Sky-Anchor Stone Mining Outpost, the shift guards' breakroom.
"This damn weather."
The old sentry breathed warm air into his palms and took off his soaking wet armor.
"Just transferred to the wilderness and it's already the rainy season." He kicked a moldy bag of rations by his feet and grumbled, "I hate the weather here."
The young sentry wiped the rust off his breastplate and chuckled. "At least it's better than the sandstorms in the dry season. Back then, I had half a pound of sand in my helmet, and my mouth tasted like nothing but grit."
He suddenly lowered his voice. "Seriously, what do you plan to do once your service is up?"
"Go back to my hometown and open a blacksmith shop."
The old sentry said, "My son learned the craft of horseshoeing in Silverpine City this year. It's not exactly prestigious, but at least it's safe. You don't have to worry about whether you'll see tomorrow's sun."
He looked toward the young sentry.
He asked, "What about you? Any plans?"
A smile spread across the young sentry's face. "Once this year is over, I'm going to apply for discharge. I want to try out for the Royal Capital Knights."
"For that blonde girl?"
Calvin grinned, revealing gums missing a front tooth. "Give it a rest. You couldn't even write a love letter without my help."
After the two of them joked around for a bit...
Another sentry joked, "I really hope a powerful Vicious Beast comes to attack and cause some destruction. Maybe then we could go home early."
Boom!
An exceptionally loud clap of thunder rang out, cutting short their conversation.
At the same time, the alarm bells suddenly tore through the curtain of rain.
Their expressions changed. They hurriedly grabbed their weapons and rushed out of the breakroom, only to witness a scene they would never forget.
In the sky where rain poured down like a deluge, a crimson figure tore through the clouds. Its towering, majestic body vaporized the moisture, trailing a comet-like wake of steam and dark red aura.
Six ballistae standing around the outpost were activated simultaneously, the Demonic Energy crystals embedded in their bases bursting with blinding blue light.
These war machines, forged by Alchemists, were each worth a fortune. The armor-piercing runes carved onto the bolts allowed their impact to penetrate three-meter-thick hardened steel plates.
They collectively turned toward the sky and fired giant bolts over ten meters in length.
The giant bolts tore through the rain curtain in succession, the glow of the runes wrapped around the shafts illuminating their flight paths like a meteor shower rising against the sky.
It was best not to withstand this kind of war machine with one's body.
Garros took a deep breath. Golden lightning arced from the gaps in his scales, flying excitedly around him like a mane as his entire body expanded.
The passage of time seemed to slow down.
In the Red-Iron Dragon's vision, the speed at which the rain fell from the sky and the bolts fired at him all seemed to slow down.
No, it wasn't that they had slowed down.
It was that Garros's reactions and speed had both increased.
The Red-Iron Dragon's powerful body displayed incomparable agility. Moving with the grace of a dragon and fast as a golden flash, he darted left and right, twisting and turning as he wove through the rain of bolts.
He dodged the first wave of the bolt attack.
Garros opened his maw, boiling flames and lightning held between his fangs.
Boom!
A spherical Flame-Thunder Dragon Breath erupted from his mouth, vaporizing a vacuum trail through the rain and arriving before a ballista in an instant.
A magic shield rose.
It encased the ballista, but shattered instantly upon contact with the Flame-Thunder Dragon Breath.
The defensive runes and Demonic Energy crystals embedded in the base all overloaded and shattered simultaneously. However, they successfully blocked Garros's strike, and the heavy ballista was not destroyed.
It had to be said.
A regular army was not something the private forces brought by the noble's son could compare to.
"Activate the Anti-Air Pillars!"
The garrison commander roared his orders.
A section of the ground suddenly broke open, and five black pillars carved with intricate incantations rose from within, arranged in a circle. Immediately after, the five pillars lit up simultaneously, forming a large-scale Demonic Energy Dispersal Domain and a Super-Gravity Domain in the air, instantly enveloping Garros.
The flow of Demonic Energy within his body became extremely sluggish.
And it wasn't just the Demonic Energy dispersal; a force of super-gravity also pressed down on him, like an invisible giant hand dragging him downward.
If it were an ordinary Dragonkin, they would lose their flight advantage and be pulled to the ground.
Garros's eyes flickered, and his body stumbled as if affected, falling toward the ground.
The roar of engines was incessant as Alchemy Golems ran at full power, quickly converging on the spot where Garros was about to fall, standing ready to surround and kill the attacker on the ground.
However...
Something unexpected happened.
When Garros had descended to about a hundred meters, he suddenly snapped his wings. His body traced a golden arc as he changed direction and charged straight for the Anti-Air Pillars.
Body Hardening!
A layer of dark, iron-like light coated his already hard body as Garros slammed into them with unstoppable momentum.
Boom!
The magic shield of the Anti-Air Pillars was smashed to pieces.
With slashes from his dragon wings, tears from his claws, and a sweep of his tail, he destroyed all five pillars in the blink of an eye. Then, his body darted and twisted repeatedly, evading another wave of heavy ballista fire, before he opened his mouth and spat Flame-Thunder Dragon Breath at the ballistae that had lost their magic shields.
The ground shattered as a heavily armored humanoid golem carrying a massive steel shield leaped up.
The Flame-Thunder sphere was intercepted mid-air, colliding with the giant shield.
The Alchemy Golem was blown back by the flames. The giant shield was covered in cracks but didn't shatter on the spot; its construction was clearly extraordinary.
Flames rolled in the air.
Before they could dissipate, a red-gold dragon shadow charged through.
Dragon wings like guillotines swept across a ballista, slicing it in two.
The other five ballistae didn't stop firing. A rain of bolts swept toward Garros again from tricky angles, attempting to suppress him and prevent him from taking flight. The Alchemy Golems also closed in to surround him, including several new ones with light-flames erupting from their backs that were capable of flight.
The casters among the humans, the warlocks, were all constructing Spells.
The warrior guards were also standing ready, prepared to launch a coordinated attack on Garros the moment he was injured and hit the ground.
Almost all the guards' attention was drawn to Garros, and they directed their attacks at him.
And this was exactly what Garros wanted.
The opportunity for the other two dragons had come.
"There are two more."
The shouting came to an abrupt halt.
Then, the alloy gate of the western warehouse began to groan under an unbearable load.
The Red Dragon and the Iron Dragon crushed the rather weak defenders and launched a surprise attack on the warehouse.
Samantha's flame breath didn't hit the gate directly; instead, it poured in through the gaps. The terrible heat and impact caused the metal door to swell and deform, and the runes on it vanished one by one.
Bang!
The Iron Dragon's hard claws thrust into the gap. With muscles bulging, he forcibly tore the heavy steel door into twisted scrap metal.
A heatwave carrying the scent of sulfur flooded the warehouse. The sky-anchor gems displayed in the blast-proof cabinets were illuminated like pulsing cyan hearts.
"Shiny! Beautiful, shiny gems!"
"You belong to the dragons now!"
Samantha roared with excitement, her eyes narrowing into vertical slits.
She and the Iron Dragon charged into the warehouse, plundering the gems inside.
The commotion in the gem warehouse drew attention. Several Alchemy Golems, followed by a portion of the guards, shifted direction, abandoning Garros as their target to rush toward the warehouse.
Garros noticed the garrison starting to split their forces to defend the rear and immediately changed his strategy.
He stopped dancing around the ballistae and suddenly dived to the lowest altitude. His dragon claws struck out in alternating succession, turning a golem attempting to rush the warehouse into scrap metal before swinging the heavy wreckage into the surrounding warriors.
Garros displayed his Divine Might, making it difficult for the garrison to return to defend.
A short time later, two loud bangs rang out as the Iron Dragon and the Red Dragon smashed through the warehouse roof and soared into the sky. Samantha didn't forget to add a parting shot of Dragon Breath toward the warehouse behind her.
Flames and thick smoke rose in the rain, coiling like giant pythons.
Sorog had swept his tail to break the load-bearing pillars before leaving, and now, struck by the Dragon Breath, more than half of the warehouse area collapsed into ruins amidst the roaring.
Engines roared as the Alchemy Golems with light-flames surging from their backs attacked Garros together.
"Remember, this is a return gift for Viscount Ironthorn!"
Garros left behind those words and flapped his dragon wings. Even at the cost of withstanding a high-speed intercepting bolt, he ascended rapidly in a straight line, shaking off the pursuit to catch up with the two Young Dragons and covering the retreat of the Red Dragon and the Iron Dragon.
Even the torrential rain could not hide the fire and smoke.
The garrison of the Duchy of Raymond could only watch helplessly as the Young Dragons flew further and further away.