Chapter 309: Chapter 212: Eight Peaks Mountain (Part 2)
"I know what you’re worried about," Aria began, her tone firm. "Without a doubt, this is the second Crimson Calamity, not yet fully grown. Once it matures and becomes a Legend, it will be a searing red blade hanging over our Skanis gathering points and the Moon Elf people.
"But right now, it’s still immature, isn’t it? Compared to Christoph, that true walking catastrophe, its threat is relatively controllable for now. We have another twelve years. If we keep an eye on it in Skanis for those twelve years, then once the Golden World Tree Seed takes root and sprouts again, it will no longer be a threat," Aria, the Chosen of the Lunar Bow, declared with unwavering certainty.
No longer a threat...? Hearing this, Menekver, the Court Mage, gazed towards the Eight Peaks Mountain to the east, which seemed to pierce the sky. A sense of déjà vu washed over him; these words felt all too familiar. That’s right... Fifty years ago, during the Dragon Dung War, when the suddenly emergent Pafila incinerated the High Elf and Drow fleets clashing at the coast, Elf King Ailiando had said the exact same thing. What a tragic irony. It was as if they were trapped in a cycle of fate.
"Maybe I should just defect to Duke Mirillian of the Silver Wheel..." Menekver mused dejectedly, muttering to himself. He had barely taken a few steps when a Forest God’s Chosen nearby nearly choked on his own blood, desperately wanting to tell Her Highness Aria:
Look at this High Elf! He’s openly planning to betray us!
But evidently, the High Elves, with their exceptionally sharp ears, merely twitched them and collectively pretended not to have heard. After all, this old elf, who had managed to serve three successive Elf Kings without falling from favor, had a well-known reputation for unreliability that wasn’t just a recent development. It wouldn’t be surprising if he defected to the dragons one day. However, for the Moon Elves, currently besieged on all sides as they were, any threat not immediately before them was tolerable, even exploitable, in their struggle to reclaim the Skanis Continent.
「At the foot of The Dark Mountains, beneath Eight Peaks Mountain.」
David had barely stepped out of the Teleportation Gate when a gash on his neck suddenly erupted in a mist of blood, followed by a viscous, eerily greenish fluid gushing out.
"Brother David!" Tania cried out. She had been tending to Alfonse, the unfortunate fellow struck near his heart and lungs. She immediately abandoned her critically injured patient and rushed over, intending to cast Heal Serious Wounds on her Red Dragon brother.
However, David stopped her by lifting his tail. He gestured for the other dragons to retreat, his eyes fixed on the still-rippling Teleportation Gate until Fesentelerus’s Portal gradually faded away. Only then did he truly relax.
He hadn’t expected these High Elves to be so cautious. Previously, they had dared to venture into the Elemental Plane of Water with him even without a Legend among them, yet now they hesitated to follow. He had been prepared to obliterate and detonate the portal if those Legends dared to come through after him. That would teach the Elves that not all portals could be entered so casually.
Thanks to David’s formidable Constitution score of 28 and the Stone of Regeneration, the neck wound he hadn’t even had time to treat began to staunch its bleeding. New flesh sprouted, and the gash started to visibly knit itself together.
This absurd healing rate, however, made David suspicious. He scraped off the newly formed scab with his claw, letting the strangely greenish blood spurt out once more. "Damn it!" he roared. "It’s bad enough that two Legends ganged up on me, but to coat their blades with poison too?"
Wrath.
This once again refreshed his understanding of High Elves. They called themselves ’High,’ yet their actions grew progressively more despicable.
"I’ll prepare an antidote for you," Tania offered quickly. She had spent a few years learning Alchemy and Potion-making from her dragon father, Attilicia. She hastily retrieved a dragon-sized workbench from her Portable Cave, but David stopped her again. Under the sorrowful gaze of his Black Dragon sister, Viola, he said:
"Don’t worry about me. A dip in lava will neutralize this poison. Stabilize Alfonse’s injuries first."
"Ah? But your chest..." Seeing her Red Dragon brother still full of vigor, Tania felt somewhat reassured. However, her eyes remained fixed on the arrow lodged in his chest, an arrow no smaller than a siege ballista bolt.
David then belatedly noticed the arrow embedded in his own chest. He also recalled the dull thud he’d heard just before the High Elf Ranger’s blade had struck.
The angle of the shot was incredibly vicious. If the Nirvana Pocket Watch and the Book of the Dragon embedded in the chest of his silver-scaled breastplate hadn’t caught the arrowhead, the power of that Legend’s arrow would likely have turned him into a second Smaug on the spot...
He couldn’t help but feel a surge of relief for choosing such durable gear and for having obediently accepted the silver-scaled breastplate his dragon father, Attilicia, had specifically crafted for them.
At his current stage, merely being able to stand meant he could maintain a continuous high damage output. What he needed more, therefore, was a greater margin for error on the battlefield. This was especially crucial when facing opponents like the Moon Elves. They were a group prone to extremism, who had managed to suppress the notoriously wicked Drow in the Gloomy Region for ten thousand years.
Just as the tip of David’s tail coiled around the arrow—crafted from some unknown material and engraved with exquisite magic runes—preparing to pull it from the face of the Nirvana Pocket Watch, the deep, ominous blare of a horn suddenly echoed from The Dark Mountains behind them.