key points in this underground cave he had set traps and spatial alarms specifically to prevent anyone like Shire from slipping close via space.

Still, expertise is particular—Phillips’s spatial methods were imperfect.

The Boundary Walker had detected and bypassed every trap, so Phillips had not detected any trace of being followed the whole way back.

"Give me back the phylactery!!"

Horrified rage turned ferocious. The lich abruptly raised a skeletal claw and fired a perfectly condensed black death ray at Shire.

Shire’s figure had already dissolved into a faint afterimage.

The death ray merely cut through the vestige and smashed into the obsidian altar behind it.

Shire did not try to hide in a space fold again; instead he continuously blinked short distances away and fled toward the cave’s exit.

It wasn’t that he didn’t want to vanish; he couldn’t.

Hiding utterly still within a space fold is one thing—traversing complex spatial structures and continuously weaving after a legendary lich is another entirely; the energy costs differ drastically.

The former is nearly free.

The latter, especially tailing a legendary lich while evading spatial wards, was an enormous burden for Shire. It had already drained him, leaving his spirit frayed and energy nearly depleted; he could no longer sustain high-intensity spatial walking for long.

"Chase! Kill him! Take back the phylactery!!"

Phillips roared hysterically as he watched the flickering human silhouette retreat down the tunnel. His soul-fire flared in frantic fury and fear.

At once, every dormant undead guard in the cavern surged into motion!

Bone warriors crawled from floor and walls, brandishing menacing weapons; banshee-like wraiths screamed shrill notes that cut through walls; a monstrous abomination stitched from innumerable corpses crashed through a side stone door and charged out, stinking and roaring.

Phillips himself, though weak, forced himself to follow, the soul-fire in his sockets nearly bursting.

Even if the red iron dragon had crushed him with a claw earlier, it would have been preferable to having his phylactery snatched away alive.

As long as the phylactery remained, even if his body were destroyed, he could spend the great cost and long time to resurrect again—though it would be a longer sleep.

Without the phylactery, for a lich, there was true irredeemable annihilation.

Shire used his last strength and exquisite movement to force through the layers of undead blocking the cave and finally burst into the outside world.

He darted through the moonlit forest, light and silent as water slipping past leaves.

But he could not go fast.

The phylactery containing a soul of legendary essence was surprisingly heavy.

His spatial skill and portable storage item could not contain it.

And the proximity was too close.

A bone-chilling negative energy poured from the phylactery, as if it could freeze the soul itself. It continuously corroded his living flesh and spirit, severely affecting him and drastically slowing his pace.

As time passed, he failed to open a gap; the horrific sound of the pursuing undead grew clearer and closer.

"Tear him apart! Reclaim the phylactery!!"

Phillips’s maddened voice echoed through the silent night as the undead relentlessly pursued.

Finally Shire burst out of the forest into a relatively open plain.

The undead poured out in a surging wave from the trees.

"Get any closer, and I’ll destroy this thing!"

Shire, glancing over his shoulder while maintaining his speed, lifted the phylactery in one hand and clenched his Crusader's sword in the other, his breath ragged from exhaustion as he threatened.

Phillips said nothing in response; he urged his undead mounts to accelerate, the empty sockets fixated on the human form ahead, burning with insane fire.

Shire shook his head and stopped wasting words. He pooled his remaining focus to search for an escape route.

The moment he touched the phylactery he had felt it clearly.

It was protected by an inward-out legendary-domain-level defense; with his strength he could not smash it—I couldn't even leave a scratch.

Phillips clearly knew this, so he ignored Shire’s threats.

Screeeaaam—!!!

A sound like an ice blade scraping glass burst from a banshee; an invisible shockwave swept over Shire’s body.

His movements staggered, and his speed slowed a fraction.

At that instant, winged harpies, the abomination, bone warriors and other powerful undead closed in, encircling him.

Shire tightened his grip on his Crusader's sword, his face devoid of fear—only a cold, murderous calm.

As an Arcane Knight with high attainment in spatial arts, he was not weak in direct combat. Apart from being helpless against irrational legendary-domain defenses, breaking through the current encirclement of undead would not be excessively difficult.

"Run! Why aren’t you still running?!"

Phillips raised his withered claw and began gathering dense negative energy to cast a powerful binding spell to seize that hateful human with the undead.

Suddenly!

A fierce whirlwind rose from the plain out of nowhere, whipping up sand and flinging trees. Grass bent and snapped.

Phillips’s soul-fire trembled wildly as an ominous premonition rose; he instinctively looked up.

A colossal shadow tore through the clouds, bringing suffocating gale-force wind and scorching dragon might, striking the ground like a falling star of divine punishment.

The deafening sound of impact overlapped with the tearing of the sky, echoing across the wilderness!

The Lord of Molten Iron—Garoth—descended!

The shock of his landing crushed several elite undead guarding the lich. Amid dust and debris, a familiar massive claw extended and casually swept across the retreating Phillips, rapping him against the palm of the claw.

Now was the same moment as before.

Only this time different.

Looking at the enormous, rugged dragon head before him, Phillips felt a brand-new terror—one hundred percent, a trembling from the marrow of his soul.

"Good evening, little bug."

The red iron dragon cracked his great maw and fixed his vertical pupils on the twisted-faced lich. His claws began to slowly close, faint sounds of grinding bone and scale scraping.

"This time, I won't give you any chance to fake death."

The lich rasped a plea: "W-wait!"

Before he finished, his withered body was once again crushed and ground into the finest ash and dust without suspense.

The surrounding undead lost their master's control.

But driven by instinctual hatred of the living, they still surged forward, only to be casually swatted into fragments by Garoth's thundering tail or the sweep of his dragon wings.

"Mission accomplished, my lord—we got the phylactery."

Shire presented the crystal phylactery in both hands and finally breathed out.

Garoth picked up the phylactery with a claw tip and examined it closely.

The instant he touched it, he felt a pure, chilling negative energy attempting to eat into his clawed scales.

The energy was intense enough to make him feel real cold—not ordinary cold, but a chill that seemed capable of penetrating his heavy armor of scales, freezing flesh and soul.

He tightened his grip.

Golden lightning crackled and deep black-red dragon qi coiled around his claw, battling the negative energy emanating from the phylactery. Their fierce clash began to press on the faint legendary-domain barrier around the phylactery.

Without activating Crimson Lotus Form, within seconds a faint cracking sound came—the domain was fracturing.

Because the lich had just died, the phylactery’s legendary-domain protection was at its weakest, almost null.

With an extremely sharp claw, Garoth pried open the phylactery’s shell.

In that instant, tangible negative energy, as thick as millennia of cold, surged out from the box.

The air temperature plunged; countless gray-white snowflakes and ice crystals instantly formed. The ground quickly developed a hard crust of ice. Nearby plants, however, did not freeze—under the wave of negative energy they withered, rotted, and turned to ash.

The tide of negative energy crashed onto the red iron dragon’s body.

His scales did not frost over, but he clearly felt a bone-deep, extreme cold, as though a naked human had been flung into perpetual ice.

A stabbing pain seeped through the crevices of his scales into his flesh; his life force began to decline slowly but noticeably.

Yet Garoth did not flinch.

He cocked his massive head slightly and even wore a look of satisfied, almost pleasurable relief.

He watched the phylactery open fully, seemingly hoping the outpouring would grow fiercer.

The result disappointed him slightly.

When fully opened, no roaring flood of more negative energy poured out; instead, at the phylactery’s center lay a smooth, lustrous soul bead about thumb-sized, shrouded in dense, impenetrable mist of negative energy.

Buzz—

The phylactery’s negative energy churned violently, and around that bead it quickly coalesced into a blurred, twisted visage.

"Now—let's talk again."

Garoth stared at the distorted lich face formed from negative energy. "State your final value to me. I might consider accepting your belated service."

But unlike the first time they met, when a façade might be feigned,

the visage condensed from the negative energy now held only pure, absolute hatred and madness.

It released a scream so twisted and inhuman, soaked in venomous hate, that the sound itself warped.

The phylactery had fallen into the claws of a long-lived, immensely powerful, and avaricious evil dragon! Phillips’s remaining consciousness could see no hope of escape.

His path of vengeance, barely begun, was forcibly ended.

The lich’s warped inner heart poured all his hellish hate for the Lothrian Holy King and the Federation onto the red iron dragon before him.

Moreover, his final pride as a legendary would not allow him to bow or serve.

At this moment his last thought clung to a single desire:

Make this damned red iron dragon pay! Make him burn in endless regret and torment for his deeds!

"Damn wyrm! I curse you! I curse you with my utterly dispersed soul!"

"From now on, your scales will grow brittle! Your body will grow weaker! Your life will speed away... You shall endure this soul curse day and night, endlessly!!"

Crack!

With those venomous words, the soul bead at the phylactery’s center shattered into the finest powder.

At the same time,

the twisted lich face formed of negative energy shot from the phylactery like an arrow toward the nearby red iron dragon’s snout.

Whoosh!

Garoth reacted instantly. Flames and wind boiled at his wing tips, and his enormous body sprang upward with agility that belied his size to avoid the final counterattack.

Yet that lich face seemed to lock onto his soul essence. Despite missing, it did not dissipate.

It flickered, collapsed, and a moment later reformed above Garoth’s broad back. Like a phantom it seeped into his heavy scales and vanished beneath them.

"Locking curses of this magnitude that require such sacrifice are, as always, hard to evade."

Garoth’s aerial movement stopped for a beat.

The lich’s curse was more powerful and wicked than the serpent dragons’ death curse back then. Garoth’s existing curse resistance was not enough to negate it.

Multiple negative states activated at once; an indescribable weakness, chill, and sluggishness swept his whole body, making him extremely uncomfortable.

He circled once in the air to adjust and then slowly descended back to the ground.

Shire stepped forward a few paces, worried eyes on the red iron dragon.

To his surprise, he did not see anger or annoyance on Garoth’s imposing face.

On the contrary,

Garoth’s mouth tipped up; he even broke into a broad grin as if he took pleasure.

Cursed so viciously and still smiling?

Has he lost his mind—or is it laughter borne of fury? Shire wisely kept silent.

In truth, he was completely mistaken.

Garoth’s smile was sincere.

Day after day, year after year, the near-masochistic high-intensity training and tempering he had endured had made sensations that ordinary folk would call pain into a kind of sharpening pleasure and resource.

The curse’s negative effects did make Garoth notably uncomfortable.

But to him it was temporary.

His will and body would adapt; his spirit would grow stronger, his scales would harden in fighting the curse’s corrosion, his life force would intensify in resisting decline... until one day his curse resistance would be high enough to completely shrug off this lich curse.

He even hoped the curse would remain for a long time.

A curse?

No—in Garoth’s eyes, this was the finest forge and a blessing from the enemy!

If resistances could be quantified, Garoth had no doubt his strongest resistances were fire, physical, and the curse resistance that was about to ascend to a new height!

"Besides the blessing, there's this phylactery."

"It can automatically absorb and store surrounding negative energy and condense a soul into a soul bead."

"Even if the lich who made it is utterly dead, I can still use the negative energy it gathers to constantly wash and strengthen myself, further raising negative-energy resistance. And the soul bead’s ability to preserve a departed soul—studying it might have other uses."

Garoth gazed steadily at the opened phylactery in his hand.

As it continued to contact the outside air, the soul-dust left by the shattered bead began to dissipate and fade.

The dust that contained the legendary soul essence was valuable; he could not allow it to be wasted.

After a brief yet careful inspection, Garoth closed the phylactery’s lid and gripped it tightly.