[Explosive Dragonfire Projectile]!
"Whoosh—BOOM!!!"
The blazing golden fireball shot forward and detonated violently.
Blinding golden light washed over K'Dath, stripping the world of all color, as if nothing remained but that single, destructive sun.
Crack… RUMBLE!!!
The seemingly indestructible deep-blue ice-crystal shield held for less than a heartbeat before letting out a strained, shattering crack and exploding apart, bursting into a storm of blue ice crystals that scattered through the air.
The instant the shield broke, the Night Queen let out a piercing scream. Her body was slammed backward as if struck by a massive blow, and she crashed hard into the filthy pool of blood below.
Her ice-crystal body was left in tatters. The pale skin exposed beneath was covered in scorched black burns, and a thin trickle of blue, ice-like blood spilled from the corner of her mouth.
She struggled to rise, but her presence had weakened to the extreme. Even maintaining the cold aura around her seemed beyond her strength.
Lo Quen immediately sensed her frailty.
It was now clear that the Night Queen's ability to instantly heal Ice Dragons and form powerful shields was not limitless. It consumed her core magic.
The continuous high-intensity battles, especially this ultimate Explosive Dragonfire Projectile, had pushed her to the brink.
"You have no chance left!"
Golden Dragon Lo Quen showed no mercy. His dragonblood surged as yet another Explosive Dragonfire Projectile began to form within his jaws.
As the destructive golden light flared again, boundless terror finally overtook the Night Queen's eyes.
She tried to summon her magic once more, but the faint blue glow that barely surfaced around her body extinguished almost instantly.
The second Explosive Dragonfire Projectile slammed precisely into her position.
"BOOM—!!!"
Golden flames engulfed the area yet again.
When the fire finally dissipated, all that remained was a massive, charred crater, along with countless blue-glimmering ice fragments scattered in every direction.
The Night Queen, with her pale skin and star-blue eyes, was gone.
In her place lay only rapidly melting shards of ice.
At the exact moment her body shattered into ice crystals, a sudden change rippled outward.
Crack… crack…
Like a chain reaction, the gravely wounded Ice Dragons in the plaza released a silent, wordless wail. Their enormous bodies began to collapse from the head downward, breaking apart into countless pale ice crystals that scattered on the wind.
And it wasn't only the Ice Dragons.
Within K'Dath and beyond its ruins, all remaining Others and wights still fighting Daenerys and the others, even those fleeing far away toward The Five Forts, froze in the same instant, like toppled dominoes. They stiffened, then shattered into countless ice-blue crystals, before dissolving completely into nothingness.
The threat of the Long Night that had plagued the world for thousands of years, the endless undead horde, collapsed in an instant with the death of its true core, the Night Queen, vanishing as though it had never existed.
Yet before the joy of victory could fully take root in Lo Quen's heart, he sensed something was wrong.
There was no notification on the system panel indicating an increase in Dragon's Soul.
He immediately checked the interface.
His Dragonblood purity had risen to 80 percent, and his golden dragon form had grown to an unprecedented seven hundred and twenty feet, immense beyond measure and more awe-inspiring than ever.
But the Dragon's Soul section had turned gray, marked as unable to advance.
He hurriedly checked the explanation for Dragon's Soul acquisition and saw a new line of flickering text added beneath it:
[After bloodline purity reaches 80%, conventional energy can no longer meet evolution requirements. Dragon's Soul can only be obtained by absorbing high-level magical entities.]
High-level magical entities.
Lo Quen's heart sank.
He looked toward the place where the Night Queen had dissolved into ice.
Even a being capable of creating and commanding an undead calamity didn't count as a high-level magical entity?
Then did "high-level magical entities" refer to the very existences that had created monsters like the Night Queen in the first place?
The Lord of Light?
The Cold God?
Or perhaps the shadowy force the Bloodstone Emperor had hinted at, the true hand manipulating everything from behind the scenes?
"System… are you really trying to force me into killing gods…"
Lo Quen muttered under his breath, a deep sense of absurdity rising in his chest.
At that moment, he noticed that a new active skill had quietly appeared at the very bottom of the skill list on the system panel.
[Dragonsight] (Active Skill): Possesses prophetic properties.
Dragonsight?
Lo Quen froze.
Wasn't this similar to the Green Sight of the greenseers?
Why would the system suddenly grant him a skill focused on prophecy and perception?
While he was still reeling from the changes to the system, an eerie sound suddenly echoed from the domed hall at the center of the plaza, the very structure the Night Queen had coveted so obsessively.
Lo Quen immediately reverted from dragon form to human form, golden dragon-scale armor covering his body as he landed on the ground.
Daenerys, Janice, Chai Yiq, and the others quickly gathered around him, all of them staring warily at the domed hall that had just produced the strange noise.
"Let's go inside and see."
Lo Quen made the call without hesitation and headed toward the pitch-black entrance of the domed hall.
Daenerys and the others followed closely, gripping their weapons tightly, tension written across their faces.
As they stepped inside, they entered an immense and cavernous hall.
The light was dim, provided only by faint, bleak daylight filtering through cracks in the dome above and by patches of strange moss along the walls that emitted a weak glow.
Along both sides of the hall stood rows of towering, imposing statues.
Each wore ancient armor and differed in form, yet they all shared one feature.
Every statue held a massive greatsword, its tip planted firmly against the ground.
Their faces were carved with exquisite detail, while their hair and eyes were set with gemstones of various colors, displaying silver-gold, violet, tourmaline, pearl white, and other hues utterly alien to ordinary mortals.
Chai Yiq studied the statues carefully and spoke in a low voice. "Your Grace, look at their hair and eye colors. These must be the successive kings of the Great Empire of the Dawn. K'Dath truly was the core site where these ancient monarchs conducted their blood magic experiments."
Lo Quen nodded in silence. His gaze swept over the statues of these emperors who had once wielded terrifying power and committed countless atrocities, yet he felt no sense of reverence.
They had chased power their entire lives, only to end up as pieces on the board of a higher existence.
The group advanced cautiously along the hall until they reached its far end.
Here, the light grew even dimmer. At the end stood an even larger, heavier black stone door, already standing open.
Beyond it lay a deeper darkness, as though it led into another world entirely.
Lo Quen did not hesitate and stepped across the threshold.
The space beyond appeared to be an even grander hall, though its layout was strange and unfamiliar.
His eyes were immediately drawn to the sight at the center.
There stood an enormous black monolith. The ground surrounding it was carved with countless blood-red runes that seemed to flow slowly, as if still alive.
And standing before the monolith were two figures facing each other.
One of them gripped a Valyrian steel sword that shimmered with dull, rippling patterns.
Jon Snow.
Standing opposite Jon, twisting his face into an expression of profound pain, struggle, and near despair, was a woman.
She had skin as pale as the Night Queen who had just been destroyed by Lo Quen, and eyes that burned like blue stars.
Yet unlike the Night Queen's icy madness, this woman's expression was strange and complex. It hovered between a smile and sorrow, neither fully one nor the other, as she stood there silently, gazing at Jon Snow while he pointed his sword straight at her.