Backed by Leon's ice bombardment suppressing its regeneration, the group unleashed a string of attacks and caught a subtle change.
Jeanne's eyes flashed with understanding, and she called out.
"The Mirage Sand Dragon's regeneration is getting slower! Leon's magic is burning through its healing!"
"Everyone! Forget the small fry!"
"Seize the chance, pour everything into the Mirage Sand Dragon, use this opening to max out the damage!"
Having given the order to rush, Jeanne turned her head toward Leon.
"Leon, I'm leaving the horde to you to hold down!"
"Don't worry, leave it to me!"
His expression hardened, and at a thought his ice clones moved in sync under his precise control, smoothly unfolding the Secret Art: Transcendent Magic Circle. Vast ice magic swept across the battlefield.
"Blizzard!"
On a battlefield of packed snow mixed with yellow sand, as the flood of magic rolled through, heavy snow began to fall from the sky again, wind howling across the dunes.
Frost ran wild. The flowing sand locked up.
Leon's crowd control took the pressure off Laurier and the others, who had been fighting hard while surrounded, and it freed the rest of the group's hands too, letting them switch targets without a gap.
"Plan D!"
"Focus fire on the boss, the Mirage Sand Dragon!"
"Rush it down!"
Every eye turned blade-sharp, every trump card came out, and they launched a saturation bombardment at the dying, roaring sand dragon.
"Haa!"
In an instant the glow of magic, the arcs of sword energy, the torrents of power, trails of every color tore the air apart and poured down onto the towering beast in one continuous roar of blasts.
A black-red mushroom cloud rose into the sky, and the violent explosion shook the floor until the ground itself trembled wildly.
And in the middle of that shaking, the shadow under Leon's feet split open.
A massive black claw burst out of the sand and slammed into him without warning. He had no time to react at all. His whole body was sent flying like a kite with a cut string.
In midair, Leon's face was blank and stunned, his mind wiped clean by the sudden turn, thinking stopped, nothing but question marks written across his forehead. But when the pain drove through his ice armor into his body and he couldn't hold it in, a mouthful of blood came up, and the blankness in his head was replaced by searing pain and anger. His eyes went bloodshot, rage boiling over, and he opened his mouth to swear.
"You son of a..."
A screech cut across him.
The curse stopped dead. He stared, eyes wide, at the terrifying giant shadow struggling its way out of the yellow sand, a flicker of shock crossing his eyes.
Black dragon scales, cold scarlet slit pupils, a tail run through with jagged bone spikes, a long neck whipping back and forth, sharp claws and fangs, and something in the aura coming off it that was completely unlike any monster in the Dungeon. Demeter's face flashed through his thoughts, and it clicked. He knew exactly what this thing was.
A black monster. The God's Assassin.
"A black dragon species, don't tell me... the Greatest Evil?????"
He hit the sand with a dull thud, the ice armor protecting him covered in cracks, but he was in no mood to patch his armor now. Only one confused question was left in his head: what exactly was going on?
One Mirage Sand Dragon was trouble enough. They had to suppress its elementalized hyper-speed regeneration and split their people off to handle the small fry it summoned, and if not for his ice magic controlling the field and steadily wearing down its recovery to keep the balance, taking it out in a single burst would have been pure fantasy.
And now there was a Greatest Evil, stronger than the sand dragon, on top of it.
One dragon had already drained them dry. Another one, and how were they supposed to fight?
...
On the other side, the cheers hadn't even fully started before Leon was swatted away, and the celebration cut off at once.
"Leon!"
"Wh, what is that?"
"A dragon? A black dragon? Where did it come from?"
"How could there be a black dragon like that in Sand Land?"
"From its aura, it's, it's even stronger than the Mirage Sand Dragon?"
"What do we do?"
Even Jeanne, Rose, Persephone, and Aura, all of them normally level-headed, couldn't make sense of what was in front of them. But one thing was clear to everyone.
Jeanne, face grim, glanced at the barely breathing Mirage Sand Dragon, then at the black dragon species that had already dragged half its body out of the sand. She didn't hesitate for a moment and gave the order.
"Everyone, retreat!"
"What?"
They were startled by how decisive Jeanne was, but there were also people like Laurier and Kureha who saw the Mirage Sand Dragon about to go down. If they pulled out now, wouldn't everything they'd spent be wasted?
"But Jeanne, the Mirage Sand Dragon..."
Jeanne's eyes went hard.
"Laurier, follow the order. Retreat!"
Laurier clenched her teeth and stared at that dying dragon of sand with open frustration, then shot a vicious glare at the black dragon that had barged in from who knows where, before she spun around in anger and broke into a run.
She swept past where the supplies were stacked, grabbed the bulging Wonder Packs, and threw them one by one to the others, keeping the last for herself and slinging it over her shoulder. She rejoined the group fast, and together they cleared the monsters gathering around them while falling back at full speed toward the passage off the floor.
Jeanne swung her Banner Lance, ran a Sandstorm Wraith through the chest, pulled it free and swept the shaft sideways to fling the corpse away. With a toss of her golden braid she shouted to Leon, who was at the rear.
"Leon! The rear guard is yours!"
"An injury like that is nothing to you, right?"
Watching the team cut into the tide of monsters, Leon drew a deep breath.
"Leave it to me."
Leon got up out of the sand and beat the grit off his cloak. A smile, bloodthirsty and more than a little crazed, slowly crept up the corner of his mouth.
"Damn it, you think you can steal my kill... the world's turned upside down!"
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