Beneath the Red Dragon

“These damned bastards,” Duke Marino could not hold back his anger, “do they not understand that once Marino is breached by those ambitious monsters, the next ones to face them will be they themselves?”

“Even at a time like this, these short-sighted fools are still thinking about preserving their own strength?”

Giant Dragons were immensely powerful, especially in large-scale warfare; flocks of Giant Dragons were enough to destroy a Legion and breach a city.

Even in planar wars, Giant Dragons could serve as mainline Legions, sweeping across the vast majority of battlefields with unstoppable force.

Yet in the hands of Karon Gogomola, this mighty siege-breaking engine, this weapon of war, had completely changed its role.

Under the Imperial Dragon King’s segmented command, the Golden Empire’s Giant Dragons galloped through the skies, turning the transport arteries between the entire Marino Defense Line and other cities utterly upside down.

When the enemy advanced, they retreated; when the enemy retreated, they struck, never using the Dragons’ fleshly bodies to meet the defensive military works of those cities head-on, and perfectly exploiting the Dragons’ innate, all-round advantages.

The joint Giant Eagle Knights and Griffin Knights dispatched by the various countries had been trained since childhood; in fierce battle they could withstand the Dragon Power of the vast majority of Giant Dragons, and once blessed with Magic, they no longer feared the majesty of the Golden Empire’s Dragon Kings.

Yet even though the later-subdued Dragons of the Golden Empire could not maintain discipline as strict and orderly as that of the Imperial Legion Warriors, Giant Dragons remained undisputed Overlords of the sky.

These Giant Eagle Knights and Griffin Knights, who had originally been meant to pin down the Giant Dragon Corps and Flying Dragon Corps, could not even fulfill that role; on the aerial battlefield guarding the rear, they were completely crushed by the Giant Dragon Corps led by the Dragon Kings.

What was more, the Chimera Corps and Two-legged Flying Dragon Beast Corps secretly cultivated by the Noble Alliance were, in their very first engagement, surrounded and slain to the last by the six Red Dragons led by the Golden Empire’s Red King Kleyna and the three hundred Flying Dragon Riders led by Flying Dragon Commander Batorri, their entire Corps structure shattered.

Among them, the male Red Dragon Kedelos, a young Red Dragon acclaimed as the “Deep Red Roar,” fought until he was utterly deranged, chasing the remnants of the aerial battle corps that fled back toward the Marino Defense Line all the way to the city’s outskirts; with a single Breath, he incinerated twenty Griffin Knights to ash under the gaze of the masses.

If this nearly mature male Red Dragon had not had one of his wings shot off by the Alchemy weapon known as the “Starlight-plucking” Amat’s Tooth, this crazed Red Dragon might well have attempted to assault Dorabi City alone.

The Southern Nobles had once sent Legendary Powerhouses to try to lure and slay these rampaging Giant Dragons, but although the Golden Empire’s Dragon Kings could not confront true Legendary Powerhouses head-on, they could, relying on Magic as elusive and ever-changing as a phantom and on agile mobility, tangle with the Legends and pin them down.

Particularly a Dragon of Eternal Punishment named Liam, previously obscure, who used such quasi-spatial Magic as the Realm of Eternal Punishment and the Magic Maze to hold off two Legendary Powerhouses at the same time.

Though this adult Eternal Punishment Dragon was beaten by the Legendary Powerhouses to the brink of death, his name from that day on spread far and wide.

From then on, the Southern Noble Alliance’s aerial forces rarely dared step beyond the vicinity of the entire defensive line to independently face the Northern Eight Kings’ Aerial Legions, and only dared to circle above the cities and over the Marino Defense Line.

The aerial scout-recon units originally dispatched by the Southern Nobles were almost entirely swept from the sky, making it exceedingly difficult to learn the situation of the Eight Kings’ Alliance Army through their own reconnaissance.

Though the Legendary Powerhouses under these nobles did inflict certain losses on the Eight Kings’ combined aerial forces, they also made the Eight Kings’ Aerial Knights far more seasoned and cunning: coming and going like the wind, if a single strike missed, they would flee a thousand miles, leaving the Noble Alliance in bitter frustration.

Marino Duke Lorne was well aware of how difficult the situation was; what he had just said was nothing more than venting.

These Southern Nobles had never expected the Golden Empire to wage war in this fashion; in their eyes, Dragons would only, like Beasts, rely on their strength and massive bodies to charge heedlessly at a city’s defenses.

Because they had made no prior preparations, these nobles’ Legions had not even formally laid eyes on the Eight Kings’ Alliance Army before the situation of the war had already sunk into a quagmire.

Yet given a strategy like Karon Gogomola’s, even had they prepared in advance, the outcome would hardly have been much better than it was now.

These realms, where Nobility stood in profusion, had, due to their ancient institutions and civilization, never possessed a unified cultural identity or cohesion of Spirit.

But in the Eight Kings Alliance, from the very moment they gathered their forces to march, these nobles were compelled to move from a merely superficial economic and political union toward a truly deep fusion of military and politics.

In the Icaria World, many rulers of various states would strike at and struggle against their own interior, suppressing and exploiting their subjects, yet toward the outside they held a will to compromise, to negotiate, to communicate.

Karon Gogomola, however, was not such a ruler, nor such a Dragon.

Karon Gogomola’s temperament of “what he says, goes” was at this moment vividly displayed before the eyes of these Southern Nobles.

As the very first victim to bear the brunt, Marino Duke Lorne felt this most keenly.

Were Lorne not the target explicitly named by the Golden Empire for elimination, under such pressure this Duke might well have given rise to thoughts of surrendering to the Eight Kings’ Alliance Army.

With each passing day, the pressure weighing on Duke Marino’s heart grew heavier than the day before; the Golden Empire’s strategy of killing bodies and breaking hearts had already achieved half of its intended effect.

Duke Marino even now worried that, if the Golden Empire and the Legions of the Kings intended to drag the tempo of this war into a protracted rhythm, the entire Marino Duchy might well be dragged to ruin.