The Silver Dome Lord

The sky above Western Fortress was draped like a vast white net, smothering the human forces below in a shroud of feathers and wings. Razor-sharp talons clashed against destructive elemental forces overhead; shrill cries and the roar of spells shook the heavens from end to end.

The fortress and the terrain for over a dozen kilometers in every direction had been swallowed by war. The humans were hopelessly outnumbered — even with every soldier from Western Fortress deployed, they could only form block formations on the ground, their role limited to striking down those White Demon Eagles that swept low enough to be reached.

The battle had divided into several distinct layers.

On the ground, Basic-Level and Intermediate-Level Mages used every tactic available to draw the White Demon Eagle Legion's attention, baiting them into diving low. Through this lure-and-destroy approach, they brought down a substantial number of the enemy.

In the middle stratum of the sky, High-Level Mages with the ability to fly formed the main battlefront against the massed White Demon Eagle army. A single High-Level spell could obliterate hundreds of Servant-class lives in an instant — the destructive power was staggering. Despite being vastly outnumbered, not one of the High-Level Mages showed any sign of breaking or retreating.

Still higher, above the cloud line, lay the battlefield reserved for the Four-Claw Demon Eagles and humanity's true apex fighters.

Whether it was the Four-Claw Demon Eagles commanding the White Demon Eagle forces, or the Palace Guards, Military Commanders, and Tribunal Agents on the human side — a single casualty on either side would send shockwaves through the entire engagement.

There were roughly ten Four-Claw Demon Eagles. The largest were nearly the size of cloud banks, and the four talons that emerged without warning from those white bodies could shatter a mountain peak to rubble.

Even a single creature like this would pose a catastrophic threat to any small city. Here were ten — ten Commanders.

The ten white Four-Claw Demon Eagles hung suspended in the clouds like drifts broken loose from the sea of mist, their cold, sharp eyes fixed upon the small human figures who dared to soar alongside them in the open sky.

At this altitude, Servant-class and Battle-General-class White Demon Eagles could not follow. The ferocious high-altitude gales and bone-deep cold were simply beyond what creatures of those tiers could endure.

The Four-Claw Demon Eagles had not scattered. They maintained a triangular formation, commanding a vast swathe of sky.

And above even these ten Commander-class Four-Claw Demon Eagles, in the biting cold of a still higher stratum, a colossal eagle with silver plumage reigned — attended and encircled by its ten escorts.

Its feathers were unlike anything seen on the white eagles below. Not a single impure color touched them; the unblemished silver-white proclaimed a sovereign authority that tolerated no dispute. A metallic sheen ran across every feather, an unmistakable declaration that those feathers were harder and sharper than any steel blade.

The Silver Dome Lord's head was the size of a room. The feathers atop its crown stood bristling upright, fanning out into a silver coronet. Its hawk eyes looked out over everything before it with unhurried interest — studying these impudent little humans who imagined they could stop it.

It was utterly at ease up there, looking down on human territory as something beneath its notice. The ten Four-Claw Demon Eagles below served as its escort, more than sufficient to sweep every obstacle from its path — to say nothing of the tens of thousands of subjects beneath those ten Commanders.

"Is... is that the Silver Dome Lord??" Ah Li Tian, the Chief Adjudicator, said with undisguised shock.

"What other creature could command an escort of ten Commander-class Four-Claw Demon Eagles?" Tang Zhong replied, his expression grave.

The Silver Dome Lord.

Alone, it was the undisputed overlord of Xi Ling's skies. With the entire White Demon Eagle Nest mobilized behind it, it could blot out the sun beneath a living cloud of its subjects.

Western Fortress had not actually been built to defend against Xi Ling's White Demon Eagles — for many years, the eagles had never attacked human territory, and humans had paid them little mind in return. No one had anticipated that their numbers had grown to such a scale, nor that their mightiest ruler would arrive with an escort of ten Commanders.

Commander-class creatures were already considered supreme threats in the eyes of human Mages. How powerful must the Silver Dome Lord itself be, to drive ten of them like mounts?

"To deal with the Silver Dome Lord, we'll need to neutralize those ten escorts first!" Councillor Zhu Meng's voice reached everyone present.

"If we spend ourselves doing that, we won't have much left for the Silver Dome Lord itself," said Military Commandant Yun Feng. "Even with all of us combined, the best we can do right now is slow it down."

"We can't afford to be too cautious. We kill a few of them first — and make it clear that our territory is not somewhere they can come and go as they please!" Councillor Zhu Meng cast off his distinguished Councillor robes, and the moment they fell away, something ferocious radiated from him.

Before the last word had left his mouth, he was already moving. He beat his Blazing Feathers and shot from the spot like a streak of crimson light, bearing straight down on the ten Four-Claw Demon Eagles.

Guard Captain Wu Pinjing saw Zhu Meng charge and immediately activated the six-layer Wings of Wind on his back, racing after him.

"Zhu Meng has been holding back all this time," Ah Li Tian remarked, a note of quiet admiration in their voice.

Palace Guards were a breed of human Mage that surpassed even Tribunal Agents in sheer threat level. Guard Captain Wu Pinjing was, without question, a Mage who had reached the absolute pinnacle of his class — and yet even he could not match Zhu Meng's flight speed. The elemental aura emanating from his body was also measurably weaker than the Councillor's. This was nothing short of extraordinary.

"Let's focus on cutting down its escorts for now — the Silver Dome Lord will have to wait," Tang Zhong said. And with that, he too launched himself into the high-altitude battle.

High in the open sky, the strong waged their war.

Down near the earth, it was the Servant-class White Demon Eagles and the human Mage formations locked in bloody close-quarters fighting.

Far from the chaos of that ground battle, at the edge of the sprawling warzone, lay a patch of blue-green forest.

Within that forest, a gray Demon-Eagle — its mixed bloodline setting it visibly apart from the pure white eagles — circled low above a small clearing, releasing sharp, furious cries in unbroken succession.

Its voice carried like a flute through the trees, reaching far — but there was nothing melodic about it. The sound was shrill and raw, edged with something desperate.

*"Eeeee——"*

*"Eeeee——!"*

The gray eagle's mixed heritage was plain to see; it fit awkwardly among true White Demon Eagles, an unmistakable outsider.

From higher above, a cluster of white Demon-Beasts spiraled slowly downward. They had spotted something they took for easy prey, and their greedy eyes locked onto a shape on the forest floor below.

The gray eagle's protests rang through the trees, but the White Demon Eagles paid them no mind. One, unable to hold back its appetite, tucked its wings and dove, talons stretching toward the motionless body of a young man on the ground.

"Eeeee!" The gray eagle shrieked in fury and hurled itself bodily into the diving White Demon Eagle's path, slamming into it and sending it tumbling across a carpet of dead leaves, rolling far before it stopped.

The other White Demon Eagles watched this mixed-blood creature shield a human and answered with their own sharp, mocking cries.

The gray eagle steadied itself and came to land gently in front of the still form of the youth. One broad gray wing — not yet fully grown — swept open wide, sheltering the young man in its shadow.

It raised its head, steady and defiant, and fixed its gaze on the flock of White Demon Eagles circling above.

Its eyes looked exactly like its little master's.