Of course, Declan was not so foolish as to clash with such a massive metal golem head-on. Instead, he stepped into the air and started to weave between the thick metal legs with his much more agile body. He occasionally stopped here and there, launching a few blows at specific areas of the golem.
Every time Declan’s outline paused was when he traded blows with the golem dragon!
Declan’s incredibly vicious compressed-wind shots allowed him to knock the golem dragon around without even touching the machine. Meanwhile, the golem dragon would take the opportunity to drown Declan in a torrent of magic energy beams.
After a few exchanges, Greem figured out that Declan’s elemental affinity was for the wind elementium. However, instead of becoming an elementium adept, he had chosen to use some unique magical technique to combine wind elementium with his body-refining magic.
Other elementium adepts needed handsigns, chants, and suitable magical materials when they cast spells. However, every single move from Declan was basically a tremendously powerful single-target spell. His attacks didn’t just possess incomparably powerful physical force. They possessed terrifying elementium damage as well.
More importantly, where and when he put his mind and will was where and when the attack landed. He did not require a buffer time to gather magic and shape spells as elementium adepts did.
As such, Declan would be able to instantly close-in on an ordinary elementium adept if they did not have any means of creating distance. When that happened, they would probably die before they could even cast a single large-scale spell!
Declan might not have muscles as large or well-shaped as the low-grade body refining adepts, but every single punch and kick he used carried horrifying might in them.
Greem’s scan revealed that even a basic attack from Declan, unenhanced by any magic, could achieve damage of over a 1,000 points. The battle techniques that required a brief period of activation would reach 1,600-1,700 points of power. Greem couldn’t endure a single one of these attacks.
Under Greem’s command, the hundreds of magic energy cannons tracked Declan as best as they could and constantly unleashing their firepower. The two giant magic energy cannons and the golem dragon’s beam were on standby, prepared to unleash a violent blast whenever the enemy was to pause for even a moment.
Even Declan’s forcefield would shatter on the spot if the two giant magic energy cannons hit it. Thus, after experiencing the shocking might of the giant cannon once, Declan became incredibly careful. He was scared that he might be hit by all three of the golem dragon’s most powerful beams and end up badly injured. After a few tries, Declan resentfully realized that the reason Greem was hiding on the platform on the dragon’s head was to bait him into attacking.
If he wanted to attack Greem, then he would unavoidably have to expose himself above the magical golem dragon. When that happened, he would be well within the range of fire for both the giant magic energy cannons and the dragon’s energy beam. One slight misstep and even he would be buried beneath the concentrated fire.
Having understood Greem’s plan, Declan gave up on all thoughts of ending the battle swiftly. Instead, he focused on circling the golem dragon to look for weak spots on its metal body. In particular, he was paying great attention to select regions on the mechanical dragon’s form: the exhaust ports, the ventilators, and other similar places.
The dragon’s shell was truly very hard, but Declan did not believe that its insides were as firmly solid and without weakness.
For the sake of discovering these places, Declan swept every single part of the golem dragon’s body with shockwaves from his punches. Plenty of fist-marked dents appeared all over the golem dragon’s body. Declan also destroyed many of its magic energy cannons.
Soon, Declan discovered an entryway in the abdomen of the golem dragon. The entryway was covered in five layers of special metal plates, for a total thickness of two meters.
Without any hesitation, Declan endured the rain of cannon fire and the fire adept’s powerful spells to charge up to the metal plates. He then started pummelling it with punch after punch.
Even the super-alloy that had been refined multiple times with secret arcane techniques could not endure the force of Declan’s fist. The first plate was quickly smashed and twisted, revealing the second plate beneath.
Naturally, Greem would not allow the enemy to so easily break into the dragon’s body. As such, the dragon’s head curved. It opened its mouth, and a frighteningly thick pillar of energy swept towards Declan. Greem also took this opportunity to chant and cast his spells, sending a massive ball of fire crashing towards the body-refining adept.
Faced with the enemy’s coordinated attacks, Declan quickly reacted. He dodged the dragon’s energy attack and chose to simply endure Greem’s Lava Spray, such that he could continue attacking the metal plate. Yet, to his surprise, strange light energy was mixed within Greem’s vicious fire attack. The light energy penetrated his defensive forcefield and left a small scorch mark the size of an egg on the left hand he had used to block with.
Even Declan was surprised at this unexpected situation!
Having decided to start a war against the Crimson Clan, Declan had naturally conducted a very detailed investigation on this legendary fire adept.
To be extremely safe, Declan had even made the extra effort to purchase a Pendant of Fire Resistance along with Potions of Fire Resistance. With such preparations, he was confident that the Third Grade fire adept would not be able to inflict any damage on him through his fire resistance, no matter what spells he had cast.
However, the situation here was simply too strange. The Lava Spray he had cast was a reasonably powerful spell even among Third Grade spells. However, that was only relative to Third Grade adepts. That amount of fire damage should not have broken through Declan’s defensive forcefield.
Declan dodged the barrage of energy beams and looked down at his hand to examine the scorch mark. He couldn’t help but frown.
Light-attribute energy damage!
Moreover, the energy was extraordinarily pure and possessed a strange penetration effect not possessed by other elementium magic.
Declan frowned and thought about the situation as he quickly circulated the magical energy in his body.
As magic flowed through his left hand, the strange burn mark began to heal and quickly disappeared without a trace.
For a body-refining adept like himself, his control and refinement over his body had already reached a peak. He did not require any healing spells. All he needed was to expend a little bit of energy, and he could recover most damage sustained by his body.
Of course, energy healing of this manner could not help with lost limbs. It could only heal lighter surface wounds. As such, Declan had also prepared plenty of healing wands and potions.
Metallic creaking rang out as the sound of spinning gears could be heard from the entryway where Declan had attempted to break into. The exposed second layer was quickly shrinking, covered by metal walls sliding in from both sides.
In Declan’s moment of hesitation, the entryway had vanished completely.
The Fourth Grade body-refining adept let out a roar of anger. He evaded most of the attacks from the cannons and arrived at the dragon’s thick metal leg, upon which he started attacking aggressively.
His fists left twenty-centimeter-deep craters on the metal. Even the super-alloy could not defend against Declan’s fists of flesh. They collapsed inwards, the shape of Declan’s fist left in the metal.
Declan spun around the leg and attacked it wildly, intent on disposing of the dragon’s mobility first.
Unfortunately, despite trying for a long time, he had no choice but to give up in the end.
The golem dragon’s body was simply too tough. Even if he were to punch it a hundred times, the best he could do was wear off a thin layer of metal. It was a seven-meter-thick leg. He would need at least an hour of continuous attacks to be able to break it.
The enemy would not give him such plentiful time to do as he wished!
From the moment he approached the golem dragon, his defensive forcefield had been trembling unstoppably from the constant barrage of the cannons. These attacks might not be able to break through his forcefield, but they drained his stamina quite substantially.
Declan had to back away every so often after fighting the golem dragon at close range so that his forcefield had a buffer time to recover.
Chapter 1013 - The Power of the Holy Light
The battle was still raging on!
The armies finally stopped after retreating ten kilometers. They started to turn back and look upon the dusty battlefield in the distance.
Wave after wave of violent magical energies shook the air itself, the result of the purest and most concentrated of magic attacks. One or two thick beams of energy occasionally swept across the horizon, shredding all the clouds in the sky to reveal its strangely crimson color.
Shock and disbelief appeared on the faces of Zam and the other six Fabres adepts as they sensed the intensity of the energy spreading from the distance.
That legendary fire adept was actually fighting Lord Declan to a standstill through the use of a Fourth Grade magical machine. How could they not be shocked and terrified by this!?
Magical machines were machines, after all. Their massive size might provide them with superior strength, but there was no working around a machine’s natural disadvantage of being slow and clumsy. Everyone here should be able to avoid a magical machine’s range of attack with some minor technique up their sleeve, before going on to slowly wear down a machine’s defense.
That was why the Third Grade Fabres adepts did not think of the Fourth Grade magical machine as that much of a threat!
However, judging from the battle in the distance, Lord Declan did not have too obvious of an advantage in this fight. Everyone was surprised at how powerful the Third Grade adept was.
Of course, if the Fabres Clan had performed a more in-depth investigation and uncovered the past results of the Fourth Grade magical golem dragon in battle, they wouldn’t be so surprised. After all, the Fourth Grade magical golem dragon had fought against a Fourth Grade dragon in Lance.
“Zam, Lord Declan should be able to win, shouldn’t he?” A male adept asked worriedly.
“There’s no doubt about that. Lord Declan will win!” Conviction appeared on Adept Zam’s face.
The Third Grade adepts instantly calmed down slightly upon hearing this.
In truth, at this point in the war, the Fabres no longer had absolute control of the battlefield anymore, even with their massive financial and military reserves. Before Fourth Grade adepts had appeared on the battlefield, this war had been at the level of a typical adept war. Victory and defeat were very common outcomes for anyone.
However, now that the war involved Fourth Grades, the entire situation was spinning out of control!
If Declan did not manage to put down this combination of the Fourth Grade golem dragon and the Third Grade legendary fire adept, then everything they had worked for up to this point would have been for naught.
So what if they had managed to conquer so many of the Crimson Clan’s territories and resources? So what if they had several times the number of low and intermediate-grade adepts compared to their opponents? Nothing mattered if they could not take down the Fourth Grade golem dragon and the Third Grade fire adept!
The true measure of these two clan’s strength wasn’t in some tiny and trivial numbers, but the personal prowess of the adepts that stood at the peak of the clan.
If and when a Fourth Grade adept wanted to establish his clan or build his kingdom, there would be plenty of organizations and human nations who would fight for the chance to join them. The Fourth Grade adept wouldn’t even need to worry about the trivial administrative tasks; someone would volunteer to do it for them.
No organization or force in the World of Adepts dared to go against the will of a Fourth Grade adept.
The only one who could interfere or intervene with the will of a Fourth Grade adept was another Fourth Grade adept or a military force equal to them!
The Fourth Grade golem dragon of the Crimson Clan had never experienced live pressure testing in combat in the World of adepts, after all. As such, it had not yet been accepted by the various adept clans of Zhentarim as a genuine Fourth Grade. Thus, when the fires of war finally reached the Crimson Clan’s land of origin, the most potent forces of the two clans finally clashed!
The Fourth Grade magical golem dragon was not complete without Greem.
It might be able to endure the quick and vicious attacks of a Fourth Grade dragon or ravage a battlefield uncontested. However, it could not stop a powerful Fourth Grade body-refining adept from sneaking in through the gaps in its body and taking it apart from the inside.
Greem’s presence compensated for its only weakness!
With Greem controlling the giant magic energy cannons and the energy beam along with his own powerful fire spells and holy light damage, Fourth Grade Declan was tremendously restricted in his movements and actions. He could no longer move around as he pleased.
The golem dragon’s body was also sufficiently hard and tough. It didn’t just manifest in the actual hardness of the super-alloy, but in the assimilation of the magical energy from within its body.
Without the infusion of magical energy, the super-alloy alone wouldn’t be hard enough to endure the violent Strength of a Fourth Grade body-refining adept. It was because magic energy had seeped into every corner and inch of the magical golem dragon’s body that much of the force from Declan’s vicious strikes was neutralized.
Only the remaining impact could affect the golem dragon’s body, leaving behind fearsome dents in the metal. Otherwise, the magical golem dragon would not have been able to stop Declan from taking it apart and boring straight through, even if its metal body was ten times as thick and substantial.
His offense having been thwarted, Declan’s defenses also started to show holes in them!
Even though they were both Fourth Grade, Declan was far, far smaller than the magical golem dragon. As such, the golem dragon’s base Strength was a lot higher than Declan’s. That said, with its clumsy size and unbearable speed, it required incredible coordination to hit Declan with its metal legs or its vicious head.
Fortunately, Greem relied on the giant magic energy cannons to make up for the golem dragon’s defensive weakness. He chased Declan around with the thick energy beams, forcing him to run and circle around with no time to break through the golem dragon’s defenses.
After several attempts, Greem stopped using his fire spells altogether. Instead, he converted all his fire energy into corresponding ‘holy light’ power through Sodden’s Holy Ring. He then used the speed and penetration ability of the pure light energy to bully the Fourth Grade adept.
Light could not be stopped!
It could penetrate the defensive forcefield formed by a Fourth Grade adept’s tremendous personal strength, directly inflicting a strange magical effect on his body akin to a burn. Declan had never even heard of such an attack.
He was remarkably unused to dealing with it, especially given his preference for head-on confrontations.
Since the golem dragon’s body was impenetrable and its legs could not be broken, Declan gave up on this pointless strategy and focused on taking down the Third Grade fire adept.
There was no doubt that the legendary fire adept was the weakest link in this chain. It was also the only weakness that Declan could hope to exploit!
He didn’t believe that a Third Grade fire adept would be able to defend against the wild melee attacks of a Fourth Grade body-refining adept with just the protection of a defensive forcefield from the golem dragon.
Of course, this change in target also meant that Declan now had to face the attacks of all three energy beams at once. However, his defensive forcefield was durable enough that a single hit would only cause it to trem
ble violently. It was only at risk of shattering when two beams hit him simultaneously.
Once Declan lost his defensive forcefield, he would have to quickly avoid all the other incoming attacks and adjust the energy circulation within his body to resummon the forcefield.
Declan would have to endure hundreds of rounds of continuous fire from the smaller magic energy cannons throughout this process, as well as the incredibly unusual light energy attacks of the wicked fire adept. Thus, even though the magical golem dragon was now covered in dents all over its body, three to five visible injuries could also be seen on Declan’s body.
The most severe of the injuries was located beneath his right rib.
It was a terrifying wound that had been left behind by the third energy beam grazing his body after the first two beams had shattered his forcefield. That one attack had shaved away a bowl-sized piece of flesh from Declan’s body. The exposed flesh had crystallized completely, with traces of magical energy still lingering on it.
Healing this wound had caused Declan to lose even more of his stamina. After neutralizing the magical energy that remained in his injury with his powers, the flesh and muscles near the wound could finally squirm and mesh together once again under the effect of his formidable Physique, uninterrupted by any foreign force.
The other injuries were all inflicted by that Third Grade fire adept and his light energy. To save stamina, Declan did not waste any power to heal these wounds. Instead, he relied on his 46 points of Physique to let them heal on their own.
It was 46 points of Physique. What a horrifyingly powerful body!
Take the common beast of the Black Forest– the Hairy Rhinoceros. Even that beast, which was known for its defense, only had 7 points of Physique. An ordinary dragon mostly had between 11 to 25 points of Physique.
The effect of extremely high Physique was astounding defensive power and impressive regeneration.
With Declan’s 46 points of Physique, he could stand there and let the enemy attack him all they wanted to; any weapon below Third Grade would not even be able to leave a scratch. He could put his hand into the mouth of a First Grade dragon, and no matter what they did, they would not be able to cause any serious injuries.
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