Chapter 630: I Am Too Weak
"Rua——!!"
Brother-kun had grown mature. But his fiery temper hadn't noticeably softened because of it.
Beholding a flock of uninvited skyward guests who clearly harbored malicious intent, a surge of heavily suppressed fire instantly ignited beneath his hind claws. The very next second, he beat his massive wings violently. The compressed, explosive heat erupted into the heavens, instantly detonating across the airspace to transform a massive sector of the sky into a rolling ocean of fire.
Several of the weaker Archeops caught in the blast flipped erratically within the inferno, instantly turning into blazing fireballs that plummeted toward the earth.
With brother-kun's current baseline sitting at Lv. 70, he was undeniably a bona fide powerhouse of the Elite Four tier. He wasn't an entity that just any random script could hope to provoke.
However, this explosive opening move simultaneously exposed his true parameters to the Alpha Archeops.
Initially, the opponent had been deeply wary of brother-kun's physical status as a giant Charizard, not quite daring to launch a direct assault against the Charizards and Bastiodons garrisoned below; their primal intent was merely to execute a sudden raid against the agricultural pastures to plunder the completely defenseless livestock.
But the moment he perceived that brother-kun's true level suffered a distinct math disparity compared to his own, the Alpha Archeops' martial courage instantly surged.
He beat his powerful wings, whipping up violent, cascading gales. Saturated under the immediate tailwind effect of the Tailwind technique, the physical velocity of every remaining Archeops across the flock multiplied exponentially. Led by their Alpha, they compressed their ranks and collectively unleashed Agility, launching a coordinated, high-speed dive straight toward the Dragon Clan's agricultural pastures.
The vast majority of the Archeops didn't dare to draw near the Bastiodon wall, whose heavy eyes projected a suffocating counter-pressure. Consequently, they exclusively targeted the open coordinates of the pasture, plucking away the animals that possessed zero capacity for active resistance.
Yet, there were always a few high-level Archeops whose psychological audacity was a fraction bolder. Seeing that the Bastiodon garrison consisted entirely of landlocked, blocky colossi incapable of skyward flight, a wave of opportunistic gambling naturally warped their focus.
These rogue Archeops didn't initiate a suicidal assault against the Bastiodon line itself. Instead, they darted behind the perimeter, ruthlessly snapping their talons at the young dragon cubs who had been separated from the group and hadn't managed to retreat behind the iron shields of the Bastiodons in time.
"Jang-o!"
Catching sight of a young Jangmo-o being forcefully hoisted into the heavens by an Archeops' talons, Charizard's wrath erupted to an absolute boiling point. He flapped his wings and tore through the airspace in a frantic pursuit, his jaws locking into a ferocious Fire Fang that cleanly snapped the Archeops' neck into two distinct pieces.
Swallowing down his physical momentum, Charizard cradled the trembling Jangmo-o in his arms, frantically diving to wedge the cub safely beneath the shadow of a massive Bastiodon torso.
The fatal limitations of their hollow anti-air presence manifested with devastating clarity at this exact moment. Whenever a dragon cub was aggressively hoisted into the sky, outside of the Charizard couple launching frantic interceptions, the garrison possessed virtually zero immediate avenues of active counter-measures.
The three newly matured Charizard siblings possessed levels that were entirely too low; merely locking horns against even the weakest adult Archeops across the field stretched their current capabilities to the absolute limit.
Fortunately, the Dragon Fangs gifted by their grandfather a year prior proved their worth. The dense, suffocating aura of a Champion-level Overlord pulsing from the teeth struck deep dread into these naturally timid Archeops, deterring them from drawing near their perimeter. Yet under these frantic parameters, the three young Charizards could at most guarantee their personal survival, completely unable to extend aid without burdening their parents further.
The Dragon Breath techniques unleashed by the Bastiodon line did provide a rudimentary layer of area denial. However, the Archeops' baseline speed was already remarkably fast, and further multiplied under the twin multipliers of Tailwind and Agility, evading long-range trajectory attacks became a simple task for the flock. This left the Bastiodons' Dragon Breath acting merely as a localized disruption, entirely incapable of cleanly rescuing the stolen targets.
The Charizard couple was completely isolated, stretched entirely thin across the vast coordinates of the battlefield. It had effectively transformed into a scenario where two dragons were forced to hold the line against over seventy ravenous Archeops.
They pushed their physical engines to the absolute limit to stem the bleeding. The two dragons plunged directly into the thickest clusters of the Archeops vanguard to unleash a ruthless slaughter, completely dismantling over a dozen Archeops in a matter of minutes.
Right at this juncture, the Alpha Archeops officially mobilized.
This was an Alpha leader who firmly commanded the lower tier of the Champion level. He had hovered silently along the periphery for several minutes, meticulously calculating and verifying the absolute baseline parameters of these two defending Charizards before finally resolving to step in to crush the opposition.
Seizing the exact window when the Charizard couple was stretched thin rescuing a cub, the Alpha Archeops launched a ruthless, high-speed ambush straight from brother-kun's blind spot. His beak snapped shut with bone-crushing force, pinning brother-kun's neck tightly within his grasp.
Simultaneously, three or four Elite Four-level Archeops perfectly executed their primal flock-hunting coordination, unleashing a relentless, multi-angled assault to completely pin down and isolate the mother Charizard.
"Roar!"
A surge of agonizing pain ripped through Charizard's body, yet his tactical focus didn't suffer even a shred of distortion. Saturated under his older brother's rigorous tutelage across all these years, his accumulated combat experience was immensely dense. He knew with absolute certainty that thrashing around blindly in a panic at this moment was mathematically meaningless—it would only expand the structural trauma of his wound.
Reversing his grip, he locked both claws fiercely around the Alpha Archeops' neck, his entire physical frame instantly igniting with a roaring vortex of gold and red flames.
The fire aggressively climbed onto the Alpha Archeops' torso, instantly setting his plumage ablaze. The avian leader let out a screech, opening his beak as he attempted to use his claws to stomp and break away from the embrace, but brother-kun absolutely refused to grant him a clean escape.
Charizard held the flaming apex predator in an absolute, vice-like death grip, dragging him directly down toward the earth. The two battling creatures resembled a burning meteor plunging out of the heavens, smashing into the soil with a cataclysmic impact that excavated a massive crater.
A tidal wave of fire rolled across the perimeter, setting massive patches of wild grass ablaze. The heartland of the Dragon Clan dissolved into utter chaos.
The remaining Archeops capitalized on the blinding smoke, carrying away massive quantities of livestock from the pastures, while a few tragic dragon cubs were ruthlessly hoisted into the skyward sectors. The Bastiodons roared with profound, agonizing grief, yet their lack of vertical mobility left them entirely text-book helpless, capable of nothing but unleashing waves of furious and sorrowful bellows.
Meanwhile, deep within the excavated crater.
The staggering level disparity meant the Alpha Archeops hadn't sustained a mathematically crippling amount of damage from the impact. However, the unique, lingering property of brother-kun's desperate Flare Blitz had successfully forced a negative [Burn] status onto his system.
"Gaa!!"
The Alpha Archeops threw back his head in a sharp, agonizing shriek, his razor talons ripping forward to gouge brother-kun's frame.
Brother-kun met the assault head-on with a desperate Thunder Punch. Yet, because his baseline panel parameters were utterly crushed by the opponent's numerical superiority, he was ruthlessly swatted down onto the soil by a succession of heavy claw strikes. Two deep, bloody gashes manifested across his face.
The Alpha Archeops didn't waste any more time lingering over the fallen Charizard. He beat his wings to break away from the crater, his predatory eyes locking onto a young Shieldon holed up nearby. A single Shieldon was more than enough to perfectly sate his ravenous hunger.
"Al-ta!!"
A succession of piercing, melodic shrieks suddenly echoed across the horizon.
The Altaria vanguard patrolling the nearby coordinates had finally breached the airspace of the battlefield. They had caught sight of the rising pillars of flame and registered the desperate, echoing bellows of the Bastiodon line, mobilizing their wings to race back at maximum velocity.
They channeled their martial resolve into a succession of Sky Attack techniques, transforming into a brilliant vanguard of shifting, skyward firebirds that crashed right into the Archeops' ranks.
Several Archeops instantly plummeted out of the sky like falling stones.
Yet, a meager force of ten mature Altaria was only sufficient to fracture the enemy's structural formation; it wasn't nearly enough to let psychological terror override the gnawing starvation driving the remaining sixty-odd Archeops across the field.
However, it had to be noted that with the tactical integration of the Altaria vanguard, the Archeops could virtually forget about successfully carrying away any more dragon cubs from the heartland. Any rogue Archeops that dared to target a juvenile would instantly transform into the "exposed target," drawing a ruthless, concentrated liquidation from the circling Altaria.
The pastures aside, the dragon cubs, at the very least, suffered no further demographic loss.
On the other side of the field.
Just as the Alpha Archeops prepared to dive forward to flip a Bastiodon and plunder the Shieldon beneath it, a massive, rotating wheel of fire erupted directly from the crater.
Boom—!
The Alpha Archeops sustained a direct, devastating hit from a Fire Blast right across his back. The absolute impact nearly plowed his torso headfirst into the soil. He turned his crimson eyes around in absolute fury, staring back at the source of the strike.
He beheld Charizard charging forward, wreathed in a cascading mantle of desperate flames.
The Alpha Archeops raised both wings high, snapping them forward with bone-crushing force. The heavy Wing Attack crashed squarely against Charizard's skull, completely fracturing the momentum of his Flame Charge and disrupting the technique mid-execution.
"Roar..." Charizard let out a low, muffled groan, his pupils uncontrollably rolling upward into his eyelids.
Thud!
The supporting power in his legs completely disintegrated, causing his massive frame to drop heavily onto his knees. His vision was swimming with white spots; it looked as though he would pass out entirely in the very next second.
Deep within his fading consciousness.
The magnificent tapestry of his older brother—who years prior had stood single-handedly as an absolute bulwark to slaughter the Overlord Arbok and hold the line against dozens of Arbok reinforcements—flashed vividly across his mind.
Brother-kun's drifting pupils slowly ground back down, locking firmly back into the center of his eyes. He extended both claws, bracing them heavily against the earth. He stubbornly, absolutely refused to collapse.
Shattering her own limits across the skyward sector, the mother Charizard grew frantically anxious upon witnessing this display, yet she was completely pinned down under a ruthless web of containment, entirely powerless to break away to extend aid.
Their three evolved children were shielded tightly behind the Bastiodon wall; outside of utilizing their Flamethrowers to offer a fraction of long-range fire support, they were utterly incapable of altering the mathematical reality. The destructive yield of a Flamethrower unleashed by a trio of Charizards who hadn't even breached Lv. 40 was entirely negligible to a Champion-level Alpha Archeops—it was no different from a passing itch.
The Alpha Archeops didn't even bother to execute an evasion maneuver against their fire. However, brother-kun's relentless, unyielding posture of continuously dragging himself back onto his feet from the threshold of collapse injected a sliver of instinctive anxiety into his focus.
"Gaa!"
His pupils trembling slightly, the Alpha Archeops let out a fierce roar and swatted forward with another crushing claw strike. That roar didn't project an absolute aura of intimidation; rather, it resembled a desperate vocalization executed entirely to bolster his own wavering courage.
Charizard was instantly launched over a dozen meters away by the strike. His colossal frame crashed heavily onto the soil.
This time, his biological engine simply didn't possess the residual energy required to stand back up.
"Roar..."
A ragged breath heavily laced with bloody froth bubbled from his jaws. With his consciousness rapidly fracturing into a hazy blur, brother-kun could only watch the Archeops flock rampaging across their home, systematically plundering their resources.
Ultimately... he had failed to mirror his older brother's legendary capability to stand alone as an absolute, unyielding gatekeeper against ten thousand foes.
A group of Bastiodons shifted their heavy frames forward, establishing a tight wall around Charizard's fallen body to shield him from further predation. They could do nothing but watch with bleeding hearts as the Archeops launched a ruthless slaughter within the pastures, aggressively stripping away their resources.
In the far distance.
Rumble!
The Cyclizar vanguard ploughed through the grass at absolute maximum speed.
During their standard territory sweep earlier, they had caught sight of this skyward vanguard of uninvited guests racing toward the coordinates of the heartland. Consequently, they had instantly split their operational numbers into two distinct detachments to initiate maximum mobilization.
One wing raced outward to locate and notify the shifting, scattered packs of the Rampardos and Kommo-o lines. The other detachment called upon every nearby Cyclizar within range, turning around to launch a full-throttle sprint back toward the inner sanctum. This immaculate operational tracking allowed them to successfully breach the parameter of the battlefield not long after the actual clash had commenced.
Unleashing their Shift Gear technique to max out their physical outputs, the Cyclizars used the sloping backs of the garrisoned Bastiodons as launchpads, catapulting themselves straight into the skywards.
Relying on their massively elevated speed and physical momentum, they forcefully tackled and pinned every single Archeops that dared to dive low to launch an ambush.
Almost in the blink of an eye.
Several Archeops were cleanly intercepted and smashed onto the ground. The remaining members of the flock grew intensely, erratically anxious; their structural formation dissolved into absolute disarray.
"Gaa!"
The Alpha Archeops was caught completely off guard by this succession of rapid, overlapping reinforcements. He didn't waste a single second indulging in tactical hesitation, instantly unleashing a raucous bellow that commanded a full-scale retreat.
The remaining forty-odd Archeops beat their wings frantically, clutching whatever prey they could secure as they soared back toward the high skyward sectors to break away.
The Bastiodon and Cyclizar lines launched a concentrated stream of Dragon Breath techniques from below. A few of the more timid Archeops hurriedly dropped their plunder to lighten their physical weight, maximizing their flight speed to guarantee a clean escape.
The mother Charizard and the Altaria flock beat their wings to launch a desperate pursuit, but they were ruthlessly checked and repelled by the combined counter-strikes of the Alpha Archeops and his Elite Four-tier vanguard.
When the dust finally settled.
They could do nothing but watch open-mouthed as the Archeops flock systematically withdrew after transforming their sanctuary into a crucible of chaos.
The earth was heavily littered with fractured, mangled remains.
There were corpses of livestock.
There were corpses of Archeops.
And there were... corpses of young dragon cubs.
To claim the Altaria and Cyclizar vanguards had arrived late would be unobjective; they had mobilized and returned to the field not long after the actual war had sparked, successfully containing the parameters from deteriorating further and preserving the lives of the remaining dragon cubs. It was merely the infrastructure of the agricultural pastures that had sustained a severe, crippling layer of destruction.
Yet to claim they had arrived early... the brutal reality remained that over a dozen young dragon cubs had still succumbed to the predatory talons, their small lives entirely snuffed out.
But regarding this tragedy.
No one within the collective could bring themselves to direct a single shred of resentment or blame toward them. Not a single soul within the Dragon Clan had desired to witness such a harrowing event manifest.
Beholding the absolute devastation blanketing the heartland of their home, the collective didn't even possess the immediate emotional luxury to properly mourn or process their grief. They had to immediately mobilize to contain the raging fires and clear the structural wreckage. Several of the Archeops that had plummeted out of the heavens hadn't officially drawn their final breath yet, demanding a systematic, ruthless liquidation to cleanly conclude their threat.
Under these harrowing parameters, an identical thought uncontrollably consumed the minds of every single resident: If Big Brother had been here... Those treacherous, cowardly birds would have been thoroughly struck with absolute terror, fleeing in wild panic right off the bat.
Even the fallen Charizard shared this exact, agonizing realization.
Watching the Altaria and Cyclizar lines dismantle the wreckage, and tracking the northern vector where the Archeops flock had retreated, his heart was completely filled with an ocean of unbridled frustration, grief, and fury.
Before his consciousness slipped entirely into absolute darkness, a singular, final thought permanently burned itself into his mind:
I...
Am too weak.
~~~
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