Tephe continued to puncture Karle's scales and skin with her claws, causing him to scream in pain and flail around as he tried to push Tephe off him.
Large gashes appeared on Kalre's body where Tephe’s claws had sliced him open and copious amounts of golden blood flowed out and fell onto the ground below, where it sizzled due to the heat before evaporating.
[Sparesomechangebro (Earth): Nooo, what a waste of gold.]
[AlamoMatador4thewin (Earth): It’s not real gold but blood, you know?]
[Sparesomechangebro (Earth): How do you know? Perhaps their veins are actually filled with liquid gold.]
“Is the combat armour enhancing her combat abilities somehow?” Revi asked Adam as she stared down at her friend and goddaughter in surprise.
“No,” Adam replied to Revis' question, attracting the other dragons' attention as he continued. “The combat armour is just that, armour. It provides the wearer with greater protection and while it can provide unique additions to your body, such as my tail, it doesn’t specifically enhance the wearer's strength or attack power.”
“Tail?” Deirlo asked curiously.
Instead of replying, Adam just willed his tail to appear, after which it began to weave left and right behind his back as if it were sentient.
“Wow,” Deirlo gasped as Narven and Denog stared at the tail in surprise.
[OfficialKasumi (Aqua Primus): What is that?]
[OfficialRowena (Fenix Nest): His combat armour's tail, I forget you’ve never seen it before.]
[OfficialKasumi (Aqua Primus): Something like that’s possible?]
[OfficialKasumi (Aqua Primus): Apparently.]
Maya, who had been watching Tephe’s fight with great interest, turned around on Adam’s head after noticing his tail and looked down at it quizzically while following it with her eyes.
Suddenly, a particularly high-pitched scream of pain from Kalre caused their heads to snap towards him, where they found that Tephe had managed to leave a particularly nasty gash on his right hind leg.
[Handsome3horns (Vinox 2): Shit, that looks painful.]
[Superior4horns (Vinox 3): Serves the bastard right.]
[HackerSu (Trillion): Tephe’s really not holding back, is she?]
As he screamed in pain, Kalre’s thick tail whipped around and managed to slam Tephe on the side of the head, causing her to stumble sideways before taking a moment to shake her head.
Kalre took advantage of Tephe’s distraction to stand up and leapt away to the edge of the platform in order to create some distance, though he winced slightly as he landed back on the platform.
[Gunlovergirl (Earth): Aww, damnit, he got away.]
[Lizziethetruepower (Palaxia): Lucky shot.]
[OracleRomy (Elysium): That leg injury looks like it hurts, though.]
“DAMN BITCH!” Kalre shouted angrily as he glared at Tephe with a mixture of rage, pain and humiliation before saying, “Screw the rules, I don’t care anymore.”
As he finished speaking, he opened his maw before a blue light started to gather there.
[OfficialMuriel (Aqua Primus): He’s using his breath attack again.]
[LadyErkath (Alastor): Something tells me he’s not going to underestimate her this time.]
Adam was about to interfere after hearing Kalre’s words, but Revi put a hand on his shoulder to stop him while saying, “Wait, I want to see this.”
Adam gave her a look of surprise before saying, “You know he’s going to use a full-powered breath attack, which Tephe can’t handle.”
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“That was before,” Revi replied calmly before pointing at Tephe while saying, “Besides, she doesn’t look too worried.”
As Adam focused on Tephe, he saw that she had also opened her maw and that a green light had started to gather within it.
“Green! Why is it green?” Deirlo asked in shock.
“That doesn’t make sense. How can the armour affect her breath attack?” Denog asked in surprise
“Was that human lying?” Narven asked as he glanced at Adam before looking back at the fight.
[Gunlovergirl (Earth): Oh, here we go.]
[NonpareilRaphilia (Aaru): Why is Tephe’s breath attack green?]
[Justiceistruth (Earth): Well, the rest of her is green.]
[Celebrityhunter69 (Earth): That’s because of her armour, idiot. How can it affect something that isn’t part of her body?]
[DeverinianLordMalacoss (Deverinian 9): There is obviously more going on here than we originally realised.]
Suddenly, both dragons released their breath attacks, causing the blue and green attacks to fly towards each other before colliding at the halfway point, where another power struggle began to play out.
As the power struggle continued, no one noticed because of how rapidly it was taking place, but the ground the dragons stood upon was going through two distinct changes depending on which side of the platform it was.
On Kalre’s side, the platform was rapidly freezing because of the water element mixed into the energy his breath attack was releasing, only for the ground to thaw almost instantly because of how hot it was, creating another steam cloud.
On Tephe’s side, the plant element that was mixed into her breath attack was causing grass and other small plants to appear; however, they too were almost instantly incinerated by the heart, creating a cloud of smoke that rose into the air and began to combine with the steam cloud.
“Smoke!” Revi said in surprise before asking, “Why is there smoke? The steam I can understand since that idiot's breath attack is probably causing ice to form on the ground beneath him, which then rapidly melts, but why is smoke coming from Tephe’s side?”
[StealthAssassin9 (Earth): Where there’s smoke, there’s fire. Could something be burning?]
[1000yearsofdeath (Earth): Yeah, the lava. Kekeke.]
[StealthAssassin9 (Earth): But the lava wasn’t causing any smoke beforehand, idiot.]
[OracleRomy (Elysium): Could it be from… No, that's impossible.]
[NonpareilRaphilia (Aaru): What, Romy, you thought of something?]
[OracleRomy (Elysium): Nothing, just a crazy idea that came to mind, but it’s not possible.]
[NonpareilRaphilia (Aaru): Now I’m even more curious.]
As the smoke and steam clouds continued to combine, water vapour began to form above the battle and although it evaporated almost instantly due to the immense heat from the lava, there was enough of it being formed that it was rapidly cooling the atmosphere around them.
“How has her breath attack increased in power in such a small amount of time?” Deirlo asked in disbelief before adding, “It’s obvious that the idiot is going all out as he wants to kill her, but she’s not being overpowered in the slightest this time.”
“It certainly seems impossible, it’s almost as if…” Denog began, before he noticed something that made him frown and asked, “Is the lava creating more steam?”
Before anyone could answer him, a huge steam explosion erupted from the lava surrounding the platform.
A giant steam funnel shot upwards and obscured the platform from view, while the resulting pressure from the explosions knocked Adam, Revi and the three dragons away and sent them tumbling through the air along with the stealthed microcams.
[Noobkiller9000 (Earth): Woooow, what's going on? Why did everything start spinning?]
[Whostolemyduck (Earth): It looked like an explosion took place and they must have been sent flying due to the force.]
[Handsome3horns (Vinox 2): An explosion? How's that possible? Things don’t just suddenly explode.]
[Lizziethetruepower (Palaxia): That male purple dragon said something about the lava steaming before it happened, maybe it was a steam explosion.]
[StealthAssassin9 (Earth): Steam explosion.]
[Beinglittleisnotadisadvantage (Strathorp 7): That’s possible, though extremely surprising.]
[HackerSu (Trillion): What do you mean?]
[Beinglittleisnotadisadvantage (Strathorp 7): This is all just speculation, but the combination of the smoke and steam cloud may have created water vapour in the air, but because of the high temperatures in the area, thanks to the lava, the water vapour was evaporating before anyone could notice it.
If water vapour were produced rapidly enough, it could, however, reduce the temperature in the surrounding atmosphere, leading to the water vapour surviving longer. Once that cooler water vapour-filled atmosphere interacted with the extreme temperature of the lava, a steam explosion may have been formed.]
It took Adam a few moments to regain control of his flight after being knocked away before he looked around and called out, “Revi! Where are you? Are you ok?”
“I’m fine,” Revi said from above him and as he looked up, he saw her flying down towards him while smirking at him as she added, “I’ve been flying far longer than you, after all.”
“We’re fine too, thanks for asking,” Deirlo remarked with a pout and a clearly jealous tone.
“What about Tephe?” Adam asked as he looked towards the platform to find that it was obscured by a massive steam cloud that covered the entire area.
“Can’t see anything through all that steam,” Nervan replied before adding, “But it would take more than a small explosion like that to hurt either of them.”
[Superherofangirl (Earth): That was small? It sent them flying.]
[Gunlovergirl (Earth): Yeah, I’ve seen and caused bigger explosions.]
[Whostolemyduck (Earth): They got lucky; it could have been far worse.]
[OracleRomy (Elysium): Both of them should be fine, even though they're young dragons; their race is still one of the most resilient in the universe.]
[Whitehorn (Darah 5): The main issue they need to figure out is how they're going to clear all that steam so we can see what’s going on.]
