At this point, Vali could no longer hear anything Rod was saying.
Or rather, he had never truly listened to a single word from the very beginning.
With less than half of his faceplate still intact, Vali wiped the blood from the corner of his mouth and said, "Albion, this man in front of me should be worthy of seeing the White Dragon Emperor's Juggernaut Drive, shouldn't he?"
Hearing that, Albion was alarmed. "This man is indeed strong, but Vali, in your current condition, you are not suited to unleash Juggernaut Drive. If you force it out recklessly, it will cause irreversible damage to your body."
"The moment you put it that way, that just means it can be done."
Vali paid no attention to the White Dragon Emperor's warning.
Long ago, when he had first become proficient in using Balance Breaker, Albion had told him that beyond Balance Breaker lay a power known as Juggernaut Drive, the recreation of the White Dragon Emperor's power at its peak, the descent of tyrannical supremacy itself.
"I am the awakener, who shall become the tyrant of white dragonhood..."
The aura radiating from Vali began to change.
But within him, Albion rebuked him sharply. "Vali, that power is not something you can control right now. Do you intend to follow the same path as all the previous White Dragon Emperors and become nothing more than a puppet to my power?!"
Albion knew the ideal Vali carried in his heart, and he had watched every bit of his effort.
Precisely because of that, if Vali repeated the mistakes of his predecessors, Albion would be deeply disappointed.
Vali could indeed use the power of Juggernaut Drive now, but it was like overloading a car. It might be able to carry more people, but it would also severely affect the vehicle's control.
Yet Vali paid no heed to Albion's warning. The magical aura around him continued to surge higher and higher.
Even the barrier trembled under the pressure of that power.
Azazel, Michael, and the others all stared toward White Dragon Emperor's position in shock. From Vali, they felt an extremely familiar presence.
It was the power of the White Dragon Emperor Albion.
When the three great factions had once joined forces to subjugate the Two Heavenly Dragons, both Azazel and Michael had been there.
Only by having the strongest of all three factions attack together had they barely managed to suppress them.
Even though they had won that battle, the undeniable truth was that without the seal of the God of the Bible, no one else would have been able to control the violent Two Heavenly Dragons.
"Vali, you foolish boy."
Azazel clenched his fist.
As Vali's adoptive father, he naturally knew exactly what point Vali had reached.
With Vali's current willpower and body, there was no way he could endure the power of Juggernaut Drive for long. In the worst case, it could even cause irreversible damage to his mind and turn him into a slave to power.
Yet at this moment, people seemed to have forgotten that Rod was still there.
"Pay attention. I'm about to use my trump card too."
Rod lowered his body slightly, shifting his center of gravity backward. His right foot slammed into the ground, sending gravel flying in all directions from the force.
And the moment Azazel heard Rod shout that line, he instantly remembered the scene from when Rod had played him like a fiddle.
That was no trump card at all.
It was a complete bluff!
"Close your eyes, all of you! That guy's 'trump card' is definitely not what you think it is!"
Azazel only had time to shout that single warning before immediately spinning around and covering his eyes with both hands. Even then, he still felt that was not enough, so he spread his six pairs of black wings and wrapped himself up tightly.
Even so, his eyes still throbbed in phantom pain.
"?"
Michael, Sirzechs, and the others exchanged confused looks, having no idea why Azazel was suddenly reacting so strongly.
At the same time, Vali had already reached the second-to-last line of the chant.
"I, who shall achieve the supremacy of the ultimate white dragon, "
"I invite thee to-"
But before he could finish, Rod had already launched himself into the air.
Golden streams of light coiled around his ankle. His body stretched into a perfectly straight line in midair, and with a sharp tearing screech, his right leg, wrapped in photon energy compressed to the extreme, plunged downward like a meteor.
That entire sequence of motion was completed in less than a second.
"Rider Kick"
A cross-shaped trail of light flashed through the arc of his descent. Before Vali could complete the final line of the chant, Rod's kick struck his chest in an instant. His vision spun violently, and his whole body was launched into the air like a cannonball, hurtling straight into the barrier without losing any momentum.
Boom!
His body crashed violently into the barrier. The ground shattered in response, and the barrier was covered in dense, spiderweb-like cracks.
The enormous impact made Vali feel as though his organs had all shifted out of place. The whites of his eyes rolled upward, and all that remained in his ears was an overwhelming ringing.
Not only that, but a massive burst of energy exploded inside his chest. Intense pain tore through his whole body, and after coughing up a mouthful of blood, he lost consciousness on the spot.
At this point, the chest armor over his torso had completely shattered, and even his ribcage had caved in slightly.
Looking at the dying Vali, Rod gave up on the idea of kicking him while he was down any further.
Then he grabbed Vali by the back of his collar, hauled him up from the ground, and flew back into the meeting room of the new school building.
Thud!
Rod dropped Vali onto the floor. A crisp cracking sound followed immediately, as though a few more of Vali's ribs had just broken from that throw.
Even while unconscious, Vali's face twisted violently from the pain.
"I didn't do that on purpose."
Rod spread his hands, looking perfectly innocent.
He was clearly telling everyone that Vali had simply slipped out of his hands, and that it was absolutely not personal retaliation.
"How is Vali...?"
Lavinia looked worriedly at the blood-covered figure.
"He's fine. He won't die."
A dragon's vitality was the greatest among all races, and Vali was no exception. On top of that, he also carried half-devil blood, so a slightly caved-in chest cavity was not that big a problem.
Of course, if he took another hit right now, then by next year the grass on his grave would be several meters tall.
And that was only because Rod had deliberately restrained the power of that Rider Kick. If his posture had been a little more perfect, if he had sustained the move a little longer, and if he had poured all of his power into the Rider Kick at the very end, White Dragon Emperor Vali would already have been taken out in a single blow just now.
Still, just to be safe, Rod added, "Then we should probably heal him first."
With that, Rod took a bottle of bio-brand hand sanitizer out of his storage space, unscrewed the cap, and poured a little onto Vali's blood-covered hand.
At that moment, something miraculous happened.
Vali's twisted fingers, the caved-in chest, and the other wounds on his body all began to heal at a speed visible to the naked eye.
Although he still had not woken up, his breathing had already stabilized.
At the same time, Rod also released the Balance Breaker state of his Longinus.
The purple-and-gold armor receded from his body like a falling tide, all of it converging back into the purple cross at his chest, until finally even the cross itself vanished.
What Rod did not see, however, was that at this moment, the envy and admiration in Sirzechs's and Serafall's eyes had already become almost tangible.
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