Chapter 328: War of Magic and the Modern Age

A swarm of F-15 Eagle fighters left white contrails in the clouds. Sixteen aircraft formed a "Sharp Blade" formation to encircle the target; the pulse wave of their onboard AN/APG-63 radar struck the dragon's scales, turning into a harsh electronic buzz.

"Hawk Squadron, lock on the heat source! Two AIM-7 missiles, fire simultaneously!"

Twenty‑four Sparrow missiles trailed smoke streams toward the target; amid swirling clouds, a hundred‑meter silver dragon, half‑concealed, glittered like the most lavish artwork in the world.

The missiles closed at extreme speed but, at three hundred meters from the dragon's wing, they bizarrely veered en masse—blue light rippled across the pattern of the dragon's neck scales, and the Eight-ring Protective Spell 【Absolute Deflection Field】 redirected all missiles toward nearby peaks. The granite mountains collapsed in a chain of explosions, and boulders rained down on the ground armored convoy.

"God, it's laughing!" Long‑range pilot Rogers saw the dragon's gaping jaws through his sight. The next instant, the dragon's claw carved an acoustic‑boom cloud; a three‑times‑sonic lunge smashed two F-15s. Steel wreckage wrapped with the pilot's flesh fell into Yellowstone Lake, staining the water's surface red in the morning mist.

Juan Ce Long's chest swelled, golden‑red patterns flowing beneath its armored scales, and an intense heat source gathered at its throat.

"Disperse! It's dragon breath!" Before the warning ended, a two‑hundred‑meter fireball had engulfed four aircraft.

It was not flame but the dragon's breath, amplified by a power gem—a infernal sphere of liquid magma mixed with plasma.

The four aircraft could not even send a distress signal before vaporizing; the remaining planes urgently dropped aluminum‑heat decoy bombs.

Then the dragon's left eye flashed violet as a Conjuration Seven-ring Spell 【Weather Manipulation】 instantly reduced the airspace humidity to zero. The decoy's smoke, before it could spread, was stripped of moisture and drifted away as dry dust.

On the ground, the 1st Armored Division's M60 Patton tanks rolled through the pine forest, their 120 mm barrels collectively elevated. They were the last line of defense—twenty kilometers behind them lay the volcanic crater observation post.

"Load armor‑piercing rounds! That monster has turned!"

Three hundred tanks fired simultaneously, but their barrage was swallowed by a translucent black Light Screen before reaching the dragon. The Necromancy Eight-ring Spell 【Oblivion Wall】 turned metal and gunpowder into foul ash, which fell into the terrified armored troops' eyes.

The dragon folded its wings, a silver spear thrust toward the ground; the moment its claw pierced the rock layer it unleashed a Transformation Seven-ring Spell 【Glacial Rift】. The earth cracked like a fragile eggshell, countless sheets of ice surged upward, two‑hundred‑ton tanks fell into the abyss, and the chain‑reaction fire from fuel depots illuminated the runes beneath the dragon's reverse scales.

Naimi Xisi flew in the air, tilted its head and spewed an Evocation double‑super‑magic 【Extreme+Strong】 【Lightning Storm】 and 【Ice Spike】 combined attack. The power grid near Yellowstone Park collapsed under a million‑volt surge, and the Yellowstone River froze into massive ice blades at minus one hundred degrees Celsius. The airflow from the dragon's wing sweep drove the ice blades across the military base, cleaving the Patriot missile site in half.

"My lord, if you watch the believers' tragedy, let your realm descend upon the earth today, as your divine might is bestowed upon the world." The dragon's terrifying power nearly stripped the soldiers of their fighting spirit; they knelt, pleading for God's salvation, yet were inevitably drawn into the elemental vortex.

Lieutenant Alisa Wu's EMP assault team huddled in a concrete tunnel. They witnessed the dragon's claws run rampant: when a B‑52 bomber formation approached, the dragon cast a Conjuration 【Level‑8 Monster Summoning】, calling forth twelve fire‑element elders from a scorching inferno. These thirty‑meter‑tall flame giants tore bomber armor with bare hands, and the explosions of aviation fuel became their jubilant fireworks.

"Starfire device fully charged!" The technician handed the suitcase‑sized equipment to Alisa. It was a wave‑emitter activation unit developed during the Cold War to counter Soviet mind‑control weapons, now retrofitted as a magnetic field disruptor. "If it can nullify its spell for three seconds..."

The assault team slipped into the battlefield through a drainage pipe. The dragon circled in the sky, preparing to unleash 【Solar Flare Burst】 on the remaining troops—if successful, the entire residual ground force would vanish in the sun's afterglow.

"May the Lord protect me." Alisa lifted the silver crucifix necklace at her throat, gave it a gentle kiss, then pressed the button on the suitcase.

It was their secret weapon, akin in effect to the Soviet Tesla coil.

In the distance, a towering temporary iron pyramid erupted in dazzling white light; a one‑billion‑watt electromagnetic pulse enveloped the dragon, briefly extinguishing the spell patterns on its scales.

Naimi Xisi's pupils contracted; it sensed the surrounding Magic Net descending into chaos.

"Berserk Magic Stance?" The dragon instinctively surged upward.

"Now!" Thirty concealed A‑10 attack aircraft burst from the canyon floor, their 30 mm GAU‑8 Avenger cannons raining depleted‑uranium shells. Stripped of protective spells, the dragon's scales finally tore, and blue‑golden blood cascaded like a waterfall onto the magma. Naimi Xisi let out its first roar of pain, but its enraged violet vertical pupils immediately locked onto Alisa.

The Divination Eight-ring Spell 【Sense Position】 instantly locked onto all assault team members; Juan Ce Long's potent prophetic talent forced the completion of a Spell Model amid the raging magic.

Next came an Evocation Three-ring Spell 【Lightning Bolt】—but under the influence of the Berserk Magic Stance, what appeared was not a single bolt but a spherical thunderstorm that engulfed the entire battlefield.

Alisa, along with her entire assault squad, turned to ash in the lightning; the last thing she saw before her consciousness faded was the dragon's wound torn open by the machine gun, countless granulation tissue regenerating at a visible speed.

Its formidable regenerative ability let Naimi Xisi return to normal in just a few seconds, and the power gem retained the taste of depleted‑uranium shells; Juan Ce Long's dragon armor will become indestructible against the next such strike.

"So… all our efforts were in vain." Those were her final thoughts before she turned to charcoal.

The intelligence room in the Pentagon fell silent before the grim battlefield; unlike the swift resolution last time, this time they were fully prepared, fielding multiples of the previous forces.

Yet against the dragon's ever‑changing terrifying tactics, they were still annihilated at once.

They even discovered that the dragon's dreadful Physical Quality rendered conventional firearms ineffective against it.

They must now rely on humanity's ultimate weapon—nuclear arms.

!

"The President authorizes the use of tactical nuclear weapons," the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff's voice rasped. "The 'Dwarf Staff' ground‑to‑ground missile is loaded with a W70 warhead, yield set to eight million tons."

General Crawford stared at the satellite image of the dragon approaching the crater and asked, "Can its spells deflect a nuclear missile?" He hadn't yet forgotten the scenes of missiles being diverted.

"So we launched twelve guided missiles and will detonate them early," the technician ran a trajectory simulation. "As long as one pierces the dragon's defense..."

"Begin."

Five B‑52 stratofortress bombers opened their bomb bays above the clouds. This was the final step of the 'Dwarf Staff' plan—twelve W53 thermonuclear warheads, each with a megaton yield, were set for airburst, their shockwave covering a twenty‑kilometer radius of airspace.

"God bless America," the bomber marked a cross on his chest. Below, the ground was being shredded by the dragon's wing shadows; the dragon had just used a Necromancy Spell 【Withering】 to turn a third of the black pine forest into ash, and now it circled above the Snake River reservoir, pursuing the remaining troops.

Twelve parachutes opened at sixty‑thousand feet. Naimi Xisi suddenly halted, its vertical pupils gazing at the horizon—the radiation pulse from a U‑238 warhead before fission was sensed by its scales, and it knew an extremely terrifying force was approaching.

"Countdown to detonation, five, four, three..."

The countdown was cut short by the dragon's roar. The dragon spread its wings into a sky‑blocking formation, endless silver light enveloping its body. When the nuclear fireball expanded precisely at 08:58, it had already appeared atop the Tidun Mountains, three hundred kilometers away.

"Boom!!!"

A deafening silence followed as twelve eight‑megaton nukes detonated instantly, a black mushroom cloud rising like the apocalypse after the blinding great sun.

(End of Chapter)