“Elder Kyriak’s contingent is currently fleeing south-eastward. Minimal life signs detected in the immediate area.”

“That’s all I needed to hear.”

Victor impelled Teutobochus into a simple, yet efficient attack; a jumping axe kick. Spinning through the air, he landed the entirety of Teutobochus’ great mass on the dragon’s back, concentrated on its heel. Its feet sunk into the ground, but it persisted and grabbed the titan’s leg with its tendrils, whipping at it with superheated blades that rent its armor asunder as if it were wood. Victor set loose another Inverse Array blast, and pulled back, resetting his footing. Red exploited the distraction to set up some distance away, having joined her four subcore-cannons into one. The moment Teutobochus was out of the way she set loose a screaming ray of northlight, focusing on a particular spot above its right shoulder that Red had struck before. So mighty was it that it carved away a noticeable pit in Eisengeist’s flesh, purple blood running like a river down its leg.

Using Koschei’s voice again, Victor sent Red another aetherwave: “Target the dragon’s sewn-shut left eye. I suspect a control artifact of some sort to be hidden in the wound.”

After a struggle to get her aim on-point enough to blow the dragon’s eyelid open, Red finally saw it open. Within the socket was nestled a cursed mask, but… That didn’t make sense. Out of the seven iterations of that design, she didn’t recall one with anywhere near the capability to control a dragon. But…

She remembered.

Cao Hu had spoken of this, in her time as his advisor.

The final iteration, never completed by the Curse-eating General’s own reckoning.

She recalled him rambling about it in a drunken stupor: “Lucky Number Eight would have worked, I am certain of it. The scorchlanders historically used their tribe-guardian spirits as weapons in intertribal conflicts, so all we would have needed was to point one tribe’s guardian spirit at a tribe that had attacked them in the past! Number Eight would have pushed the subject to act on lingering resentments, it would’ve torn open old wounds such that the subject’s disposition would remain wrathful towards the intended target even if the mask were to cease function. But no, His Divinity deemed that too niche an application, weighing the value of my work against that of his precious Chimera Farm program. The Seventh and Eighth iteration prototypes must be rotting in an imperial vault somewhere…”

“How did they source such a thing? First the Leshy with a Number Seven, and now this?!” questions ran through her mind. It was an undeniable fact that Boreans were the greatest long-distance sailors on the continent, but… She just couldn’t believe the heavenly coincidence it would’ve taken for a viking crew to stumble upon not just a Number Seven mask somewhere in the scorchlands, but a Number Eight as well. Something so elusive that none but the Curse-eating General and a scant few court eunuchs would’ve known about its existence to begin with. For all she knew, this could be the only Number Eight in existence, or it might even be an entirely new mask made on a combination of Cao Hu’s research and Borean deep magic.

Red sent a message to that horrifying titan. She still didn’t have a clue as to who was controlling it, having never heard that crowing voice.

“Hold the dragon’s head still. I will burn the cursed artifact out of its eye socket; my magic can annihilate it cleanly and quickly.”

“That woman… Her magic is identical to the pseudo-antediluvian power of a Dungeon Core. If anything can destroy an artifact accursed enough to direct a Dragon Descendant’s actions, it would be that. It is not a matter of raw power, but the fundamental nature of a Dungeon Core’s magic. It would be best to heed her suggestion.”

So it was that Victor put Teutobochus’ physical might to task, trusting its armor and resilience to hold up in the face of Eisengeist’s blades.

By some miracle he got the beast in a headlock on the first go, feeling it spraying a continuous geyser of sap as it thrashed. Even Eisengeist, the great dragon that it was, couldn’t deny the virtue of sheer physical mass when it came to who had the power in a grapple. He tries to use Teutobochus’ legs to pin the dragon’s blade-tendrils, and though he managed to get four of them, two more shredded away at Eisengeist’s side with each passing second.

He twisted Teutobochus’ head far beyond human limits in order to aim the Inverse Array, firing it at high-output, half in an attempt to defend and half in the hopes that the impact would weaken Eisengeist’s tendrils. That hope saw the light of day, skin and muscle being shredded away by a noticeable amount near the tendrils’ roots by the beam which went screaming past them and into the sky.

“Estimated offensive capability reduction for enemy tendrils No. 3 and No. 5: 20%. System output reduced in the short-term, Heart No. 5 damaged by enemy attack, conduits in Thoracic Quadrant No. 4 damaged but operational. Stratagem successful.”

Red closed the distance, approaching to less than fifteen meters from Eisengeist’s eye, arranging all four of her external Subcores into a pyramidal array and arraying blackstone panels around them. She pushed herself to the point of blood spraying out her nose and ears in order to ensure the mask’s annihilation… But in the end, it worked.

HYPERCRITICALITY SIGN

LIGHT OF TOTAL ANNIHILATION

CRIMSON COMMAND: FUSION VOLTEKKA

Northlight screamed forth. A geyser of accursed purple and atomized gore erupted from Eisengeist’s eye socket, the motes of cursed magic zipping through the air. Red kept track of them just in case they led to the culprit.

Seeing the cursed artifact carved out of the Dragon Descendant’s eye and a weeping hole straight to Eisengeist’s rock-hard brain left in its place, the titan broke its grapple. Red could see its ribcage and eldritch organs showing, waterfalls of artificial blood gushing forth for a moment before tendrils of artificial flesh sprung forth to plug the leak.

Eisgengeist laid still, struggling for air.

Then, it emitted a howl of utter unmitigated rage and redoubled its assault with renewed ferocity, no longer restricted by a controlling artifact.