In short, with Asterion's current Fire Resistance, even Elder Dragon-level monsters in the conventional sense couldn't hope to deal any effective damage to him using fire-elemental energy—even if Asterion stood completely still and let them strike him.
At most, it would just make Asterion feel a bit of hot wind blowing against his face—no big deal.
—Yes, I'm talking about you! Teostra! Lunastra!
You couple should be ashamed of yourselves! Have some shame! You Elder Dragon idiots!
But the current situation was completely different from any time before. If the flames spat out by ordinary monsters were like a burning campfire, then the fire-elemental energy released by Teostra when unleashing his full power would be a raging forest fire—the kind capable of burning entire mountain ranges to a barren wasteland during a dry season.
As for Alatreon... compared to those two, Alatreon was like the sun itself, and the fire-elemental energy he unleashed possessed temperatures worthy of that title. The two sides simply existed on entirely different levels; there was no comparison.
That Alatreon looked like he was getting a little angry.
This intense heat gave Asterion a long-forgotten sense of crisis, much like when he first came into contact with subterranean magma—making him cautious while simultaneously igniting his competitive spirit.
Asterion's prior provocation was undoubtedly successful. At the very least, it made Alatreon cast aside some of his pride as a senior and drop his condescending arrogance of graciously guiding a junior, deciding instead to get serious.
In the face of this intense light and heat, even the heavy dark clouds caused by Alatreon that originally blanketed the skies of the Elder's Recess were completely evaporated and scattered to the winds within a single, brief instant.
At this very moment, nothing but an endless, rolling, and roaring ocean of golden-red fire filled Asterion's field of vision. Being inside it felt as though the entire world was being ignited and burned to ashes.
Confronted with this ultimate lethal move that could easily kill any ordinary monster multiple times over, there was no fear in Asterion's eyes; instead, an even more blazing fighting spirit flickered within them. How could he possibly choose to just sit still and wait for death?!
Wasn't it just hurling ultimate moves at each other? It wasn't as if he didn't have one of his own.
Here I come!
As an Information Forbidden Species, Asterion knew exactly what lay behind this move of Alatreon's. Escaton Judgment was Alatreon's most representative technique, a decisive final blow. If one were to explain this move using gaming terms, it meant that if hunters couldn't apply enough pressure on Alatreon using a specific elemental weapon to trigger an elemental topple, the moment this move landed, it would wipe the field.
Instant death for the entire party. No matter where you hid or how thick your armor was, it was completely useless.
It was a field-clearing skill with a massive area of effect and extremely high damage, serving as Alatreon's customary signature ultimate move.
Though the spectacle was somewhat exaggerated, nearly blasting the Elder's Recess flat, truth be told, in a clash of this caliber, both Asterion and Alatreon maintained their rationality and did not unleash their full power.
They shared a tacit understanding, so to speak. Neither side had any intention of destroying the entire New World, so they consciously controlled their output. Even so, the high-purity abyssal energy that Asterion continuously unleashed from his body to counter the sea of fire displayed such powerful resilience and erosive force that it still surprised Alatreon at the core of the inferno.
Tracing it back to the source, the inherent advantage of the Safi'jiiva species lay in their precise manipulation of energy, whether it was the Earth's energy or their own. As a dragon who had fully inherited all the foundations from Xeno'jiiva's incubation period and brought them to greater heights, the current Asterion could already be considered an adult Safi'jiiva at his absolute peak, naturally inheriting this talent for energy control.
With a shift of his thoughts, the massive ocean of abyssal energy that Asterion had previously unleashed like a bursting dam suddenly contracted. Rather than engaging in a pointless struggle against the flames, it curled back inward strand by strand like tentacles, as if time itself were flowing backward.
Like a bottomless black hole, such a vast amount of energy flooded entirely into Asterion's body, to the point where his figure became warped and impossible to look at directly, resembling a skeletal giant being rapidly filled with flesh and blood.
This was by no means a retreat; it was for an even more violent eruption. In fact, the immense energy released by Asterion himself merely served as a catalyst. As this abyssal energy frantically condensed and compressed, Asterion moved once again.
His attack was far from limited to this. His own energy alone wasn't enough; Asterion was forcibly siphoning the Earth's energy through his limbs in contact with the ground. One had to realize that the spot beneath his feet was the largest bio-energy node in the Elder's Recess, and directly below it was the very place where Xeno'jiiva had developed all those years ago—the Confluence of Fates!!
Coupled with Asterion's continuous efforts over the past few months, the level of activity within the Earth's energy veins here could easily be imagined.
As an old timer who had survived for an unknown number of eons, Alatreon keenly noticed Asterion's movements. Truth be told, this kind of maneuver looked entirely too familiar; Alatreon had witnessed this process of forcibly siphoning the Earth's energy countless times before.
Narrowing his eyes slightly, this ferocious-looking beast unexpectedly refrained from taking advantage of the situation to launch a sneak attack or attempt to interrupt Asterion's attack, merely tilting his head, lost in thought.
Asterion naturally noticed Alatreon's strange reaction, but what he set out to do would not stop here.
As Asterion drained and condensed the massive volume of abyssal energy around him, the entire combat zone—whose vision had originally been warped by a deep blue glow—suddenly became exceptionally clear and transparent, leaving only Alatreon's golden-red flames that seemed to scorch the entire world.
Yet, this clarity was merely the final calm before the storm. Directly above the center of this roaring sea of fire, an even more terrifying phenomenon was taking shape. Countless masses of condensed abyssal energy had turned pitch-black. Simultaneously, innumerable bluish-white bands of light emerged from the ground like tentacles, continuously feeding into the pitch-black sphere of energy.
However, no matter how much white energy poured into it, the color of the sphere did not change in the slightest. The Earth's energy, which should have been pure, was rapidly eroded and warped the moment it touched the abyssal energy, subsequently transforming into fresh abyssal energy.
Finally, when the density of this power reached a critical threshold where even space itself began to warp slightly, the massive sphere of energy hovering there was suddenly compressed down until only a tiny, teardrop-like droplet of energy remained.
And this teardrop, seemingly insignificant yet harboring the cataclysmic power to destroy heaven and earth, was the sum total of all the energy Asterion had previously released from his body, with the addition of all the energy from this particular node of the Elder's Recess. It was falling!!!
So swiftly, yet so slowly—Snap!
When it finally landed in the sea of fire, there was no earth-shattering sound of collision as one might expect. Yet, even without witnessing this scene, the minds of the creatures situated at the fringes of the Elder's Recess inexplicably shuddered at the same time, as if something had cracked open.
True destruction had arrived.
"The one destroying the Elder's Recess isn't even Alatreon—it is I, Asterion!"
The golden-red world that originally occupied the entire field of vision, looking as if it would incinerate everything in existence, was instantaneously—without even a tenth of a second of transition—forcibly replaced by a burst of pure light erupting from the teardrop!
A clear, brilliant azure and white world!
Space had lost all sense of direction at this moment. The smooth ground below was gone, and the high sky overhead vanished. It was as if, in this single split second, the entire universe had been utterly erased, leaving behind only this solitary yet destructive, pure color. Beyond it, everything was silent; nothing else remained.
The intense light was nearly blinding. This was Asterion's ultimate defensive move, named—Sapphire of the Dark Emperor!!
Cough, cough. Sorry about that. He copied it from Safi'jiiva. The original version was called Sapphire of the Emperor, and Asterion was too lazy to overthink it, so he just casually modified the name for his own use. Anyway, the underlying principle of activation was pretty much the same.
The sound produced by this droplet upon detonation surpassed what the auditory organs of the vast majority of lifeforms could receive and process. Consequently, what this explosion left for the world was not a deafening roar, but absolute silence.
A roaring silence!!
In front of this torrent of energy that seemed capable of directly purifying the entire world, Alatreon's seemingly unstoppable flames of judgment had long since become like a flickering candle in the wind... Actually, let's forget the candle metaphor. Long story short, Alatreon's flames were completely washed away and extinguished.
The violent tremors caused by the clash of these two apex powerhouses of the world spread across an unbelievably wide radius, even affecting lifeforms thousands of miles away. Whether they were sleeping, hunting, or breeding, they all scrambled to their feet at the exact same moment, turning their heads toward the direction of the Elder's Recess, unable to help but feel their hearts pound with terror and awe.
Two Forbidden Species powerhouses battled to the edge of the New World, to the point that even the Elder's Recess was obliterated.
Ordinary creatures indeed had no idea what was happening in that direction, yet the instinct rooted deep within their bloodlines was enough to make them feel the exact same reverence and dread.
Needless to say, with the landing of this strike, the New World predictably suffered a massive earthquake... along with a multitude of smaller aftershocks.
Sigh, truly a state of living in dire straits.
First, Asterion had overbearingly and forcibly drained a portion of the Earth's energy from the Everstream in a short amount of time. The resulting imbalance in energy would inherently cause the geological veins to riot, triggering earthquakes—let alone the head-on collision between the Sapphire of the Dark Emperor and Escaton Judgment.
The destructive force produced by the pure energy annihilation reaction would have snapped the northern half of the New World clean in half if it weren't showing some restraint, somewhat respecting Asterion and Alatreon's intentions to hold back.
On the contrary, Asterion, the culprit behind it all, didn't suffer any damage whatsoever. It didn't matter even if the Sapphire of the Dark Emperor detonated right in his face. No matter how much abyssal energy was compressed, it was still abyssal energy. As the master of this power, Asterion could never be harmed by his own strength.
Standing tall right where he was, Asterion proudly waited for the tidal waves of energy to gradually dissipate, letting the world return to clarity, allowing the air to become completely refreshing once more.
Any mountain peaks, crystal mountain ranges, or abyssal crystals had vanished entirely without leaving a single trace of debris behind.
From this day forward, perhaps the Elder's Recess could be renamed the Elder's Plains. In any case, there were no mountain ranges left for now, only a vast expanse of flat ground... Perhaps countless years later, as energy accumulated once more, bio-energy crystals or abyssal crystals would reappear. Who knew?
At least for now, every single protrusion on the surface had been leveled flat. On this level, open ground, Asterion could already see Alatreon still standing opposite him. This fellow actually looked completely unharmed; aside from his inverse scales appearing glossier than before, there wasn't much of a change.
Well, though the marks left by his own violent slashing earlier still remained on Alatreon's inverse scales.
"Roar!" (Got your answer?)
Unexpectedly, Alatreon did not continue his assault. His reaction was quite calm as he took a few steps forward, pacing around Asterion, and left a few deep gouges on the abyssal crystals on the ground with the tips of his claws as if out of curiosity.
"Roar." (Thank you.)
Although he was slightly annoyed by Alatreon's nonchalant demeanor, Asterion wasn't surprised by his reaction. Instead, he offered a sincere thank you—he had finally recognized his place in this world and realized exactly what level his power resided at. That had been the primary purpose of this battle from the very start.
"Roar—Roar." (My energy will only exist within the New World, becoming a unique geographical feature here.)
Asterion gave his guarantee.
Gazing at Asterion, no emotion could be discerned from Alatreon's dark red draconic eyes.
"Roar!" (Remember your words.)
Leaving those words behind, Alatreon suddenly beat his wings and took flight. In stark contrast to his sluggish pace when he arrived, he flew toward the northeast at an extreme speed.
Watching the dark silhouette rapidly vanishing into the horizon, Asterion retracted his gaze. He swept his eyes over the leveled area and simply adjusted his wing-limbs to take flight.
He was ready to head back to his nest.
Alatreon had no intention of fighting him to the bitter end, and Asterion's previous provocation was merely to test his own strength.
After all, if one wanted to earn the respect of other dragons, relying solely on mental combat comparisons or fantasies wouldn't work. Only a real, physical battle could let other dragons know you were not to be trifled with—this rule remained unchanged even at the level of the Forbidden Species.
Neither Alatreon nor Asterion had unleashed their full strength. The two dragons had merely clashed briefly, an exchange that could even be categorized as a greeting.
The result was glaringly obvious: Alatreon acknowledged the strength of this newborn peer. If there ever were a meeting among the Forbidden Species, Asterion's will would certainly command the respect of the others.
As for Asterion, he also walked away with a realization—and that was that he still couldn't consume Alatreon.
At least, not for now.