Chapter 655: Rain is annoying

Both Ume and Vyaghra’s breath hitched as Maximilian destroyed the body of First Elder into pieces. In all the decades Maximilian had taught them, he had never once raised his voice, as if he weren’t even capable of speaking loudly. Nor had he ever grown furious despite the blunders the two had made.

He was like a peaceful monk with immense knowledge and a calm heart. That was, at least, his image in Vyaghra and Ume’s hearts.

What they were currently seeing was the farthest thing from the saint they knew. His expression was dark, black lightning crackled around his skin, and veins bulged across every part of his body.

He moved out of the black hole and into the cosmos outside. Forming a slow series of hand signs, he muttered in a cold tone,

"Gravitational Collapse: Crush!"

The bodies of the remaining three elder dragons began to twist and buckle from their centres. Scales shattered and spines folded inward. Every inch of them was dragged towards a single point at their core, compressing until their colossal frames were nothing but a dense knot of flesh and bone. Then even that vanished, consumed by the black hole. Not even a scream left their throats.

The cosmos around them began vanishing like a curtain lifting off the world. The broken land about a hundred feet beneath was revealed first, along with the huge crater left by the Limit Breaker Vajra. At its edge, the injured cultivators were climbing to the surface, still desperate to put some distance between themselves and the battlefield with what little movement their broken bodies allowed.

Rain began pouring down once again as the domain completely vanished, revealing the dark clouds above the trio.

Maximilian’s hair clung to his face, turning damp. Blood began washing down from the small gaping hole in his abdomen where the Third Elder had impaled him, dripping from his torso and falling into the air below. The rain had already turned the dust of the crater into a thick brownish mud.

Maximilian’s golden eyes shifted to the ground. Vincent and Felix were absent.

Tap! Tap! Tap!

The heavy rain continued to strike his body, the water tracing lines on his face before dropping from his chin to the ground far below.

Ume in his arm and Vyaghra on his shoulder looked at him with worried eyes. Ume was about to speak when Maximilian raised his head towards the clouds above.

"This rain is annoying..." he muttered, extending his other hand towards the sky. "Stop!"

A beam of dark lightning ascended from his palm and struck the dark clouds.

The sky slit open, the clouds scattering outward from where the lightning struck. The rain stopped, and sunlight reached the earth for the first time that day, painting the ruined land in a golden hue. The puddles in the crater shimmered, and the mist rising from the wet ground glittered like a veil of gold dust.

"Please calm down, Master," Ume murmured, wrapping her little arms around his waist, careful not to touch his injury. "You are wounded. Let Mriga heal you."

"Listen to Her Majesty, Master," Vyaghra also insisted. "Your wounds need to be treated right away."

Maximilian raised Ume by her underarms until her adorable fox face was level with his. He moved her closer and kissed her forehead. The tenderness immediately sped up her heartbeat, the six little tails tensing behind her.

"I’m sorry for coming late," Maximilian whispered once his lips parted. "I promise you will never experience something like that again."

He grabbed Vyaghra from his shoulder by the back of his neck. "You two are my pride. And pride is the identity of a dragon. When they insulted and harmed you two, they insulted my very pride."

Both Ume and Vyaghra understood what he intended to do. They also knew there was no stopping him. Although his voice seemed calm, they could sense the raw fury boiling inside him, like a storm hidden beneath still water.

"Wait here," he told the duo, lowering them to the ground with a sway of his hand. "I will be back in a few minutes."

Before either of them could stop him, a rift appeared in space, and he was already gone.

---

"W-we must inform the clan about Maximilian’s appearance and the emergence of Gumiho," Vincent muttered, sitting cross-legged on the bed. A thin veil of white energy covered his body, rapidly healing the wound in his abdomen.

Felix sat on the bed opposite him, healing his own wound. The grand chariot in which the duo were sitting had already crossed several thousand kilometres of the Western Continent. However, it would still take them half an hour more to reach the Abyssal Sea. They needed to heal their injuries in that time so that they could fly across the sea with their wings, since flying artifacts were useless there.

"Tch, if we had waited a few more minutes, we could have taken their heads home," Felix muttered, his brows furrowing. "The elders had already released their Soul Domains. Maximilian must have been shredded into pieces by now!"

Vincent didn’t share Felix’s thoughts. Unlike Felix, who had been pampered and spoiled by his mother since childhood, Vincent wasn’t that naive.

From the massive dragon head that Maximilian had manifested as casually as breathing, Vincent could tell that he wasn’t just any Early-Stage Celestial Dragon. He still remembered how easily Maximilian had bested the heirs of the five clans during the banquet.

Not to mention that Gumiho, the only being rumoured to possess the potential to overpower the dragons, was his disciple. What were the chances that the dragon prophesied to become the bane of the dragon race had, as his disciple, the only being who could harm the dragons?

Moreover, several Celestial Dragons had surrounded the Riftlands from the moment Maximilian was exiled, yet none of them had sensed him escaping.

"Still, we shouldn’t take the risk," Vincent insisted, fixing his robe now that his injury was almost healed. "Maximilian is dangerous. He is the son of the Almighty Sovereign, after all."

Felix scoffed, rolling his eyes in annoyance as he declared, "The so-called Sovereign who was slain by his own people?"