"MABLIK—SLATHALIN—!"

As the spontaneous sea spout erupted from the Shoal's surface, a rippling wave of Dragon Fear tore through the firmament above, invisible yet more tactile than a sudden gale.

Lulan Li, Sword Mage of Huashan—and now the sole Disciple of the White Serpent of Fur Peak, felt the fear envelop her with a silken caress, causing the follicles on her exposed Iron Skin to goosebump until even the roots on her head stood alarmed and erect.

Then that was it.

Compared to what she'd suffered when she had first arrived at Huangshan, the fear wasn't that impressive. Lulan had felt more so intimidated when gazing upon the misty peak of the Yinglong's White-Jade palace. If she had to judge, Lulan would suggest that even Ryxi, her scripture-loving, art-obsessed White Serpent Master, had exuded a purer, if not older, aura.

Beside her, Richard likewise shrugged off the Dragon Fear, a feat Lulan could only attest to Richard's time spent with Gwen.

Nonetheless, she had to resist her instinct as a trained Swordswoman to fire off all seven of her Falling Star fragments. She couldn't—for even with her mana-tempered eyes, there was no seeing past the revolving column of water heralding the rise and arrival of their next foes.

Knowing that a confrontation would follow before the possibility of diplomacy, she commanded her Naga Spirit to infuse the blades with thrumming mana, furthermore adding the property of Huashan's Sonic Strike to Ryxi's modified Panzerschreck.

But before Lulan could kiss hot steel to cold scale, another team member had better plans.

"QUACK—!" came a very delayed reply to the Draconic demand, desiring a fight to the death.

Lulan focused her vision, then grew mute as Gwen's duck approached from the direction of the city, its neck white with a cone of pressure. With the same motion pushing forward, its rainbow body distorted the Elemental Air around it, supernaturally increasing its velocity.

Fast!—was Lulan's first impression—certainly much quicker than she could manage while riding on her sword.

However, even beneath the veil of water, she could sense that their foes were far beyond human ken. Even masked, the central figure's silhouette was more imposing than Lord Golos and twice as thick and heavy.

Plop!

Another Hydra broke free of the inky surface of the Void egg. Behind herself and Richard, her saviour continued her dark art of Consumption and would require uninterrupted spellcasting.

Now closer and quickly ascending, the duck shrieked toward the sea spout pillar.

"HOFIBA!!" came a retort from within the toiling cyclone.

Lulan agreed with the Draconic riposte. In the next moment, the duck struck the wall of water, instantly forming a semi-sphere where it penetrated, splicing and parting the veil, creating an opening almost thirty meters from end to end.

Within, Lulan caught sight of their foes for the first time.

Dragon Turtles! Her heart rate shot to its utmost limits, blushing her Iron Skin a shade darker. Not quite Mythics, but close enough if stories from her childhood rang true. These, Lulan could see, were descendants from the legendary Bixi, the ninth scion of the Shenglong, historically sent to pacify the raging rivers of waterlogged Hangzhou. After the fall of the Jade Emperor, the Bixi was said to have fled from its duty and entered the China Sea, becoming one of the Warlords of the Four Seas, transforming its erstwhile guardian-self into a raging menace.

Her knuckles grew bone-white.

Not from the nerves of facing such a foe—but for the glory of battling, perhaps even slaying such a beast. If Ryxi's tipsy musings were correct, then such a duty of subjugation was in the very foundation of her arts! Aeons ago, when Dynastic God-Kings reigned, the Daoshi Swordsmen's foremost duty was to hunt down monsters in the guise of Gods such as these and bring prosperity and peace to a disquieted land!

Of course, nowadays, the Communist Party executed such endeavours through fleets of Golem-mounted artillery travelling on NoM-crewed battle rails with Shielding Barriers. Still, the point remained that thanks to Gwen, she would hunt the scions of Mythics and subjugate legendary monsters, allowing her to live like the Swordswomen of the old world, just as Ryxi foretold!

But before her spirit could soar—Lulan bore witness to a terrible sight.

Dede the duck, that boisterous, arrogant thing waddling all over Gwen, was no match for the leading Dragon Turtle.

A careless swipe had been enough to divert the duck.

The strike wasn't solid—for the duck was too quick, but the move was more than enough to break its momentum and then send it plunging toward the water like a meteor.

With a crash of rolling thunder, the duck broke off at an angle and struck the surface below after a few seconds. When it impacted the sea, the collision left a streak of white water a kilometre long.

Dede Duck! Lulan winced. Defeated! And hopefully not dead, lest Gwen declares total war.

"To be perfectly honest," Richard remarked some distance drily away. "I am not sure what I expected."

"Is Dede going to be okay?" Lulan asked in case.

"Gwen would know," the Water Mage returned with a snicker. "It'll take a while to heal, and Dede should be fine fairing against the Mermen below. At any rate, I think it best if Dede isn't here to mess with our next battle."

Lulan agreed. The duck was a good lad—but it was a duck after all, and these were Dragon Turtles. Just as with Lord Golos, if things got serious between the duck and the princeling, she was sure the Wyvern could render Dede into drumsticks in a matter of moments.

Nonetheless, even if Dede had done nothing in terms of damage, what it did achieve was the dampening of the Dragon Turtle trio's opening salvo.

"Get ready," Richard warned her as he moved Lea into place. "If they want to talk, let them. The more time we burn, the more Lampreys Gwen controls."

Lulan spun her blades in affirmation.

Some distance away, the Dragon Turtles discarded the water spout column, which Lulan guessed was a form of mobility magic that empowered the oceanic creatures' rapid ascent.

The leading turtle was a brute of a beast, a bipedal mountain of keratin hammered by some undersea God-forge into a vaguely humanoid dreadnaught. Its head, Lulan could see, was indeed that of the legendary Dragon's, consisting of a pair of stunted stag horns just above the eye-ridge, framing a crested neck shrunken into the shelled body. Unlike its compatriots, the leader possessed two pairs of eyes, one set closer to the armoured nostrils, the other more toward the brow-ridge of the head. Its beak was hooked like a Griffin's, its interior lined with barbed, backward teeth for swallowing large prey wholesale.

As it hovered closer, Lulan took note of the Dragon Turtles' stumpy legs. Unlike the ever graceful Lord Golos, this creature possessed flippers for forelimbs and clawed elephant legs for its lower half, reminding her of the tortoise Ryxi kept as a pet brush holder.

Less than a hundred meters away, the Dragon Turtle trio struck Richard's first defence barrier, covered by a sheet of suddenly-materialising brackish water.

"WUX BEVÍL!" The leading Dragonkin exploded with outrage, followed by a sharp gathering of multi-Elemental mana.

As anticipated, these monsters firmly believed in martial diplomacy.

"Richard—!" Lulan shot forward, meeting the incoming Dragon Breath with four of her seven blades, crossing into the blast's path to deflect the incoming blow. From the trajectory, she could see it was directed at her saviour, the source of the Void Hydras.

Dissonant to Lord Golos' instantaneous line of lightning, the leading turtle's breath consisted of a vortex of swirling steam, combining superheated seawater with rapidly vaporising Elemental Air. On contact, Lulan felt something like a force of nature striking her metal blades, flash-smelting the unyielding slabs until her cold steel grew malleable.

"BLADE SHATTER—" she delivered the invocation, splitting the white-hot vortex with bisecting blasts of expanding metal.

Despite her efforts, the conic blast shot forth, deflected but undeterred, punching through a dozen of Richard's membranes until he redirected the final dozen meters with a pressurised jet blast as thick as Lea was tall.

"Wocao!" Lulan swore, manifesting four spares behind her. Was this the power of a Dragon Turtle? She wasn't sure how committed the thing was—but that single blast had Water, Positive Energy, and even Elemental Air. "Richard— we need to stop that thing!"

Perhaps surprised that its attack wasn't enough to reach Gwen's Dark Egg, the Dragon Turtle barked something at its lesser siblings.

They opened their mouths.

"No need to fret," Richard restored his multi-layered defence matrix even as he spoke. "Get ready to go on the offence. Our help is here!"

Lulan's eyes glanced to their right.

"POL VHIRA!" The cry from Lord Golos arrived no sooner than his enormous head—bodily crashing into one of the junior Dragon Turtles while his tail whipped at its sibling.

Both Dragon Turtles moved instantly into defence mode, shrinking their softer body parts into their shells, allowing Golos only glancing blows against the exterior of their barnacle-caked shell.

CRA—CRACK!

The snap of the horn and tail on jutting Draconic keratin was enough to ignite the air, sending down a shower of blue-white sparks, resulting from friction as much as Golos' plasma-charged body.

Both turtles reeled from the ambush, splitting from their formations like cue-broken balls breaking for either pocket of a billiard table.

"Wuxh ornla symba mrith nomenoi mabliki?" The leading Dragon Turtle did not attack but coldly regarded the pleased-looking Golos, currently levitating without moving an inch, heedless of the whipping winds conjured by the Sea Dragons. Lulan's Draconic was lacking, but she could make out something vaguely resembling a submission trial.

"Ha! That's no mortal you're challenging," Golos retorted in the language of "mortals" so that Lulan and company could fully utilise their Translation Stones. "Stay around and keep fighting if you dare, cousin. Sooner or later, you'll be begging for the sweet embrace of the Unformed Land."

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The Dragon Turtles barked back.

Was that a signal to attack?

Lulan once more charged her blades with sonic vibrations, wondering if direct strikes could penetrate a shell that had stopped Lord Golos' attack cold.

"O scion of the Tempest Torn," the Dragon Turtle halted its enraged siblings from retaliating. Perhaps to show respect to Golos, it was now also speaking a language her Stone could decipher. "Rare is the need for conflict among Dragon-kin. If we three must endure the dance of death, I wish to know the name of yours and her Sire."

Lord Golos grunted. "Golos, fourth Scion of He who Answered, the Yinglong."

Gwen, still in her egg, said nothing.

Though Lulan knew Golos' origins from Ryxi, hearing the Wyvern quote an exert from the Analects of the Mountains and the Seas made her Iron Skin prickle. Even now, her mind struggled to accept that she, a mere Sword Shaman from Huashan, was now standing shoulder-to-snout with mythical beings.

"And I am Shyvaphyr, seventeenth scion of He who slumbers in the Crown of Corals, the great Miommiriorthyr," the Dragon Turtle professed a more impressive-sounding title than Golos' father. “These young ones are Zitusphyr and Sevphr, my kinsmen.”

The two Dragon-kin measured one another. Golos was the scion of a true Mythic—and though Lulan knew nothing of the Sea Dragons, she could only assume the oceanic descends of the Bixi was older still. As for the Yinglong, she knew that the Dragons of yore from Chinese creation legends were already ancient.

Plop—as if to punctuate their present circumstances, a volley of hungry and deadly things dropped from the bottom of Gwen's egg-shell defence. The interruption was subtle, but the birth of yet another lamprey was enough to disrupt the respectful silence between Golos and Shyvaphyr.

As validation for her troubles, Gwen had sown enough anarchy to validate the Dragon Turtles visiting in person.

"Move aside, kindred of the tempest," the Dragon Turtle craned its neck in an attempt at intimidation, uncoiling another four or five meters of muscle and carapace from within the shell. As it spoke, steam rose from both its nostrils and the tooth-gaps of its enormous maw. "Our business is with the Conjurer behind you. Just as well, we are content to oblige if you wish compensation for your spoiled sport with your female."

Golos' response was to move between it and the Dark Egg behind them. At the same time, the Thunder Wyvern changed air currents around Gwen's egg with only his will, sending her Void shelter adrift. "The Scion of the Yinglong bows to no one, not even ancient Miommiriorthyr."

The Dragon Turtle was not surprised by Golos' refusal.

"A welcome insolence from our cousin of lightning—!" In Lulan's eyes, Shyvaphyr's face possessed an amazing ability for expression, considering her foe was a lizard in a half-shell. Yet, the sadistic glee was palpable. "Than I shall take the witch prisoner, and your Lord Father can pay the Coral Crown a lair's ransom to retrieve you and your pet!"

Golos grinned in return—with Lulan recognising the secret thrill running through the Wyvern's spine.

Before the Dragon Turtle even took its next breath, Lulan raised the mana in her conduits to their utmost allowance.

"VATAKA!" Shyvaphyr unleashed an aural assault in Draconic, warping the air as the power word rang out like a tolling bell. The command struck like a spark of electricity, triggering all the primal phantasms within Lulan's complying body. Her knees bent only slightly before her Naga Spirit negated the rest.

Not far, Richard's face grew ripe as cherries as he forcibly resisted the mental compulsion.

As for Gwen—Lulan felt confident that even if her saviour had heard the Draconic command, she couldn't care less.

The split second after Lulan felt her mind restored; everything happened everywhere simultaneously.

SCHWING—!

"Falling Star Sword!" Lulan sent three blades shrieking toward Shyvaphyr, while two and two made for the bodies of Turtle Zi and Turtle Se, whose names she could not recall.

Richard followed with the final syllables of a nursed invocation, causing the watery membranes to explode into mist, visually obfuscating his and Gwen's whereabouts behind thick veils of shifting haze.

Golos barged bodily into the leading Dragon Turtle, going for the throat.

Below the wrestling drakes, the junior Dragon Turtles responded with their breaths attacks aimed at Gwen.

Mid-tussle, Golos swept the smaller turtles with his Lightning Breath. Ignoring the Thunder Wyvern, Shyvaphyr turned his body, swinging his enormous shell so that he spun, head, tails, arms and all, propelled by gusts of superheated steam, transforming his body into a living disc of Draconic destruction.

In the chaos, Lulan could only focus on foes she was confident of besting. Her sword connected at the same time as Golos' attack. The blades on Turtle Zi struck only glancing blows, slicing off chunks of keratin before exploding into a thousand shards, embedding into the shell and the scaled-hide surrounding Zi's left flank and limbs.

Turtle Se had less luck, catching a sword in a gap between his armoured plating, allowing Lulan's Sonic Blade to dig an arm's length inward before it erupted, tearing out a gory chunk of scale and flesh about the size of her head.

Much to Lulan's alarm, Lord Golos' breath of plasma did little more than singe and disorientate the turtles, serving as testaments to the futility of Dragons fighting one another with breath attacks—ratifying why Shyvaphyr had chosen a more direct approach.

Lulan allowed herself to free fall, attempting to gain distance without drawing attention.

Unlike herself, Lord Golos did not possess skills akin to Misty Step—but even so, the Thunder Wyvern had greater agility than the spinning turtle could match. With a twist of his enormous wings and serpentine body, Golos avoided the slicing body-barge of the Dragon Turtle, then gave the centre a resounding smack with his clubbed tail, sending another shower of electric sparks to dance across the still-accelerating Draconic-discus.

Lulan's mana pool dipped as she manifested seven more blades, charging each with more weight and rigidity than their expired siblings.

"EE—EE—!" A clarion cry answered from somewhere below, less than a quarter-kilometre from the churning surface of the Shoal.

Ariel, who must have been waiting in ambush, now let loose a double-volley of Lightning Orbs from its horns, violently vivifying the underside of Turtle Zi and Se. The attack wasn't enough to damage the two—but was enough to paralyse both creatures for the second or two needed for Lulan to re-launch her blades.

This time, she sent the lot toward where Shyvaphyr's shell was weakest—the area near its rectum where several plates met.

SCHWING—!

SCHWING—!

SCHWING—!

CLANG—!

To Lulan's chagrin, the smaller turtles shrugged off Ariel's attack, adopted the defensive spin used by Shyvaphyr, and then deflected her blades so that not a single one could lodge themselves.

To get to the big one, Lulan accepted, she would have to hack through the small ones.

With a titillating wail, she switched tactics, forming her blades into an overlapping pattern so that all seven combined into a circular saw-blade edged with gleaming steel for teeth. Using the same magic that propelled the blades, her spellshaped Falling Stars engaged, becoming a whirling disc of death.

Fighting the strain on her mind, she sent the blade-circle wheeling for the wounded Dragon Turtle, the dubbed Se.

"EE—EE!" Twin volleys of Chain Lightning erupted from Ariel's horns, connecting both their foes. Unfortunately, the third jump fell short as the Elemental Lightning died, repelled by Shyvaphyr's absurd natural resistance.

SCHW—KREEEEEE—

Lulan's makeshift sword wheel connected with Turtle Se, engendering a blaze of sparks. The instant her sword-wheel kissed the counter-spinning Dragon Turtle, she lost control of three implements, sending the metal to bounce into the uncertain distance.

The momentum of her attack lasted only a few seconds, but it was enough, for Lulan felt the satisfying thunk of a blade crunching into soft flesh and striking bone.

At last! The Sword Mage congratulated herself. She couldn't see among the arcs of plasma, the screeching embers from the screaming metal and the rippling howls from Golos and Shyvaphyr's deadly tango of teeth and claw, but it was enough.

"BLADE SHATTER!"

The Sword Mage pumped nearly one-tenth of her total mana pool into the blast, forcing the iron into complete disintegration, propelling a thousand razors of flesh-rending metal.

From near Turtle Zi's neck, a crimson flower of scale and flesh blossomed, the fragments of which made plinking sounds as they passed Lulan's whistling air space, bouncing off her Iron Skin.

"GUAWRRRK!" The Dragon Turtle roared in protest—though it remained uncowed. Perhaps because the wound was shallow or the Dragon Turtle was too vital, the wounded beast barged toward her, hell-bent on pounding her into mincemeat.

Cursing, Lulan formed a sacred invocation using her off-hand digits, rapidly invoking the silent syllables of her next spell.

The enormous claymore she had held underfoot finally rose to action.

KRUNG!

The charging Dragon Turtle struck her steel barrier. Lulan tasted something iron and hot in her mouth as the pressure in her chest mounted. Then, the beast began its death roll.

Heavy! Lulan grunted in silence, swallowing the blood bubbling forth from her overcharged capillaries. These junior turtles may not be anything like the one Lord Golos was fighting. Yet, they still possessed the strength of industrial-sized Golems.

"Parry!" she commanded her remaining blades to converge, shifting the weight of the turtle's charge as its weight bore down on her lithe figure.

Quickly, she glanced to see that Richard and Ariel were keeping Turtle Zi busy.

For a few seconds, all she could hear was the sound of screeching metal-on-metal as her sword-forged net grew concave. Between her tortured grunts, Lulan heard Richard's voice warning her to dodge.

"Misty Step!" She evaded by reflex, then instantly regretted her unthinking action.

Using her sword net as something akin to a springboard, the wounded Dragon Turtle Se ricocheted from her conjured implements to move straight toward Richard's general direction somewhere in the mist.

"Dick!" Lulan cried out, not even using her Message Device. "Watch out!"

To her horror, the Dragon Turtle possessed the means to affect Elemental Water in a manner no less than Richard's Lea. An enormous localised vortex formed as the creature passed, dispersing Richard's visual obfuscation, revealing the levitating form of Gwen's Dark Egg.

"Cao!" Lulan swore, rapidly aligning each of her remaining blades. She had promised to protect her saviour! Even if it costs her life, she had to ensure that Gwen survived!

"STAR CHASING SWORD!" The invocation on her lips finished within three seconds. A derivative of Ryxi's Falling Star variant, the Star Chasing "spell shape" exchanged power for speed and was aimed at interception over that of destruction—even so, she feared it might be too late.

Including her claymore, seven streaks of quicksilver launched their foe-seeking selves toward the escaping Dragon Turtle.

Her spell struck.

But Lulan's heart sank.

The junior Dragon Turtle had missed Richard, tore through his defence barriers, and arrested Gwen's Dark Egg through manipulating the water even as her swords struck sparks against its shell, with only the claymore lodging into a damaged crack.

"BLADE SHATTER!" Her mana fell instantly below half as the super-dense metals erupted, peppering Gwen's Void Shield while sending forth pink specks of butchered turtle, shredded Dragon sinews, and shattered shell-fragments.

"LOREAT!" Before her swords could re-manifest, a swirling vortex of superheated steam erupted from Golos' whereabouts, making for Gwen's barrier.

Rapidly, the line-based Steam Breath expanded into a cone, enveloping both Turtle Se and saviour.

"Gwen!" Lulan desperately conjured swords for a barrier so that Gwen could escape the brunt of the attack.

CLANG—!

In her haste, she had failed to foresee that Turtle Se could distend its snake-like neck and waylay her implements. When she did see, the Dragon Turtle's eagle beak had already bit down with a crunch, bending her newly-conjured tools into decommissioned trash. "Richard!"

"Lulu—hold!" Richard's warning was not what Lulan wanted to hear. That, or she couldn't hear Richard's response, for the swirling steam now struck Gwen's Dark Egg in full, instantly peeling back the Void layer to roast the double-glazed barriers behind.

Gwen's "Gunther" shield lasted a single spell exchange before it shattered.

Lulan's Iron Heart grow suddenly hot.

Her skin took on the dull red hue of tempered steel, and her skull felt possessed by inexplicable tinnitus.

If I Misty Stepped into the Dragon Turtle's innermost reach, her mind informed her. Would it be enough to hack the creature down?

Around her, fresh slabs of iron, each the size of claymores larger than her shaking body, slid forth from rents in the Elemental Plane of Earth.

"Lulu!" Richard's voice barked somewhere in the recess of her mindscape, like a man calling from a clifftop. "HOLD!"

"CALAMITY!" Lord Golos' Draconic exploded as a thunderclap, shaking her brain like a madman rocking a geranium. "DO IT NOW—OR YOUR FEMALE IS GOING TO LOSE IT!"