Just like when humans debate the toxicity of venomous snakes, talking about lethality without considering the dosage is utterly meaningless.
This was exactly the case right now. As a Forbidden Elder Dragon standing at the absolute apex of the ecosystem, Alatreon wielded Dragon element energy that possessed an absolute, suffocating pressure over countless living things. Yet, in front of Asterion, that pressure fell entirely short.
The Bio-energy erupting from Asterion's body was like an ocean bursting through a dam. Even a being as mighty as Alatreon, taking the impact at such close range, succumbed to a surreal illusion—as if he had been plunged into the deepest abyss of the ocean, with the crushing weight of infinite water pressing down from above.
Energy that should have been drifting freely through the air had materialized with physical mass, dense enough to crush ordinary organisms to death. Imbued with Asterion's indomitable will, this unfathomably vast torrent of energy tore through the black and red lightning crackling across his scales, scattering Alatreon's aura like dust in the wind.
The sealing property inherent to the Dragon element was completely shattered. The suffocating congestion that had briefly choked Asterion's energy circulation vanished without a trace.
The Blade of Evolution
Under Asterion's deliberate control, the glowing Bio-energy bleeding from the seams of his massive carapace and scales didn't scatter aimlessly. As if granted a life of its own, the energy surged toward the tips of his wings, condensing into a hyper-dense blade of pure, radiant power—as blindingly sharp as a cosmic greatsword.
This cataclysmic torrent possessed a terrifying velocity and mass, entirely swallowing Alatreon's monstrous, Draconic form within a fraction of a second!
BOOM—WZRRRR!
Violent energy fluctuations ruptured through the air, accompanied by a deafening, high-pitched hum that pierced through eardrums and vibrated the very bones of any living creature. The entire world fell silent, save for that reality-rending drone.
With Asterion at the epicenter, a massive portion of the Elder's Recess was instantly terraformed. The landscape was utterly submerged under a torrent of ethereal blue energy so intense it warped the ambient light, rendering everything invisible and leaving no room for escape. It was no exaggeration to say that, through his power alone, Asterion had manifested a roaring, turbulent ocean upon the dry land in a matter of seconds.
This was no mere poetic hyperbole. When such an astronomical amount of Bio-energy condensed, it transcended its intangible, ethereal state, consolidating into a fluid that possessed genuine physical mass. Yet, the true marvel lay in its nature: though the immediate area had been cleansed of life, if an ordinary creature were to wander into this domain, it would find itself able to breathe this fluid as easily as regular air.
However, unlike how it behaved around ordinary monsters or flora, the Bio-energy Asterion unleashed carried his raw, unadulterated hostility and a burning desire to subjugate Alatreon. Fueled by its master's wrath, the inherently corrosive energy manifested a level of aggression far beyond its usual state.
The massive energy blade Asterion swung sheared through the rugged terrain where Alatreon stood. Clusters of colossal crystals and hardened basalt columns were leveled like soft clay before the energy torrent, leaving the ground polished so perfectly smooth it resembled a mirror. Instantly following the erasure, crystalline structures began to rapidly sprout across the surface, transforming the entire battlefield into a gleaming, sapphire mirror.
It was breathtakingly beautiful. A lethal beauty.
But Asterion knew better than to expect an attack of this caliber to defeat Alatreon. Physical trauma was merely a superficial threat; the true lethality lay within the unique property of his Bio-energy: Evolution.
Exactly! Not even the Blazing Black Dragon could escape this absolute law!
By this point, Asterion's goal had evolved far beyond merely repelling or defeating his foe. He had hatched an audacious, borderline insane plan: to use a hyper-concentrated dose of Bio-energy to breach Alatreon's defenses, corrode his form, corrupt his very biological essence, and trigger an irreversible, forced evolution within a fellow First-Class Peril!!
As for whether this forced evolution would result in a divine ascension or a horrific, malignant mutation... well, don't ask!
The Fury of the Sacred Land
It was an unmitigated provocation! Even if Alatreon didn't consciously understand Asterion's underlying scheme, he could feel the sheer, disrespectful insolence of the attack.
In the lexicon of draconic communication, Asterion's actions were the ultimate slap in the face. It was the equivalent of pointing directly at Alatreon's snout and demanding to be called "Daddy" because he was the one granting him strength. The invading Bio-energy acted like microscopic drill bits, relentlessly trying to bore into Alatreon's flesh. Had the black dragon not unleashed an emergency burst of hyper-pure Thunder energy to blast them away, Asterion might actually have succeeded.
Talk about arrogant.
If a gale were to blow away the shroud of this sapphire ocean, an aerial view of the battlefield would reveal that the vast earth had been hollowed out into a perfectly neat, elongated semicircular crater—as if someone had scooped a massive chunk out of a jar of honey. At the absolute deepest point of this trench, Alatreon raised his upper body.
"ROOOOOAAAR!!!"
The colossal roar vibrated with unbridled fury, carrying a menace far greater than any Tigrex could ever hope to emit. The sound waves propagated alongside waves of Dragon energy, materializing into a visible shockwave that rippled outward like concentric tides.
The sound, normally invisible, acted like giant, phantom hands parting the sea of blue energy. This roar was Alatreon's declaration—he disdained underhanded tactics and was openly notifying Asterion that his retaliation was commencing.
Don't underestimate the records I've read... Asterion thought. Feeling the suffocating pressure rolling toward him, he didn't dare lower his guard. He took a deep breath, locking his muscles into a rigid, combat-ready stance.
Though Alatreon had acted surprisingly civil upon landing, greeting him instead of immediately attacking, Asterion knew all too well that this creature was no benevolent entity. He was never a monster with a good temper.
The volcanic, lava-slicked island chain Alatreon called home was known by humanity with fearful reverence as the Sacred Land. Yet, that divine moniker wasn't given willingly out of idle admiration; it was a bloody title forged from endless death and destruction.
In bygone years, countless human vessels and airships that unknowingly wandered too close to that forbidden territory were met with catastrophic annihilation. The man-made constructs were shattered to splinters, and their passengers vanished without a trace, declared "missing." Anyone with common sense knew that "missing" in the wild just meant dead.
From the harrowing remnants discovered by daring rescue operations, the wreckage displayed a terrifying assortment of fates:
Some airships were twisted like wet rags, completely torn apart as if by a category-twelve hurricane, with even the reinforced dragonbone keels snapped into pieces.
Other hulls were heavily carbonized and reduced to ash, bearing the unmistakable marks of apocalyptic incinerations.
Some looked as though they had been blasted by localized lightning storms, scorched and shattered by high-voltage currents.
Yet others had their interiors encased in thick, translucent ice sheets, preserving the crew's final moments of absolute terror like frozen statues.
It was precisely because of these wildly varied, horrific demises across that vast stretch of ocean—and the heavy toll paid by elite Hunters and Guild scholars sent to investigate—that the Hunter's Guild finally came to a grim realization: these disasters were not natural phenomena, but the work of a singular, cataclysmic monster beyond human comprehension.
Consequently, the Guild sealed all records concerning Alatreon, formally labeling the region on nautical charts as a restricted zone of absolute fatality. Alatreon's reputation as a First-Class Peril wasn't just handed to him; it was a title carved out through a ruthless slaughter, built upon a mountain of bones.
An apex predator capable of such atrocities possessed a petty, territorial streak that easily rivaled a Velkhana—any insignificant creature encroaching upon his domain would be hunted down and ruthlessly crushed.
So the question remained: with Alatreon's volatile temperament and pride built over millennia at the absolute top of the food chain, could he tolerate being overpowered in a head-on clash by a younger dragon?
The answer was a resounding no.
The Five-Element Cataclysm
As the roaring shockwave tore through the sapphire sea of energy, Asterion locked eyes with Alatreon, glimpsing a gaze filled with apocalyptic fury. A heart-stopping surge of elemental power began to pool before the black dragon. Or rather, it was already discharging.
Within a millisecond, the ambient temperature surged at a rate that defied all laws of thermodynamics. A brilliant, incinerating flash of fire reached its zenith instantly, casting a brilliant gold-crimson hue over the abyssal blue of Asterion's Bio-energy.
Yet simultaneously, even as he faced temperatures capable of liquefying solid steel, the nerves beneath Asterion's carapace detected a localized, bone-chilling frost.
This sensation was no mere trick of thermal contrast. Alatreon was actively demonstrating why he reigned as a living calamity, unleashing all five elemental energies simultaneously without a single shred of restraint.
The absolute heat of the Fire element and the absolute zero of the Ice element violently collided within the cavernous expanse of the Recess. These two diametrically opposed, naturally repulsive forces were brought into identical alignment by Alatreon's godlike precision, causing a continuous, catastrophic chain of mutual annihilation—which was exactly what the black dragon intended.
Waves of destructive shockwaves rippled outward in rapid succession. Yet, the clash of fire and ice was merely the prelude; Alatreon was already weaving the Water and Thunder elements into the chaotic mix.
The Water element Alatreon deployed possessed bizarre physical and chemical anomalies. While it looked like a pristine, translucent fluid, it behaved far more like a volatile oil. Upon making contact with Alatreon's flames, instead of extinguishing the blaze, it acted as a perfect, hyper-reactive accelerant, making the inferno roar with even greater intensity.
Simultaneously, the freezing breath streaming from Alatreon's maw sublimated the moisture in the air into colossal, unbreakable spires of ice. The moment these frozen pillars materialized, high-voltage lightning discharged from his horns lanced straight through them, triggering instantaneous, violent detonations.
These explosions defied standard physics; they were the result of raw elemental energies violently amplifying one another, driving their collective destructive output to apocalyptic heights.
It was an absolute doomsday scenario. Fire, ice, water, and lightning coalesced into a chaotic, raging vortex. Asterion's pupils contracted. He realized exactly what Alatreon was doing—the black dragon was skipping physical combat entirely and going straight for his ultimate technique!
Alatreon used the Dragon element as a core conductor to orchestrate the other four elements. Now, all five forces were detonating concurrently, with black and crimson lightning tearing through a sea of flames!
In a mere second—no, in less than half a breath—a cataclysmic shockwave of Fire energy erupted outward with Alatreon at its center, mirroring the energy wave Asterion had released moments prior.
Escaton Judgment!!!
This was the ultimate sentence Alatreon used to terminate his enemies, passing a final, unappealable verdict on the life and death of all creation!
As the saying goes, true masters always maximize their visual effects—and the flashier the display, the more devastating the power. Alatreon was a devoted adherent to this ironclad rule. The blinding gold-crimson flames clashed violently with Asterion's ambient Bio-energy, intermingling before erupting into a localized supernova.
Ironically, the sky-blotting Bio-energy acted like a pressure cooker, trapping Alatreon's elemental storm within its confines. Under this constriction, the blast's lethality multiplied exponentially. Even behind his layers of energetic defense, Asterion felt a wave of tangible, scorching heat.
Experiencing this cataclysm firsthand was a far cry from watching it through a screen in his previous life. The sheer scale of destruction left the game's mechanics in the dust—after all, a video game had to preserve its map design, whereas reality had no qualms about grinding the entire landscape to dust.
Holy hell, is Alatreon's Fire element actually this absurdly strong?!
Asterion found it utterly mind-boggling. Was this even fair?!
One had to remember that his biological foundation was rooted in a standard Fire-element monster. Climbing the evolutionary ladder from a regular monster to an Elder Dragon, and finally to a First-Class Peril, Asterion's fire resistance had stacked to astronomical heights with each successive adaptation.
Even before he achieved his current status, back when he roamed the underground leyline corridors beneath the Ancient Forest, he could comfortably take baths in molten magma or swallow liquid rock like water without a single scratch. It was completely safe.
His skin wouldn't even blister, let alone suffer scorched or brittle scales. His internal organs were just as resilient, easily digesting molten slag without a single point of internal bleeding. He was steel inside and out!
Cough, cough... shouting that phrase feels a little like a death flag.