By the watchtowers on the riverbank, groups of soldiers are hiding behind stone walls or anything else that can be called cover. Soldiers who have just rushed over to support like Jace from the forest charge towards one of the collapsed ruins.
There, an officer in the guise of a knight wearing full armor is beckoning the soldiers to quickly cross the gentle slope and approach the cover.
Jace also joins them. As he runs, he looks around but doesn't see the dragon.
In fact, it's not difficult to judge. Because soon he notices that the soldiers of Lordaeron in the distance are all staring in one direction uniformly—the top of the watchtower.
When Jess realized that he could judge the location of the dragon from their line of sight, he felt someone grab the cloak at the back of his neck and give a sharp tug, causing him to stumble and almost fall backward.
When he looked up, he saw a black shadow emerging from behind the battlements of the high watchtower.
Even with his back to the sun, he could see that the monster's yellow reptilian eyes were staring intently at him. It was an extremely large snake-like head, so large that Jess developed megalophobia.
The oppressing feeling of the other party's size far beyond that of a normal organism made him, who had never witnessed a huge monster up close before, have his hair stand on end in the hot environment where flames were burning everywhere. "Quickly get out of here, mage!"
Jesse rolled over and slid out with the force of someone pulling him just now. After crawling on all fours for a while, he then felt as if he had been kicked hard from behind and flew up with his bottom facing the sky.
Before he could fall to the ground, he was engulfed by a ball of flames. The dark red fire swept over his head. This heat wave pushed him to roll several times after landing before he finally stopped.
He staggered up and ran a few steps before jumping behind a wall. Looking back, he saw a soldier wearing chainmail running towards the small river, his whole body ablaze.
"Damn... damn... damn..."
Jesse patted the small flame at the end of his hair and muttered in his native language while tightly pressing against the stone wall. His hand could feel that the stone wall was somewhat heated by the fire on the other side.
At this moment, Jesse felt a burning pain in his forearm. It turned out that when he fell just now, his forearm was not covered by the cloak.
The cloak had changed from dark brown to red. If it weren't for this thing protecting him just now, his entire back might have been in trouble.
"Use slow spells to restrain his movements! Mages!" A knight captain on the other side shouted: "Don't be frightened by his flames!"
Jesse didn't notice where there were mages. In fact, he didn't dare to stick his head out now. The soldiers holding bows nearby were also pressed against the wall without sticking their heads out.
They probably didn't dare to go out either, Jesse told himself. However, he didn't know where a voice came from: "Archers, get ready!" Immediately, these soldiers rushed out of the cover, drew arrows and nocked them.
These Lordaeron soldiers defending Southshore are undoubtedly veterans who participated in the orc war a few years ago. And Hillsbrad Foothills is the battlefield on the entire continent where red dragons participate in the war most frequently.
People here will definitely not question whether orcs are really fighting on dragons like people in the Kingdom of Stormwind, because most local residents have seen red dragons whistling and flying over their heads.
For them, black dragons are just red dragons with a darker color.
Jesse watched these fellow countrymen aim at the sky behind him without fear and couldn't help but muster up his courage and stick his head out.
Now, he saw the whole picture of that dragon.
The black dragon was covered with dark brown scales. It moved its body by clinging to the wall of the city wall with its four sharp claws, scraping stones and dust that fell like rain.
A huge wing like a dark purple canvas, one flapping outward, and the other wrapping around the watchtower together with its four legs. It was simply a gecko as big as a bus.
The exaggeratedly slender tail was sticking up in the sky. Only the spindle-shaped tail tip with several spikes trembled from time to time, like some kind of deterrence.
Its high-raised head was aiming at several fleeing soldiers by the river. The billowing black smoke surged out from between its scaled lips. The corners of its mouth kept trembling and transparent saliva flowed down. This cunning guy obviously used this watchtower as cover and was maneuvering with the soldiers who were attacking.
Whoosh!
The soldiers released their arrows. One by one, the arrows whistled past Jesse and shot straight up. Jesse didn't have time to see where these arrows landed. The harsh sound of arcane energy tearing through the air was approaching rapidly from behind again.
He looked up. Arcane missiles were continuously spinning and rushing straight towards the black dragon. The black dragon keenly sensed the threat behind it. The raised wing shook violently towards the direction where the missiles were coming. All the missiles suddenly shattered into arcane dust and dissipated in mid-air.
The black dragon turned its head to look at the source of the missiles. Its abdomen bulged and became bright red. Then it turned towards its throat. Jesse saw that several mages had already used various strange displacement spells to escape in different directions...
Roar!
A ball of scorched black flames with crimson lava was thrown out. It exploded instantly when it hit the ground. Jesse quickly picked up his cloak to cover himself. The heat wave slammed into him hard, like a strong man pushing him against the wall and making a solid impact.
In fact, compared to this intuitive explosion of flames, those remaining crimson shadow corruptions emitting purple auras on the ground were even more terrifying.
Jesse saw a mage who couldn't escape in time near the explosion wailing in pain. The burned pants and exposed skin had turned purple and swollen. Soon it would necrotize under the damage of shadow corruption.
He groped in his bag for a while, clenched the last bottle of shadow protection potion he had left and stuffed it into the sash of his robe. Although he didn't know if this bottle of potion could block the damage of this black dragon (of course it was impossible at all), but at least it could block some.
Unknowingly, Jesse, who was hiding under the watchtower, had already become the person closest to the black dragon in the entire open space.
He didn't dare to stick out his body because once he was discovered, he would surely die the fastest.
Some of the archers who were hiding with him earlier were injured by the explosion and were rescued into the forest. Some transferred to another low wall and waited for an opportunity to attack again. The continuous clinking sounds of arrows hitting stones and scales came from above.
Suddenly, the black dragon let out a fierce roar. Jesse glanced sideways and found that some lucky archer had shot an arrow right between the scales on the black dragon's abdomen and deeply pierced it.
But looking closely, there were already many arrows shot into the skin. It's just that this black dragon was too large. These arrows still couldn't cause any fatal injuries and could only slow down its movements.
And where are those mages? What about the slow spells they promised?
Seeing that the attacks it was suffering were getting stronger and stronger, the black dragon couldn't help groaning in pain. Immediately, it moved its claws again and climbed to the other side of the watchtower. The stones scraped off fell like rain. Jesse had to hug his head and hide in the corner for a while.
Out of the corner of his eye, he glanced up at the black dragon and found that the retracted wing membrane had been severely torn. A series of wounds extended all the way to the ribs where the huge wing was connected. That was the terrifying wound caused by the dwarf gryphon knight earlier. Damn it, where did Greed go?