Chương 34: Destined Battle

"What the fuck is wrong with your eyes?" I blink. Once. Rude. I answer anyway, even as my tail flicks in open irritation.

"A trait." He stares at me for a moment, clearly deciding whether or not he cares.

"What trait?" I tilt my head, ears angling slightly as if I'm genuinely considering the question.

"You cannot seriously expect me to answer that." For a heartbeat, anger flashes across his face—hot, sharp, and entirely unfiltered. Then it vanishes, smoothed away behind practiced control. Ah. So he does know how to keep it together. Kind of.

"Whatever," he says, waving it off.

"This is your one and only warning." He raises one clawed hand, red flames crawling over his fingers and licking up his wrist, heat warping the air around him. It's a deliberate display. Meant to impress. To intimidate. To establish hierarchy.

"Leave. Now," he says flatly.

"If you run fast enough, I might even let you live." … Incredible. He skipped the entire three-page entrance monologue. No dramatic backstory hints. No grand declaration of superiority. Not even a proper villain pose. Just straight to threats. Tragic. It seems I'll have to do the heavy lifting if this is going to feel like a proper pre-battle cutscene. So, naturally, I do the most obvious thing one can do when confronted by a True Dragon fourteen levels above them. I adjust my expression a little.

Just enough to be dramatic. I stretch my own hand out in front of me, mirroring his posture, leaning forward slightly to frame the moment just right. A shame there's only one person here with the taste to appreciate the cinematography.

"Consider this your one and only warning." My own, far more beautiful flames come to life on my palm. He narrows his eyes. Good.

"Leave. Now," I continue calmly.

"Though, regrettably for you, the outcome will remain unchanged, as I have no intention of letting you live. Not under any circumstance." My tail sways behind me, slow and deliberate. There it is. Throw his words back at him. But cleaner. Sharper. Better delivered. The shock is brief—but unmistakable. His brows lift a fraction before his expression hardens again, something wary creeping in beneath the irritation. A pause. A recalculation. A successful intimidation check. Probably. And if not? Well.

At least the opening line landed. The dragon moves first. Of course he does. He raises one clawed hand and fire swells in his palm, heat compressing inward until it condenses into a dense, seething sphere roughly the size of a basketball. The air around it distorts violently before he hurls it toward me with unmistakable lethal intent. I activate my starfire shell and—naturally—Dash straight at it. The moment the fireball enters striking range, I Astral Step, slipping through it in a burst of starlight.

Heat vanishes. Pressure collapses. Space folds. I reappear directly in front of him. His eyes widen. Good. Both hands snap to my sword as I swing it out to my right and spin, momentum carrying my body through the arc.

"Horizon Slash." The blade screams toward his neck— —and he barely gets his arm up in time. Sword meets scale with a deafening clang. The impact reverberates through my arms, followed by a sharp, ugly crack. Not from my sword. Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings. From the scales that took the hit. I plant my foot hard, ground shuddering beneath the force, and immediately transition. My hilt snaps back to my left shoulder.

"Starline Thrust." I drive forward— —and miss. A single, massive wingbeat detonates the air between us, tearing him backward out of my effective range. The sudden displacement rips away my solitary Momentum stack as cleanly as if it had never existed. I exhale through my nose. Annoying. Gravity drops to its minimum and I launch. I surge forward in a straight line, intent on keeping him grounded.

Letting a mage— a flying one, no less—achieve altitude when I currently lack any reliable aerial combat options is a strictly worst-case scenario. One that likely ends with me being bombarded into a smoking corpse while he circles overhead like an extremely smug weather phenomenon. As cinematic as that death would probably be, I personally prefer life over the cold embrace of the underworld. Or whatever nonsense happens to dead people in this aggressively fantasy-chic reality.

Fire sparks to life above his left shoulder, twisting and compressing until it forms a long, distorted spike—half spear, half accusation—before it launches straight at me.

"Flame Lance!" The projectile tears through the air with murderous intent, a blazing reminder that magical physics operate on vibes rather than rules. As it charges toward my face, I find myself pondering an important question. … Can I cut it out of the air without being reduced to well-done Lyn chunks? Only one way to find out. I raise my sword overhead and bring it down in a decisive arc the instant the lance enters range. It works. … Kind of.

The impact detonates the spell into a violent spray of fire and pressure. Heat washes over me, my arms flaring with pain as the air turns several degrees spicier than it had any right to be. The blast shoves against my starfire shell— —and then something interesting happens. My starfire rejects it. Not blocks. Not resists. It outright devours the remaining flames, swallowing them the same way it does physical matter, as if offended by the intrusion of lesser fire into its space.

I skid back half a step, smoke curling off my forearms. I glance down. A few hit points gone. Nothing serious. Easily regenerated. The only real downside is the persistent prickling sensation of having lightly cooked my own arms. At least, it would be—if the constant attrition damage weren't smothering my passive regeneration entirely. Annoying. Eight out of ten. Bonus points for almost certainly looking extremely cool from a third-person perspective. The dragon hesitates.

Just for a moment—either stunned by the fact that I just cut a spell in half, or briefly reconsidering whether engaging me was a good idea for his long-term health. Hard to say. Either way, I take full advantage. I Dash. The distance collapses instantly, and I'm on him again, blade flashing as I launch into a rapid sequence of strikes—this time without any skills layered in. Clean. Fast. Repetitive. He blocks every single one. Forearm scales. Tail. A quick twist of his shoulder. Efficient, practiced defenses.

Doesn't matter. These aren't for damage. Two stacks. Three stacks. Five. He retaliates with a scatter of fireballs and a series of claw swipes meant to force space, but I slip past them all, never fully disengaging, never letting him reset. His Dexterity is close to mine. Closer than I'd like. But his other stats tell a different story—his Perception lags just enough, his Strength just shy of mine. Which means— He can't shake me. Until he tries something different.

Heat blooms suddenly from his right hand, violent and compressed, distorting the air and kicking the ash-laden wind upward into a familiar, dangerous updraft. Ah. That's a problem. I Astral Step backward just as he releases it.

"Flare Burst!" The explosion slams outward with a concussive bang, ash and debris thrown violently into the air. My ears flatten on instinct as the shockwave rolls through the wasteland. I don't wait for the flames to clear. I Dash straight back in. Three Momentum stacks vanish in the brief window of separation. Annoying. The air is still shimmering with heat—stepping into it feels like plunging into a furnace—but the gamble pays off.

My blade slips past his guard and catches his thigh before he can fully reposition, tearing through fabric and leaving a sharp red line across the unprotected skin beneath. He snarls. My tail sways in appreciation. First blood is mine. Naturally, I take the opportunity to taunt him. Because no violent disagreement is complete without a little trash talk.

"Oh dear… those scales don't protect everything, do they?" I ask, tone sweet enough to rot teeth. Oh. He looks pissed. Excellent. Unfortunately, he declines to answer my rhetorical question. Rude. Instead, he opts to express himself through a sustained barrage of fireballs, with the occasional lance threaded in for emphasis—apparently deciding that if dignity has failed, overwhelming violence is the next logical step.

I weave through the inferno, cutting and twisting between explosions, twirling past lances with inches to spare. My blade flashes in tight arcs as I slip inside his guard again and again, landing shallow cuts where I can—never committing too hard, never letting him breathe. Momentum builds. Stacks climb. Pressure stays constant. I do, however, make a mental note of the fireballs and lances that miss me and slam into the ground instead.

Mostly because each one detonates with force uncomfortably close to my own thermal grenade. Ah. That explains a lot. Physical stats high enough to keep up with me. Magical output strong enough to casually lob high explosives like a one-man artillery battery. As expected, True Dragons come equipped with a truly disrespectful stat line. The fourteen-level gap certainly doesn't help. But as long as I keep him on the back foot— As long as I don't give him time to think— I like my chances.

Which is, naturally, the exact line of thinking that causes reality to clap back like a boomerang powered by overconfidence and a profound sense of dramatic irony. The dragon growls. Not a shout. Not a roar. A low, vibrating sound filled with intent—and the air around him begins to burn. Heat surges outward in visible waves. Sparks crackle and snap through the ash-choked air as the ground beneath his feet reignites, embers flaring to life like they've been waiting for permission. My eyes widen.

I disengage immediately. Momentum stacks be damned. A clean Astral Step tears me out of range just as he triggers the skill.

"Flame Torrent!" Fire erupts. A towering column of red and orange flame spirals skyward from his position, forming a raging inferno that stretches dozens of meters into the air. The heat is immense—tongues of fire lash outward, consuming everything nearby as ash and debris are flung violently away. I shield my eyes, retreating further as the air itself seems to scream. The torrent lasts only a few seconds. Long enough for every last Momentum stack to decay into nothing. Charging into that would have consequences.

Serious ones. When the flames finally collapse inward and fade, the battlefield has changed. And so has he. The dragon is airborne. Hovering high above me, wings spread wide, heat shimmering around his form. Far enough that even a full-power jump wouldn't close the gap. I grimace slightly. Then he speaks.

"Fine," he says, voice sharp and resonant.

"If you are so desperate to die, then I will grant your wish." My ears twitch. Is this— His scales surge. Flowing like molten metal, they spread across the remaining exposed skin, swallowing every trace of humanoid form. His body begins to expand, bones shifting, mass increasing with each second. His face elongates, features pulling forward into a proper snout. Horns curve and thicken. Wings stretch wider, membranes expanding as his frame grows larger and larger. Naturally, I wait.

Interrupting transformation sequences is strictly forbidden by my personal code of ethics. A few seconds later, it's done. Where a humanoid once hovered now looms a full western dragon—massive, unmistakable, at least fifteen to twenty meters from snout to tail. His wings beat once, stirring a gale that scatters ash across the wasteland. He throws his head back and roars. The sound is deafening, raw power vibrating through the ground and rattling my bones. My ears ache, flattening reflexively as the roar rolls on.

Then, slowly, deliberately, he lowers his head. Yellow, slitted eyes lock onto me, narrowed and burning with intent. I nod. Metaphorically, of course. My expression remains perfect. A second phase. A properly dramatic transformation. Nine out of ten. All that's left is—" Round Two." That. The words carry weight, reverberating through the air like the activation of a skill rather than a simple declaration. My tail swishes in anticipation.