N-A-A Page 69
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To be precise, Roar entered the Astral Plane—although it's unclear how, this Astral Plane within the Dragon Vault is not the scene Casalos imagined to be within the dungeon; it really is that Astral Plane!
This wouldn't normally be a big deal; the vastness of the astral plane far surpasses that of the material plane, and it also possesses another...
Chapter 214
The rules governing this vastness transcend space and time itself. Without specific abilities permitted by the astral rules, even the gods cannot encounter each other within the astral realm. Furthermore, astral tracking methods only function within specific ranges and under specific conditions, such as between astral realms that have entered from the same celestial realm.
However, the "entrance" that Casalos used to enter the Astral Plane through the Dragon Treasury does not belong to the Realms, and under normal circumstances, the Realms and even the gods of the multiverse would never be able to find it in the Astral Plane.
The reason it was able to "encounter" Grommash Hellscream was entirely because the Dragon Vault had pulled Grommash over. As a result, Hyvilland and Azak, who were tracking Grommash Hellscream from the Realm of Astral Plane into the Astral Plane, had completely lost their target.
"What's going on now...?"
"A small auxiliary function that makes it easier for you to clear some obstacles in reality." The abstract message conveyed by the Dragon Vault was difficult for Casalos to understand, so Artanis provided a suitable explanation: "Simply put, Grommash Hound hates you to death—although it doesn't know who's blaming it, its prophetic abilities are enough to make it suspect you. The Dragon Vault detected this connection at the level of chance, and it just so happens to have entered the Astral Plane, so the Vault pulled it over, creating an opportunity for you to eliminate it within the Dragon Vault."
To prevent information leaks, the trial instance will be temporarily closed while the Roar is within range.
"I understand. So, in the future, if I encounter any enemies that I can't deal with in a short time, I can force them into the Astral Plane and then use the power of the Dragon Treasury to eliminate them?"
The current situation is quite interesting. Grommash Hellscream, who entered the Astral Plane and was then pulled here, is its true form, while Casaroz, who entered through the Dragon Vault, is a psychic entity constructed by the Dragon Vault. In other words, its existence is essentially the same as its state within the trial instance; it cannot truly die.
Although the old roar is much stronger than it, and the trial dungeon ban prevents it from obtaining those extra boosts in the game, it still has countless chances to try.
Well, it's a small feature, but Dragon's Treasure Vault not only allows users to improve themselves indefinitely, it also has the ability to eliminate rivals!
“It’s not impossible, but if the gap between the goals is too large…” Casalos knew this without the archbishop needing to remind him.
It's time to fundamentally eliminate the threat of Roar.
147. First Battle with Old Roar
"Pah, you ruthless Iron Dragon brat, I never thought you'd actually track me down to the Astral Plane."
As the distortion from the teleportation disappeared, Casalos saw the enormous red dragon roaring as it charged toward him.
"It seems the success of your scheme has bred endless arrogance in you, to the point that you've misjudged your own true strength. Since you dare to appear before me, you'll soon regret it!"
The dragon's roar transformed into a furious dragon's breath, sweeping towards Casalos against a backdrop of a silver void river.
Casalos clicked its iron beak and barrel-rolled to the right, avoiding the attack it should have been immune to. A burst of dragon breath exploded from its tail, the flames capable of incinerating a city appearing like a tiny firework against the vast astral backdrop, revealing two high-level attack spells hidden within. Glancing at Roar's form, even a dragon more than twice the size of a normal Primordial Red Dragon appeared as small as an ant due to the distance.
Accelerating diagonally upwards, Casalos cut into the range of Roar's back hemisphere with his back to him, while simultaneously summoning a high-level lightning elemental to possess him, turning his body to adjust his angle in preparation for a counterattack.
In the vast astral space far from the silver river or floating islands, the binding force of gravity becomes negligible, and altitude loses its meaning. The only elements of the formation are speed and angle. The old howl, hovering at a low energy level, actually gained the advantage of angle and turned its direction towards the diving Casalos first. Two magical lights flashed again from the tips of its wing hooks.
Casalos could only disengage its shear maneuver to the left, dodging two straight, unidentified spells, before circling back to engage Grommash Hellscream head-on at a distance. Just before they met, Casalos turned right, avoiding Grommash Hellscream's breath attack and spellcasting window, which were far beyond its own size.
Old Roar instinctively followed to the left, chasing Casalos as he turned, and was forced into the single-ring competition.
In the second encounter, Casalos used its turning radius advantage to cut inside Roar's side and finally gained its first attack window. With its head slightly tilted and mouth open, it spat out a crackling ball of lightning in front of Roar's flight path, instantly covering hundreds of meters and hitting Roar's abdomen protected by its pale yellow armor plates.
The disintegration effect destroyed Grommash's high magic resistance. Exploding arcs of electricity leaped across the fiery red dragon's body, while a layer of pale blue frost, accompanied by radiating ice shards, burst open from the point of impact. Grommash, whose senses had been partially paralyzed by the electric current, was frozen and roared in anger.
"What a nasty breath you're spewing! You've hurt me. I've decided to chew every bone in your body and swallow it whole."
As we all know, Red Dragons are vulnerable to Ice, so Ice Breath is the obvious choice when fighting them; Lightning is merely a cover created by the Lightning element. Unfortunately, Casaroz is also half-fire dragon, and its Frost Breath, derived from its Super Breath feat, places a significant burden on its blood vessels and body. Furthermore, it is still too young; even with enhanced Dragon Breath power, its strength is still far from enough to destroy an extraordinary Ancient Red Dragon, a difference that the elemental vulnerability of Ice cannot compensate for.
The full-force dragon breath, capable of destroying a small city, only caused minor damage to Old Roar; its roar remained deafening.
As for melee combat… Casalos estimated that even fully bound, it was about the same size as Groudon's single forelimb, so it completely ruled out that option. In aerial combat, limited by the astral environment, it could use its maneuverability to outmaneuver Groudon, but in melee, it had absolutely no chance.
This battle is like a high-agility, fragile Barbarian jumping in front of a high-strength, heavily armored, and heavily armed Barbarian. Grommash Hellscream can make many, many mistakes, while Casalos can only dance and scrape. Once a mistake is made...
"You wretched little brat, all you can do is buzz around like a fly?"
Casalos, taking advantage of the timing of his Super Breath feat, successfully lured Growl into the single ring twice, delivering two Ice Ball Breaths that left two necrotic frostbite wounds on Growl's abdomen and side chest, yet Growl's roar remained undiminished.
After another encounter without an attack window, Casalos intended to attack again as usual. However, this ancient red dragon, with its extraordinary body and mind, suddenly abandoned the pursuit and turned around in the opposite direction. The two dragons each circled around once and returned to face each other, looking for their own opportunity to attack.
The massive, slow-flying Roar happened to be in the optimal turning speed range, gaining a two-second lead in securing the firing window.
In aerial combat, when you attack the enemy, it is also the best time for the enemy to attack you. Casalos, sensing danger, is in a state of high maneuverability overload. By the time it detects Roar's movements, Roar's attack is already upon it, leaving no room for avoidance.
Two beams of magical light, one yellow and one blue, struck it squarely. The yellow beam hit its left wing, while the blue beam struck its neck. The violent magical power exploded, tearing it to shreds. The defense and magic resistance provided by the Dragonskin, the damage reduction and spell resistance provided by its feats, and even the elemental affinity provided by the Elemental Master were all rendered useless by the old man's extraordinary casting level and the high-level spells enhanced by unknown supermagic and magical items.
Before his consciousness faded, Casalos heard the old man let out a hoarse, triumphant laugh.
The source of the maniacal laughter seemed to suddenly change direction and location. Casalos reopened his eyes, followed the sound to find Old Roar, and then glanced at his own mangled corpse drifting away into the distance.
At this distance, the corpse was no longer recognizable as a dragon, but merely some severed limbs and fragments.
The old roar's laughter abruptly ceased. It too had spotted the reappearance of Casaroz, and the old scar covering half its face bulged with shock and rage: "What is that?"
Chapter 215
A physical clone, or a golem?
My previous assessment was correct. Even if Razorfang and I went together against Grommash, we wouldn't stand a chance. That old man has hidden far too much power; his arcane prowess is probably several Wallaces higher than Razorfang's... Indeed, Varo's hearsay-based card compilations are completely unreliable. Fortunately, this old man is used to intrigue and trickery, no longer acting recklessly like a typical red dragon... As expected of a shrewd old fellow who has been steady for thousands of years, he can adapt to aerial combat tactics that don't belong to this world so quickly, relying solely on instinct.
Casalos ignored Grommash's roar. This battle, created by the Dragon Vault, would only end with Grommash's death, and its course would remain unknown to anyone. Any communication with Grommash was pointless. It silently reviewed the previous battle and summoned new higher elemental entities, which were quickly covered by pure white frost.
This time, it abandoned lightning, which enhances its mobility and provides paralysis control without immunity, and chose ice, which will hinder flight mobility but greatly increase damage to Roar.
As long as we can hurt Old Roar even once, we can kill him here by sacrificing our lives to deal with the damage.
148. Victory or Defeat
One of Faerûn's most powerful dragons, Roar Klaus the North, is dead—a death filled with humiliation, terror, and utter silence.
When it first killed Casalos and discovered Casalos had reappeared, it was only angry at being toyed with. Under the unpredictable magic and the bizarre rules of the astral plane, being resurrected with full health on the spot was no big deal. It could just kill him again. In its thousands of years of dragon life, it had seen everything... but it had never seen anything like this before.
A full resurrection on the spot once meant it was well-prepared, twice meant it was well-prepared, three times meant it was a miracle, and four, five, six times it suspected it was under an illusion. When the battlefield was filled with Casalos's mangled limbs, severed tails, and dragon heads, Old Roar, having used various methods to confirm that it was not under an illusion, was filled with nothing but terror.
Casalos had lost count of how many times it started, but Grommash stopped wanting to engage it and instead began using spells like Blink and Teleport to evade, making its long-range aerial breath attacks increasingly difficult to land. Casalos could only recklessly charge into Grommash's embrace, expending its elemental energy to unleash even a single effective attack before dying.
How many times has this happened?
It had forgotten how many times it had been blasted apart by magic, and how many times it had been torn apart by sharp teeth and claws. Its consciousness had become numb, merely repeating the monotonous and mechanical process of summoning, elementalizing, charging to launch a suicide attack, and then resurrecting.
Roar's body was mostly covered in frost, and the remaining half was covered in marks left by elemental damage: bruises, cuts, cuts, and welts, lingering stone spikes, poison, acid, and electric arcs, and even flickering dim flames. This was the deadly thing; the negligible flames had, under Casaloz's relentless attacks, accumulated into fatal wounds on Roar.
This dragon, which had dominated the northern lands for millennia, had long since compromised. Just as it had done with every powerful foe it had faced throughout its life, it had attempted to reconcile with Casaroz, willing to pay a heavy price for peace. Unfortunately, Casaroz, whose consciousness had been sealed away through countless deaths, ignored Grommash's negotiations—even if it were fully conscious, it would never reconcile with Grommash.
Roar's fate was sealed the moment it was locked in the Dragon Vault.
It tried to sever the silver thread to escape the astral plane, but failed. The thin thread that kept non-astral beings connected to the astral plane and thus accepted by it seemed to have become an illusion, and even the silver sword obtained from the Githyanki could not reach it.
It tried other spells to escape, but interdimensional teleportation failed to send it to other realms; it only traversed a short distance in interstellar space, as if the spell had been rewritten to a random teleportation within a fixed range of tens of kilometers. It couldn't even escape the area littered with Casalos's corpses.
Regardless of the method of teleportation, it can only give Roar a few minutes of buffer time at most. After just a few minutes, the elementalized Casalos can catch up with it and then repeat that chilling mechanical suicide attack.
Casalos's suicide attack doesn't always work; Grommash always finds a way to intercept it beforehand or evade it at the last minute.
However, as the floating corpses piled up, the boiling dragon magic within Roar was gradually calming down, becoming increasingly difficult to stir. In each interception and evasion, Roar's stamina was being depleted beyond its recovery; its movements were slowing, and its reactions were becoming increasingly sluggish. As a result, it was taking damage more and more frequently, accumulating more and more severe injuries, and its condition was deteriorating, making it easier for Casalos to carry out an effective suicide attack.
Time and again, each time Casalos "refreshed" from the respawn point, it was in its prime—except for its mental state. All the times it had died in the Dragon Vault trials combined didn't even amount to a tenth of this time. If it weren't for some protective mechanism of the Dragon Vault, if it weren't for its iron will holding onto its last shred of consciousness, its dragon soul would have shattered long ago in these repeated deaths, and it would have gone to the Dragon Soul's Other Shore, temporarily without divine jurisdiction.
Nevertheless, Casalos's consciousness is on the verge of collapse, and perhaps the next suicide attack, or the one after that, will cause the last thread in its dragon soul to snap.
Fortunately, Asgard favored the Iron Dragon more, and Grommash collapsed before Casalos. It wasn't just the collapse of the dragon soul and consciousness, but also the collapse of the body and life itself.
The blazing flames shattered the ancient red dragon's battered body, eventually exploding like a star igniting a fusion, swallowing up all of Roar's life force.
Under the unique, seemingly frozen spacetime metric of the Astral Plane, Casalos observed for the first time that Blaze had stolen something from death and fed it into its own body. This "Primordial Power," a gift from the Gem Dragon Bejuri and further enhanced by the Dragon Treasury, was growing in an unnamed direction. For the first time, Casalos revealed a traceable physical trajectory—the layered enhancement did not appear out of thin air. For every life killed by Blaze, something was taken away by Casalos.
Is it soul, matter, or energy? Or something else entirely? Casalos doesn't know yet, but it will eventually find out...
The war between Damara and the Witch King Zheng Yi is progressing smoothly. Although Zheng Yi, the red-robed wizard who was expelled by Sel, has broken the seal on the Vasa demon with the blessing of the abyss, thus raising a dark army, for some reason, the high-level demons have not joined the war. Zheng Yi's army did catch the Blood Feather Dynasty off guard at first, but as the war progressed, the situation reversed.
The armies of neighboring countries, dragons of all kinds who were either kind or unwilling to be enslaved by the dark army, and the ubiquitous "righteous" adventurers continuously joined the cause of resisting the dark forces. With the advantage of high-end power, Damara stubbornly resisted the advance of the dark army and initially organized an effective counterattack, showing the momentum of pushing the dark army back to Vasa to be resealed.
Light will ultimately triumph over darkness, and the Abyss Lord's plot to seize the material world will be thwarted once again. Under the leadership of many legendary figures, people seem to have already heard the triumphant song of victory.
Casalos flew indifferently... or rather numbly, looking down at the battlefield, with absolutely no desire to participate.
Attracted by several gregarious Atheros, seven more solitary Atheros wandering throughout Faerûn joined Damara's side, doubling the size of the dragon herd, yet it showed no psychological fluctuation.
The repeated deaths it experienced in the battle with the old roar were vividly reflected in its physical body. Even though the prepared sequence of trigger spells tried to reduce the pain it suffered, the tearing sensation originating from the dragon soul still overwhelmed it.
It simply flew instinctively, endlessly, searching for a sense of security that could only be felt at high altitudes.
149. Awakening
Casalos flies aimlessly
Chapter 216
As you walk, glaciers, mountains, rivers, grasslands and other landscapes flash by, like a roll of film on a black and white projector, pale, gray and lifeless.
It didn't know how long it had been flying or how far it had flown.
War is everywhere in Faerûn.
A wealthy and ambitious man hired an army to raid throughout the kingdom's territory, attempting to seize the throne. His illusions were shattered by the kingdom's knights in just eight days. For freedom, commoners took up arms and joined guerrilla forces, fighting mercenaries to the death in narrow valleys. Two massive fleets clashed on the Moon Sea, one utterly destroying the other; sailors who fell overboard were swallowed by the waves and the merfolk hidden beneath the surface. A portal to another plane was opened, and demons from the hell of Bathor seized heavily fortified fortresses, reaping innocent souls. Centuries-old allies broke their pact, and armies turned their blades against their former ally, conquering new cities. A civil war within a small kingdom drew the armies of neighboring great powers.
The elves are still retreating, migrating from the great jungle to distant islands across the ocean, while humans are rushing into the forest, intending to seize fertile lands that do not belong to them and ignite new conflicts.
The diminutive dark elf, wielding twin swords, and his companions beheaded the white dragon; the dwarves, brandishing their warhammers, charged into the hall surrounded by mountains, smashing the head of the drow dragon that dwelled there, proclaiming themselves the new kings… From high above, the war of mortals was merely the static on a film reel, the deadly slaughter and flowing blood fading into the vast, desolate backdrop of the earth. The beings, used as pawns for the gods' amusement, were, for this moment, briefly far removed from the dragons.
Casalos rejected all magical communications—or rather, ignored them—from Tindor and the Underdark, from Waterdeep, from Damara, or from elsewhere. The dogs of the Carrick-a-Karrior tribe were looking for it, as were Isis, Edgeworth, Shakales, and Bellamy, Kenneth Zmnor and Fitzgerald, Toona, the Shaving Tooth, and the Thinker, and Azumys, Kara, and Galos Dragon Nightmare as well.
They might just be making normal contact, or they might be in some trouble, or they might have some urgent matter that Casalos needs to deal with, but none of that matters to Casalos at this moment.
It only wanted to fly, soaring down upon all living beings, until it was utterly exhausted… but that was impossible. The primal power it received from the Bejuri Gem Dragon was an inexhaustible source of energy. The minimal energy expenditure from low-drag, gentle flight at altitudes higher than the clouds couldn't even keep up with its stamina recovery. Its enhanced elemental properties allowed it to directly draw nourishment from the omnipresent elements to replenish its bodily resources, enabling it to fly indefinitely. If undisturbed, it might continue flying until the end of Toril, or even the end of the realms and the multiverse.
In such a chaotic world, how could it not be disturbed?
Before the upheaval of the gods that was sweeping across the entire continent of Faerûn had even begun, nor was it an apocalyptic catastrophe, a magical ship had already awakened Casalos.
"Wow, it's a dragon! I never knew dragons could fly so high and so fast. This is the first time I've ever seen a dragon like this." The arrogant voice carried a strange penetrating power, forcefully drilling into Casalos's closed senses.
A sharp whistling sound ripped through the air, accompanied by a crackling noise. Casalos pulled the icy shell off his neck, numbly turning his head to see a young sun elf standing on the deck of a traditional magic ship, his gaze fixed intently on him. The magic ship's protective barrier blocked the frigid winds, filling the deck with the air needed for the fragile elven bodies and other humanoid races to breathe, all perfectly at ease.
"Hey, Vatan, you talk like you're so knowledgeable. You should know that by your race's standards, you're still just a little kid." The speaker was a Tyr paladin. The fact that he could joke like this with a sun elf suggested that the two had a pretty good relationship.
"That's still better than this baby dragon!" The sun elf rolled his eyes, his lingering arrogance vanishing in an instant, replaced by a coarse, dwarven aura. It was quite rare to see such an expression on a sun elf.
The paladin lightly punched the sun elf in the chest, then turned to Casalos and asked with impeccable politeness, "Your Excellency, if my friend's words have offended you, then I apologize on his behalf..."
The paladins of this era were always like this. Casalos's empty dragon eyes slowly turned, and he shook his head perfunctorily without speaking. But the paladins did not back down because of this, and still "enthusiastically" came forward to chat.
Looks like another fool fantasizing about riding a dragon.
"Judging from your flight direction, are you one of the dragons invited to the Dragon Clan Conference? We are also going to attend this grand event. Flying by yourself will consume your energy. Why don't you come with us? The Kingdom is enough for you to move around."
"Ok?"
Dragon Clan Tournament, what the heck is that?
The paladin seemed to misunderstand Casalos's question and immediately explained, "Ah, don't misunderstand, the Kingdom was invited to participate in the conference by the Golden Dragon Dracono Baron, and our captain..."
Valimar Oman hails from the Land of Magic, and as Netheril's successor, it is his inescapable responsibility to resolve the problems left behind by Netheril.
Metal dragons and chromatic dragons are teaming up! And judging by the addition of the iron dragon, this is probably the first time such a grand spectacle has ever occurred in Faerûn's history. We are honored to be a part of it..."
No, what are you talking about? The Dragon Clan Tournament is one thing, but a tournament combining Metal Dragons and Colored Dragons? Has something like this ever happened in Faerûn? What happened? Did I travel back 30,000 years? But where did the magical land of Aruha come from 30,000 years ago?
Casalos's mind was briefly distracted by a barrage of questions, barely managing to hold its collapsing spirit together.
"Alright."
It had no intention of asking those questions in its heart. It shook its body, shattering the ice covering it, and gladly accepted the paladin's invitation. It burrowed its dragon head into the magic ship's barrier, changed its form into its usual heavily armored warrior, and landed on the deck.
"There's no need for you to expend extra energy to expand the protective barrier; I don't take up that much space anyway."
It knew nothing about the Dragon Clan Assembly. It would be easier to extract more information by interacting with these people in a more approachable form, so that it could consider its next course of action.
Based on the observations just now, all the people on this ship combined wouldn't be enough for it to cut down in human form...
150. Morning
At the paladin's invitation, Casalos boarded the Kingdom in human form. Deep down, it was grateful to the paladins; had it not been for their chance encounter that awakened it, it might have continued flying in its current state until it developed some kind of mental illness similar to that of the nameless dragon, forgetting its own existence—the dragon's spirit is resilient enough compared to humanoid races, but it is not invincible; both dragon rage and the six common mental illnesses among dragons illustrate this fact.
The wooden sailboat sails above the sea of clouds, riding the stratosphere's fierce winds, shattering the golden scales of the rising sun into the clouds, which then gather at the stern like ribbons.
Early in the morning, the halfling burst out of the cabin, yelling and screaming. He carried a bamboo stick with a piece of white cotton cloth hanging from the end, which swayed like the cloud trail behind the ship as he ran. An oriental-looking female warrior, her face contorted with rage, bare-chested, one hand clutching her chest and the other wielding a drawn katana, chased after the halfling, looking determined to tear him to pieces.
Casalos's nose twitched slightly as he smelled the scent of the female warrior's protruding body parts and apocrine sweat glands on the white cloth carried by the halfling on the bamboo pole—this was probably the female warrior's undergarment.
The still-sleepy sun elf was reluctantly dragged out of another hatch by the paladins, and saw the female warrior chasing and playing with half...