From Hogwarts to Strixhaven.

Chapter 557 Manifestation of Divine Power
Different scholars have offered different answers and conjectures regarding why dragons can soar through the sky.

Some believe that dragons' ability to fly relies on innate magical powers. It is these magical powers that make them so different, allowing them to remain airborne for extended periods despite having the smallest wingspan-to-weight ratio of all flying creatures.

However, a strong argument against this claim is that dragons can take off and maneuver in anti-magic zones where their spells and breath attacks have no effect. This has been proven in many different types of dragons.

From this perspective, it seems that dragons' flight is entirely due to their physical capabilities, which far surpass those of ordinary creatures. They not only possess exaggeratedly strong muscles, but also have other special physiological structures that facilitate flight.

Like the compromises birds make for flight—hollow bones, immediate excrement, and toothless beaks that are almost impossible to regenerate.

Dragon experts engrossed in their books used a method similar to proof by contradiction to deny that dragons' ability to fly originated from magic. Ivy could similarly use a similar argument to deny that dragons' flight was entirely due to their strong bodies.

Since there is no air in the desolate universe, the dragon cannot obtain reaction force from the vacuum by flapping its wings, and of course there is no swirling updraft here either.

If a dragon flaps its wings too forcefully, it may blow away the air surrounding its body, causing it to suffocate.

Therefore, if dragons relied solely on their wings to fly, it would be absolutely impossible for them to fly in the vacuum of space.

But the truth is, the Gith Yankees' red dragon knights charged menacingly toward Ivy and her companions. Neither the knights themselves, clad in silver armor, nor the young red dragon carrying them showed any signs of using flight magic.

"Queen Vairakis has pronounced your death sentence!" The red dragon knight charging at the forefront showed no intention of assessing the difference in strength between himself and the enemy. As soon as he entered range to launch a ranged attack, he impatiently urged his battle companion to use the scorching dragon breath as the opening act of the battle. "The flames of the red dragon will be the last bright light you see before you die!"

The scorching dragon breath covered most of the space in sight. The Red Dragon Knight had seen this scene countless times in his years of fighting for Vairakis. Most of the enemies would be completely turned into a pile of charred remains, and those who survived were often incapacitated and could only watch sadly as the magnificent silver sword cut off their heads.

This is a battle of annihilation. The Red Dragon Knight doesn't need to worry about whether the enemy's equipment is still usable after being scorched by dragon breath. He only needs to find the artifact that the Queen cares about most from the ashes of the enemy's corpses.

Just as the Red Dragon Knight never imagined that being transferred from his distant homeland to the barren Star Bay Nursery would only result in routine patrols and training, he never imagined that a fleshy, earth-dwelling human could emerge unscathed from the Red Dragon's breath and easily cleave the entire wall of blazing flames in two.

Just as Moses parted the Red Sea in the Christian legend, Ivy made the red dragon, which covered the entire field of vision, obediently split in two with its breath. However, Moses parted the Red Sea with devout faith, while Ivy parted the dragon's breath with her profound magic.

The Beast-Biting Sword, slung at the waist, had broken free from its sheath. The vibrations produced by the friction between the blade and the soft leather inside the sheath were its battle cry before facing slaughter. The multicolored flames wrapped around the blade effortlessly weakened the scales on the red dragon's neck, allowing the Gangdolin Sword, which had once been deeply embedded in the body of the Lonely Mountain Dragon, to replicate this feat on this young red dragon.

The red dragon's shimmering scales and tough hide were like two layers of parchment weathered by time before the slender and elegant blade of the Beastbite Sword. They were easily destroyed by the blade forged by the Gondolin elves. The muscles and bones beneath the skin naturally had no chance of escaping unscathed and followed suit in an instant.

As Ivy slid the Beastbite Sword into the red dragon's neck, she felt no resistance. She simply and deftly pushed the blade in, then with a twist and a slash, the massive dragon's head, along with a thick section of its neck, was severed from its body. It neither roared nor had it had time to retaliate.

Having lost its life, the red dragon could no longer use its flying ability and could only helplessly follow the path it had charged along, crashing straight into the broken Gith Yankee pirate ship.

The Exorcist's Rudder, the power unit of this pirate ship, had long been removed by Ivy. At this moment, the pirate ship was nothing more than a piece of space debris floating in the Toril Wasteland, having neither the desire nor the ability to change the status quo.

The blood-splattered red dragon corpse crashed through the pirate ship's deck, with most of its body completely wedged inside. The impact not only stunned the knights aboard the dragon corpse but also caused the broken ship to shift considerably.

On an interstellar scale, the battle that erupted here was nothing more than a spark on the tail of the asteroid Serenne's Tear. But on a mortal scale, the feat of facing the red dragon's breath head-on and severing its head with a single sword strike was enough to shock both sides.

The other Gith Yankee knights riding on the red dragon's back hadn't even realized what was happening, but their bodies reacted instinctively. They tightened their reins, stopping their red dragon companions' charge, and stared in disbelief at this shocking fact.

Ivy did not take advantage of the Gith Yankee Red Dragon Knight's shock to continue the attack. Instead, he made his figure disappear in a silver mist and reappeared next to the Red Dragon's corpse that had crashed into the deck.

He wanted to use a preservative spell on the red dragon's corpse before it cooled down. After all, this was one of Karak's spare hearts, and it was also Ivy's first time performing a live organ transplant between different species; no amount of caution was excessive.

The Beastbite Sword, which discriminated against the Green-skinned Yankees, severed the head of the Red Dragon Rider, and Ivy used magic to drag the Red Dragon's corpse out of the crater in the deck.

Necromantic magic flickered at Ivy's fingertips, and in the blink of an eye, the embalming of the body was complete. Naturally, Ivy wanted to preserve such important research material carefully.

The Grimoire of Destruction, which appeared out of nowhere, quietly turned a page. The fire dragon's corpse disappeared, but a red dragon pattern, its head severed from its body, appeared on the blank page.

"I'm planning a party after I'm reborn! Anyone want to come?" Karak, who was usually carefree and had been fighting in the Bloodbath for ten years, threw her trident and happily invited her teammates. She knew very well why Ivy had handled the red dragon's corpse so carefully.

“If there’s a dance at the party, count me in!” With a surge of demonic power sweeping across the desolate cosmos, Will, raising his palm, was the first to respond to Karak’s invitation.

“We’re not the first to drink dragon’s blood!” Minsk grumbled, his greatsword clenched in his hand. “You should be ashamed, you purple-skinned bald guy! Now, shove me deep into that flying lizard’s fat belly!”

"Dragon Slayer Doom? Dragon Destroyer Ivy?" Jahira tossed a gliding potion to Minsk and asked Ivy, who was cleaning blood off her body, with interest, "What kind of nickname do you think the bards would give you?" "Actually, I prefer names like Dragon Slayer." Ivy drew several runes on her mithril staff in her left hand, and a cloud of ice-blue mist suddenly appeared on the battlefield where swords were clashing, quickly enveloping the red dragon knights flying around the pirate ship.

That was the eighth-ring spell, the Cloud Burning Technique. Although the desolate universe is a vacuum environment where ordinary flames cannot burn, magical flames can still exert their full power, only they can no longer ignite flammable materials.

However, Ivy wouldn't do something as foolish as using fire magic against the red dragon. The Burning Cloud spell was a modified version of the spell he created with the Awakening Grimoire; it was no longer a cloud of smoke piercing through the white-hot embers, but a heavy fog exuding deadly freezing air.

This cold mist will not only obscure vision as usual, but will also freeze enemies trapped within it. Slowing down movement speed is just one of the most minor effects. If the body has poor tolerance to cold damage, it may also fall into abnormal statuses such as shivering or dazedness.

The red dragon, shrouded in the icy mist, attempted to unleash its breath to combat the freezing air, but Ivy's magic mercilessly extinguished its illusions, turning its intense breath into a wisp of blue smoke. The Gith Yankee red dragon knight, clad in highly conductive silver armor, became the first creature to fall victim to this eighth-ring spell.

The rapid loss of body temperature rendered him unable to respond to external stimuli, preventing him from using his psionic powers to guide his battle companions. The red dragon, relying on instinct to roam aimlessly through the icy mist, finally managed to escape from the seemingly sentient cloud, only to be horrified to discover that the deadly cold vapor had materialized into a giant hand, gripping its neck, which was covered in a row of backward-swept thorns.

The extreme low temperature eliminated the need for Ivy to cast the preservation spell a second time. He manipulated Bigby's Hand to pull the red dragon out of the Burning Cloud spell and shoved it into another blank page of the Grimoire of Destruction.

At this point, of the two waves of attacks by the Gith Yankees, only one pair of the three knights riding red dragons remained, putting up a last-ditch resistance.

The Gisyanke ships, still some distance away, launched several waves of long-range attacks, but the battlefield was far beyond the maximum range of these siege weapons. Even the luckiest siege crossbow bolt was more than a hundred feet off its target.

Although the absence of air in the open world is a great advantage for long-range attacks, ignoring air resistance is almost equivalent to unlimited range.

However, even with unlimited range, the Gisyanki's crude aiming devices did not allow them to launch attacks from such a distance.

Lost in millimeters, a thousand miles.

Even a slight error like hand tremor would be magnified infinitely by the extremely long range, let alone a weapon like a siege crossbow, which is completely impossible to aim accurately.

After the last red dragon, whose evasive options were restricted by ranged attacks and whose mobility was sealed by various spells, fell to the adventurers' swords, the Githyanki commander began to try other methods of attack.

Elite psionic spellcasters projected their will onto the pirate ship where the adventurers had landed, attempting to open a portal to send the queen's loyal soldiers.

However, Ivy was no longer the novice who had only a superficial understanding of psionic energy. Deep purple lightning flashed across the surface of his lens, and the space that had just fluctuated was easily smoothed out. The gatekeeper, far away in the Gith Yankee fleet, rolled his eyes and fell backward to the ground.

"enough!"

The surging sound waves that resounded deep within the soul swept over all living beings in the Serenne's Tear asteroid belt. Even though sound cannot travel in a vacuum, the divinity and psychic power that the Lich Queen Velakis stole from the physical forms of her people still allowed her will to cross the sea of ​​stars and be understood by other beings.

“If you were hiding on that muddy planet, perhaps I would be more concerned about how to get what I want.” The orange-yellow astral projection of Vyrakis seemed to occupy half the sky, and none of the other celestial bodies in the Toril Wasteland—including the stars in distant space, and the sun and moon that divide day and night on the continent of Faerûn—looked as magnificent as this gaunt woman.

“But you have entered my territory! I have amassed a large number of warriors in Star Bay, preparing to launch an invasion of Faerûn, simply to search every inch of its soil and reclaim what I have lost.” The projection of Vyrakis arrogantly raised its chin, glancing down at the adventurers on the small pirate ship. “This is my last offer of mercy; you had better accept it gratefully! Hand over the Astral Prism, and I may let you leave safely. Otherwise…”

"You will face Velakis! The noble and immortal queen of the Githyanki, the regent of the six-armed Tunaras! Face my endless wrath!"

As if to make his words seem more convincing, a large amount of flame erupted from behind the orange-yellow astral projection of Vairakis.

However, if Ivy had to give her opinion, the particle effects that Velakis created for his projection were too cheap and lacked any sense of realism.

Shar's domain was nothing but darkness, yet its oppressive power was far greater than that of Vairakis.

“You have no power here, Velakis.”

These words weren't spoken by Ivy, but by—Shadowheart.

A pure silver holy fire ignited around her, yet it did not damage her clothes or hair in the slightest.

The holy light of Serene resonated with this celestial body closest to interstellar space, and the pure moonlight even overshadowed the supreme majesty emanating from the sun, becoming the dominant force in this space.

A projection of a holy goddess, draped in a flowing white robe and with long white hair like Shadowheart, appeared in this desolate space, causing the astral projection of Vairakis to rapidly shrink to one-tenth of its original size.

(End of this chapter)