Published at 25th of August 2026 9:09 am

Volume 8, Chapter 85: Long Time No See

This chapter is updated by JustRead.pl

Hearing the other’s full name, Valendna clearly froze.

“Wuconstantine? Your name is Wuconstantine? Then what’s your relationship to the Red Flame Dragon King? Oh~~~ from the look of you, you’ve got some years on you. You must be his dad!”

“...Do I look that old?”

Boom!—

A burst of magic interrupted their slightly nonsense exchange. Isha loosed a fierce blast of dragonfire and then disengaged, reverting to human form as she fell back to Valendna and Wu’s side. With her back to them, she said,

“My sister’s letter says Wuconstantine is the Red Flame Dragon King’s elder brother, and he’s very likely the key to saving us from this sun crisis. So we have to protect him, Valendna.”

“Got it, Isha!”

At once, Valendna looked again toward the three peril-forms over there—varieties she had never seen—and asked:

“Are those things easy to deal with?”

Isha’s expression turned grave. She shook her head slightly.

“They’re not easy. We can only look for a chance to take Wu out of here and hurry to the Red Flame Dragon Clan.”

“Since touching the Primordial Force earlier, Isha’s strength has already reached beyond the Dragon King tier.”

And now, even facing these three far-ancient peril-forms, Isha found them thorny. That alone showed the situation wasn’t great.

No wonder Wu had been hunted by them.

If even Isha couldn’t be sure of finishing such monsters, then for a dragon exiled for hundreds of years to keep his life—he’d already done well.

“Understood.”

With that, Valendna spread her wings, turned into her dragon form, then lowered her head to Wu and said,

“Get on. We’ll take you back to the Red Flame Dragon Clan.”

“Okay... thank you.”

Dragging his injured body, Wu clambered onto Valendna’s back with some difficulty.

Meanwhile, the three peril-forms attacked again.

“You two go first! I’ll hold them!”

Isha patted a scale along Valendna’s flank, then rushed to meet the enemy.

“Be careful, Isha!” Valendna shouted.

Isha didn’t answer. She fixed her eyes on the three peril-forms.

One of them had already pounced at her. Isha had no intention of getting dragged into a tug-of-war with these three. She opened with a kill move.

She raised her right hand, a tiny point of light gathering in her palm.

As magic and gale surged, the point began to shine in seven colors, instantly lighting the pitch-dark around them.

When the peril-form drew close enough, Isha clenched her fist and detonated the point in her hand.

Seven-colored streamers burst from between her fingers. Timing it, she cast them out.

“Primordial Magic · Rainbow Burst!”

The peril-form was struck head-on in its core. In an instant, a violent surge of magic erupted and, in the blink of an eye, swallowed the creature’s body whole. Soon the seven-colored light faded away, and the peril-form collapsed, dead where it stood.

“After being suppressed by the sun for ten thousand years, you did stockpile plenty of resentment.”

A moment earlier Isha had body-checked that peril-form with her draconic mass and failed to do any substantive harm; she realized ordinary physical attacks wouldn’t finish it quickly. So she chose to use soul adjudication first. The stronger the opponent’s negative emotions, the stronger the adjudication’s power.

Isha dropped her stance, straightened, and turned toward the other two.

Having seen Isha’s Primordial magic firsthand, the remaining two didn’t act rashly. They watched from the side for an opening.

Isha’s gaze swept them. She had no desire to linger. She unfurled her wings and shot upward, closing on Valendna.

“Wow~ amazing, Isha. That was Primordial magic?” Valendna’s eyes were full of worship and awe.

Isha came up to level with her and nodded.

“That’s right, Primordial magic. At first I could only channel the Primordial Force into the simplest attacks, but not long ago my sister and Senior Claudia of the Sea Dragons taught me some concrete forms. That one just now is called soul adjudication.”

Valendna blinked as if enlightened.

“You can do it in dragon form too, huh? Then you definitely have to teach me later!”

Isha smiled lightly. “Sure. Once this mess is settled, I’ll—”

Before the words could land, both she and Valendna cried out at once.

As they were flying out, yellow bolts of lightning sprang into being overhead and all around—bars blocking their way.

The moment they brushed that lightning, both the dragon-shaped Valendna and the human-formed Isha were paralyzed head to toe and tumbled out of the sky.

Thankfully they hadn’t been flying very high; the fall didn’t matter much.

On landing, Isha sprang up and set her stance, glanced quickly at Valendna and Wu beside her, and, confirming both were fine, snapped her attention to the two remaining peril-forms.

One had raised its spike-studded back; the barrier lightning came spurting from those spines.

Looking around, Isha saw that the lightning from this peril-form wrapped the area for several hundred meters.

“If I’m not wrong, the shock field has only just spread. Which means this—this is nothing but a huge cage, and nothing inside can get out.”

Valendna shook herself clearer, reverted to human, ran to Isha’s side, and said:

“It’s very strong lightning magic. We could try to punch through,

but Wu can’t. In his condition, if he takes another hit like that lightning just now, I’m afraid—”

Isha locked onto the peril-form projecting lightning from its draconic back and said, low:

“Then we have no choice. We take it out first.”

“No problem. Let’s go, Isha!” As she spoke, Valendna gathered wind magic in her hands—no problem at all.

Carefree as she usually seemed, nerves wide and heedless, she was still a Dragon King. Her strength and presence were more than worthy of the title.

The two split left and right, rushing the lightning peril-form. After a brief exchange, Isha found a perfect opening; her dragonfire blade thrust forward, stabbing for the creature’s flank.

Valendna, almost in the same beat, unleashed a powerful wind spell.

Isha’s dragonfire hit first, and the lightning peril-form went up in a roaring blaze;

Valendna’s wind followed to the touch, fanning the flames and magnifying them several times over. Wind feeds fire. After those two strikes, the thing should be dead or crippled...

But just as they thought they’d felled it, the raging flames curled up with silver-white tongues, and in almost the same instant the entire sea of fire was dispersed by some invisible force. Heat and high temperature vanished in a rush, leaving only a few trivial licks clinging to the creature’s hide.

Isha’s pupils tightened.

“What was... that just now? The power of the other peril-form?”

She looked to the second peril-form. From its stance, it had indeed acted. But what kind of force could simultaneously neutralize both her and Valendna’s attacks in a blink?

“Valendna, again!”

“Okay!”

This time they chose to strike from midair. Isha no longer intended to hold back. She spread both hands, gathering

two masses of blazing fire in her palms and channeled the Primordial Force into them. She hurled the two fireballs one behind the other at the lightning peril-form below.

As they dived, the fireballs became two burning dragon heads, roaring as they plunged. Their heat ignited the grasses and shrubs nearby; the hot blast formed a heavy pressure that pinned the lightning peril-form to the ground, unable to move.

Primordial Magic · Dragonfire of Dissolution!

Valendna kept perfect rhythm at Isha’s flank. She summoned wind, sending invisible packets to wrap the Dragonfire of Dissolution. As the wind fused in, the dragonfire swelled, its power multiplying by the exponent!

Boom!!

The overwhelming dragonfire slammed the lightning peril-form head-on, kicking up a pillar of dust to the sky. Valendna’s eyes lit.

“Isha, we did it!”

She started forward to check, but Isha threw out an arm to stop her.

“What is it, Isha?” Valendna looked at her in confusion.

Isha’s face was stern. She shook her head slightly.

“Our attack... was broken again by that same invisible force. The blast and the dust we just saw were produced by two energies colliding.”

Isha bit her lip and looked at the third peril-form.

“What kind of power is that supposed to be...”

Valendna’s fists tightened. “Then why don’t we take that one first?”

“Fine. Let’s try.”

“Mm-hm!!”

But just as they were switching targets, a powerful suction exploded without warning and yanked them out of the air, slamming them to the ground.

“Ugh!!”

Both fell. The pull didn’t stop—it only grew stronger.

Valendna tried to rise but struggled badly; she couldn’t even straighten her waist.

Isha wasn’t much better off, but she could still work her knees a little. She looked to the third peril-form.

“Its power is... gravity control?...Utterly outrageous.”

“What do we do now, Isha?!” Valendna shouted from over there.

Her voice was almost drowned by the warped gravity.

Isha tried to raise a hand and conjure dragonfire, but the instant the flame gathered it was crushed out by the gravity behind her. That was how their joint strike with Valendna had been shattered as well.

The enemy had superior numbers, superior mechanics, and a control field in the lightning cage on top of it. For the moment, they were out of answers.

The gravity intensified. Isha and Valendna were about spent, both dropping to one knee.

“Isha...”

Valendna forced words through her teeth. “There really isn’t a way out...?”

One-handed, Isha propped herself up and, with difficulty, lifted her head.

“At times like this... my brother-in-law always drops out of the sky and, all full of himself, says, ‘Sorry I’m late’...”

Valendna blinked. “Is that a bad joke, Isha?—We’re about to be pressed into meat paste and I haven’t even seen a single hair of your brother-in-law! He’s half my teacher, too!”

Valendna had learned wind magic from Leon, so fair enough—not that any of that seemed especially useful in a crisis like this.

The lightning peril-form stalked forward on them, held fast under gravity, the spines along its back gathering into two orbs crackling with arcs. It meant to finish them while they couldn’t move.

“Fix me—fix me—this time I’m really going to ascend straight to the heavens, I never thought I’d die like this—”

Valendna was fraying.

“I’ve never even dated, my first kiss is intact, I haven’t even held hands with a handsome boy! And I’m going to get killed by this ugly freak throwing sparks all over! No!!”

Isha tried to work her limbs, but even moving a few centimeters took everything she had.

She watched the lightning peril-form come on, while she kept trying to gather dragonfire in her hand—only to fail again and again.

“Is it... really going to end like this...”

Isha didn’t have as many regrets as Valendna.

It just felt hasty to be killed like this. She hadn’t had a chance to say goodbye to her sister, her brother-in-law, and those adorable external hires... And she hadn’t met anyone who could make her believe in love again. Well... so be it.

Isha slowly closed her eyes and waited for fate to fall. The crackle of arcs grew louder at her ear, and fear of death spiked her heartbeat.

“Isha!!”

Valendna’s shout came. But Isha no longer had the strength to answer. So... end it.

...

The expected pain never arrived. With the faintest hint of premonition—she’d been through her share of life-and-death—the one who pulled off last-second rescues was always that cocky yet reliable brother-in-law.

So this time... was it him again?

“Waa~ what a hottie~”

A heartbeat ago Valendna had been screaming her lungs out; now she’d turned into a swooning fangirl.

Huh? A hottie?

Hasn’t she seen Leon? How is “hottie” the first thing out of her mouth?

Oh—no shade on my brother-in-law’s looks... Isha shook her head to scatter the noise in her mind and looked carefully at the man who’d cut in to save them—young, but with a not-receding hairline...

Clean, upright muscle lines; dark-violet hair stirring lightly in the night wind. Isha’s eyes widened, a little disbelieving.

“So it’s you...”

The pale-violet-haired man half-turned his head and said softly:

“Long time no see, Isha.”

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