Adam, Evelyn, and Heinrich were in a moment of deadly crisis! The three dragons from the southern flock stealthily approached in their Human-forms to surprise attack the three of them! Adam flipped through his options in his head and came to a decision of what to do in a split second. He fired a lightning bolt, not at the fire dragon that was attacking him, but at the water dragon attacking Evelyn!

Evelyn hated fights and would be caught entirely unprepared by the sudden assault of the water dragon. Adam had to give her the best chance he could for her to survive, even at a small cost to himself!

The water dragon was at an extreme distance of a few kilometers away from Adam. Never before, had Adam attempted to attack such a distant target. As his bolt tore through the skies at light speed, it forked out along the way! Before, his lightning bolts were all self contained and consisted of a single bolt with little to no leakage. With this particular bolt traveling over such a large distance, it lost most of its energy along the way! Still, when the lightning bolt struck, it was more than enough to disrupt the water dragon! The water dragon gave out a cry of shock as its formation was halted.

The fire dragon in front of Adam, on the other hand, completed its formation and hurtled it at Adam! The flaming inferno this dragon summoned was not nearly as dangerous as the inferno that the elder dragon Adam had fought before had tried to use. Adam spread his wings out wide, to take the entire brunt of the attack! If he tried to dodge... The town of Vielen would become a sea of flames and burn to the ground!

Adam put a surge of earth essence through his body to strengthen himself right as the raging fire inferno hit! With a cry of pain, Adam was forced backwards a step as his scales burned from the flame. With a grunt of effort, Adam pushed back and flapped his wings forward to throw the flames away from his body! Adam then flapped his wings and zipped right at the red dragon before it could complete another formation!

Adam's sudden burst of speed completely surprised the red dragon. Unable to move in time, Adam swiped his claws at the dragon. With his claws infused with wind blades, Adam easily tore through the webbing of the dragon's wing with one hand, while slicing through the scales on its flank with his other.

The red dragon immediately began to fall from the sky. It tried to take control of its descent with its one good wing and what was left of the wing Adam attacked, however Adam took this chance to fire a lightning bolt at it! The red dragon once again cried out in pain as its scales scattered and its flesh burned before it hit the ground hard!

Without missing a beat, Adam closed his wings in and dived straight down at the red dragon. A panic stricken male voice that came from the dragon entered Adam's mind: “Why are you on their side!?”

It was too late, though. Adam smashed down on the dragon from above and a sick crunching sound issued out as the red dragon's chest collapsed! Adam's fore arms also ached from the impact. Adam thought: “They are probably fractured...”

The life of the red dragon quickly ebbed away beneath Adam. As it's soul dispersed, the dragon's control over the spirit essence in its body lost control! The spirit essence was ready to explode out at any moment! If Adam let this continue, it would be quite devastating to Vielen and even both the armies nearby! Adam immediately set about the task of controlling the spirit essence that was ready to explode. Adam could make a good portion of it flow into the part of the dragon's soul that was crystallizing into a physical form. Another part, Adam directed at himself! By absorbing some of it, he could use the spirit essence to speed up the healing of his fractured fore arms. There would be no immediate effect, but it could help in the long run. As for the rest, Adam safely dispersed it into the surroundings. Soon, all that was left was a desiccated dragon corpse devoid of life or color.

After all that was done, it still was not time to rest. More roars of dragons could be heard in the distance. Adam looked over to see Heinrich in heated battle with the green wind dragon while the blue water dragon was firing icicles down toward the command tents while Evelyn was frantically defending against them! Evelyn was still in her human form and was at a severe disadvantage!

Arcs of electricity danced off Adam's wings as he suddenly took flight! Faster than when he attacked the red dragon, Adam flew to the blue dragon in an attempt to support Evelyn. The distance was great, so it still took Adam time to reach the area. The whole time, Adam's anxiety grew as he could only watch the blue dragon hurtle icicles and freeze the ground around Evelyn. He could see that there were soldiers in the area that had been completely frozen solid from the freezing temperatures the blue dragon spread through its icicles! If Adam had to, he would throw a lightning bolt over, but it would drastically slow his speed! It was more important for him to get over there to more actively partake in the battle.

From Evelyn's perspective, the blue dragon had appeared from out of nowhere to tower above the encampment! Evelyn's heart shuddered in fear as the dragon was already in the midst of a large formation that would be difficult for Evelyn to overcome. Suddenly, though, a bolt of lightning struck the blue dragon on the side! Evelyn felt awash in relief as she looked to the side, expecting to see Adam. To her astonishment, she could only see Adam's Dragon-form far off in the distance. He was under the assault of an inferno cast by a red dragon while protecting Vielen! Evelyn's heart shuddered: “Why did he protect me, instead of himself?”

She had no time to dwell on it, however, as the blue dragon had only been momentarily stunned by Adam's weakened lightning bolt! While it had disrupted the formation the dragon was using, it had not injured the dragon itself! Evelyn immediately stepped out from underneath the open sided command tents so she could freely use formations and defend from any side, including the sky. She raised her hands up, summoning intense blue fire! She was ready to strike!

Evelyn immediately started hurling blue fireballs at the blue dragon. These were the hottest flames she could muster, but they weren't that large. She couldn't control wide swaths of blue fire unless she was in her Dragon-form! At the same time, spiritualists from all around the camp started their own attacks as well!

The blue dragon sailed in an arc to dodge most of the attacks, including Evelyn's fireballs. The few attacks that did hit it, bounce right off its scales! The blue dragon then immediately started raining down icicles onto the camp! Evelyn shot fireballs off to hit the icicles and when they hit, the two would cancel each other out and water would harmlessly rain from the sky. Evelyn found it easiest to block the icicles directed at her, the rest were much harder to intercept. Icicles pelted the ground and an intense sub-zero temperature exuded from them! Instantly, men and women were frozen dead in place for tens of meters around any of the icicles! The only safe place was the command tents, where Evelyn was doing everything she could to intercept those icicles!

General Winters' face was pale white. Where had this dragon come from? Not only that, there were three more dragons he could see! A green one fighting Heinrich, and a black one dominating a red one near Vielen! None of the plans he had created before hand included this kind of situation! He could only mumble: “What the hell is going on!?”

Despite Evelyn's best efforts, she could only play a defensive game against the blue dragon, she had no opportunity to make a decisive attack! Time passed and more and more icicles were getting past Evelyn as she grew more and more desperate. At this time, a black form came careening in! The blue dragon had only looked once in Adam's direction after his lightning attack, only to see him being engulfed by the red dragon's fire! The blue dragon felt assured in the red dragon's victory, so it had not paid any attention to Adam's side of the battle. It didn't see Adam coming straight at it from the side!

Adam charged into the blue dragon with his shoulder, disrupting the dragon's flight! The blue dragon tried to recover its flight when Adam struck it with a thunderbolt to its chest! This time, the distance wasn't great enough to diminish the power of the lightning bolt and it struck with full force! The scales on the blue dragon's chest were blown away and burned the flesh underneath!

Having been momentarily paralyzed from the lightning bolt, the blue dragon fell from the sky. Adam quickly followed in pursuit. The blue dragon crashed onto the ground a small distance from the command tents. Adam didn't dare pounce down onto the blue dragon, like he had with the red one. His fore arms were already fractured and he didn't want to make things worse! Instead, he landed near the blue dragon and bit down on its neck just as it regained control of its body!

The blue dragon started to struggle and pull, but Adam's bite was like a vice that would not let go! At the same time, Evelyn quickly approached from the ground. Close to the blue dragon's chest, she unleashed a steady stream of blue flames directly at the wound caused by Adam's lightning bolt! The blue fire burned away and into the blue dragon! It did not have the defenses the elder dragon they fought had and the flames easily ate away at it! It didn't take long for the fire to begin consuming the insides of dragon, including its heart! As the dragon's life was ebbing away, it screamed in a female voice: “Your death will still come when the death dragons arrive!”

After that, the blue dragon went limp as it lost its life. In the same manner as Adam had with the red dragon, he controlled the spirit essence in the dragon's body so that it wouldn't explode outward.

Pale faced, Evelyn collapsed to her knees as she looked at her shaking hands. “What... what did I just do?”

Evelyn had done it in the spur of the moment to defeat the 'evil' dragon, but she had still killed someone! It was the first time she had killed anything. She had seen plenty of death over the last few days, but this was the first time she became the cause of it!

At the same time, the anguished cry of a dragon rang out from the battle field! Looking over, Adam saw a heavily scarred Heinrich standing on top of the green dragon! Heinrich had somehow forced the green dragon to the ground on its back! Heinrich then caused pillars of earth to jut up! They tore through the webbing of the dragon's wings, but mostly glanced off its scales. Still, the pillars rose high and enclosed the green dragon, trapping it! Heinrich then proceeded to bite out its throat! The green dragon cried out in anguish as it tried to move and escape from Heinrich. However, its body could hardly move! And whenever it moved its wings, the webbing would tear even more and cause it more pain! Quickly, its struggling died down after Heinrich ripped its throat out!

Heinrich raised his bloody maw high as he bellowed a loud triumphant dragon roar! Heinrich then realized something as he looked down and then quickly flapped his wings to propel himself backwards! The green dragon's body started giving off a radiant green light as spirit essence started exploding from its body! Heinrich had close to zero control over wind essence and had no way to prevent this explosion of spirit essence, like Adam could.

Adam looked on with dismay in his heart. The number of soldiers in the area easily reached into the hundreds of thousands. Now, every single one of them was at risk of becoming a ghoul! If they got hit by a clump of spirit essence exploding out from the green dragon, they could only hope for a quick death to end it all!

Adam gently nudged the still dazed Evelyn. “Be strong, your help is still needed! If not, more people will die today!”

Evelyn came out of her dazed state of mind. She wasn't doing great, but she could move. She looked over to the battlefield where chaos was only just starting as soldiers turned into ghouls! Even in the camp, there were people turning into ghouls! Evelyn's heart shuddered. In the end, this was all part of the war. How could people even think about going to war when this was the result?

Adam once again spoke: “Help the camp with the ghouls, or more lives will be lost! I will go out to the battlefield and help contain things there.”

Evelyn numbly nodded and said: “Okay.”

Adam wished he could do more to help Evelyn cope with the situation, but there wasn't enough time! With a flap of his wings, Adam took to the skies to fly off to the battlefield. On the way, Adam felt the sense of danger he initially had when the dragons attacked had not receded! Instead, it seemed to be growing more ominous! He thought of what the blue dragon had said about 'death dragons' coming... “Perhaps she didn't say those words in spite. Are there more dragons coming?”

Adam looked out across the skies, to see if he could spot any silhouettes that could resemble a dragon, but he saw nothing. Something on the ground, however caught his eye! Behind the hill that the northern armies were using as their forward camp, there was a clearing that housed a towering stone! It was black as night and Adam's own heart shuddered in fear when he realized what it was: “A portal stone!”

Adam immediately forewent any plans to deal with the ghouls. It was hard enough dealing with the three dragons they had and there were surely more ready to come through the portal stone! He had to stop it, no matter what!

The first thing Adam did was to immediately send a lightning bolt over. The faster he could take care of things, the better. Similar to when he first attacked the blue dragon when it appeared, the portal stone was a good distance away and the lightning bolt forked out and lost power on the way. When it was around ten meters from the portal stone, the lighting bolt suddenly hit something! It was like a shield that was made of air was formed around the portal stone! The lightning bolt did not have enough power to make it through this shield formation and was diffused across it. Adam was much too far away to send a bolt with enough power to pierce the shield formation, nor was he close enough to use his elemental sight to find a gap in the formation. Adam could only speed along as fast as he could to close in on the portal stone and hopefully do something when he was closer to it.

Heinrich noticed Adam's odd behavior as he flew past and sent out: “What's going on Adam?”

Adam merely sent back: “I will take care of it, deal with the ghouls!”

As Adam flew as fast as he could, he watched as the portal stone sudden came to life! Black flames suddenly swathed around the portal stone and extended up into the air! In the air, the flames collected into a single point that slowly grew, forming a hole between this world and the plane of death! From beyond the dark portal, the roars of dragons could be heard!

The roars of the dragons could be heard far and wide. Evelyn, Heinrich, and everyone else looked up with astonishment and fear: “More dragons!?”

They could only watch as Adam flew closer and closer to that growing dark portal, desperate to reach the portal stone before it was too late! The portal finally grew large enough that a black dragon started making its way through!

Adam thought to himself: “Death dragon...”

Adam immediately fired off another lightning bolt at the portal stone! The lightning bolt first hit the shield formation surrounding the portal stone. Much of the lightning bolt became diffused across the shield, but it still made its way through! The lightning bolt pierced through the black flames surrounding the portal stone and directly struck it! Lightning surged along the stone, causing it to tremble and crack! This was enough to stop the dark portal from growing and even to start shrinking, but it was not enough to destroy the portal stone!

Adam continued flying as fast as he could. He was intent on ramming the dragon that was half-way through the dark portal to throw it back to the other side!

On the black dragon's part, it was surprised and confused to see Adam. It merely barked: “What are you doing!? We are trying to come through!”

Adam's only response was his shoulder ramming into the dragon's chest! Unfortunately, the black dragon grabbed onto Adam and pulled him along as it got pushed to the other side of the portal!

That long forgotten, but very familiar song of death essence greeted Adam's soul. Adam wrenched himself and broke free from the black dragon's grasp. With his eyes, he saw the plane of death for the first time! Ashen sand along the ground, churning black clouds rushing overhead, and six black dragons around Adam with a field of ghouls surrounding them all!

The dragon Adam pushed back sent word to the others. Adam heard him say: “I don't know who this is, just kill it!”

Five of the black dragons looked at Adam with intent eyes, getting ready for the kill. The last of the six turned and made for the portal! Adam couldn't allow this and shot a lightning bolt! The lightning bolt didn't hit the dragon, but the portal stone! This time, there was nothing to shield the portal stone as the bolt struck. Lightning danced across its surface as the portal stone quickly cracked and then exploded! The portal shrunk and disappeared in less than a second!

Silence filled the area.

The black dragons were shocked to see the portal stone destroyed so easily and quickly. It normally took a significant amount of work to accomplish what Adam just did! But then again, he was the first to try and use lightning against a portal stone!

Adam looked back with a sorrowed heart. He understood the pain Evelyn was going through with killing for the first time, but he had no time to help her. Now, he could only hope for Evelyn's continued safety, as there was no way to get back. Being surrounded by six dragons, his death was almost assured!

Adam shook himself of that negative thought. “I killed an elder dragon and two others, lets see if these six can stop me!”

This six dragons surrounding Adam looked at him with a more intense look than before. They were just going to kill him for getting in the way, but now he had put a stop to the whole plan and destroyed a portal stone! Now, they harbored hatred and a true desire to kill. Before they attacked, one of the dragons asked: “One of our elders sent word of his defeat, are you the one that killed him?”

Adam thought back to the elder dragon he had killed. The dragon had used a strange roar that seemed to pierce through the planes. Likely, it was sending word of its demise back.

Adam aloofly replied: “So what if I am?”

Without another word, the six dragons attacked with hatred in their hearts! However, Adam attacked them in a way they never expected! For the first time in a very long time, Adam had enough death essence at his disposal to utilize threads of death essence! He couldn't wrap the threads around the dragons' true souls, but even tugging on their whole soul would give the feeling of suddenly being unbalanced!

The six dragons staggered as Adam immediately took to the skies! His ultimate goal was to escape! However, he barely got off the ground before one of the dragons regained himself and bit on Adam's tail, pulling him to the ground! Adam tried to use the threads of death essence again, but the dragon's were much more protective of their souls since Adam used that strange attack on them. Its effects were negligible now! Adam was left with no choice but to fight, tooth and claw!

Adam sent a lightning bolt at one dragon while lunging at another with his mouth and claws outstretched! Another dragon pounced on him from the side, though, and pinned him to the ground! The dragons all around ganged up on Adam and tore at him while another went for his throat! Adam was too exhausted from his previous fight with the red and blue dragon to fight back.

Instead, Adam spread his elemental sight out. There were a few ghouls that were close enough for him to see. There was one among them that seemed to give him an amicable feeling. Adam stretched threads of death essence out to its soul while wrapping more around his own soul. After both ends were secure, Adam wrenched his soul in half while pulling on the threads! His only way to survive was to do what he had with Captain Jira; to possess another person!

Adam made it just in time. Just as the pain of tearing his soul in half flooded his mind, the black dragons succeeded in tearing Adam's throat out and killing his body! Adam's soul flew to the ghoul he had anchored himself to and held their souls tightly together! Amid all the pain Adam was suddenly feeling, a feeling of warmth and protection fell over him. An image came to Adam's mind of a father protecting his son. In his heart, Adam couldn't help but whisper: “Father.”