Building a Gaming Empire From Scratch

Chapter 729: 692: Kidnapping the Dragon Girl?!

Chapter 729: Chapter 692: Kidnapping the Dragon Girl?!

Intense and concentrated explosions detonated on the Fire Dragon, splattering its blazing blood on the exterior walls of the building, kindling spontaneously.

The Fire Dragon finally lost strength to support itself, no longer shaking the building, but started flapping its wings to ascend.

“It’s trying to escape!!”

The players cried out in panic, “We can’t let it get away!”

However, the Fire Dragon only ascended about ten meters before it stopped ascending. It tilted back its neck for a momentary brewing, then the intense dragon flame erupted again, continuously pouring into the building through the broken window of Qiang’s room.

The entire building began to spew flames from inside out as the highly explosive charges on the players went off in succession. The continuation of Dare To Die Squad charging into the building led to the explosion spread from the top floor to the bottom, spreading endlessly.

Finally, with the surge of dragon flames from the bottom of the building, the entire building met its end and began to slowly collapse.

The players, who had just speedily descended, were dragging a disheartened Qiang, frantically running away from the dragon flames spilling out of the building.

The scene was in chaotic disorder.

…

“Mavis is the big villain! Gaga!” Mavis attempted to imitate the speech of a big villain, but her laughter wasn’t quite right.

If players were paying attention, they would realize that as the Fire Dragon rampaged destructively, not a single NPC died.

All the NPCs affected were wrapped in a “cocoon” woven by flames.

Under the wreckage of the buildings, under the ruins, were numerous flame cocoons. Cutting them opened revealed the peacefully sleeping NPCs within.

After operating Metropolis for so long, many originally randomly generated virtual figures have become emotionally attached to the players due to prolonged interactions – even if it was just familiarity, it mattered to Cloud Dream.

After all, casual players have provided this feedback many times.

Since it aligned with the operating concept of Metropolis, it was somewhat accepted. In contrast, Night City would not do this. Someone dying in the middle of the street was nothing special.

By now, unless necessary, Metropolis’ operation team rarely arranges activity designs like “players or NPCs going on a killing spree, and NPCs coming back to life nonchalantly the next day”.

In other words, the NPCs of Metropolis have received a modicum of respect.

And this respect comes entirely from the efforts of the players.

As a group, players are indeed complex.

When they’re evil, they can make Satan bow, but when they’re good, they can make Buddha give up his seat.

…

Although it still looked pretty impressive, the Fire Dragon’s health bar has dropped by a fifth. If it continued like this, it probably wouldn’t win.

Looking at the slowly collapsing building, Mavis suddenly had an idea. She patted the dragon horn and excitedly said, “Big Dragon, let’s play ”demolish the building”!”

The Fire Dragon understood, and soared into the sky. In mid-air, it twisted its body downwards and made another dive.

This time, it folded its wings in front to guard its body, and at the moment of hitting another building, it suddenly did a sideward drift, using its right side to crash hard into a twelve-floor high building.

Under the violent impact, the building could not resist and was directly split in half by the dragon, crashing down towards the crowd!

A giant shadow was cast, the falling building blocked out the sun. Players fled in all directions.

With the enormous crash, the ground quaked and smoke and dust filled the air.

Yet the Fire Dragon didn’t stop. It continued to crash into a second building.

Then a third…

After four buildings collapsed in succession, the entire battlefield became fragmentedly broken. For a moment, countless players were squashed into pancakes in the midst of the smoke and dust, vanishing into thin air.

Just as the Fire Dragon was charging towards the fifth building, a tank gun hit the Fire Dragon again. This time, the location was: the head!

A large burst of flame exploded on the Fire Dragon’s head. Even the extraordinary scale could not withstand the enormous impact, causing Fire Dragon’s health to drop significantly and the body became instantly stiff.

With heavily armed helicopters approaching, the ship-mounted machine guns started firing crazily.

Once again, Mavis almost fell off but she tightly held onto the dragon horn, refusing to let go.

Instinctively, the Fire Dragon wanted to fly away from there.

But as soon as it started to flap its wings, a sharp pain came from its wing roots. Enduring the pain, it insisted on flying.

But just when it started to ascend, a ferocious explosion occurred at the wing root, causing dragon blood to spill.

The Fire Dragon let out a mournful howl and fell again.

Everyone’s attention was drawn to it, and they noticed that at the connection between the Fire Dragon’s wings and body, there were several players!

Lance and William were among them!

At this moment, they were both wearing climbing gear, using chrysanthemum ropes to secure themselves on the Fire Dragon’s back – obviously, the rock nails that broke through the scales were drilled by professional climber William.

The dragon scales were significantly thick, and without breaking the dragon scales to harm the flesh, the Fire Dragon would not feel any pain.

However, not all dragon scales were indestructible. The closer it was to the part where dragon skin and scales meet, the weaker the dragon scales were. Similar to the deflecting effect of “sloping Armor” was also weaker there.

More than thanks to this, William was able to drill holes in the dragon’s back and drive in a series of rock nails.

Thanks to the stability of these rock nails, they were not thrown off by the Fire Dragon’s vigorous movements.

The previous explosion was from Lance using an electric saw to cut open the dragon skin at the scale-less root of the wing, and two “dare to die squad” players igniting the high explosive placed inside, causing such noticeable damage.

Now they were increasing their efforts, aiming to utterly cripple one of the fire dragon’s wings and ground the battle once and for all.

Mavis felt a little distressed. She patted the fire dragon’s head, signaling it to unleash its ultimate move.

But at that moment, a “thunk” resounded from behind, as if something had struck the dragon’s head.

Turning around hastily, Mavis spotted a familiar figure: Xu Chun.

Xu Chun, with a twin blade slung on his back, had grasped another dragon horn, landing securely on the dragon’s head.

Thereafter, he quickly unrolled his speed descent rope, skillfully affixing it onto the dragon horn. Without wasting a single second, he moved towards the dragon’s eye, pulling the rope along.

“Hey!” Mavis stretched out a hand, attempting to stop him, yet Xu Chun, oblivious to Mavis, continued his endeavor.

Xu Chun’s appearance gave Mavis momentary hesitation—this person was, after all, not only a familiar face to some extent but also a “colleague.”

But the hesitation only lasted a moment. Mavis decisively commanded, “Dragon Flames Baptism!”

The fire dragon once again roared upwards, with the dragon flame surging from deep within its throat.

However, this time, instead of directly attacking the players, the dragon flame spread along the dragon’s head, down and over, covering the dragon’s head, neck, back, wings, tail, extending to its whole body.

Gone through this wave, all the players on the dragon’s body, apart from Mavis, were out of luck!

Xu Chun only managed to strike a blow at the dragon’s eye before he was incinerated mid-air.

Lance and the other players were swept away by the explosion from the explosives.

There was just one piece of good news: the explosion had again critically injured the root of the fire dragon’s wing.

Not only that, but an even more violent explosion immediately happened thereafter.

It wasn’t the dragon who was bombed this time, but an office building standing twenty stories high!

The players had set off explosives on one side of the building, successfully causing it to collapse heavily onto the fire dragon!

This blunt force trauma instantly thumped the fire dragon onto the ground, reducing its health further and sending it below 75%.

The players, greatly encouraged, were pouring forward, casting their offense, exploding…, making it rain damage on the fire dragon.

As the dragon’s health dropped dramatically, it seemed that the chance for slaying the dragon was within reach!

What they didn’t know was: the fight up to this point had come to an interlude.

Under the proposed mechanism, the fire dragon would not just appear and engage in a battle of life and death—it would leave the battlefield under two conditions:

The fire dragon would retreat if it has already killed more than 10,000 players or if its health drops below 20%.

Then it would reappear at an even interval.

It would have to go back to work 11 more times today, either to pulverize players or to be beaten up by them.

…

“Roar!!!”

With a dragon roar that shook one to the core, a group of brilliant light emerged from the fire dragon’s body, ascended to the sky, and in a blink of an eye, splintered into a manifold of thousands of light rays shooting out!

All the engaged combatants—whether they were still alive or had already respawned, rushing back—were hit in the chest by a beam of light that seemed to pass through the air!

Despite being sheltered behind sturdy defenses, this beam of light still managed to penetrate their cover, striking their bodies.

All of them were flabbergasted by this unexpected “attack”.

Seizing this opportunity, the fire dragon, with its somewhat tattered wings, scratched away from the ground, bearing all its injuries, struggling to fly high, higher and higher.

But before disappearing, the fire dragon spoke up again.

What came out of it this time wasn’t a dragon roar—it was human speech!

“Wretched humans who kidnapped the Dragon Girl!”

“Remember, this is not the end!”

“As long as you do not give my niece back, the war will not end!”

Having said this, the fire dragon plunged into the clouds and disappeared from sight.

It left the players standing on a battlefield that was nothing but ruins, looking at each other in bewilderment.

They then reached out and looked at the ‘light’ that had just struck them.

That wasn’t real ‘light’. It was merely wrapped in a layer of light on the outside. Plus, its speed was so fast that it looked like a beam of light.

Now that the light had dispersed, everyone finally saw the truth:

It was an amber-colored spherical object, about the size of a toddler’s fist, encapsulating a red pentagram at the center.

Shuihua, who had followed Lance to the Metropolis and survived by playing it low-key in a crowd, muttered the name of this object in confusion:

“Dragon Pearl? What is this for?”