Wizard: Starting from the Skill Tree

Chapter 861: Chapter 773: Felling Audric

This isn’t truly unlimited regeneration, but a form of overdraft.

Those golden flowers don’t appear out of thin air; they consume Audric’s Origin Power.

Every flower that blooms costs him a portion of that power.

He can use these flowers to heal his wounds, but every healing makes his strength that much weaker.

There’s no way he can maintain this state forever; his Origin Power is finite.

Duke didn’t know where that limit lay, but he knew that as long as he dragged this out, Audric would run dry sooner or later.

Duke shifted his strategy.

He stopped trying to wound Audric and focused instead on evasion and harassment.

His sand-flow roamed all over the battlefield, keeping Audric from locking onto his position.

The colossus no longer clashed head-on with the dragon, instead leveraging its speed to dart rapidly around the dragon, striking from different angles, then retreating at once.

Not a single sword stroke sought to be fatal; they only aimed to carve one more wound on the dragon, to burn one more golden flower.

Audric realized what Duke intended.

Golden fury burned in his Dragon Eyes, and his roar shook the entire battlefield: "You think I can’t see it? Trying to stall for time—let’s see how long you can hold out!"

Duke said nothing and simply kept moving.

His sand-flow traced dark-gold arcs around the dragon, like a net that kept tightening.

Audric gave chase in a frenzy.

His dragon claws slammed at Duke—Duke scattered; his dragon breath swept across the battlefield—Duke dove underground.

Audric wanted to take out the colossus first, but the colossus was far faster than he was; every strike he threw hit nothing but air, and every turn of his body earned him another sword in the back.

His Scale Armor was crisscrossed with sword marks; golden blood seeped from his wounds and dripped to the ground.

Those golden flowers still bloomed, but they were fewer and fewer, and their blooming slowed.

"Is that all you can do, dodge?!" Audric’s voice shook with rage. "Just burrow around like a rat?!"

Duke’s voice drifted out of the sand-flow, as calm as if he were discussing something trivial: "As long as I’m the one standing at the end, that’s enough."

Audric let out a roar, his dragon claw slamming down onto the ground and blasting open a massive crater.

The sand-flow shot up from the bottom of the pit and reformed into a human shape in the distance.

A faint smile hung at the corner of Duke’s lips. It wasn’t mockery, but something colder, lighter—like a Hunter watching his prey step by step walk into the trap.

An anxious flicker flashed through Audric’s eyes.

But he couldn’t catch Duke.

The man was like a loach, slipping through his fingers.

Audric was already at his limit. He could feel the Origin Power in his body pouring away like sand in an hourglass.

He knew he couldn’t drag this out any longer.

Resolve flashed in Audric’s Dragon Eyes.

His wings snapped wide, and his massive body shot straight up, piercing into the sky.

Audric wasn’t fleeing; he was preparing for the final strike.

Duke lifted his head, watching that golden dragon climb higher and higher—from hundreds of meters to thousands, from thousands of meters into the clouds above.

The dragon’s figure rolled within the clouds, golden scales refracting a blinding light under the gray-white sky, like a star about to burn out making its final struggle.

The dragon halted, hovering above the cloud layer.

Its wings slowly folded in, wrapping its whole body, like a gigantic golden cocoon.

Audric’s voice came from within the cocoon, low and hoarse, laced with a near-mad resolve: "Duke—this time, you won’t dodge it!"

The Dragon-tongue chant began.

It wasn’t a sound a human throat could produce, but an ancient language carried down through millions of years in Golden Dragon Blood.

Every syllable was like a war hammer smashing between heaven and earth; the air trembled, the ground cracked, even the leaden clouds overhead were shaken apart.

Those syllables echoed above the cloud sea, spreading outward layer by layer like ripples on water—like the inescapable descent of some fate.

Duke couldn’t understand the words, but his instincts were screaming.

His Spiritual Sea churned violently, his heart hammered faster, and every cell in his body told him that something was awakening.

The clouds began to spin, centering on the dragon’s position, forming a colossal golden vortex; flames burned along its edges, while the center glowed with bottomless dark-gold light.

The vortex spun faster and faster, wider and wider—from thousands of meters to tens of thousands, from tens of thousands to swallowing the entire sky.

The leaden firmament was torn apart by the vortex, revealing the deep, dim heavens behind.

High in that firmament, something was taking shape.

Duke narrowed his eyes, staring at that ever-brightening golden radiance.

His Spiritual Power couldn’t pierce that barrier; he couldn’t sense what was happening within the vortex.

But he could see, at the very center of the vortex, a vertical pupil slowly opening.

It was not Audric’s eye, not the Dragon Eyes of the giant dragon, but something older and far more powerful.

Golden fire burned along the rim of the vertical pupil. It wasn’t ordinary flame, but the materialized Origin Power of Golden Dragon Blood.

The pupil itself was a bottomless dark gold, a yawning abyss that seemed able to swallow all light.

Around the edges of the pupil, countless tiny golden runes flowed. Each rune held enough power to annihilate a city.

Duke’s own pupils contracted to pinpoints.

He recognized this move. Not long ago, Adrian had been insta-killed by the beam that shot from that very vertical pupil.