Chapter 208: Retreat
"Boss!"
A sonic boom suddenly shattered the eerie, cosmic silence of the Disaster Land.
A solitary figure violently broke through the thick, swirling clouds, rushing toward the resting group at a terrifying, reckless speed.
Jiao Shen immediately turned around, his calm expression instantly changing when he recognized the panicked person rapidly approaching them.
It was one of his closer, highly trusted blood brothers.
Jiao Ning.
"What’s wrong with you?"
Jiao Shen frowned deeply as Jiao Ning landed haphazardly in the glowing grass right in front of him, almost tripping over his own boots.
The young dragon prince was breathing incredibly heavily, his chest heaving as if he had just sprinted across the entire continent.
His expensive, custom-forged armor was cracked, and his vertical pupils were dilated to their absolute maximum limit.
His terrified eyes darted frantically around the starlit surroundings, completely paranoid, as if he expected a nightmare to emerge from the darkness at any given moment.
"Boss, you have to save me!" Jiao Ning shouted, his voice cracking with genuine, unadulterated terror. "There’s something in this place!"
"Something?"
Jiao Shen’s thick brows furrowed in deep confusion.
He quickly expanded his powerful spiritual senses, scanning the immediate surroundings for any trace of danger.
But absolutely all he could see was the endless, glowing grassland stretching peacefully beneath the strange, cosmic darkness of the Wormhole Disaster Land.
"Something stronger than you?"
"I don’t know!"
Jiao Ning shook his horned head rapidly, his hands literally shaking as he gripped his weapon.
"I couldn’t even see it properly. It was completely invisible in the shadows. It was just too fast."
Jiao Shen’s expression immediately became deadly serious.
Jiao Ning absolutely wasn’t weak by any metric.
He was a fully realized Demi God dragon prince, born with a powerful, ancient bloodline.
And although he wasn’t among the absolute strongest frontline members of the Jiao clan, he was still far, far above ordinary, mortal Demi Gods.
For an arrogant, prideful dragon like him to be this visibly frightened meant something had gone incredibly, catastrophically wrong.
Jiao Shen was the tenth royal son of King Jiao and was currently ranked as the tenth strongest Demi God within the entire massive Jiao clan.
That prestigious ranking alone was more than enough to explain his usual, unshakable confidence on the battlefield.
He had even directly fought the Blazing Star of the Bastion’s Ascendant faction before and managed to give the man a serious, bloody battle.
Now, Blazing Star had already successfully evolved and become a high-ranking Angel.
Yet his own blood brother, Jiao Ning, was standing here telling him that something hidden inside this Disaster Land was capable of frightening him to this pathetic degree.
"What happened to the others in your vanguard?" Jiao Shen asked, stepping forward and gripping his brother’s shoulder.
"I don’t know!"
Jiao Ning violently clenched his fists, his breathing still ragged.
"We were completely separated in the chaos! Something attacked us from the blind spots, and everyone just scattered in panic!"
Before Jiao Shen could ask another pressing question to clarify the threat, a violent, howling wind suddenly swept across the area.
Boom!
A heavy figure brutally broke through the atmospheric wind barrier directly above them, plummeting like a heavy stone.
Everyone in the Jiao group immediately looked upward, drawing their weapons defensively.
Ethen descended rapidly from the dark sky, crashing heavily into the glowing grass a few meters away.
His luxurious, silken black clothes were violently torn in several places, exposing his skin.
Dark, wet blood covered large portions of his body, and his usually neat black hair was completely disheveled and wild.
His heavy saber remained tightly, desperately gripped in his right hand, his knuckles completely white.
For a long, tense moment, the elite dragon princes simply stared at him in absolute shock.
Ethen was actually still alive.
But more importantly, he looked exactly just as physically shaken and terrified as Jiao Ning did.
Jiao Shen’s scaly expression drastically changed as the gears in his tactical mind rapidly turned.
"No."
His veteran mind immediately connected the scattered pieces of information, forming a terrifying, logical conclusion.
Something had gone horribly, fundamentally wrong with the ecosystem of this Disaster Land today.
The brilliant, foolproof assassination plan they had prepared should have easily resulted in Ethen being overwhelmed and killed by the feral Mythical Beasts.
They had deliberately, carefully placed him in a highly dangerous, impossible situation and fully expected to return to the Bastion with his mangled corpse.
Instead, the human Envoy had somehow miraculously survived the initial horde.
And now he had suddenly appeared right in front of them, looking exactly like he had barely escaped from something infinitely worse.
"We need to leave."
Jiao Shen made the absolute, final military decision almost immediately, entirely abandoning the hunt.
One of the heavily armored dragon princes standing beside him stared at him in deep, protesting confusion.
"Leave? But Boss, we haven’t even—"
"Now."
Jiao Shen’s voice instantly became completely cold, leaving absolutely no room for debate or argument.
"We don’t know what the hell we’re actually dealing with out here in the dark."
He looked directly toward the shivering form of Jiao Ning.
"If there is a mutated anomaly in this place capable of forcing the human Envoy to flee for his life, then staying here is absolute suicide."
His sharp, vertical gaze quickly shifted toward Ethen’s battered, bloody form resting in the grass.
Even though Ethen had clearly suffered massive physical injuries from whatever chased him, Jiao Shen couldn’t tell exactly what had happened.
He couldn’t sense the lingering aura of a Mythical Beast on Ethen’s torn clothes.
And that absolute, terrifying uncertainty was precisely what frightened the veteran commander the most.
"We should hold our ground, wait for the others to regroup, and—"
"Wait?"
Jiao Shen violently snapped his horned head toward the speaker, his eyes blazing with fury.
"If there’s actually something hunting in this cosmic void that can easily kill us, waiting for the others simply means giving whatever it is more stationary targets!"
He tightly clenched his armored fist, making a final, sweeping gesture to his men.
"Our absolute best course of action is to leave the area immediately and report this anomaly directly to the city guards. They can send fully realized Angels to investigate the threat."
The other proud dragons instantly fell silent, swallowing their remaining protests.
Jiao Shen wasn’t simply worried about his own personal life and safety in this chaotic environment.
If several high-ranking, royal dragon princes died simultaneously during a standard hunting expedition under his direct command, the political consequences would be enormous.
He had personally organized and led this specific hunting expedition into the Wormhole Disaster Land.
He would be directly, publicly held responsible for the massive loss of royal blood by the Dragon Council.
And the ruling Jiao clan would absolutely not overlook or forgive such a catastrophic, humiliating failure from their tenth son.
Ethen stood completely silently nearby, using his saber as a makeshift crutch to support his supposedly exhausted weight.
He was actually slightly surprised by how quickly and decisively Jiao Shen had decided to completely retreat.
He had fully expected the arrogant, prideful dragons to stubbornly try to maintain their hunting expedition.
Especially after they had clearly gone through so much political trouble and plotting just to bring him out here to die.
Instead, the exact moment Jiao Shen logically believed there was something in the dark capable of killing them, he abandoned absolutely everything to survive.
"Fine."
Ethen nodded weakly, his chest heaving as he played the part of a traumatized survivor flawlessly.
"I completely agree. Get us out of here."
There was absolutely no tactical reason to argue with the enemy when they were doing exactly what he wanted.
The surviving group immediately moved out, abandoning their established camp.
Their flight speed exploded as they desperately crossed the strange, starlit grassland, fleeing for their lives.
They headed in a completely straight line directly toward the massive, ancient teleportation formation they had used to enter the Disaster Land.
Every single second they spent flying through this isolated void now felt incredibly, suffocatingly dangerous to the dragons.
The strange, glowing green grass far below them swayed gently in the darkness, despite there being almost no wind in the atmosphere.
The further they traveled toward the exit, the quieter and more disturbing the surroundings became.
Absolutely no feral Mythical Beasts appeared to challenge them.
No other lost or injured dragon princes came searching for them in the sky.
Nothing but pure, absolute cosmic silence.
That suffocating, unnatural silence only made Jiao Shen’s expression grow darker and more terrified by the second.
Finally, the glowing, runic lines of the massive teleportation formation appeared ahead in the distance.
"Everyone, move! Power the array!"
The panicked group rapidly descended toward the ancient stone platform.
One after another, they frantically poured their spiritual energy into the runes and entered the center of the formation.
Blinding, spatial light immediately erupted from the stone beneath their heavy boots.
The very fabric of space violently distorted and twisted around their bodies.
Then, with a deafening crack of displaced air, the surviving group completely vanished.
They had successfully escaped the terrifying unknown of the Wormhole Disaster Land.
Unfortunately, the exact same thing could absolutely not be said for everyone else in the expedition.
Far behind them, scattered across the endless, glowing grasslands, a horrific, bloody massacre lay completely hidden in the cosmic dark.
Dozens of massive, armored corpses lay violently scattered in completely different, isolated locations across the valley.
Some of the proud Demi Gods had been brutally, effortlessly torn apart, their legendary dragon armor peeled open like cheap tin.
Others had been violently crushed deep into the hard ground, their skulls shattered by an overwhelming, completely unfamiliar physical force.
Some of the mangled bodies were barely recognizable as living creatures anymore.
They lay completely still beneath the thick, glowing green grass that slowly began growing over them, passively swallowing their rich, divine blood.
The silent, shadowy figures of Ethen’s summoned knights slowly faded back into the dark ether, completely erasing all evidence of their presence.
The terrifying Disaster Land simply continued to exist in total silence, exactly as if absolutely nothing had happened at all.
Several tense hours later.
The surviving group finally reappeared in a massive flash of light on the balcony above Reverse Scale City.
The exact moment they emerged from the spatial teleportation formation, several of the exhausted dragon princes released long, shuddering breaths.
They were actually alive.
They had made it back to civilization.
That single fact alone was more than enough for them right now.
Jiao Shen quickly looked around at the small handful of surviving members of the grand expedition.
"Absolutely everyone stays strictly inside the inner city limits until the official military investigation is complete."
His voice carried an unusual, heavy seriousness that brooked absolutely no defiance.
"Do not leave the city for any reason."
After aggressively giving the strict lockdown order, Jiao Shen immediately turned toward the enormous, imposing military tower standing in the center of Reverse Scale City.
He shot toward it through the sky without uttering another word to his men.
They desperately needed to formally report what had happened to the high command.
More importantly, they needed to immediately send fully realized Angels back into the Disaster Land to find the remaining, missing dragon princes.
If they were somehow still alive and hiding, they had to be quickly rescued.
If they were already dead...
Jiao Shen didn’t even want to mentally imagine the catastrophic political consequences that would follow.
The total number of high-ranking, royal dragon princes who had entered the Wormhole Disaster Land today had been massive.
If most of them had truly died in a single, unexplainable expedition, it would instantly become one of the absolute greatest tragedies in the history of Reverse Scale City.
And absolutely none of the surviving dragons knew what had actually caused it.
Except Ethen.
He remained hovering silently in the air for a long moment, completely ignoring the bustling noise of the dragon capital.
He looked back toward the spatial direction of the Disaster Land they had just fled from.
A faint, incredibly dark smile slowly appeared on his blood-stained face, dropping the terrified survivor act completely.
The other dragons genuinely believed something had gone horribly, unpredictably wrong with the environment today.
They were completely right.
Just not in the exact way they thought.
The grand, aristocratic hunt had abruptly ended in absolute disaster for the Dragon God Clan.
But as a familiar, glowing blue system notification chimed loudly in Ethen’s mind, cementing his kill count...
[100/100 Dragon Clansmen slain.]
[Requirements met. S-Rank Class Evolution Unlocked.]
Ethen’s true harvest had only just begun.