“O Dream Dragon, your beauty is so dazzling that even the sun hides its face in shame whenever you appear! Your eyes? So radiant, they could make stars cry with jealousy. Your scales shimmer brighter than a thousand gems!”
“Truly, if we could bottle the essence of your greatness, it would be sold for a price too high for even the richest kings to afford!”
“When it rains, it’s due to the gods weeping in awe and sorrow, because they know they could never shine as brightly as the glowing wonder that is you!”
The moment a group of Dream Sirens appeared on the stage, they filled the stage with loud chatter praising the glory of the Dream Dragon, just like their templates.
Actually, the time dilation had an even more unfortunate effect at this very moment. Typically, the chatter of the sirens would occur at a speed too fast to be easily understood by ordinary humans. However, every cringey word they were saying was now perfectly slowed down due to the time dilation and broadcast across the empire for all to hear.
“I didn’t expect the Dream Dragon to have this taste…” Kain said aloud what many were thinking. Silently judging the dragon in their hearts.
After all, these weren’t real creatures summoned from elsewhere, they were born from its mind. Therefore, they could only be saying these things if that is what it wanted to hear—right?
The Dream Dragon, hearing the muffled judgemental whispers of the audience and feeling the weight of their stares felt very wronged!
Obviously, in order to conjure a spiritual creature as close in power and ability to its template, he needed to make it resemble it as much as possible—even down to the personality! Which is why familiarity is so important!
Couldn’t they see its own tail curled in shame? Couldn’t they see its claws digging into the stage as it physically recoiled from the verbal bombardment? Couldn’t they see that IT WAS A VICTIM?!
It had just conjured them as faithfully to its memories as possible, and that happens to include these words that it had had to suffer through hearing for years.
The Dream Sirens, oblivious to the growing embarrassment of their summoner, continued their hymn at an agonizingly slow pace, their voices rising in pitch as they praised the Dream Dragon’s supposed “flawless” grandeur.
“Your wings are so vast, they could wrap the world in a blanket of dreams and warmth!” one siren cooed.
“Your beauty is like the endless sky, and even the moon envies your radiance!” another chimed in.
“Your majestic tail—oh, how it sways with such grace, like a comet streaking through the heavens!” the third added, her voice dripping with reverence.
The words, meant to uplift the Dream Dragon, only served to make it look more and more ridiculous.
The Dream Dragon’s eyes narrowed in mounting frustration. The more they sang, the more it felt its dignity slipping away. Why had it thought summoning these pests was a good idea?
With a flick of its claws, the Dream Dragon’s body trembled with tension. Its tail lashed behind it, the force of its anger sending a ripple through the air.
“Enough!” it growled under its breath, its voice crackling with irritation.
The Sirens stopped mid-song, their voices faltering as the Dream Dragon’s command resonated through the space.
“Shut up and get to work!” it snapped, its voice louder now, the frustration impossible to conceal.
The Sirens, now silenced, blinked in surprise, momentarily flustered by their summoner’s outburst. They had always taken great pride in their praise-songs, thinking it was the highest honour to sing such flattering words. After all, if even one of their words could leave even the faintest impression of themselves in their Lord’s heart, they could die completely content.
Honestly, the fact that the Dream Dragon could create such realistic conjures of them that even seem to have emotions, must mean that their wishes had come true. They had made an undeniably strong impact on the dragon—whether it liked it or not.
However, despite their desire to continue praising their Lord. They could never disobey a direct order from him. Their ethereal bodies flickered with energy, and as they were commanded, they began to focus their powers on the surrounding environment.
When they sang—especially when their songs were directed with intent—they had the power to turn reality into a dreamscape where illusions and distortions reigned supreme.
In the blink of an eye, the bright lights and hard stone of the battlefield began to blur and waver, as if the entire stage had become a brightly coloured painting.
The Dream Sirens’ chanting transformed into a surreal lullaby, the melody taking on a strange, hypnotic quality.
The audience, already struggling to make sense of the slowed-down environment due to the time dilation, now found themselves slipping deeper into an ethereal fog.
Their perception of reality blurred as dream-like illusions began to manifest before them—phantoms of dragons flying across the sky, gigantic flowers blooming in an instant, and strange landscapes rising up in every direction. The very fabric of the arena seemed to warp, making it almost impossible to tell what was real and what was just an illusion.
Honestly, had it not been for the powerful song being greatly dulled by the wards surrounding the stage, the majority of the audience probably would have directly fallen asleep without any fight.
Even with the wards, the song of the sirens was so powerful that at least a third of the audience had their eyes closed.
To those in the battle, the effects were even more dramatic. The Dream Dragon, aided by the terrain constructed by the Sirens, began to distort the field to its advantage.
Although the Sirens were annoying, there was a reason he always allowed them to follow him. Although it had supreme control over dreams, the sirens were more adept at drawing individuals into the dream realm with their songs or blurring the line between the dream realm and reality. Although the Dragon could do something similar, it would take a lot more energy, and it would not be as able to exert its power when focused on maintaining this dream-like field.
Under its machinations, the gravitational field created by the Gravitoise and Taotie now seemed to fluctuate unnaturally as if the laws of physics themselves were bending to the Dragon’s whim.
Time seemed to stutter and warp, creating moments where the battlefield slowed to a crawl before snapping forward at dizzying speeds.
Ezra’s Void Lynx, still struggling to regain its bearings from its earlier ordeal, flickered unsteadily around the field, its form blinking in and out of reality, even its space-warping abilities were starting to behave strangely against the surreal nature of the field.
Meanwhile, the Nightmare Dragon, as a close relative of the Dream Dragon, felt right at home and as though it had been injected by a stimulant, putting greater pressure on its opponent.
With a powerful beat of its wings, the Dream Dragon surged forward, the ground beneath it warping into a landscape like a watercolour painting as it glided above the arena, no longer restricted by the gravity that previously kept it down.
The Gravitoise was particularly negatively affected by the dream realm, likely due to being the main target of the Dream Dragon. It had always been able to control gravity with precision, but here, in this dream-saturated world, its gravitational manipulation was more erratic—sometimes moving exactly as it wanted, other times in the exact opposite manner.
With the dream realm created by the Dream Dragon spreading, it began to affect all of the ongoing battles.
The Magnimorph Snake who was in a fierce confrontation against Solar Dragon, was occasionally finding its perceptions altered and missing its attacks more frequently.
The Distortdjinn, who was elected to confront the Nightmare Dragon due to having the highest mental resilience, was having its mental defenses impacted for the first time in the competition.
The Void Lynx, who had finally recovered, was assisting the Voidrake against the fourth dragon that, due to its seemingly immaterial nature, Kain was calling the Ethereal Dragon. Therefore, it wasn’t able to play as great a support role across the whole field as it usually could.
The battle was once again brought to an even playing field—if anything it was tilting slightly in the direction of First Celestial.