"Lord Nolan, Bayle's place of confinement is not far ahead. As for this traitor, you need not trouble yourself. Leave him to me."
Florissax's expression was icy, a cold gleam in her eyes. Her voice cut like a winter wind.
The old friends' reunion came to an abrupt end, and both sides lost any desire to continue the conversation.
The atmosphere grew heavy in an instant. Everyone understood that a battle between titans was about to erupt.
Jagged Peak Summit was eerily silent, like a graveyard sunk in deathly stillness. Only here, the dead had crawled out of their graves and were chasing the living until they could barely breathe.
The air was thick with the acrid stench of gunpowder. Smoke hung in the air, choking and pungent, lingering like the dense fog that blankets the land at dawn.
Trina's small body hid tightly behind Nolan's broad, mountain-like shoulders, her bright eyes scanning the surroundings with wary alertness.
She could clearly sense a danger unlike anything before slowly closing in, as though some matter of life and death was about to unfold.
After a brief moment of thought, she tightened her arms around Nolan without hesitation, pressing herself even closer to him.
Trina turned to look at her Lord's face, feeling the warmth radiating from him. For no clear reason, she simply leaned against him, and a small measure of calm settled in her heart.
"Don't be afraid, Trina. The one who made a vow with you is right beside you, so there's nothing to fear!"
Trina quietly encouraged herself, then lifted her head and looked past the Ancient Dragon's colossal body toward the distance ahead.
Far away, a bottomless black abyss could be faintly seen, like a gaping maw waiting to devour anyone who came near.
Low, furious roars kept rumbling from within. Some were filled with rage, others with madness, like thunderbolts tearing across the sky, threatening to rip through their fragile eardrums.
The two Ancient Dragons, one grayish-white and the other cherry-red, spread their enormous, majestic wings at the same time, like two brilliant clouds drifting through the air.
With heavy, powerful steps, they took their first step toward the battlefield almost in unison.
The Ancient Dragon covered in grayish-white Scale Armor slowly raised a sharp claw that gleamed with cold light. Along its long forelimb, scales as hard as stone were packed tightly together like an impenetrable layer of armor.
The Ancient Dragon wrapped in cherry-red Scale Armor bared a vicious mouthful of sharp fangs. Its snow-white teeth reflected the sunlight with a cold gleam, dazzling enough to sting the eyes.
In the next instant, the two great dragons beat their wings and shot into the dark, low sky like arrows loosed from a bowstring.
The sound of their bodies tearing through the air was like rolling thunder, deafening and overwhelming. It pressed the already tense atmosphere even tighter, making it feel more suffocating, more searing.
"No Dragon Lightning? Are they starting with close combat right away?" Nolan, watching from the side, thought to himself. "Is this some custom of Ancient Dragon duels? They certainly aren't this gentle with outsiders."
The Ancient Dragon with grayish-white Scale Armor soared through the air above one side of Jagged Peak Summit, then suddenly lashed out with its thick, powerful tail, like a giant python whipping through the sky.
But the cherry-red Ancient Dragon pursuing her was light and agile, twisting gracefully in midair like a dancer and avoiding the fierce blow with ease.
Senessax quickly turned her head, her terrifying fanged maw opening wide as she glared viciously at Florissax above her, a trace of mockery in her eyes.
The surging lightning finally came. It was the symbol of dragons, and also their blade.
"Looks like that shameless rebel has completely corrupted you. Truly the same vile, despicable methods!"
Florissax was a little slow to react. Only after a moment did she open her razor-toothed maw.
Violent thunder exploded before her eyes. She immediately beat her vast, magnificent wings, sending a hazy current of air surging outward in every direction.
"To receive such praise from you is truly my honor," Senessax replied without expression, her voice utterly cold.
"You shameless traitor!"
As Florissax roared in fury, her body flashed forward like a giant arrow.
Trina suddenly felt an invisible pressure, powerful to the point of terror, crashing down from above. As the two massive beasts lunged savagely at one another, that pressure surged in like the sky and earth were overturning together.
Trina had no choice but to raise both hands and hold down her long hair as it whipped wildly in the wind, lest it block her sight.
At the instant both sides launched their attack, the figures of Florissax and Senessax suddenly blurred.
It was no illusion. The two dragons were moving so quickly in their lunge that it defied imagination, as if they were two brilliant meteors screaming in from the far reaches of the heavens.
Their wings and Scale Armor-covered bodies were almost impossible to distinguish now, their speed driving them to the very edge of what the naked eye could follow.
At that moment, the aura pouring from the two colossal beasts was unmistakable. It was a killing intent determined to put the other to death.
Fierce, sharp, and carrying the fearless resolve of one prepared to sacrifice herself.
Bodies that powerful charged forward like cannonballs. Even if a towering mountain stood before them, it would likely be smashed open by force.
But though the two Ancient Dragons looked like stones, they were not mounds of earth. Their mighty flesh was stronger than dust, and their cold Scale Armor harder than rock.
In that instant, what should have been heavy and cumbersome stone moved with the speed and ferocity of a meteor tearing across the sky.
The two collided with a thunderous crash, then split apart in a flash like lightning, only to slam into each other again.
The deafening impacts were like war drums shaking heaven and earth, pounding again and again against the eardrums of everyone present.
Even the Flying Dragons circling in the sky were swept up by it, beating their wings as they joined the fierce charge.
No one knew whether those great beasts had suddenly found their courage, or whether they had been stirred by the roars within the mountain.
They rushed toward the army gathered from the dead. Yet strangely, they alone did not approach one person.
Trina could not see the details of the dragons' battle clearly.
She could only vaguely make out Senessax and Florissax crashing violently together, pausing for a brief moment as if frozen, then vanishing without a trace in the blink of an eye.
Nolan, by contrast, saw every move both sides made.
The dragon pressure, roaring like a massive wave, was blocked by Nolan. Trina suddenly found that breathing had become much easier.