Red Dragon Monster Hunter Template.

Sylvie dared not speak the rest of her words, but Thor already understood what she meant.

These undead skeletons are incredibly audacious, actually planning to wage a full-scale war against me.

Having been lying dormant in his lair for a long time, he could take this opportunity to go out and stretch his muscles.

Hopefully, the souls of these dragon liches are powerful enough that if we can wipe them out, we might be able to gather enough essence to extract the next unlocked monster template.

Chapter 432 The Origin of the Dragon Witch Cult (Background, can be skipped)

Legend has it that long, long ago, there was a mage named Samaster, who was intelligent, wise, and had an extraordinary ambition for magic.

His knowledge and wisdom grew at an alarming rate, and before his hair had even turned gray, he had already become a top spellcaster.

His fiery passion for magic quickly caught the attention of the goddess of magic, who appeared before him in her avatar when he was around fifty years old.

At first glance, Samass was convinced that this goddess was someone he was willing to give everything for in his life, so he knelt down devoutly and let his tears of excitement fall onto her feet.

Mystra smiled and embraced the mage, inviting him to have in-depth conversations with her over the next ten days.

As they were about to part, Mystra asked the young genius if he was confident he could bear a portion of her power, and then personally passed on the Silver Flame to him.

Thus, Samasser became another voter of Mystra after the Seven Sisters of the North.

Before leaving, the goddess of magic guided him to the Tower of Shadows, where he could learn from Elminster, who lived there, how to control this power.

On his way to the Valley of Shadows, Samasser carefully reflected on everything that had happened over the past ten days and finally came to the conclusion that he and the goddess had long been deeply in love with each other.

This conclusion is not entirely wrong; Mystra did indeed love him, just as she loved all those who believed in her. However, as one of the chosen ones, Samasser may have received more favor, but it was by no means a unique, exclusive love for one person.

Unfortunately, Samass didn't see this clearly. He was still immersed in his own romantic fantasies, making no attempt to hide his feelings and constantly proclaiming his love for the goddess.

This is why his subsequent interactions with Elminster were not pleasant.

As a rational and experienced spellcaster, Elminster could not tolerate his absurd obsession, so he invoked Mystra's consort, Azus, in an attempt to completely shatter his delusions.

Samasser's dream was shattered, but he blamed all his pain and resentment on Elminster, harboring a deep grudge ever since. Having fully grasped the voters' abilities, he left Shadow Valley without hesitation.

At that time, he was still kind-hearted, but the changes that followed ruthlessly distorted his character.

One day, while traveling through a woodland, Samasser encountered a group of Zantalin mercenaries escorting a prison wagon.

The powerful spellcaster immediately recognized the group as slave traders and, without hesitation, went straight forward to rescue the prisoners.

He easily felled the charging cavalrymen, and then a fireball fell, instantly turning the entire vanguard into dust.

The remaining Zantarlin mercenaries, fearing Samaster's magical power, could only gather around the prison wagon, attempting to use hostages to deter him from making a move.

But then an unexpected event occurred. The slaves in the prison cart saw a glimmer of hope for rescue and began to stir. They stretched their hands out from the gaps in the cart and used their chains to whip the guards outside.

The guards, already burdened by pressure and fear in the face of a formidable enemy, were suddenly attacked unexpectedly, causing their reason to completely collapse, leaving them only with uncontrollable madness and rage.

They swung their swords to cut off the slaves' outstretched arms and thrust their spears into the prisoners' chests.

The angry roars mixed with painful howls, the splattered blood reflecting off the cold weapons, this hellish scene deeply agitated Samass, making his rage uncontrollable, and the silver flames around his body pulsed violently.

A flash of white light tore everything apart, sparing neither slave traders nor innocent slaves in the prison carts.

Once Samasser calmed down, he stared blankly at the horrific scene before him, unable to believe that he had done it.

After a long while, his expression began to become ferocious and twisted, and he forcibly shifted all the blame onto the Zantalin Society.

This explanation could deceive others, but it couldn't deceive himself. Samass's soul was tormented day and night by endless regret and pain.

In the years that followed, he began to actively study dark necromancy, hoping to use his own power to resurrect those who had died tragically because of his recklessness.

Even gods cannot revive beings annihilated by silver fire, so it is even more impossible for him, a mortal, to do so.

Not only were his wishes thwarted, but his long-term contact with dark forces and his creation of undead creatures further distorted his already unbalanced mind.

As a neutral god, Mystra focused on exploring magic itself and did not care about the users or uses of power, so she never interfered with Samaster's dark research.

Many years later, Samass reappeared and met Elasdra, the daughter of Mystra, who had only been in power for a few years, in Silvermoon City.

Of all the women Samass had ever seen in his life, only Mystra's beauty and elegance surpassed that of Elasdra.

Elasdra was also impressed by Samass's extraordinary talent, and the two quickly became a couple and spent a wonderful time together.

Unfortunately, his good fortune didn't last long. Just like his past obsession with magic and his fanatical love for goddesses, Samass quickly developed a morbid possessiveness towards Elasdra.

The naturally independent Elasdra could not accept such constraints, and the conflict between the two continued to deepen, ultimately leaving only endless regret in this relationship.

This experience made Samasser increasingly anxious and depressed, and he could only devote all his energy to deeper research into necromancy in order to relieve his inner pain.

Just then, he met a young mage named Aigarson. The mage spoke of Aigarson's great admiration for him and how well he knew him, so the two traveled together.

Samasser was unaware that Aigarson was not only a mage but also a priest of Bane, the god of tyranny, and that his sole purpose in approaching him was to drag him into an even deeper abyss of darkness.

Throughout their journey, Aijiason constantly tugged at Samassen's fragile heartstrings, turning black into white, twisting cause and effect, transforming illusion into reality, love into hatred, and blaming others for all his misfortunes.

He grew increasingly hostile towards Elminster, even taking his anger out on Elastra, and became paranoid, believing that they were the ones who were hindering his love for the goddess.

Finally, he tracked down to the encampment of Elasdra outside Silvermoon City and decided to launch an attack.

Upon seeing her former lover approaching, Elasdra was caught off guard and was about to greet him warmly when blood suddenly gushed from her mouth. She was met with vicious curses and a merciless attack.

Fortunately, her pre-planned defenses saved her life, and through the spiritual connection among the voters, she summoned Lyra Silverhand and Kelben Blackstick.

Under the combined attack of the three chosen ones of the goddess of magic, Samaster was ultimately defeated. The silver fire within his body was completely taken back by Azus, and his body withered like a corpse.

After the dust settled, Aigarson slowly emerged from the shadows and cast the spell he had prepared beforehand, resurrecting Samasser and maintaining his immortality with the remaining power of the chosen ones, while completely erasing the last shred of conscience in his heart.

After that, Samassi devoted himself to studying and translating various ancient prophecies, and publicly released the contents he deciphered from the prophecies of Magella:

Except for the shattered throne, everything will return to nothingness; there will be no more rulers on earth, only the dead. The dragons will eventually rule the world.

Samass interpreted this prophecy as: the dead dragon would rule the world, and thus, the Dragon Witch Cult was born.

Chapter 433 Black Claw

Thor was unaware that this passage was actually included in his Dragon Legacy; he simply flipped through it casually and found it easily.

Perhaps one of his ancestors had dealt with these skeletons, and his assessment of them was: what's more pathetic than a sycophant is a paranoid sycophant.

With Samasser's talent and opportunities, he could have at least become a god or something similar if things had gone according to plan.

However, due to his own obsessive personality, he easily fell into the schemes of others and was transformed into a monster that was neither human nor ghost. Not long after he founded the Dragon Witch Cult, he was directly attacked by Losanda and is now hiding in some corner plotting his resurrection.

After dismissing Silvesre, Thor immediately began gathering his men, intending to completely erase this organization, born of obsession, from the history of the world.

Then one could see countless flying dragons covering the sky like fiery clouds, and heavy cavalry galloping across the land like an endless tide.

When the Red Emperor began to stomp his feet, the entire northern lands trembled, and all the major powers began to busily prepare for the city's defenses in order to withstand any possible attack.

As Thor's power grew, some of the city-states had already begun secretly transferring assets and people, preparing to flee the city at any time.

Fortunately, the Red Dragon's target this time was not them. The army simply passed by their territory and then split up, heading towards the White Feather Mountains, the Sunset Mountains, the Tassa Wasteland, Zambia, and the Moon Sea.

Just as Thor's lair is located at Mount Doom, a fact known to everyone in the North, the important strongholds of various powerful factions are not secrets among themselves.

However, liches and living beings are ultimately different. These undead creatures, who are naturally suited to hiding in the shadows, have their own unique ways of concealing their whereabouts.

Although Thor's men had discovered over 90% of the Dragon Shaman Cult's hidden strongholds in the North, they still missed one.

Deep beneath the wilderness in the western heartland, far from human cities, stretches a vast, dark region.

It was even an integral part of the Underdark beneath Thor's territory, with numerous passages connecting the two.

In short, deep within this dark region lies a massive, deep, and dark rift.

On the towering cliffs on both sides, one can see countless sunken caves resembling ant nests, where a large number of undead creatures are quietly sleeping, including even death giants.

At the bottom of the rift, a special environment has created a passage leading directly to the Shadow Realm, from which massive amounts of shadows and negative energy are constantly gushing out.

A colossal dragon lich, nearly a hundred meters in size, was sleeping in the gray-black mist.

It is evident that her original form was an ancient black dragon, and unlike ordinary dragon liches whose bodies are decayed and reduced to mere skeletons, most of her flesh and blood remains intact.

This means that she did not transform into a dragon lich because of a fatal trauma, but rather it was a deliberate act.

The dried flesh clung tightly to the bone surface, but because the black dragon was already as thin as a skeleton, it didn't look much different from when it was alive.

The surface of its dark gray scales was covered with energy veins like a spider web, with edges gleaming with a bewitching purple light. Its skull, spine, limbs, and long tail were also densely covered with silver-white dark engraved runes.

But what is most striking is her snout, which is much longer and narrower than that of a typical black dragon, and her exceptionally large and sharp forepaws.

The dark runes entwined around these two parts are also the most dense, and are also the source of her title—Rune-Inscribed Dragon Lich Anabrahis Blackclaw.

She is also the current supreme ruler of the entire Dragon Witch Cult.

However, because they rarely venture out into the outside world, they are little known. As spirits, they often enter long periods of slumber, making the entire lair as silent as a graveyard.

On that very day, a spellcaster dressed in black robes descended from the sky, his wide sleeves billowing like bat wings in the air currents, and he cried out in terror.

"Lord Anabrasis, it's terrible! The five-colored dragons have come to our door!"

The sharp sound echoed continuously in the deep rift, instantly causing two ghostly blue flames to ignite in the eyes of the dragon lich below, which looked like a dried corpse.

A surge of cold, negative energy erupted outwards, sweeping away the dust that had settled around them over the long years.

"The Five-Colored Dragons have come knocking on our door? Damn it! I've only been asleep for a few decades, what's going on? Explain yourself!"

A piercing sound, like two pieces of sandpaper rubbing together, came from that long, narrow mouth. The sound waves vibrated the surrounding shadowy black mist, causing it to surge and twist, revealing countless blurry phantoms.

At this moment, the entire great rift seemed to be awakened, and countless undead creatures propped themselves up in the caves on both sides, the cracking sound of bones colliding and the screams of ghosts blending together.

The dense negative energy that permeated the area caused the space within the Great Rift Valley to distort slightly, as if it were about to fall into the Shadow Netherworld at any moment.

The black-robed spellcaster seemed somewhat uncomfortable with this as well. After landing, he tightened his wide robe, hunched over, and spoke in a trembling voice.

"During the decades you have been asleep, a red dragon blessed by Tiamat appeared in the North. It grew rapidly and unified most of the North in just a few decades."

Not long ago, Her Majesty Tiamat bestowed a divine oracle, declaring that she would appoint this red dragon as her representative, entrusting him with the task of leading the other five dragons to completely unify the Northlands and eliminate all resistance.

Lord Drogosa, not wanting to sit idly by and await his doom, intervened to thwart their plans, but he hadn't expected the red dragon to become enraged and now come knocking on their door.

In just a few words, Anabrahis had a general understanding of the current situation, and he couldn't help but roar angrily.

"Damn useless piece of trash, why didn't you tell me about something this important beforehand?!"

The terrifying sound waves surged through the ravine like a hurricane, nearly blowing the black-robed spellcaster away. He could only cower and speak cautiously.

"You said that we shouldn't disturb your slumber unless it's a life-or-death situation, so we did..."

"Shut up! I don't want to hear such weak excuses!"

A giant wing covered with a shriveled membrane swept across, sending the black-robed spellcaster flying and embedding him deeply into the rock wall.

Fortunately, his body seemed to have undergone special modifications, or he possessed some kind of powerful bloodline, and he managed to withstand the heavy blow without dying, only spitting out a large amount of bright red blood.

"Tell me! Where is that damned red dragon now?!"

"In...in...the White Feather Mountains, we're almost at Lord Drogonza's lair. I have the teleportation coordinates here."

The black-robed spellcaster trembled as he reached into his robes and pulled out a broken dragon tooth.

Then an invisible force pulled the dragon tooth apart, causing it to explode into a cloud of dust that formed a dark vortex in the air.

Anabrasis gave his subordinates a deep look, let out a long roar, and transformed into a streak of light as he plunged into the vortex.

The undead creatures located on both sides of the cliff followed closely behind, surging out in an endless stream, like a gray-black river.

Chapter 434 Battle of Baiyu Mountain

The aerial force, composed of dragons, pterosaurs, and darkin, resembled a burning cloud, turning the entire sky crimson. Frenzied lightning bolts frequently tore through the clouds, like silver snakes dancing wildly, and deafening roars echoed across the wilderness.

Thor reigned high in the sky, where howling winds and churning clouds gathered and coalesced beneath him to form a colossal cloud throne.

He looked down at the battlefield below, and at the countless undead creatures pouring out from the cracks in the mountainside, a sinister smile creeping across his face.

These guys from the Dragon Witch Cult certainly didn't disappoint me; over hundreds or thousands of years, they've accumulated a substantial fortune.