Chapter 449: Has Light Come So Soon?

What do you do when your companions flee ahead and leave you stranded in a strange place?

Monica frantically hiked up her skirt and sprinted toward the city's edge.

Equivalence… Ang remembered the principle of equivalent exchange and followed after her.

By the time Monica reached the city's outskirts, the Mage Ladder had already risen hundreds of meters into the air, and several dark shapes circled it, spewing black deathly miasma.

Nagelis spoke inside Ang's soul: "Death dragons!"

The difference between death dragons and bone dragons is like that between zombies and skeletons—but why are death dragons so rarely seen?

Because flight requires agility, and death dragons, being slow-moving, move clumsily in the air and struggle to adapt to the ever-changing air currents at high altitudes.

Second, death dragons are far too heavy: a hundred-jin corpse becomes a skeleton weighing at most thirty or forty jin, but as a zombie, it retains sixty or seventy jin—seventy percent of its living weight—making flight even harder.

Conversely, if a death dragon can fly, its soul is surely one or two times stronger than that of a bone dragon of the same size.

The six death dragons in the sky were each sixteen to seventeen meters long, their leathery wings tattered, yet their movements were remarkably agile; their motion clearly disturbed elemental fluctuations, indicating active magic use.

This is also where death dragons surpass bone dragons: because their souls are stronger, they usually possess intelligence, can learn magic, and can no longer be called mere death dragons—they are dragon-shaped liches.

What they spew is not dragonfire, but deathly miasma blasts—black waves of miasma slammed against the Mage Ladder's magical barrier, shaking it violently.

Unfortunately, the firing rate of these deathly miasma blasts was far too low; each death dragon could fire only one every few minutes, utterly incapable of breaking the shield—but they still threatened every passing airship and sky-cart, and some late-returning vehicles were violently knocked down by the death dragons' ferocious charges.

"They're not mounts—no riders on their backs," Anthony and the others arrived, observing the aerial battle as they discussed.

Nagelis asked: "So they're lich-dragons, but too few to take the Mage Ladder—have you spotted any other undead?"

Du Luo replied: "No. No traces of undead at any key positions."

The moment Du Luo spotted the lich-dragons, he checked all critical locations—and found no signs of large-scale undead activity.

Without large numbers of undead, capturing a Mage Ladder is no easy feat.

BOOM! BOOM! Two thunderous explosions—one lich-dragon lunged at an airship; realizing escape was impossible, the airship detonated its two Soul-Nullifying Bombs, unleashing a sudden invisible soul-shockwave.

The lich-dragon erupted with intense soul energy, enduring the first Soul-Nullifying Bomb's shockwave—but it could not withstand the second; its body went rigid, a stream of You blue soul-flame oozing from its mouth before dissipating into the air.

The out-of-control lich-dragon crashed into the airship, flipping it over, then spiraled down from hundreds of meters above.

Du Luo and Anthony felt their bodies tighten with tension.

A lich-dragon over ten meters long—its soul was undoubtedly dozens of times stronger than a regular zombie's, like a Great Bone: its soul-heart was several times stronger than a gold skeleton's of the same rank, a benefit of its size.

Yet now, this soul dozens of times stronger was shattered by two Soul-Nullifying Bombs, killed outright by an ordinary airship.

This wasn't a bone dragon—it was an intelligent lich-dragon. Losing one was a devastating blow to the undead empire, whose intelligent individuals were already scarce.

It also terrified the remaining lich-dragons; the other five no longer closed in to attack, only firing deathly miasma from afar or flapping their wings to create chaotic updrafts and flip sky-carts and airships.

At the very instant the lich-dragon and airship destroyed each other, a sky-cart shot out from the Mage Ladder—while all other vehicles fled back, this one raced outward, plunging almost vertically toward the ground.

This anomaly drew the lich-dragons' attention; one circled down and chased the sky-cart from afar.

Anthony closed his eyes, then snapped them open—two beams of light blazed in his eyes, glowing like fireflies in the dark: "That's the priestess named Unika."

"She must be here to pick up Monica—Monica's her mother—but diving down like this is suicide, isn't it?" Nagelis said, then shifted topic: "Anthony, have you grown stronger again? Your Eye of the Divine is so much more restrained now."

Previously, when Anthony activated the Eye of the Divine, his eyes blazed like magic lamps; now they glowed faintly—far harder to sustain, energetically speaking.

Anthony said: "Before, it was the Eye of the Divine. Now, it's the Half-Divine Eye."

"Ah, no wonder," Nagelis understood. Though going from "Divine" to "Half-Divine" sounds like a downgrade, the Eye of the Divine borrowed divine power—the Half-Divine Eye is Anthony's own power.

One's own power is always easier to control than borrowed power.

Unika dove toward the ground; as her altitude dropped, Monica below clearly saw her and screamed: "No! Unika, go back! It's dangerous!"

Anthony and Du Luo covered their faces: "It's too late now…"

Anthony sighed: "It's brave, but foolish. Rushing out like this only ensures death—and might drag others down with you."

Du Luo sighed too: "Yes. She gave us the teleportation array coordinates—meaning even if Monica couldn't reach the Mage Ladder, she could still return via teleportation. But now, by rushing out, she draws attention to Monica on the ground—if the lich-dragons spot Monica, both of them will die."

Unika, descending in her sky-cart, seemed to realize this too; though she'd already spotted Monica below, she turned the cart sideways and flew horizontally away, trying to lure the lich-dragon off.

How could Monica watch her own daughter be hunted? She flung back her cloak—and holy light blazed across her body.

The lich-dragon, about to be lured away by the sky-cart, instantly turned toward the holy radiance, snarling as it dove down—what was a common sky-cart compared to the hated servants of Light?

Monica exhaled, smiling with relief. She knew she was doomed—she could never defeat a ten-meter lich-dragon on open ground—but if Unika escaped safely, her sacrifice would mean something.

But her smile froze seconds later—Unika's sky-cart had turned around and was flying back.

Anthony sighed helplessly: "They're both doomed now, my lord—what do we…?"

Anthony was about to ask what to do when he turned—and Ang and the others were gone.

Monica realized too: her daughter would never abandon her to flee. She whispered helplessly: "Then we die together… May Light protect us…"

The moment Monica's words faded, a figure radiating holy light appeared before her.

Has Light come so soon?

PS: Too late