Dustin felt his body suddenly grow heavy, as if a mountain were crushing his shoulders. Even lifting his arm became a struggle.
The ground beneath his feet roiled and churned, making it impossible to maintain a steady footing. Countless deadly stone spikes and rock walls closed in from all sides, sealing off every avenue of escape.
Summoning the last of his true energy, his longsword erupted with a final, pure radiance. The spinning sword light formed a protective shield around him. The clash of sword aura and stone sent fragments flying, the air thick with swirling dust.
Dustin’s sword remained razor-sharp, each strike cleaving through massive churrks of rock. But the onslaught seemed endless. Just as he destroyed one pile, another erupted from the ground.
Moreover, the crushing gravity limited his speed and strength. It made every swing of his sword a monumental effort.
His face had gone even paler, and his breath came in harsh, wheezing gasps. The webbing between his thumb and fingers split open, blood dripping freely.
“It’s a futile struggle,” Valindra said with a chuckle.
She formed hand seals and gestured toward the two massive stone dragons carved and coiled around the palace ceiling.
“Awake, my guardian!” she roared.
The eyes of the decorative stone dragons suddenly blazed with crimson light. A grating rumble of grinding stone filled the hall as their colossal forms shuddered to life. Stone fragments crumbled away, revealing dragon scales beneath that glowed with earthy yellow spiritual light.
Silent roars echoed as they broke free from the ceiling. They crashed down like twin avalanches-one from the left, one from the right onto Dustin and trapped him inside the jagged stone forest below.
Their claws were sharp enough to shred steel, while their massive tails swept with hurricane force, whipping up a violent gale.
With the stone dragons joining the fight, Dustin instantly fell into a desperate situation and was cornered on all sides. The ground he stood on churned and rose in jagged waves.
Around him, the gravity field pressed down with crushing weight, and above, two colossal dragons of limitless strength attacked him from both sides.
“Dustin!” Grace screamed. She watched in terror, her heart nearly shattering. She tried to rush forward, but the terrifying gravity field and rampaging earth and stone forced her back.
Dustin’s gaze remained calm, even in the face of certain death. While arduously wielding his sword to fend off attacks from both the ground and the stone dragons, he used his remaining divine sense to perceive his surroundings.
He noticed that the movements of the two stone dragons had an extremely subtle, synchronized fluctuation with Valindra’s hand seals and the yellow spiritual light circulating around her body. Even the churning earth drew its power directly from her.
Strike the head, and the body would fall.
Dustin was resolved to attack her. But breaking through the forest of stone and the two stone dragons blocking his path was another matter.
His mind raced, and a ruthless glint flashed through his eyes. He deliberately left an opening, slowing his movements by half a beat while parrying the claws of a stone dragon.
The dragon’s claws tore through his protective sword aura. They ripped four deep gashes across his left shoulder, cutting down to bone. The massive force sent him flying backward.
He slammed hard into a thick rock wall that had suddenly shot up behind him, coughing up a mouthful of blood. His energy was depleted in an instant, and he looked like he’d blacked out any moment.
“It’s over,” Valindra said, a gleam of triumph flickering in her eyes.
With such severe injuries and the suppression of the gravity field, she knew Dustin was incapable of continuing to fight.
She controlled the two stone dragons.
Their jaws opened wide as they lunged toward Dustin, who was still half-embedded in the rock wall and appeared too weak to fight back.
Simultaneously, the ground churned, and countless stone spikes lunged up like striking pythons, stabbing toward his back. But at that split-second between life and death, Dustin’s dim eyes suddenly flared with light that burned brighter than stars.
He’d been waiting for exactly this moment.
