Dragarion’s first decision was simple: completely avoid everything, even the trap they had prepared with the most powerful to stop him.
Very much in Dragarion’s style...
"If they want a war of attrition it’s fine," he murmured, accelerating toward the enormous purple crystal already visible on the ground, " but they’ll have to catch me first."
His plan was equally direct: use his superior speed to break through enemy lines before they could react, reach the crystal, and end everything before the sextuples could even touch him.
It was, again, a very characteristic strategy: direct confrontation backed by overwhelming power.
But Coleoran had anticipated exactly that line of thinking.
The enemy King’s Nian manifested first, and immediately Dragarion knew something had changed in it.
This wasn’t the monstrous armored lion he had faced before. This was something that belonged to a new rank... a corrupt one.
The fusion had corrupted the base beast to make it more terrible. The leonine body was still there, yes, but now it was intertwined with the segmented exoskeleton of a gigantic scorpion whose chelicerae in a disproportionately large mouth dripped purple venom.
Worse still, the extremely long translucent tentacles of a superior gold-rank man o’ war emerged from its mane, each one pulsing with abyssal energy that made the air itself feel heavy and viscous.
"Everyone, activate paralysis!" Coleoran absorbed his fully fused beast and roared, his voice distorted by the fusion.
The effect of the lion’s roar was immediate in his voice and slightly unexpected.
It wasn’t the old magical paralysis that Dragarion could resist with brute force. This was different, more insidious. Taking advantage of his now lower speed, the absorption tentacles filtered through his defenses like water through a net, not attacking his body but his draconic power itself.
Dragarion felt his speed drastically reduced, as if he were flying through thick honey.
His muscles responded, but the dragons’ power seemed to be... muffled. The connection between will and manifestation had become sluggish, imprecise.
Clever, he thought with genuine admiration even while struggling more and more against the effect. They’re not trying to paralyze my body completely. They’re trying to reduce my speed and my access to power first.
The strategy revealed deep understanding of how dragon essence functioned. Rather than opposing it directly, they were disrupting the flow, creating interference in the channels that connected his will to the energy.
And that was just the beginning...
Coleoran’s Royal Winged Basilisk activated next, and this fusion was equally efficient.
The massive serpentine body was now inhabited by two contradictory spirits: one of pure light that blazed like a miniature sun, and another of absolute darkness that seemed to absorb surrounding light. Chaos.
The combination created a nauseating strobe effect. Blinding light alternating with impenetrable darkness at rapid and unpredictable intervals.
Each flash was accompanied by a wave of magical disorientation that attacked the nervous system directly.
The sensory assault was more than just visual, it targeted the fundamental ways his enhanced perception interpreted reality.
Not just the petrifying eyes, the entire Basilisk now seemed specialized in freezing movement... the creature hissed, its voice resonating with supernatural harmonics.
Dragarion felt his sense of direction beginning to fail. Up and down became relative concepts. His spatial navigation disintegrated momentarily under the sensory assault.
Still, it wasn’t enough to stop him, he was ready to squeeze more from the diamond power...
But then Ravenspire acted.
His three-legged crow had always been an impressive beast, but the fusion with the gold-rank darkness spirit and an abyssal man o’ war had transformed it into something that defied the description of beast and brought it closer to a cosmic horror.
The wings and their feathers now ended in small claws that seemed capable of expanding beyond reality itself in a dark illusion, while long tentacles extended from that same darkness, each ready to drain energy from everything it touched.
"Obscure Field!" Ravenspire declared, extending his arms.
The space around Dragarion immediately became an expanded spatial trap in the crows’ wings.
Invisible tentacles extended in all directions, creating a net that not only slowed movement but also actively suctioned his power. It was like flying through a swamp that fed on magic.
’This is kinda bad,’ he realized with growing urgency. ’I didn’t expect they had developed such specific synergies with such annoying characteristics of their beasts... The most exasperating characteristics, very much like Yino.’
’How efficiently am I using this energy?’ he wondered, feeling how the power flowed through him in a way he hadn’t completely optimized.
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