Kaelthar and Veyrakas’ expressions changed at the same time.

It wasn’t that they’d never seen powerful forces.

But this kind of quake—this kind of pressure coming straight down without any room to breathe—was the first time they’d ever faced something like it.

The moment that fused lightning dragon took shape, air, light, space—even the rhythm of their own breathing—got thrown out of sync. Even standing still, a brief hitch crept into their movements.

That tiny hitch was enough.

For the first time, they looked... wrong-footed.

Veyrakas reacted first.

Blinding gold erupted from his body. The radiance no longer just clung to his surface—it expanded inward and outward at the same time.

His body began to swell and rise. Bone and muscle rebuilt inside the gold light, restructuring rapidly. In only a few breaths, the Veyrakas who’d been hovering there had become a towering golden giant.

Kaelthar instantly understood what he was doing.

No hesitation—he drove his freezing power into a full transformation.

Ice-blue energy surged out. His form twisted in midair, stretched, reshaped—until he became a massive crystalline blue dragon.

That Frost Dragon didn’t charge alone.

It coiled out and wrapped around the giant’s arm in thick loops, anchoring itself like living armor. The dragon’s head settled right in front of the giant’s fist.

In a blink, the battlefield shifted again.

High above the warship: a lightning dragon wreathed in electric glare—opposite a golden giant with a Frost Dragon spiraled around its arm. Four completely different forces packed the void until it felt like there was no room left to exist. No one retreated. Not even half a step.

"Three! Two! One!" Ethan roared, counting down out loud.

On the final number, he and Anya swung their arms down together.

The lightning dragon in the high void immediately coiled upward. Its body twisted, and it lunged forward—carrying the fused thunder of both of them.

Its jaws opened wide, head dropping low, target locked on the golden giant’s body.

Kaelthar and Veyrakas—now a combined giant—moved at the same moment.

The giant raised the arm wrapped in the Frost Dragon. That arm came down like a slab of collapsed space, hammering toward the charging dragon.

Ice-blue coils and a golden limb slammed forward together, meeting the lightning dragon head-on.

Before impact, the dragon roared.

"RAAAH—!"

Then bright red lightning flooded from its open mouth.

Not scattered arcs—

A fully compressed torrent.

Red, threaded with transparent lightning, like a roaring river of thunder exploding outward—washing straight over the giant’s arm.

The current raced up the limb that the Frost Dragon was wrapped around. Wherever it passed, gold radiance and freezing ice both shuddered violently.

"AAGH—!"

Veyrakas and Kaelthar screamed at the same time.

That brutal current didn’t just burn the surface—it drilled numbness and pain deep into flesh and bone.

The golden giant’s movement visibly locked up. The Frost Dragon wrapped around its arm writhed in agony, cracks tearing across the crystalline blue body as the electricity ripped it apart.

The giant couldn’t hold.

Both knees slammed down into the void.

The impact made the space around them tremble. The huge arm sagged, limp. Its surface had already been torn open by lightning, blood pouring down and staining the once-blazing gold light into something mottled and dirty.

"RAAAH!" Kaelthar bellowed.

In the next instant, he released the giant’s arm.

The Frost Dragon tore free in a violent snap. Its body spread wide, jaws opening as it lunged straight at the lightning dragon—going for a savage bite.

Ethan watched the Frost Dragon lunge in, and a cold edge flashed through his eyes—almost amused.

At this point, Kaelthar was still trying to ram that into their dragon?

Whether it was refinement, raw pressure, or the weight that came from two lightning forces fused into one... they weren’t even on the same tier anymore.

The Frost Dragon looked imposing—crystal-blue, cold raging off it in rolling waves—but before the collision even fully arrived, Ethan could already see the ending.

"RAAAH—!"

Anya didn’t give it a single chance.

She lifted a hand and drove the dragon woven from bright red and transparent lightning straight into it.

The lightning dragon snapped its body in midair, jaws opening wide, and bit down on the Frost Dragon’s midsection. The moment its teeth closed, red light and transparent arcs detonated together, current racing wildly along the ice-blue body.

Then a crisp, almost ear-splitting crack rang out.

Creeeak—

The section that had been bitten split first. Then fractures ran up through the head, across the spine, and down to the tail.

Ice-blue light flickered violently a few times in the void... then lost all support. The entire dragon body exploded into fragments, shattering into scattered pieces that broke apart and dispersed.

"AAH—!"

Kaelthar let out a shrill, furious scream.

As the Frost Dragon shattered, his own body started to collapse with it.

Cracks opened at his shoulder and arm first. Then icy blue fracture-lines spread across his chest and waist. In the next breaths, he looked like an ice sculpture being smashed apart from the inside—splintering midair into flying chunks.

Ethan lifted his eyes to the other side. His voice dropped, heavy with unquestionable killing intent.

"Next... it’s your turn."

Veyrakas’ body visibly trembled.

He watched Kaelthar turn to fragments right in front of him, and the color drained from his face in a single rush.

The lightning dragon still coiled in the high void, and in his eyes it wasn’t "an attack" anymore.

It was a death-shadow coming down to end him.

His golden giant body still stood there, but his gaze was already starting to go hollow. Even the instinct to back away arrived half a beat late.

It wasn’t that he wanted to stand his ground.

It was that the pressure in front of him was so overwhelming... it crushed even the desire to run.

"Die!"

Anya shouted, both hands pressing forward.

The dragon above lowered its head, jaws spreading wide.

Bright red lightning compressed in its mouth, threaded through with dense, razor-fine strands of transparent current.

It charged for only an instant—then erupted.

A thick, violent flood of lightning blasted out and swallowed the golden giant that Veyrakas had become.

"Y-You—"

Veyrakas only managed two words.

In the next moment, his entire form was consumed. Golden holy light, half-healed wounds, the last scraps of defense on his surface—everything was torn apart inside that lightning torrent.

Red glare and transparent arcs drilled through him from the outside in. A heartbeat later, the outline of the golden giant collapsed completely, disintegrating into ash and vanishing into the void.