Apocalyptic Dragon Riders

Chapter 2

The gold dragon, still nursing the rage from last night’s battle, scratched irritably at what remained of its tail—once as sleek and straight as a masterwork spear but now ragged and deformed. Its wicked claws casually swiped through the air, their tips passing just above its rider’s head as if by accident.

Luck could not have been worse in that chaotic fight. Out of nowhere, a strategic-class ninth-level spell scroll—“Frozen Thousand Miles”—had struck the gold dragon dead-on. If not for its rider burning every last drop of battle aura to shatter the spell’s effects, the dragon would have been frozen solid a thousand meters in the air and crashed to the ground like a block of ice. Even with its legendary resilience, it wouldn’t have been smashed to pieces, but it would have been locked in ice for a hundred years or more—easy prey for capture. And humans had no shortage of ways to deal with extraordinary creatures.

Dragons might be among the most powerful beings beneath the stars, but their bodies were priceless treasures. At best, they would give the enemy a heroic “Dragonslayer” to boast about. At worst, they’d butcher the dragon, chopping it into pieces to forge all manner of magical weapons. Who would it complain to then?

Every gold dragon was a master weaponsmith by birth. They fed on metal, armored themselves in it, and wielded dominion over the power of gold itself. Though they lacked innate spellcasting ability, they could evolve their bodies into unique living weapons. In ancient legends, gold dragons were said to be the divine weapons of the gods themselves, the very embodiment of the invincible Sword of Damocles. Their battle power was terrifying, and they were notorious for their bloodlust. Every one of them was proud, untamable, and ferociously independent.

Even with the ancient pact between dragonkind and humankind, very few knights had managed to sign a contract with a gold dragon and live to tell the tale. That made them one of the most dangerous types of dragons to bond with—not every gold dragon was willing to let itself be saddled by a human.

This particular gold dragon, named Goldie, sprawled lazily on the ground, its posture appearing casual. But only its rider, Morin, knew how dangerous that relaxed pose really was. If he had been careless for even an instant, the casual swipe of those claws would have taken his head clean off.

Killing its rider would free Goldie from the cursed knightly bond. No more being forcibly summoned whenever its partner called. No more having to obey. It could live free, do whatever it pleased, and answer to no one. What could be more wonderful? The dragon often cursed its luck for ever resonating with this particular human. Under the Dragon God’s binding contract, it had been forced—against its will—to sign a knight’s bond. Ever since then, it had been plotting ways to kill Morin and regain its freedom.

Morin’s own life had been a brutal struggle from the very beginning. A street orphan, he had survived by fighting stray dogs for scraps of food, relying on the rare kindness of strangers, and taking on whatever back-breaking labor he could find. From as far back as he could remember, giving up had never been an option. A single scrap of stale bread could mean the difference between life and death. He had watched other children his age waste away and die of hunger and sickness—and he swore he would never share their fate.

So when the Slaine Empire’s conscription officers discovered his potential to become a Dragon Rider and sent him to the merciless training camp, Morin seized the opportunity with all his might. No matter how dangerous or painful the trials became, he refused to quit.

To survive meant never letting go of that resolve burned into his very bones. He gritted his teeth, paid a price far heavier than most, and finally stood out from among the many candidates. He was fortunate enough to resonate—if only barely—with one of the dragons awaiting a partner. His luck, however, was double-edged: the dragon was a vicious, feral, notoriously rebellious gold dragon—one of the least suitable partners for a knight. To make matters worse, Morin’s battle aura attribute was Light—neither opposed to nor compatible with Goldie’s gold element, meaning he gained no special boosts from their bond. His cultivation speed would never match those lucky enough to have complementary or identical attributes, whose progress could skyrocket overnight.

Under the mocking stares of the rejected candidates, the conflicted looks of the instructors, the pitying glances of the other newly-bonded knights, and the deathly glare of the gold dragon that would rather kill him than serve, Morin still reached out and took the dragon flute. To him, the bond wasn’t a curse. The fact that the dragon was dangerous didn’t matter. He had already survived worse. In Morin’s eyes, Goldie was nothing more than a particularly vicious stray dog—one that could bite, yes, but also one he could keep under control if he stayed cautious. Caution, patience, and vigilance would keep him alive long enough to become what he had always dreamed of: a Dragon Rider, a man whose destiny had truly changed.

Morin never let his guard down. Not for a moment. Even in his sleep, he kept one hand on the dragon flute, knowing that with a single thought he could banish Goldie into the flute’s eternal resting space. This kept the fierce, untamed dragon in check—at least for now.

Goldie, for its part, had no choice but to bide its time. If it struck and failed, Morin would not hesitate to seal it inside the flute permanently—an imprisonment that was little better than death. And that was the one outcome Goldie truly feared.

Since the signing of the ancient pact, there had been no shortage of knights who were killed by their own dragons. Some, after realizing their bonded dragon was a gold dragon, had even thrown away their flutes altogether, releasing the beast and living as “knights without dragons.”

Gold dragons were awe-inspiring and terrifying in equal measure—not a choice every knight was willing to make. Soul resonance was the key to forming the bond.

And as for the notion that knight and dragon were “bound to live and die together”? That was a romantic myth. Dragons weren’t so charitable as to share their long lives with short-lived humans. The bond was purely a combat partnership. If either the knight or the dragon died, the contract simply ended. There was no “if one dies, the other follows.”

The war between the Texi Empire and the Slaine Empire was one of the most devastating conflicts in a century. The Battle of Hailar alone had consumed nearly 1.6 million lives, and countless heroes had risen and fallen like mayflies.

And yet, the cause of this blood-soaked war was laughably trivial.

It had all begun with a petty dispute: a member of the Texi diplomatic mission had gotten into an argument over half a gold coin with a palace servant of the Slaine Empire. With a few schemers stirring the pot from the shadows, the quarrel escalated until higher and higher-ranking officials got involved. Soon, national dignity and political interests were at stake.

With one spark, the two nations—who had only just been paying lip service to “peaceful development”—tore away their masks and plunged into a storm of blood and fire. The war that followed centered on the Hailar Mountains and turned into a contest of national endurance. Five years of war later, historians had mockingly named it “The Half-Gold War.” To this day, the conflict remained unresolved, draining both nations’ treasuries and strength. But with pride at stake, neither king could back down.

Hissssss—!

In the distance, a blazing white meteor streaked across the sky, trailing a tail of fire and a deafening sonic boom. It shot toward the mountain peak like a living thing. The icy summit steamed as if scalded by boiling water. The eternal ice melted in an instant, water rushing down in newborn waterfalls. Clouds of white mist billowed into the air, shrouding the peak as if the mountain had suddenly been crowned with a white hood.

“Arka! Are you trying to roast me alive?” Morin spun around sharply, the acrid scent of sulfur filling the air. The mist split apart, and a massive fireball hurtled straight toward him, carrying a wave of heat intense enough to turn him into charred meat.

“Morin! Guess I still can’t compare to big brother Gerdel—he’s the one who really knows how to make an entrance!” A booming laugh rang out as the fireball burst into a shower of sparks, revealing a dragon and its rider, who landed gracefully before Morin.

The instant the dragon touched down, its enormous claws sent up clouds of hissing steam, the ground beneath them sizzling as though on the verge of melting into magma.

“Hah! Arka, you and Misell are a fire-dragon pair—you practically light up the whole sky. Of course you can’t sneak up on anyone like Gerdel and his shadow dragon.”

Morin removed his helmet with both hands, shaking his head in exasperation but smiling nonetheless. His black eyes and short black hair seemed a perfect match for the black-and-gold-scaled dragon lying nearby, feigning disinterest.

Arka, clad head-to-toe in fire-red plate armor that matched his dragon, stood a full head taller than Morin. The two had been close friends since training camp. Unlike Morin, Arka had grown up in a simple country household with a younger sister and had led a far happier childhood.

“Hmph!” Goldie snorted dismissively and flicked its tail. A boulder revealed beneath the melting snow shattered like tofu under the casual swipe. In its eyes, the young fire dragon in front of it—barely a century old—was nothing more than an overgrown lizard that it could tear apart with one claw.

And fire breath? Please. Goldie had once devoured liquid mithril, and with its innate mastery over metallic elements, it was practically immune to ordinary flames. Melt it? Ridiculous. Unless the fire dragon could somehow evolve its flames into the legendary Heavenfire, there was nothing it could do to Goldie.