The entire continent literally shook as the battle raged on in the southern Diantes Wastelands. Tremors could be felt from the refugee camps in the southern shores of Fiora province as Feni dreaded what would have happened if a mere mortal such as her took part in the battle. However, some part of her longed to view the battle from afar, burn this legendary battle into her memory.

Thousands upon thousands of stone wingless dragons dug their way up the ground as Kiefer and Feir kept crushing them with their combined gravitational field. Rashael had taken Luna back to the safety of the ship to recharge his armour and laser cores, while allowing luna some time to recuperate. Drigor smashing her spell midway brought her to the brink of mental exhaustion and she would have fallen to the first of the stone dragons had it not been for Rashael who kept a constant close eye on everyone, monitoring their status.

Isana was now high above the clouds, filling the stratosphere with her icy mist. Snow began to fall on the wasteland as Fiora helped keep the stone dragons at bay by crushing them. Feir’s gravitational field was not enough to crush the stone dragons that kept rising, but it was enough to immobilise them for Fiora to act. Kiefer on the other hand kept piling up more and more gravel and dust from constantly crushing the dragons. Drigor had yet to resurface a second time and switched from sending clones of himself to clones of these dragons.

Despite being made of stone, these dragons behaved almost like living things and were quite agile for their weight and size. They were about the size of a tarsus, some with 4 limbs and others with 6. Kiefer had experimented on them, trying to cleave them with his mithril sword. It was quite effective, however, it meant wearing down his sword and only being able to handle them one at a time, which was impractical.

Sher was by far the most useful after kiefer, basically atomising everything in her path as she flew by, well clear of the ground so the sharp vice like jaws of the dragons could not reach her. Kiefer had no luck locating Drigor thus far, since Rashael had left. His mana pulse was basically sending a huge feedback just from touching the ground and there was no way to pinpoint the location of the underground dragon anywhere.

Finally sick and tired of the endless waves of dragons, Kiefer sent out a signal through the comms for everyone to take to the skies as far as possible. Feir copied Kiefer mana platform skill and rose up to the clouds in his giant wolf form. Throwing his and Feir’s lasers into his PD, Kiefer told everyone to be ready to attack. He summoned a blackhole and directed it straight into the ground, devouring everything in its path.

The blackhole itself was tiny, with an event horizon of only 10cm, and yet its destruction was devastating. Earth, rock and dragon alike were absorbed into the singularity as anything within a 400m radius around it swirled in a mass of confusion, feeding the hungry mass of entropy. Kiefer’s intention was to flush out Drigor by removing as much of his environment as possible.

Sure enough, Drigor once again surfaced for the second time, his huge maw trying to engulf Kiefer to stop the destruction of his trump card. Kiefer reacted quickly, annihilating the blackhole and instantly crafting an enormous mana rune in the air. From the mere inertia of coming up to the surface, Drigor’s rocky snout broke the activation sequence for the acceleration rune and his jaw was accelerated up into the air, pulling his head out.

Kiefer watched in horror at the sheer size of the titan, laying out increasing numbers of consecutive acceleration runes in Drigor’s upward path, finally pulling the last bit of his tail out. By the time the whole body was out, Drigor’s eye fixed onto the other titans awaiting him in the clouds as they bombarded him with all their attacks. From snout to tail, the dragon was at least 5km long as it continued its flight into the night sky. The scene would have looked like several mosquitos trying to attack a large lizard in mid-air.

Kiefer immediately spread out all the orihalcom he could collect into as thin a sheet as possible, laying it onto the ground where Drigor was about to land. The metal sheet was a fraction of a millimetre thick, covering an expanse of 10km in diameter, barely enough to separate the titanic dragon from its resource.

Drigor started falling to the ground just as Kiefer finished laying out the welcome mat for him, eyeing the young magus and his capabilities carefully. Drigor barely caught a glimpse when he was blinded and enveloped in perpetual darkness. From the edge of the battlefield, Rashael was sprinting forward, with Luna following closely behind. Luna had cast the blinding spell on Drigor’s eyes to disorientate him during the spinning fall to the ground.

The 8 Isanas and other titans wasted no time, attacking the right forelimb at its shoulder after a quick direction from Kiefer. Drigor scrambled about wildly in the air as the titans chipped away at his shoulder, finally breaking off one of his limbs just before he hit the red metallic mat below with a loud ‘Kathunk’.

Sher rushed to form her hexagram prison and imprisoned the dismembered arm, carrying the prison at great speeds and tossing the limb into the sea where it turned to mud, beyond the reaches of Drigor’s control.

As Sher had gone out to dispose of the limb, the rest of the titan began attacking the other limbs only to be set back again when they witnessed dirt, earth and stone rising from the ground around the red metal plate and being suctioned into the dismembered shoulder stump, quickly reforming what was lost within seconds. With his arm almost formed, Drigor curled his body up and wrapped his tail around him, before transforming the surface of his gigantic body to reveal billions upon billions of rocky spikes, like a hedgehog.

Anticipating his next move, Kiefer tripled his mana armour, setting up a mana dome for Rashael and Luna. Sher had returned just in time to receive the shocking news that the arm had grown back. Informing everyone to take defensive measures, Kiefer backed away from Drigor’s body, making as much distance as he could. Feir copied Kiefer’s mana armour while Sher set up her hexagram barrier.

Just as he expected, the spikes all shot out of Drigor’s body, new spikes replacing the old ones and then shooting out moments later. Drigor kept up the barrage for some time, still in his defensive position as he fully reformed his arm and returned it to its original functionality. The earth spikes bounced of Kiefer and Feir’s mana armour, while they embedded themselves in the dome Shield and Sher’s hexagram barrier. Isana and Fiora on the other hand skilfully manipulated her clones and dodged the rain of spikes that radiated from Drigor’s hunched body.

With no signs of the attack letting up, Kiefer pulled out his black neutron sword, carefully coating it with his mana to eliminate the gravitons and radiation that the neutrons emitted. Dashing forwards without any regard for the spikes that kept pinging off his armour, Kiefer once again lopped of the arm that Drigor so painstakingly regenerated. Just before impact, Kiefer released the mana shielding on the sword, letting it literally eat and sink its way through the limb, while the radiation cauterized and boiled the earthen stump that remained.

Drigor howled as he attempted to swat Kiefer away like a fly with his tail. Kiefer however, dodged it with no problem, blinking in and out of Drigor’s range. Watching the arm regenerate again, Kiefer immediately willed part of the orihalcom mat to coat the shoulder stump, digging and anchoring a red metallic barrier into the rocky dragon’s shoulder. With no place for the dirt and earth to attach to, Drigor quickly scrambled his way off the red mat, with the shoulder barrier still attached and sunk into the ground.

As Drigor attempted to flee from the battlefield, Rashael picked up on his general location and directed Kiefer and the other titans towards Drigor. Without his forearm, he was moving considerable slower underground. Kiefer blindly dug his mana ropes into the ground, longer and thicker than he has ever made them. He eventually found the red orihalcom still sttached to Drigor’s shoulder moving through the ground and he grabbed the metal plate. Exerting so much force that he depleted the mana crystal in his chest piece, Kiefer slowly dragged the dragon out of the ground by his shoulders.

“AAAARRRGGGHH!!! WHY!?!?” Drigor roared as he desperately tried to claw his way back into the earth. “WHY ARE YOU ATTACKING ME!?!?!”

“BECAUSE YOU KILLED OUR SISTER!!” Isana yelled back in synchronisation with her 8 clones as they circled the other front limb and froze the thinner elbow joint. With 8 consecutive Ice meteors raining and shattering on the same exact point in the frozen elbow of Drigor’s right arm, The elbow finally shattered, and Kiefer quickly covered it in orihalcom again to prevent regeneration.

Meanwhile Rashael, Fiora and Sher were working on the tail of the titan, slowly melting and chipping away at the base of its tail. In a moment of agony and desperation, Drigor’s neck elongated as rocks and earth from the ground rose to join his body. Swinging his head wildly, the huge gaping dragon’s jaw snapped blindly in the air catching a careless phoenix.

“NOOOO!!! Fiora!!” Rashael yelled out loudly as he dashed forth towards the jaw of the dragon, only to be stopped by Luna.

“Ow!! Don’t yell into the comms!” Fiora complained as she came flying by around the back of Drigor’s tail, burning brightly as ever, still trying to melt the tail off with her flames.

“Fuck! He got Feir!” Kiefer responded desperately as he blinked forwards, trying to pry open the jaws with his mana ropes. But it was an almost impossible task trying to open the 500m jaw that was lined in a zig zag pattern with rocky teeth.

“ANNOYING PESTS! TELL GONDOR TO COME FIGHT ME HIMSELF!” Drigor roared in the midst of the chaos without opening his jaws, but nobody registered it, everyone still desperately trying to save their companion.

Drigor stood up on his hind legs, with his elongated neck extending up to the clouds and head snapping at the annoying Isana’s buzzing around his face while blowing cold mists into his eyes. His tail was partially buried into the ground, siphoning more of his element to replace what was being shaved off from his neck and the base of his tail.

As the team finally regrouped and worked together to go straight for the long twisting earthen neck of the titan, there was a sudden shockwave coming from within Drigor’s belly, and with the shockwave, came an explosion that scattered part of his underbelly outwards. An excruciating heatwave followed, melting the edges of the gaping hole in his stomach as a flaming wolf quickly jumped out of the cavity before it refilled.

Kiefer did not miss this chance that Feir had created for him, ordering everyone to quickly attack the neck while Drigor was concentrating on refilling the huge cavity in his belly. As everyone slowly chipped away at the thick undulating neck of the dragon, Kiefer rushed in with his neutron sward and dealt the final blow, cleanly severing the neck of the dragon.

As the rest of the dragon’s body crumbled away like a biscuit, Kiefer observed the head and the neck try to regenerate the rest of the body. Drigor looked like a rocky snake now, with only a head and an extending neck. Kiefer quickly sealed the neck stump only to watch tiny limbs appear from the side of the long neck. Drigor seemed to be regrowing his body from the neck itself.

Seeing this, Fiora quickly dove forwards, imitating what Feir had done moments ago. With a single snap, Drigor swallowed Fiora whole and surely enough, within the next few seconds, a similar but more violent explosion rang out from the base of his head, completely severing the head from the neck.

Rashael quickly went to retrieve the falling Fiora and retreated with her and Feir back to the ships. Having just reincarnated from a phoenix’s rebirth, both Feir and Fiora were quite powerless, especially in front of a dragon that could smudge the entire city of Diantes off the map with his tail.

Watching the head fall through the sky and crumble away, Isana wasted no time conjuring up multiple tempests that tore the crumbling earthen head asunder. “Hurry! Find the real body! His core is still intact and he will regenerate once he touches the ground!” Isana warned through the comms.

Kiefer dove through the chaos of clumps of dirt and stone, blinking here and there none-stop looking for anything that might resemble a core. There, with his enhanced eyesight, he saw a man falling; the same man that taught him the art of necromancy. Kiefer quickly grappled him by his neck and slammed him down onto the ground where his orihalcom plate was laid out.

Drigor was visibly weakened, bleeding from all his facial orifices, both his arms missing and in their place a bleeding stump. Tilting his head slightly, Drigor opened his eyes and stared at Kiefer who was on one knee, holding him down to the ground with a vice like grip on his neck. “You… traitor…” Drigor mumbled as a stone jaw abruptly burst through the orihalcom plating and instantly took a bite out of Kiefer like a land shark before retreating into the ground.

“AAAARRGGGHHH!!!” Kiefer screamed, not expecting the jaw to penetrate not only his orihalcom floor plate, but also his mana armour and his mithril armour. He fell to the ground, releasing his grip on Drigor’s neck, dragging his bleeding waist and upper body with his arms. “You asshole!” Kiefer yelled as propped what was left of his body up with his mana ropes and beheaded the dying man that laid before him with his mithril sword.

Kiefer lay there on the red metal plate, intestines sprawled out on the ground below him, with only his torso intact. He was bleeding out profusely, barely able to keep his consciousness from fading thanks to the excruciating pain from his waist. He could not concentrate to put up a mana armour to keep his innards within his abdominal cavity.

Looking at the corpse of Drigor slowly turn to dust, a brown crystal fell to the ground and shattered, as white wisps shot out of the shattered crystal, towards the other titans. His eyes followed the wisps, and saw them merge with the titans still in the air. Hearing them howl in pain as they dropped out of the sky, Kiefer knew that his hopes of recovery just dropped to zero, since Rashael too would be affected.

His eyelids felt heavy, slowly drooping as a surging pain filled his head, putting the pain from his waist to shame. He shut his eyes tightly, enduring the pain, knowing full well that he would most likely not open them again. The last time the titans suffered this skill transfer, Isana and Sher were out for 3 full days. He knew he had no hope of staying alive that long and that it would be too late for Rashael to use his resurrection skill.

Finally yielding to the pain, Kiefer recalled his parents, his research, Sher and Isana, before succumbing to the piercing agony and fainting. There he laid, his blood matching the colour of the orihalcom mat that he was on, not moving an inch.

Getting real close to the end of this arc. Hope you all enjoyed reading this thus far. please do give me some constructive reviews so i know what and how to improve on the next arc.