Chapter 94: The Demon Clan’s Cross-Kick

Zhang Cheng was teleported to a high mountain ridge, standing there as he looked out at the players gathered in the distance—an overwhelming dark mass surging toward the Silver Dragon.

At the center of the battlefield, Lu Qiuchen felt immense torment. After entering the dungeon, she had read through the script and knew she would be besieged once the instance began, but she hadn’t expected the battle to be this agonizing.

Shortly after she arrived, she saw that four legendary ranged NPCs had already spawned, glaring with predatory intent. Surrounding them was a large group of epic-level NPCs of various classes. However, since the dungeon had not officially started, these NPCs remained inactive under the system’s restrictions.

She still remembered when she first evolved into an adult dragon and lost her sanity—she was mercilessly ganged up on by many legendary-level veterans, and these four were familiar faces among them.

Two of them hailed from the Church—both red cardinals who once accompanied the Pope—one from the Empire, and the last from the Adventurer’s Guild.

Faced with such terrifying power, even though she knew she couldn’t truly die here, a sense of unease crept into Lu Qiuchen’s heart. She felt that even without the players, these NPCs alone could give her a serious fight.

When the countdown ended and the players entered the dungeon, the situation quickly tilted in their favor just as she expected.

At the start of the battle, several legendary NPCs pinned her to the ground. Her wings felt as heavy as mountains, and she couldn’t even flap them. Lu Qiuchen could only attack them from a distance using magic.

But before she could launch an attack, the players swarmed around her, sacrificing their lives to chip away at her modest health pool.

Seeing the fight was underway, and wanting to end it quickly, Lu Qiuchen stopped attacking the NPCs and unleashed her fury on the players instead.

What she hadn’t expected was how torturous the fight would be. Those powerful NPCs seemed to have an unspoken agreement: they only cast binding spells from afar without directly attacking her. All damage came solely from the players, who kept throwing themselves at her to drain her health.

Since the players’ highest power was only at the Saint rank, even their full output barely penetrated her dragon scales. Although she was immobilized and could only stand there like a wooden stake, the double-digit damage dealt to her made it difficult to endure.

The constant, slight stabbing pain from the attacks was especially unbearable.

Worse yet, under Beta’s scripted design, she couldn’t simply give up. She had to fight back. Every time she killed a wave of players rushing her, it extended her own execution time.

Lu Qiuchen had recently leveled up to LV123, and her health had risen to 36 million—making the ordeal even more painful. Facing each hit dealing barely double-digit damage, this was the first time she wished her health and scale defense were lower.

“Bang!”

After more than ten minutes, a piece of dragon scale on her back was repeatedly struck by magic, eventually shattering and exposing vulnerable flesh beneath. Damage numbers surged several times higher, and Lu Qiuchen’s pain skyrocketed.

As more scales cracked and fell, her health bar visibly dropped.

“Roar!” Lu Qiuchen, seeing only a tenth of her health gone after over ten minutes, felt utterly frustrated at having to endure at least another hour of punishment to complete the mission.

Spurred by the sting of blood loss, she roared and triggered her berserk mode, forcibly breaking free from the binding spells cast by the several legendary elites hovering around her.

Having completed her fusion with the Golden Dragon bloodline, her race was still Silver Dragon, but now she possessed the full suite of Golden Dragon’s basic magic talents.

As for her appearance, her eyes shifted from red to gold, and her human form grew taller by another centimeter to 175 cm, her figure becoming more curvaceous—a silver-haired, golden-eyed older sister type.

In her rage, Lu Qiuchen cast dual forbidden spells of wind and water, summoning a massive water tornado that connected heaven and earth, sucking all the surrounding players into one cluster.

With the players out of the way, she teleported to confront the four loathsome legendary elites in the sky and struck first.

Lu Qiuchen wanted only to be severely beaten by those four, rapidly lowering her health.

Short pain was better than slow pain—this was far better than being tortured by players bit by bit.

Her tactic worked. Although she looked pitiful on the outside, as a mighty dragon with a fearsome reputation, the four didn’t dare take her lightly. They gathered immense energy and locked onto Lu Qiuchen, unleashing their strongest attacks.

Lightning, fire, and radiant light assaulted her almost simultaneously. Lu Qiuchen charged forward excitedly, enduring the blows. More scales shattered from her body as she let out a low, pained howl.

But seeing her health bar plummet sharply, her eyes brightened further. She launched several ice magic spells at her foes, forcing them to keep attacking her.

The four had just expended great energy, and upon seeing the dragon’s ferocity, exchanged looks and ceased their assault, instead resuming binding magic to restrain her.

Once immobilized, Lu Qiuchen fell to the ground and was surrounded again by players flooding in.

She was puzzled.

She had willingly exposed herself to take hits, but their lethargic attitude—what were they planning?

Fortunately, with most of her scales shattered, her health was now dropping several times faster than before. She could barely tolerate the slight pain and pressed on.

Half an hour later, Lu Qiuchen’s blood had stained the ground around her red, and her health had fallen to about 10%.

Although, under Beta’s orders, she had to release a massive forbidden spell every time her health dropped by 10%, instantly killing all players within several kilometers, this did little to dampen the players’ enthusiasm.

The number of players around Lu Qiuchen never decreased, because the player count was simply too large. Many were still desperately pushing toward the center, and others who entered later remained outside, still unable to spot the dragon.

All because of sheer numbers. Even though she frequently used large-scale attack magic, she couldn’t keep up with the killing spree—not that she wanted to finish too quickly.

Only a tiny number of players with flying mounts caught envious glances.

Zhang Cheng, riding a bipedal wyvern, looked down at Lu Qiuchen fighting bloodily below from afar. Though he knew it was fake, he felt a surge of sympathy.

With that amount of blood loss, she would have long since collapsed in reality—and just watching it hurt.

Lu Qiuchen had been tortured like this for almost an hour!

As her health dropped to 10%, Lu Qiuchen, following Beta’s instructions, released one last massive ice forbidden spell, instantly wiping out all nearby players.

At that moment, a sudden dizziness washed over her. An overwhelming aura hateful to dragons appeared around her.

She turned to see a large number of demons manifesting from the void, and on her back, an enormous Heart Demon was clinging!

Her body trembled. Beta had only said in the previous mission briefing that she needed to reduce her health below 10% to complete this phase, knowing that after 10%, a story event would trigger.

She hadn’t expected it to be possession by a Heart Demon.

She absolutely didn’t want to be controlled by one! That octopus-like creature looked disgusting.

Although she had no idea what being possessed by a Heart Demon in the game entailed, it definitely wouldn’t be good.

“Beta, you’re such a bastard, hiding these things in the mission!” Lu Qiuchen cursed silently.

But the immediate priority was to shake off the Heart Demon. With her health below 10%, she was considered critically wounded and weak by the system. The Heart Demon’s unique control ability was very dangerous.

Lu Qiuchen tried to fling the demon off her back, but once it settled there, it quickly became semi-corporeal, its long tentacles wrapping around her upper body. Its suckers latched tightly onto her battered scales, weakening her even further.

She felt waves of nausea and anger but was helpless.

Just then, a brilliant holy light descended from the sky, piercing the Heart Demon on her back and freeing her from its bindings.

“Wait—so the information that Alice obtained when she transformed was about me?” Lu Qiuchen suddenly realized.

At the time, she was focused on tricking Beta into giving Zhang Cheng the note, paying no attention to the script. After suffering now, she finally recalled these details.

Grateful, Lu Qiuchen looked up at the red cardinal in the sky, understanding now why they hadn’t attacked her earlier—they had been saving their strength for the demon invasion.

So, their previous attempt to subdue her had been incidental.

Beta then issued a new task: she had to evade the lightning-element legendary mage who wanted to capture her and then escape westward to the map’s boundary, where she would exit the dungeon.

Seeing the other three legendary mages and epic adventurers battling the demons while only the lightning mage glared fiercely at her, Lu Qiuchen understood this was the Adventurer’s Guild’s elite.

Relieved that this mission was finally nearing its end, Lu Qiuchen took off, awkwardly dodging the lightning mage’s binding spells.

Once she broke free, she flew toward the direction indicated by Beta.

The players watched the severely wounded dragon and a legendary elite suddenly fly away, while the NPCs who had been watching the show began attacking the demons that had appeared.

They were utterly confused by the plot development.

“Weren’t we supposed to fight the boss? Why did the boss suddenly run away and now we’re fighting demons?”

Fortunately, the mission objective updated to instruct players that after defeating a certain number of demons, they could leave and claim their rewards, unlocking the next phase.

Their confusion turned to excitement as they charged forward, yelling.

There were only a few demons here now, but with a million players in the dungeon, competition was fierce.

Whoever killed the demons first would start the next task!

No more talk—time to fight!

The battlefield descended into even greater chaos.