Fang Hong shook his head to show he was fine.
This wasn't a real clash between Dragon Riders after all; in this world where matter didn't exist, all conflict ultimately manifested on the level of Soul and spirit.
And what took the hit in the end was also the Soul.
The Dragon Souls might bear most of the impact, but of course their masters couldn't possibly remain completely unaffected by the shock.
In the earlier Combat with Seniman, what he'd faced was only a portion of the other side's spare strength; the shock he'd taken naturally couldn't compare to what a Dragon Rider gave off when going all out.
But the impact Irs had taken was even worse. That shock wasn't just from Hillofen coming out on the losing side against that bizarre Construct in their frontal exchanges; it was also that the previous Combat had inflicted much heavier Soul damage on him.
More importantly, it hit him on the psychological level: no matter what, he simply couldn't accept that his Dragon Knight was actually inferior to some newcomer.
His face darkened. He clenched his teeth and struck again.
But once the opponent launched his second wave of Attacks, Fang Hong started to feel a headache coming on.
Irs might not believe in backing down, but that didn't mean he was brainless. Or rather, among Invokers at this Level, there were almost none whose heads didn't work. Since he knew perfectly well that his Dragon Knight didn't have the upper hand in a direct clash, there was no way he'd keep trying to butt heads with Fang Hong.
And once it came down to Combat Experience, Fang Hong could only be said to have rammed headfirst into a solid iron plate—his pitiful bit of Combat Experience might be overwhelming among his peers, but compared to a veteran who'd been piling it up for years and years, it really wasn't much to look at.
Besides, Irs wasn't just any ordinary veteran; he was a Star player, a Dragon Knight from the Second World.
So Fang Hong was basically just there to get strung up and beaten.
The opponent and his Dragon Soul worked together seamlessly; he and Miss Tata also cooperated seamlessly, but the "seamless" they had clearly wasn't on the same level.
Hillofen was always one step ahead of Xiuma.
Sometimes Irs even knew what he was going to do next and would set up a trap in advance, just waiting for him to jump in. And other times, Fang Hong could only watch helplessly as Irs used some brilliant maneuver he actually recognized to break out of danger and then flip the situation around.
He even felt a bit like crying with no tears. There were tactics he clearly knew, but his Level just wasn't high enough to execute them—what the hell was he supposed to do about that?
The other guy was basically bullying the weak with the strong. Fang Hong was grinding his teeth in hatred, and could only console himself mentally: just you wait till I grow up, I'll beat you till you cry.
Or, you know, go ask R or Sister Nether, or Great God Odin to help out.
"That damned foreigner!" Fang Hong was getting beaten till his head was covered in lumps; naturally he was gnashing his teeth too.
But he of course understood this was just wishful thinking. Never mind R and Sister Nether, even if Great God Ye Hua was probably right down at the foot of the mountain, distant water still couldn't put out a present fire. They hadn't even clashed that many times yet, and Fang Hong already felt like he was skating on thin ice, practically relying solely on Xiuma's superior performance to barely maintain Survival like this.
But he knew this wasn't a solution; the other side still hadn't pulled out his Trump Card. What was a Dragon Rider's strongest ability? Domain Ability. If you weren't a proper, full-fledged Dragon Rider, you couldn't use that thing.
In short, the other guy definitely could, and he definitely couldn't.
His gaze swept over the Dragonfire Guild crowd to the side, who were staring blankly at the Combat. Inspiration struck in his desperation—or you could call it flailing around for any cure in a panic. He shouted, "Hold up, this guy isn't from our bracket, he just disguised himself as one of you, and he was trying to kill your Big Sister just now, did you forget?"
But the Dragonfire Guild people had apparently really forgotten about that; they just stood there watching him with no reaction at all, their expressions even a bit strange.
Irs looked at this guy, a bit speechless, and let out a contemptuous snort.
Seeing the banner of bracket-ism fail to rise, Fang Hong felt a bit embarrassed, thinking to himself that these people really had no sense of national pride; wasn't this the time they should be uniting against an external enemy?
But then he thought it through: these people had even defected to the Cultists already, basically "traitors to humanity," so how could they possibly have that kind of thing.
Still, he comforted himself that his words had more or less sown some division among them—they were at least not helping either side, which sort of counted as a bit of a gain, right? Little did he know that the Dragonfire Guild people really weren't unwilling to help; it was just that in a Combat like this, they had no way to get involved at all.
Otherwise they would've come over and done him in this morning—
Fang Hong might be thinking all that, but his hands weren't slow. In his mind, he said to Miss Tata, "Miss Tata, do we still have any Calculative Power left?"
Tata replied without even thinking, "We do."
Fang Hong suddenly thought of a solution.
The Dragon Souls possessed enormous Calculative Power, but they still couldn't replace the role of the Dragon Rider—they could only assist the Dragon Rider in controlling those gigantic beasts and remove the part that was like the cumbersome operations a craftsman had to perform when piloting a Construct.
But when it came to Combat Experience and tactical arrangements, in the end it still had to be the Dragon Rider making the decisions.
Of course, this wasn't to say that no Dragon Souls possessed rich Combat Experience, but Dragon Souls like that were rare. At least, as far as Fang Hong knew, Miss Tata definitely wasn't one of them. And under his careful observation, Irs's Dragon Soul clearly wasn't that type either.
That was where he found his opening—
There were bound to be differences between one Dragon Soul and another. Fang Hong didn't know how strong the opponent's Dragon Soul was exactly; he just figured the difference wouldn't be too big, just like between Miss Tata and Great God Ye Hua's Hailan.
And there were definitely differences between Dragon Rider and Dragon Rider as well; in fact, that was already clearly evident in this fight. If Xiuma's performance wasn't vastly superior to Hillofen's, he'd have no idea how many times he'd have died by now.