Chapter 114: The Golden-Furred Hou

A bloodthirsty smile flickered across Kazan’s face, and the firearms on Kant’s person began to preheat. Ran Bingqing clenched her fists, while the three mages began chanting various auxiliary buff spells in advance.

Everyone was prepared.

Facing the overwhelming deluge of dragon breath and wooden spears, not a single demon retreated. Having been modified by Adonsa, they were even more frenzied and bloodthirsty than their kin, while maintaining absolute obedience to Adonsa’s orders.

The rain of spears riddled the ground with dense punctures, and the dragon breath scorched the earth until it melted. Even a single inhalation of the searing air was enough to turn a respiratory tract into charred remains, yet these demons remained as ferocious as ever.

Adonsa had commanded them to destroy the human settlement while ensuring a specific number of humans and wyverns survived, and they would carry it out to the letter—even if every last one of them died, they would not kill a single wyvern more than allowed.

Conversely, the remaining wyvern knights were nothing more than lambs for the slaughter, fish on a chopping block.

Although most attacks failed to harm the demons, the dragon breath washing over the ground from the wyverns above left the demons feeling immensely irritated.

An ape-like demon opened its maw and roared, unleashing a beam of azure light the size of a basketball that swept across a large group of wyvern knights.

"Defensive formation, Radiant Barrier!"

The high-ranking wyvern knights linked their battle qi into a shimmering golden curtain, holding firm like chainmail against the roaring beam that would have melted them into plasma at the slightest touch.

The ape grew even more furious, increasing the output of its roar, and the light curtain began to flicker unstably.

Meanwhile, the demons nearby launched their own attacks.

One demon instantly transformed into a five-meter-tall fire demon, its lower body turning into the tail flame of a meteor. It surged into the sky, ejecting temperatures of tens of thousands of degrees, and slammed directly into the light curtain. The barrier buckled inward, and the wyvern knights closest to the impact suffered terrible blisters, clinging to life through severe burns.

The remaining demons transformed into sandstorms, lightning, and gale-force winds, charging into the formation of wyvern knights.

The entire light curtain shattered in an instant into countless specks of light. The bloodthirsty demons let out excited, unintelligible roars as fire novas, vacuum blades, and magnetized lightning storms unleashed terrifying destruction upon the wyvern knights, who faced certain death.

"Super-Power Stasis!"

At the critical moment, a spell that clearly did not belong to this world enveloped the entire field. The lightning, thunder, and firestorms were all frozen in mid-air.

Xiroya seized the opportunity and shouted, "Disperse! Retreat and regroup!"

Although the wyvern knights had resigned themselves to death, they hoped to take a demon down with them rather than perish under such cheap, indiscriminate attacks.

Ten seconds later, the terrifying assault poured forth once again, but let out cries of frustration as it failed to strike many targets.

The mobility of the wyvern knights was commendable. Under their frantic retreat, only the dozen or so unluckiest knights in the center perished, disintegrated into dust by the elemental attacks. The rest, despite serious injuries, managed to retain some combat effectiveness.

In the distance, Ava and the other two mages turned pale, letting out long sighs of relief as they swallowed mana potions as if they were water.

These mana potions, depending on their quality, could replenish varying amounts of mana, but continuous consumption led to high drug resistance in a short time. They were precious strategic reserves, but this was a life-or-death moment; there was no room for reservation.

It was precisely because the three mages had formed a triangular formation of mana resonance that they were able to cross tiers to unleash a powerful spell like "Super-Power Stasis," halting the high-energy attacks of the demons for ten seconds and buying the wyvern knights precious time to retreat.

The number of demons remained high, and the wyvern knights were a vital force for pinning them down. Only in the chaos of the battlefield could the Prism Squad fish in troubled waters.

The demons' long-range attack power was no weaker than the wyvern knights'. Xiroya’s anticipated fire suppression failed instantly. Even after escaping the initial calamity, the battlefield inevitably devolved into a mess. The wyvern knights were carved into several smaller battlefields by a handful of demons, launching attacks in vain, while the demons happily unleashed wave after wave of earth-shaking attacks, indifferent to whether they harmed themselves or other demons.

Facing such madness, the wyvern knights were mown down row by row like wheat.

Nash let out a muffled roar, his body emitting a series of crisp cracks. His burly frame slumped to the ground as wild golden fur sprouted from his rough skin. His bones lengthened and his size expanded until, within a few breaths, he had transformed into a strange, ferocious beast—part dog, part lion.

Nash’s profession was the very common natural-type caster, the Druid. However, in the context of the Box Court’s travel across myriad worlds, he had become a formidable combat unit. His strength lay in his tenacious vitality and his ability to steal bloodline powers to transform.

The beast he transformed into was known as the Golden-Haired Hou, a mount said to be favored even by deities. It played a major role in many legends and was even titled a "Dragon’s Son." It was a creature of complex origin, existing somewhere between a ferocious beast and a divine beast.

To steal the bloodline power of a wounded, pregnant Golden-Haired Hou in a certain Xianxia realm, his entire squad had narrowly escaped with their lives. That had been a brand-new plane where magic and technology were vastly different—a bizarre world that was not even shaped like a starry expanse, but was instead a "Flat Earth" world.

But the harvest had been immense. Just now, relying on his transformation into the Golden-Haired Hou, Nash had charged into the chaotic battlefield as if entering an empty land. In an instant, he swatted away several demons and pounced on one that resembled a limbed egg, pinning it to the ground. With a single bite of his sharp jaws, he tore away a large chunk of flesh, exposing the creature’s hard skull.

The violent hue in his golden slit pupils grew increasingly intense; Nash’s consciousness was on the verge of being swallowed by the beast’s savagery.

The egg-shaped demon’s cry sounded like a mix of a shriek and a mocking laugh. Amidst the shrill cries, Nash’s Golden-Haired Hou form displayed a look of agony, his body trembling abnormally as the ferocity in his eyes was ruthlessly shattered.

The fat mage hurriedly shouted, "It’s the Demon King that attacked me! Its mental power is incredibly strong!"

The psionicist Lin Zexi gritted his teeth while casting mental defenses for Nash, feigning nonchalance as he said, "What Demon King? How could a monster from such a backwater place know the true mysteries of psionic power!"

The egg-shaped demon’s mental power was merely a mutated ability. Compared to the systematic, scientific skill tree of a psionicist, its only advantage was a chaotic, massive volume of mental power that could almost crush any technical factor. Even when released stupidly in one go, it was far stronger than the painstaking defenses Lin Zexi could muster. The residual impact still slammed into the Golden-Haired Hou.

With the mental defense transmitted through Lin Zexi’s psionic link, combined with the innate resistance of the Golden-Haired Hou as a divine beast, Nash finally regained a moment of clarity. He controlled the beast to drive its sharp claws into the egg-shaped demon’s gaping maw, tearing it viciously while biting down hard on its shell-like skull.

Masseter muscles had always been the most powerful in biological organisms. The bite force of a mere dog could crush the hardest thigh bones, let alone a giant beast from mythology like the Golden-Haired Hou.

The Golden-Haired Hou’s jaws, as wide as a hotel gate, clamped down on the skull. The egg-shaped demon’s struggles became increasingly violent, its mental fluctuations exploding aimlessly. Both demons and wyvern knights were intensely affected. The stimulated demons grew even more brutal, while the wyvern knights were also influenced by the bloodthirsty emotions, stretching their already precarious formation until it was even more fragile.

Finally, with a heart-stopping *crack* and *squelch*, the demon with the heavily skewed mental ability finally stopped moving. Its final wave of psionic blast was released nonetheless.

A flash of light appeared in Lin Zexi’s eyes. He resolutely abandoned protecting Nash and instead transformed into a torrent, diving into the terrifying psionic blast, adding fuel to the fire and boosting the power of the blast even further.

Every living creature within thousands of kilometers felt as if their brains had been struck by a heavy hammer; their souls were nearly shaken from their bodies, and many wyvern knights involuntarily wobbled and lost altitude.

Provence was overjoyed; his squad had inadvertently created a mass-control effect covering the entire battlefield, buying precious time for the next phase of the battle.

A powerful warrior must learn to seize every fleeting opportunity and successfully expand upon it.

Even a mage must learn to do the same.

Ava also seized this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. The three of them performed resonant spellcasting, using spell scrolls to release compressed spell fragments to shorten the casting time. As they chanted the key incantations, they began to prepare a powerful and terrifying forbidden spell.

Nash, in his Golden-Haired Hou form, was at the center of the psionic blast. Blood flowed from his seven orifices. Neither ferocity nor reason mattered anymore; he withered instantly, unable to maintain his giant beast form. His figure shrank continuously, reverting to that of a burly man. He knelt, unable to speak, his head splitting with a pain so intense it felt as if it were about to explode.