Noodle had no idea what was going on with that lady and her weird flames down below him, but he decided not to worry about it. After all, she was melting all those annoying metal guys and helping out Uncle Dave. As far as he was concerned, she was great.

Besides, he was almost done getting through this annoying ship’s bubble. Noodle knew that the ships had shields; he’d watched Mom and Aunt Asherta popping them. Obviously, he’d figured chomping down on this one would bust right through it. He was way bigger than Aunt Asherta, after all, and she could pop them just fine.

So he was kinda surprised when he clamped his jaws around the ship and didn’t feel the barrier break right away. Even chewing on it a bit didn’t seem to get him anywhere. Feeling a bit stubborn at that point, Noodle decided he was done messing around and let loose a full blast of his Forge Breath with the ship still in his mouth.

Instantly, he could feel the power of the shield dwindle as it was bathed in white fire threaded through with tongues of red, purple, and gold. The traces of his dad’s domains that Noodle had picked up started ripping at the energy of the shield.

With a sudden crack, Noodle felt his teeth slip a little into the shield, finally penetrating it. At the same time, Noodle could feel the energy near the top of the ship, right where his Forge Breath first made contact, starting to melt like candle wax.

Noodle thought he’d finally got the stupid bubble beat, but the ship had held back the whole time. Suddenly, a massive wave of energy surged through the bubble right when it was about to pop and undid all his progress. The melted energy reformed, and Noodle’s yards-long teeth were pushed out.

At this point the stupid ship was starting to make him mad, so he decided to try something else. Obviously, biting the stupid thing wasn’t working. Instead, he backed off, letting go of the bubble and flying up a bit. Then, before the ship moved, he grabbed hold with his fore legs, his talons scraping against the invisible field.

The shield had little friction, so his grip started slipping almost immediately. Noodle had kinda expected that based on how hard the thing was to bite. That's why he wrapped a few coils of his body around the whole vessel, slamming his hind leg’s talons into the ship’s shield as well.

He tried squeezing the whole thing with his coils for a moment, but the shield seemed way better at dealing with that kind of broad, spread-out pressure than it had with his teeth and breath, so Noodle decided to focus on what had already worked. The change in grip was just to get more leverage and use his breath properly instead of having the ship already halfway into his mouth.

For most dragons, having their target closer to their breath was usually a good thing. After all, energy naturally disperses over distance. The closer something was to a dragon’s mouth, the more intense the energies would be. That was just common sense. Plus, aiming was easier. It’s why Aunt Asehrta was practically on top of a ship when she used her breath.

Noodle’s breath was, as with all dragons, unique. But his was pretty odd, even compared to the broad spectrum of dragon breaths that existed in the Starry Sea. Some of the differences made his breath arguably better at mid-range rather than close-up.

Noodle had Forge Breath. Unlike Aunt Asherta, whose breath created a physical material, Noodle’s breath was a form of energy that melted anything it came in contact with. Literally anything. Stone? Melt. Metal>? Obviously melted. But that included things that typically wouldn’t melt at all. Wood which would normally burn instead, melted, and even other forms of energy like the ship’s shield would melt into a liquid rather than just disperse.

That wasn’t the only unique thing about Noodle’s fire. His was a breath that acted more like a tool than an attack. After all, it was meant for a forge, not a battlefield. Surprisingly, that meant that Noodle had a lot more control over the shape and intensity of the flame than was normal. He could even sustain a continuous blast for a lot longer than was typical.

The reason why this made a little distance nice was because Noodle lost control of his breath entirely once it hit something. More than that, it took him a moment to get a grip on the flame once it left his mouth and really control it. So, with the ship literally inside his mouth, he wasn’t able to properly use his breath right.

Now that he had a tiny bit of space, he could actually use his abilities correctly. Once more, Noodle used his breath. But this time his mouth was barely open, leaving only the smallest gap for the flames to escape. The moment they did, Noodle focused them into a singular beam of intense power no wider than his fang.

Instead of wrapping around the entire ship, the Forge Breath impacted a single point of the shield, causing the energy to bubble like water at boil before melting entirely and allowing the flames to surge father in. Finally contacting the ship, the Forge Breath eagerly ate into the infused materials that composed the vessel.

Noodle simply kept up his stream even as the breath failed to instantly melt the ship itself. He wasn’t surprised at all. Infused materials had an inherent resistance to any change unless they interacted with something of a polar opposite concept. Obviously, those that designed the ship didn’t make it with a weakness to something as obvious as melting.

No, Noodle just waited. He wasn’t the most patient dragon, but his Forge Breath was built for situations like this. No matter what it was, his breath would eventually melt it down. He had the power and stamina to keep up a flame of this level for hours. The ship wouldn’t last anywhere near that long.

But the little humans inside weren’t just going to sit idly while Noodle’s breath broke their ship and melted them into puddles. The shield, already no longer a factor, completely disappeared at the same moment the ship shot away from Noodle’s face and out of his coils.

He was caught off guard and the space created from the shield vanishing was just enough to make the action possible. Instead of grabbing the ship, Noodle’s body slammed into itself in the space where it used to be. While kinda embarrassing, it didn’t hurt Noodle at all. His scales were far too thick and resistant to physical damage for something like that to do anything.

It only took a moment for him to swirl around to catch sight of the ship again. But that was also how long it took for them to turn enough to fire every single weapon loaded onto that side of the ship right into his face. Noodle huffed, closing his eyes against the barrage. Again, it was more of an annoyance than an actually harmful attack.

Feeling tired of putting up with these shenanigans after barely a few seconds, Noodle flew forward, blindly following the attacks to their source. He was a relatively fast dragon, and his head slammed into a freshly raised shield, bouncing off as the energy rejected his momentum.

In that brief contact, Noodle noticed that the shield was way weaker than it had been. That fact showed as the ship rebounded from the collision as well. Before, any momentum from and impact was eaten by the bubble. Now, some of his force was getting through to affect the ship.

The midair collision had the bonus of stopping the endless attacks. No doubt the people actually shooting all those weapons had been sent flying around as their ship skewed wildly through the air. Of course, a few of the weapons seemed more automatic, so those kept firing. But they were also stationary, so the movement of the ship meant they all missed anyway.

Noodle didn’t give them even a moment. Instead, he went full throttle after the erratically spinning ship before it could stabilize. This time, he didn’t headbutt it. No, he decided to continue his original strategy, and chomped down hard.

The difference was immediately obvious. Instead of hardly gaining purchase, Noodle’s fangs instantly punched through the shield, giving him a solid grip. The invisible energy of the bubble flared white as it slowly buckled under the pressure of Noodle’s jaws.

The shield seemed different than before, not just weaker. Instead of being completely impenetrable and solid, this one seemed flexible as it compressed under Noodle’s bite. Rather than an all-or-nothing sort of defense, this one was still doing its best to stop Noodle long after it started to fail.

Instead of finding that annoying, Noodle was having fun with it. It was genuinely like a chew toy, letting him really sink his fangs into the barrier without it just instantly popping. It even had a nice sense of both give and resistance. Noodle was almost sad when he upped the pressure.

Soon, his teeth were scraping against the side of the ship as his mouth closed further and further. Noodle probably could have ended this already with his breath and busted the shield entirely, but he felt like enjoying the victory. This ship had been super annoying to put down, after all.

It wasn’t long before he paid for taking his time. It seemed the other ships were no longer content to sit the fight out, and a dozen of them opened fire on Noodle’s long body. Though it was pretty much pointless. None of them were anywhere near as big as the ship Noodle had in his jaws, and their weapons were of a size to match. It was like a light massage against his scales as they pelted him.

But Noodle got the message. He was dragging this out too long, despite the fact that he’d only been toying with this ship for a few minutes. He was more disappointed than anything. When Dad had told him to step in and help out his mom and aunt, Noodle had expected a challenge. This was just kinda boring.

With a massive, metal-rattling sigh, Noodle bit down.

{}

“Sir, the Vengeance has been intercepted by a behemoth class dragon-type monster.”

Russell felt like tearing his hair out. Only the overwhelming weight of responsibility let him keep his calm facade. Everything was going farther and farther out of control. The only upside was that Travis had failed to call, despite Russell honestly believing the twerp had ample excuse to do so.

The army of Ethermen he’d launched to deal with the undead had proven far less effective than he’d hoped. In fact, they’d barely managed to do anything yet, which was insane. That many Ethermen should be enough to match a force of Shroud half its size. A bunch of monsters at a third their number should have been a cakewalk.

The problem was that damn green fire. It melted Ethermen like nothing else. Even their energy shields were corroded and destroyed in short order. And that wasn’t even beginning to mention the powerful defensive barriers that had been put up around the undead, or the storm of weapons turning the only path to them into a meat grinder.

Russell realized he’d stepped up to a fight far outside his league. The enemy had counters to his best soldiers; meanwhile, Russell knew practically nothing about undead in turn. They only spawned in a rare few dead continents. Places that lacked any resources worth a damn and, as such, were ignored.

Russell had still believed they might have managed to take out the undead once his forces started getting through, but feedback data from the Ethermen showed they survived only moments in that bone cage. Then this damn dragon showed up to block the super-battleship he’d sent to deal with the annoying flying shrouded.

The Vengeance was supposed to be a trump card, a last resort to handle some of the most powerful shrouded currently on the island below. Sending them after the two flyers was meant to be overkill, a sure win to get them back on track.

Obviously, the shrouded hadn’t got that message.

Looking at the CV screen displaying the image of the dragon in question, Russell could only shake his head in disbelief. It was a behemoth, dwarfing even the Vengeance. Only the Liberation itself could make the monster look small. Even then, it was big enough to wrap halfway around the flagship with its length.

Monsters of that size were reserved for only the largest of continents. The only answer was that a shrouded had created it with a creature shroud. But something like the dragon could only be made by the strongest of shrouded. Someone old enough to be known to the Revolution. And Russell had never seen anything about a creature-type shrouded making gigantic dragons.

He watched almost helplessly as the colossal beast played with the Vengeance like it was a toy. One of their strongest offensive ships rendered useless in the face of even greater power. Now, some of that was down to unfortunate timing. The Vengeance was equipped with armaments to deal with the two shrouded below. Not something like this.

Their specialized armaments and robust shield, meant to counter the clouds and energy-eating Mithril breath of the shrouded, was useless against the pure physical might of the behemoth dragon. Had they equipped the Vengeance to handle the dragon’s thick scales and odd breath weapon, the fight might not have been so one-sided.

“Sir, the Vengeance is requesting permission to detonate armament stores.” A technician looked toward Russell grimly.

There had been a brief moment where it almost looked like the super-battleship might get away, but that dream vanished a moment later. Russell could only wave his hand in acknowledgment. He did a disservice to the brave men and women on that ship, but his attention was split between the dragon, undead army that now had some kind of fire elemental helping them, the two flying shrouded, and the increasingly untenable situation at the main meeting hall.

His guilt only grew as he saw the Vengeance explode in the dragon’s jaws. Most of the armaments had been potent acidic shells meant to melt through the defensive clouds the shrouded on the bird used. Russell watched the dragon lick the acid off its jaws like it was a tasty sauce. The scales covering its body didn’t even sizzle. That thing was a true juggernaut.

Looking at the battlefield slowly but surely collapsing, Russell couldn't help the sense of hopelessness wash over him. What was he supposed to do now?

“Sir, incoming from HQ.” Russell’s eyes snapped onto the tech who’d spoken. “They’re sending in the elites.”