--- Elena's POV ---

We snuck into the capital cities of a few of the leading nations, but seeing that their leaders were still in their cities, we left them alone. Considering their conspiracy, they probably wanted to wait until either we or Padinyss won the battle and then they’d finish off the winner.

Taking that into consideration, maybe the Kobolds’ existence wasn’t a bad thing. It took only a few hours to reach the island in the middle of the Moonlit Sea. “Should we send somebody to call Padinyss over?” I asked.

“Well, Audrey and the dark scars are on the way, but their task is to free Cor and Jake. I don’t want to reveal them, so we should do something flashy to catch Padinyss’s attention,” Dred replied.

I bit my lower lip as I looked at the red ring on my finger. “We could use this.”

“Do you want to summon a volcano? But it might cause trouble for us as well and I’m pretty sure Padinyss could take a bath even in a pool of lava.”

After slapping my cheeks to get some courage, I nodded my head. “I hope that we’re going to be alright.”

“Hey, now. We managed to kill Ekrok when he was still much stronger than us. Although it took a few days until we healed, we survived. I’m pretty sure we can beat up this stupid dragon,” Dred sat down on the ground.

“Pfft- hahaha, you look hilarious! A bear sitting on his ass,” I couldn’t help but laugh.

“What? Oh, it’s comfortable. Anyway, use it. We’re running out of time,” he replied.

“I’m going to miss your ring,” I sighed while looking at the blue ring on his finger. It helped us advance a lot thanks to the increased mana density.

“Same here, now use it,” he urged me.

Raising my hand, I poured my mana into the Ring of Fire. It lit up with a bright red light and even the sky changed its colour. Huge waves raised out of the sea and clashed against each other while the island trembled. It was a simple matter to make the waves change destination and avoid the island.

A huge volcano rose from beneath the sea and filled the area with gas. The water heated up and reached its boiling point, probably cooking most of the weaker monsters by doing so. As the volcano stopped rising, it started spewing lava.

I couldn’t tell its height since it raised above the dark grey clouds which poured acid rain upon us. “This should catch his attention,” I said as I sat down on Dred’s huge lap and used him as a pillow.

He put his paw on my belly and raised his head, “Enjoy this until you can.”

“Do you plan to use your panther form or stay like this?,” I muttered.

“I'll see, depends how he fights, but I think I'll be forced to use my bear form most of the time since Cor isn't here.”

Half an hour later, we noticed a smaller dragon appear far away, but as soon as it spotted us, it turned around. It took only fifteen minutes for another huge dragon to appear.

It had black scales with green lines running among its scales. This was an aspect of the reptilian legendary creatures like the Twelve Headed Hydra and the Dragon God. Although the space between the scales could be called a weak point, it wasn’t that simple.

The green part was a gelatinous substance which was able to absorb almost any kind of smashing and thanks to the scales, slicing and cutting were of no use either. To top it all off, they had inner layers as well packed on each other with no opening like the outer layer. Those scales were also much harder than the outer layers.

This meant that Dred’s claws were of no use against Padinyss and since that green layer absorbed mana, it’d be also hard to hurt him with magic. We were in for a good fight, but we had devour, so we weren’t afraid of him. “If not for the level difference, we could easily take care of him,” I muttered.

“Well, I wouldn’t dare to state that alone, but if we fight together, then sure,” Dred replied as he stood up and put me on the ground. “It’s time.”

Padinyss landed in front of us and his size decreased. His body was about three meters long not counting his tail and his wings had a wingspan of eight meters. The fact that he could use them as blades was rather threatening, but considering that almost every inch of his body was a weapon, it didn’t matter a lot…

“Hello~ I imagine you don’t want to get stuck here in case you manage to kill me and I’m of the same opinion. So we should open the seal, right?” he said, visibly amused to see us again after so many months.

“I’m glad to hear that you’re at least a bit reasonable,” I nodded my head.

“No, no. You have no idea how reasonable I am! I happened to hear about your strange idea to not devour everyone and kill only those who you find guilty,” he flapped his wings.

“What’s your point?”

“I know that I’m a bit on the edge pertaining this, but I’d rather not risk my life if changing the way I lived would save me the trouble. That’s why I have an offer. I won’t do bad stuff anymore and once we break the seal, I’m going to level up and leave this place behind. You can do whatever you want. Additionally, I’ll also let go of your blood servants. How about it?”

“This sounds fishy,” Dred whispered in my mind.

“It doesn’t matter, we must kill him or the abyss is going to take us down. But we could accept it for now and once Jake and Cor are free, we could attack him.”

“No way, by the time we reached Cor and Jake, he could reach the six hundredth level and we both know that it’s an entirely different thing. He could create his own world, teleport, and use the world laws… no way in hell I let him level up. We’d be dead meat if that was the case,” Dred persuaded me in no time.

“Ugh, true. Then we should attack him as soon as the seal is broken.”

“Yes.”

“But we can still say okay, maybe he’d let his guard down…” he added.

“Well, that’s unlikely to happen but okay.”

“We agree,” I said aloud.

“That’s great. Shall we break the seal now? I’ll lead the way,” Padinyss flew to the middle of the island and landed on top of the stone building. Both of us jumped onto the building.

“So how do we go about this?” I asked and crossed my arms, “Also, where is the carrier of the ring of darkness?”

“Just pour your mana into the rings,” he replied. “And he should be here in a bit.”

Just as he finished talking, Shin appeared in front of us. “My friend is going to be fine, let’s get over with this,” he urged us while looking into my eyes.

“Have you met Cor?” I asked with a smile.

“I don’t know who you’re talking about,” he raised the sides of his lips.

“What’s this?” Padinyss furrowed his brows.

“Ah, nothing. Let’s hurry up and kill these two,” he poured his mana into the ring.

Shaking his head, Padinyss told him he wouldn’t kill us and then followed him.

I hesitated for a moment since I didn’t want to summon another volcano, but seeing that nothing happened with their rings, I did as told nonetheless. I was surprised to see that despite being filled with mana, the rings didn’t do anything and just started to melt on our fingers. My ring dripped onto the ground as if it was lava, though the other rings were the same just with different colours..

Even though the roof was flat, the liquefied ring spread out and covered the whole roof. The rings on Dred’s and Padinyss’s fingers did the same and mixed with mine, creating an eight coloured surface, much like Audrey’s drip element. I wasn’t sure what would follow, so I hopped off of the roof and ran to the beach.

An eight coloured tower of light shot into the sky a few seconds later and started to spread through the whole planet. The volcanic gas disappeared as if it was never there and the sky became so clear that we could see space from the ground.

“Well, I’m going now,” Shin jumped off of the rooftop and turned into an eagle. He just came and left as if there was nothing important going on here… but I was pretty sure that he wanted to help Cor.

“Isn’t it amazing?” I sighed while looking at the star-filled sky.

“What?” Padinyss waved his tail.

“Space. It’s so empty yet full of life. I should turn the world into something like that, clean the trash and leave only the beautiful stars,” I lowered my head and smiled at him.

“Oh?”

“You know, you’re one of the trash I should take out,” I said while two daggers of shadow formed in my hands and Dred appeared behind our dear enemy.