Chapter 404: Sealing the Wood God Dragon
Ren wiped a bead of sweat from his forehead, exhaling a heavy, exasperated sigh as he hovered high in the air. "I'm tired," he complained irritably, glaring down at the impossible mass beneath him. "Can't I take a break for just a second?"
The sheer resilience of the Dragon Race was already a widely documented nightmare, but this Wood God Dragon took it to an entirely new, terrifying level. Because of Aldoron's intrinsic wood attribute, the colossal beast possessed a horrifyingly accelerated recovery rate. As long as his gargantuan limbs remained rooted deeply into the earth of Guiltina, the land itself fed him a virtually endless supply of Ethernano and life force.
Every devastating wound Ren inflicted seemed to stitch itself back together before the dust even settled.
"Hmph! Human, I admit I underestimated you," Aldoron's booming voice echoed, shaking the very clouds above. "But it is fundamentally impossible for a mere human to ever hope to defeat a true Dragon. You shall simply become my nourishment!"
Before Ren could react, massive, gnarled trunks of ancient wood burst from the ground in every direction. They twisted and braided together at a blinding speed, forming a suffocating, inescapable wooden cage that completely swallowed Ren in darkness.
Far below, Aldoron's humanoid avatar—the central God Seed—lifted a distinctly foreign object between his massive, wooden fingers. It was a three-pronged kunai, its handle wrapped in cloth and etched with a complex magical formula.
"You were relying on this pathetic little tool to teleport around my domain," Aldoron sneered, his voice dripping with absolute contempt. "But I have found and destroyed every single one of these wretched things scattered across my body."
Aldoron squeezed his palm with crushing force. The specialized metal of the kunai groaned before shattering into useless shrapnel.
"Now, I'll let you have a good taste of a god's unrelenting wrath!!"
Inside the pitch-black confines of the wooden cage, the smooth interior walls suddenly contorted. Dense, razor-sharp wooden spikes erupted inward from every conceivable angle, closing in to impale Ren from all sides in the next fraction of a second.
Despite the impending doom, Ren merely looked up toward where he knew Aldoron's avatar was standing. He offered a relaxed, almost pitying smile.
"You really did destroy the marked kunai I left in that specific spot," Ren casually admitted, slipping his hands into his pockets. "But that was only the one in your immediate vicinity. The ones I scattered outside are all still perfectly intact. Bye-bye now!"
Swoosh—!
In a brilliant flash of golden light, just a split second before the lethal spikes could pierce his skin, Ren's body vanished from the cage entirely.
"No—!!"
Aldoron roared in unfettered fury upon seeing the human slip through his flawless trap. The sheer volume of the Dragon God's voice created a localized hurricane, uprooting trees and shattering boulders across his own continent-sized back.
"Damned human! I don't care where you flee, I will hunt you down and kill you!!"
He had suffered such heavy, humiliating blows from this pest, only to let him slip through his absolute grasp. What remained of his pride and dignity as the mighty Wood God Dragon?
"Roar—!!"
The Wood God Dragon's true, unfathomably massive body let out a deafening roar toward the heavens, the sheer kinetic force parting the cloud cover for dozens of miles. His immense magical senses immediately swept the area, desperately searching for Ren's location.
It didn't take long to find him. While Ren's physical figure was smaller than a speck of dust compared to the continent-sized Wood God Dragon, his current energy signature was astronomically dense. In Aldoron's perception, the human was radiating power as conspicuously as a second sun.
"Go to hell!!"
Countless massive, hyper-dense wooden spears rapidly grew from the surface of the Wood God Dragon's body. With a deafening boom, they launched themselves into the sky, raining down toward Ren's location like an apocalyptic downpour of lethal lances.
Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom!
The massive wooden spikes carried terrifying destructive power. As they slammed into the environment, they effortlessly obliterated entire mountain peaks and shattered the crust of the earth, leaving behind massive, dust-filled craters.
Swoosh!!
Amidst the devastating carpet bombing, Ren's figure vanished in another golden flash, reappearing high above the debris.
The Flying Thunder God Technique was a supreme, god-tier spatial skill with practically zero cooldown. Although its singular drawback required the user to physically set coordinate formulas in advance, its instantaneous execution made it a thousand times more practical and powerful than standard Spatial Magic, which required a casting delay.
If Ren simply wanted to escape, absolutely no one on the continent of Guiltina could ever hope to catch him.
However, running away was the furthest thing from his mind right now.
"Tailed Beast Avatar!"
Swish—!
A monumental tsunami of golden chakra erupted from Ren's body. The sheer pressure of the energy physically pushed the atmosphere away, painting the sky in a brilliant, blazing gold. In a matter of seconds, the chakra condensed and took shape, forming a colossal, ethereal Nine-Tailed Demon Fox.
Its immense, god-like power caused the very laws of magic in the surrounding air to tremble and distort.
"What in the world is that?!"
This blinding, world-shaking energy surge immediately caught the terrified attention of everyone still lingering in the ruined cities atop Aldoron's back.
"It's... it's that guy!"
From a distant vantage point, Kiria, Skullion Raider, and Madmole shielded their eyes against the golden gale. When they saw the towering, majestic form of the Nine-Tailed Demon Fox, their breath hitched. They immediately recognized him as the absolute monster of a man who had casually fought Mercphobia in Elmina—and actually managed to wound the Water God Dragon.
"Why the hell is this guy here?!" Kiria gritted her teeth, her usual sadistic smirk replaced by genuine apprehension. "Could it be that his target is also the Wood God Dragon?"
Skullion's expression paled beneath his mask upon seeing Ren's overwhelming display of power. This man was a living calamity capable of rivaling the Water God Dragon, and judging by the suffocating pressure currently crushing their lungs, he might even surpass the God Dragons in sheer, concentrated destructive force.
Immediately after, Skullion's tactical mind caught up with the grim reality of their situation. His eyes widened in horror. "Not good! We absolutely cannot stay here any longer."
The cataclysmic battle against the Water God Dragon was still freshly burned into his memory. If they got caught up in the crossfire of this tier of combat, they wouldn't just be killed—they would be completely erased from existence.
Furthermore, it was terrifyingly obvious now that their guild's intel was severely flawed. The idea that destroying the elemental crystals scattered across the cities would effectively weaken the Wood God Dragon was entirely false. The Wood God Dragon had fully awakened, and instead of being severely crippled, his overwhelming magical strength had become infinitely more fearsome.
Far below, the central avatar of Aldoron naturally noticed the blinding golden light as well. Although the colossal, translucent fox was still incredibly small compared to Aldoron's continent-sized true body, it was now roughly the same size as standard, ancient Dragons.
"Selene!!!"
At first glance, seeing the majestic, multi-tailed fox construct, Aldoron almost instinctively mistook Ren for the Moon God Dragon, Selene. But upon second thought, he immediately dismissed the notion.
He didn't sense an aura even remotely similar to Selene's from the golden beast. If this entity were one of Selene's offspring, they would naturally carry a fragment of her unique magical signature, or at the very least, the distinct, instinctual aura of the Dragon Race.
But Aldoron couldn't sense any trace of a Dragon's aura from Ren at all. The golden chakra felt entirely alien, proving that the opponent floating before him was still nothing more than a mere human.
"I don't care who you are or what parlor tricks you possess!" Aldoron bellowed, his voice echoing with absolute divine authority. "If you dare to provoke me, Aldoron, not even a god can protect you!"
"Forest of Swords and Halberds!!"
The continent shook violently as countless massive, sword-like wooden spikes tore through the ground, shooting toward the towering golden fox with the speed of a meteor shower.
Swoosh!
Ren's massive Nine-Tailed form vanished instantly, leaving the colossal wooden blades to harmlessly pierce the empty sky.
"Damned bastard!"
Aldoron's rage reached a boiling point. This human's Space Magic execution speed was simply too fast to track. The instant transmission left the Wood God Dragon with almost no conventional way to pin down or deal with Ren.
The volley of massive wooden spikes acted like an unyielding missile carpet bombing, leveling the surrounding ground, obliterating ruined cityscapes, and flattening entire mountain ranges in a relentless wave of destruction.
Swoosh!
High above the dust clouds, Ren's golden figure calmly reappeared.
Aldoron roared up at him, his voice laced with venom. "Coward! Do you only know how to run from a true fight?!"
Suspended safely within the crystalline head of the golden fox, the corners of Ren's mouth curled up into a confident, predatory smirk. "Run? I'm just fighting a bit more intelligently than you are. But you're right... it's about time to end this little battle."
Ren raised his hands and formed a familiar, cross-shaped hand seal. "Multiple Shadow Clone Jutsu!!"
Poof!!
A massive, deafening explosion of white smoke erupted in the sky. As the smoke swiftly cleared, a second colossal, golden Nine-Tailed Demon Fox—utterly identical to the original in both size and catastrophic energy—appeared floating right beside Ren.
"A... a Clone?!"
Down below, the retreating members of Diabolos nearly stumbled over their own feet. Everyone who witnessed the spectacle was left utterly paralyzed, their minds unable to comprehend what Ren meant by casually creating a tangible physical copy of such a massive, energy-dense construct.
Within the heads of their respective avatars, Ren and his clone extended both their hands in unison. The two massive golden foxes opened their jaws wide. Positive white chakra and negative black chakra swirled together, rapidly condensing into a hyper-dense sphere in front of their mouths.
The Tailed Beast Bomb quickly stabilized and then began to continuously expand, pulsating with an apocalyptic level of raw, destructive mass.
Aldoron let out a booming, disdainful laugh upon seeing the black sphere. Although the human's power output was undeniably strong, he was the absolute peak of defense. As the Wood God Dragon, his continent-sized bark was harder than any known magical metal. In terms of physical defense, he feared nothing in this world.
Aldoron's true, gargantuan dragon body tilted its head back and took a massive, world-shaking breath. The powerful suction was so immense that it felt as if it would drain all the oxygen within a ten-thousand-meter radius, forming a massive, spiraling gale that tore the clouds from the sky.
It was a Dragon's Roar!
And it wasn't a concentrated blast from his frail human-sized God Seed avatar. It was a true, unfiltered roar fired directly from the maw of his massive, continent-sized Wood God Dragon body.
A roar unleashed in this colossal form was fundamentally on a different plane of existence, far, far more cataclysmic than anything his humanoid form could ever hope to produce.
Hum—!
A colossal, blinding beam of concentrated green energy erupted from the dragon's jaws. It swept directly across the earth, effortlessly slicing through the planet's crust with terrifying ease, the apocalyptic light streaking straight toward Ren and his clone.
Just as Kiria, Skullion, and Madmole braced themselves for the continent-shattering impact, entirely certain that Ren was going to recklessly clash his Tailed Beast Bomb against Aldoron's Roar—
Swoosh!
The massive, expanding Tailed Beast Bomb suddenly vanished into thin air.
Aldoron's colossal eyes widened, momentarily dazed by the abrupt disappearance of the lethal threat.
In the very next instant, a suffocating, terrifying pressure materialized deep inside Aldoron's central core. The massive Tailed Beast Bomb had bypassed the impenetrable outer bark entirely, appearing directly inside the inner chamber housing Aldoron's true body—the God Seed.
The humanoid Aldoron standing inside the core looked up in sheer, unadulterated horror as the massive sphere of black chakra suddenly materialized mere inches away from him. He reacted a fraction of a second too late, finally understanding the fatal trap.
The human hadn't just placed spatial coordinates on the outside. He had actually managed to leave a hidden coordinate mark directly inside his most vulnerable sanctuary!
"You bastard—!!"
Aldoron screamed in absolute, desperate fury, his divine superiority shattering into pure terror.
Boom—!!
The massive Tailed Beast Bomb detonated directly inside Aldoron's body.
The terrifying, highly concentrated destructive power of the Bijūdama was fully unleashed within an enclosed space. The apocalyptic shockwave almost instantly incinerated the internal chamber, tearing Aldoron's true, humanoid body apart at the molecular level.
Aldoron's defensive power was practically invincible, but that absolute durability solely belonged to the continent-sized outer shell of the Wood God Dragon. The defensive capabilities of the true God Seed body hidden inside were incredibly frail compared to the impenetrable behemoth guarding it on the outside.
And as the true Aldoron on the inside suffered fatal, catastrophic damage, the massive, continent-sized Aldoron on the outside likewise lost its life force.
That incredibly massive, world-dwarfing Wood God Dragon body froze in place, the green light completely fading from its eyes, as its continental structure began to rapidly crumble, shattering continuously into the earth below.
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