Six-Armed Serpent Demon

Page 134

The Golden Dragon has a unique feature around its mouth: barbels, which are not found in other true dragons. These barbels resemble the whiskers of a catfish. The older a dragon is, the more barbels it has. The same applies to the Golden Dragon species. Ordinary Golden Dragons have between two and eight barbels, while the "Golden Catfish" has eight.

This is because he has lived for nearly seven hundred years.

As one of the oldest followers of the Golden Dragon, "Golden Catfish" spent his entire life dealing with the sea. He served as a county magistrate, a ship captain, and was also demoted to sailor and soldier. This was because he loved drinking, and once ashore, he either gambled or slept with women, which clashed with the Golden Dragon's strict and rigid doctrines. The greater the achievements he made, the greater the trouble he caused.

"You have a golden coat and a full beard, but what makes you look like a golden dragon?"

One day, when he committed another grave error and was being whipped, the enraged golden dragon priest roared at him, "You're more like a despicable catfish!"

And that's how he got the nickname "Golden Catfish".

Over time, everyone only knew this old dragon as "Golden Catfish," and his real name was forgotten because no one mentioned it for so long.

Golden Catfish reached out and grabbed a sailor, patting his face: "Go find the captain! The enemy is down below!" He then shoved the bewildered man aside, drew his sword, and went down to the deck.

His weapon had a strange design; it was a sickle-shaped sword that resembled both an axe and a knife.

A strong, pungent smell of blood filled the air.

When the golden catfish entered the hold where the cannons were located, it found no one alive. The cannons were mangled and twisted, the walls were covered in blood, and corpses lay scattered everywhere. From the depths of the hold came terrifying chewing sounds.

The golden catfish tilted its head, looked ahead, and called out, "Who's there?"

The chewing sounds stopped.

Accompanied by heavy footsteps, a towering figure, nine feet tall, appeared before the old dragon.

At this moment, the appearance of the dog demon Antirk is neither that of a bear goblin nor a ferocious wolf, but rather a creature that combines the physical characteristics of both.

He walks upright like a humanoid creature, but his leg joints are bent backward like a wolf's, and his feet are huge claws.

The newly absorbed large amount of life force made the Great Dog Demon even stronger than when it had transformed into a bear goblin, its steel muscles covered with thick, sky-blue fur.

"Great, food, another one."

Antichrist grinned at the old dragon. His face, as fierce as a goblin's, stretched out, revealing the long snout and sharp fangs of a ferocious wolf. "I like you damned golden dragons. You smell like saffron and spices. The red dragons are not bad either; the smell of sulfur also whets my appetite."

"Dog Demon..."

The golden catfish sighed and twirled the sickle-shaped sword in its hand. "What a nuisance."

Before Antik could even see what was happening, the blazing sword blade pierced his left eye!

The dog demon howled, covered its eyes, and backed away.

The "Teleport" spell that had been cast on Antichrist hadn't dissipated yet. This was his signature spell ability, allowing the hound's body to blink and shift between the material plane and the aetherial plane. It made it extremely difficult for enemies to hit him with physical attacks and single-target spells.

But to my utter surprise, I was stabbed in the back by this old man with the golden dragon skin in the first encounter!

Damn, that old ghost's luck is too good!

Antik's muscles and hair twitched, and in an instant, a perfectly intact new eye appeared in its socket.

The old dragon sighed repeatedly, "It turns out to be a war shapeshifter. This is going to be difficult."

The War Shapeshifter class specializes in shapeshifting abilities, allowing them to develop the shapeshifting capabilities of living beings to incredible degrees.

As a war shapeshifter, Antirk can use his canine shapeshifting abilities to heal his wounds and regenerate limbs and organs, adjust his musculoskeletal structure to make his body stronger and faster, extend the length of his arms and neck, enlarge his teeth and claws, and even change the position of his brain and organs to escape severe injuries.

After regenerating his eyeballs, Andrei shook his neck from side to side, making a cracking sound. He began casting "Teleport," "Levitate," and "Berserk" on himself one after another.

“Good luck, you old bastard,” his eyes were bloodshot with rage, “as a reward, I’m going to tear you apart.”

Antirk lunged madly at the figure before him, waving its claws and stretching its neck to bite. But the old dragon was like a shadow, or a ghost. He seemed to move very little, yet all of the hound demon's attacks missed their mark.

Suddenly, a flash of sword light appeared before my eyes.

Antik stared blankly as a blue-haired nose rolled onto the floor of the lower deck. He blinked, bewildered. Only when a sharp pain shot through him did Antik realize with horror that it was his own nose!

"This is impossible!"

Antichrist clutched his noseless wound and roared with heart-wrenching fury, his confidence in the "Flash" spell shattered.

Blood flowed down his neck, staining his chest and abdomen red.

The dog demon then discovered that it had somehow acquired seven or eight wounds on its abdomen. These wounds had all cut through the flesh and penetrated deep into its abdominal cavity.

Antik was both shocked and furious, and his whole body trembled.

If it weren't for the good habit he developed of transferring all his internal organs to another place in advance since he became a war shapeshifter, he would be dead by now!

He didn't even see Lao Gui's movements!

“Puppy, your Blink spell,” said the Golden Catfish, “is useless against me.”

Only then did Antik notice that the old man's scythe-shaped sword gleamed coldly, its blade like a flowing beam of silver light. Not a single drop of blood stained it.

The dog demon suddenly remembered a legendary cosmic race that used thought and telekinesis to forge their weapons. Those blades, formed from force fields, could inflict damage extending from the material world to the etheric world, capable of cleaving through anything and ignoring any damage reduction.

The nemesis of "Flash" is force field weapons!

If it weren't for the fact that the "Anywhere Door" could only be used once a day, and that he had already used it when he boarded the ship, Antich would have loved to use the "Anywhere Door" to escape right now.

At this moment, the old man of the golden dragon race in front of him, his full beard swaying, slowly walked towards the panicked dog demon while rotating his wrist holding the blade.

"Could you do this 698-year-old man a favor?" said the golden catfish. "Go and die quietly, little dog?"

Chapter 178 A Seven-Hundred-Year History of Battles on a Small Island

"Fuck you!"

Antik roared at the old dragon, his voice as loud as the roar of cannons.

He then turned around and sprinted towards the depths of the hold.

The golden catfish followed him at a leisurely pace.

In the blink of an eye, Antik had reached the end of the hold.

Seeing that there was nowhere to go, the dog demon roared and used its monstrous strength to drag the cannon next to it away from the warship's gun port with a creaking sound.

He healed the knife wound in his abdomen, but didn't have time to use his shapeshifting ability to restore his nose.

The noseless dog demon turned its cannon, aimed at the slowly approaching golden catfish, and howled through gritted teeth: "Don't come any closer! Take another step and I'll blast you to death!"

"You've got some ideas, you little rascal."

The golden catfish kept moving, but raised its eyebrows and pointed with its unarmed left hand at the cannon in front of the dog demon, "But I think I have to remind you, you don't seem to be very good at using magic cannons. Just pressing the switch won't fire any cannonballs."

Antik looked at him with a mixture of surprise and anger, and shook his head.

“Fuck you,” he said. “Fuck you!”

The golden catfish chuckled, stopped, turned to face the dog demon, and arched its body.

His left arm was slightly bent, held at shoulder level, with the gleaming silver sickle-shaped sword resting on his left elbow, assuming a charging stance. This was the initial position for performing the Tiger Claw Style martial arts technique "Pounce Charge" using the stance technique "Sword Dance Stance" of the Iron Heart Style martial arts.

"The Sword of Military Strategy..."

Antichrist, a man of considerable experience, finally recognized the old dragon's profession, gritting his teeth, "You are the Sword of Military Path!"

He still couldn't understand how he had been hit by those seven or eight swords.

Now, seeing the golden catfish's posture, I immediately understood.

Legend has it that once the Steel Soul Style martial arts reach their highest level, one's reflexes and sword speed become so fast that they transcend time.

The one that Old Ghost just hit must have been the Steel Soul Style's ultimate move.

Without a doubt, who else could be the legendary sword maniac "Sword of Military Way" who is proficient in the techniques of the Steel Soul Style, Iron Heart Style, and Tiger Claw Style at the same time?

"You little dog do have some knowledge."

The old dragon's gaze became slightly more serious.

“As a reward, this time it’s not your eyes, not your nose, and not your belly,” the golden catfish said, “because I’m going to slice your neck into pieces. Unless you can move your brain into your ass, I’ll make sure you never have the chance to regenerate. Ready? One, two—”

Terrified, the dog demon roared and abruptly turned and scurried out of the cannon window.

A splash came from outside the window, and Andrei jumped into the sea.

The golden catfish put away its sickle-shaped sword.

He peered out of the gun vent and saw that Antirk had transformed into a giant blue wolf, half-floating and half-sinking on the sea, struggling to paddle along.

The golden catfish smiled and lowered the cannon window.

Just then, hurried footsteps sounded behind him; the captain was leading his sailors down the ship.

"Bosun, where are they?"

The captain was also a golden dragon. His uniform and armor were adorned with badges signifying his priestly status. As he approached the golden catfish, he stared in shock and fury at the horrific scene in the hold.

The golden catfish said in a nonchalant tone, "He jumped into the sea and committed suicide."

"Jumped overboard to commit suicide?" The captain peered out, his anger escalating. "You let him escape, didn't you?"

"How could that be?"

The Golden Catfish lazily pointed to the cannon that the Dog Demon had turned around, "That little dog is tough and strong by nature. I, this old man, have already tried to kill him, but he still managed to snatch a cannon. Look," he turned and gestured along the direction of the cannon's muzzle, "If he had fired a shot in this direction, it would have broken our bowpost. Luckily, I, this old man, am wise and brave, and I spoke my mind, making him realize the true meaning of life. So he put down the cannon and jumped into the sea to commit suicide."

The captain's eyes were practically spitting fire as he looked at the old bosun.

"Our gunner has been killed in action."

He gritted his teeth, "You let the pirates who killed them go! How are we supposed to complete the landing mission like this?!"

The golden catfish reached out to clean its ear canal.

"We've sent a total of seven gunboats. Even if this one can't fire, there are still six left. We have plenty of manpower to do the work, so what's there to worry about?"

"Others are others, and we are us," the captain said angrily. "That's our mission too!"

"Young man, don't be so impatient."

The golden catfish scoffed, "A mission, a mission, what's so great about a mission? Just because you conquer this island today doesn't mean it's yours from now on. You're just ignorant."

"you!"

"Stop with the 'you' and 'me' talk. More than four hundred years ago, I, an old man, conquered this island three times for the great golden dragon. How dare you, a mere brat, compare yourself to me?"

The captain was stunned by his outburst.

"Did we conquer this island?"

“You haven’t studied our war history, have you? Of course we’ve conquered it, but then lost it again,” the Golden Catfish said contemptuously. “Because no matter which city-state occupied this island, the other dragon kings couldn’t stand it and kept coming to fight it out. After a while, all the military expenses were wasted here, and the command decided it wasn’t worth it, so they withdrew their troops and abandoned the island.”

"During the last occupation, the two-headed evil dragon rose to power and killed its father, the former Red Dragon King of the North. The North was thrown into chaos, unable to attend to sea routes. Our foolish command thought the international situation was favorable and that a long-term occupation was feasible, so they stationed troops on the island. It turned out the Dawn Titans and the Elementals thought the same way, so they returned with a vengeance. That great battle… almost all the stationed soldiers died. I was part of that garrison; if it weren't for my passable swordsmanship and my affair with your great-grandmother…"

Upon hearing this, the captain's eyes widened and his fists clenched.

"Don't worry, with your stupidity, you're definitely not my offspring," the golden catfish said, glancing at him sideways. "And don't even think about fighting, you're no match for me. Anyway, before I was assigned to this island, your great-grandmother gave me a magic brooch, and it was that brooch that saved my life, otherwise I would be dead here... For the next four hundred years, we didn't try to take over this island again."

The old dragon bosun sighed.

"In the past four hundred years, the red dragon, the green dragon, and all sorts of other dragons from the north have all sent armies to try and occupy this island. In recent decades, the bronze dragon's army has also cleansed this island. The result is always the same: insufficient military funds, withdrawal, and abandonment of the island. And now we're back again. I mean, why don't those idiots in the command headquarters learn their lesson after this time and time again?"

Author's note: My heart hasn't been feeling well these past few days, so I went for a checkup and am still slowly taking supplements.

Chapter 179 Iron Lion

At this moment, the dock has become a jungle overgrown with thorns.

The golden dragon priest leading the group wielded the "Expanded Supermagic Scepter," which increased the range of spells, and cast divine spells in succession: "Blessed Precision" and "Thorn Web."

In an instant, all the nearby plants—trees, weeds, and shrubs—changed their shape, growing into countless thorny, dark green vines. The thorny vines lashed wildly in all directions, automatically climbing and entwining themselves around whatever they touched, instantly trapping the dwarf and the many hooded figures within.

The dwarf Sonnet raised his hand and cast "Dispel Magic," instantly withering and shattering the thorny vines that entangled him and the hooded figures around him. However, with the enhancement of the Extended Magic Scepter, the "Thorn Web" expanded several times over, and "Dispel Magic" was not entirely effective.

Just then, the strings on the other side began to fire incessantly.

"Damn it! Repeating crossbow!"

The dwarf Sonnetto immediately turned around and hid behind the hood that was closest to him.

Archers blessed with "Precision" have an extremely high hit rate, especially when the enemy has a large number of people and a dense barrage of crossbow bolts coming at them like a deluge!

The dwarf held on tightly to the fleshy shield in front of him, feeling his body trembling and vibrating incessantly.

The sound of arrows piercing flesh was incessant.

When everything returned to calm, the dwarf lifted his eyelids and peered around from behind the hooded meat shield's corpse.

The hooded soldiers suffered heavy losses, with at least a third of them falling.

Most of the hooded men either evacuated to the back of the warehouse building or found cover with other people, but several others were entangled in thorns and riddled with arrows. Looking at the corpses on the ground, each man had been hit by at least twenty arrows.

The sound of crossbows being cocked came from the other side; the enemy was reloading their repeating crossbows.