The gentle clink of heavy iron links echoed across the ruined flat stone slabs of the arena.
Hall Master Han, with four surviving 1-Star Beast Instructors, crept cautiously forward from the shattered edge of the retaining wall.
In their trembling hands, the instructors carried thick, glistening coils of replacement chain.
Each link was forged from six inches of cold-cooled black star-iron, covered in fine, detailed, crimson-painted runes designed to suppress spiritual beast dantians.
“Quickly!” Han hissed under his breath, his voice strained with urgent desperation. “While the creature is dazed by the expulsion! It has exhausted its draconic reserves! We must re-anchor the 2-Star Soul-Binding Shackles before its ancient instincts reawaken!”
The instructors fanned out, raising the heavy chains with hushed incantations, preparing to loop the iron collar over the dragon-hound’s massive horns.
The moment the scent of cold star-iron and crushing weight runes drifted into the pit, the air curdled.
The Viridian Dragon-Hound’s head snapped up.
Its ears pinned flat against its skull plates.
The warm, peaceful emerald light shimmering across its scales instantly turned harsh and jagged.
GRRRRRRRR—
A deep, menacing snarl rattled through the dragon’s chest.
Its upper lip curled back, exposing three rows of serrated fangs dripping with acidic salivary venom.
The heat in the crater spiked fifty degrees in a split second as the beast’s eyes narrowed into slits of deadly, hungry focus.
The four instructors froze in their tracks, their faces draining of all color.
Two of them dropped their chains, the iron links crashing loudly against the stone, ready to bolt back to the bleachers.
Frank, who was in the middle of wiping a smudge of turnip juice off his denim sleeve, looked up with a fed up sigh.
He stepped casually between the snarling dragon and the scared instructors.
“Hey! Put that junk away!” Frank barked, waving his hands at Hall Master Han like an annoyed neighbor shooing away solicitors. “What’s wrong with you guys? Did you learn anything from the last five minutes?”
Hall Master Han clutched the heavy master shackle to his chest, stammering in terror: “Senior Master! You don’t understand! Without the Star-Iron Soul-Binding Shackles, a Rank-2 Peak apex war-beast can’t be controlled! The moment it recovers its spiritual strength, it will massacre the entire capital!”
“He doesn’t need shackles,” Frank said flatly, turning his back on the armed instructors. “He snapped your chains because your collar was three sizes too small and chafing his neck raw! You kept him locked in an iron chokehold. Meanwhile, he had an ear tick and two weeks of constipation! How would you feel if someone clamped a rusty bicycle chain around your neck when you had a migraine?”
Han stared, his mouth opening and closing like a stranded carp. “A... Bicycle... What?”
“He doesn’t need crushing weight runes,” Frank muttered, shaking his head. “He just needed basic preventive upkeep.”
Frank turned back toward the forty-foot dragon-hound.
The beast was still growling at the chains. Its massive body coiled was tight, ready to pounce and tear the instructors into bloody shreds.
Frank didn’t raise his voice. He didn’t draw a weapon.
He simply walked straight up to the creature’s towering chest, raised his bare right hand. Then he reached up to the soft, pale-green scales located right under the beast’s broad jaw.
Where the chin met the throat.
The exact spot every domestic dog on Earth dreamed about twenty-four hours a day.
Frank curled his fingers. He pressed his calloused nails into the soft crevice between the chin scales. Then he began to scratch.
Scritch-scratch. Scritch-scratch.
“Easy, Big Green,” Frank muttered in a quiet, steady beat. “Ignore the clowns with the hardware. Who’s a good boy? Who’s a big green idiot? You’re.”
The snarl died in the beast’s throat.
The murderous crimson flare in its eyes snuffed out fully.
The massive head tilted back, exposing its soft, cream-colored throat scales to the open sky.
Its huge jaw went entirely slack, its thick tongue lolling out of the corner of its mouth like a pink doormat.
Scritch-scratch. Scritch-scratch.
Frank dug his fingers two inches deeper into the soft groove, scratching with firm, steady builder leverage.
The forty-foot dragon-hound’s front legs began to wobble.
A deep, rumbling purr erupted from its massive ribs. A sound like a twin-turbo diesel generator idling inside a closed garage.
Then, before the eyes of fifty thousand numbed spectators, the impossible happened.
The legendary Viridian Dragon-Hound—an ancient scourge of the northern wilderness, a war-beast capable of sundering fortified castle gates—slowly leaned its entire twenty-eight-ton bulk to the left.
THUD.
It collapsed onto its flank with a heavy, dust-raising impact that shook the arena floorboards.
It didn’t stop there.
With a long, blissful, canine groan of total surrender, the huge titan rolled fully onto its back!
Its four huge paws, armed with talons that could shear through cold-rolled steel, curled limply into the air.
Its pale, unsafe, cream-colored belly—unprotected by heavy armored plates—was thrust upward toward the heavens, fully exposed to the sun and fully defenceless.
And then, its left rear leg began to kick.
Thump-thump!
The massive hind leg pedaled wildly in empty air, twitching in uncontrollable, ticklish ecstasy as Frank’s fingers hit the sweet spot behind its jawline.
Its tail, thick as an ancient redwood trunk, began to wag with wild, unrestrained enthusiasm, slapping against the crushed granite floor.
THUD!
THUD!
THUD!
Every rhythmic strike of the tail cracked the underlying bedrock. It sent tremors through the lower spectator tiers like a tiny earthquake.
Yet the expression on the dragon’s face was one of pure, pure, drooling bliss.
The screen in Frank’s eye flickered with amused green text:
Across the vast tiered arena, fifty thousand fighters felt their grip on reality slip entirely away into madness.
Elderly grandmasters dropped their jade walking sticks. High-born ladies forgot their fans, their mouths hanging wide open.
Students rubbed their eyes so hard their white of the eye turned red, certain they were suffering from a collective demonic illusion.
Grand Elder Yan leaned forward, his hands gripping the stone rail as he stared down at the dirt.
“The Belly Rub of Heaven’s Mandate...” Yan breathed, his voice carrying across the silent benches. “The lost subjugation postures of antiquity!”
“Look at the beast’s stance!” Hall Master Han said. That let the heavy star-iron chains slide uselessly from his grip into the dust. “Dorsal recumbency... Exposing the soft dantian to the open sky! An apex draconic entity only exposes its underbelly to total power!”
“Not a single crushing weight rune used,” Chief Elder Wu muttered, resting his forehead against the stone railing. “Pure, total submission.”
On the royal terrace, Crown Prince Chu Tianxiao gripped the marble stone railing so hard his knuckles turned white as chalk.
His jaw trembled. His teeth ground together with a sound like crushing glass.
“A dog...” Tianxiao choked out, his voice hoarse and cracking with utter humiliation. “The sacred royal guardian... Is rolling in the dirt like a mangy village dog... For a peasant’s scratches!”
In the eastern gallery, Princess Jiang Ling’er watched with a calm, knowing smile, recording the exact hum of the tail thumps in her ledger.
“One point two Hertz,” Ling’er noted softly. “Optimal endorphin breath flow. When the skull nervous system is fully de-stressed, the body motor reflexes enter an uninhibited parasympathetic loop.”
Shen Shitou chuckled, leaning his chin on his sledgehammer handle. “My uncle’s boarhound used to do that whenever you scratched behind his collar. Kick his back leg so hard he’d knock over the water pail. Master knows every beast is just a dog in a bigger skin.”
Niu Mang smiled warmly. “Look at him. Big Green’s happy as a pig in fresh mud.”
Down in the pit, Frank stopped scratching the neck and took half a step backward.
The dragon-hound let out a disappointed whimper, its hind leg stopping mid-air, its big jade eyes opening to look at Frank with deep canine sorrow.
Frank had to chuckle.
He lifted his left foot and gently rubbed the scaly white belly with the thick rubber tread of his work boot.
Scritch-scratch.
The dragon’s tail instantly resumed its thunderous thumping against the floor.
THUD! THUD! THUD!
“Yeah, yeah, good boy,” Frank said softly, patting the beast’s scaly flank with his boot. “Good boy, Big Green. You’re not so bad when you aren’t trying to melt people’s faces off with star-fire breath.”
The dragon-hound let out a deep, contented sigh, its eyes fluttering half-closed.
Then, without warning, the surrounding wind halted.
The air in the center of the colosseum grew heavy and dense with packed spiritual power.
Deep between the dragon-hound’s ivory brow horns, directly in the center of its forehead scales, a pinprick of blinding light ignited.
It wasn’t the fiery emerald flame of rage.
It was a blazing bright, radiant, pure golden pillar of ancient soul light that shot straight into the midday sky!
The golden beam pierced straight through the smoggy ceiling of Cloud-Mist Ridge, carving a circular window into the azure heavens above.
Swirling rings of ancient, snake-like script danced around the golden pillar, chiming with ringing frequencies that shook inside the souls of every living fighter within ten miles.
“The Ancestral Soul Manifestation!” Hall Master Han gasped, his hands shaking so wildly he could barely hold himself upright. “The creature isn’t merely grateful! It’s unveiling its Ancient Source Essence!”
“In the thirty ages of our Beast Guild, no war-beast has ever willingly unveiled its core soul to a human!” Chief Elder Wu cried out, his voice choked with awe. “It’s offering the sacred old family promise!”
Frank blinked against the blinding glare, raising a hand to shield his eyes from the golden spotlight pouring out of the dog’s forehead.
“Who installed high-beam halogen headlights in your skull?” Frank muttered, squinting down at the radiant forehead. “That’s at least ten thousand lumens. Fully out of residential code.”
The dragon-hound didn’t blink. Its massive head rose slowly from the ground, bathed in golden fire. That turned its gaze with resolute devotion directly toward Frank’s boots.