CHAPTER 937: BY THIS BLOOD

It was an indescribable sensation.

His body, his mind, his very soul were trapped in an amorphous prison of shadow. Everything around him was an absolute darkness that seemed to dissolve reality itself.

The feeling was worse than being devoured; it was a slow, terrifying erasure.

For the first time, a sliver of genuine despair and fear pierced Orion’s composure. It coiled around him, heavy and exhausting, a shackle on his will.

"You see," the voice of the Great Dragon King of Light, Mondusath, echoed from everywhere at once. "I told you. You cannot escape."

Above him, in the dark firmament of his prison, a face emerged—the partial visage of Mondusath, so colossal it blotted out everything else.

The effect was nauseating. It was as if Orion was trapped at the bottom of a deep well, and the only sky he could see was the impossibly vast, leering face of the Great Dragon King.

Every subtle shift in the dragon’s expression was amplified a thousandfold. What Orion saw was pure mockery. Utter contempt.

In the world outside the shadow, Mondusath loomed over the dark mass Orion had melted into, its physical form peering down at its trapped prey.

"Tell me," the dragon commanded, its claw igniting once more with radiant fire, the very laws of physics seeming to bend around it. "Where is it? Who has it?"

Zing!

At that moment, a spectral spirit sword tore through the fabric of space, appearing directly above the pool of shadow.

"Alexander’s Flaw-Seeker!"

Alexander’s cold, sharp voice cut through the air. The spirit sword hissed as it descended, aimed directly at Mondusath’s head.

Mondusath gave a dismissive snort, and a halo of light pulsed from its body to intercept the attack. But this time, the light failed. Alexander’s Flaw-Seeker was an attack that bypassed all defenses to strike at a target’s fundamental weakness.

With a sickening schlick, the avatar of the Great Dragon King of Light was cleaved cleanly in two.

The instant Mondusath was struck, the shadow prison dissolved. Light and darkness rushed back into equilibrium, and Orion stumbled out, the terror of his confinement still clinging to him.

"Bro! Just in time!" Orion gasped, appearing beside the hovering spirit sword. "That thing is the Great Dragon King, Mondusath!"

He had to warn him, afraid Alexander would underestimate the foe and pay the price.

"I gathered it wasn’t normal," Alexander’s voice replied from the sword. "A peak arch lord shouldn’t be this terrifying."

And it was terrifying. Across from them, the two halves of Mondusath’s body slid back together as if nothing had happened, leaving not so much as a seam. It fixed its cold gaze on Orion and the spirit sword.

"So, it seems you also had a hand in the desecration of my tomb," Mondusath accused the newcomer.

Alexander didn’t deign to reply. The spirit sword merely trembled, gathering power.

"This is just an arch lord’s shell," his voice transmitted to Orion. "No matter how powerful, it can’t surpass a demigod. With the right approach, it can be killed."

It was both an observation and a statement of supreme confidence.

"Right," Orion grunted, subtly collecting a few droplets of blood that had been flung from the dragon by the spirit sword’s attack.

Alexander’s avatar hadn’t just saved him; it had secured the medium he needed. Alexander had known from the start that a single blow wouldn’t be enough. For a man who preferred to end fights in a single, perfect strike, that fact alone spoke volumes about how dangerous he considered Mondusath.

"Again!"

The spirit sword wasted no more time on conversation, transforming into a streak of light as it shot toward Mondusath once more. Alexander was buying him time.

"Hmph. May the light in your eyes be your undoing, and your slaughter illuminate your own demise!" Mondusath chanted. Another halo coalesced around it, the law of light itself manifesting as a perfectly circular, shimmering mirror.

The spirit sword slammed into the mirror’s surface, its energy rippling against the reflective barrier, threatening to be refracted and turned aside. But a furious roar emanated from the sword avatar, and the repulsive force ceased.

A horrific, grating screech filled the air, like two tectonic plates grinding against each other. The mirror shattered, and Alexander’s spirit sword was thrown back.

"A Regulus Blade?" Mondusath’s voice was laced with genuine shock. "A holy relic?"

It couldn’t believe that a mere arch lord would possess a sacred sword capable of ignoring the laws of light and meeting it in a direct clash of power.

Its answer was not a reply from Alexander, but the final words of Orion’s incantation.

"Dragon-ghost, slumbering in the endless dark, hear my call! By this blood, I offer a tribute you covet! Descend and feast! Arise, Ghost Dragon!"

The forbidden summoning skill, Ghost Dragon, activated. An aura that made Mondusath’s scales crawl—an energy fundamentally opposed to its own—descended, enveloping it completely.

Body, mind, and soul—all were sealed in an instant. Mondusath couldn’t even command the law of light to defend itself.

Now!

Orion and Alexander shot forward from opposite directions, their target the paralyzed dragon.

Aura Lock! Berserk Aura! Instant Impact!

Bolstered by his Titan Form and the Ancestor’s Soul, Orion became a living thunderbolt, slamming into Mondusath’s white dragon form.

Just as its physical body was about to be obliterated, a furious shriek erupted from within. A faint sphere of light burst forth from the corpse—the white dragon’s body of faith. Mondusath’s own will projection.

But what met the escaping will was not Orion’s charge. It was another ultimate attack, one Alexander had been preparing all along.

"Kill!"

"Kill!"

In that single moment, the wills of Alexander and Orion burned as one, their focus absolute: destroy Mondusath’s avatar, here and now.

BOOM!

BOOM!

Two massive impacts echoed in rapid succession. Mondusath’s physical form was annihilated by Orion’s charge, its dissipating body consumed as a sacrifice by the rising Ghost Dragon. At the same time, Alexander’s spirit sword collided with the sphere of light, a high-pitched, resonant hum ringing from the blade as the two forces locked in a desperate stalemate.

Orion gripped his trident, preparing to join the tug-of-war between fundamental forces. But just then, a titanic roar echoed from the distance.

It was Leonidas.

"BEHEMOTH OBLIVION BEAM!"

The lightning armor around Leonidas surged violently, countless arcs of electricity leaping from his body until he resembled a miniature sun. In the next instant, that sphere of energy compressed into a perfectly straight beam of incandescent power, a bolt of divine punishment that lanced across the sky and struck the white dragon’s body of faith.

The truth was, Leonidas could have finished the black dragon arch lord long ago. He had been dragging out the fight, waiting for precisely this kind of opening. Compared to the black dragon, the cards up his sleeve were almost limitless.

"DAMNABLE WRETCHES! FILTHY TOMB-ROBBERS! YOU INFERIOR INSECTS! I WILL ANNIHILATE YOU! I WILL—"

Amid the grinding shriek of sword light and the crackling roar of thunder, the voice of the Great Dragon King of Light, Mondusath, grew fainter and fainter, until it vanished completely.