Supreme BeastTamer: I Can Copy and Upgrade Skills 10x!-Chapter 555: Caught

[Ding! Your spirit has died]

Nox clenched his teeth.

He reached a ridge that overlooked what seemed to be a massive chasm that was over a hundred feet deep and nearly a mile wide in diameter. The ground below was covered by a deep crater. Furthermore, several wisps—which Nox assumed to be his spirit pets—rose into the sky before eventually disappearing.

Nox's gaze lingered a little on his dead spirits before returning to the center of the massive chasm.

And at the center of it—

There it stood.

A towering beast.

It was clad in jagged, rusted armor fused into its flesh, standing almost ten feet tall. Massive arms like tree trunks ended in black claws, each tipped with obsidian talons that shimmered with dark energy. Its mouth—if it could even be called that—was hidden behind a helmet of cracked iron, and yet every breath it took exhaled smoke and venom.

It was a corrupted dragon.

But something was different about this one. It wasn't actively hunting. It didn't move with purpose or rage.

It just… stood there. Twitching slightly. Its armored head slowly turned from side to side. And every few seconds, its claws lashed out with impossible speed, carving through the air, slashing at nothing.

Nothing—but in that nothing were Nox's spirits.

Nox's eyes widened slightly.

"…It can't see them," he whispered, crouching behind a frost-covered boulder. "But it can sense them…"

That was it.

It wasn't looking at his spirits. It was sensing them. Maybe through motion. Maybe through some kind of corrupted aura detection. Whatever it was, it was reacting on instinct, lashing out at the smallest shift in energy.

And the worst part?

It was working.

The beast didn't need precision. It didn't need to see them. Its wild, sweeping strikes were colliding with the incorporeal spirits—and that alone was enough to disperse them.

He watched as one of his spectral Scourge drakes swooped low from above, aiming to pierce the creature's back with a spectral talon.

Without warning, the Scourge Champion spun around with terrifying speed, slamming one massive claw upward like a club.

The moment it connected with the spirit, there was a flash of purple mist—and the dragon was gone.

[Ding! Your spirit has died]

Again.

Nox's jaw tightened.

"This thing… it's dangerous."

Even more dangerous was the fact that it wasn't using corrupted magic or breath attacks. Just brute force and raw instinct. That meant even his own incorporeal advantages were useless here.

"I need to rethink this," Nox muttered.

He was just about to activate his stealth skill Phantom Cloak, hoping the corrupted dragon wouldn't sense him when—

A hand touched his shoulder.

Nox froze.

The cold that touched him wasn't natural. It wasn't the wind or the frost from the trees. This cold was deeper. It sank through his skin like needles and twisted around his spine.

A single breath escaped his lips, fogging in front of him. Nox turned his head slowly, and his eyes widened in shock.

The figure behind him was cloaked in frost and mist, almost as if it had stepped out of the air itself.

But it wasn't just the sudden appearance that shocked him.

It was who it was.

"Don't move," came a deep, calm, powerful voice.

The grip on his shoulder tightened slightly, but it wasn't violent.

It was commanding.

"I almost lost your scent," the figure said again. "But I suppose even you can't fully hide it."

Nox didn't say a word. His body was still. Tense.

He didn't need to look to know now.

He knew that voice.

He had heard it before.

Dracos.

The Ice Monarch.

Nox turned to face him fully now.

Even here, with the frost thick in the air and the red mist curling below, Dracos looked untouched. Unbothered. Regal.

"What… are you doing here?" Dracos asked in a low voice, as if not wanting to alert the beast who was still battling the corrupted spirit dragons. The monarch released his shoulder but didn't step away. His presence still filled the air, thick like snowstorm pressure—suffocating and heavy.

"I needed some distance from the others because I wanted to fight at full power," Nox said simply, visibly relaxing.

"Not to check out the Marked Zone?" King Dracos raised a skeptical brow.

Nox coughed and looked away.

"I noticed you for a while but thought I'd let you do your thing."

"Wait, you sensed me? Does that mean you also saw…"

"I didn't see it, but I sensed them."

By "them," both of them understood that Dracos was referring to the Scourge dragons.

"And it seems that nosy Supreme Court is beginning to suspect some things."

"Right. They were about to ask me some questions before this whole Scourge attack." Nox paused and narrowed his eyes, looking at the Frost Dragon monarch with a suspicious gleam. "Could it be this is your doing?"

"I was indeed about to do something, but this is just pure coincidence," Dracos said, then added in a serious voice, "But the Alpha Scourge dragon is not the type to attack blindly. I fear this is just a prelude to something even greater."

"A full-blown war?" Nox asked.

"Most likely. The Scourge Alpha is probably testing the waters to see how the dragon realm has progressed in the past few years."

"We could have put away everything else and focused on the corrupted dragons, but it seems those old fools have abandoned what's important and turned their attention to you." Dracos sighed.

"Hmmm." Nox was about to speak again when suddenly another notification chimed in his head once more.

[Ding! Your spirit has died]