Dragon Raja 3; Chapter 493: Divine Punishment (6)

Dragon Raja 3

“You, such a great being! Such a great being! I missed it! I missed it!” Herzog, caught in a state of extreme shock and despair, cried out. “I was so close to the ultimate power of the world! And I missed it!”

“I really can’t stand your habit of repeating everything twice,” Lu Mingze said calmly. “At funerals, the most important thing is to keep the speech short and to the point.”

Herzog stared at him, dumbfounded.

“What’s wrong? Isn’t tonight your funeral?” Lu Mingze feigned surprise. “This bright, moonlit night—what a perfect evening to bury a king. To hold a coronation and a funeral for a new king at the same time, that’s something even the Dragon Clan has never seen before.”

“I don’t believe it! I don’t believe it! I spent so many years! So many years getting to this point, and now I run into you!” Herzog screamed hysterically. “You’re supposed to be dead! You’ve been dead for a long time!”

“People need to face reality—you’re just too stubborn,” Lu Mingze sighed. “Though it wasn’t easy for us to reunite, I’m afraid I don’t have time to chat. A certain VIP client paid one-quarter of their life to buy your death, so you’d better start preparing to die.”

“What are you saying? I don’t understand what you’re saying!” Herzog was confused.

“You made a mistake. You offended someone you shouldn’t have.”

Suddenly, Herzog opened his mouth—not to scream, but to unleash a deafening chant. He manipulated the elemental chaos around him, and after condensing the fire element, it exploded violently, like a napalm bomb detonating not far from Lu Mingze.

Yanling: King’s Blaze! After inheriting the White Empress’ legacy, Herzog naturally gained the ability to use high-level Yanling, even mimicking the devastating abilities of the King of Bronze and Fire.

Once a scheming human, Herzog had now become a scheming dragon. After the initial shock, he quickly regained his composure. His earlier shouting was just to distract Lu Mingze while preparing to release his Yanling.

“Cancel,” Lu Mingze snapped his fingers, dispersing the elemental chaos in front of him. The once ferocious flames vanished as if absorbed into another dimension.

Next came the Wind King’s Eye, a high-level Yanling of wind and sky, once imitated by Jörmungandr in her disguise as Xia Mi.

“Cancel,” Lu Mingze snapped his fingers again, and the rapidly flowing air returned to a state of absolute stillness.

Cyan Lightning Control… canceled!

Black Flame Prison… canceled!

Bloodline Link… canceled!

In a matter of moments, Herzog unleashed five high-level Yanling. He knew that low-level ones wouldn’t work against Lu Mingze, and even high-level ones couldn’t severely wound such an opponent. His only hope was that the Yanling might temporarily weaken Lu Mingze, giving him a perfect opportunity to strike. But with five snaps and five “cancels,” all of Herzog’s efforts were rendered void. He finally realized the terror of the enemy before him—like himself, Lu Mingze was a complete master of the elements, able to control them purely through willpower.

“I won’t bother trying anymore. I know if I release a Yanling, you’ll just cancel it the same way,” Lu Mingze said, lowering his hand. He had been holding two pieces of metal torn from the Shinshin fighter. Sparks ran along the pieces, quickly melting the metal and reshaping it. What would take humans repeated forging efforts to create a sword, Lu Mingze completed in mere seconds. When the metal cooled, it took the form of two simple yet razor-sharp giant swords.

Futsunomitama and Ame no Habakiri—legendary swords from Japanese history, perfectly recreated in just seconds.

“It seems you still don’t understand the ways of the Dragon Clan. In our world, a battle between kings can only end with blood on the blade!” Lu Mingze let out a deafening roar, spreading his wings as he broke the sound barrier in an instant.

His Death Servitors roared fiercely, charging after him toward Herzog.

Since the beginning of recorded human history, there has probably never been such a dazzling showdown.

For those on the ground, the battle was nothing more than a series of thunderclaps in the sky, with flashes of lightning repeatedly illuminating the gaps between the clouds, as if glowing dragons were weaving through the storm clouds, spitting lightning.

For Lu Mingze and Herzog, every collision was a chaotic storm of elements. Superheated and freezing air currents tore through the clouds, slashing at both combatants. The clashes gouged massive holes in the clouds, which were quickly refilled by the surrounding storm. Each collision generated streams of high-energy particles, which neither of them could withstand easily. Their nervous systems were overloaded, and terrifying hallucinations flickered through their minds before disintegrating just as quickly.

This was a deathmatch between kings, a fight where nothing was held back.

Several times they drew close to the ground, skimming over the flooded streets at supersonic speeds. The glass in all the windows shattered in their wake, and towering waves followed them, reaching their peak a few seconds after they had passed. In some areas, the lights were still on, but where they flew, the high-energy particle streams surged through, causing power surges that tripped all the breakers.

Their battlefield shifted from Setagaya to Shinjuku, then to Minato, before leaving the land altogether, heading out over the sea. The F-2 fighter jets sent to reinforce the area didn’t dare approach the airspace. Radio systems were completely useless amidst the high-energy particle storm, and the jets that had previously entered the area had all mysteriously crashed. The sky over Tokyo had turned into a Bermuda Triangle-like zone of mystery.

Suddenly, the dense clouds shattered as the two collided like shooting stars, before bouncing off each other and hurtling toward the ocean.

Before they touched the surface of the sea, a powerful Yanling was unleashed, rapidly expanding into a domain that enveloped several kilometers of the ocean. It was a domain of extreme cold. The seawater, along with the fish swimming below, froze instantly. The waves turned to ice, and even the moisture in the air solidified, a blizzard sweeping across the frozen ocean in an instant.

They landed on the ice, their scorching dragon blood dripping onto the frozen surface. Both of them staggered back, gasping for air, as they forced their bodies to heal. The crude giant swords shattered into fragments smaller than fingernails, scattering across the ice, while Herzog tore one of his own Death Servitors in half.

Lu Mingze slowly knelt down, his shattered scales bleeding from countless puncture wounds.

Somehow, Herzog had gained the upper hand, despite the fear that had driven him mad when he first realized Lu Mingze’s identity.

Herzog revealed his trump card, a gleaming white blade—the tailbone of the Yamata no Orochi. In Japanese mythology, this tailbone was called Ame no Murakumo, the Heavenly Cloud-Gathering Sword. It was a sword born from nature itself, and Herzog had taken it with him when he left the Red Well.

In the face of this sword, the hastily-forged Futsunomitama and Ame no Habakiri were too fragile. Neither Lu Mingze’s scales nor bones could withstand Ame no Murakumo. In their countless collisions, it was often Lu Mingze who ended up impaled. Only his superior healing ability allowed him to keep recovering, charging back into the fight again and again. All his Death Servitors had been slaughtered by Herzog. In a deathmatch between kings, the Death Servitors were too weak. As Lu Mingze had predicted, in the end, he fought alone.

He forced himself to stand upright, but only barely. Herzog watched from afar, laughing maniacally at the once fearsome, imposing figure that had made him tremble.

“Hahaha! So, you’re not complete after all! If you were, I’d be dead already!” Herzog pointed at Lu Mingze. “You may have the form of a king, but you’re a fake! You’re not the great being you pretend to be!”

“You’re right, you’ve seen through me,” Lu Mingze replied calmly. “Neither of us is complete. The difference is that I have the heart of a dragon but lack the full bloodline of a Dragon King, while you have the complete bloodline of a king but harbor a cowardly human heart.”

Lu Mingze looked down at the wounds on his body.

Half of his scales had been stripped away by Ame no Murakumo, leaving his flesh in tatters, like a fish that had been descaled. A complete dragon has over a thousand bones, and more than two hundred of Lu Mingze’s had already been broken. But the worst injuries were internal. Herzog had repeatedly targeted the same spot with his razor-sharp sword, tearing through the scales and creating massive wounds in Lu Mingze’s organs. For a dragon, external injuries could heal easily, but healing internal wounds was far more difficult.

Some sort of supercell, akin to nanomachines, was still working to repair Lu Mingze’s body, but similar cells were also healing Herzog’s injuries. Herzog’s wounds were far less severe. Before they had landed on the sea, Herzog had even managed to unleash his extreme cold Yanling.

By the time Lu Mingze was ready to fight again, Herzog would have fully recovered, and could kill him countless times in the meantime. Herzog was the newborn king, and Lu Mingze was the king of an older age. History always followed this pattern: the strong new king cutting off the head of the old.