Dragonai's Invasion (9) - Black Dragon and Red Dragon
Yet even so, their attacks never ceased. Through the protruding cannons, they unleashed thousands of arrows and every kind of magic imaginable. At least the knights who had recklessly hurled their weapon ki right up against the barrier's surface were gone, which was a small comfort to the dragon.
"These damn human brats... How the hell are they handing out weapon ki like it's candy? Even a dragon feels that when it lands clean. Is this the power of a kingdom that's become an empire? Tch, none of that matters now. If only I could summon my Dragon Tooth Soldiers..."
Dragon Tooth Soldiers—warriors born when a dragon's teeth were planted in the earth. Of course, no sane dragon would ever rip out its own fangs to do it. Even for a dragon, regrowing a tooth could take decades, and the pain of extraction was excruciating, much like a human suffering through dental work. Most Dragon Tooth Soldiers were either given by a conquering dragon as proof of subjugation or harvested from the corpse of a defeated dragon.
These soldiers were so overwhelmingly powerful that even human Sword Masters stood no chance against them. If Bandseuk could have brought even ten of his family's hundred Black Dragon Soldiers here, he could have wiped out every defender on those towers and seized Delie in an instant—the woman he so desperately wanted to claim as his slave.
In truth, he did possess the magic to summon them. There was only one problem. Calling them would immediately prove that a first-tier dragon—his father—had invaded the Lusa Empire. His father had never approved of him crossing into second-tier territory alone. If summoned, his father and brothers would surely come rushing to "rescue" him.
"Second-tier dragon, my ass... That coward's probably holed up somewhere like a shut-in. Not even showing his snout."
Bandseuk was not yet a proper first-tier Black Dragon. He was a second-tier son dragon. A son dragon could only awaken as a true first-tier dragon by receiving the Soul Stone containing the souls of all ancestral Elemental Dragons from his lineage—something passed down only after the previous first-tier dragon's death.
Receiving the Soul Stone did not grant any particular physical strength. Even without it, Bandseuk already possessed physical power nearly equal to his father, Tamorparty. However, a first-tier dragon who inherited the stone gained all the knowledge, memories, and high-tier magic techniques of his ancestors. His mana also increased by a small but significant amount, and his mental strength improved dramatically, boosting his mana recovery rate to extraordinary levels.
It was like transplanting the ancestors' brains directly into the successor. According to his father, the inheritance felt like adding 90% ancestral personality and 10% one's own, along with 98% ancestral memories and only 2% personal ones.
"Damn it... To think I'm struggling against these worthless humans. This city really is too well-prepared."
The dragon pondered how to deal with the towers without summoning Dragon Tooth Soldiers. He had expected the humans of Koban City to surrender after being crushed by raw power, just like the other great cities he had terrorized. But who could have imagined a city armed with such cutting-edge, high-tech weaponry?
Some military scholars had wondered whether enough cannon fire might eventually harm a dragon. Their theories were based on the assumption that hitting a dragon's massive body would be easy. Those scholars had probably never seen anything beyond a wyvern. A wyvern might be affected by cannon fire, but even then, accuracy remained a fatal problem. Wyverns were not particularly large—a hundred-year-old wyvern was barely the size of an earthly dinosaur. As a result, cannons had become almost entirely obsolete in this world's armies. Their accuracy was poor, they moved at a crawl (only 8 km a day even with dozens of men and oxen), took over three hours to reload, and would shatter from recoil if fired more than seven times a day. Even well-maintained cannons were far weaker than high-tier magic or weapon ki.
Against an Elemental Dragon whose barrier could absorb thousands of such attacks, cannons were little more than a warm compress. Only something on the level of a modern anti-ship missile like a Tomahawk could even hope to damage that barrier. That was why humanity had needed a weapon capable of killing powerful foes like dragons before the cannons themselves were destroyed.
After five hundred years of effort, a few genius mages and engineers had finally developed the magic cannon. It was primarily used for dragon-slaying. However, because only grandmaster-level mages with a combined level and treasure rating of 1400 or higher could participate in its creation, the cost was astronomical. A single magic cannon shell cost around 300,000 shillings—five times the value of a modern Tomahawk missile—just in high-energy output. Even its designers had never imagined it would one day be used against an Elemental Dragon. It had only ever been deployed against lesser threats like earth dragons or low-grade metal dragons raiding loose walls in deserts or plains. Elemental Dragons were beings humans were never meant to provoke.
"What the hell is that?!"
Bandseuk could hardly believe his eyes. Fourteen streaks of light were raining down from the sky like a meteor shower. He blinked his pumpkin-colored eyes in stunned confusion. If he had looked a little more carefully outside the Black Star Knights' fortress, he would have fainted on the spot. There, charging up their priceless magic cannons, stood fourteen white towers.
"Shit, those aren't aimed at me... Where the hell are they shooting?!"
Bandseuk had no idea he should have been paying attention to those dragon towers.
* * *
At that same moment, Dragonai, soaring through the skies above Koban, was forced into an evasive maneuver by a sudden pillar of fire. Something struck with enough force to shatter the first-layer barrier he usually maintained while flying.
"Hmm. To think it broke my first-layer barrier. Impressive."
Pure admiration filled Dragonai's voice. Normally he flew with a three-layer barrier—each layer three times stronger than the last. But when he glanced down, he saw the magic cannons charging again.
"Ahem..."
Just moments ago, lost in thought, he had been flying straight toward his lair without even looking at the ground. He had been thinking about the other princess he had knocked out and brought back a few days ago—Ailier, another flower of the Lusa Empire's social scene. The moment he revealed he was a womanizer, her flirting had stopped. Then she had declared she would never marry him. But once she had caught Dragonai's eye, her fate was sealed. He was already drooling at the thought of adding her to his harem of beautiful women. Her charm stat was a staggering 1.51 million—an ultra-legendary beauty.
"Kuhuhuhu... Now that I think about it, why bother with love? I can just skip straight to the sex."
Happy at the thought of her, Dragonai had been hurrying through his night flight. But when he looked down, the magic cannon shells that had shattered his first barrier turned out to be nothing more than a warning shot. Thirteen additional beams of light were now streaking toward him in a massive barrage.