Bruno suddenly grabbed the black enchanted undergarment with both hands.
Then he tore it apart.
Rip!
Shreds of fabric scattered through the storm.
Evelyn’s mouth twitched.
“You actually took it off...”
Then her expression changed completely.
Cracks appeared across Bruno’s body.
One.
Then another.
Then a third.
More and more followed.
They spread over his chest, arms, face, and the rest of his body like fractures across a piece of pottery about to shatter.
And from every crack...
Blinding golden light leaked out.
The surrounding magical energy began to churn violently.
Even the rain evaporated before it could touch Bruno’s body, driven away by the rapidly rising heat.
White steam billowed around him.
Evelyn’s pupils contracted.
The danger instinct she had developed from brushing against death countless times in her previous life screamed inside her head.
Run.
Run now.
“Self-destruction?!”
Evelyn didn’t hesitate.
She turned and ran.
No wonder that lunatic had thrown away his weapon.
He had never intended to keep fighting.
From the beginning...
He hadn’t intended to survive.
“HAHAHAHA!”
Bruno burst into wild laughter.
His body began swelling even further.
The sharply defined muscles covering him gradually lost their shape as some force inside his body pushed outward from every direction.
“Run!”
“Run, you black dragon whelps!”
“Run!”
“HAHAHAHA!”
“You’re not getting away!”
Bruno raised his head high and let the rain fall across his twisted face.
“My god!”
“Your servant is returning to you!”
“Receive my soul!”
Evelyn had no time to listen to his dying speech.
She had already reached Darrien.
The idiot had been laughing only moments ago.
Now he was staring blankly, clearly having no idea what was happening.
“Run!”
Evelyn grabbed one of his front claws.
“Huh?”
“RUN!”
“Why?”
The question had barely left Darrien’s mouth when a deep, terrifying hum came from behind them.
Bruno’s body suddenly contracted.
The grotesquely swollen figure collapsed inward in an instant.
All the golden light concentrated into a single point.
For one brief moment...
The world seemed to go silent.
Then...
BOOM!
The explosion erupted.
Blinding golden light illuminated the entire night sky.
The intense heat instantly vaporized every drop of rain nearby.
Trees.
Mud.
Stone.
Everything close to Bruno was torn apart in the first instant.
A visible shockwave erupted outward from the dwarf’s position.
Trees snapped apart in entire rows.
Mud and water were hurled into the sky.
Broken branches and shattered stones shot outward like arrows.
“Damn it!”
Evelyn finally understood why Bruno had been so confident.
This wasn’t an ordinary self-destruction attack.
He had clearly combined it with some divine spell or special ability.
At their current level of physical strength, taking that blast head-on...
Even if they survived, they would lose more than a few scales.
“Darrien!”
“RUN!”
Evelyn dragged him forward and sprinted.
Her legs drove against the ground as hard as they could.
At the same time, she instinctively spread her wings.
If they could get airborne, a dragon’s speed would take them out of the blast radius quickly.
But...
Her wings beat once.
Nothing happened.
No magical energy answered.
Evelyn’s heart sank.
The anti-flight field.
That damned scroll was still active.
“Of all the times...!”
She clenched her teeth and dropped back onto all fours.
Then she ran.
Her massive body tore through the forest.
Crash!
A small tree in her path snapped apart as Evelyn barreled straight through it.
Mud exploded to either side.
Darrien, still being dragged behind her, finally understood what was happening.
He looked back.
The golden shockwave was rapidly closing in.
His face changed.
“He’s insane!”
“You’re only realizing that now?!”
“I thought he just wanted to fight to the death!”
“This is fighting to the death!”
Evelyn released him.
“Run on your own!”
The instant Darrien hit the ground, he needed no second warning.
All four legs started pumping.
His speed was almost as fast as Evelyn’s.
The two young black dragons raced through the forest one after the other.
But this wasn’t open ground.
Thick trees.
Vines.
Mud pits.
Boulders.
The complicated terrain constantly slowed them down.
The shockwave behind them had no such problem.
Rumble!
It grew closer.
Whole sections of forest were ripped apart.
The blinding golden light already illuminated the scales along Evelyn’s back.
She could even feel heat licking at her tail.
They weren’t going to make it.
Evelyn suddenly looked back.
The shockwave was right there.
“Darrien!”
She instinctively moved toward him.
At the very least, her larger body could take some of the impact for her idiot brother.
Then...
“ROAAAR!”
A deafening dragon roar exploded through the sky.
Evelyn felt her mind buzz.
A familiar and terrifying Draconic Presence crashed down from above.
For one instant...
The entire forest seemed to go silent.
Countless magical beasts hiding from the storm immediately flattened themselves against the ground.
They no longer even had the courage to flee.
At the same time, an invisible force suddenly enveloped Evelyn and Darrien.
A second later...
BOOM!
The golden shockwave slammed into the unseen barrier.
The impact shook the earth.
Visible ripples spread across the surface of the invisible protection.
Wind howled over Evelyn’s body.
But the shockwave could advance no farther.
Evelyn froze.
Darrien stopped too.
Both young dragons looked up.
Through the rain...
A colossal black figure slowly descended from the sky.
That bloodline presence was far too familiar.
Darrien’s legs gave out.
He collapsed straight into the mud.
“We’re...”
“We’re saved...”
He panted heavily.
He didn’t even want to move a single claw.
Evelyn also let out a long breath.
The tension that had gripped her body finally eased.
Then she remembered something much worse.
Why were she and Darrien out here in the first place?
Had their mother discovered that they had secretly left the territory?
How much of the fight had she seen?
Evelyn slowly went stiff.
She raised her head.
The adult black dragon hovering above them was very clearly radiating danger.
Evelyn forced the most awkward smile of her life.
“Hey, Mom. Nice evening...”
Above them floated a true behemoth.
The anti-flight magic covering the area might as well not have existed for her.
Her enormous black wings gave a single casual beat.
The result was like a hurricane tearing through the forest.
Even the rain stopped falling.
Not because Selvira’s massive body blocked it.
The wind from her wings had simply blown the storm clouds apart.
For the first time, the adult black dragon who spent almost all her time sleeping revealed her true power in front of Evelyn.
Draconic Presence spread across the area like something almost physical.
Any ordinary creature caught beneath it would already have been crushed helplessly against the ground.
Even the lingering force of Bruno’s explosion was suppressed and rapidly dispersed.
For Selvira, dealing with an explosion of that level was probably no harder than blowing away a little dust.
So this is the power that comes with age...
Evelyn swallowed as she met her mother’s golden eyes.
She saw irritation there.
Selvira did not enjoy being woken up.
“Heh...”
Darrien finally pushed himself out of the mud.
Then he looked up.
The instant he saw their mother’s expression, he immediately pretended he hadn’t noticed anything.
He awkwardly turned his head and stared at a rock on the ground.
“Wow... The moon sure is round tonight...”
There was no moon.
The three dragons remained in awkward silence for several seconds.
Then Selvira snorted two streams of white vapor from her nostrils.
She gave her troublesome hatchlings one long glare.
After that, she beat her wings and flew away in another direction.
“Haa...”
Evelyn quietly exhaled.
Her eyes followed Selvira as the enormous dragon disappeared into the distance.
That direction...
Wasn’t toward the dragon lair.