Chapter 349

“Huh, why do dragons have so many weaknesses? What about gods too? It almost seems like dragon affinity and divinity are debuffs instead of buffs.”

Ancient secrets lingered at his ears, but Li En felt boundless malice.

Hunting arrows, dragon-slaying ballistae, dragon-killing swords, dragon-poison wine—dozens of malicious inventions targeting dragons, and these were merely the creations of past intelligent life, not to mention countless specialized tactics and designs.

The same went for gods: before the God of Drama and Joy, deities and divine beings appeared riddled with flaws, easily yielding a host of targeted countermeasures.

Things like symbolic substances targeting their divinity, evil artifacts from underworld overlords sworn as enemies of the gods, blasphemous holy waters brewed from profaned priestly blood—

The sheer number of bottomless, ruthless techniques opened Li En’s eyes wide.

“Dragons are inherently powerful; gods are inherently noble.”

“Precisely because they are hard to confront head-on, they become worth targeting.”

“A desperate, compromising choice—if you had to decide, would you rather be the powerful one who is targeted, or the weak one who fights for one-in-ten odds to win?”

He explained it all clearly in just three sentences.

Dragons are born powerful; their raw stats alone are absurd, not to mention their potent active and passive innate talents.

Add to that the privilege of “Commanding the Elements (Dragon Tongue),” a trait that unites offense and defense, making them perfect hexagonal warriors.

Gods are born noble—that refers to their “divine authority.” They may lack stats, their panels might even be blank, but each one is a mechanism monster.

Within their own domain, if you lack the “authority” to counter them, meeting the right conditions means instant death.

To ordinary life, both are ancient cheaters, overwhelmingly powerful without reason—hence their right to call mortals “weaklings” at every turn.

But precisely because of this innate inequality, other lifeforms, over long ages and history, devised countless methods to target them—or rather, desperate ways for the weak to overcome the strong.

Fisterion, rare as it was, fulfilled his duty as a spirit guide, teaching Li En numerous combat techniques against dragons and gods. But Li En felt uneasy—this fellow kept teaching him dragon-slaying arts; was he foretelling something again?

“No, as the Dragon of a Thousand Faces, you are also a Dragon-Eater, a sworn enemy of all dragonkind. Best to quietly pretend you’re an ordinary red dragon.”

Li En fell silent. He’d known that talent for consuming “dragon souls” was problematic.

“On the bright side, dragons below the Ancient tier don’t even know you exist. Most gods lack awareness of you, and with the ‘Unnameable Curse’ in place, as long as you’re not stupid enough to shout ‘I am the Dragon of a Thousand Faces,’ you won’t be hunted by the entire world. But if you wish to evolve, dragons will always be the best nourishment. You’ll eventually have to fight dragons to the death, becoming a public enemy of your own kind—just like the Great Red Dragon.”

The brief interlude passed swiftly; Li En stored away a wealth of knowledge he likely wouldn’t use for a long time.

Though Fisterion casually named over twenty types of dragon-slaying weapons, cost and material constraints meant Li En couldn’t acquire any of them anytime soon.

What truly mattered were the combat experiences and strategies—Li En dared not ask how many dragons Fisterion had slain, or how he knew so much about rare gemstone dragons.

By the way, most dragon-slaying armaments are made from dragon-affinity materials, and their designs stem from dragon-specific abilities, organs, and supernatural weapons—dragons are essentially undefeated in civil war, growing stronger the more they slaughter their own kind.

“Uh, Li En, really going to hunt dragons? Isn’t that a bit premature?”

After leaving, Li En first visited an alchemy shop and ordered a stack of special potion formulas.

But the shopkeeper, Victornia, grew uneasy: with the current strength of the Weavers’ Knight Order and the classmates’ group, taking on a single adult sapphire dragon still seemed too early.

"Even if you win, many people will die." She was behaving less and less like a dark elf.