Dragons begin with courage

"I am not human."

"It's nothing... Ronald Don."

He paused, as if savoring the fleeting and illusory warmth that the name brought, before gently discarding it.

"I am……"

He turned around. The face was none other than Old Tang's—the same cowardly and pathetic bounty hunter who used to take orders on the hunter website, always clamoring to make money to treat Lu Mingfei to a lavish meal. But those eyes now burned with a molten gold-like flame, and deep within their pupils lay an ancient majesty and… a lingering trace of human desolation.

"The King of Bronze and Fire"

!!!

These six words, like six heavy hammer blows, slammed into everyone's hearts! King of Bronze and Fire! The noble first-generation race! One of the four monarchs! A symbol of destruction and forging!

But why... is He in such a human form, sitting in such an ordinary bronze hut? The loneliness and confusion emanating from His back even made Nono, for a moment, absurdly think of another loser who always had slumped shoulders—Lu Mingfei.

The air seemed to freeze. Time stretched out in that moment, each second filled with suffocating pressure.

Caesar's golden eyes burned to their fullest extent, and he gripped Dick's sword hilt so tightly it creaked, but he did not act rashly. Facing a fully awakened First Generation Dragon King, any rash move could lead to instant annihilation.

Ye Sheng and Jiu Deya instinctively huddled together. Having experienced a brush with death once, they could better understand the terror of facing the monarch in person. It wasn't just a simple suppression of power, but an absolute dominance stemming from the level of life and the authority of rules.

Pacino was deathly pale; the pain from his wounds seemed to be overshadowed by an even greater fear.

Zero was like an exquisite doll, expressionless, but her fingertips had already silently rested on the safety of her weapon.

Nono was the first among them to recover her senses from the shock. Her profiling talent went into overdrive, trying to decipher the extremely contradictory scene before her: the dragon king's divine might and human form, the immortal monarch and the ordinary dwelling, the power of destruction and that trace of... loneliness.

"Ronald Don..." Nono murmured to herself, "Where have I seen that name before...?"

Nono's mind raced as she desperately tried to recall the name, but she really didn't remember it. She might have just glanced at it in a document during a mission, or perhaps she had only heard someone call it that name at a rendezvous in the United States, or maybe it was just someone with the same name.

Norton's voice turned metallic and hard, "You've trespassed into my land, even planning to pollute my Nibelungen with ridiculous little toys..."

His gaze swept over the Dictator in Caesar's hand, the equipment on Nono's waist, and finally landed on Ye Sheng and Jiu Deya.

"...and they also took my things (the Seven Deadly Sins and the urn)."

A chilling killing intent began to permeate the air.

"He deserves to die."

The sky, which had originally simulated the appearance of some ancient dome, suddenly cracked like a shattered mirror! The fragments did not fall, but were pulled, flipped, and reassembled by an invisible hand! Huge bronze plates moved and spliced ​​with a roar, emitting a deafening sound like the grinding teeth of a primordial beast!

Time and space changed dramatically! In just a few breaths, the entire "sky" as far as the eye could see was completely replaced by cold, heavy bronze domes engraved with flowing gold patterns! They were no longer in a "room" or "underground space," but were forcibly stuffed into a world made entirely of moving bronze.

Roar—!!! The dragon's roar rose again, this time not from below, but from the newly formed, slowly rotating bronze dome! From the gaps and slabs of the dome, countless black shadows emerged like locusts—the bronze spirits with snake heads and human bodies! They were densely packed, covering the entire "sky," their silver pupils like cold stars, silently looking down.

At the very center of that "heavenly army" formation, Samson, the dragon attendant, spread his enormous wings to obscure the view and stood suspended in mid-air, like a bronze marshal commanding this undead legion.

"It's them...all of them...all of them have come..." Pacino's voice was shrill and distorted, as despair overwhelmed him like a tidal wave.

Whoosh! Like a torrential downpour, or the end of a robot factory assembly line! Hundreds and thousands of bronze spirits leaped down from the high bronze dome! They crashed to the ground with a dull thud like war drums, then stiffly and swiftly rose to their feet, their silver pupils locking onto their targets, slowly closing in from all directions.

Samson folded his wings and, like a meteorite, crashed to his knees before Norton, his massive head bowed low. The escape route? It had vanished. Nono and the others felt as if they were trapped inside a shrinking, deadly bronze cube.

"Run!" Ye Sheng roared, his adrenaline forcibly suppressing his fear.

"Where do we go?!" Pacino looked around in despair, surrounded by writhing bronze and cold silver eyes.

"Forward! Get away from this area!" Caesar forced out the command through gritted teeth. Dictator was finally drawn half an inch from its sheath, the alchemical patterns on the blade flickering erratically, as if trembling as well. He didn't know what lay ahead, but if he remained still, he would be completely swallowed by the tide of bronze in the next second.

The Bronze and Fire King's powerful alchemy created an army of living bronze spirits. Not to mention Caesar and his six men, even sixty or six hundred men couldn't defeat this army!

"It's the end!" Pacino rushed to the front and saw a bronze wall in front of him, which completely extinguished his last bit of hope.

"The wall is it!" A flash of inspiration struck Ye Sheng, as if grasping at a last straw. "This is Nibelungen, the spatial rules are different from the outside world! Use the blood of the 'Key'! The blood of the 'Key' can open the gate of the Bronze City, and it can definitely open a gap here! This is our only..."

His words came to an abrupt end.

Because a huge shadow, obscuring all the "sky" above, descended suddenly with a deafening roar that tore through the air!

Samson, the Dragon Servant! He swooped down from the rotating bronze dome above them like a deadly meteorite, crashing down with a deafening roar between them and the seemingly only "path to survival"—the bronze wall!

The earth trembled violently, and the shockwave knocked several of the nearest bronze spirits to the ground.

Even more terrifying, the air around it began to distort and boil! The temperature soared to an appalling level in an instant, and even the bronze ground began to turn dark red, as if it were about to melt!

"It's Word of Power... Lord's Flame!! Scatter!!!" Caesar's pupils contracted to their maximum size as he roared!