Deep into the night in the southeast corner, the sky was far from empty.
Late night and early morning constituted one of the Dragon Knights' training periods, their regimen largely operating on a reversed day-night cycle. Torches on the ground and sparks occasionally spilling from the dragons' nostrils provided the only light. Graduating under such conditions ensured every dragon rider would adapt to night combat and low-light conditions in the future. On the other hand, even residents who rose during these hours would casually mistake the dark shadows streaking across the sky for birds.
Residents would eventually grow accustomed to dragons' presence, but not yet—new drivers on the road inevitably cause accidents. If people mistakenly regarded the skill level of "riding a dragon, drawing figure eights, and crashing into trees" as standard practice for dragon riders, every qualified dragon handler would weep bitter tears over this undeserved stigma.
"Sir, what is that?"
The first to spot the airship was a dragon rider. Following his outstretched finger, a strangely shaped cloud approached over the horizon.
All beings who had surrendered their souls to the dungeon had relinquished every ounce of control to Tashar. Like Marion, Douglas had offered his soul, so when the scene imprinted itself upon his retinas, Tashar saw the flying vessel through his eyes. Plump as a loaf of bread, its elliptical tip pointed southeast, every inch marked by the traces of artificial construction. It resembled something from a World War I poster, far more recognizable than that bizarre magic cannon. In less than a second, Tasha realized this was an attack from the north.
The white airship was heading toward their airspace.
The observation tower's detection range was tied to its height. Tashan could map the territory's terrain, but this detailed battlefield map was confined to a flat plane. She had no radar, no anti-aircraft guns—in a place seemingly stuck in the age of cold weapons, who would have thought to prepare such things? Fortunately, the dungeon's airspace wasn't entirely defenseless.
The Amazons near the border had received early warnings and retreated underground. The dungeon was the best air-raid shelter. The two stranded youths were rescued and brought to the medical bay. As the vanguard dragon sliced through the bird swarm's blockade like a razor, the aerial battle commenced.
The fluttering "bird swarm" wasn't composed of actual birds. They resembled remote-controlled drones, bearing a distinct Erian aesthetic—mirroring the Red Hounds and Door-Breaker Spiders. These mechanical birds glowed red in the head, their bodies covered in feathers, and various sharp weapons hung beneath them. A strange fusion of brutality and technology defined them. They flew in formation, their trajectories staggered, creating an attack that seemed chaotic yet followed precise patterns. This allowed them to harvest efficiently without colliding with trees or each other.
But they couldn't evade the charging dragon.
Douglas rode atop the crimson dragon's neck, his ever-present lasso serving as reins. He crouched low, pressing himself as close as possible to the dragon's body, enveloped in its faint red glow. The contract between dragon rider and dragon created a magical bond between them, linking their minds and actions. Douglas's will and movements extended through the dragon, its power shared with the rider, shielding him from winds fierce enough to tear flesh during the dragon's high-speed dive.
Douglas needed no weapon; the dragon itself was the deadliest weapon. The red dragon's head bore fearsome horns, its scales harder than the thickest shield. The horns tore through the air, the scales and bones unbreakable. They moved with the speed of a jet, the weight of a hammer, crashing down upon the flock. The orderly formation shattered into chaos as the mechanical birds, armed with sharp weapons, plummeted to the ground with a sound like rain on banana leaves.
"Come on!" Douglas roared. Dragonfire surged from the beast's throat. Before the bright flames touched the birds, the twisted air currents sent them reeling.
Like a brush dipped in flames, it swept a long, thick line through the air. Feathers instantly turned to ash, revealing only the bare metal beneath. The breath continued, red light flickering feebly within the flames before the mechanical birds' hulls began to char, warp, and contort into clumsy metal lumps, plummeting straight down. The dragon's wake—a torrent of air, heat, and flame—cleared the sky of its swarm of shadows as thoroughly as insecticide. A gap tore open in the dense net of death, allowing the dragon cavalry following behind to exploit the opening.
The pseudo-dragons manufactured by the dungeon were modeled after bipedal flying dragons. Compared to the mighty, imposing dragons ahead, these wyverns appeared much smaller and more agile. Saddles were placed on their relatively flat spines, and reins and stirrups allowed this group of former cavalry to adapt quickly to riding through the skies. About the size of two horses, the wyverns could move with the agility and speed of birds. However, their hollow skeletons and relatively thin scales made them unsuitable for serving as battering rams. The dragon cavalry's equipment resembled that of traditional knights—armored and spear-wielding, they charged on their mounts.
The steel lances were quite heavy, requiring considerable strength to swing. Yet the dragon cavalrymen did not need to swing them. Their mounts form a vital component of their combat prowess. The impact of a dragon's dive, combined with the steel lance's sharp tip, is sufficient to impale any enemy meeting them head-on like skewered meat. Forming ranks, the dragons plunge like a giant plow, harrowing the skies teeming with mechanical birds.
While Litiya's shortbow demands repeated shots at weak points, the dragon cavalry's attacks require little precision. Long before the mechanical birds entered their range, the dragons had already closed in. Though the lance tips, driven by tremendous momentum, might not pierce the metal exoskeletons, they could snap limbs and shatter propellers. Losing balance, the mechanical birds plummeted, gravity and the hard ground finishing the job the cavalry had begun.
The "half-dead" mechanical birds were still a boon to Tarsha.
Goblins and skeleton soldiers scurried across the ground, dragging the fallen birds into the dungeon. Not a single bird could take flight again; they would become Tarsha's source of knowledge and nourishment.
Yet, the battle was not entirely one-sided.
The dragon's breath consumed considerable energy, leaving significant intervals between attacks. After clearing an area with flames, it could only rely on charging for the time being. The first wave of dragon cavalry numbered only thirty riders. Thirty flying dragons were insufficient to cover the entire sky, while mechanical birds swarmed the entire space. After the initial assault, they changed tactics, abandoning formation and launching scattered, cunning attacks.
This was no ground battle. Knights needn't fear treacherous terrain, but they must constantly watch for assaults falling from above. This three-dimensional battlefield shifted in an instant, too fluid for even the sharpest mind to predict its entirety.
The first dragon rider tumbled from his mount. A mechanical bird, its sharp tail hook slicing through the air above him, tore through the knight's shoulder armor, blood gushing from the wound. He tumbled off while dodging, only his foot still caught in the stirrup. The dragon, now riderless, began to flail wildly. The knight struggled, his helmet falling away.
Before his vision faded, he saw the bird that had attacked him once more.
"Tell them not to hover!" Tashar shouted to Douglas. "Only by falling can they survive!"
The second falling rider decisively kicked off his stirrup, curling his body as tightly as possible to dodge the whirling blades. He looked down in terror—the forest seemed so thin, utterly incapable of stopping a fall from this height. The wind was fierce, cutting at his exposed skin.
The pilots here carried no parachute packs, but they possessed something else.
A patch of green light flared at the edge of the forest. Within dozens of meters, trees began to grow vigorously. Trunks shot upward, branches weaving horizontally, while leaves sprouted even faster. Clusters of green exploded atop the treetops like massive airbags. The cavalryman plunged into this cotton-candy-like canopy. Horizontal branches didn't pierce his body; resilient limbs bent downward, gradually absorbing his impact through repeated snaps. His descent slowed until he came to rest on the lowest layer of branches.
This colossal tree-ball existed for less than half a minute before dissipating. The cavalryman landed on the ground, dizzy but nearly unscathed. Medics in helmets and armor jogged over, hoisting him onto a mobile stretcher. "How do you feel?" they asked, just like in drills. "Anything hurting badly? Stay alert—you'll see a doctor soon!"
Druids advancing toward the "Tree Speaker" stood ready, tree-ball cushions poised to deploy beneath any falling comrade. The mobile stretcher brought by the medic was crafted by artisan dwarves. Stable and swift, it prevented jolts from worsening injuries, swiftly transporting the casualty to the subterranean medical bay. Here, ample supplies of hemostatic ointments brewed by the apothecaries awaited. Doctors cleaned wounds and set broken bones while Jacqueline began singing healing songs.
Though the bard's voice couldn't directly heal wounds, its soothing melody eased both physical pain and psychological terror. Aaron, the young Amazon, was now out of mortal danger. Litiya, who had insisted on staying by his side, had ceased her sobbing and trembling. Both lay in the hospital bed—he resting, she leaning over it—lulled into sleep by the gentle song.
Alas, the song's reach could not extend to the skies above.
Most of Tashan's troops could only fight on the ground, and aerial combat severely limited the dungeon's strength. The Amazons' arrows were only effective at close range. After shooting down a few, the mechanical birds climbed higher and refused to descend no matter how they were lured. Ground traps inflicted no damage whatsoever. Marion, the dungeon's strongest force, paced restlessly, cursing her lack of wings. Ghosts could only rise three meters above the ground; beyond two meters, movement became as sluggish as walking through gelatin. The constraints of aerial combat seemed far more severe than the horizontal distance from the dungeon's core. The only reliable unit was the dragon cavalry.
Without riders, the dragons attacked chaotically. These wyverns, when not under command, were as violent and mindless as beasts, easily overwhelmed and eliminated by a coordinated swarm of mechanical birds. Tashan recalled the flying dragons and replaced them with reserve dragon riders. She gazed skyward as the airship drew nearer, while the mechanical birds seemed endless.
They couldn't possibly be infinite. Douglas, finally reaching the airship's edge, discovered the answer. Beneath the colossal vessel lay an opening, from which activated mechanical birds streamed endlessly. The airship served as the carrier for this murderous flock, reminiscent of an aircraft carrier.
The airship dwarfed the dragons by an immeasurable margin.
Douglas charged forward on his dragon, the beast's claws slashing viciously at the airship's hull. Though its exterior appeared soft as clouds, the inflated skin proved remarkably resilient. The claws merely scraped across, leaving only a white mark. The dragon's mouth, filled with razor-sharp teeth, found no foothold either. Douglas tried again, turning to ram the opening that continuously produced mechanical birds. This attack proved more effective. The mechanical birds emerging from the opening moved with the sluggishness of newly hatched chicks, and a single impact from the dragon sent a large flock plummeting to the ground.
However, the number shot down was far outweighed by the total being produced.
The opening was too small for the dragon to squeeze through. What could possibly block it effectively? Perhaps this opening was the creature's weak point? The dragon's anatomy made hovering difficult. Douglas guided it into a wide circle, intending to charge the opening from a distance. They flew nearly a hundred meters away, then turned and accelerated toward the gap. Before reaching it, Douglas was suddenly struck by a dangerous premonition.
His instincts were usually precise, amplified by his bond with the dragon. The dragon rider yanked the reins hard, forcing the dragon to turn abruptly and halt its forward momentum.
Directly ahead of Douglas, at the point where their original trajectory would have struck, something plummeted downward.
"Scatter!" Douglas bellowed. His voice was muffled by the wind, then drowned out by a deafening explosion.
A new breach appeared beneath the airship. After the bulkhead was torn open, a string of flat objects tumbled down. Shaped like dried persimmons, each about the size of a human head, they fell too fast to make out clearly. The cluster scattered mid-air, plummeting downward before exploding in mid-flight.
The dragon cavalry scattered as best they could. The good news was they were already relatively spread out, and the timing of the flat bombs' detonations was somewhat erratic, so none hit anyone directly. The bad news was the bombs' blast radius was enormous.
Bombs. Definitely bombs.
Their effect mirrored those carried by the circus that day: puffs of black smoke erupting mid-air, flames engulfing several meters around, while the shockwave's reach extended farther still. The blast wave hurled metal shards outward, piercing through the dragon riders' armor and even their limbs at breakneck speed. One unfortunate dragon was struck in the eye by a metal fragment, piercing its brain. It vanished silently mid-air. Its rider plummeted like a stone, tiny, sharp shards of metal leaving bloody gashes across his cheek.
Within that mercenary alliance known as the Circus, every member except the dragon riders and minstrels who joined the dungeon perished in the war. Douglas was single-minded in his dragon hunt, paying little attention to Circus's affairs, while Jacqueline remained an almost silent shadow—Tasha doubted she possessed a fully formed personality. Their line of communication snapped midway, and the Dungeon never learned the details behind that day's checkpoint explosion.
The bomb had never surfaced during the battle for the southeast corner. Just as Tasha was nearly certain it was merely a timed device crafted by professionals, it appeared here.
Two bombs remained unexploded. It landed almost vertically, crashing safely to the ground.
BOOM!
An irregular circle erupted in the forest, reducing every tree within its radius to splinters. Earth was violently torn apart, as if struck by two furious fists.
Two unfortunate medics nearby were hurled several meters by the onrushing shockwave. One, blood streaming from his head, screamed, "Why is there no sound?!" he cried in terror, "Gone! I can't hear anything!" The other stared blankly at the massive crater several meters away, utterly terrified by an attack he'd never witnessed.
Several druids were knocked off balance by the shockwave, falling to the ground and failing to complete their spells. The newly conjured tree spheres, like poorly risen bread, collapsed. During this chaos, a fallen dragon rider crashed into the mass of broken branches, smashing through countless twigs before hitting the ground, his fate unknown.
It was like an absurd farce. Tasha, who had journeyed from the scientific world into this realm of magic, stood at the site of the assault and witnessed soldiers from the age of cold steel reacting to firearms.
Looking closely, numerous hatches could be seen beneath the airship. It continued its flight southeastward.
She strained to recall that military airships had also been prevalent on Earth during the First and Second World Wars. Their vast capacity could carry reconnaissance aircraft or numerous bombs—the very thought of a flying arsenal was chilling. Those in the north likely harbored similar intentions. Bombing this settlement would inflict catastrophic damage on ground facilities. Even if people could seek shelter underground, the losses would obliterate nearly a year's worth of construction. Yet in the modern era where Tasha lived, airships seemed to serve little purpose beyond advertising, rarely seen in the skies anymore.
What was the reason?
Airship navigation was highly susceptible to wind direction, with enormous time differences between favorable and unfavorable winds, making stability extremely poor. For cargo transport, departure and arrival times always depended on the whims of the weather. For military use, routes were difficult to control, often veering off target.
—But now it's right at Tashan's doorstep, stable beyond belief. Even the dragon's charge barely made it budge. Is it because of its sheer size? Or because it's filled with some suitable gas Earth doesn't have?
Like the filling gas, the airship's fuel is also a problem. To fly such a massive airship all the way from the north to Tashan's occupied territory would consume fuel by the ton. As fuel is consumed, the airship's weight should decrease, requiring deflation to maintain its altitude.
——What fuel?
In the year since Tashar arrived in this world, she had never heard of Earth's two vital industrial energies. Whether describing coal, dubbed "the bread of industry," or oil, called "the lifeblood of industry," she met only blank stares. Dungeon construction dug deep into the earth, uncovering magic stones but never coal mines or oil fields.
She hadn't dismissed industrial development entirely, but lacking the necessary conditions, Tasha concluded it was futile for a dungeon like hers—one never specialized in science and engineering—to waste effort. At first, she wondered if sheer bad luck had placed her in a dungeon devoid of both resources. Later, she considered that perhaps the laws of this world differed from Earth's—after all, what was strange about a continent permitting magic while imposing numerous constraints on science? Then, when the Artisan Dwarves successfully dissected a product of magical technology and revealed that the Doorbreaker Spider ran on magic stones, Tasha formed a new hypothesis.
The energy source within magical technology was magic stones.
A dirigible fueled by such unscientific substances made pondering its underlying science utterly pointless.
But did that mean a stable, long-endurance airship, free from fuel or gas concerns, was invincible?
Hardly.
Douglas's dragon arced through the sky, slamming into the airship once more. The impact merely rocked the vessel; the dragon's sharp horns sank into the air cushion before bouncing off, like striking thick, fatty flesh. The dragon circled beneath the airship repeatedly, wearing down its mechanical birds.
As if unable to tolerate the dragon rider's persistent harassment, another hatch beneath the airship opened.
Douglas's eyes, fixed on the hatch, detected its movement instantly. He pulled the reins, and the dragon instinctively arched its body upward.
The second breath of dragonfire was finally charged.
The searing flames erupted, gleaming like molten gold. The dragon's flame burned several times hotter than ordinary fire, warping the surrounding air and clouds. After a moment's resistance, the airship's hull began to melt—though that hardly mattered. The choice to unleash dragonfire at this moment was precisely to avoid unnatural surprises, like the canvas-like hull proving fireproof. What mattered was that the searing heat ignited the explosives.
The first detonated, its flat casing warping under the intense heat before triggering the chain reaction. The dragon's breath ignited the closest cluster of bombs, which, like lit fuses, carried the searing flames and explosions deep into the airship's interior. Like toppling the first domino, the dragon needed not sustain its breath for long; its work was done after the initial blast.
The airship exploded.
The external blast and flames tore open a gap, but it was the chain reaction of internal detonations that sealed the colossus's fate. Ghost, perched at the three-meter-high limit, gazed skyward. The distant series of booms sounded to her ears like firecrackers during the Spring Festival. The pure white, colossal, and dangerous airship was blown to smithereens by its own bombs. The scene resembled a melon shattered by a single shot, golden-red flames erupting from its core and engulfing all remaining fragments.
This airship was indeed more agile than those on Earth, but as long as it remained less nimble than a dragon, it carried a fatal weakness. The northerners were truly unlucky—just as they finally deployed their airship trump card, Tashan happened to possess a dragon air force. History had long proven that from the day agile flying machines took to the skies, massive, cumbersome airships ceased to be the rulers of the heavens.
Upon receiving the command, the dragon cavalry and everyone on the ground had already evacuated. The dragon riders abruptly retreated, the dragon's wings flapping at the perfect moment, using the explosion's shockwave to propel itself far away. The scales on the dragon's belly were harder than gold or stone. Dwarven masters of old had long held that armor forged from dragon scales and blood offered the highest defense—and this was a living dragon. This fiery red dragon moved freely through the most terrifying flames. The explosion's fire meant little to it; the metal fragments couldn't pierce its armor, and the shockwave merely propelled it forward.
It reared up to shield the knight behind it. Douglas clung tightly to the dragon's neck, the heat and wind still stinging his skin despite their weakening. "Brilliant, baby!" he shouted ecstatically, laughing as the coin hit the deck—that coin bearing death on one side and victory on the other—a moment of pure, unadulterated beauty. Douglas had scoured this inhospitable continent for dragons, Douglas had become a dragon rider, Douglas had been born for this very moment, hadn't he?
No fresh reinforcements joined the mechanical birds circling overhead. In fact, they began spinning like headless flies, and within minutes, numerous crashes and crashes occurred. Whatever had kept them running so precisely seemed to have crashed along with the airship. Now, cleaning up the remains was merely a matter of time.
The fiery remnant of the airship disintegrated mid-air, crashing hundreds of meters from the nearest human settlement—a failure at the last moment, a tragic fall. Druids hurriedly conjured fire-resistant plants where the flames landed, while nearby Amazonians rushed water basins to extinguish the blaze. "Consider it a forest fire," the druid said painfully, surveying the scorched area. He regretted that summoning wind and rain demanded such high energy levels, while the special condition needed for rain—the withering aura—had already been uprooted by them.
Tasha stood beside the artisan dwarf as he used a set of intricate tools to open a fallen mechanical bird. Having participated in dissecting the door-breaking spider, the craftsman was now somewhat skilled. Shortly after the aerial battle ended, he successfully pried open the mechanical bird's shell like cracking a walnut.
At the walnut's core lay a magic stone.
For some reason, a stirring melody echoed in his mind. Tashar glanced at the pile of captured mechanical birds in the dungeon and thought calmly: How did that song go again? Oh, "No food, no clothes—our enemies deliver them right to us."