The shadowy pitch black figures soundlessly rushed towards the mountain of gold coins. They were moving chaotically, some fast and others slowly.
The dragon covered in the thick black smoke with lightning sparkling within it was hovering above the mountains.
‘How can someone be a dragon lord if they can’t even protect their hoard from thieves.’ Vesuvius tried to think about some other hidden meanings behind the trial. Still, in the end, he realised that abandoning the gold to monsters without a fight would go against a dragon’s nature.
‘The first trial was about not getting blinded and keeping a cool head… but this second one feels more about a whit in a fight.’
From new memory from his inherited memory that became accessible after the second trial started, he knew that the strength of the shadow monsters would scale with his strength, ‘I must defeat them with tactics and fitting skill, not just sheer strength.’
Suddenly the dragon launched forwards toward the monsters; he streaked across the blank white space before opening his mouth. Orange light flickered inside, and lightning crackled intensely, forming tendrils around his three horns. A brightly glowing stream of super hot magma flew out, hitting the crowd of shadowy monsters. The magma rushed through their ink-like bodies, burning them as if they were out of paper. The magma was splashing everywhere, sending waves of heat through the ranks of the shadow monsters. At the same time, a massive bolt of lightning stroked across the white skies, striking the black formation. Electricity crackled everywhere, throwing electrical sparks and creating massive glowing tendrils of electricity as it moved through the monsters. The monsters kept spasming as the lightning crackled around their bodies before they dissipated in black smoke.
Spam of notification filled the dragon’s mind.
[+1XP]
[+2XP]
[+3XP]
[+1XP]
…
‘Honestly, this is a nice surprise. I was expecting no XP as this is not real and just an illusion… but maybe it is real in some weird pocket dimension. But that amount is so small… maybe a reduction from the system as there is no risk of dying here? Who knows…’
However, the monsters on the three remaining sides continued unhindered, advancing like a black oily tide towards the gold.
‘Damn this. I can’t focus on one side only… ‘ Vesuvius realised that he was in a complicated situation. He couldn’t just stay in one place and fight as it would leave other sides unprotected.
‘Or maybe I can, If I annihilate one side fast enough, I could focus on the remaining three much better… but I need to slow them down to accomplish it.’
He flapped his wings, strong winds around him rushing back towards his mountain of gold. He opened his mouth once again, spitting out a stream of magma. He tilted his wings, flying in a spiral around the gold without stopping the stream of magma. He flapped his wings even stronger while keeping them tilted, doing fast laps around the gold. The magma splashed on the ground, creating layers of burning bubbling circles around the gold, its orange glow contrasting with the white ground around it.
Finally, he stopped and landed on top of the hoard winded, causing another massive landslide of gold tingling all the way to the ground.
The monsters kept running forwards as if they had endless stamina. Soon they reached a line of hot lava spread over the ground. They stopped at once, looking at the orange glow of lava with their pitch-black eyes. At once, the monsters started to throw themselves into the lava, concentrating on a few spots. They jumped straight into the shallow layer of magma. Immediately after that, more of them jumped in, slowly forming bridges out of their burning bodies. They moved forwards relentlessly, stomping through the backs of their burned comrades.
The dragon caught up his breath and once again flapped his wings, sending fumes of dark smoke all around him.
He turned his gaze towards the monster slowly passing through the layers of magma and grinned, ‘As I hoped so, they are now much more concentrated.’
The dragon flapped his wings, moving towards the monsters. He opened his mouth, and a collum of magma passed through the tightly stacked monsters pushing through the magma, easily burning their bodies and illuminating the white space into a slightly orange tint.
‘Feels good when I finally have enough mana.’ Vesuvius slightly got nostalgic, remembering his days when he almost ran out of mana after a few breath attacks.
The dragon flapped his wings, launching himself into the monsters, explosively landing between them, his heavy armoured body crushing a few monsters around him. The dark smoke spread around him, black motes rising from the monsters as the smoke slowly burned their shadowy tissue. The monsters around him rushed at him with their claws swinging around, while the rest of the monsters ignored him and continued their advance towards the gold.
A black monster jumped towards the dragon, but immediately after it entered the smoke, electrical sparks flashed around its body. The monster fell to the ground, twitching quietly without making any noise.
A chill passed through the dragon’s body, ‘This feels weird with them being so quiet.’.
Suddenly bright blue-glowing electrical tendrils formed all over the dragon’s body, violently flashing and sparkling. Then in an instant, a wave of electrical spark exploded from the dragon, moving in all directions in a spherical shape. It moved through the surrounding monsters, causing them to fall to the ground. Electrical arcs passed through their muscles and nerves, killing them in puffs of black smoke.
A large monster with the height of a tree jumped a few meters toward the dragon and swung its black claws. It moved slowly and clunkily, electricity crackling and making sparks all around its body as it entered the cloud of dark smoke around the dragon, its huge razor-sharp claws slowly moving towards the dragon’s black armour. The dragon easily jumped to the side. The claws passed by him, cleaving through the white ground, leaving black trails in it.
The dragon opened his mouth, and a bright fire erupted out, engulfing the monster in bright orange-yellow flames. The flames instantly burned the monster, spreading all over its inky body, burning it alive. However, it didn’t even flinch or wail as it turned into black smoke before vanishing.
Finally, Vesuvius flapped his wings, rising back to the sky, ready to unleash inferno.