The young apprentice sitting on the stone wall next to Philip was still squinting hard at the grand parade, trying his best to prove Philip wrong.
"You don’t know what you’re talking about man!" the apprentice argued, waving his arms in the air.
"Sir Valentino is a graduate of the Royal Magic Academy! His staff isn’t running on three percent of what you called battery life! That sky diamond on top is powered by pure refined sea-crystal!"
"Kid, I spent three hours this morning grinding up broken junk in a damp cellar," Philip said calmly, taking a slow bite off his second stolen meat skewer.
"I know what a dying mana core looks like. See how Sir Valentino keeps switching the staff from his right hand to his left hand every thirty seconds? He’s doing that because the handle is overheating and burning his fingers through his expensive leather gloves." He sighed and continued to eat.
The apprentice looked closer, his eyes widening. "Wait... he really is switching hands!"
"Of course he is," Philip snickered under his wooden clown mask. "Uuggh. He’s trying to look heroic for the noble ladies in the balcony while his palm is literally cooking like a strip of bacon. Modern magic is ninety percent fashion and ten percent functional magic."
Before the apprentice could yell back another defense for his favorite knight, the cheerful festival music abruptly died down.
It didn’t fade out slowly. It was as if someone had brutally chopped the vocal cords of every musician in the plaza at the exact same moment.
The bright blue afternoon sky turned pitch black in less than three seconds.
A shadow so massive that it blocked out the entire sun descended over the kingdom, throwing millions of gold banners and stone towers into absolute, freezing darkness.
The temperature in the air plummeted so fast that Philip could see his own breath turn into thick white frost right in front of his clown mask.
"Hey!" a drunk guy down in the street yelled, holding up an empty wooden beer mug. "Who turned out the lights?! I can’t find my mug!"
"Is it a solar eclipse?" a woman gasped from a nearby balcony. "The calendar didn’t say anything about a solar eclipse today!"
"My roasted pork is getting cold!" someone else complained.
"Everybody shut up!" Philip shouted, standing straight up on top of his wooden barrel. "Look up at the sky you morons!"
ROAAAAAAAAAAAR!
The sound that followed didn’t feel like a normal animal sound. It was a massive sonic shockwave that slammed into the ground like a falling mountain.
The sheer air pressure shattered every single glass window across four entire city districts at once, sending a cascading shower of sharp glass raining down on the crowded streets below.
The entire plaza went dead quiet for a fraction of a second, followed immediately by absolute, chaotic hysteria.
Descending through the freezing black clouds was a creature straight out of a apocalyptic nightmare.
It was an S rank metallic dragon, a beast so impossibly gigantic that its wings stretched completely across the city skyline from east to west.
Its hide was covered in thick, dark bluish scales that shimmered like polished enchanted steel under the flickering torchlights.
"DRAGON!" a guard screamed from the top of the high watchtower, his voice cracking so hard it sounded like a strangled goose. "IT’S AN S RANK BLUEFIRE DRAGON! RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!"
Before the guard could even ring the alarm bell, the massive dragon opened its cavernous, razor sharp jaws.
A roaring ocean of deep blue plasma fire erupted straight from its throat, raining down upon the kingdom like a waterfall of liquid death.
WHOOOOOOSH!
The entire central market street instantly exploded into a blinding hellscape of blue fire.
Wooden shop fronts melted into black tar in seconds, granite cobblestones cracked open from the sheer thermal shock, and hundreds of screaming citizens began running in pure blind terror, knocking each other over in a desperate bid to reach the narrow side alleys.
"Fuck! My meat skewer!" Philip yelled, diving headfirst off his barrel as a flying wave of blue fire blasted directly over his head. "You stupid overgrown lizard! That was five coppers worth of roasted pork! I didn’t even get to finish the crust!"
Chaos was breaking out in every direction.
The air became thick with suffocating black smoke and the sound of crying children who had been separated from their parents in the stampede.
Philip rolled across the hot cobblestones, coming to a stop behind a half collapsed stone archway.
He wiped soot off his wooden clown mask and cussed loudly under his breath. He was a convict, a thief, and a degenerate who snorted crushed magic items in dark basements, but watching helpless people get trampled was something he couldn’t just ignore.
He hesitated for moment. In his previous life, he saved a little girl from the drunk men however he was accused for molesting the child by the parents who obviously wants some money from him.
"This isnt my previous life." Phillip whispered to himself and cleared his thoughts.
"Help! Someone help me!" a panicked voice shrieked from under a burning wooden bakery sign.
Philip sprinted over through the smoke.
Trapped beneath the heavy oak beam were two tiny crying kids, holding onto each other for dear life while a pile of flaming hay sat less than three feet away from them.
"Hold on kid!" Philip shouted, grabbing the heavy burning beam with both hands.
Thanks to the leftover earth and fire powder still lingering in his bloodstream from earlier today, Philip’s muscles swelled up with raw force.
He lifted the giant oak log right off the ground with one massive heave and tossed it into the gutter like a light stick.
"Hey! Are you okay?!" Philip asked through his wooden mask, grabbing both kids by their dirty tunic collars.
Before the kids could answer, a fat noble wearing a silk cape came sprinting out of a burning tavern, pushing small children out of his way with his elbow.