Chapter 284: The Summoned Vampire Marquis

Above the desert strewn with scorched earth and lava, two dragon silhouettes tore the clouds apart.

Plasdon unfurled his forty‑meter cobalt‑blue dragon wings, a storm weaving a net of electricity between the wing membranes. The future blue‑dragon lord's scales reflected lightning, each reverse‑scale charged with one hundred thousand volts of static. As he dived, the air ionized with a sharp ozone scent, and his claws gouged three‑meter‑deep scorch marks into the ground—until they struck the boiling sea of lava.

Naimi Xisi gathered his silver‑scaled wings and hovered above the lava pool, the magical aura at his tail tip reshaping the geology. Sandstone layers within a few kilometers had vitrified, and crimson magma erupted skyward in a torrent. The blue dragon had just been startled by the sudden surge of lava and strained to turn in midair, avoiding a head‑first plunge into the scorching sea.

"Damn coward, will you fight me fair and square?!" Plasdon's roar raised a sonic boom, a spherical bolt of lightning gathered between his horns lighting his crippled left wing—a scar from a battle a hundred years ago against the Bronze Dragon clan.

Naimi Xisi let out a soft chuckle, his fish‑fin‑like tail fin slapping the void, and Plasdon suddenly felt himself enveloped by a wave of malice.

Eight‑Circle Necromancy Spell—【Instant Exhaustion Wave】!

The necromancy spell generated a transparent ripple that spread at the speed of sound. As the wave passed, the air twisted as if rotting, a magic that acts directly on flesh and is the most disgusting to any melee brute. Plasdon's impending lightning blast erupted in his throat, and the blue dragon's powerful hind‑limb muscle fibers began to spasm uncontrollably.

"Do you crave a battle that makes the blood boil? I can grant it." Naimi Xisi vibrated the third joint of his wing roots to adjust his hover, his claws tracing the topology of an Eight‑Circle Spell in the air while murmuring a strange incantation. The lava pool suddenly sank into a vortex, and an obsidian coffin sealed by thirteen chains burst forth from the molten flow.

Eight‑Circle Necromancy Spell—【Summon Higher Undead】!

The moment the coffin shattered, dense black fog spewed out like a locust swarm, and an intensely cold aura froze the surrounding lava into hard black ground.

"Play with this blue dragon, but don't kill it." Naimi Xisi curled his lip; the 【Summon Higher Undead】 spell, amplified tenfold by a power gem, would summon what kind of formidable Undead?

When A'ersi Xueji's consciousness awoke from the blood coffin, the first thing he sensed was heat—not the reviled scorching of holy water or sunlight, but a more primal, violent energy tearing at his spirit. As a vampire marquis who had survived thirteen centuries in Ying Ying Ming Jie, he should have instantly triggered blood teleportation, yet a suppressive force beyond necromantic instinct pinned him inside the obsidian coffin.

Then a supreme voice, laced with cunning, came from the outside, and A'ersi naturally perceived why his current situation—he had been forcibly summoned!

Inside his skull, the blood core quivered violently; through the coffin's fissure, A'ersi saw the sea of flowing lava. His necromantic sight parsed a Seven‑Layer Spatial Anchor Technique—far from the usual corpse‑summoning spell, it was a forbidden summoning that tore the planar barrier. Even more shocking, the binding incantation on his spirit bore the distinctive resonant frequency of Dragon‑tongue magic.

Three hundred years ago, on a lunar eclipse night, the legendary lich Saenheite attempted to control him with a Nine‑Circle Necromancy Soul‑Binding Technique, and A'ersi could still feel the gaps in the spell's chain. Now, thirteen necromancy runes wound around his blood core, each precisely sealing his most vulnerable soul depths. This required the caster to possess anatomical‑level knowledge of vampire physiology—something no living researcher should ever possess.

Which archmage forcibly enslaved him!

A'ersi still found it unbelievable; the humiliation he had not felt since rising from a common vampire to a baronial rank had never returned, yet after many years, the near‑legendary him was summoned again. At the instant the coffin lid opened, A'ersi's scarlet cloak fluttered without wind. Instinctively he tried to dissolve into a blood mist and flee, but each blood droplet was marked by green ash from the lava steam. As his gaze followed the magical aura upward, the pupils beneath his mithril helm contracted sharply—floating in the air was not the gaunt wizard in robes he expected, but a silver giant dragon whose scales radiated arcane light.

The lingering necrotic aura on the dragon‑claw tip still reminded him of reality, and A'ersi felt his "Eternal Winter Sword" tremble within its sheath. This completely contradicted his understanding of necromancy. Dragons have always relied on sharp teeth and claws, and even ancient dragons rarely dabble in high‑level necromancy—unless, perhaps, this creature was not a traditional dragon at all, but some higher being cloaked in dragon hide.

"Play with this lord," the dragon's vertical pupils narrowed slightly, and A'ersi suddenly felt searing pain radiating from his blood core. The necromancy runes were siphoning his memories—uncontrolled images of the battle with the lich three centuries ago surfaced. When he tried to resist with the vampire's mental shield, he realized his spirit sea had already been reshaped into an extension of the spell's circuitry.

"Yes," A'ersi replied briefly, the thirteen green necromancy runes flowing across his pallid face like mercury, revealing only a pair of dead, black eyes.

He finally realized that he had become the subject of this dragon's experimental spell.

Unlike the cunning vampire A'ersi, who instantly recognized the terror of the Juan Ce Dragon, the green‑horned Plasdon, upon seeing his opponent summon a vampire to confront him, felt only a profound humiliation.

That damned giant dragon actually thought a rat hiding in a gutter could deal with the great Plasdon?!

When the blue dragon's thunder‑claw surged through the air in fury, A'ersi instinctively assumed a crimson spiraling opening move. His bone sword struck dragon scales, sparking a weave of ice‑fire starlight.

Plasdon's thunder‑claw collided with the bone sword, erupting blue‑white arcs. The vampire knight leaned back in a joint‑defying posture, the blade slipping through the gaps in the claw's scales into the metacarpal crevice. As the "Eternal Winter" frost spread along his nerves, the blue dragon let out a roar mingled with pain and anger.

The Juan Ce Dragon's silhouette gradually faded from the air, replaced by twelve massive prisms that refracted the battlefield into multi‑angled slow‑motion images.

These are the entities summoned by the Eight‑Circle Divination Spell 【Advanced Arcane Sight】; they will record every detail of the battle and perfectly analyze both sides' exact strength for the caster.

Although the mature blue dragon's power is far below that of a level‑20 adventurer, vampires are naturally restrained by dragons; even this vampire marquis, comparable to a level‑20 adventurer, would likely only trade blows with the mature blue dragon without the weakening effect of the Exhaustion Wave.

!

The 【Higher Summon Undead】 spell's effect far exceeded Naimi Xisi's expectations; he did not anticipate the spell would directly alter its release principle, turning the creation of Undead into the summoning and enslavement of extra‑planar beings, and the summoned entities' levels were absurdly high.

However, Undead come in many varieties; Naimi Xisi must gather data on each summon target to determine the spell's optimal use. After collecting this vampire's combat data, he also plans to catalog higher‑grade variants of Wraiths, Zombies, and Skeletons.

(End of Chapter)