Inside the target cart, the enticed dragon found a group of goats, quickly deducing that they were a breed specially made for food, not wild ones like she originally hoped.
She would have preferred it if they were wild, as their flesh tasted better than these skinny, grass-fed things. Still, her mouth couldn't stop watering, the ground beneath her sizzling and smoking due to saliva dripping from her hungry maw.
She scanned the frightened goats with her eyes and nose, concluding that only one had the scent of Dragondrunk Fruit on it. She didn't expect to find any of those tasty fruits outside dragon valley, and on a goat much less.
Those delicacies might be small and harmless to other creatures, but when dragons like her ingested them, it made them see things that weren't there and left them absolutely sloshed.
It was one of the rare and ultimate highs they could obtain due to their robust physiques fighting off pretty much any and everything else. As such, almost every dragon cliff or valley had a bunch of trees that produced these fruits planted nearby.
Wanting to taste the absolute goodness and escape from her depressing reality if even for a moment, the supremely motivated Rissana singled out the culprit goat, broke open the cart, and pounced on it.
Unlike her normal way of feasting where she'd pin her food down and take her sweet time, she swallowed the unlucky herbivore in one gulp and started chewing, the familiar taste of blood and the tasty fruit hitting her long tongue instantly.
She closed her eyes to savor the delicious goodness and awaited the approaching high, only to notice another foreign substance besides the goat's blood and the fruit.
Her eyes snapped open when she lost feeling in her tongue right then, the void spreading from her mouth deep into her body and extremities. In seconds, she lost strength in all her limbs, her massive body crashing onto the square with a loud boom.
Taking that as a signal, the observing and ecstatic Adepts rushed from the noble mansion and descended on the powerless dragon like lightning, Greem and Mary being the first to arrive with their weapons at the ready.
Capitalizing on her speed and momentum, the eager vampire held her sword straight with both hands and slammed its tip into the paralysed creature's side, earning sparks and a scuffed scale for her efforts.
Not bothering to attack the behemoth's emerald defenses like his lover, Greem slowed to a stop and retracted his wings before letting Allerdyce, now in sword form, hover for a moment.
His fears and knowledge of the impressive nature of a dragon's scales confirmed by Mary's fruitless attack, he placed both palms on the creature's side and pushed.
As though she didn't weigh enough to crush a fully grown man to paste by simply stepping on him, Rissana had no input in the matter as Greem rolled her onto her side, exposing her chest and abdomen.
A dragon's scales had levels of resistance to physical and magical effects that were matched by only a few creatures in existence. This was especially so for places on its body where they were larger, thicker, and more concentrated, like their spines, and sides.
Without truly sufficient force, magic with hidden, mixed, or exotic effects, you could forget about doing substantial damage to these overgrown lizards.
However, if you could target the areas below their bodies like their throats, chests, and abdomens, it was possible to go past the thinner and lighter scales found there. And that's exactly what Greem and Mary did after he flipped their prey over.
Mary attempted another stab and failed like the first time, but instead of pulling away, she held the sword tip there with her connection to it and spun it, adding her blood control to the mix to turn Alucard into a makeshift drill.
While she burrowed past the scales into the body, Greem grabbed the shortened shaft of Allerdyce and triggered its main enchantments, turning its edge a hot white that would have been blinding and blistering were the heat not so tightly controlled.
Unlike Mary who needed to improvise, his simple act of stabbing buried the blade hilt deep into the dragon, its scales, tough skin, and cordlike muscles proving no resistance to the blade's sharp, superheated edges.
With Meat Vision's guidance, he could perfectly see the kind of havoc he and his lover were wreaking on the dragon's insides, Mary's sword having finally gone past its skin and now in the process of sucking it dry.
Alucard might as well be a vacuum seeing as how its owner used it as a focal and storage point for the copious amount of dense, energy rich blood being suctioned ferociously.
From what he could observe and his calculations, Greem estimated the dragon running out of its lifeblood in about five minutes. And they had only three minutes to finish it off, Ferrier's poison only lasting that long.
The potion focused Adept was good… but not that good. This was a dragon after all. If they didn't slay or grievously wound it in these three minutes, they could say their last goodbyes.
Greem could prevent all that by simply removing the impossibly tight leash on Allerdyce's edge and let the scorching heat roast the lizard's insides. It would not last a minute under that kind of assault.
Not even dragons could swallow the sun… or at least something with its surface temperature. A Second Grade Fire dragon probably could, but our dear Rissana was a poison dragon. She would cook.
However, doing that would reveal he had in his possession something capable of killing entities of higher grades. It would make the eyes already trained on him more focused and greedier, something he didn't need nor want.
Plus, if he set the dragon's insides on fire right now, Mary would lose all that powerful blood, and all this would be a waste. So he simply pulled out the sword, harvested a few of those impressive, bowl sized emerald scales before dialing down the heat to acceptable levels.
Right after, he started to make a show of attacking the exposed underside repeatedly and a ball of black smoke landed beside him and dissipated to reveal Keoghan, Ferrier with her cyan fairy wings right behind him.
Both of them wasted no words and dived right into the thick of things.
Ferrier remained in the air far out of Rissana's reach and pulled potion vial after potion vial from her numerous waist pouches, tossing them onto the dragon's immobile form with expert precision.
They each broke apart upon arrival, their contents shifting into a collective mass of grey smoke that crawled over the dragon's body like a carpet, collapsing on itself and then expanding repeatedly like a lung or an abomination from the deep sea.
Wherever it swam by on the giant lizard, the smoke reduced the scales it came into contact with from their bright green vibrancy into a lead-grey and then a sickly white.
Robbed of their powerful defensive properties, the scales no longer held back the living smoke and unwillingly allowed it passage to the "tender" flesh beneath, overlaying the dragon's faint moans with the horrid sizzle of flesh.
Ferrier saw this and tossed three more vials, her aim true as they shattered on the dragon's large head, curved horns, and its spiny and thorny back.
Since most of its defenses had been dealt with, the curses stored in the potions managed to take root in its body, the maroon halos flashing over its limp form confirming this.
And even though its powerful physique fought back and actually nullified the worst of the curses, some of their effects managed to slip through and take root, its urgent moans slowing to a lull.
While all this took place, Mary's thralls engaged the guards stationed around the square, their collective tiny bat forms descending on the silvery armored knights like a black tide.
They made short work of the nearby guards, the three first Grades among them being integral to this speedy success. However, the commotion and noise, plus Rissana's gradually intensifying roars, drew more and more of the guards and knights to the square.
This resulted in repeated clashes between the two groups, each successive battle ending in a bloodbath that saw the vampires victorious.
A loud bestial cry suddenly echoed through the night, Rissana's distressing call for aid moving far past the square and deeper into the city, where it roused many from their slumber.
Looking at the dragon who somehow scraped the bottom of her empty strength barrel to unleash this cry, it wasn't hard to determine the main motivator that spurred her on.
Within the incision Greem made into Rissana on his first attack, Keoghan had stuck his hand in there, the spells of Sharpening and Hardening being the only reasons why he was able to force his arm in wrist-deep.
Ignoring the greenish purple blood that ate away at his skin and flesh, the corpse weaving Adept let out a low shout and through some unknown means, shifted his entire arm into a green grey tentacle.
Using it as a medium, he dumped all sorts of uniquely engineered and dangerous pathogens into the wailing dragon's body, showing everyone present exactly the kind of atrocities Adepts could bring to life in their laboratories.
Rissana's body began to swell and shrink in random places like a balloon being squeezed, the surface of her giant body undulating like the surface of the ocean. Greem could barely keep from grimacing at the sight Meat Vision fed him.
Bones, flesh, and organs were not supposed to behave like that. He could almost feel the dragon's agony.
Perhaps unable to bear the pain any longer or feeling death wrap its icy hands around her soul, Rissana summoned every ounce of will and went all out, channeling every ounce of strength that wasn't there into one last roar.
All the attacking Adepts had no input in the matter as they paused their actions, their bones, minds and souls rattled just like the very air in their vicinity as the female dragon's aura of might washed over them and the city.
Even Greem with his soul defense artifact was affected by the stunning attack, his only saving grace being that his various essences and the artifact allowed him to recover much faster than the others.
When he finally came to his senses a few seconds later, he sensed a powerful aura in the distance, and a quick glance there showed the sun… or something with a similar level of radiance rushing towards the square.
Zipping over to Mary's side, he yanked her sword free and picked her up in a bridal carry, his status as the sword's crafter allowing him to control it easily.
Unfurling his wings and firing up his booster, he glanced at Ferrier who'd lost control of her wings and crashed, and Keoghan who stopped grinding the dragon's insides to mush and simply stood there like a loon.
He channeled lifeforce into his mind control ring and sent a burst of pure mental energy to the duo, waking them up from their stun-locked states before cranking up the booster and blasting away from the square.
By now, the source of the approaching radiance had become visible. It was a human-shaped silhouette to the mortal onlookers, but to every Adept present, that was a Dragon Knight. A Third Grade entity.
Shaken to his core by the helplessness in his mount's cries, the knight ignored everything in way and simply blasted through them, be it the homes or shops of people. Nothing stood in the way of his screaming charge.
Unfortunately for him, it was all for naught. For all his power, the knight was pitifully slow… compared to the Adepts at least.
Under his watchful and unwilling gaze, Keoghan turned into a ball of black smoke that sped away from the square into the distance while Ferrier summoned her fairy wings once more and soared away in the same direction.
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Author's note:
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