Just as she stepped deep into the alley,
“Hey, beauty, walking alone on the street late at night? Aren't you scared? How about accompanying us for a drink? Hehehe.”
Seeing the half-beastkin girl continuing forward without paying him any attention, it seemed the alcohol had gotten to his head.
“Bett, keep watch here first!”
As the burly man spoke, he and his other companion quickened their pace and lunged forward.
In the next instant, the half-beastkin girl moved.
No spells, no weapons—pure physical strikes.
A single kick struck the stomach of the lunging burly man. The man flew backward like a folded piece of metal.
The companion who had rushed up after him watched in shock as the man's nearly broken body flew over his head, freezing in his tracks.
But before he could even turn his head, the girl slammed a fierce straight punch into his chest.
Leather armor and ribs offered no resistance whatsoever, crumpling like tofu.
A bloody fist burst out from his back.
In the distance, Bett gaped at the terrifying scene, rendered speechless.
As the girl turned her head to look at him, her eyes were completely ice-cold.
A wave of warmth trickled down his crotch.
Sobering up instantly, Bett turned around and bolted out of the alley, sprinting toward the street where guards were still patrolling.
As he ran, he shrieked, “M-Monk, mercy...”
Before he could finish, a gust of wind whistled, and the girl's foot slammed into his back.
Bett's body tumbled across the ground like a rolling snowball before flopping flat. With his spine shattered and internal organs crushed, he grew still.
Right ahead lay the main thoroughfare, brightly lit and echoing with faint voices.
...
Scale Shedding Transformation—shedding dragon scales to take the form of another creature while retaining a portion of physical attributes.
This was a divine spell exclusive to chromatic dragon priests. It was no ordinary mage's polymorph spell, but an ability granted by Tiamat.
Seria's subclass was Monk. With Red Dragon Priest as her primary class, combined with the retained attributes from her transformation, she still possessed overwhelmingly superior stats compared to other creatures of the same tier.
However, the anti-flight formation restricted her far too much, not to mention that witch.
Glancing at the corpses on the ground, she did not linger, continuing to move through the night.
Relying on a Red Dragon Priest's sensitivity to magic power, she finally located the crucial node of the anti-flight formation beneath a deserted tower.
“Hmm, two more rats.” Her powerful perception also allowed her to discover two Fifth-Tier rogues hiding in the shadows.
“Hey, a half-beastkin girl is coming over. I'll handle it.” Upstairs, a rogue hiding behind a window spotted her first and leaped out of the window.
“Don't go overboard, kid. We still have a job to do,” warned the rogue hiding behind the door downstairs.
“Yeah, yeah, I know. Who'd care about this dump anyway? We've been standing guard for ten straight days; I'm bored out of my mind.”
The rogue from the tower landed on the ground and walked briskly toward Seria.
The rogue downstairs didn't urge him further, resuming his duties.
One minute passed. Five minutes passed. Half an hour passed.
“Wait, he never takes this long. Something's wrong!”
Just as the rogue downstairs opened the tower door, a fair white fist crashed into his face.
“Is this the node for the anti-flight formation?”
Seria stepped into the tower. What met her eyes was a massive magic crystal embedded in a stone pedestal.
Right now, the magic crystal remained quiet. Once the formation was activated, magic power would continuously channel outward to maintain the anti-flight formation enveloping the entire city.
Seria had never studied anti-flight formations, nor did she know how to extract the crystal.
So she raised her right hand, clenched her five fingers, and wrapped her magical power alongside her Monk class battle qi around her fist, driving it downward in an instant.
“Bam!”
With a loud boom, the magic crystal at the center shattered into dust.
Then, she pulled out that magical crystal from her bosom:
“Everything here is taken care of. Move.”
...
High up in the sky, a dragon roar tore through the starry night.
A young male red dragon, twenty-three meters long with a thirty-meter wingspan, flapped its massive wings as it descended from the heavens, crushing houses beneath its feet.
Flames spewed from its maw, and the first to bear the brunt of the attack was naturally Viscount Cullen's manor.
A single dragon breath tore through the main castle building of the Viscount's manor. The Viscount and the dragon-hunting party, who had still been discussing how to lure the red dragon into attacking the city, fled for their lives from the collapsing castle.
Looking back at the destruction, the dragon-hunting party leader roared at Viscount Cullen, “Cullen! This isn't a red dragon that just entered young adulthood at all! You lied to me!”
The blazes of the Viscount's manor illuminated the red dragon's massive form.
Gazing up, its scales were thick and crimson like molten iron, its bone spikes crisscrossed ferociously, and its physique far surpassed that of a red dragon that had newly reached young adulthood.
The red dragon raised its foreclaws, its chest contracted, and its head aimed directly toward the dragon-hunting party.
“Dodge!”
The leader shouted hastily, warning his team members.
The party members scattered frantically just as another blast of dragon breath rained down. The slower shield warrior felt the enchanted tower shield strapped to his back glow a faint red from the heat.
“We can't run! This is an Eighth-Tier red dragon! Everyone, form up!”
The moment the leader spoke, everyone took their positions as they had practiced countless times.
The heavily armored shield warrior stepped forward, thrusting a fire-resistant enchanted tower shield before him. A magical glow radiated from the shield surface as he braced to take the brunt of the head-on blast.
The Eighth-Tier swordsman stayed behind the shield warrior, dragon-slaying greatsword in hand, watching for an opening—especially during the dragon's breath wind-up or claw recoil.
In the rear, the priest rapidly chanted a prayer, enveloping the entire team in a pale-golden fire resistance blessing while bestowing an additional blessing on the shield warrior to resist physical impacts.
The mage hastily raised a hand, chanting incantations for weaken spells, slow spells, and bind spells in rapid succession.
The elven archer darted into the shadows of a building, keeping her eyes glued to the dragon, watching its fiery red eyes and relatively soft underbelly to land a critical strike at the first opportunity.
Viscount Cullen began directing the manor's servants and guards to evacuate or assist with harrying attacks.
Lacking experience against dragons, he could offer no direct aid.
Yet before such a formidable opponent, all of this was nothing more than futile struggle.
Seeing this, the red dragon Lesa began to grow excited.
“How interesting! I thought there'd be some powerful foe that prompted Little Seria to seek me out for a deal, but it's just you few little bugs!”
“What a bargain! What a bargain! Hahaha!”
With that, the red dragon didn't bother engaging the party directly. Beating its massive wings, the gale-force wind whipped up dust and flames, nearly obscuring the party's field of vision.
Soaring into the sky, the red dragon unleashed a continuous barrage of dragon breath down upon the party and the people of the Viscount's manor.
The mage's debuff spells were virtually useless against this red dragon, whose tier exceeded expectations and whose magic resistance was sky-high.
“Dammit, what about the anti-flight formation? Why hasn't it been activated yet? Cullen, what on earth did you arrange?!”
Unable to suppress his rage any longer, the leader roared at Viscount Cullen.
Suppressed constantly by the airborne red dragon, the party members didn't even have a chance to cast spells or use martial techniques.
“Hold out a little longer! I've already notified the Adventurers' Guildmaster and the witch! Their reinforcements should be arriving soon!”
Having just dodged a burst of dragon breath, the Viscount hastily explained.
...
Meanwhile, at the western city gate, the guards had already raised the drawbridge and closed the city gates tight.
Yet the area inside the gate was packed with people. They had heard the spell explosions coming from the city center and seen the raging flames towering into the sky.
Something big must have happened inside the city.
Residents and adventurers unwilling to be caught in the crossfire crowded around the gate, demanding that the guards open up and let them out.
“No way! Kingdom law dictates that without special permission, leaving the city at night is forbidden!”
Trembling, the guard spoke while staring at the firelight in the city center.
If he let them out and the Viscount held him accountable afterward, he would definitely be sent to the wilds to fight monsters—and he didn't want to die.
Rate on N.U.
