A loud shriek comes from the bone dragon, enough to obliterate multiple crystal spikes in one go. The sound was piercing, a physical force that shattered the very air around them.
It flaps its wings, shooting several black waves toward Esdeath and Maruti. The attack was fast, way faster than any other beast or monster they had faced. The waves of dark energy cut through the air like blades, leaving trails of distortion in their wake.
They both jumped opposite to each other, barely dodging the multiple attacks. They could clearly sense that the bone dragon was actually going easier on them, not considering them a serious threat. It was just playing around, toying with its prey.
"It's good then. Underestimating us will eventually lead it to its fall," Esdeath thought to herself, running around. She couldn't afford to stay in one place; staying still meant death.
Every bone dragon had high affinity with the dark element. Death aura was covering its whole body like a shadow or halo. Also, it seemed to be bending reality a bit, like a magnet.
The magnetic field was causing Esdeath to be pulled toward it, a constant force tugging at her body. Although for some reason, Maruti was clearly immune to it, making her situation quite better.
Although Maruti was in her own thoughts.
Yes, it was a life and death situation. None of them could afford to distract themselves for even a second, but the remembrance was quite a surprise to her.
The sudden attack from a dragon causing her life to be in a life and death situation—it felt quite familiar.
Didn't something similar happened when she was on her academic mission?
And all of a sudden, she shouted.
"Dragon Heart!" Maruti shouted, her voice cutting through the chaos of the battle.
"What?" Esdeath asked back, she didn't understand what she was trying to say. Her focus was on dodging another wave of dark energy.
"The dragon heart, I have it," Maruti shouted, making sure that Esdeath heard it clearly over the roaring of the dragon and the howling wind.
Esdeath's eyes widened for a second and then a small grimace formed on her expression. "You!" She really wanted to punch her in the face.
If she had it all this time, then why couldn't she tell her earlier? The frustration was palpable, but she pushed it down, focusing on the immediate danger.
Controlling her urge to punch her, a flicker of smile emerged on her face. "Well, it's a good thing then. Now we can change the plans,"
Maruti dodged one more attack by a fraction of a second and asked, "What?"
At that moment, somehow Maruti already got the answer as she saw Esdeath turn around.
"Run!" she shouts, her voice urgent and clear.
Maruti grits her teeth. She didn't want to run, at least not before breaking a few bones of it. The thought of retreating without a fight felt quite disappointing.
Not like she has any choice against Esdeath in this situation.
"Why are we running? Don't you want that Rank A essence stone?" Maruti asked, although she had to keep her tone high because of all the noises the bone dragon was making.
"Of course I need it, but not right now. You know what a bone dragon is, right? Fighting it straight away is too risky, especially now that you have a dragon heart. I'm not desperate to fight this thing," Esdeath answered back, her voice calm despite the chaos around them.
Of course Maruti knew what a bone dragon was... a legendary creature. Even among S ranks, legendary creatures were always on top.
There were only four of them: either a mature bone dragon or a mature fallen dragon, the Great Serpent of Hollow Space, or The Abomination.
Lastly, the Cosmic Tuna Fish—the same Cosmic Tuna Fish whose pupils were used to make Esdeath's wedding ring.
Even among them, the Cosmic Tuna Fish is considered the hardest to kill, since one has to dive deeper into the oceans to find it.
And fighting a monarch of the ocean inside water and actually defeating it? It's deadly even for S ranks.
So actually gifting a ring made of Cosmic Tuna Fish's eyes, which she personally hunted without any external help.
Lortell was clearly flexing on Esdeath and the whole world.
"Urgh... fuck it, run then," Maruti sighs, increasing her pace even more. The frustration was clear in her voice, but she knew Esdeath was right.
But at that moment, the magnetic pull of the bone dragon seemed to slow down.
Esdeath turned around to see and saw that the frenzied bone dragon was just hovering in the air, not continuing its pursuit. Its purple fires in its eye sockets flickered, as if sensing something else.
If anyone else was here, they would smile in joy at their sudden escape, but Esdeath's expression turned grim.
Because the bone dragon sensed something which they didn't. Something that had captured its attention more than two fleeing warriors.
All of a sudden, silent cracks appeared in the air like reality itself was breaking apart. A hundred or so meters away from Esdeath, something huge came out of thin air, as if tearing through the very fabric of space.
A huge leviathan-like creature emerged. Its scales were like onyx armor—polished, tough, and ancient looking. The jaw was wide, showing its formidable fangs, each one as large as a sword.
The serpent was about the same size as the bone dragon, hissing continuously. The sound was low and menacing, like a promise of death.
But luckily, its eyes were locked on the bone dragon, not them. The same went for the bone dragon as well, its purple fires fixed on the newcomer.
"To meet two of the four legendary creatures? How unlucky. Didn't we kill that slave already?" Esdeath gritted her teeth, stomping her foot on the ground in frustration. The sound was lost in the chaos around them.
Who knows what would happen if both of them attacked her and Maruti? The situation would turn from deadly to terrible in an instant.
But at the same time, her eyes widened again as another realization hit her like a bolt of lightning.
She remembered that when she looked through her fingers, as if clicking a photo of those Awakened and slaves, there was something else captured in her gaze.
The ground.
The very ground beneath them.
Turns out that this ground itself had turned very unlucky, and the situation would turn terrible for anyone who would be here. The same went for Esdeath and Maruti, who ended up facing a bone dragon, and the bone dragon to face the Great Serpent, a creature of equal level.
Esdeath immediately turns to Maruti, "We need to leave immediately," she says, grabbing her hand. Her grip was tight, urgent.
She was trying to use her affinity with the space element to teleport away. Of course, taking someone with her was quite exhausting and very hard, but she didn't think about anything else. Even if it's just a few hundred meters, or even a hundred meters, she wanted to get away from that particular land as far away as possible.
Her body glitched slightly, the air around her shimmering for a moment, but she was still there. Nothing happened at all.
She didn't need a second to realize what was happening.
The presence of the Great Serpent was causing her teleportation to fail. After all great serpent was a space type beast.
"Forget it, just run," Esdeath shouts, her voice cutting through the noise.
With the Great Serpent in front of them and the bone dragon behind, they could only run toward the side, trying to escape the crossfire of two legendary creatures.
At the same time, a horrific hiss came from the Great Serpent, followed by the loud shriek of the bone dragon.
The fight between two legendary creatures was starting. The very air crackled with energy, the ground trembling beneath their feet.
The aura of both S ranks clashed, causing nearby creatures to turn into bloody meat paste in an instant. The pressure was immense, enough to crush lesser beings without even touching them.
At the same time, the ground shook, and several bony hands came from beneath, eventually revealing their figures one by one.
It was a dead skeleton army. The whole horde ran toward the Great Serpent. Some were tiny, some were huge. Some holding swords or spears, while many had bodies of monsters and beasts. The variety was endless, the number overwhelming.
The surrounding desert had suddenly turned into a sea of skeleton army. Bones stretched as far as the eye could see, a tide of death rising from the sand.
Of course, Esdeath and Maruti were caught in the sea as well, trapped between the two legendary creatures and the army of the dead.
Esdeath turned her ZK-20 into a scythe, splitting skeleton's heads apart with swift, precise movements. Meanwhile, Maruti crushed their bones with her bare hands, marching their way through the crowd of skeletons. Her strength was immense, each blow shattering bone into dust.
They were not the main target, so it wasn't like the whole army was upon them. That would have been a quite dire situation, even for them.
Most of the army ran toward the Great Serpent, led by the bone dragon, while a few of them were eating the flesh of the dead slaves and Awakeneds, their jaws cracking as they crunched through bone and tissue.
Then, the Great Serpent curled its body and raised its tail high in the air. The movement was slow, deliberate, building tension with every passing second.
SWISH!...
The tail directly shot toward the ground like a spring and then—DHAMMMMM!
The whole ground shook violently. A huge quarter of the skeleton army got shattered in a second, while most of it got sent flying through the air like broken dolls.
Even Maruti and Esdeath weren't spared. The ground beneath them disappeared, swallowed by the force of the impact.
They were thrown away about three hundred meters from them in one go, their bodies tumbling through the air uncontrollably.
Their bodies collided and rubbed against the ground, but they eventually regained their balance, landing on their feet with practiced ease.
"What the fuck!" Maruti shouts, she had experienced something similar in the past. The memory was vivid, painful.
When the academy was attacked, everyone was dying, and a huge snake-like creature with a bull head had attacked her from behind, sending her flying away. The helplessness, the sudden attack on the back—it was all coming back to her.
"I hate snakes," she shouts, taking out her frustration on a nearby skeleton that had managed to follow them, crushing its skull with a single punch.
However, Esdeath's mood wasn't bad. A flicker of smile emerged on her lips, a stark contrast to the chaos around them.
"Nice, we actually covered quite the distance," she says, her voice tinged with satisfaction. The army of skeletons was about eight to hundred meters away from them now, and no one was coming to chase them either since they were not the main target.
"Let's retreat for now and oversee the situation from a distance," she says, her mind already calculating their next move. Who knows, if neither of the two legendary creatures retreated, it would eventually lead to one's downfall or maybe they'd both be quite injured. Either way, it would definitely give them an advantage in a future battle.
Maruti nods, ready to retreat, but then a drop of water landed on her forehead. It was cool and unexpected in the dry desert air.
She touches it with her finger, feeling confused. "Water? Is it going to rain now?" she murmurs, turning to Esdeath with a questioning look.
Esdeath's eyes were wide, her face frozen in shock, causing Maruti to startle a little. The look on Esdeath's face was one of pure disbelief, something Maruti rarely saw.
"Oh shit," Esdeath says, pointing towards the horizon with a trembling hand.
In front of them, a huge tornado of water was forming up out of nowhere. It grew bigger and bigger, towering thrice the size of both the bone dragon and the Great Serpent in a fraction of a second. The water swirled with unnatural speed, a vortex of pure power.
Both of them felt like a mountain was pressing down on them, and a powerful invisible pull, far greater than the bone dragon's magnetic pull, was dragging them toward it. The force was immense, relentless and neverending.
"Why is there a water storm in the desert?" Maruti shouts, her frustration with the strange environment of this place at its peak. Nothing made sense anymore.
"It's not a normal storm. It's a time storm," Esdeath shouts, her voice strained against the pull of the vortex.
If one were to ask her what is the most deadly thing in the river sand of flawless time, then her answer would surely be a time storm. It had the power to kill both of the legendary creatures.
Because once trapped in the whirlpool of a time storm, no one knows what will happen. Trapped in frozen time? A loop? Or even a paradox? Nothing was impossible.
Only time experts like Elara could barely make out alive if they were to get trapped. For anyone else, it was a death sentence.
"It's going towards them. We still have a chance if we just preserve for enough time," Esdeath says, her mind racing to find a solution.
They didn't stop either. The further they were able to be away from the time storm, the better it would be. Every meter counted.
It's just that running was impossible. The invisible pull of the time storm was too fierce. Their feet had dug deep into the ground, their backs bent down at an awkward angle. Both of them were having a hard time just taking a few steps, each movement a struggle against the overwhelming force.
At that moment, Esdeath's balance crumbles. A particularly strong pull from the storm catches her off guard.
And that was all it took to lift her off the ground, her body hovering in the air for a moment before being dragged toward the vortex.
"No!"
Her eyes widen immediately, her hand shot out, desperate to reach anything, just anything she could grab to anchor herself.
And she did.
It's just that the hand came on its own. Before she could be pulled away, Maruti grabbed her, putting all her strength into keeping her feet on the ground. Her muscles strained, her entire body focused on this one task.
Her jaw was so tight that her teeth might snap from the pressure.
The water kept dropping on her, even in her eyes, making it hard to keep them open. She blinked rapidly, trying to clear her vision.
And then she saw something that made her heart stop.
Esdeath... Esdeath had turned into a statue.
A lifeless statue of grey and black color as if made of stones, her body frozen in place. A satisfied smile was on her face, as if she had achieved everything in the world.
She was looking at something or someone, her eyes upward, who knows what. There was a deep crack going down her body.
From her face to neck and finally ending with a big crack on her chest. And on the chest, something was coming out—a pinkish stone, glowing slightly.
It was hard to see the clear shape because of the storm, but it was definitely an essence stone.
A divine rank Essence stone.
Thousands of thoughts and questions clashed into Maruti's mind. What was happening? How was this possible? Was this real?
The sudden shock ran through Maruti's body, causing her to let go of Esdeath. Her fingers slipped, the sudden realization too much to process.
But the second she blinked, Esdeath was there, alive. Her eyes were wide because Maruti had just let go of a perfectly fine grip that she was grabbing.
"You!" she was about to curse, her voice filled with confusion and a hint of anger.
But Maruti immediately leaned forward and grabbed her once again, her movements swift and sure.
"It's not time to play idiot," Esdeath scolded, her voice stern but relieved.
"Well that's why I was telling you to eat more. You weight like a feather," Maruti shot back with a friendly grin.