Chapter 511: The Mightiest Time Dragon

The instant Ambrose declared that the Dragon Tyrant had resurrected, countless omens broke out across the sky above.

The gods were manifesting in the heavens.

Lightning danced in a wild frenzy, a sign that Thanos was laughing himself half-mad.

He was, after all, the biggest winner in this entire game, having watched the whole spectacle unfold from beginning to end while also walking away with a goddess for a wife.

The other translucent silhouettes were the guests Ambrose had personally invited to witness this contest.

The God of Alchemy, the Goddess of Wealth, the Lady of Mists, the Oakfather, the orcish pantheon, the dwarven deities... every single god connected to any kingdom present had come, save for the elven pantheon.

The gods had gathered to bear witness, to see exactly where this lich intended to steer the world.

The first blow had just landed.

The Dragon Tyrant had returned. His disguise had failed.

In that instant, he became the target of every blade on the continent. Every race would unite, then and there, to hunt down that once-tyrannical ruler.

They wouldn't listen to a single word of explanation. They wouldn't grant the Dragon Tyrant so much as a sliver of mercy.

And everything that had just occurred had already been broadcast across the entire world through Ambrose's magic mirror network. Everyone, everywhere, now knew the Dragon Tyrant's true identity.

The young emperor of Lyon... no. He was no longer the emperor of Lyon. He was the Dragon Tyrant, Atros.

Atros watched as Ambrose descended slowly from the sky above. The lich, in human form, showed no trace of satisfaction on his face—only exquisite composure. Atros ground his teeth and demanded, "You've won. Why aren't you gloating?"

Ambrose glanced at him but didn't answer the question. His reply was flat and mocking. "Are you admitting defeat, then?"

Atros said, bitter and resentful, "What choice do I have left? I'm not the Dragon Tyrant I once was. I can't reverse the flow of time for the entire world, and none of you are going to let this go."

The spectators gathered here represented the majority of the world's legends. Even the version of Gareth he'd faced in the dreamscape had proven stronger than the original Arthur Lyon himself. There was no way he could win this fight through his own strength alone.

Struggling further was pointless. Worse, with his plan now in ruins, he would never surpass Arthur Lyon, not ever.

Crushed under the dual blow, Atros had already lost the will to continue fighting.

"Arthur wouldn't give up even in a hopeless situation like this. He always kept hold of hope, no matter what. That's exactly why you lost to him back then."

Ambrose's words sent Atros into an uncontrollable rage.

"You cursed lich! You should just go straight to hell!" Atros ground his teeth so hard they cracked, roaring through a mouth full of blood. "I should have killed you the very first moment I had the chance! Damn Cymric! He was the one who deceived me..."

Ambrose seemed not to hear a single word of Atros's cursing. Instead, he tilted his head back and looked up at the sky.

Atros began to sense something was off. What was this lich even looking at? Was there really anything left worth looking at, now that he'd lost?

High above, the countless faint shadows began to fade. In their place, even more colossal shadows began to emerge.

They were dragons, impossibly, unimaginably vast dragons. Dragons that seemed larger than the entire world itself.

"This is..."

Atros's whole body shook violently. He could feel the resonance of his own bloodline calling out to them.

Ambrose said, with a sigh, "This is your hope. Your very last chance."

Now that the Dragon Tyrant's identity had been exposed, the wager between the dragon gods and the Lord of Dawn had reached its conclusion.

After seventeen centuries, the Dragon Tyrant's plan to seize Lyon had failed completely. The overseas dragons would never be allowed to return home. The dragonkin had finally lost their millennium-long war.

In the end, the Lord of Dawn had won. But whatever the Lord of Dawn had won as his prize, from this moment forward, the dragon gods no longer needed to remain silent.

So long as the wager's price had been paid, the second game could now officially begin.

Hundreds of millions of rays of golden light streamed down from the heavens, transforming into a shimmering downpour that gathered into rivers midair before pouring directly into Atros's body.

In that instant, he let out a roar at the sky. His human form swelled monstrously as he transformed into a colossal being.

His flesh and skin were torn apart. Silver-white scales sprouted forth from underneath. A massive silver dragon, nearly a hundred meters long, now stood before everyone present.

Atros stared down at his own body in absolute disbelief.

"My power's restored... No, more than that. I'm stronger! HAHAHA! I'm even stronger than before!"

He spread his enormous draconic wings wide. The entire arena plunged instantly into a state of frozen time, every single person present locked in place, sealed within the flow of time itself.

The time dragon soared into the sky, looking down at everything below. What should have been his moment of ultimate defeat had somehow, impossibly, flipped into an absolute victory.

Not only had his power returned, he had gained a wealth of blessings he hadn't yet had time to fully understand, gifts bestowed directly by the dragon gods themselves.

His soul had originally been poured, molded from flesh, into the Draconic Armaments; his body had been a fusion of the Draconic Armaments and the Lyon royal bloodline. He could transform into a time dragon, yes, but that transformation had never been much more sophisticated than a druid's shapeshifting.

But in that instant, every trace of human impurity within him had been utterly purged. This body was now a purebred time dragon, through and through—and stronger and more vital, than even the original Dragon Tyrant had ever been.

That was precisely why Atros could freeze the flow of time for every single person present the very instant he spread his wings.

This was no mere crowd of bystanders, either. There were eight legends alone from Lyon's delegation.

The power of time was like flipping the chessboard the instant you realized you couldn't win the game legitimately, then swinging the board itself as a weapon: a brute-force way to snatch victory from certain defeat, breaking every rule in the process. But every single piece on that board carried real weight, and the larger the board you flipped, the more strength it cost you to swing it.

Back in the dreamscape, Atros had been cautious to the point of paranoia, only resorting to his power over time as an absolute last measure, and even then only managing to reverse a few minutes of combat.

But now, Atros could lock down every single one of those legends with barely any effort at all. He didn't even feel particularly strained by it.

"Damn you, lich! Your end has come... hm?!"

Atros was right about to nab Ambrose and humiliate him in turn, but when he looked up to search for him, he found that Ambrose had already fled far into the distance.

"How is that even possible... wait. Is that a time dragon?"

Atros spotted Ambrose riding atop a small silvery-white dragon, flying away from the arena at top speed.

Only a time dragon could move freely within this temporal barrier. Where in the world had this lich gotten his hands on a time dragon of his own?!

Shocked, Atros beat his wings and gave chase at once.

Without so much as glancing back, Ambrose hurled a handful of fireballs at Atros, but such minor spells meant absolutely nothing to a time dragon. The closer each fireball drew to his body, the slower it moved, until it froze completely, suspended motionless in midair.

Lightning bolts, ice shards, magic missiles—every spell, without exception, faded against the power of time.

Even boosted with a haste spell, Ambrose couldn't outrun a time dragon's pursuit. He hadn't even managed to clear the boundary of the arena before Atros caught up to him entirely.

The colossal time dragon blocked Ambrose's path. By comparison, the time dragon Ambrose rode looked almost childlike, small and delicate.

"A shapeshifting druid?" Atros said, stunned. "How could a druid possibly transform into a time dragon?"

Time dragons, iridescent dragons, and force dragons—these three legendary dragon breeds were legends in the most literal sense, born that way from the moment of their birth. That status was a privilege granted directly by the laws of the world itself; no matter how far a druid honed their shapeshifting ability, it could never allow them to transform into one of the three great legendary dragon lines.

And yet the small silver dragon before him did carry genuine power over time, however faint. Simply maintaining the strength to move at all had already left the little dragon utterly exhausted.

Ambrose had no intention of answering Atros's question. He seemed determined to keep struggling to the last, still hoping to make his escape somehow.

But Atros wasn't about to give him that chance.

The power of time gathered around Ambrose and the small time dragon, instantly overwhelming whatever defenses they had.

The druidic transformation broke. Naomi, plummeting from the sky as she attempted to shapeshift again, was caught in Atros's claw.

"Interesting little creature. I'll study you properly later."

The Dragon Tyrant gave the faintest squeeze of his claw, and Naomi vanished as though she'd never existed at all.

Suspended in midair, Ambrose asked, "Have you sent her to another point in time?"

Atros glanced at him. "Do you honestly still think you're in any position to be asking questions?"

Ambrose let out a light chuckle and shot back, "Do you think I don't know about the wager between the dragon gods and the Lord of Dawn? Do you think I never guessed the gods would grant you their blessing?"

"And what if you did?" Atros demanded, brimming with confidence. "Nothing in existence can stand against my power now."

He was stronger now than even the Dragon Tyrant had been at the very height of his power. Even if every legend present ganged up on him at once, he wouldn't be afraid in the slightest.

Ambrose said, smiling, "I knew you'd end up like this. Blaming the world when you're losing, and full of yourself the moment you win. Have you even noticed the one person you'd most want to see hasn't shown up yet?"

The instant the words left Ambrose's mouth, a thin veil of dawnlight settled over Atros's body.

Like the first ray of daybreak itself, the faint glow seemed utterly unremarkable—but in the very next instant, the time dragon's massive head was sheared clean off.

Dragon blood sprayed outward, and the frozen flow of time snapped back into motion. Every legendary warrior across the arena regained their ability to move all at once.

A massive silver mech materialized in midair, its longsword still dripping with the time dragon's blood.

Only one person alive could deliver a Sacred Slash this pure, this saturated with hope—pure holy light entirely unaffected by the flow of time, breaking straight through the time dragon's defensive barrier, shattering through even the hardest dragon scale, and severing the Dragon Tyrant's head from its body.

And yet Arthur Lyon, despite having just cleaved the Dragon Tyrant's head off in a single stroke, showed not the faintest trace of triumph. He simply gripped his sword hilt tightly, staring at the headless body of the time dragon before him.

The time dragon's colossal body began plummeting from the sky, but before it ever hit the ground, the severed head reattached itself automatically and the time dragon's wound healed on its own, as though it had never been injured at all.

Time itself stood on Atros's side. No matter how fatal the wound inflicted, a time dragon could simply leap backward through time, returning to the moment before the injury ever occurred. So long as the dragon's own power hadn't run dry, a time dragon was, for all practical purposes, immortal.

Atros let out a furious roar. "Arthur Lyon!"

The power of time swept across the entire arena once more, and every hero who'd only just regained the ability to move vanished, one after another. Their attacks never even reaching the time dragon's body before they themselves were flung off into some unknown era.

The entire arena now held only three figures: Ambrose, Arthur Lyon, and the raging colossal dragon.

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.