Chapter 1080 - 882: Battle_2

But just as Audric was about to pursue, a sand arrow wrapped in four-colored light shot accurately at the joint of his dragon wing from the side.

The Four-Color Divine Light exploded at the point of contact, leaving a small scorched mark on that area of dragon scales.

Audric let out a low roar of pain, his dragon tail instinctively lashing toward the direction from which the sand arrow came, but Duke had already turned into a breeze and drifted to the other side.

The ensuing battle fell into a rhythm that made Audric increasingly irritated.

The Demon God withstood the frontal assault, while Duke continuously used the Metallic Yellow Sand and Four-Color Divine Light to conduct long-range harassment on the flanks.

Every time Audric tried to focus his power to deal with the Demon God first, Duke’s sand arrow would precisely target his eyes, dragon wing joints, and neck.

Although these areas were covered with dragon scales, the scales were thinner, and the Four-Color Divine Light posed a substantial threat.

Each time Audric turned to chase Duke, the Demon God would seize the opportunity to strike, the war axe hacking fiercely at his back or side ribs, not breaching the scales but causing his internal organs to churn with the immense force.

This combination of strong frontal assault and flanking harassment left Audric with no place to leverage his strength, his Dragon Breath either physically endured by the Demon God or dodged by Duke’s elementalization, never truly locking onto any target.

Already bearing over a dozen minor scorch marks and several shallow cuts on his body, these small injuries only fueled the anger in Audric’s pale gold vertical pupils to burn ever brighter.

He suddenly raised his head high, ignoring the Demon God’s war axe and Duke’s sand arrow, unfurled his dragon wings and fiercely thrust upward, forcing the massive body of the Demon God back a step.

Then, in Dragon Language, he chanted a string of ancient and solemn syllables, each vibrating tangibly in the air.

The sky changed, lead-gray clouds torn apart by an invisible giant hand, revealing a piece of pitch-black void above.

In the center of that void, a vertical pupil composed of pure gold light slowly opened.

The size of the vertical pupil nearly covered the entire sky above the valley, the pupil as thin as a spindle, with thick golden light flowing in its depths like liquid gold.

At that moment, the entire valley was enveloped in a stifling pressure, the decree of a dragon upon its prey.

This was a tactic Duke had seen before, the Dragon’s Vertical Pupil, which had once instantly killed Adrian.

If not for the Eternal Barrier of the Destiny Bell back then, he himself would not have been able to withstand it.

Now, the Destiny Bell was unresponsive, leaving Duke unable to actively summon the Eternal Barrier.

However, this also meant that Duke had not reached the point where he needed to use the Eternal Barrier, his own strength sufficient to handle the present trouble.

The giant golden vertical pupil hung between the parted clouds, the liquid gold glow in its depths growing ever denser, as though the weight of the entire sky was converging into that eye.

The air began to tremble under the gaze of the vertical pupil, the rocky surfaces on both sides of the valley cracked with fine fissures, stones losing their gravitational restraints, floating from the ground and trembling violently in mid-air.

The Dragon’s Vertical Pupil had not truly activated yet; even the oppressive force leaking during the energy gathering phase was already causing the valley’s terrain to crumble.

Duke stood at the center of this chaos, his expression calm, lifting a fingertip lightly with his right hand.

Under his command, the dark gold sand sea surged, grains of sand pouring out from the space around him like living creatures, stacking wave upon wave.

From the ground to overhead, from his front to back, countless streams of sand interwove simultaneously, like warp and weft threads on a loom, swiftly weaving into a round cocoon, with Duke wrapped at its core.

The moment the sand weaving completed, it contracted sharply, the gaps between each grain compressed to near inexistence, the surface of the sand cocoon smooth as a mirror.

Subsequently, Four-Color Divine Light flowed from Duke’s palm, permeating outward along each grain of sand inside the cocoon.

The rules light in dark red, earth yellow, pale blue, azure blue flowed and interwove between the sand grains, turning the originally metallic-colored dark gold giant cocoon into a four-colored light sphere suspended mid-air.

At this moment, the Dragon’s Vertical Pupil finished amassing energy, a thick golden beam of light vertically descended from the center of the sky, its diameter almost matching the width of the valley, the moment it fell ionizing all air along its path, dragging a blinding white vacuum passageway.

The light beam crashed onto the top of the sand cocoon, the impact radiating intense light that dyed the entire valley a stark white.

The golden light beam poured continuously, the ground unable to withstand the pressure, collapsing from the center of the sand cocoon outward, forming an expanding deep pit.

The rocks at the pit bottom melted and vaporized under the high temperature and impact, dark red magma bubbling from the fissures in the pit walls.

The entire valley turned into a furnace.

The surface of the sand cocoon trembled violently from the light beam’s bombardment, the Four-Color Divine Light flowing madly amid the shockwaves, forming a relentlessly shifting liquid light film on the sand cocoon’s surface, disintegrating the remaining energy one by one.

Inside the sand cocoon, Duke remained utterly still, not even a hem of his clothes lifted by the force.

Audric’s vertical pupil, after the light beam continued for a considerable duration, finally began to retract.

The golden beam receding from the bottom up, like the sea retreating from the beach during low tide.

The valley floor trembled slightly, the gurgling of magma at the bottom of the pit distinctly audible in the silence.

Once the light and dust finally dispersed completely, the dark gold sand cocoon remained suspended in place, its surface intact, the Four-Color Divine Light steadily flowing between the grains.

Audric’s vertical pupil, for the first time, reflected an expression of disbelief.

The Dragon’s Vertical Pupil was one of his trump cards, its power something he knew better than anyone.

In his long combat history, those who could withstand this move head-on either relied on a powerful one-time protective Witchcraft Artifact or had prepared extremely targeted countermeasures in advance.

But Duke didn’t use those things; instead, he took it head-on with that sand and that strange light.

Audric originally thought Duke would use that mysterious spell from before for defense, but unexpectedly, this time Duke didn’t use that spell.

In reality, it wasn’t that Duke didn’t want to use it, rather the Destiny Bell was not subject to his will, and the Eternal Barrier couldn’t be activated now.

However, this also indirectly indicated that Audric’s move no longer held a threat to Duke, not requiring the use of the Eternal Barrier.

Duke further validated the power of the Four-Color Divine Light, having only done ordinary tests before, with combat intensity not that high.

Now using Audric’s Dragon’s Vertical Pupil for testing, Duke had a clearer grasp of the strength of the Four-Color Divine Light.

Audric probably never expected that the killer move he prided himself on was merely a spell strength test for Duke.

What exactly was that interwoven four-colored light, Audric couldn’t discern, only vaguely sensing various mixed rules aura within.

But after all, he was the genius of the Bloodgold Clan’s generation, the brief shock did not plunge him into panic.

Since he couldn’t crush with absolute power, he would use skill and experience to tear apart his opponent.

He retracted his dragon wings, his massive dragon form slowly descending onto the cliff on one side of the valley, uttering a series of low, ancient syllables in Dragon Language.

With the chanting of Dragon Language, golden flowers began to manifest in the air.

Each of these flowers was the size of an adult’s palm, with petals of translucent pale gold, and a miniaturized Dragon’s Vertical Pupil at the center of the flower, the pupil spindle-shaped, sweeping over every corner of the battlefield as the flower slowly rotated.

Initially, only a few dozen scattered around Audric’s body.

But quickly became hundreds, thousands, dispersing like dandelion seeds blown by a spring breeze in all directions.

Some hovered high above Duke’s head, others floated at the edge of the Demon God’s projected axe blade, some stuck to the rock walls on either side of the valley, and some even drifted to the flattened hills far behind Duke, a result of previous battle shockwaves.

The entire valley, from the rubble at the bottom to the pine branches at the summit, from the foremost Demon God to the distant horizon, was entirely enveloped in an invisible sensory network composed of these golden flowers.