The ground wasn't just shaking. It was pulsing.
Like some drunk giant was using the Northern Barony as a drum.
Sir Gregor, the Azure Shield of the 17th Legion, spat a glob of bloody saliva onto the cracked earth. "Hold the line!" he bellowed, his voice raw. The words felt stupid, even as he said them. What 'line'? The one that had been a two-hundred-man-strong shield wall ten minutes ago?
That line was now a scattered collection of molten slag, screams, and shattered dreams.
"Aegis Formation! On me! On me!"
Gregor was a Core Formation cultivator. A high-stage one, at that. He was a 'hero', the 'Azure Shield', a man whose Qi presence could quiet a rowdy city just by him walking through the gates. He had fought off sieges, slain sect elders, and even faced down a lesser flood dragon in his youth. He was the best.
And he was about to die.
The thing that had risen from the Scarred Chasm wasn't a beast. It was a cataclysm. The archives called it a 'Crimson Calamity Drake', a one-in-a-thousand-year event. A walking, flying, breathing natural disaster.
Its scales weren't just red. They were the color of a ruby held up to a star, so bright they hurt to look at. It was the size of a small mountain, and every time it roared, the sound didn't just hit his ears—it boiled the air. Men were screaming as their own Qi reserves vibrated uncontrollably, literally cooking them from the inside out.
"Sir! The barrier is... it's just gone!" a young-looking knight, maybe nineteen, shrieked before a gout of liquid fire turned him into a shadow burned onto the rock.
Gregor felt the heat scorch his face, his enchanted Azure armor groaning as it wicked away energy that would have vaporized a normal man.
"It's just me and you, you bastard," Gregor whispered, planting his tower shield—a legendary-grade artifact—into the ground. He poured every last drop of his Qi into it. This was it. His ultimate technique. The one that had stopped a charging legion of a thousand demonic cavalry.
"AEGIS OF THE MOUNTAIN!"
His Qi, a deep, cobalt blue, erupted from the shield, forming a solid dome of light. It was beautiful. It was the pinnacle of his entire life's work, the sum of all his training, his pain, his sacrifice.
The Crimson Drake, bored of its smaller prey, finally turned its immense, star-like eye on him. It didn't breathe fire this time. It didn't roar. It just... inhaled.
A vortex of pure gravitational force slammed into the Aegis.
Gregor felt the crack in his shield before he heard it. It started as a hairline fracture, then spread like a spiderweb. His ultimate defense, the 'Aegis of the Mountain', held for exactly 0.8 seconds.
Then it shattered.
The force threw Gregor back like a ragdoll, smashing him through the remnants of a stone watchtower. He landed in a heap, his body broken. His world was just pain and the sound of ringing. He looked up, his vision blurring, and saw the Drake lower its massive head towards him. Its cavernous mouth, lit from within by a sea of roiling plasma, opened wide.
Gregor tried to lift his sword. His arm wouldn't respond.
He was the Azure Shield. A hero. A legend in the making.
And he was just... food.
He closed his eyes, his last thought a bitter, hopeless curse. So, this is the end.