Chapter 64: The Nature of the End

On the other side, after the red dragon was struck down to the ground by lightning, the burrowing dragons, led by their aged patriarchs, immediately initiated their next step.

They used thick ropes coated in heavy rock-mud to bind the limbs of the dying red dragon, further restricting his frantic, final struggles.

The rock-mud served as an effective fire retardant, capable of enduring the scorching heat of intense flames for a few seconds to protect the core fibers of the ropes inside.

Given the terrain where the burrowing dragons excelled, a few seconds was more than enough time for them to cast new loops of rope.

Every single limb of Georbert, the red dragon, was bound by seven or eight thick ropes, and even his tail was no exception.

Behind each rope, a dozen burrowing dragons exerted every ounce of their strength, pulling him in five different directions.

Taken individually, the strength of any single one of these burrowing dragons fell far short of a red dragon.

Yet under such opportune circumstances, their combined strength was enough to shackle a colossal dragon.

This creature, so accustomed to lording over others, had finally fallen into their grasp.

Georbert, still far from recovered, let out an unwilling roar of fury. He felt as though his body were being torn apart into several pieces.

This was something he had never imagined possible.

A swarm of creatures he had utterly despised were now actually attempting to trap him?

What sheer delusion!

Georbert could not endure such humiliation. Driven by a stubborn willpower, his mutilated wings still tried to beat upward into the air.

Death was no stranger to him, and he had weathered moments on the brink of survival several times before.

Deep in his heart, Georbert still harbored a shred of desperate hope: as long as he could fly away from here before Linde arrived, he might regain a chance at life.

As long as he lived, there remained a possibility of turning the tables.

I still have that greatsword unused, I have yet to unleash my full strength, I cannot fall here...

I cannot yield yet!

The desperate will to survive in the face of doom ignited a final blaze within Georbert.

The true dragon's fire, fueled by his burning life-force, incinerated all the shackles in an instant. Just as the red dragon thought the next second would usher in his freedom—

A red shadow plummeting from the skies dashed his hopes to pieces.

Countless wyverns dropped TNT laden with their own fury upon the red dragon below, forming a contiguous sea of red poised to engulf the tyrant.

Earlier, while Linde was rescuing Victoria, Sirona—still stationed at the camp—had already telegraphed the standby wyvern patriarch, instructing it to lead the wyverns and transport the remaining TNT to the red dragon's location for an aerial bombardment.

Strike while the iron is hot; Sirona understood this principle all too well.

Even had Linde not hurried over to clean up the aftermath, these red bombs alone would have sufficed to end the creature's life.

What destroyed the red dragon was his own final blaze of fury.

Anger, resentment, regret...

All these emotions gradually faded from the depths of Georbert's mind.

They coalesced entirely into a single sensation—

Despair.

True despair is not the absence of hope, but the shattering of hope at the very instant it is perceived.

His pupils were already dilating, and his vision was beginning to blur.

He could not fathom how he could possibly survive such a dead-angle, high-explosive bombardment.

Even for the spells available to him, the required chanting time was already out of reach.

In the next second, he would likely be reduced to a pile of minced flesh.

Perhaps not even in pieces that large...

Georbert knew all too well the devastating power of the bombs. With his physical body pressed directly against them, even his sturdy scales could no longer shield him from this wave of shockwaves.

As the panorama of his memories flashed through his mind, he could not help feeling a twinge of regret, wishing he had simply gone all-out with his attacks from the start.

His hesitance and cautious mindset had ultimately impaired his own performance.

Yet, recalling the countless white-robed figures he had seen looking down from above, he realized he would have had no way to strike anyway.

To have fallen into the hands of these despicable outsiders...

Just as Georbert sank into the abyss of despair, the dormant and long-silenced End-force within his body seemed to catch the scent of something exquisitely sweet.

The red dragon's former conscious will had been far too strong, and combined with the devastating blow dealt by the World Tree's power, it had left him completely incapacitated.

Yet now, the hollowed-out spirit and the nourishment known as despair reawakened the End.

The destruction of the physical vessel is the starting point for embracing the Shadow.

When the old world still existed, the primordial form of the Shadow, upon first gaining consciousness, had attached itself to an aging black dragon nearing death.

That decaying bodily machinery and necrotic muscle tissue bore witness to all the suffering endured by flesh and blood.

After endless ages had passed, the first physical form it assimilated upon stepping into the new world turned out to be a dragon once again.

It had never imagined its ties to dragons would run so deep.

Since you have given up, join the glorious path of the End.

Amidst the roar of the explosion, the intricate flesh and blood were obliterated, but one pitch-black dot after another continuously emerged.

Like black holes, they endlessly devoured the surrounding light and heat, along with everything within their reach.

Regardless of what an object had previously been or what shape it held, its essence would be unified by this power and subsequently transformed into black blocks.

The End was reshaping the red dragon's body, molding it toward a standardized form.

All things were born from a single explosion, and it would return all things to the origin point before that explosion.

Let the name of the Ender Dragon descend upon the new world once more!