Victarion stood at the front of the crowd, unable to accept that Euron had been killed so easily. His immense rage drowned out even his fear of the dragon.
He shoved aside an Ironborn who was trembling and trying to back away, and roared, "What are you afraid of? He's just one man and one dragon! Avenge Euron! Kill that damned Easterner!"
The Ironborn officer beside him was deathly pale, his voice shaking. "B-but, Captain… he has a dragon…"
"Useless trash, get out of the way!"
Victarion kicked the officer aside, snatched a longbow from a soldier nearby, nocked a thick arrow, drew to full strength, and loosed at the low-circling Blooddancer's belly.
The arrow tore through the air with a shriek and struck Blooddancer's belly scales dead-on.
Then—
Clink!
A sharp, crisp sound rang out. An arrow strong enough to punch through armor simply bounced away, leaving not so much as a scratch on Blooddancer's dark crimson scales.
"Damn it!"
Victarion ground his teeth and bellowed in furious refusal to accept it.
High above, Lo Quen glanced down at the pirates with cool contempt.
These butchers had followed Euron in slaughtering Oldtown to the last, committing crimes beyond counting. He had not the slightest mercy to spare for them.
"Blooddancer…"
His voice was ice-cold. "Dracarys."
Blooddancer answered with a low, rumbling roar.
It shifted its position, lowering its massive head. A throbbing crimson light flared in its throat once again, sending a chill down the spine.
The next instant, annihilation descended.
Searing Dragonfire poured down like a tidal wave, flooding the platform where the Ironborn stood and swallowing it whole.
They had nowhere to run.
Their panicked screams and curses were instantly drowned out by the roar of the flames.
Human bodies melted like wax in Dragonfire. Armor glowed red-hot and warped. Weapons ran like molten iron.
Those who tried to leap into the sea were chased down by fire that raced across the surface of the water, burning fiercely amid the blood-stained waves.
Victarion stood at the very front and took the brunt of it.
He swung his battleaxe and roared his defiance, but against absolute power it meant nothing.
Dragonfire swallowed his muscular body in an instant. His roar cut off abruptly as he became a blazing, human-shaped torch, and in the end he was reduced to char and ash, no different from the rest.
In barely a dozen seconds, the base of the High Tower was cleared out completely, leaving only the flames still raging.
Hundreds of elite Ironborn were wiped from existence.
Lo Quen remained expressionless as he guided Blooddancer in a slow patrol above Oldtown. One by one, he picked out the Ironborn squads still rampaging through the city and erased them with Dragonfire.
He had already decided to reclaim rule over the Iron Islands, so he showed no mercy to pirates who lived by slaughter and plunder.
After he had purged the Ironborn from the city, Lo Quen brought Blooddancer down on the shore of Battle Island, near that eerie black stone soaked in the Bleeding Sea, still greedily drawing in energy.
He jumped down from the dragon's back and studied it with a deep frown.
Marwyn's research suggested that unsealing the black stone required actively pouring vast amounts of magical energy into it, following a specific frequency.
Yet the stone before him was automatically, greedily absorbing the magic carried in the blood mixed through the seawater.
"Blood contains power…"
Lo Quen murmured, recalling what Chai Yiq had once said about the nature of ghost grass.
Ghost Grass needed enormous amounts of blood to thrive, and places where it grew thick often meant some large-scale calamity had occurred there, leaving staggering death in its wake.
And ghost grass itself contained magic.
All of it seemed to fit together.
Life, blood, magic, the black stone…
There was some kind of connection between them.
But why could this black stone draw it in on its own?
Had Euron done something to it?
Why did he know so much about the black stone?
And why choose Oldtown of all places?
Had he known the secret of the High Tower and this black stone all along?
The towering blood-red pillar of light before him was completely different from what he had seen the last time he unsealed a black stone. Beyond the darkness it led into… what was waiting there?
Question after question pressed in on Lo Quen's mind.
Although there were no strange whispers directly assaulting his mind this time, the sense of unease deep within him only grew stronger.
This process had to be interrupted.
He reached out, drawing on his control over Magic, and forcibly began competing with the black stone for the blood-tinged Magic permeating the seawater.
A vast, chaotic surge of energy poured into his body.
It felt unpleasant, even nauseating, but it was undeniably effective.
Besides, the system automatically refined the Magic, so the energy born of blood would not produce any harmful side effects.
On his status panel, his maximum Magic capacity, which had previously increased after killing the Kraken in the Narrow Sea and had yet to fully recover after using his Ultimate Skill, began to refill at a rapid pace.
However, just as he focused on absorbing the Magic, a detail suddenly surfaced in his mind.
When he had killed Euron and the silver dragon earlier, the system had only issued a single notification for gaining Dragon's Soul.
That was the 3000 Dragon's Souls obtained from killing the silver dragon.
There had been no prompt for Euron's Dragon's Soul.
While magical units sometimes failed to drop rewards upon death, considering Euron's unique nature, this was far too suspicious.
Lo Quen frowned. Could it be that Euron wasn't actually dead?
Just then—
Boom! Boom! Boom!!!
Deep, muffled thunder echoed across the distant sea.
The already violent, blood-red waters began to churn even more fiercely, as if they were boiling.
An unimaginably enormous, terrifying shadow surged up from the depths, sending blood-colored waves crashing sky-high.
Splash!!!
Amid the deafening roar of water, a colossal head, like a small mountain, burst through the surface.
Its head was covered in a hardened shell encrusted with barnacles and scars. Two eyes the size of houses glowed a crazed blood-red, locking firmly onto Lo Quen on the shore.
Immediately afterward, grotesque tentacles studded with suction cups and bone spines rose from the sea, lashing wildly at the water and throwing up even greater waves.
It was the same colossal Kraken that had previously destroyed the fleet of the Reach.
But the aura it radiated now was even more violent and unhinged than before. Within those blood-red pupils flickered a trace of unmistakably human light, filled with venomous hatred and malice.
Lo Quen's expression sank at once.
"Damn it… it really didn't die completely."
He understood immediately.
Euron was a powerful Skinchanger. At the instant his physical body was destroyed, his consciousness had forcibly transferred into this Kraken, which shared some kind of connection with him.
Doing so would cause his memories to gradually blur and his humanity to erode, but at the very least, he had managed to "survive" for now.
Lo Quen patted the massive dragon beside him. "Blooddancer, leave this stretch of sea for now. Fly higher. I'll deal with this big thing myself."
Blooddancer let out a low growl, clearly worried, but still obeyed. With a powerful beat of its wings, it climbed higher and withdrew from the churning coastline.
Lo Quen stood alone on the shore, facing the terrifying behemoth that seemed like the embodiment of the sea itself. His gaze sharpened as the immense Magic he had just absorbed surged through his body.
The gigantic Kraken let out a piercing shriek that ripped at the eardrums. With a fury that seemed capable of crushing everything in its path, it whipped its massive tentacles and surged across the Bleeding Sea, charging straight toward Lo Quen.