The first seven scouts returned exactly as expected. They were violently ejected from the portal, battered and exhausted, but they brought back crucial pieces of the puzzle. They confirmed the elemental shifts. They mapped the safe zones. Frieren's theory was holding up perfectly.
Then came the eighth scout.
Thud.
The young mage rolled out of the golden portal and collapsed onto the grass. But unlike the others, he didn't immediately try to sit up. He scrambled onto his hands and knees, clawing frantically at his own throat.
"Kkkh! Hkk!"
He was gagging, his eyes wide and bloodshot, gasping for air that his perfectly healthy lungs refused to process.
A healer in the group rushed forward, casting a quick diagnostic spell. "His physical body is fine!" she reported, her voice tight with panic. "There's no internal damage. The barrier worked. It's... it's phantom pain. His mind thinks he's suffocating."
It wasn't the lingering chill of the blizzard or the phantom heat of the magma. This was something else.
Denken, the veteran mage, stepped forward, his expression grim. Frieren followed closely behind him.
"Breathe, boy. You are safe," Denken said, his voice carrying the commanding weight of his experience. "What did you experience in there? What killed you?"
The young mage squeezed his eyes shut, forcing his breathing to slow. Sweat dripped from his chin. It took him a full minute to calm his racing heart enough to speak.
"Red..." he croaked, his voice raw. "Red mist."
"Mist?" Frieren tilted her head. She reviewed her memory of the first encounter. The dragon had breathed fire, summoned a blizzard, and called down lightning. It had never produced a mist.
"It was leaking from its scales," the scout shuddered, wrapping his arms around himself. "It was highly corrosive. The moment it touched me, it seeped right through my defensive barrier like it wasn't even there. It burrowed into my skin."
Panic began to ripple through the gathered mages. A spell that bypassed barriers?
"But that wasn't the worst part," the scout continued, his voice dropping to a terrified whisper. "The moment that mist entered my body... my mana vanished."
"What?" Denken's eyes widened.
"I couldn't feel it. I couldn't shape it. I tried to cast a simple wind spell to blow the mist away, but nothing happened. It was like... like my circuits had been completely sealed shut. I was just an ordinary human."
A heavy, suffocating silence fell over the clearing.
To a warrior, losing a weapon is a setback. To a mage, losing access to mana is a death sentence. It is absolute helplessness. Like being paralyzed from the neck down. If this beast could inflict a "Silence" effect on them, all their strategies were useless.
"Fire, Ice, Lightning... and now this," a mage muttered, despair creeping back into his voice. "How are we supposed to fight that?"
Frieren looked down at the ground, processing the new variable. The puzzle had just become infinitely more complex.
"We do exactly what we have been doing," she said firmly, cutting through the rising panic.
She looked up at the remaining candidates. "We don't know the range of this mist. We don't know its duration or its trigger conditions. We can't form a countermeasure without data."
She pointed her staff at the shimmering portal.
"Next scout. Your objective isn't to damage the beast. Your objective is to observe the red mist and find out how it works."
The mages swallowed hard, but they nodded. Fear was a natural response, but they were professionals. They wouldn't quit just because the boss had revealed a new phase.
….
From my concealed vantage point, I listened to their tactical discussion.
Analysis: Morale dropped by 14%, but recovery was swift. Decision-making remains logical and data-driven.
I gave a mental nod of approval. They were handling the stress test remarkably well. The addition of the "Red Mist" was a brutal difficulty spike, but their approach, sacrificing runs to gather intelligence, was the correct one.
As the creator of this specific iteration of the Blazing Black Dragon, I knew exactly what that "Red Mist" was.
It was Dragon Element.
In the video game from my previous life, Alatreon possessed a unique, corruptive energy. When a player was struck by it, they were afflicted with "Dragonblight", a status condition that completely nullified the elemental properties of their weapons. It forced the player to rely purely on raw, physical damage.
When I used the Monster Creation spell to bring Alatreon to life, I had to translate game mechanics into the physical laws of this magical world.
Monster Creation is an incredibly absurd spell. Its output is limited only by two factors: the caster's imagination, and the caster's mana capacity. If you can perfectly visualize the creature's anatomy, its abilities, and the exact mechanics of how its powers function, the spell will make it real.
I understood the game mechanics flawlessly. As for the mana capacity? I fueled the spell with Dimensional Energy. I had the power of an entire world at my disposal.
So, I had successfully translated "Dragonblight" into this reality.
In a world where mages rely on visualizing mana to manifest elements, the "Red Mist" acts as a violent disruptor. It invades the target's mana pathways and scrambles their ability to visualize or project spells. It effectively reduces their magic output to zero.
It was a fatal debuff designed specifically to crush mages.
Of course, a physical fighter like Takson could simply ignore the magical suppression and keep swinging his axe. But for this group of pure spellcasters, it was their worst nightmare.
However, the spell 'Monster Creation' has an inherent flaw, I mused, watching the next candidate step into the portal.
Because the resulting creature is bound by the rules of reality, even absurd powers must have a logical limitation.
The red mist requires massive amounts of internal energy to produce, meaning Alatreon can only vent it during specific elemental transitions or in close-quarters bursts. It cannot maintain the mist indefinitely.
….
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