Chapter 1004: The Monster Slayer
Chapter 1004: The Monster Slayer
The brass dragon growled, feeling his ribs almost cracking beneath Plum's massive foot. Brass dragons are amphibians but don't have gills. Their massive lungs could process both water and air at the dragon's will. He won't drown no matter how long he stays beneath the water, but now he can't breathe properly since Plum's foot is squishing his chest, preventing him from breathing.
As he struggled, his eyes spotted something in the distance that made him question his life, it made rats spawn in his head to try and figure out what in the nine hells his eyes were drinking to see such an illusion. Ann was swimming to the surface from the depth of the sea.
^This titan fairy is knee-deep into the sea... we're six hundred meters deep... no...my lair is over three kilometers deep. What in the Bahamut is that thing?!^ He growled before blood could rush into his head...^No, my wife was in the lair, how did that thing get out...she didn't leave to hunt, did she?^
Thinking about that won't change the fact that Ann somehow managed to escape and is swimming up. The brass dragon decided to deal with Plum first, he'll then get to the bottom of what Ann is.
He growled with lightning crackling from his wings. The electric discharge shocked Plum's leg so she couldn't keep pushing down on him, evaporating the air around him at the same time to allow him to flap his wings once.
With a brilliant flash of light from deep beneath the sapphire sea, a massive explosion burst out and the brass dragon flew out like a bullet, ramming Plum's stomach with his head as hard as he could. She growled, swinging her fist and punching him to the shore. She coughed a sea of blood as her body shrunk down.
For a moment there the dragon had hoped his electric discharge would've hit Ann and killed her, but she seems to have been just a bit far away. As the dragon coughed blood on the shore, her hand finally landed on the wooden ladder built on the side of the ship. She barely managed to pull her head out of the water, gasping for air as she coughed several mouthfuls of water out of her lungs.
Ann reached up with her shaking hands, slowly but surely climbing the ladder as fast as she could. This wasn't the first time she stood at death's door, and it won't be the last. She knew it, no one could help or save her, they couldn't even save themselves so what power did they have over others?n/ô/vel/b//in dot c//om
Mesharra, the blade of justice had failed to measure up to the dragon's arrogant justice. Echidna's curses are just that, curses, not allies, they give as much as they take, rendering their power meaningless, just like how the existence of a witch that helps and kills people at the same time is meaningless.
Mary had the power to heal and save lives, but that power isn't hers, it doesn't even belong to the being she currently prays to. She's as powerless as everyone else, being through across the battle at other's will.
Plum, the rampaging wrath of nature, the chaotic power that drives nature forward, even she can't stand the pure and unfiltered violence of the dragons. Those wyrms were born to dominate all life, to stand at the peak of all-natural orders, the lands shift by their presence, so how could nature stand against them?
Ann climbed on board the warship and rushed toward the artillery range to mount the largest of its cannons. The captain of the ship spotted her and rushed to stop, "Brat! Stop! Get away from that cannon, it's dangerous." He grabbed her by the arm and pulled her back.
"Let me go! I'll shoot him in the head, even if he doesn't die, it'll give Plum and Echidna a chance to finish him off." She cried but couldn't resist his power, he was far larger and stronger than her.
"You don't know anything. You'll just set him on us, he'll come here and kill everyone." He shouted at her.
Ann's expression immediately changed, "So this is why none of you did anything while I wasn't here...cowards." BANG! She popped his head off with a single shot from her flintlock. Jack who was watching from the command room saw them, his eyes opened wide. ^That gun... ^ He saw it, the gun appeared out of nowhere the moment Ann started moving her hand to shoot the commander.
^It was storage magic after all...no, we would've detected it, it's something far more complicated... a magic that gives her weapons? Teleport magic, summoning magic?^ No matter how much Jack thought about it, he wasn't a wizard so he couldn't guess more than a handful of common spells. He was sure that the experts who inspected everyone knew better than him and would've caught anything he might think of.
Even now that he saw it, whatever Ann is doing still remains far above his understanding.
Ann grabbed the massive cannon and pulled the levers at its side, activating the mechanism that turned it and aimed at the dragon's head. The moment she got him locked on, she fired the cannon with a scream.
The large cannon shell flew at blinding speed enchanted by the magic the army weaves into all of its shells to fight other ships. Unlike normal guns, those cannons are designed to have extended range, pierce steel, and explode with brilliant fire. Brass won't stop it.
The brass dragon who was on the shore covered his head with his wings to protect it, but the cannon shell pierced right through and exploded at his face, burning a hole into his wings and took the left part of his face with it, exposing the dragon's burned jawbones.
His eyes looked through the smoke gushing out of his burned flesh, spotting Ann standing behind the cannon. "It's the human's inborn duty to rule the world, we conquer, violate, and exploit it no matter what." Her eyes glared right back at him, "Monsters shall not be allowed on our earth. I'll kill them all, and let Yog sort them out."
He could hear her, see her shadowy figure from behind the smoke, glaring back at him with a smirk.
The warship's cannons are dangerous, they were made to defeat other armored ships, destroy on-shore castles, and battle large sea monsters. Usually, a dragon-like him could easily dodge the cannons, which means they'll never harm him if he doesn't get hit. But this little girl, no little thing is dangerous.
She was already a threat with a mundane rifle, but with a warship, she's an existence that he must eliminate first. 'Throwing my words back at me? Fine, I too know how to black with backhands. I'll get to my wife after I crush your bones.' He firmly believed that his wife must've been out or something.
He stood on his hind legs and opened his mouth. Seeing that motion, Ann jumped out of the cannon and ducked on the deck. There is only one thing that'll come out of a dragon's open maw and that is his breath weapon.
Unlike most dragons, brass dragons have two-breath weapons. A lightning-breath weapon, and an air-breath weapon that takes the form of an explosive cone of compressed air. They usually use their air breath weapon to fill their lairs which they did beneath the sea with air to breathe. They later use the lightning to break water into oxygen which they use to top up the air in their lair, and hydrogen which they use to lay traps to kill intruders.
GRO00000000000! CLAP! The brass dragon suddenly sucked air with a blast, pulling everything from the warship's direction. He could use his air breath in reverse.
Ann and everything on the ship's deck which wasn't nailed down flew toward the dragon's maw as the shockwave washed over them, blasting them toward him. It wasn't like a vacuum cleaner, it was like when a spaceship's door breaks, everything gets sucked into it in the blink
of an eye.
^You underestimate dragons, you underestimate me, human brat.^ He thought, ^Call me a monster all you want...I saw the peerless evil and I killed it, you stood in my way, and I shall kill you as well. Your feelings are worth less than the dirt you walk upon^
As Ann was just a few meters away from the dragon's maw, Echidna landed on his head, smacking her palms on his forehead. For a second, he went blind. At that moment Plum jumped in, enlarging herself just barely enough to force the dragon's maw closed in her hand. And with a single leap, the still bloodied Mesharra jumped over five meters into the air from Plum's back and caught Ann, falling with her on the wet sand of the shore.
Mary rushed toward Mesharra and Ann to heal them, but the situation had just turned from
bad to worse. Mesharra wasn't fully healed yet but she still took the fall for Ann, which broke her legs even though they landed on the sand. Ann wasn't fine either, the shockwave and sudden pull of the dragon's breath had left her barely conscious with most of her organs
scrambled.
Lightning crackled from the dragon's back, shocking both Plum and Echidna. The two fell to the ground and he leaped forward, smacking Mary and Mesharra away as he stood over Ann, glaring down at her, growling.
"So..." Ann mumbled, "Here my...life ends..." She stared at him with a smile, satisfied.
Just as he was about to bite her down, he stopped, the sea had turned bright red. A mast slowly peeked up from the still water beneath the sun.