Re-Awakened :I Ascend as an SSS-Ranked Dragon Summoner-Chapter 601: The trials of Ego (Same Dragon, different power)

The path grew steeper as they climbed, the trees thinning until bare rock dominated the landscape. The moonlight was clearer here, unobstructed by canopy, casting everything in silver and shadow.

Noah walked near the back of the group, listening as the dragon knights talked amongst themselves.

"So what do we actually know about this red one?" Marcus asked, his earlier bravado tempered by the reality of what they were walking toward. "Besides the burned livestock and the terrified farmers?"

"Witnesses say it's massive," Gareth replied. "Bigger than the wyvern we killed last year. Wingspan maybe thirty feet, body the size of a house."

"House is generous," Roland countered. "More like a large wagon. But still big enough to be a problem."

"The fear though," Davos said, speaking up for the first time since being healed. "Every witness mentions the fear. Said just seeing it made them want to run. Instinctual terror that overrode everything else."

"Dragon fear," Egor said without turning around. "All dragons produce it to some degree. Aura that triggers prey responses in humans. The stronger the dragon, the stronger the fear."

Noah filed that information away. 'Nyx doesn't produce fear in me. Storm and Ivy don't either. But I'm bonded to them. Maybe that's different? But he does produce his own fear aura in others. Lesser willed beings,'

"And the fire," Marcus added. "One witness said the dragon's breath was like a volcano erupting. Melted stone, turned sand to glass. Heat so intense you could feel it from a hundred feet away."

'Inferno Storm,' Noah thought, remembering Nyx's signature attack. 'Temperatures high enough to liquify metal. This dragon has similar capabilities.'

They walked in silence for a while, boots crunching on loose stone, until Noah decided to ask a question that Burt would reasonably ask.

"You keep calling it the red one," Noah said. "Is that just because it's a red dragon you're hunting? Or is there more to it?"

Roland glanced back at him, seeming surprised Noah was still following.

"Color matters with dragons," he said. "Different colors mean different abilities, different threat levels. Green dragons use poison, white dragons control ice, blue ones manipulate lightning."

"But red, black, and gold are the ones you really worry about," Marcus added. "Those colors tend to produce the strongest dragons. The leaders."

"Leaders?" Noah asked.

"Dragons aren't always solitary," Gareth explained. "Sometimes they form clutches. Groups of three to six dragons that hunt together, share territory. And in those clutches, there's always a hierarchy. Red, black, and gold dragons almost always end up at the top."

Noah's mind went to his own dragons. 'Nyx leads. Not because I told him to, but because Storm and Ivy just naturally defer to him. Even Ivy, who's technically older and is powerful in her own right since when I first got her, defers to Nyx. There is a hierarchy, and Nyx sits at the top of it.'

"Why those colors specifically?" Noah asked.

"Nobody knows for certain," Roland said. "But observation over decades shows consistent patterns. Red dragons are more aggressive, more territorial, stronger in direct combat. Black dragons are more intelligent, better at tactics and ambush. Gold dragons are rare, but when they appear, they tend to dominate entire regions."

Egor spoke from the front. "Color indicates potential. A green dragon might be dangerous, but a red dragon at the same age is exponentially more deadly. It's genetics, or magic, or something we don't fully understand. But the pattern holds."

"Is there anything worse than red, black, or gold?" Noah asked, genuine curiosity in his voice.

The group went quiet for a moment.

"Legend says yes," Marcus finally answered, his voice dropping. "A purple dragon. Not quite black, not quite purple. Dark purple, like deep twilight."

"Have you ever seen one?" Noah asked.

Egor's voice came back flat. "If we had, we'd all be dead. Purple dragons are myth, or at least so rare that nobody I've spoken to has confirmed seeing one and surviving. The stories say they're to regular dragons what dragons are to humans. Apex of apex predators."

'Purple,' Noah thought, his mind immediately going to his void energy. 'Dark purple, like twilight. Like the energy I use for everything.'

But he said nothing, just filed the information away.

They climbed higher, the path becoming more treacherous. Loose rocks skittered beneath boots, and the drop to their left grew steeper.

"What happened to the other kingdoms?" Noah asked after another stretch of silence. "The one we were fighting, and the third kingdom that brought the dragons?"

"Absorption and destruction," Roland said. "The kingdom we'd been at war with? After the third kingdom was driven back, both our rulers decided continued conflict was stupid. We merged. Took a decade of negotiation, but now we're one kingdom. Doubled our territory, our population, our resources."

"And the third kingdom?"

"Gone," Egor said simply. "The Dragon King drove them back, destroyed their forces. They retreated to wherever they'd come from, and we haven't seen them since. Some say they collapsed entirely. Others think they're rebuilding, waiting for another chance."

Marcus spat to the side. "It was later discovered their king was the one who'd brought dragons into warfare originally. Witnesses and captured soldiers said this king was courting some dark god. That the god gave him the dragons as weapons in exchange for... something. Nobody knows what."

"King Arthur," Roland muttered. "That bastard."

Noah stopped walking.

His feet just stopped moving, his entire body going rigid.

'Arthur,' he thought, ice flooding his chest. 'King Arthur. It can't be. Can't be the same Arthur I know. That would mean—'

"Boy?" Egor's voice cut through Noah's spiral. "What's wrong? Why'd you stop?"

Noah looked up, found all seven dragon knights watching him with varying degrees of concern and suspicion.

"I just—" Noah started, his mind racing for an explanation.

Then he heard something.

A rumble. Distant, like an avalanche starting miles away. But growing louder. Closer.

Everyone's heads snapped upward.

The sky above them was dark, clouds obscuring most of the moon. But something was moving up there. Something massive, descending with speed that defied its size.

Blackness split the clouds, and for one moment, Noah saw wings. Massive wings that blocked out stars, that created wind pressure he could feel from the ground.

"DRAGONNNNN!" Egor's shout cut through the night.

BOOM!

The creature hit the mountain top maybe two hundred feet above them. The impact was catastrophic. Stone shattered, the entire mountain shaking from the force. Debris exploded outward in all directions—boulders the size of people, smaller rocks like shrapnel, dust that filled the air in choking clouds.

The shockwave hit Noah like a physical wall. His feet left the ground, his body tumbling backward through air, completely out of control.

He was falling. The cliff edge, the drop he'd been walking beside, suddenly beneath him instead of beside him.

A hand caught his wrist.

Egor had somehow crossed the distance, his grip iron-strong, his body braced against a boulder that had miraculously stopped rolling. He hauled Noah up with one arm, dragging him back onto solid ground.

"Stay down!" Egor commanded, and Noah didn't argue.

The other dragon knights had their weapons drawn. Swords, spears, Gareth's hands already glowing with healing light in preparation for injuries. Brom's body shimmered gold as his defensive ability activated.

The dust was settling slowly, revealing the destruction. The mountain top above them was gone. Just gone, replaced by a crater and scattered rubble. And in that crater, something moved.

Then silence. Complete, oppressive silence that made Noah's ears ring.

"Where is it?" Marcus whispered, his sword raised, his eyes scanning the darkness.

"I don't see anything," Davos said, turning in a slow circle.

Noah's enhanced perception was screaming at him. Something was wrong. Something was here, close, watching them.

He turned his head slightly, and his blood went cold.

A white line. Thin, almost invisible in the darkness. Extending from somewhere in the dust and debris, aimed directly at him.

'Attack precursor,' Noah realized, his body trying to move, trying to dodge. 𝘧𝓇ℯℯ𝑤ℯ𝘣𝓃ℴ𝓋𝑒𝑙.𝑐𝘰𝑚

But he couldn't. His muscles wouldn't respond. Fear had locked him in place, his enhanced stats meaningless against the terror flooding his system.

"Where did the damned beast go?" Roland demanded, his voice tight.

Noah's throat was dry, his voice barely working.

"Be... behind me."

Egor spun, his hammer already forming in his hand.

The dragon rose from the rubble like a demon emerging from hell.

Thirty feet of scaled muscle, wings spreading wide enough to eclipse the moon completely. Red scales that caught the light like molten metal, each one the size of Noah's hand. A head shaped like a wedge, jaws that could bite a man in half, eyes that glowed with intelligence and malice.

The creature's chest was expanding, ribs spreading as it drew breath. And beneath those ribs, between the scales, light was building. Red-orange light that grew brighter with each passing second, turning the entire area into day.

'Magma Bomb,' Noah thought, recognition hitting him like ice water. 'That's Nyx's ultimate attack. Condense superheated material inside the chest cavity, then release it in an explosion that creates volcanic conditions in a targeted area.'

The dragon's mouth opened slightly, heat shimmer visible in the air around it.

'How do I know this?' Noah's mind raced even as his body stayed frozen. 'Because I have one of these in my domain. This is a red death dragon. The same species as Nyx. The same abilities, the same powers, but different—'

The light beneath the dragon's chest reached critical brightness. The air itself was burning, oxygen igniting from proximity to the building energy.

Noah's eyes went to the dragon knights around him. To Egor with his hammer raised, to Brom with his golden shimmer, to the others preparing to fight something they didn't understand.

'They don't know what's coming,' Noah realized, horror mixing with the fear already paralyzing him. 'They've never seen this attack before. Don't know that when that energy releases, it's going to turn this entire area into a magma field. Don't know that their armor won't matter, their abilities won't save them, that they're all about to die.'

The dragon's chest compressed, the light condensing into a sphere of pure destruction.

And Noah couldn't move, couldn't warn them, couldn't do anything except watch as the red death dragon prepared to show these dragon knights what real power looked like.