Wandering Knight
Chapter 494: The Most Loathsome Thing
A host of dragons tore through the heavens. At their head flew the silver dragon Aurelian, with Wang Yu and Avia upon her back, leading the draconic vanguard straight toward the heart of the Ashen Wastes. The entrance to the underground domain, the first defensive line set by the Utopia, barely delayed them at all.
"The combustive energy is growing stronger. We're closing in on the target. Be wary of whatever the Utopia has yet to reveal. They won't rely on such meager fortifications alone."
The Chariot's perception spread outward. The strange power unique to the Ashen Wastes intensified as they pressed deeper, signaling that the Church of Nightfall was indeed nearing its destination. Wang Yu warned the encircling dragons of the dangers ahead.
As expected, the number of enemies that the Utopia had stationed here was staggering, so vast that one could hardly imagine where they had all come from.
Several void rifts tore open before the advancing host. From within surged even more colossal spires, each bearing Utopian operatives of countless races. Nearly every intelligent species on the continent was represented, along with their subspecies.
"There must be over ten thousand..."
Wang Yu swept his gaze across the enemy ranks. The Perfect Fractal lens embedded above his right eye estimated their numbers in an instant. Every one of these foes possessed at least the power of a mid-tier wizard. Most were spellcasters, though there were also a few knights clustered among them.
The moment they emerged, the enemy forces unleashed a collective assault, with coordination so perfect it was all but inhuman, just as during the battle in the Bloodfang Empire. Joint incantations erupted skyward, a barrage of seventh-tier spells with a scattering of terrifying eighth-tier ones woven in, all hurtling toward the dragons overhead.
The tidal wave of spells, magnified by ten thousand casters chanting as one, warped the very air. If the Utopian spellcasters hadn't been carefully regulating themselves, the spells would have collapsed under their own magical turbulence.
Vast spell arrays bloomed among the enemy ranks. They were dazzling and lethal, so intricate they might as well have been components in a magitech engine. The combined spells blasted up toward the dragons.
"Dive down! Break into their formation!"
Wang Yu's eyes narrowed. There was no meeting this storm head-on—this was merely the first volley. And with the Utopia's unnatural coordination, the second volley would not be far behind.
Thus, the answer was simple. Against a spellcasting legion, the most effective tactic was to crash into their midst and force them into close quarters. Any large-scale spell cast under such conditions might as well be suicide.
Several bronze dragons unfurled their mechanical wings, exposing the energy-receiving organs unique to their kind. Their intent was clear: to use their innate affinity to gather and amplify the power of all dragons present and thereby counter the first wave of destructive spells.
The other dragons shifted the form of their breaths, replacing destructive beams with concentrated torrents of energy. The bronze dragons caught and absorbed these streams, gathering the power within their bodies and compressing it to its breaking point before releasing a devastating discharge downward.
This time the "dragonbreath" did not erupt from their maws. It blazed outward from their chests, where their scales had turned a molten red. Rings of condensed energy shimmered around each beam.
The instant the two forces met, a massive pulse of energy erupted. For a brief moment they were balanced, but the disparity became clear almost immediately. The dragons' amplified breaths were dispelled and dissipated.
Magic was not like wizardry. Wizardry was merely large-scale manipulation of the void, but magic could transmute elements, recycle mana, combine with itself, and synergize with various elemental affinities. Mana cost alone was not an accurate measure of a spell's strength.
The Utopia fielded tens of thousands of compatible spells whose combined output was multiplied in strength. In contrast, the dragons simply released their raw energy. Though the dragons' attack was more focused, simple energy could not match refined magic.
The spell barrage paused only for a heartbeat, then surged forward again. One eighth-tier spell accelerated the flow of time across a portion of the battlefield, instantly speeding up the entire barrage. Thousands of meters vanished in a blink.
"Forward!"
Silver light flashed around Wang Yu as Aurelian hurled him directly into the oncoming storm.
He stamped upon empty air, the recoil granting him monstrous acceleration. The Chariot's power surged, amplified by raging fighting spirit and boiling blood. Behind him, the host of black dragons roared and dove down, following him straight into the avalanche of magic.
Then came a thunderous detonation. Wang Yu's charge, backed by the black dragons behind him, clashed with the spellstorm and ripped the sky apart. The resulting shockwaves caused the mana in the vicinity to fizzle, only for it to be sucked back into the heart of the collision by the silhouette wreathed in a blaze of flames.
There was no time for any smoke to form; the shockwaves blew it away instantly. Through dimming brilliance, one could make out a vast, heavily cracked silver-white wall hurtling downwards, blocking spell after spell as it fell.
The wall was made of pure mithril. Mithril, save for rare and unnatural materials like that comprising the starsteel blade, was the strongest known anti-magic substance. It could block fifty to ninety percent of most magical effects, and had excellent durability besides—hence its exorbitant price.
But price meant nothing in this war. The united strength of every intelligent race on the continent had been marshaled. Money was all but meaningless. Avia's Seed of Eden now contained many outrageous contraptions. This mithril bulwark was one that she had just constructed and released.
The bronze dragons' combined breath had served only one purpose: to counter the most destructive spells in the first barrage, preventing the mithril wall from shattering too quickly before the dragons completed their dive.
Even so, a meter-thick mithril wall, pushed to its absolute limit, could not withstand such overwhelming magical force indefinitely. As Wang Yu and the black dragons pressed forward, driving the bulwark against the upward blast, it gradually began to splinter.
If not for the Chariot's power stabilizing the wall and preventing it from breaking apart, the wall would have disintegrated halfway through. Even so, this was it. No amount of patching could preserve it now. The mithril had not shattered—it had been completely unmade. Its very essence had been warped beyond recognition by destructive force.
The rest of the way would be carved open by Wang Yu and the four black dragons. The instant the mithril bulwark collapsed, they hurled themselves forward, their bodies so absurdly resilient that they alone held the line. With a legend's might, even bare flesh could stand against magic and wizardry.
Holding to their original speed, they cut through the torrent of sorcery like a blade cleaving through water, tearing open a path toward the dense ranks of the Utopia's spellcasters below. The onrushing black dragons, and the lone human who seemed almost insignificant among them, radiated an incredible aura.
But even the dragons could not endure forever. As they continued their dive, their scales began to crack. Their metallic sheen dimmed; fine fractures webbed across their hides. For all their monstrous strength, even they could not sustain a direct clash against such power for long.
"Almost there. Get ready!"
Wang Yu's shout rang out. The black dragons had fulfilled their role—they had made it another quarter of the way down toward the Utopia. That would be more than enough for the others. Wang Yu had been gathering a dense mass of mana with the Chariot on the way down; now, he tossed it at the Utopian spellcasters below.
A thunderous boom swept the sky. Dragonbreath rained down. Silver-edged slashes carved into the weaving barrage below, and the dragons that had been diving in Wang Yu's wake at last unleashed the breaths they had hoarded. The combined assault tore through Utopia's coordinated incantations.
"?"
Then, something faltered. The Utopia's seamless barrage of spells suddenly juddered as though a gear had jammed. Spells cut off mid-cast. Across a vast swath of the battlefield, casters found themselves unable to synchronize with those beside them; the chain-casting that sustained their onslaught collapsed in an instant. The dragons plowed through the breach and smashed into the ground unhindered.
This was, of course, Wang Yu's handiwork. One of his Chariot's powers, the Silent Hall, could lock down a wide tract of mana, creating an expansive anti-magic zone. But it had a flaw: the domain could not reach all casters below.
Following Avia's advice, he had instead gathered a colossal orb of mana, sealed it with the Chariot's power, and slammed it into the frontlines. The result was a vast region in a state of mana "oversaturation." Such mana entered a state of stagnancy and would need to be roused to be manipulated again.
Magicians could achieve such an effect with their mana vortices, but the sudden disruption meant a fatal delay in their defenses. The Utopia's flawless cooperative spellcraft relied on perfection; a single broken link shattered the entire chain.
He didn't even need to interrupt all the spellcasters. A fraction was enough. With a small tear in the weave, the entire tapestry would unravel.
And a momentary lull was all the dragons required.
They struck the earth with a resounding crash. Their power raged outward. Within the Chariot's Silent Hall, spellcasters were barred from magic, while the dragons cast freely. Side by side with the Church of Nightfall's vanguard, they tore into the sea of the Utopia's casters. The enemy's advantage in sheer numbers vanished in an instant.
Losses for the Utopia mounted at a terrifying pace as the dragons picked up the pace.
The casters had tried to teleport the dragons away with spatial spells even as they dove down, but such attempts were crushed the instant Avia and the silver dragon Aurelian locked space down. The Utopia's defensive measures were doomed to failure.
Explosions blossomed. Energy flared. Wang Yu strode through the battlefield like a walking anti-magic relic, enabling the dragons to reap their foes with ruthless efficiency.
"Wang Yu, there's someone..."
As Avia's voice brushed his ear, he turned. From one of Utopia's spires, a figure stepped out just as Wang Yu's gaze met his. It was an old acquaintance: the orc Emmon, an employee of the gnome Elliot. But now, they stood as enemies.
"And that," Wang Yu murmured, "is what I hate the most about Utopia."
Calm though his words might be, killing intent radiated through him.