Dragon Raja: Lu Mingfei Returns from the Elden Ring

At the knight's command, the mountain broke off at the point of attack, pulling the remaining threads clinging to it toward the abyss. The rubble struck the invisible rock walls of the abyss with a thunderous sound.

Then, a barrier-like mountain range rose into the sky, blocking the view from the battlefield of the gods onto Lu Mingfei.

Nidhogg was furious. He keenly seized the opening created by the knight's help to Lu Mingfei, and pounced on him. The conceptual weapon in his tailbone was not yet fully forged, and it tore through the golden defense with the force of a blunt weapon.

The knight raised his sword, but the reflexive parry was too hasty. He lost the strength to stand firm in this space and was pushed forward by Nidhogg's huge body. He even had to condense a gale behind him to alleviate the decline.

But this played right into Nidhogg's hands. He immediately stripped the knight of his power with the authority of the orthodox sky and wind, and condensed lightning in the already viscous air mass. The ultimate wind king-level incantation, comparable to the authority of the ancients, erupted against the knight's back. Tangible matter could only be shattered and melted under such an attack.

In the scorching plasma, there indeed was the figure of the knight falling freely. His armor was on the verge of disintegration, and his limp arm seemed to be unconsciously still gripping the golden greatsword.

Lu Mingfei was still running wildly.

"Door, door, door! Where are you, door?" His stamina was still that of an ordinary human boy, and the long run had left him drenched in sweat.

He simply kept repeating the knight's words in his mind, as if that would make him forget the people who died in the storm and the apocalyptic war of gods.

Once we find the door, everything will be over, and a good life will return, with milk and bread... although Lu Mingfei prefers soy milk and fried dough sticks.

Moreover, Lu Mingfei had a slight selfish motive regarding the knight's words.

Find the door, then go outside. Is the outside world the real, real world?

No matter how realistic it is, it cannot change the fact that this is an illusion. Even if the gods fight fiercely here, they will eventually have to return to the real world outside.

The real world must be vast enough that it can withstand even a storm.

In this vast world, there must be a corner where Lu Mingfei can find refuge.

What exactly is Lu Mingfei? What is his value? Even he himself can't say for sure.

But what that knight, that other Lu Mingfei, said was very clear and made a lot of sense. He cared about very few things, and he possessed very little. The past and future that these things built upon were the reason for Lu Mingfei's existence in the world.

His parents whom he hadn't seen for many years, Chen Wenwen, his aunt's family with whom he had complicated feelings... Even if no one loves Lu Mingfei, as long as these people are still alive, that's good enough.

What kind of bullshit world is it if it can't even satisfy this?!

"Damn it! Open Sesame!" Lu Mingfei's eyes were bloodshot, almost roaring and ordering.

His voice echoed in the deep valley, separated and reassembled by layers of storms, becoming a faint whisper returning from all directions. His anger cooled in the distance, leaving only a deep and mechanical echo.

The starlight went out.

Before Lu Mingfei could figure out what was happening, he lost his footing and fell from the sky. The fall seemed incredibly long to him. He stared wide-eyed at the dark rock wall, like a bird skimming across the surface of a moonless, dark night sea.

A pair of golden eyes opened in mid-air, and the heavily armored knight awoke as he fell.

He flipped his body and shattered the solidified air with a single punch, or rather, he used his profound power to strike the air into a fixed form. In any case, he reversed his downward momentum with a loud bang and reassembled his power.

A blazing flame erupted from the divine body that had transformed into a sword, and it struck Nidhogg's abdomen like a meteor.

A name… no, a dragon script, was being chanted repeatedly, its sound echoing and amplifying throughout the elemental world. A chant composed of flames was being uttered in unison by a million voices.

"Anything that touches the flames with its bones and blood will be melted again in the boiling water."

The intensity of the flames surpassed that of looking directly at the sun at close range. Just as the power of the Saha world converged on an individual, the power that condensed the Candle Dragon onto the blade also exceeded the physical capacity of Nidhogg.

The glow of flames shone on the scales on Nidhogg's back, seeping out from between the scales. At first, it was a soft flame, then lines that outlined the patterns on the dragon's scales like a vermilion brush, followed by a sudden intensification of white light that ignited from every muscle of his body until his back was like a red-hot iron block in a blast furnace.

Then the flames completely broke through the outline of the dragon's body, like black iron being dismembered by the flames.

Chapter 266 The Path of Gods

Nidhogg was like prey stabbed by a high-pressure gas cylinder dagger. Unparalleled fire element surged into his body, and the royal domain continuously devoured these rebellious flames, but the royal domain was weakening. He rolled and twisted in the flames, his massive body stirring up thunderstorms around him, and the blood of the Dragon Emperor continuously gushed from his ruptured blood vessels.

He is turning to ashes.

The divine body transformed into swords also shattered during this attack, reverting back to the two original double-curved swords made by Lu Mingze.

The price of this attack was the knight's sword and the Great Rune of Bronze and Fire.

In this illusion, it is unknown how much power Nidhogg poured into it, how much of it came from the material world and how much from his spirit that had not yet been revived in reality. But at least, this is the first time since the Black Dragon Era that an individual has destroyed Nidhogg's body in a duel.

The knight breathed heavily, bleeding, and looked down at the ground, searching for Lu Mingfei.

Not long ago, He lost his connection with Lu Mingfei.

Then, the threads, which should have lost their vitality upon losing their host, suddenly pierced the storm and surged from the ground. The knight looked at the shadows beneath the veil that shrouded the earth, where even the elements had lost their vitality, and everything was dying. Nidhogg had succeeded; this place had become His Nibelungen.

The silk threads re-formed into a cocoon as large as a mountain.

Thus, everything was heading towards a hopeless end. The knight botched it; his efforts to save humanity pushed the world to the brink of destruction. Bearing the Great Rune, he should have shouldered the responsibility of fighting Nidhogg, but instead, he was destined to die here. Nidhogg, having reclaimed the throne, would undoubtedly awaken from reality, destroying human civilization and the dragon civilization that might exist in the darker side of the world.

He looked at the giant cocoon and did not hesitate for even a second. After crushing the Great Rune of Bronze and Fire, He destroyed the Great Rune of Earth and Mountains.

A power powerful enough to destroy the world rose from the earth, instantly shattering the incubation grounds where Nidhogg had been reborn. Then, without hesitation, it destroyed another complete throne—the spirit of the White Emperor.

"Lu Mingze".

He spoke softly into the void.

With the help of supreme spiritual power, Lu Mingze, who had followed Nidhogg into this place, was able to reveal himself.

"coming!"

Accompanied by rousing music, a belt replaces the knight's skirt armor, and a new concept of weaponry is transforming from fantasy into reality.

The knight relinquished control of his body, allowing himself to strike a cool pose. Several phantom images of large runes appeared beside him: fire, earth, ocean, and sky. Lu Mingze chose to analyze the power of the White Emperor into the four elements.

As the phantom left its mark on the knight's body, a suit of armor composed of the four elements appeared on him.

"I am the nemesis of the end, Kamen Rider Lu Mingze!"

Lu Mingze took over the knight's body, while Lu Mingfei's spirit broke free.

The black dragon's body, after its rebirth, was almost as majestic as the black dragon itself, and it looked up at the Kamen Rider in the sky.

"My brother went to save the world, now I'll play with you." The Kamen Rider cracked his knuckles and summoned an elemental storm.

……

Lu Mingfei's departure from the boundaries of Nibelungen in the form of a pure spiritual body was an extremely dangerous move. Even the soul of a demigod would get lost in the boundless void if it had no safe place to land.

In this respect, there is no difference between gods and mortals.

But Lu Mingfei persisted in his search in the darkness, his soul enveloped by the cold and profound void. Here, everything was truly illusory; there was no logic or order, no "reasonable" or "unreasonable," no "right" or "wrong." His life experiences of over a hundred years seemed as light as a dream against this infinitely vast backdrop.

His thoughts had never been so active and light, like a newborn infant examining the memories of a hundred-year-old corpse.

A monarch who returned to Earth from the borderlands.

Compared to the history of these two worlds, a hundred years is but a blink of an eye.

The laws governing him are nothing more than the elemental laws of the dragon race and the divine laws of the borderlands... These are not things that the Supreme Will cares about. The object for whom the Supreme Will truly designed the intricate mental world is not Nidhogg, not the demigods, not Melina or Lani, and not even Lu Mingfei himself.

No, Lu Mingfei is part of the truth.

That's not enough. Lu Mingfei isn't enough, and even the god Lu Mingfei isn't enough. It's the path to the birth of another god!

His vision as a Golden King limited him. The so-called integration of laws and becoming a god did not refer to a deity. A new deity or the Dragon Ring was not of interest to the Supreme Will. He once stated that the Borderlands was a failed attempt.

The "Lu Mingfei" in the illusion is not simply real or fake; he represents a deeper connection.

We must find him.

Finally, a change occurred in the depths of darkness. At first, it was the sound of the sea. As the image of the sea appeared in Lu Mingfei's mind, the fog rose. A torrential downpour began, and Lu Mingfei squinted. A certain mental shock rendered him unable to move, as if he were experiencing a lucid dream. There was no doubt that something was hidden in the fog.

In addition to the sounds of the raging wind and rain, the fog gradually became mixed with the roars of animals. It was a very eerie sound. Countless sheep imitated the howls of wolves, rising and falling in waves. Then came the heavy thud of iron hooves, slowly emerging from the fog.

A knight clad in heavy golden armor appeared, raising his enormous golden halberd.

Ningmgef, the guardian of the great tree.

His spirit found a place to rest; if the "Lu Mingfei" in the illusion still exists, he must be here.

Lu Mingfei tried to take a step forward. He was wearing tattered armor, and a rusty short sword lay at his feet. He picked up the short sword, feeling the metal blade that offered no sense of balance. At the same time, he felt a long-lost sense of heaviness—it was hard to breathe, and the armor made his whole body stiff.

He slightly raised his head and looked at the ever-expanding thick fog.

Before the upside-down Church of Elektra in the sky, he tumbles and leaps beneath the hooves of the trees guarding the way; atop Stormhill, he is surrounded by wolves, his body covered in wounds, but the wolves have also paid a heavy price, while in the distance, a colossal golem slowly rises from the storm; before the tunnels leading to the city, the battle has not yet begun, and the ominous demon Malkit is recounting the sins of the Faded Ones; before the throne in Stonewell, the demigod Grek leaps amidst the flames of a dragon, the scorching storm threatening to ignite the entire battlefield…

All of this is happening simultaneously in different scenes, as if the entire boundary has been crushed and then reassembled into a kaleidoscope of chaotic world, with the Faded One moving forward alone.

So this is the final journey.

He took a deep breath.

There was neither the power of law to rely on, nor a body strengthened by dragon blood.

It's unclear how long Lu Mingze can hold out. Melina hasn't appeared in the illusion, presumably because she's been held back by the emergency. The Secret Society's army should still be waiting on the snowy plains of Siberia... Every minute and every second feels as heavy as if it's soaked in blood and tears.

Lu Mingfei gripped the hilt of his sword and began to regulate his breathing, his expression remaining calm.

It's just starting from scratch.

Stepping onto the rain-soaked grass, his feet sinking deeper and deeper into the water, he felt the muscles and blood of his frail body. Exhaustion, cold... he had almost forgotten what it felt like.

Chapter 267 Core Instructions

Kassel College, forty meters underground from the library. Server clusters hummed in the darkness, massive amounts of data surging along fiber optic cables in the pale blue light.

The stock ticker of the New York Stock Exchange and the secret nuclear test in the Sahara Desert; the scanning data of the Shanghai Metro turnstiles and the special operations team lurking in the Congo rainforest; the pupil collection of pedestrians at the Shibuya Crossing in Tokyo and the tree rings of ancient trees that have collapsed in illegal logging camps in the Amazon Basin; the fluctuations in pressure sensor readings at Saudi oil fields and the shifts in the migration routes of wildebeest herds in the West African savanna—war and peace, life and death, success and failure—these concepts, which humans have given meaning to, are indistinguishable. Any economic, ecological, or social human activity is merely a data-driven calculation here.

A flashing red alert could be caused by malware disguised as a cat video, or by an unusual gathering of armed personnel around an operations team. The microsecond-level response time allows for near-simultaneous problem detection and solution correction; only major issues are sent to the central control room for handling by a senior on-duty team.

She is EVA, playing the role of the brainstem, cerebellum, and part of the brain of the Secret Party. Her eyes are suspended in geosynchronous orbit, like a giant transparent jellyfish, with billions of tentacles penetrating the ionosphere and reaching the submarine optical cable.

The EVA server room is located beneath the library elevator, but only a handful of people know that there is another server room within the academy, situated even deeper underground than an ice cellar. This room preserves the core command library created when EVA was first built.

In the vast space, millions of wires of various colors intertwine and go in different directions. The walls are lined with huge old-fashioned computers, and ancient transistors gleam faintly in the darkness. Magnetic tape memory drives spin and make a soft clicking sound.

In the deepest part of this vast and chaotic space, a burly figure sat listlessly in the darkness, a screen flickering with dim light in front of him. From behind, he looked like a bear staring blankly at a beehive.

Footsteps sounded behind him, stopping at the safety door. A dozen steps away, for a hybrid who could divide time into 50 parts, it was practically a knife to the throat.

"So it really was you who managed to intercept EVA's underlying commands," "Bear" said solemnly.

“It’s just cutting a few lines. The repair task has already been assigned to the equipment department. They’re very unreliable, but with such high salaries, they can still be trusted with technical tasks,” Angers said. “We have about nine minutes to cancel the order.”

On the monochrome screen from the 80s in front of the "bear," a short command is written in Latin.

"When the fire is extinguished, open the Nibelungen and broadcast it to the world."

"The flames aren't a metaphor, are they? Just how much preparation did Lu Mingfei and you guys secretly make?" Angers' eyesight was good enough to see the text clearly.