A Timely Rescue

A vast halo rose from the Chimera's enormous, charred remains and poured into Liu Qian's body.

He looked deep into his consciousness, his eyelids twitching:

Dragon Spirit: 4.8%

Magic Power: 10112/48550

Fifteen thousand points of Dragon Spirit!

That was a full five thousand more than the ten thousand Dragon Spirit points he had gained from killing the Purple Monster Bird.

But this Chimera was clearly smaller and weaker than the Purple Monster Bird. Why had it yielded more Dragon Spirit?

The question circled in his mind.

Liu Qian suspected it had something to do with that eerie black stone.

The Chimera had undergone some special evolution beside the Black Stone. Though interrupted, it had, in a sense, reached a higher tier than the Purple Monster Bird.

Liu Qian could not help feeling relieved that he had interrupted the process in time. He hardly dared imagine how powerful the Chimera would have become after completing its evolution.

He lingered no longer, turning his massive body toward the edge of the High Tower.

His wings beat hard, churning up fierce winds as he dived toward the city thousands of feet below.

He broke through the final layer of gray-white mist, and a vision of hell rushed up to meet him.

Unlike the scene he had witnessed upon arriving, Tyria was now steeped in blood and fire.

Severed limbs lay scattered like broken dolls across the white marble avenue. Shattered heads had rolled into corners, their hollow eye sockets staring at the blood-red sky.

Shock gripped Liu Qian. His gaze swept across the scene. It was those Scaleclaw Monsters!

They crouched over corpses that had yet to cool, thrusting barbed tongues into skulls they had pried open. Their sucking noises made his scalp crawl as they lapped up the thick fluid inside.

The air was saturated with the stench of blood and the foul reek of entrails.

The entire city was burning, groaning, sinking into death and despair.

Liu Qian's gaze swept like a cold probe over the broad steps descending from the base of the High Tower.

Those, too, had become a slaughterhouse.

Several young wizards in gray robes had been disemboweled, their intestines dragged out and their skull cavities exposed in a red-and-white mess. Thick fluid trickled through the cracks between the steps, collecting in a small, nauseating puddle.

Liu Qian's draconic eyes swept over them. There was no pity in his golden slit pupils, only indifference.

These lackeys of Osarion had met the deaths they deserved.

His gaze moved upward, and a scarlet figure higher on the steps caught his attention.

It was Jelena.

Like a blood-drenched statue of red copper, she stood firmly planted on the last few steps leading to the High Tower's doors, shielding Janice behind her.

The longsword in her hand blazed with fire. Every slash traced a scorching arc of death, driving back or cutting apart the Scaleclaw Monsters lunging at her.

Her scarlet armor, covered in ancient runes, shone with a dazzling red light. It kept the monsters' sharp claws and fangs at bay, allowing them to leave only blackened scratches across its plates.

But there were too many monsters.

Like sharks scenting blood, they knew neither fear nor exhaustion, surging up wave after wave from the mountain of corpses and sea of blood below.

They shrieked shrilly, throwing themselves fearlessly at that lone patch of scarlet.

Jelena's movements grew visibly heavy and sluggish.

Every swing of her sword came with a harsh, painful gasp.

Sweat mingled with blood, dripping steadily from the lower edge of her helmet.

Her armor was not seamless. The joints and the gaps around her neck had become targets for the monsters' claws.

Fresh wounds kept appearing. Blood seeped through those gaps, soaking the lining red.

She could feel her strength draining rapidly, her vision blurring from exhaustion and blood loss.

"Gah-!"

An uncontrollable, violent cough burst from beneath her visor. Blood instantly stained the metal mesh inside and dripped from its edges.

"Sister!" Janice's heart-rending cry rang out behind Jelena, filled with despair and helplessness.

She clutched the belt at her sister's waist, her small body shaking violently from fear and the horrors she had witnessed. Her face was spattered with filthy blood, whether from the monsters or Jelena, she could not tell.

"Go!" Jelena's hoarse voice squeezed out from behind her bloodstained visor, every word carrying the metallic reek of bloody foam. "Now... hurry! Find a ship at the harbor and go to Oros..."

She swung her sword with all her strength, forcing back the nearest Scaleclaws to give her sister a sliver of an opening.

But Janice shook her head desperately, tears cutting tracks through the blood on her face. "No! I won't go! Even if I die, I'm staying with you!"

Jelena looked into her sister's deep violet eyes, so much like her own, and saw reckless determination burning within them.

For an instant, scalding tears spilled from her eyes, always as cold as solid ice, and slid down mingled with blood.

She said nothing more. She merely used the last of her strength to draw her sister farther behind her.

Jelena tightened her grip on the scorching sword hilt. Her cold violet eyes fixed on the renewed tide of Scaleclaws, holding nothing now but the resolve to fight until her last breath.

Just then, a dragon's roar powerful enough to tear souls apart and shake the earth thundered from the sky burning with blood and fire, like a horn from ancient times!

A torrent of destruction followed.

Golden dragonfire poured from the heavens like the molten core of the sun, engulfing precisely the crowded steps in front of Jelena.

The flames roared, instantly swallowing the dozens of Scaleclaws at the front.

The terrifying heat made the air shriek under the strain. The stone steps glowed red and cracked apart in the flames.

The monsters writhed and rolled in the golden inferno, letting out death screams sharp enough to pierce eardrums. Within moments, they became charred bones and drifting ash.

A searing blast of air crashed toward them like a tsunami, carrying the promise of burning everything to nothing.

At the sight, Jelena spun around and sheltered Janice beneath her broad breastplate and encircling arms, using her own body and armor as a shield.

The scorching gale whipped up the silver-gold hair spilling from her armor, instantly singeing and curling its ends. Her skin burned with fierce pain, but she did not budge, pressing her sister's head and face firmly against her chest.

The wind howled, sweeping ash and broken stone from the ground.

A shadow that blotted out the sky abruptly descended over the blood-soaked steps.

With a tremendous crash as heavy as a falling meteor, rubble flew and dust billowed. A Great Dragon over ten meters long, covered in majestic, magnificent golden scales, landed before them.

The cold stone ground groaned and shattered beneath the Great Dragon's claws.

Jel-

-ena lifted her head with difficulty. Through the bloodstained mesh of her visor, the towering golden figure was reflected in her Ice Purple eyes.

Beside her, Janice struggled to peek out as well. Her equally violet eyes opened wide, filled with utter shock and a trace of scarcely believable familiarity.

"Get on!"

The Great Dragon's roar was deep and commanding, cutting through the crackle of flames and the monsters' dying wails to strike clearly in the sisters' ears.

Jelena froze, her mind blank.

A talking dragon?

Was this a hallucination as she lay dying?

"It's you, Liu Qian!" Janice realized, a note of excitement in her voice.

Liu Qian, now in the form of a Golden Dragon, gave a slight nod.

At the same time, his cold golden slit pupils swept the lower steps, sharp as blades.

There, more Scaleclaws, having wiped out the other wizards' resistance, hissed like a vast ant swarm scenting fresh flesh. They gathered into a filthy torrent, trampling the charred remains of humans and their own kind as they surged madly up the steps again.

There was nothing in their eyes but slaughter. They felt no awe toward the Great Dragon that had just descended, only a frenzied urge to attack.

"Hurry!"

Liu Qian's voice rang out again, pounding against Jelena's racing heart.

The instinct to survive overwhelmed her shock and confusion.

Gritting her teeth, Jelena summoned the last of her strength, took Janice's hand, and climbed up over the thick base of the Great Dragon's wing.

The scales on his back were scorching, like red-hot branding irons. Even through her armor, she could feel their astonishing heat.

The sisters had only just crouched low and grabbed the protruding spines on the Golden Dragon's neck.

Whoosh-!

The enormous golden wings beat fiercely, whipping up a small storm.

Powerful lift instantly carried them away from the blood-soaked steps and into the air above the city.

Below them, the devastation of Tyria lay exposed in full.

Carrying the sisters, Liu Qian began gliding low along the central marble avenue, once prosperous but now piled with monsters and corpses.

The Great Dragon lowered his head slightly, his golden slit pupils locking onto the dense mass of Scaleclaws below, their heads raised as they shrieked.

His jaws opened, destructive golden light gathering deep in his throat.

The next moment, a dazzling pillar of golden fire erupted like molten gold.

Dragonfire fell from the sky like thick, scorching liquid gold, pouring violently over the heads of the monsters packed below.

The intensely hot flames instantly surged upward, spreading wildly along the avenue.

The burning monsters became humanoid torches, rolling frantically amid shrill, desperate screams as they tried to extinguish the flames clinging to them like maggots to bone.

Within a few breaths, the entire broad avenue became a surging, roaring river of pale golden fire.

The golden firelight illuminated the sky, which had grown ever darker with thick smoke, gilding the entire dying city in a cruel layer of gold.