Morrigan's figure slowly emerged from the shadows at Casaric's feet, the darkness standing out starkly against the battlefield crisscrossed with firelight and cannon flashes.
He sneered, "It seems this low-level magical creature still thinks it's just over ten days ago."
"It probably thinks it can still swing out another sword strike, my King, don't you agree?"
Casaric's expression remained unchanged, his gaze still fixed on that pale green slime on the railing of the floating fortress.
"Everyone must pay the price for their ignorance, even a slime."
He tapped his staff against the chariot.
[Demon Summoning Spell]
The sound of the staff's base striking the metal carriage panel wasn't loud, but the moment it spread out, all the mana and air currents changed direction in an instant.
The ground lit up.
Black flames burned at the edges of the magic formation. The flames had no heat; instead, they froze the surrounding trees. Frost began forming on the surface of the charred black soil, the frost lines spreading along the cracked fissures left by the fire, like a continuously expanding spiderweb.
A roar echoed from deep within the magic formation.
This roar carried physical impact force. The sound itself was like an invisible wall pushing outward from the center of the magic formation.
The nearby Poison-stinger Wasps were hit head-on by the soundwave. Their wings shattered from the resonance, and their bodies exploded into dark red clouds of blood mist in midair, like crushed blood packs.
Then Agrel saw the skull reaching out from the magic formation.
A bone dragon's head.
First the skull, then the cervical vertebrae—each section of the spine was longer than his entire body. When the wings spread out, they kicked up a freezing storm in every direction.
Its gaze fell on the slime on the bridge. Two ethereal blue soulfires ignited in its eye sockets.
Then it flapped its wings, silently rising from the ground, charging toward Chen Yu.
A legendary bone dragon.
Agrel's heart grew heavy.
Most of the undead in the Material Plane had been driven into the Abyss centuries ago, making them subjects that could be summoned.
Even if it was just a bone dragon, it was still a dragon, still worthy of vigilance.
Agrel took a deep breath of the cold air.
This was a huge problem. He knew this demon warlock wasn't simple, but becoming a Legendary so recently and using Legendary spells with such proficiency...
He needed to find a way to land a Backstab.
The Corrupted Miasma Mountains could afford one epic-tier magical creature, but not another demonic lord.
Compared to the local magical creatures, these demons from outside the Material Plane, who wanted to drag the entire continent into the Abyss, were clearly more detestable.
He lowered the Shadow Owl's flight altitude, diving toward Casaric's direction.
The strong wind made his robe flap loudly. He had to reach out and hold down his wizard hat to keep it from being blown away.
The Shadow Owl's natural flight speed wasn't fast; it relied mainly on shadow travel. But he didn't dare use shadow abilities lightly.
He hadn't yet figured out the perception range of the Shadow Staff in Casaric's hands. Using shadow abilities recklessly would be no different from raising a torch in the dark.
Closer.
Closer and closer.
Casaric still stood on the chariot, the light barrier of the Dome of Life flickering faintly around him. His attention was still on the floating fortress; he hadn't noticed Agrel.
Agrel prepared to raise his staff and cast a spell when a sudden surge of Mana Tide washed over him.
The Shadow Owl was thrown off balance by this Mana Tide, forcing Agrel to abandon the dive and flap its wings to steady itself.
Agrel quickly looked up at the sky.
That slime wearing a crown had somehow floated to midair.
The gel erupted with immense suction force. A massive black hole even appeared at the center, frantically absorbing mana.
The mana surged in, forming a visible mana hurricane. The hurricane was so vast that even the clouds in the sky began to spin along with it, torn into a vortex shape.
Even the gravel and ash on the ground were swept up by the mana flow, flying toward the black hole. Before even touching the edge of the black hole, they disintegrated on their own and were swallowed inside.
Agrel thought it was his imagination, but after confirming, he realized this slime was indeed rapidly expanding.
The bone dragon swung its massive skull in midair. Its lower jaw opened to an angle completely inconsistent with bone structure, and a pale blue freezing energy condensed deep in its throat.
The frost churned into a massive storm in the air. The temperature at the center was so low that even the moisture in the air didn't have time to condense—it turned directly into fine ice crystals.
The ice tornado collided head-on with the still-expanding gel.
But it vanished instantly.
The moment the ice storm touched the gel's surface, not even a sound was made—it was all absorbed into the gel black hole.
Amid flashes of lightning and thunder, this slime kept growing larger. It had already surpassed the size of the floating fortress, the bone dragon's wingspan, and everything else on the battlefield that could serve as a reference.
The color of its gel was also changing, from its initial emerald green to purple, from purple to pure pitch black.
"My god... what is this..."
Agrel had never seen a slime more enormous than an Astral Realm being.
Though being huge in the Astral Realm wasn't necessarily a good thing, it was obvious this slime was no ordinary astral creature to mess with either.
Casaric clearly sensed something was wrong too. This slime's expanded form was far larger than when it was in the Royal Capital. Even he felt a sense of unfamiliarity.
Unless... unless in the past ten-plus days, this low-level magical creature had completed the step he himself hadn't managed to achieve in the past few hundred years.
Casaric reached a conclusion he found hard to accept: this low-level magical creature had actually become Legendary.
A legendary slime.
A soft, dignified voice came from the sky.
"Casaric, I told you to hand over the crown."
Under everyone's gaze, the pitch-black, mountain-like slime began to condense into a specific form.
The gel differentiated on its own into the contours of bones, muscles, and scales, as if a dragon's body structure was rebuilding within the gel in a matter of seconds.
Black scales flipped out from inside the gel. Dorsal spines arched out of the gel surface one by one along the spine. A tail whipped out from behind, sweeping across the base of the clouds, churning the vortex center into even more chaos.
It had transformed into a dragon.
A black dragon that blotted out the sky.
Its spread dragon wings were wider than the deck of the floating fortress. Dark purple patterns left by the Mana Tide were faintly visible on the wing membrane, pulsing slowly like blood vessels.
The dragon's head lowered. Its vertical pupils glowed with amber light in the shadow of the clouds, reflecting the densely packed demons and slimes on the battlefield below.
Before this massive silhouette, even the floating fortress and the entire battlefield seemed exceptionally tiny. The bone dragon that had seemed enormous to Agrel just moments ago now looked no more than a slightly larger flying serpent.
The lightning flashes overhead could only illuminate the outlines of its scale edges, unable to capture even a glimpse of its full form.
He merely flapped his dragon wings gently, and the airflow kicked up from the wingtips churned the clouds into spiral turbulence.
Chen Yu roared to the sky.
Dragon's Aura and Fear Aura activated automatically, pressing down across the entire battlefield with the dragon body as the center. The imps at the front of the Demon Legion collapsed directly to the ground.
The bone dragon's soulfire flickered.
It wanted to retreat, but it was too late now.
A pitch-black dragon claw reached down from the clouds.
The bone dragon tried to spit out an ice tornado, but before its breath could condense, the dragon claw grabbed its entire skull. The grip was so brutal that the bone joints cracked with a sharp sound.
His other claw hooked onto the bone dragon's lower jaw, forcibly prying its mouth open.
The bone dragon thrashed its tail desperately. The tip of its skeletal tail struck the black dragon's forelimb but didn't even scratch a single scale.
Then Chen Yu lowered his head, and a surge of dark green light gathered deep in his throat.
[Dragon Breath]
Acid and dragon flame mixed together, pouring from the black dragon's throat into the bone dragon's wide-open mouth.
The bone dragon struggled frantically, its skeletal wings flapping wildly in the air. But Chen Yu held it as easily as a toy; it couldn't break free at all.
The bone dragon's bones turned black and charred under the high heat. The soulfire let out a shriek-like hiss the moment the breath touched it, then was completely engulfed by the breath.
When Chen Yu released his dragon claw, the remaining charred bones crashed down from the sky onto the battlefield with a dull thud, kicking up a cloud of black ash and dust.
Inside the charred skull, the bone dragon's soulfire had long since been extinguished.
And long before the bone dragon fell, Casaric was already preparing a dimensional teleport to escape.
A slime that was only Gold-Rank could slash out a spell that tore apart the Dome of Life. Now it had become Legendary.
Let alone that bone dragon—if he ran too slowly, he'd be in trouble too.
This legendary warlock chose to follow his instincts, wanting to escape back to the Abyss fissure. He didn't even dare return to the Burning Capital.
But someone wasn't willing to let him leave.
[Dimensional Anchor]
A green ray shot down from the sky, spreading above Casaric's head, expanding into a layer of green force field, like a transparent cover wrapping around Casaric from all sides.
The staff in Casaric's hand flickered twice, then went out like a candle flame.
His teleportation spell had actually failed.
He looked up. Agrel's figure emerged riding the owl.
Another Legendary?!
Despicable slime!
Even Casaric, a demon warlock with excellent composure, couldn't help but curse at this moment.
Clearly, he misunderstood something.
But Chen Yu wasn't surprised by the owl's appearance.
His Divine Sense had long discovered this owl. It could evade magical detection, but not Divine Sense.
He had even counted exactly how many gold coins this old mage had hidden all over his body.
Since someone had stepped in to help, now was the time to finish everything.
Chen Yu looked down at the battlefield below, his gaze landing on Casaric, trapped in place by the Dimensional Anchor.
[Gel Projection]
Gel domain, expand!
Above his dragon body, a round, shadowy slime image rapidly appeared. This projection was so massive it could cover his entire black dragon body, including all the slimes on the battlefield.
On the battlefield, a Slime Knight had just stabbed through an imp's ankle with its short sword when it suddenly noticed a layer of green light spreading across its gel surface.
A pale green light, full of life energy, shone through from the deepest part of its gel, dyeing its entire body into a glowing little lantern.
"Moo?" It lifted one gel hand and saw that its short sword was also glowing.
It felt power swelling inside its body. Instinctively, it bounced up, tumbled a full rotation in midair, swung its short sword, and sliced the demon charging at it clean in two.
The demon's upper half slid off, black blood and organs splattering everywhere.
The Slime Knight landed back on its beetle's back, staring dumbfounded at its short sword, then at the fallen demon corpse. Its little eyes were wide as saucers.
"Moo moo?!"
Mommy, since when was it this strong?!
The other slimes felt the change at the same time.
A pink slime that had been pinned to the ground by a hellhound thought it was done for. It had closed its eyes, ready to blow up its gel and take the hellhound down with it, when it suddenly felt a surge of power flowing through its body that wasn't its own.
It opened its eyes and found it wasn't injured at all—it had actually bounced the hellhound away instead.
"Moo?"
It bounced up from the ground, brushed the dust off its body, then looked around and saw all the slimes on the battlefield glowing.
They all felt that connection at the same time, as if they had all become part of the King, and the King had become part of them.
"Moo, it's the King's Blessing!"
"Long live the King!"
The Slime Knights cheered. The entire Slime Knight Regiment turned into a green ribbon of light weaving swiftly through the demon ranks. Wherever it passed, demons fell in droves.
The green slime silhouette loomed in the sky, gathering all the slimes' light toward the sky. The specks of light, like fireflies flying against the wind, merged into that layer of pitch-black slime gel.
The black gel that had originally blotted out the sky suddenly began to contract. With each contraction, the black color grew deeper and deeper.
From black to an even deeper black, its entire body became a mass of darkness with no discernible form.
Finally, when the darkness contracted to its limit, a burst of golden light erupted from deep within the gel.
Riiip!
The crown's cry was like a trumpet sounding, its soundwave piercing through the clouds and the chest of every soldier.
Golden light gushed out from deep within the dark gel, spreading outward along the gel like flames.
When Chen Yu's body had shrunk to about half the size of his Demon King Form, the black slime had completely disappeared.
In its place was a golden slime suspended in the sky.
A gold like sunlight shining on dewdrops as the sun just rose over the clouds, like the golden waves of wheat fields rippling in the autumn wind, like the light reflected by freshly minted gold coins dancing in a furnace flame.
"Ooh, the King is glowing!"
The Slime Knights exclaimed in unison, lifting their short swords, tilting their heads back, their little eyes reflecting that mass of golden light in the sky.
Agrel also looked up at that gold flooding the sky. Bathed in that golden light, he felt a warmth spread through his body. It was even quite comfortable.
But he quickly came to his senses and hastily cast a teleportation spell to leave the spot.
Soon after he left, the golden slime slowly floated to directly above Casaric and fell straight down.
Like a giant celestial body descending from the heavens, it broke through the air. Its golden figure generated light and heat from friction in the air. The edges of the golden gel began to glow, so bright it was blinding, washing away all the shadows across the entire battlefield.
"Damn it!!"
Casaric looked up at that golden meteor that kept growing larger. He swung his staff, going all in. Every defensive spell he could think of in that instant, he piled up.
Abyssal Fortress, Multiple Soul Shields, Anti-magic Barrier...
"Wow, such a sacred butt."
The Slime Knights looked up, their helmets nearly sliding off their heads, letting out sincere, soft exclamations of wonder.
Under the gaze of all the slimes, Chen Yu's golden figure plunged completely into the ground.
The light engulfed the chariot. It engulfed the layers upon layers of defensive spells on the ground. It also engulfed the legendary warlock's final unwilling roar.