That rampaging dragon still reached the chamber entrance long before the portal finished powering up. "Screw this!" Merrick had turned ghost-white. He didn't even try to ask Aiden how he had taken down the Redmaw, because the creature coming after them felt like an entirely different class of nightmare. Death hung over them like a storm cloud ready to burst. Worse, the portal's mana infusion hit its most delicate point. There was no halting it now. 1... The final second expired, and a surge of milky-white brilliance erupted from the portal array, pulling them into its core. Aiden took one regretful look back at the Redmaw's dropped loot. Killing that beast had been a one-in-a-million stroke of luck, and its massive body scattered the equipment too far to grab in time. He knew sprinting for it would only get him roasted. He still enjoyed jumping eight levels at once. Their forms disappeared into the light. A deafening boom tore through the maze the moment they left. The entire Labyrinth Cave collapsed like a house of cards. Violent void currents swept through the hallways, swirling into a monstrous vortex that devoured every eerie creature, every equipment, and every stone. Silence followed, leaving the place as empty as a forgotten parking lot. When the world snapped back into view, Aiden blinked through a blaze of harsh red. The light stabbed his eyes until everything looked like it had been washed in molten paint. A colossal dragon—easily three hundred feet long—hovered above them. Its stare carried the same weight as a falling skyscraper. "That's Dragon-class forbidden spell... already halfway through the charge." Merrick's pupils contracted, and every inch of him bristled. A forbidden spell that even a Tier-5 dragon needed to chant carried a level of power he struggled to imagine, and the idea of its blast churned his gut. He could almost feel the entire place waiting to collapse into ash. Anyone trying to stand against it would be lucky if their remains needed only one funeral box. Even if Merrick used his trump card again to bulk up, he would only become a sturdier corpse. Flames wrapped around them in a blazing cage and sealed off every escape path. An exit didn't exist. Desperate syllables tumbled from Merrick's mouth as he worked to summon a defensive forbidden spell. A tiny sliver of survival still existed if he could pull it off. Boom! A thunderous explosion shook the ground. Magma burst through the rock like an erupting geyser. The earth buckled as molten pillars shot upward in waves of blinding crimson. The scene felt both terrifying and mesmerizing. Ping! You have lost fifteen Health. Ping! You have lost fifteen Health. The air scorched Aiden's skin so intensely that his Health began dropping on its own. Another thirty seconds under this heat would leave him dead. This only came from the spell's environmental backlash. Aiden squinted at the massive blaze dragon above. His Attributes Panel flashed, 'Target: Holy Judgment Dragon—Inferno Dragon. Level and attributes not found.' Great. Another Holy Judgment dragon. Just what I needed, he thought. "Gray!" Aiden called out, and Gray burst from the beast space. The elemental storm wasn't something he could contain. Even if Merrick's forbidden spell were completed, it probably would not hold back the Inferno Dragon's strength. A single leftover ripple could turn him to charcoal. The Inferno Dragon wasn't an eerie creature. Even if it died here, it could respawn. The idea of standing around and accepting death never crossed Aiden's mind. Facing a Tier-5 dragon changed nothing. "Merrick, you got a way to get my divine beast right up to that thing?" Aiden shouted while Gray bolted toward the Inferno Dragon. Merrick furrowed his brows. "What are you planning?"Aiden smiled. "I'm going to cut that forbidden spell off." Merrick froze, speechless with shock for a moment, then completely revoked his forbidden spell. Anyone else making such a claim would have seemed completely unhinged. A forbidden spell cast by a Holy Judgment Dragon never broke cleanly. Its magic resistance alone made the creature a nearly indestructible fortress. Its physical body could endure a forbidden spell without flinching. Merrick, despite being a top-ranked powerhouse, had no real way to stop it. He usually had only one choice: raise a shield and hope for the best. This young man, though... Merrick had seen him perform too many impossible feats today. Moreover, the little dragon leading the charge didn't resemble a typical contracted divine beast. "How do we pull this off?" Merrick asked, confidently surrendering his life. It felt absurd, yet it was also entirely true. Dropping the forbidden spell guaranteed he would die if Aiden's plan failed."It's easy," Aiden replied calmly. "Get him within sixty-five feet of the Inferno Dragon."