Chapter 323: Dragonslayer

In his draconic form, Sieg drove his massive forearms into the necromantic eight-armed giant, seizing two of its limbs and wrenching them apart with overwhelming force. The crushing strength went far beyond what Varma could resist.

The behemoth, which had so easily suppressed both Wang Yu and Avia, was torn open in an instant by the wrath of the colossal dragon. A crimson glow pulsed beneath the blackened armor at its heart—dragonbreath, igniting in a brilliant burst.

A searing beam of red energy shot forth from the dragon's jaws, lancing through the torn gap in the giant's torso. The devastating heat and destructive force erupted in a fiery detonation.

This blast of dragonbreath surpassed any that Sieg had ever released before. Its terrifying power came from the living dragon armor fused to him, which housed intricate magitech circuits and additional fire-element amplification arrays—refinements that magnified his raw destructive might. A mushroom-shaped cloud billowed into the air. Smoke, fire, and shattered remnants of the eight-armed colossus whirled together. Just one breath had reduced Varma's mighty undead creation, a construct empowered by a sixth-tier spell, to ash.

Winds howled. A wave of blistering energy swept out in all directions. It passed over Wang Yu, who, after Avia's healing and the rapid activation of his regenerative abilities, had finally recovered enough to stand. Both he and Avia turned their eyes toward the battlefield where the dragon had annihilated the undead titan.

"It's not over yet," Wang Yu warned. "The enemy's goal was to drag Sieg and Noelle in here in the first place. She's confident she can take him on despite his strengths—we can't drop our guard."

Wang Yu spat out a glob of greenish mucus, the remnants of the magical suppressant he had consumed. While it had been useful against Varma, it would also counteract the healing from Avia and his potions.

Then, he downed a new potion, which glowed weakly in red. His regeneration accelerated as his vitality surged and his depleted reservoir of blood began to refill at a steady pace.

Avia's latent ability had once been able to heal Wang Yu instantly, but as his strength grew, so did the complexity of his body. Her ability could now restore only a fraction of what had been damaged.

"I've handled the preparations," Avia reported. "Our opponent is a lich. Based on the spell she used, Finger of Death, and the data from my Perfect Fractal, I've confirmed her identity. Now, we'll act in concert with the professor. No matter what she has in store, I'm confident we can finish her off here."

As she spoke, Avia drew mana stones out of the Seed of Eden and began placing them carefully around the battlefield. She was constructing a destructive spell array with staggering single-target strength.

"This unfinished weapon might finally prove useful," Wang Yu said.

He activated the Chariot and used Avia's projection on the Perfect Fractal lens to finalize the preliminary formation of the array. He then turned and took the weapon Avia handed him.

It resembled Fury of the Forge, his ruined alchemical revolver, but surpassed it in every measurable aspect: material, design, and output.

The preliminary prototype was half-finished, but Avia and Sieg had high hopes and ambitions for it—as evidenced by the name they had given it, Conqueror.

He loaded a silver-white bullet into the firearm, rotated the chamber to the firing position, and began charging it with condensed fighting spirit. Now that he was a grand knight, his fighting spirit was dense enough to replace traditional alchemical propellants entirely.

A subtle tremor coursed through the weapon. Arcane patterns that were previously invisible began to glow faintly along the barrel. Mana imbued the silver bullet with unique destructive might.

Though still a prototype, Conqueror could already showcase terrifying strength. Its only flaw was its excessive charging time. Longer than even that required for the Fury of the Forge's charged shot, it was nearly useless in most combat situations.

In battle, every second counted. Knights, for instance, were able to draw on the full strength of their bodies at any given moment and could react more quickly than magicians with their so-called "instacast" spells. This was one of their advantages. Still, in this carefully orchestrated strike, timing mattered more than speed.

"A dragon? Is that you, Sieg Wilsbach?" came a voice steeped in malicious amusement. "I didn't expect you to come to me. A delightful surprise. I thought the mission had failed, and I would need to wait longer to take that final step toward becoming a dragon myself."

Though Sieg had obliterated the undead giant, Varma's phylactery had not perished with it. Anticipating defeat, she had already hidden the source of her power—and her greatest vulnerability.

Beneath the earth, encased in reinforced bone, the dragon-lich's phylactery lay hidden. Varma had been fully focused on the battle, never growing complacent even when she believed herself close to victory.

She had cast a necromantic web throughout the Void Realm and was using it to sense Sieg from where she lay concealed. The very undead magic suffusing the realm served as her perfect shroud. As long as she remained passive, her presence was nearly undetectable.

This was one of the reasons she dared face a legendary dragon head-on. As second-in-command of the Church of Dragonkind, Varma knew better than to rely on brute force alone.

She summoned forth a spectral blade from the void. It looked like a simple longsword in form, but was adorned with dragon scales along the blade and a miniature dragon skull that formed its guard. Thin rivulets of blood streamed down its surface, vanishing into nothing.

Those devotees of the Church of Dragonkind, who idolized the might of dragons and who understood them best save for dragons themselves, also possessed the most straightforward means of taking them down. This was the Dragonslayer, a blade born from Its power.

"The crippling flaw of all dragons—their bloodline is what grants them extraordinary strength, as well as what curses and binds them for eternity."

Despite her lofty rank within the cult, Varma's expression harbored a hint of contempt. Perhaps she wasn't so devout herself after all...

She released the sword into the void. It would find its own mark—and cripple Sieg utterly.

With a roar of defiance, Sieg activated a secondary formation on his living armor. A repelling shockwave burst from his body, sweeping outward and clearing a field of raw, neutral mana in the Void Realm.

His goal was to expose Varma's hiding place. The pure mana not only disrupted her camouflage but severed her magical senses.

Sieg's eyes scanned the ground, spells cycling rapidly as he searched for traces of her existence. Finally, he located the bone sphere buried beneath the surface—Varma's hidden phylactery.

Then, a chill pierced his spine. Sieg turned sharply toward a patch of ground nearby. Something ancient and terrible was stirring—something whose presence triggered primal fear deep within his blood. Its presence.

The next instant, the Dragonslayer burst from the ground. The aura it radiated was unmistakable. It was the same power as the titanic claw that had once descended from the sky. But how? Its presence was supposed to be restricted to the material plane!

Sieg's pupils contracted. The void was involved. He could sense it. Could It project Its influence across any plane if there were a beacon—a person—guiding Its way?

He beat his wings, his living armor rippling with mana as he launched himself away. He had to get clear. Sieg could feel it in his bones: if that sword were to strike him, every drop of draconic blood within him would be annihilated.

But the sword moved too fast. His retreat was futile. It closed in, its tip nearly touching his scales—

Sieg frowned. He didn't give up. He tried to transform back into a human to avoid the sword, but there was simply no time.

"?"

And then... it passed right through him. Sieg blinked in shock. The sword had ignored him entirely. Its target was... Wang Yu?!

A moment of crystal clarity hit him. He was a flawed dragon, born with a fragmented name and now partially merged with the flesh of the ancient Behemoth. To the sword, he might have seemed more like a mongrel.

𝓯𝓻𝒆𝙚𝒘𝓮𝙗𝓷𝒐𝓿𝙚𝒍.𝙘𝓸𝙢

By contrast, Wang Yu had absorbed the blood of both Sieg and the silver dragon Aurelian. Somehow, he had even awakened the power of "dragonbreath." In some twisted way, Wang Yu was more of a dragon than Sieg. The Dragonslayer had targeted him instead.

Sieg sighed inwardly. "A never-ending parade of shocks and surprises..."

The danger had somehow been dealt with, just like that. He took the opportunity to prepare another dragonbreath. The mana circuits on his living armor lit up, supplying Sieg with what seemed like inexhaustible fire mana. It was time to finish off this hidden foe.

Meanwhile, the Dragonslayer blade pierced through Wang Yu's chest, infusing him with a strange energy and imparting him with a vision.

"What the—?"

Wang Yu frowned. The Chariot registered a strange, sword-shaped void energy passing into his body and circulating through it briefly before dissipating without a trace.

"...Whatever."

His gaze snapped back to the Perfect Fractal lens. Now wasn't the time to dwell on unusual phenomena. Varma's exact position was displayed on the lens, as revealed by Sieg.

He raised the now fully charged Conqueror, which had been equipped with a special round, the Star of Mourning.

High above Varma's hiding spot, the energy condensed into a massive runic sigil, which then unleashed a blinding white column of annihilation.

At the same moment, Sieg released another dragonbreath at full power. A crimson firestorm entwined with the descending beam. Red and white light merged as two apocalyptic forces fused into one.

The land split apart. Cracks radiated like lightning. Entire swathes of terrain were turned to ash. A deep crater yawned where the phylactery had once been, its protective bone shell utterly obliterated.

"Impossible! Why is the dragon still alive?!"

Varma's phylactery emerged from afar. She had sensed the growing elemental storm and escaped via a soul leap. Now, disoriented and exposed, she realized her gambit had failed.

But just what had happened? How had the Dragonslayer blade failed? There was only one thing she was certain of: she had to flee. Without the blade, she stood no chance against Sieg. If she were to wait any longer, her failure wouldn't even matter. She would be dead.

She tore open a dimensional rift, attempting to slip through into the undead plane.

But someone had been waiting. Just as the rift formed, an impossibly fine thread sliced through the rippling space, cutting through her phylactery without any resistance.

Avia's spell, the Severing Thread, had dealt the final blow.