Chapter 1409 - Aishalstromoz vs Jake (3)

The slumbering Dragonsbane within the True Dragon’s body was spread out and weak after the antidote, but much of it still remained. For now, Jake decided to keep it suppressed, though, at least until he could accumulate enough for it to have a proper effect. If he awakened it immediately, he was afraid she would crush it with sheer overwhelming energy, so better to wait a little.

Aisha clearly realized by now that her attempt to blind his senses hadn’t worked, and honestly, he thought she’d done research on him. If she had, she would have known such attacks were ineffective... then again, she likely didn’t know he got enough information purely from this Bloodline to not care.

One good thing about Willpower attacks was that they tended to just do their job as long as the person could be affected and the caster was powerful enough. Both of those criteria were fulfilled in this case, and She’d successfully sealed several of Jake’s senses, which would usually be utterly devastating for anyone, especially an archer. Unfortunately for her, he was just an outlier with a bullshit Bloodline, so even if she sealed every single sense of his, he would be fine relying solely on his sphere, intuition, and danger sense.

Switching up her attack pattern, Aisha spread out her wings as magical runes glowed on both of them, something Jake barely saw as his eyesight returned. The runes were complex, and he had no time to gain any insight before suddenly he experienced an extreme sense of vertigo.

Her wings looked like two giant eyes staring at him, disorienting him. He tried to dodge, but to his own surprise, his movements were impaired, and rather than dodge directly backward, he moved slightly to the side, resulting in a tail striking him in the stomach and sending him flying into a nearby mountain.

The environment's durability proved quite a detriment: the ground hurt a lot as the mountain barely took any damage, unable to absorb much of the impact. Gritting his teeth, Jake forced himself out of the shallow crater that had formed around him, just in time to dodge as a golden beam swept across where he’d just been, leaving a glowing scar across the mountainside.

In the distance, two massive glowing eyes that looked to be from an insect continued to fill the sky, forcing Jake to not look directly at the dragon as he started shooting arrows in retaliation. They were intercepted by magic as golden bolts and arrows clashed in the air, his arrows coming out on top as several continued toward the dragon, a few even making it through her defenses to strike her body.

His arrows penetrated her outer scales, with arrowheads sinking into flesh, allowing them to unleash their toxic payload of Dragonsbane into her body. Jake had closed his eyes at this point to avoid the odd soul attack that honestly reminded him a bit of looking at Oras, though to a far lesser degree.

Aisha unleashed plenty of magical attacks toward Jake, who used his original plan of utilizing the mountains to his advantage. While the durability of the stone sucked when getting smacked into a mountain, it was incredibly beneficial when using them to avoid attacks as Jake teleported around the mountain range while shooting arrows.

At first, Aisha didn’t give chase but simply continued attacking, seemingly fine with having a long-range battle, but it quickly became clear this wouldn’t be in her favor. The further they got away from one another, the more the difference in their abilities to dodge and the potency of their ranged attacks started to show. Jake’s arrows were far less affected by the environment, and rather than slow down while flying over greater distances, they actually tended to speed up.

Meanwhile, Aisha’s spells lost power the further they had to travel. What’s more, while both fired homing attacks, it was far harder for Aisha to land a hit. Jake’s ability to dodge was unmatched, and his small form and ability to use the environment for defense made him a borderline impossible target. Meanwhile, Aisha herself was a large dragon, and while she had shrunk her form down to only be around twenty meters in length -  counting the tail – she was still far larger than Jake in every aspect.

Ultimately, she was left with very few choices. She could stay where she was, which clearly didn’t favor her, try to retreat or force the battlefield elsewhere, something that would only make her an easy target for Jake to bombard, and retreating clearly wasn’t an option. In the end, she made the only real choice she had. Aisha stopped channeling the odd eyes and instead followed him into the mountain range, flying after him, likely to either force him into a melee battle or at least a ranged battle at closer proximity than before.

Jake continued trying to maintain distance while flying and teleporting through the vast mountain range, diving into valleys and up slopes to evade attacks while constantly shooting arrows. The entire terrain was filled with explosions and lights, as despite the durability of the stone, several mountains had pieces of them sent flying when particularly powerful spells missed or one of Jake’s arrows struck them.

Aisha also tried to use the mountains as cover, but the first time she did, she was blasted by an Arcane Powershot that pierced straight through a mountaintop. Between Penetrating Arrow and Unblemished Arrows, environmental mana and objects could do little to stop Jake’s attacks, only further hammering home how advantageous the environment was for him.

Soon, he felt that the accumulated Dragonsbane would be adequate to awaken it all at once. He just needed a few more arrows to land, and the fight would become even more advantageous than it already was. Sadly, Aisha clearly had enough, as after chasing him for a few minutes while failing to find any success, the dragon showed she had a fourth method to deal with this kind of situation.

He felt an utterly insane activation of mana as the True Dragon glowed with power while she spoke.

“Claws of Giants Flatten the Land.”

In a mind-boggling display of power, more than a thousand phantasmal golden dragon claws appeared throughout the entire mountain range, atop the mountains, and in concert, they all pressed down. The large mountains seemed to almost work with the claws as they deflated and were pressed into the ground, and in mere seconds, what had once been a vast mountain range had turned into flat land.

The claws faded away once their job was done, and Jake was left there floating in the air, all his cover gone. When he had planned to use the mountain range, he hadn’t imagined a world where Aisha would simply remove the entire mountain range from existence. While it was true that manipulating environmental mana took far less energy than regularly attacking, it still must have taken a lot out of her to do what she did.

Yet, despite Jake thinking this, Aisha immediately took advantage and charged towards him, magic circles filling the sky around her as beams of light and bolts of golden lightning were flung his way.

He used his wings to block the light beams while shooting a few arrows in retaliation, but she soon reached him, clearly using some kind of movement skill as she borderline teleported over.

She used her superior physique to attack. She swiped at him several times with her claws, and Jake dodged every time while switching to his katars in an attempt to land counterattacks, but right as he thought he saw an opening, her voice echoed.

“Claw That Swipes.”

From out of nowhere, the detached limb of a dragon appeared, a golden claw indeed swiping for his body. Jake reacted quickly, but the swipe was far faster than her usual attacks, forcing him to push himself further as he finally fully activated Pride of the Malefic Viper to try to deny her magic.

Their Willpower clashed, and to Jake’s - albeit expected - dismay, he found himself sorely on the losing end, but fortunately, he still managed to slow down the swipe just enough for him to turn and raise his katars to block.

Launching backward, Jake was about to take out his bow as words echoed again.

“Maw That Bites.”

Behind him, a gigantic head of a dragon appeared, more than a thousand meters in height, its mouth already wide open, with Jake already halfway into it before the entire golden projection had even fully manifested. He simply had no way of dodging as the dragon closed its maw around him.

Within the mouth, Jake felt an intense pressure upon him from all sides along with a stinging pain. It was as if more than a hundred teeth were trying to bite into his body at the same time, and despite fueling power into Pride, he saw his skin tear on his arms as if bitten into. Focusing on defense, he pushed Pride even further, finally fully denying the effect upon him. For a second or two, anyway.

The second Aisha realized her attack had stopped affecting him, she made the entire dragon head explode with Jake trapped within. The blast of golden energy washed over him, but the bigger problem was the massive teeth of the head that also flew towards him, all feeling fully corporeal to his sphere.

Narrowly dodging the teeth, Jake still had to endure the brunt of the golden explosion, stressing his scales and dealing some damage. What’s more, the explosion clearly wasn’t the main attack, but just a distraction as Aisha was charging quite a big spell.

With Pulse, Jake saw that far up in the sky, invisible to sight, Aisha had been conjuring a magic circle ever since right after she’d crushed the mountains. He couldn’t tell what it was meant to do, but he would soon get his answer.

Before the explosion had time to fully peter out, the magic circle in the sky had finished manifesting as what looked like a veil fell down upon the world. It draped over the entire area, making it look as if they were beneath an invisible table with a tablecloth going all the way to the ground on top of it.

Jake was unsure what the purpose of this was as Aisha released a beam of golden light towards him. Dodging it rather easily, he took out his bow to fight back as several more beams were shot his way in quick succession, alongside bolts of golden lightning and pure rays of energy.

All of them were easily evaded as Jake retaliated with arrows of his own, forcing Aisha to defend. The massive golden veil surrounding them still hadn’t made its purpose known, and since he didn’t feel it posed an immediate danger, he chose to temporarily ignore it and focus on doing damage.

It was only after a few blows were exchanged that he realized the purpose of the veil. All the missed attacks naturally struck the veil behind Jake, but rather than explode or damage it, they were fully absorbed like droplets hitting the calm surface of a lake.

Meanwhile, Jake’s arrows surprisingly flew straight through the veil, and even when he exploded one in the middle of it, nothing really seemed to happen besides the veil shuddering temporarily. Destroying it did seem possible, but would it be worth the effort? Only time would tell.

For now, their exchange of blows continued as Jake landed several more arrows while narrowly dodging the spells thrown his way. He did have to take a few minor hits here and there to avoid more dangerous attacks, but overall, this kind of situation favored him.

At this point, the Dragonsbane had accumulated enough toxins to be activated, yet Jake held back from doing so until a more opportune time. He wanted to fully awaken it right when Aisha was about to cast some large spell to instantly deal a significant amount of damage, something that did seem to be necessary.

Aisha and the Chosen of the Heartsoul Daolord had rather similar Paths. Both of them were magic-focused with Willpower as their highest stats, but in the physical department, there was simply no comparison.

The Chosen of the Heartsoul Daolord was extremely feeble and had little ability to resist Jake’s attacks as long as he pierced her magical defenses, while Aisha purposefully didn’t even bother to block some attacks but simply took them, as she knew he would barely be able to penetrate her scales. Even when he did, the damage dealt was negligible from her perspective.

Her other physical stats were also extremely high based on how fast she could fly and the power of her blows. In sheer physicality, without even using any magic, Aisha could match most top-tier geniuses of B-grade, showing just how powerful True Dragons inherently were.

She had a far more balanced Path than the Chosen of the Heartsoul Daolord, but that also meant that in the pure Words of Power and Willpower department, the Chosen had been stronger. He doubted Aisha had the ability to pull off those nasty combos, and she didn’t try to affect Jake directly with her Words of Power much either.

Overall, she was definitely a tougher opponent, but between Jake landing his opening arrow, leading to a large wound still festering in her chest, he was definitely confident as arrows and spells continued being flung back and forth while fighting under the golden veil she’d summoned. There were certain things he was looking out for; first and foremost being the most obvious one:

Dragon’s Breath.

Jake had no idea what the Dragon’s Breath of a golden dragon would look like, but he had a good feeling that no matter what, it wasn’t something he wanted to get hit by. She was obviously saving it, though, making him believe it wasn’t the kind of attack she could unleash easily, only giving further credence to the theory that it would be extremely powerful.

For now, she seemed to stick with more regular magic, though, as Aisha finally revealed the purpose of the golden veil. Flapping her wings, she unleashed a gust of cutting winds towards him, and right as Jake started to dodge, he felt the gathering of energy behind him. Vaguely visible on the golden veil was a mirrored version of Aisha that proceeded to cast a golden bolt of lightning that was timed too perfectly for him to fully dodge.

Making matters worse, Jake felt energy gather in several more places as a dozen mirrored versions of Aisha manifested within the veil and started casting spells towards him. Spells he suspected to be the same ones he’d dodged earlier that had been absorbed.

With so many spells coming towards him at the same time, alongside Aisha continually flapping her wings to trap him in a golden whirlwind, it was simply impossible to dodge everything... so he didn’t.

Pushing his newly upgraded Pride to its full potential, a small domain appeared around Jake where all the golden winds were nullified, and the several dozen beams and bolts of lightning that shot for him started rapidly dissolving into nothingness when they got near him, and whatever remnant energies remained were easily handled by his scales.

Jake felt the mental toll and his energy drain from denying the existence of so much magic at once. Aisha was clearly surprised at seeing him completely nullify her magic and decided to go for another big attack.

The veil surrounding them shivered and slowly started to close in as if wrapping around the battlefield like a piece of cloth being wrung. The True Dragon manifested several dozen spells, and beneath them, a magic circle appeared, but just before she could unleash any of it, Jake raised his hand as it started glowing dark green.

Touch of the Malefic Viper activated, and as it did, the Dragonsbane was awakened and came on with full force immediately. He saw the dragon’s eyes open wide in pain, and the magic circle below them dissolved away instantly as dark green veins spread across her body, ravaging her from within.

Smiling, Jake felt that the battle was about to turn massively in his favor... at least he did so for about zero-point-seven seconds until he was reminded that, well, one should really never underestimate True Dragons, especially not the golden kind.